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NUCLEAR
Theodore Taylor, a Designer of A-Bombs Who Turned Against Them, Dies at 79
Peace & The New Corporate Liberation Theology
Atomic Power Station Halted in Russia, No Radiation
Accident at Russian nuclear power plant sows fear among residents
Parents hear details of school evacuation plan
Another nuclear plant fails siren test
Revealed: the huge mountain of 'unofficial' nuclear waste
Breathing Uranium Oxides
MoD admits Gulf War mistakes
MoD dismisses reports on 'Gulf War Syndrome'
Defence says no deal signed on weapons testing
War Crimes and Iraq
Environmentalists express concern about smart bombs
The lowly, ill-regarded tumbleweed might be good for something after all.
Iran: U.S. Nuclear Fears Overblown
Iran, EU Nuke Talks Progress, But No Deal Yet
Khamenei denies Iran seeking nuclear weapons, hits out at Bush
Japan to increase inspections of Kansai Electric
UN nuclear watchdog ends inspections in South Korea
North Korea wants big concessions from second-term Bush
U.N.: Traces of Plutonium Found in Egypt
Slim majority oppose missile defence: poll
Report: Terrorists prowling Yucca site?
Islamic site links to Nevada info
UN nuclear chief rejects charges he has attacked Bush over Iraq
Top U.N. arms inspector slams Bush
Nuclear laundry to be razed
Vermont Yankee Power Uprate Application
NRC calls off meetings, will reschedule to allow public
DOE OKs North Anna demo
Survey: Majority of Nevadans still support Yucca fight
Nuclear waste gridlock looms, officials warn
9th Circuit overturns ruling on reclassifying nuclear waste
MILITARY
Karzai Vows to Crack Down On Warlords, Drug Dealers
KABUL Afghan Leader Promises Security and Stability
Darfur Increasingly Unstable, U.N. Envoy Warns
Japan: Bush Reelection Means Even Closer Ties
U.S. Awards Anthrax Vaccine Deal
Three British Troops Killed In Iraq Attack
Hoon Fury at Black Watch Deaths 'Duplicity' Charge
U.S. military gear on sale at dangerous Baghdad bazaar
Raytheon To Continue NASA Contract
Bush win seen lifting drug, defense, oil stocks
Colombia: Bush's Triumph Gladdens Uribe, Scares Others
'My brother died for oil'
Bush laments coalition of the unwilling
G.I.'s Itch to Prove Their Mettle in Falluja
U.S. Warplanes Pound Targets in Fallujah
UN Warns on Iraq, U.S. Urges Civilians to Flee City
Arafat Wants to Be Buried in Jerusalem
Palestinians Choose Two To Assume Arafat Roles
Brazil minister quits in army row
NATO chief hails alliance relations with Armenia
New Russian army chief appointed
Clarke: Nations using internet to spy
CIA's Goss Names Undercover Officer To No. 3 Position
Retired Official Defends the CIA's Performance
Jury in Siberia Convicts Physicist of Spying for China
Air Force report calls for $7.5M to study psychic teleportation
Warplane Strafes a School in New Jersey
F-16 fighter jet accidentally fires on New Jersey school
Injured Troops Look for Courage, Face Fears
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Despite G.O.P. Gain, Fight Over Judges Remains
Go West to use medical marijuana
'No-Fly List' discriminates against some
700 arrests made to avert election terrorist attack
Police Create Panel on Abuse Claims at Convention
Dead Inmate Exonerated in a Murder
POLITICS
Dollar Falls On Fears of U.S. Deficits
US Lost Evidence of Saddam's Abuses
Bush victory infuriates world press
Report Says Problems Led to Skewed Surveying Data
Bush will now celebrate by putting Falluja to the torch
The End Game - Divide And Conquer
Foreign policy: More to worry about
Confident Bush Vows to Move Aggressively
Knuckleheaded politics
ENERGY
Colorado voters back renewable energy measure
Eagles overshadow world's biggest land windfarm
OTHER
New Jersey Writes Nation's Strictest Mercury, Arsenic Rules
ACTIVISTS
Ballot Initiative to Ease California "Three Strikes Law" Fails to Pass
-------- NUCLEAR
Theodore Taylor, a Designer of A-Bombs Who Turned Against Them, Dies at 79
November 5, 2004
By MARGALIT FOX
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/national/05taylor.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Theodore Taylor, a theoretical physicist who spent his early career as a designer of streamlined nuclear weapons and his later career as an antinuclear campaigner, died on Oct. 28 at a nursing home in Silver Spring, Md. He was 79 and until recently lived in the western New York community of Wellsville.
The cause was complications of coronary artery disease, his family said.
Dr. Taylor, who worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory at the height of the cold war, was renowned as a designer of fission bombs of minimal size and maximal bang. He later directed Project Orion, whose mission was to develop a nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft.
"His trade, basically, was the miniaturizing of weapons," the physicist Freeman Dyson says in "The Curve of Binding Energy" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974), a book-length profile of Dr. Taylor by John McPhee. "He was the first man in the world to understand what you can do with three or four kilograms of plutonium, that making bombs is an easy thing to do, that you can, so to speak, design them freehand."
But by the mid-1960's, Dr. Taylor had become, in his own words, a "nuclear dropout." A frequent adviser on nuclear safeguards, he wrote and lectured widely on the threat of nuclear terrorism and the risks of nuclear power. He believed that a small clandestine group, or even an individual, could easily steal nuclear material and, with publicly available information, build a homemade atomic bomb.
"The nuclear genie has proliferated considerably since it was first released," he said in a 1996 lecture. His mission, he often stated, was to put it back into the bottle, and by the end of his life he had become an archetypal figure: the creator compelled to destroy his own creation after it runs menacingly amok.
Theodore Brewster Taylor was born on July 11, 1925, in Mexico City. His grandparents had been missionaries, and his father was general secretary of the Y.M.C.A. in Mexico. A brilliant boy (he completed sixth grade the same year he started fourth), Ted was enthralled by his chemistry set, or, more precisely, its explosive possibilities.
"He enjoyed putting potassium chlorate and sulfur under Mexico City streetcars," Mr. McPhee wrote. "There was a flash, and a terrific bang."
Dr. Taylor received a bachelor's degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1945 and pursued a doctorate in physics at the University of California. But he failed his oral examinations - he lacked the capacity to focus on things that did not interest him - and he left the department in 1949. (He would eventually earn a Ph.D. from Cornell in 1954.)
He found a job at Los Alamos. "Within a week, I was deeply immersed in nuclear weaponry," Dr. Taylor wrote in a 1996 article in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. "I was fascinated by every bit of information I was given during those first few days."
Preternaturally inept at ordinary tasks (parking a car defeated him), he became an artist of the fission bomb, taking the massive nuclear weapons developed for the Manhattan Project and making them smaller and lighter without sacrificing explosive power. Over the next seven years, he designed a series of ever-smaller bombs, whose cunning names - Scorpion, Wasp, Bee, Hornet - captured both their size and their sting.
Dr. Taylor would develop the smallest fission bomb of its time, Davy Crockett, which weighed less than 50 pounds. (By contrast, Little Boy, dropped on Hiroshima, weighed almost 9,000 pounds.) At the other extreme, he designed Super Oralloy, which was at the time, Mr. McPhee wrote, "the largest-yield pure-fission bomb ever constructed in the world."
Viewed as a theoretical abstraction, Dr. Taylor's work had a cool, compelling elegance. Exploded in the Nevada desert, it made a satisfying flash and bang. The weapons, he often reminded himself, were meant to deter nuclear war, and if the United States did not develop them, the Soviets soon would.
In his 1996 article, he recalled how he spent Nov. 15, 1950, the day his daughter Katherine was born:
"Instead of being with my wife, Caro, I had spent the day at a military intelligence office, poring over aerial photographs of Moscow, placing the sharp point of a compass in Red Square and drawing circles corresponding to distances at which moderate and severe damage would result from the explosion at different heights of a 500-kiloton made-in-America bomb. I remember feeling disappointed because none of the circles included all of Moscow."
Dr. Taylor's marriage, to the former Caro Arnim, whom he wed in 1948, ended in divorce in 1992. He is survived by their five children: Clare Hastings of Washington; Katherine Robertson of Davis, Calif.; Christopher, of Colorado Springs; Robert, of Rockville, Md.; and Jeffrey, of Brooklyn; two half-brothers, John Barber of Irvine, Calif., and Ralph Thompson of Issaquah, Wash.; 10 grandchildren; and 9 great-grandchildren.
In 1956, Dr. Taylor left Los Alamos to work on Orion. The size of a 16-story building, Orion was to be propelled by 2,000 nuclear bombs, ejected one by one from the bottom of the spaceship (the designers modeled this feature on the technology of Coke machines) and detonated in space. He dreamed of visiting Mars and Saturn, but the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned nuclear explosions in the atmosphere and in space, put an end to the project.
In the late 1950's, working for a division of General Dynamics, Dr. Taylor and several colleagues developed Triga, a small reactor used for research and considered safer than conventional reactors.
In 1964, he went to work for the Defense Department as deputy director of the Defense Atomic Support Agency. There, he later said, he came to see the real-world implications of the elegant little bombs he had designed at Los Alamos.
"I became privy to the actual characteristics and deployments of what, by then, were thousands of nuclear weapons," he wrote in 1996. "The nuclear arms race had a force and a momentum I had never dreamed of."
He left in 1966 and the following year started the International Research and Technology Corporation, a consulting business. In 1980 he started Nova Inc., which developed alternatives to nuclear energy.
His books include "The Restoration of the Earth" (1973, with Charles C. Humpstone), "Nuclear Theft: Risks and Safeguards" (1974, with Mason Willrich) and "Nuclear Proliferation: Motivations, Capabilities and Strategies for Control" (1977, with Ted Greenwood and Harold A. Feiveson).
He also taught at Princeton for a number of years, and was a member of the president's commission on the Three Mile Island accident.
Dr. Taylor approached his work with the zeal of a convert and, perhaps, the attitude of a penitent.
"Rationalize how you will, the bombs were designed to kill many, many people," he says in Mr. McPhee's book. "If it were possible to wave a wand and make fission impossible - fission of any kind - I would quickly wave the wand."
--------
Peace & The New Corporate Liberation Theology
Scoop Media
Arundhati Roy
5 November 2004
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/PO0411/S00054.htm
The 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture delivered by Arundhati Roy, at the Seymour Theatre Centre, University of Sydney, 4 November 2004
Peace & The New Corporate Liberation Theology
It's official now. The Sydney Peace Foundation is neck deep in the business of gambling and calculated risk. Last year, very courageously, it chose Dr Hanan Ashrawi of Palestine for the Sydney Peace Prize. And, as if that were not enough, this year - of all the people in the world - it goes and chooses me!
However I'd like to make a complaint. My sources inform me that Dr Ashrawi had a picket all to herself. This is discriminatory. I demand equal treatment for all Peace Prizees. May I formally request the Foundation to organize a picket against me after the lecture? From what I've heard, it shouldn't be hard to organize. If this is insufficient notice, then tomorrow will suit me just as well.
When this year's Sydney Peace Prize was announced, I was subjected to some pretty arch remarks from those who know me well: Why did they give it to the biggest trouble-maker we know? Didn't anybody tell them that you don't have a peaceful bone in your body? And, memorably, Arundhati didi what's the Sydney Peace Prize? Was there a war in Sydney that you helped to stop?
Speaking for myself, I am utterly delighted to receive the Sydney Peace Prize. But I must accept it as a literary prize that honors a writer for her writing, because contrary to the many virtues that are falsely attributed to me, I'm not an activist, nor the leader of any mass movement, and I'm certainly not the "voice of the voiceless". (We know of course there's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.) I am a writer who cannot claim to represent anybody but herself. So even though I would like to, it would be presumptuous of me to say that I accept this prize on behalf of those who are involved in the struggle of the powerless and the disenfranchised against the powerful. However, may I say I accept it as the Sydney Peace Foundation's expression of solidarity with a kind of politics, a kind of world-view, that millions of us around the world subscribe to?
It might seem ironic that a person who spends most of her time thinking of strategies of resistance and plotting to disrupt the putative peace, is given a peace prize. You must remember that I come from an essentially feudal country -and there are few things more disquieting than a feudal peace. Sometimes there's truth in old cliches. There can be no real peace without justice. And without resistance there will be no justice.
Today, it is not merely justice itself, but the idea of justice that is under attack. The assault on vulnerable, fragile sections of society is at once so complete, so cruel and so clever - all encompassing and yet specifically targeted, blatantly brutal and yet unbelievably insidious - that its sheer audacity has eroded our definition of justice. It has forced us to lower our sights, and curtail our expectations. Even among the well-intentioned, the expansive, magnificent concept of justice is gradually being substituted with the reduced, far more fragile discourse of 'human rights'.
If you think about it, this is an alarming shift of paradigm. The difference is that notions of equality, of parity have been pried loose and eased out of the equation. It's a process of attrition. Almost unconsciously, we begin to think of justice for the rich and human rights for the poor. Justice for the corporate world, human rights for its victims. Justice for Americans, human rights for Afghans and Iraqis. Justice for the Indian upper castes, human rights for Dalits and Adivasis (if that.) Justice for white Australians, human rights for Aboriginals and immigrants (most times, not even that.)
It is becoming more than clear that violating human rights is an inherent and necessary part of the process of implementing a coercive and unjust political and economic structure on the world. Without the violation of human rights on an enormous scale, the neo-liberal project would remain in the dreamy realm of policy. But increasingly Human Rights violations are being portrayed as the unfortunate, almost accidental fallout of an otherwise acceptable political and economic system. As though they're a small problem that can be mopped up with a little extra attention from some NGOs. This is why in areas of heightened conflict - in Kashmir and in Iraq for example - Human Rights Professionals are regarded with a degree of suspicion. Many resistance movements in poor countries which are fighting huge injustice and questioning the underlying principles of what constitutes "liberation" and "development", view Human Rights NGOs as modern day missionaries who've come to take the ugly edge off Imperialism. To defuse political anger and to maintain the status quo.
It has been only a few weeks since a majority of Australians voted to re-elect Prime Minister John Howard who, among other things, led Australia to participate in the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it and are now in the process of selling it.
I speak of Iraq, not because everybody is talking about it, (sadly at the cost of leaving other horrors in other places to unfurl in the dark), but because it is a sign of things to come. Iraq marks the beginning of a new cycle. It offers us an opportunity to watch the Corporate-Military cabal that has come to be known as 'Empire' at work. In the new Iraq the gloves are off.
As the battle to control the world's resources intensifies, economic colonialism through formal military aggression is staging a comeback. Iraq is the logical culmination of the process of corporate globalization in which neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism have fused. If we can find it in ourselves to peep behind the curtain of blood, we would glimpse the pitiless transactions taking place backstage. But first, briefly, the stage itself.
In 1991 US President George Bush senior mounted Operation Desert Storm. Tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed in the war. Iraq's fields were bombed with more than 300 tonnes of depleted uranium, causing a fourfold increase in cancer among children. For more than 13 years, twenty four million Iraqi people have lived in a war zone and been denied food and medicine and clean water. In the frenzy around the US elections, let's remember that the levels of cruelty did not fluctuate whether the Democrats or the Republicans were in the White House. Half a million Iraqi children died because of the regime of economic sanctions in the run up to Operation Shock and Awe. Until recently, while there was a careful record of how many US soldiers had lost their lives, we had no idea of how many Iraqis had been killed. US General Tommy Franks said "We don't do body counts" (meaning Iraqi body counts). He could have added "We don't do the Geneva Convention either." A new, detailed study, fast-tracked by the Lancet medical journal and extensively peer reviewed, estimates that 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives since the 2003 invasion. That's one hundred halls full of people - like this one. That's one hundred halls full of friends, parents, siblings, colleagues, lovers.like you. The difference is that there aren't many children here todaylet's not forget Iraq's children. Technically that bloodbath is called precision bombing. In ordinary language, it's called butchering,
Most of this is common knowledge now. Those who support the invasion and vote for the invaders cannot take refuge in ignorance. They must truly believe that this epic brutality is right and just or, at the very least, acceptable because it's in their interest.
So the 'civilized' 'modern' world - built painstakingly on a legacy of genocide, slavery and colonialism - now controls most of the world's oil. And most of the world's weapons, most of the world's money, and most of the world's media. The embedded, corporate media in which the doctrine of Free Speech has been substituted by the doctrine of Free If You Agree Speech.
The UN's Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix said he found no evidence of nuclear weapons in Iraq. Every scrap of evidence produced by the US and British governments was found to be false - whether it was reports of Saddam Hussein buying uranium from Niger, or the report produced by British Intelligence which was discovered to have been plagiarized from an old student dissertation. And yet, in the prelude to the war, day after day the most 'respectable' newspapers and TV channels in the US , headlined the 'evidence' of Iraq's arsenal of weapons of nuclear weapons. It now turns out that the source of the manufactured 'evidence' of Iraq's arsenal of nuclear weapons was Ahmed Chalabi who, (like General Suharto of Indonesia, General Pinochet of Chile, the Shah of Iran, the Taliban and of course, Saddam Hussein himself) - was bankrolled with millions of dollars from the good old CIA.
And so, a country was bombed into oblivion. It's true there have been some murmurs of apology. Sorry 'bout that folks, but we have really have to move on. Fresh rumours are coming in about nuclear weapons in Eye-ran and Syria. And guess who is reporting on these fresh rumours? The same reporters who ran the bogus 'scoops' on Iraq. The seriously embedded A Team.
The head of Britain's BBC had to step down and one man committed suicide because a BBC reporter accused the Blair administration of 'sexing up' intelligence reports about Iraq's WMD programme. But the head of Britain retains his job even though his government did much more than 'sex up' intelligence reports. It is responsible for the illegal invasion of a country and the mass murder of its people.
Visitors to Australia like myself, are expected to answer the following question when they fill in the visa form: Have you ever committed or been involved in the commission of war crimes or crimes against humanity or human rights? Would George Bush and Tony Blair get visas to Australia? Under the tenets of International Law they must surely qualify as war criminals.
However, to imagine that the world would change if they were removed from office is naive. The tragedy is that their political rivals have no real dispute with their policies. The fire and brimstone of the US election campaign was about who would make a better 'Commander-in-Chief' and a more effective manager of the American Empire. Democracy no longer offers voters real choice. Only specious choice.
Even though no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq - stunning new evidence has revealed that Saddam Hussein was planning a weapons programme. (Like I was planning to win an Olympic Gold in synchronized swimming.) Thank goodness for the doctrine of pre-emptive strike. God knows what other evil thoughts he harbored - sending Tampax in the mail to American senators, or releasing female rabbits in burqas into the London underground. No doubt all will be revealed in the free and fair trial of Saddam Hussein that's coming up soon in the New Iraq.
All except the chapter in which we would learn of how the US and Britain plied him with money and material assistance at the time he was carrying out murderous attacks on Iraqi Kurds and Shias. All except the chapter in which we would learn that a 12,000 page report submitted by the Saddam Hussein government to the UN, was censored by the United States because it lists twenty-four US corporations that participated in Iraq's pre-Gulf War nuclear and conventional weapons programme. (They include Bechtel, DuPont, , Eastman Kodak, Hewlett Packard, International Computer Systems and Unisys.)
So Iraq has been 'liberated.' Its people have been subjugated and its markets have been 'freed'. That's the anthem of neo-liberalism. Free the markets. Screw the people.
The US government has privatized and sold entire sectors of Iraq's economy. Economic policies and tax laws have been re-written. Foreign companies can now buy 100% of Iraqi firms and expatriate the profits. This is an outright violation of international laws that govern an occupying force, and is among the main reasons for the stealthy, hurried charade in which power was 'handed over' to an 'interim Iraqi government'. Once handing over of Iraq to the Multi-nationals is complete, a mild dose of genuine democracy won't do any harm. In fact it might be good PR for the Corporate version of Liberation Theology, otherwise known as New Democracy.
Not surprisingly, the auctioning of Iraq caused a stampede at the feeding trough. Corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton, the company that US Vice-president Dick Cheney once headed, have won huge contracts for 'reconstruction' work. A brief c.v of any one of these corporations would give us a lay person's grasp of how it all works. - not just in Iraq, but all over the world. Say we pick Bechtel - only because poor little Halliburton is under investigation on charges of overpricing fuel deliveries to Iraq and for its contracts to 'restore' Iraq's oil industry which came with a pretty serious price-tag - 2.5 billion dollars.
The Bechtel Group and Saddam Hussein are old business acquaintances. Many of their dealings were negotiated by none other than Donald Rumsfeld. In 1988, after Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds, Bechtel signed contracts with his government to build a dual-use chemical plant in Baghdad.
Historically, the Bechtel Group has had and continues to have inextricably close links to the Republican establishment. You could call Bechtel and the Reagan Bush administration a team. Former Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger was a Bechtel general counsel. Former Deputy Secretary of Energy, W. Kenneth Davis was Bechtel's vice president. Riley Bechtel, the company chairman, is on the President's Export Council. Jack Sheehan, a retired marine corps general, is a senior vice president at Bechtel and a member of the US Defense Policy Board. Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is on the Board of Directors of the Bechtel Group, was the chairman of the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
When he was asked by the New York Times whether he was concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest between his two 'jobs', he said, "I don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it [The invasion of Iraq]. But if there's work to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it." Bechtel has been awarded reconstruction contracts in Iraq worth over a billion dollars, which include contracts to re-build power generation plants, electrical grids, water supply, sewage systems, and airport facilities. Never mind revolving doors, this -if it weren't so drenched in blood- would be a bedroom farce.
Between 2001 and 2002, nine out of thirty members of the US Defense Policy Group were connected to companies that were awarded Defense contracts worth 76 billion dollars. Time was when weapons were manufactured in order to fight wars. Now wars are manufactured in order to sell weapons.
Between 1990 and 2002 the Bechtel group has contributed $3.3 million to campaign funds, both Republican and Democrat. Since 1990 it has won more than 2000 government contracts worth more than 11 billion dollars. That's an incredible return on investment, wouldn't you say?
And Bechtel has footprints around the world. That's what being a multi-national means.
The Bechtel Group first attracted international attention when it signed a contract with Hugo Banzer, the former Bolivian dictator, to privatize the water supply in the city of Cochabamba. The first thing Bechtel did was to raise the price of water. Hundreds of thousands of people who simply couldn't afford to pay Bechtel's bills came out onto the streets. A huge strike paralyzed the city. Martial law was declared. Although eventually Bechtel was forced to flee its offices, it is currently negotiating an exit payment of millions of dollars from the Bolivian government for the loss of potential profits. Which, as we'll see, is growing into a popular corporate sport.
In India, Bechtel along with General Electric are the new owners of the notorious and currently defunct Enron power project. The Enron contract, which legally binds the Government of the State of Maharashtra to pay Enron a sum of 30 billion dollars, was the largest contract ever signed in India. Enron was not shy to boast about the millions of dollars it had spent to "educate" Indian politicians and bureaucrats. The Enron contract in Maharashtra, which was India's first 'fast-track' private power project, has come to be known as the most massive fraud in the country's history. (Enron was another of the Republican Party's major campaign contributors). The electricity that Enron produced was so exorbitant that the government decided it was cheaper not to buy electricity and pay Enron the mandatory fixed charges specified in the contract. This means that the government of one of the poorest countries in the world was paying Enron 220 million US dollars a year not to produce electricity!
Now that Enron has ceased to exist, Bechtel and GE are suing the Indian Government for 5.6 billion US dollars. This is not even a minute fraction of the sum of money that they (or Enron) actually invested in the project. Once more, it's a projection of profit they would have made had the project materialized. To give you an idea of scale 5.6 billion dollars a little more than the amount that the Government of India would need annually, for a rural employment guarantee scheme that would provide a subsistence wage to millions of people currently living in abject poverty, crushed by debt, displacement, chronic malnutrition and the WTO. This in a country where farmers steeped in debt are being driven to suicide, not in their hundreds, but in their thousands. The proposal for a Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is being mocked by India's corporate class as an unreasonable, utopian demand being floated by the 'lunatic' and newly powerful left. Where will the money come from? they ask derisively. And yet, any talk of reneging on a bad contract with a notoriously corrupt corporation like Enron, has the same cynics hyperventilating about capital flight and the terrible risks of 'creating a bad investment climate'. The arbitration between Bechtel, GE and the Government of India is taking place right now in London. Bechtel and GE have reason for hope. The Indian Finance Secretary who was instrumental in approving the disastrous Enron contract has come home after a few years with the IMF. Not just home, home with a promotion. He is now Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission.
Think about it: The notional profits of a single corporate project would be enough to provide a hundred days of employment a year at minimum wages (calculated at a weighted average across different states) for 25 million people. That's five million more than the population of Australia. That is the scale of the horror of neo-liberalism.
The Bechtel story gets worse. In what can only be called unconscionable, Naomi Klein writes that Bechtel has successfully sued war-torn Iraq for 'war reparations' and 'lost profits'. It has been awarded 7 million dollars.
So, all you young management graduates don't bother with Harvard and Wharton - here's the Lazy Manager's Guide to Corporate Success: First, stock your Board with senior government servants. Next, stock the government with members of your board. Add oil and stir. When no one can tell where the government ends and your company begins, collude with your government to equip and arm a cold-blooded dictator in an oil-rich country. Look away while he kills his own people. Simmer gently. Use the time collect to collect a few billion dollars in government contracts. Then collude with your government once again while it topples the dictator and bombs his subjects, taking to specifically target essential infrastructure, killing a hundred thousand people on the side. Pick up another billion dollars or so worth of contracts to 'reconstruct' the infrastructure. To cover travel and incidentals, sue for reparations for lost profits from the devastated country. Finally, diversify. Buy a TV station, so that next war around you can showcase your hardware and weapons technology masquerading as coverage of the war. And finally finally, institute a Human Rights Prize in your company's name. You could give the first one posthumously to Mother Teresa. She won't be able to turn it down or argue back.
Invaded and occupied Iraq has been made to pay out 200 million dollars in "reparations" for lost profits to corporations like Halliburton, Shell, Mobil, Nestle, Pepsi, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Toys R Us. That's apart from its 125 billion dollar sovereign debt forcing it to turn to the IMF, waiting in the wings like the angel of death, with its Structural Adjustment program. (Though in Iraq there don't seem to be many structures left to adjust. Except the shadowy Al Qaeda.)
In New Iraq, privatization has broken new ground. The US Army is increasingly recruiting private mercenaries to help in the occupation. The advantage with mercenaries is that when they're killed they're not included in the US soldiers' body count. It helps to manage public opinion, which is particularly important in an election year. Prisons have been privatized. Torture has been privatized. We have seen what that leads to. Other attractions in New Iraq include newspapers being shut down. Television stations bombed. Reporters killed. US soldiers have opened fire on crowds of unarmed protestors killing scores of people. The only kind of resistance that has managed to survive is as crazed and brutal as the occupation itself. Is there space for a secular, democratic, feminist, non-violent resistance in Iraq? There isn't really.
That is why it falls to those of us living outside Iraq to create that mass-based, secular and non-violent resistance to the US occupation. If we fail to do that, then we run the risk of allowing the idea of resistance to be hi-jacked and conflated with terrorism and that will be a pity because they are not the same thing.
So what does peace mean in this savage, corporatized, militarized world? What does it mean in a world where an entrenched system of appropriation has created a situation in which poor countries which have been plundered by colonizing regimes for centuries are steeped in debt to the very same countries that plundered them, and have to repay that debt at the rate of 382 billion dollars a year? What does peace mean in a world in which the combined wealth of the world's 587 billionaires exceeds the combined gross domestic product of the world's 135 poorest countries? Or when rich countries that pay farm subsidies of a billion dollars a day, try and force poor countries to drop their subsidies? What does peace mean to people in occupied Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir, Tibet and Chechnya? Or to the aboriginal people of Australia? Or the Ogoni of Nigeria? Or the Kurds in Turkey? Or the Dalits and Adivasis of India? What does peace mean to non-muslims in Islamic countries, or to women in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan? What does it mean to the millions who are being uprooted from their lands by dams and development projects? What does peace mean to the poor who are being actively robbed of their resources and for whom everyday life is a grim battle for water, shelter, survival and, above all, some semblance of dignity? For them, peace is war.
We know very well who benefits from war in the age of Empire. But we must also ask ourselves honestly who benefits from peace in the age of Empire? War mongering is criminal. But talking of peace without talking of justice could easily become advocacy for a kind of capitulation. And talking of justice without unmasking the institutions and the systems that perpetrate injustice, is beyond hypocritical.
It's easy to blame the poor for being poor. It's easy to believe that the world is being caught up in an escalating spiral of terrorism and war. That's what allows the American President to say "You're either with us or with the terrorists." But we know that that's a spurious choice. We know that terrorism is only the privatization of war. That terrorists are the free marketers of war. They believe that the legitimate use of violence is not the sole prerogative of the State.
It is mendacious to make moral distinction between the unspeakable brutality of terrorism and the indiscriminate carnage of war and occupation. Both kinds of violence are unacceptable. We cannot support one and condemn the other.
The real tragedy is that most people in the world are trapped between the horror of a putative peace and the terror of war. Those are the two sheer cliffs we're hemmed in by. The question is: How do we climb out of this crevasse?
For those who are materially well-off, but morally uncomfortable, the first question you must ask yourself is do you really want to climb out of it? How far are you prepared to go? Has the crevasse become too comfortable?
If you really want to climb out, there's good news and bad news.
The good news is that the advance party began the climb some time ago. They're already half way up. Thousands of activists across the world have been hard at work preparing footholds and securing the ropes to make it easier for the rest of us. There isn't only one path up. There are hundreds of ways of doing it. There are hundreds of battles being fought around the world that need your skills, your minds, your resources. No battle is irrelevant. No victory is too small.
The bad news is that colorful demonstrations, weekend marches and annual trips to the World Social Forum are not enough. There have to be targeted acts of real civil disobedience with real consequences. Maybe we can't flip a switch and conjure up a revolution. But there are several things we could do. For example, you could make a list of those corporations who have profited from the invasion of Iraq and have offices here in Australia. You could name them, boycott them, occupy their offices and force them out of business. If it can happen in Bolivia, it can happen in India. It can happen in Australia. Why not?
That's only a small suggestion. But remember that if the struggle were to resort to violence, it will lose vision, beauty and imagination. Most dangerous of all, it will marginalize and eventually victimize women. And a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it and within it is no struggle at all.
The point is that the battle must be joined. As the wonderful American historian Howard Zinn put it: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.
-------- accidents and safety
Atomic Power Station Halted in Russia, No Radiation
(Reuters)
Nov 5, 2004
http://reuters.myway.com/article/20041105/2004-11-05T185008Z_01_N05354622_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-NUCLEAR-RUSSIA-DC.html
MOSCOW - One reactor at a Russian nuclear power station was closed down after a malfunction, but there was no leak of radiation at the site near the city of Saratov on the Volga river, Russian news agencies reported on Friday.
"What happened at (Balakovskaya) power station was not an accident. It was just a malfunction," RIA Novosti news agency quoted a spokesman for the Russian atomic agency as saying.
"There were no radioactive consequences, there were no emissions ... There is no threat to health."
----
Accident at Russian nuclear power plant sows fear among residents
MOSCOW (AFP)
Nov 05, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041105153518.fr8ndcyq.html
A reported accident at a nuclear power plant in central Russia spread panic Friday, as residents rushed to buy radiation antidotes despite official assurances that the malfunction was a minor glitch.
Fears spread in the regions surrounding the Balakovskaya nuclear power plant, some 800 kilometers (500 miles) southeast of Moscow, after reports that a leak forced one of its blocks to shut down on Thursday.
"As a result of turbine malfunction, block number two of Balakovskaya nuclear power station underwent an emergency shutdown at 1:24 p.m.on November 4," said a press release from Russia's federal nuclear agency.
"There was no increase of radioactivity," it said. "The event does not endanger security and under international standards of nuclear events is classified as zero."
On Friday, officials said that the shut-down block had been restarted, ITAR-TASS reported.
"There is no cause for concern," said Viktor Bychkov, a deputy head of the emergencies ministry in the Saratov region, where the nuclear power plant is located.
"The situation is under control, security measures at Balakovskaya plant are high and in line with international norms," he said.
But, with haunting memories of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, residents in the surrounding regions rushed to pharmacies to buy up iodine, which doctors recommend in cases of exposure to radioactivity, witnesses and news agencies said.
Teachers in Saransk, some 300 kilometers (180 miles) northwest from the station, advised parents to administer iodine to their children, according to a regional internet site. Several pharmacies had run out of the substance, RIA Novosti reported.
Meanwhile universities in Samara, 300 kilometers northeast from the plant, were closed and businesses advised employees to stay home and close the windows.
A representative of Greenpeace Russia said reactions by the school threw doubt onto official assurances about the accident.
"It's not the first time that the reactor has stopped," said Vera Pissaryova. "Why this panic? It makes you think that there was a leak."
The accident revived the memories of April 1986, when a reactor at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine exploded and spewed radioactive material into the air for 10 days, contaminating large swaths of Europe.
The Soviet government did not acknowledge the disaster for days.
According to UN figures, between 15,000 and 30,000 have died since the disaster and nearly six million people continue to live in contaminated zones.
-------
Parents hear details of school evacuation plan
reformer.com
By CAROLYN LORIé
November 05, 2004
http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8862~2515028,00.html#
BRATTLEBORO -- Approximately 50 people gathered at the Academy School to discuss the evacuation plan for Brattleboro schools, in the event of a Vermont Yankee emergency.
The concerns voiced by parents were many: Would bus drivers actually show up to transport the children if there was a serious accident at the plant? Are parents allowed to come and pick up their children or are they expected to meet up with them at the reception center in Bellows Falls? Will potassium iodide pills be distributed by school personnel and who would decide when it should be taken?
Town and school officials did their best to answer the questions but many remained unanswerable.
"We're not here to tell you that this plan is a 100 percent plan. We're never going to get a 100 percent plan. It will always be a work in progress," said Town Manager Jerry Remillard.
In addition to Remillard, WSESU superintendent Ron Stahley, Brattleboro Fire Chief Dave Emery and emergency management official Steve Goldsmith were also at Thursday's meeting.
The meeting was prompted by a letter sent to Stahley last June by a group of concerned parents.
According to Stahley, he had confidence that the plan was workable and that school personnel were prepared to implement it if necessary.
Two teachers who attended the meeting, however, said that they were unsure about what was expected of them and that there had not been enough discussion among school personnel.
"I feel in the dark about this," said Kevin O'Donnell, a math teacher at Brattleboro Union High School.
Upon hearing that students and staff may be ordered to shelter in place under certain accident conditions, O'Donnell pointed out how problematic that would be given the amount of construction going on at the school.
According to O'Donnell, for some time a large bookcase was used to cover a section of missing wall in his classroom. The gaps around the bookcase were large enough "for a raccoon to climb through," making the school unsafe if a radioactive plume were passing over it.
After the meeting, Stahley said that drills would be done at the school, including an unplanned one where the bus drivers would be paged. During the school bus drill, children would be loaded on the buses but not transported.
Stahley anticipated that the unplanned drill would happen some time early next year.
Although the superintendent stated at the start of the meeting that he wanted to avoid the "politics of Vermont Yankee," parent Randy Knaggs said that the best way to deal with a risk is to eliminate it. He asked the officials to go on record saying that the best strategy would be to close the plant.
The comment drew applause from others in the audience.
Stahley and Emery pointed out that the plan is necessary for any emergency. Emery went on to state that Vermont Yankee will continue to pose a threat even after it shuts down, as the spent fuel may be there for many years to come.
At the close of the meeting, which lasted almost three hours, Remillard said that it was clear that increased communication about the plan between the public and officials was necessary.
"These meetings aren't necessarily easy but this was a good meeting," said Remillard afterwards.
Carolyn Lorié can be reached at clorie@reformer.com.
-----
Another nuclear plant fails siren test
Charlotte Observer
BRUCE HENDERSON
Nov 5, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/krcharlotte/20041105/lo_krcharlotte/anothernuclearplantfailssirentest
For the second time since midsummer, emergency sirens around one of Duke Power's nuclear plants near Charlotte failed routine tests because of radio frequency interference.
On Oct. 28, Duke told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, all 34 Mecklenburg County sirens around the McGuire nuclear plant on Lake Norman failed a weekly test the county conducts. Another 33 sirens in four neighboring counties performed as expected.
In July, 26 of the 89 sirens around the Catawba nuclear plant on Lake Wylie also failed a weekly test for the same reason. Two hours later, all but three of the 26 were working.
-------- britain
Revealed: the huge mountain of 'unofficial' nuclear waste
Contamination nine times worse than admitted
sundayherald
By Rob Edwards
07 November 2004
http://www.sundayherald.com/45831
The mountain of radioactive waste that will be left by Britain's nuclear programme is at least nine times higher than previously admitted, a new report by government advisers has revealed.
A massive 18 million cubic metres of soil and rubble is now known to have been con taminated by leaks, spills and discharges at 30 nuclear sites across the country over the past 60 years. That figure could double to 36 million cubic metres when the full extent of the problem is revealed. Only 1.9 million cubic metres of low-level radio active waste has been declared in the official inventory.
The news follows revelations in the Sunday Herald last week that a large area of land around the Hunterston nuclear power station in North Ayrshire had been contaminated .
The latest report, by the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), which advises the Scottish Executive, warns that there is currently "no solution" for dealing with the waste.
"This report reveals the vastness of the problem ," said Dr David Lowry, consultant editor of the land contamination newsletter, Brownfield Briefing. "It is extraordinary to learn that such large volumes are not included in the official UK inventory of nuclear waste."
CoRWM's report, released last week, is the most comprehensive assessment to date of Britain's legacy of radioactive rubbish. The waste comes from defunct and operating nuclear power plants, military nuclear bases and medical radioisotope factories.
In Scotland, the waste has been generated at six sites: Hunterston, Dounreay in Caithness, Torness in East Lothian, Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway, Rosyth in Fife and the Clyde naval base, near Helensburgh.
CoRWM concludes that there are 2000 cubic metres of high-level radioactive waste, 349,000 cubic metres of medium-level waste and 1.93 million cubic metres of low-level waste. But it adds that there will also be a huge volume of contaminated soil, rubble and other wastes from cleaning up the nuclear sites over the next century.
It estimates this will amount to 18 million cubic metres - enough to fill 200,000 double-decker buses. This is a "rough figure", CoRWM says, which may end up being two times too low, or two times too high.
The figure includes the 81,000 cubic metres of contaminated land at Hunterston . It also includes an estimated one million cubic metres of contamination from the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria.
At Dounreay, the UK Atomic Energy Authority says that 7500 square metres of land is contaminated - 5% of the open ground on the site. The amount of radioactive soil, rubble and other "low-activity" wastes planned for disposal over the next 30 years is between 26,000 and 45,000 cubic metres.
All these wastes - low in radioactivity but high in volume - pose a dilemma. While regulatory agencies say they might need to be buried at special sites with other radioactive waste, the nuclear industry would like to leave them where they are.
"Owing to the increase in future volumes of site clearance waste, it will be necessary to review the scale of, and arrangements for dealing with, these wastes," says CoRWM.
Green MSP for the South of Scotland Chris Ballance, who was instrumental in uncovering the contamination at Hunterston, accused the nuclear industry of " playing Russian roulette with public health, public money and the environment" .
It also raised questions about nuclear secrecy, and suggested that there may be other radiation leaks which have been covered up, he argued. "The cost to the taxpayer of cleaning this up - if that can be done - is anybody's guess."
The Green Party will next week be questioning ministers on how much contamination has been found around Hunterston, Dounreay, Torness and Chapelcross. And last week, party co-leader, Robin Harper, quizzed First Minister Jack McConnell on the Hunterston contamination.
CoRWM was set up by ministers in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2003 to recommend what should be done with nuclear waste. It includes 13 experts from universities and consultancies and has promised to make its final recommendations in July 2006.
CoRWM's chairman Gordon MacKerron pointed out that low-level wastes were not part of its remit, which is restricted to medium and high-level wastes. But another government group which had been looking at low-level wastes, the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC), had been suspended.
"Government has no source of independent advice on the low and very low-level waste," MacKerron said. "CoRWM cannot make credible recommendations to government without looking at the whole picture and that includes low and very low-level waste." David Lowry said that RWMAC had flagged up the looming problem of high- volume decommissioning wastes a year ago. "But it seems that the Executive and the ministries in Westminster have paid no heed," he said.
The Executive said it was aware of the nuclear industry's legacy. "We do not accept that putting a figure on the amount of low-level nuclear waste adds any risk to human health or the environment," said a spokesman. "The scale and scope of the issue is being reviewed. Proposals on how these wastes can best be managed for the long term will be brought forward shortly."
The British Nuclear Group, which runs 10 nuclear plants in the UK, including Hunterston A and Chapelcross, said that "no firm decisions" had been taken on what to do with the waste. Most of it would probably be left where it is for the moment, and would be dealt with in the future by the government's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which starts up next year.
British Energy, which runs Hunterston B and Torness, accepted that there could be 18 million cubic metres of site clearance waste. "We have contributed to that figure and we are totally supportive of CoRWM," a spokeswoman said.
Friends of the Earth, however, dismissed suggestions that there was nothing to worry about. "This latest revelation of the problems of nuclear power should act as a warning to all those who think building new nuclear power stations is a smart idea," said the environmental group's chief executive, Duncan McLaren.
-------- depleted uranium
Breathing Uranium Oxides:
Global Medical Crisis of Depleted Uranium
Nov 5, 2004
axisoflogic.com
By John Lewallen
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_13342.shtml
I begin my report on the health effects of uranium munitions with a heartfelt personal appeal: stop using uranium munitions now!
If you are the President of the United States, or under the President's command, you are commiting a war crime by using, or ordering the use, of uranium munitions.
If you are a soldier about to use a uranium bullet, missile or bomb, don't do it. The uranium oxide vapors unleashed when you pull the trigger put both you and your target in a battlefield gas environment of tiny, deadly, mutagenic uranium oxide particles. These tiny uranium oxide particles made when up to seventy per cent of the uranium projectile you shoot burns on friction and impact will stay in the environment as long as the Earth exists, bringing death, a host of diseases, and mutation to many living creatures.
Summary:
Uranium is the leading deep-penetration metal used today in United States military munitions worldwide. Uranium combines superior density with the tendency to sharpen and burn on impact. The first wartime use of uranium munitions was in 1991, when United Nations forces used an estimated 320 tons of uranium munitions in Iraq, primarily in anti-tank munitions in desert warfare. These munitions contributed to the complete neutralization of the Iraqi tank forces, so much so that during the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, many Iraqi tanks were abandoned unused.
All commentary on uranium munitions is colored by the fact that U.S. armed forces worldwide are fully committed to the use of uranium munitions. The official U.S. military position is that uranium munitions pose no toxic or radioactive health danger to anyone.
In fact, as has been known by the U.S. military since 1943, when the inventors of the atomic bomb described uranium vapor as an agent of chemical and radiological warfare, breathable uranium is a horrific weapon with both chemical and radiological toxicity. Extensive testing of uranium munitions show that from ten to seventy per cent of the uranium vaporizes on impact, in particle sizes ranging down to the microscopic.
Today in 2004, thirteen years after the first massive use of uranium munitions, countless thousands or millions of its victims cry in vain for relief as the United States and other military forces continue to use uranium munitions. Anyone seeking to end this suicidal chemical and radiological gas warfare is confronting one of the biggest institutional lies in history, the lie that uranium munitions pose no long-term or widespread health hazard. This lie is so huge, and has so many tentacles and subtleties, that it has become institutional orthodoxy in the United States.
The truth, as it is being pieced together by dedicated, disciplined, peer-reviewed scientists worldwide, is too horrifying for most people to contemplate. The vaporized, ceramic uranium oxides which billow as smoke from an impacting uranium munition have poisoned the human environment with minute, undetectable uranium oxide particles which will remain radioactive and toxic for the lifetime of Earth. Unlike natural uranium, which is soluble, breathed uranium oxide particles are insoluble, and become lodged in the human body if breathed, remaining there for many years, causing a host of diseases. Uranium oxides are mutagenic, attacking the genetic code which allows the human race to reproduce without crippling mutation.
Today the United States military forces are fully committed to a munition metal which, based on U.S. Veterans Affairs disability statistics on veterans of the 1991 Gulf War, will, along with the effects of other toxins in Iraq, disable one out of three battlefield troops who use uranium munitions within a decade of their exposure. To repeat: ONE-THIRD OF THE VETERANS OF THE 1991 GULF WAR ARE DISABLED TEN YEARS AFTER THE WAR.
THE AGES-OLD CLASH OF SPEAR AND SHIELD
"Briefing on Depleted Uranium," Colonel James Naughton, U.S. Army Materiel Command, March 14, 2003:
(Image of burned, blackened, and shattered Iraqi tank on screen)
"Why do we use it (depleted uranium)? This is the result. What we want to be able to do is strike the target from farther away than we can be hit back, and we want the target to be destroyed when we shoot at it. We don't want to see rounds bouncing off. We don't want to put our soldiers in the position that you see, if you watch 'Kelly's Heroes,' where they load tank rounds with paint in order to blind the target. And I'm sure everybody in here has probably seen 'Kelly's Heroes' once, because in World War II we faced a problem of not having the overreach we have today. "We don't ever want to go back to that. And we don't want to fight even. Nobody goes into a war and wants to be even with the enemy. We want to be ahead, and depleted uranium gives us that advantage. We can hit, and they can't hit us."
The story of how uranium munitions, and uranium armoring, became today's state-of-the-art metal of war worldwide begins with the ages-old desire of military forces to have superior spears and shields: spears that will fly farther than the enemy's and penetrate the opponent's best armor, and armor that will stop any spear the enemy can throw.
In the 1960s tungsten carbide was the primary metal used by the U.S. armed forces for armor-piercing projectiles. Tungsten carbide could not reliably penetrate the double-and triple-plated armor developed in the 1960s, touching off a scramble to invent a better armor penetrator. That decade the military began experimenting with uranium as an armor-piercing metal. Tungsten carbide continued to be favored over uranium, for two reasons: problems in developing a consistent alloy, and penetration tests that failed to show clear superiority of uranium over tungsten carbide against older-model Soviet tanks.
In the early seventies, it became clear that the latest-generation armors would be impenetrable by tungsten carbide. Also, tests by the Air Force and Navy using small-caliber uranium rounds (20-,25-, and 30mm) clearly showed the penetration superiority of uranium rounds.
Extensive Army testing for a better tank round metal for the 105mm M68 tank gun led to the XM774 Cartride Program in 1973, which used an alloy of uranium and titanium in an improved design that allowed the uranium core to withstand high acceleration without breaking up.
In the words of John Pike of : "Since the selection of depleted uranium for the XM774 cartridge, all major developments in tank ammunition have selected depleted uranium, including the 105mm M833 series and the 120mm M829 series (the latter being the primary anti-armor round used in the Gulf War). This pattern continues today, with the latest generation of the 105mm M900 series and the 25mm M919 for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle."
When a uranium round is fired, friction and impact vaporize from ten to seventy per cent of the uranium, depending on what the round hits. Uranium is pyrophoric, meaning it burns on friction and impact. Also, unlike tungsten which dulls when it penetrates, uranium rounds shatter and burn as they penetrate armor, sharpening the round as it goes. In 1991, uranium munitions turned Iraqi tanks into hellish crematoria thick with breathable, burning particles of uranium.
Today very few people know the full extent of the use of uranium, depleted or fully radioactive uranium, as a metal of penetration by the world's armed forces. A cloak of secrecy and web of deception make it impossible for an ordinary soul to know when, where, and how much uranium has been used on bullets, artillery rounds, bombs and missiles worldwide.
The Groves Memo: Gas Warfare With Uranium Vapor
In 1943, the Manhattan Project scientists, racing to beat Hitler in inventing the atomic bomb, realized the Germans might use vaporized uranium as a gas warfare agent, or that U.S. forces might want to use it. Here is a quote from the "Groves Memo" written by Drs. James B. Conant, A.H. Compton, and H.C. Urey to General L.R. Groves on October 30, 1943 (the "material" referred to is uranium):
"As a gas warfare instrument the material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles, or aerial bombs. In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It is estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person's body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty.
"Two factors appear to increase the effectiveness of radioactive dust or smoke as a weapon. These are: 1) It cannot be detected by the senses; 2) It can be distributed in a dust or smoke form so finely powdered that it will permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities large enough to be extremely damaging. An off-setting factor in its effectiveness as a weapon is that in a dust or smoke form the material is so finely pulverized that it takes on the characteristic of a quickly dissipating gas and is therefore subject to all the factors (such as wind) working against maintenance of high concentrations for more than a few minutes over a given area....
"Areas so contaminated by radioactive dusts and smokes, would be dangerous as long as a high enough concentration of material could be maintained...they can be stirred up as a fine dust from the terrain by winds, movement of vehicles or troops, etc., and would remain a potential hazard for a long time.... "Particles larger than 1 micron in size are likely to be deposited in nose, trachea or bronchi and then be brought up with mucus on the walls at the rate of 1/2-1 cm/min. Particles smaller than 1 micron are more likely to be deposited in the alveoli where they will either remain indefinitely or be absorbed into the lympatics or blood." .
The Clouds of Hell: Baghdad, October 1, 2003
The Uranium Medical Research Centre, a nonprofit research group, sent a bold team of sample-collectors into Baghdad in the fall of 2003 to collect soil, water and urine samples for uranium contamination testing. Here is part of their report on the U.S. battlefield cleanup effort in Baghdad, October, 2003:
"The most disturbing circumstance was observed in the U.S. occupied base in south-western Baghdad in the Auweirj district. It is close to the International Airport and hosts one of the largest Coalition bases around Baghdad....The area was subject to considerable aerial bombing and rocket fire prior to the Coalition ground forces' arrival followed by several ground skirmishes along the main routes to the International Airport and western entrances to the city.
"Leaving the downtown core for Auweirj requires crossing one of the elevated bridges over the Tigris Rover. The raised bridge provides a long view towards the south/southwest. On October 1, the team's third day in Baghdad, this view was interrupted by an enormous dust cloud hovering over a several hectare area, rising upwards of 300 meters (1000 ft.). The cloud slowly traversed Auweirj...Auweirj contains a wealthy residential neighbourhood...Some of the highest overall ambient air and ground surface radioactivity readings were measured in Auweirj...
"As the team's vehicle approached Auweirj, the cloud was blanketing the Coalition-occupied base, depositing a layer of fresh dust on people, houses, automobiles, and the highway. We had to turn on the windshield wipers. Departing the Coalition-occupied base was a long, steady stream of tandem-axle dump trucks carrying full loads of sand, heading south away from the city. Returning from the south was a second stream of fully loaded dump trucks waiting to enter the base....The soil removal was lofting tonnes of fine, light dust into the local environment, which was then falling back to inundate square kilometores of residential neighbourhoods and Coalition occupied facilities."
A Deadly Pack of Pentagon Lies: Michael Kilpatrick, M.D.
Representing the U.S. Department of Defense Iraq Deployment Health Support Directorate, Dr. Michael Kilpatrick made the following statements on March 14, 2003:
"Depleted uranium is 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium around us. And so when it's outside the body it's just not an issue. It's only when it's internalized--either by inhaling the dust, the oxide, as Colonel Naughton said when there is penetration of armor, it does self-sharpen and it does create an oxide dust. And there are people who were in or on the vehicles that were struck in friendly fire, who did inhale that oxide, and we have not seen any medical consequence from that....
"When DU does strike armor and that oxide is created, it falls to the ground very quickly--usually within about a 50-meter range. As Colonel Naughton said, it's heavy. It's 1.7 times as heavy as lead. So even if it's a small dust particle, it's still very heavy. And it stays on the ground....
"Our studies in the United States over 15 years have not shown depleted uranium going from the soil into the groundwater. It just does not move from the round that is in the soil. And the bottom line is there is going to be no impact on the health of the people in the environment, or people who were there at the time it was shot."
The Vanishing Urine Samples
In 1991 the victorious Gulf War veterans returned outwardly unscathed from the Iraqi battlefields, having taken only small numbers of visible casualties. However, they had been exposed to a staggering array of toxins, including rushed vaccinations and breathable vapors from uranium munitions.
That same year Dr. Asaf Durakovic, who at the time was also a Colonel in the U.S. Army, became aware that Major Doug Rokke, who had been doing cleanup work to remove U.S. military vehicles destroyed by "friendly fire" in Kuwait and Iraq, was seeking medical treatment for several U.S. and British soldiers who were showing a wide array of symptoms which suggested the possibility of poisoning by inhaled uranium oxides.
Both Maj. (also Dr.) Rokke and Col. Durakovic were under specific orders to protect U.S. troops from the health hazards of uranium munitions. Dr. Durakovic, Director of Nuclear Medicine at a VA hospital, immediately agreed to treat the sick troops. An expert in the toxicology of uranium and other radioactive materials, Dr. Durakovic took urine samples from the sick soldiers, and sent them by registered mail to a lab in Aberdeen, Maryland for analysis of uranium content, broken down into the different uranium isopopes, which could indicate the source of the contamination.
"The urine samples never arrived in Aberdeen," Dr.Durkovic recalled in a 2003 interview. "All my inquiries were futile. Patients had renal surgeries, they were very sick, and some died."
Dr. Durkovic then had to endure constant verbal attack from many quarters to continue his work of protecting U.S. troops from battlefield uranium vapor contamination. The same thing happened to Major Rokke.
Then began an internal struggle of the soul within the United States military establishment, as the impulse to find out the truth and protect human health gave way first to the deeper military instinct to cling to the superior metal of penetration at all costs, and now also to the chilling knowledge that everyone in a responsible position who has claimed that uranium munitions pose no significant chemical or radiologcal hazard to human or environmental health is potentially liable for damages and guilty of crimes under U.S. and international law.
Today, Dr. Asaf Durakovic and Major Doug Rokke, are two leaders of an international movement to stop the use of uranium munitions. As Director of the Uranium Medical Research Center, Dr. Durakovic brings his lifelong expertise in the medical effects of radiation to the field study of the leavings of uranium munitions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Every serious student of the health and environmental effects of uranium munitions is well-advised to read Dr. Durakovic's two key articles, "Medical Effects of Internal Contamination With Radiation," and "Undiagnosed Illnesses and Radioactive Warfare." These two scientific, peer-reviewed articles thick with references to actual research studies offer an ordinary person the best basis for sorting out the truth about the health effects of uranium munitions from the multitude of misunderstandings, lies and distortions.
Doug Rokke has become "The Flying Squirrel," his nickname as a B52 pilot in Vietnam, a short and very energetic speaker hopping, shouting and gesticulating in an Oct. 2,2003 speech before the Humboldt County, California, Veterans for Peace. Major Rokke believes a lot of his superior officers are lying war criminals who should be brought to prosecution, and he read written, signed orders and statements to lie and cover-up the horrible toxicity of uranium munitions.
The Disappearing Medical Records
In 1995, Congressman Christopher Shays (R-CT), contacted his friend Robert Newman, a retired journalist, to help him investigate a strange new disease, or diseases, sweeing through Gulf War veterans.
"The Congressman was receiving a disturbing number of letters and e-mails from sick veterans in his district complaining that, when trying to get treatment at veterans hospitals, they were told, 'It's all in your head.' They weren't getting any help," Mr. Newman recalled in a 2001 interview. 16. Congressman Shays held fifteen hearings on what came to be called "Gulf War Syndrome" for the committe he chaired, the Subcommittee on Security, Veterans Issues, and International Relations, beginning March, 1996. After interviewing veterans and experts in various fields, the subcommittee concluded that Gulf War Syndrome was caused by radiation and/or chemical substances they encountered during their military service in Iraq, such as PB and untested vaccines they were forced to take.
"We learned that the medical records of nearly all the veterans had disappeared," Newman said. "For the five years or so it took Congress to launch this investigation, the Defense Department and Veterans Administration took their time responding to veterans who sought treatment or compensation. In the end, the requests were refused. At best, they took folks in but insisted the symptoms were just due to stress.." .
Disability Compensation Without Investigating Cause
In October, 1998, Congress passed two laws based on the findings of the 14 bipartisan members of Congressman Shay's subcommittee. "The gist of those laws," Robert Newman explained, "is this. One stipulates that even without medical records, the illneses of Gulf War veterans must be recognized as due to their service in the Middle East, and the Defense Department and the Veterans Administration are required to offer prompt and appropriate treatment and compensation. The other one...prohibits the administration of any experimental drugs to soldiers without their consent."
This law opened the way for the Veterans Administration to award full disability to 221,000 Gulf War veterans with a host of symptoms by September, 2002, with thousands of cases still pending. It also diverted attention away from any scientific inquiry into the causes of Gulf War Syndrome.
When Hiroshima newsman Akira Tashiro interviewed Robert Newman in 2001, he was still devoted to monitoring the Veterans Administration for just treatment and compensation for Gulf War Syndrome victims. "The laws are absolutely inadequate," Robert Newman said, because full treatment and compensation would cost an impossibly large sum of money. Based on what he had learned about the probable long-term medical effects of breathing battlefield uranium vapors, Newman expressed worries that, for the next ten years, cancer and neurological disorder will increase among Gulf War veterans.
Mutant Science: The 1998 Rand Report
A prime example of what one might call "Mutant Science" --truth chopped up and spliced with lie to make the Big Institutional Lie--is the 1999 Rand Report which concluded, and I quote,
"Although any increase in radiation to the human body can be calculated to be harmful from extrapolation from higher levels, there are no peer reviewed published reports of detectable increases of cancer or other negative health effects from radiation exposure to inhaled or ingested natural uranium at levels far exceeding those likely in the Gulf. This is mainly because the body is very effective at eliminating ingested and inhaled natural uranium and because the low radioactivity per unit mass of natural uranium and DU means that the mass of uranium needed for significant internal exposure is virtually impossible to obtain....Large variations in exposure to radioactivity from natural uranium in the normal environment have not been associated with negative health effects."
The 1999 Rand Report on Depleted Uranium, prepared by a research think-tank on contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, provides the "scientific basis" for the Pentagon's claim that uranium munitions pose no hazard to human health or the environment. It is a review of the literature, brushing aside such evidence as Major Rokke has gained by doing actual clean-up and testing of uranium munitions as not being "peer-reviewed published reports."
It says first, "any increase in radiation to the human body can be calculated to be harmful from extrapolation from higher levels." In reality, since 1991, worldwide evidence of horrific casualties with multiple symptoms has been found wherever uranium munitions have been used.
The lack of "peer-reviewed published reports" linking negative health effects to inhaled battlefield uranium vapors is a flat-out lie; see Dr. Durkavoic's two key studies referred to above.
"...the mass of uranium needed for significant internal exposure is virtually impossible to obtain." This is blatantly untrue, both because battlefield concentrations of uranium vapor are massive, and because even one minute particle of uranium oxide lodged inside a person's body can cause the destruction of dna in adjoining cells.
Toxic Forever, Radioactive for The Expected Lifetime of Earth
As the armies of the United States range across the Earth showering bullets, artillery rounds, bombs and missiles, it is known only to insiders what type of uranium is being used, how much, or where. Quoting the Rand report, "The material generally used by the U.S. Department of Defense is 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium."
However, Uranium Medical Research Center field investigations found that natural uranium bombs and munitions had been used by the United States in Afghanistan during 2002, heavily contaminating the population and environment. Even the March, 2003 Pentagon briefing on uranium munitions noted that some reactor-generated "transuranics" are used in uranium munitions, indicating that nuclear reactor waste is used in uranium munitions.
Whether the munition is natural or so-called "depleted uranium", the tons of breathable, alpha-emitting uranium oxides being generated as I write will penetrate throughout the entire environment and remain, virtually undetectable, chemically and radioactively toxic for the lifetime of Earth.
The Big Lie is Institutional Truth, The Truth is Heresy: Dan Fahey and Dr. Robert Gould
Anyone seeking to rescue the human race from this ongoing suicide mission to permeate the biosphere with breathable uranium oxide particles is confronting one of the most elaborately constructed institutional lies in history.
Consider the work of Dan Fahey, "an independent policy analyst on the uses and effects of depleted uranium munitions." Dan Fahey's credentials are similar to mine: I am also an independent policy analyst studying the health and environmental effects of using uranium munitions. I have a record of military analysis writing going back to my book "Ecology of Devastation: Indochina" (Penguin Books, 1972), an ecological analysis of the U.S. war in Indochina, including early information on the effects of the herbicide Agent Orange. Today I finance my research and writing with my cottage industry, the Mendocino Sea Vegetable Company.
Dr. Robert Gould, President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, recommended Dan Fahey as an authoritative expert on uranium munitions to me. In a phone conversation with me, Dr. Gould rejected the idea that uranium munitions pose a major danger to the human race. "It's not Hiroshima," he said. (In fact, the 320 tons or more of uranium munitions used in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War constituted the greatest environmental release of vaporized radioactivity in human history until the recent hostilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, much greater than Hiroshima.
At an October, 2003, meeting of activists which I facilitated in Philo, California, Dr. Gould heard information brought by Humboldt County Veterans for Peace, who had just heard a speech and received information about uranium munitions from Dr. Doug Rokke.
Dr. Gould sent me this email message on November 19, 2003: "As I mentioned at the teach-in, I believe that DU is a toxic material because of its heavy-metal and radioactive qualities, and I think it should be banned as a weapon, that there should be good studies of civilians and soldiers and that clean-up should proceed without waiting for the results of these studies. But I don't believe that DU is the most toxic material around (compared with highly radioactive waste, for example), and I think that much of the material presented at the teach-in is overstated based on available evidence and knowledge of the chemistry, and when so presented, obscures other significant potential contributors to observed health effects (oil fires and leaks, release of CW agents from warfare, the legacy of dirty Iraqi industrialization, immunization of troops, nutritional effects of sanctions, etc.) Particularly since most of 'us' will agree on 'what needs to be done,' I remain puzzled by the apparent need for many in the progressive movement to put out such limited monocausal 'science' to convince people, since there are abundant credible arguments (as in the Dan Fahey material I sent you prior to the meeting) that better make the points."
Reading Dan Fahey's initial assessment on uranium munitions used in Iraq during 2003, this researcher has concluded that I am witnessing the Big Institutional Lie being used to delude, and to keep the uranium munitions reform movement from making any serious efforts to stop the use of uranium munitions.
Dan Fahey's assessment begins by noting that although "there is little known about the actual quantities of DU released or the locations of contamination, it appears approximately 100 to 200 netric tons was shot at tanks, trucks, buildings and people in largely densely populated areas." As Tedd Weyman noted in the "Iraq Gulf War II Field Investigation Report," "there is a significant discrepancy between the independent reports that rely on official government and defence department numbers (i.e. 100-200 metric tonnes) and the 1000 to 2000 metric tonnes of DU attributed to estimates by unnamed United Nations Environment Program and Pentagon sources."
Mr. Fahey denounced the "pre-war propaganda" of lies used by the White House and Pentagon early in 2003 "to justify the use of DU munitions as a military necessity, and to dismiss concerns about the health and environmental effects of the use of DU munitions." Quoting a January 2003 White House report which stated that "scientists working for the World Health Organization, the UN Environmental Program, and the European Union could find no health effects linked to exposure to depleted uranium," Dan Fahey noted that "scientists from these organizations never looked for health effects linked to exposure in DU in any post-combat environment." Fahey went on to document several of the lies used by Dr. Michael Kilpatrick at the March 14, 2003 press conference on uranium munitions, which, he wrote, "perhaps reflected an urgency to deflect criticism and concern about DU on the eve of war."
Mr. Fahey's vigorous critique of the Big Pentagon Lie that uranium munitions pose no major hazard to human or environmental health is followed by an equally vigorous assertion of that lie. Mr. Fahey does not want to see uranium munitions banned, or use of uranium munitions stopped. Dan Fahey's policy recommendations are limited to better informing U.S. troops about uranium munitions, bioassays of U.S. troops with extreme battlefield exposure, revelation of when and where uranium munitions have been used, cleanup of "DU sites," and more studies of the problem. Mr.Fahey urges a health assessment of all the troops who, in his estimate, were extremely exposed to uranium munitions in 1991, who, he wrote, are just 900 in number.
Then Dan Fahey's report attacks "anti-DU activists and people using the DU issue to further other political agendas or raise money." First, Mr. Fahey quotes an unnamed source from the "UK Green Party" making various unfounded claims about uranium munitions. Then he tars Drs. Doug Rokke and Asaf Durakovic with the same brush, to discredit and dismiss their devoted life's work to discover and reveal the true health effects of uranium munitions. Dan Fahey accuses Doug Rokke of making "exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims."
Then comes this blood-chilling paragraph by Dan Fahey, independent researcher on depleted uranium munitions:
"The old myth that large quantities of DU are used in missiles and bombs has taken a new twist with the claim that 'non-depleted uranium' is being secretly used in hard target, deep penetration, and DBHT (deeply buried hard target) weapons that combine uranium with high explosives. Citing unspecified 'government reports and independent research,' the Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC) claims these new warheads contain '100s to1000s of kilograms' of uranium that is 'extracted from the nuclear fuels and nuclear weapons production cycles prior to the uranium enrichment phase.' UMRC claims that secret use of uranium is responsible for illnesses in Afghanistan, but this assertion is undermined by the lack of any evidence that any missiles or bombs used in Afghanistan contain any natural or depleted uranium."
Is The United States Military Using Uranium in Bombs and Missiles?
The full scope of U.S. military use of uranium munitions is secret. So how the hell does Dan Fahey, an independent researcher like me, know that it is an unsubstantiated "myth" that uranium is used by the U.S. in bombs and missiles?
The Uranium Medical Research Centre discovery that non-depleted uranium was used in bullets and bombs in Afghanistan is based on field work and sophisticated urine analysis for the different isotopes of uranium. First the UMRC found that the isotope content indicated natural uranium contamination in Afghanistan, not depleted uranium. Testing further, the UMRC found ceramic uranium in the urine of Afghans, indicating that the extreme heat of burning munitions had produced the uranium. This, according to Dr. Durakovic, has made some Afghan valleys permanently uninhabitable.
Dr. Doug Rokke also is sure there is uranium in many of the bombs and missiles used by US armed forces today. His evidence and proof? Here's a verbatim email Dr. Rokke sent me on April 2, 2004: "Primary on-site radiological measurements, photo, video, direct observations, and discussions with military personnel verify DU is in all of these weapons--from 50 cal through bunker busters. And heck, we did a lot of work too."
Major Rokke has been taken part in U.S. military uranium munitions testing, clean-up, and remediation efforts since 1991. Here is his current list of uranium munitions used in weapons, part of his May 4, 2004 article titled "Immediate Action Required on Depleted Uranium":
"DU is used to manufacture kinetic energy penetrators- giant pencils or rods. Each kinetic penetrator consists of almost entirely uranium 238. The United States munitions industry produces the following DU munitions with the corresponding mass of uranium 238:
7.62 mm with unspecified mass
50 caliber with unspecified mass
20 mm with a mass of approximately 180 grams.
25 mm with a mass of approximately 200 grams.
30 mm with a mass of approximately 280 grams.
105 mm with a mass of approximately 3500 grams.
120 mm with a mass of approximately 4500 grams.
Sub-munitions / land mines such as the PDM and ADAM whose structural bodies contain a small proportion of DU.
Cruise missiles with unknown quantity of DU Bunker buster bombs with unknown quantity of DU.
A Call to Action: Stop Using Uranium Munitions Now!
In today's competition for attention to issues, the issue of uranium munitions is easily buried and forgotten. Dr. Robert Gould, President of the Physicians for Social Responsibility, advised me to worry about something more dangerous like "high-level radioactive waste" in the email quoted above. In order to cause effective change, groups such as Veterans for Peace and Physicians for Social Responsibility will need to focus on uranium munitions, and organize long-term, relentless campaigns to end the use of uranium munitions. Is this going to happen?
The only Congressional bill dealing with the hazards of uranium munitions--the "Depleted Uranium Munitions Study Act of 2003" (HR 1483, sponsored by Rep. McDermott)--is, in my view, not worthy of support. In calling only for studies of the problem and cleaup of US uranium munitions test sites, it deludes and defuses the worldwide effort to halt the ongoing catastrophe of uranium munition use.
How likely is it that the U.S. military, fully committed to uranium munitions and uranium armor as state-of-the-art, involved in shooting wars in several nations worldwide now--how likely is it that they are going to drop their radioactive munitions and be like "Kelly's Heroes" again, with the second-best metal of war in the world?
I actually dropped the topic in despair last fall, until I heard that my future son-in-law was about to be deployed to Iraq with his private company. Now we're talking about the genetic integrity of my bloodline! So I tossed off a brief piece, "Do Not Force Our Children to Breathe Uranium!" My daughter's fiance quit that job and stayed out of Iraq.
It is time for everyone on Earth to stop using uranium munitions now! A campaign of nonviolent noncooperation, informed by group effort, seems the most effective strategy. The Big Institutional Lie is going to keep uranium munitions poisoning people and environments for some time, but we can, in small and big ways, refuse to pull the trigger on uranium munitions.
Notes
1.John Lewallen is a writer and peace activist focused in 2004 on uranium munitions and their health and environmental consequences. His published books include "Ecology of Devastation: Indochina" (Penguin Books, 1972), and "High-Altitude Nuclear War" (NuclearPress.com, 2002), an analysis of today's great-power nuclear weapons confrontation available from Amazon.com Books. He supports himself with income from his cottage industry, the Mendocino Sea Vegetable Company, and maintains the website .
2. "Briefing on Depleted Uranium," Colonel James Naughton, March 14, 2003 . The use of 320 tons of uranium munitions in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War is a U.S. Department of Defense estimate. An authoritative Iraqi estimate is that 800 tons of uranium munitions were used by the U.S. and allied forces during the 1991 war, with more than 300 tons used in western Basra, Iraq (Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, Director of the Oncology Center, Basra, Iraq, "Effects of wars and the use of depleted uranium on Iraq," Japan Peace Conference, Naha, Okinawa, Jan.29-Feb.1, 2004 .
3."Briefing on Depleted Uranium," March 2003.
4. "Memorandum to:Brigadier General L.R. Groves, from Drs. Conant, Compton, and Urey," Oct. 30, 1943, declassified June 5, 1974, supplied by Major Doug Rokke , hereinafter referred to as the "Groves Memo."
5."RAND Report on Depleted Uranium," RAND, 1999, p.4, hereinafter referred to as the "RAND Report" .
6. Durakovic, Asaf, "Undiagnosed Illnesses and Radioactive Warfare," Croatian Medical Journal, Vol.44, No.5, 2003, pps. 520-532.
7. See the National Gulf War Resource Center website for the latest Veterans Affairs disability statistics .
8. "Briefing on Depleted Uranium, 2003."
9. John Pike, , page on "Depleted Uranium," is my source for this thumbnail history of uranium munitions as a super-metal.
10. Groves Memo.
11. Weyman, Tedd, Iraq Field Team Lead, "Abu Khasib to Ah'qua: Iraq Gulf War II Field Investigation Report" , p. 14.
12. "Briefing on Depleted Uranium, 2003."
13. Dr. Asaf Durakovic, audio interview, 2003 .
14. Durakovic, Asaf, "Medical Effects of Internal Contamination With Uranium," Croatian Medical Journal, Vol. 40, No. 1, March, 1999; and "Undiagnosed Illnesses and Radioactive Warfare," Croatian Medical Journal, Vol.44, No.5, 2003, pps. 520-532.
15. Major Doug Rokke, Oct. 2,2003 speech for Veterans for Peace, Humboldt County, California, on video.
16. Tashiro, Akira, "Discounted Casualties: The Human Cost of Depleted Uranium," published 2001 in Hiroshima, Japan, by The Chugoku Shimbun, p. 34.
17. Ibid., p. 35.
18. Ibid.
19. Rand Report, Chapter 3, p. 1.
20. Rand Report, p. 2.
21. Durakovic, Asaf, "Undiagnosed Illnesses and Radioactive Warfare," section on "Afghanistan Uranium Studies."
22. "Briefing on Depleted Uranium," March, 2003.
23. Fahey, Dan, "The Use of Depleted Uranium in the 2003 Iraq War: An Initial Assessment of Information and Policies," June 24, 2003, available at .
24. Durakovic, Asaf, "Undiagnosed Illnesses and Radioactive Warfare."
25. Fahey, Dan, op. cit., p.1.
26. Weyman, Tedd, op. cit., p.11.
27. Fahey, Dan, op. cit., p.2.
28. Ibid., pp.8-10.
29. Ibid., p.11.
30. Ibid., p.12.
31. Dr.Asaf Durakovic, audio interview, 2003, available at .
32. Major Doug Rokke,"Immediate Action Required on Depleted Uranium," May 4, 2004.
http://www.nuclearpress.com/view.lasso?id=0032&-token.f=3
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MoD admits Gulf War mistakes
The Times
By Michael Evans
November 05, 2004
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1344812,00.html
THE Ministry of Defence admitted for the first time yesterday the mistakes it had made in preparing thousands of British troops for a feared chemical and biological war in the Gulf in 1991.
Thirteen years after the Gulf War, the MoD published a report, Health and Personnel-Related Lessons Identified, which outlined numerous policies which had to be changed and implemented for the latest war in Iraq. However, defence officials remained adamant that there was still no evidence of a Gulf War Syndrome.
The report was published in advance of the conclusions of an independent inquiry into Gulf War Syndrome, conducted by Lord Lloyd of Berwick. His report, which is expected to be critical of the MoD's treatment of the 6,000 Gulf War veterans suffering from ill health, is due in the next two weeks.
The MoD acknowledged that it had not been open about its anti-biological warfare vaccination programme which included giving many of the frontline troops a cocktail of injections to counter anthrax, plague and other bio-chemical attacks.
The report said: "The fact that the MoD was not open about the UK's anti-biological warfare immunisation, did not provide sufficient information to forces about the vaccinations they were receiving, did not explain the reasons for offering them, or provide information on the assessments of safety of the vaccines, sideeffects and so forth, has led to uncertainty, suspicion and doubt."
Gulf War veterans, suffering from illnesses ranging from cancers and motor neurone disease to chronic fatigue, skin rashes, traumatic stress and aching joints, have blamed the multiple vaccines for causing the health problems. However, the defence officials said the interim findings of an important study into the "medical counter-measures" given to service personnel in 1990 and 1991 showed there had been "no apparent adverse health consequences". The final report by the research team is due to be published in a medical journal by the end of the year.
The MoD also admitted yesterday it had failed to point out the potential hazards presented by the firing of shells by American and British forces which had depleted uranium (DU) warheads. Information about DU "was not always fully disseminated nor was information on the simple precautions which could have been taken to minimise these risks".
The MoD said all these lessons had been taken into account for Operation Telic, the current campaign in Iraq. Commanders now had to ensure all their soldiers were regularly immunised against the usual health risks.
Outlining the results of the MoD's Gulf veterans' medical assessment programme which started in 1993, the report said that of the 3,244 seen so far, 75per cent were well. Of the 25per cent unwell, 83per cent of ill-health was accounted for by psychiatric illness, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
According to Tony Flint of the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association, the only reason the MoD refused to acknowledge the existence of a Gulf War Syndrome was "because they don't want to pay out money".
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MoD dismisses reports on 'Gulf War Syndrome'
05/11/2004
telegraph.co.uk
By Michael Smith
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/05/ngulf05.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/11/05/ixhome.html
The Ministry of Defence yesterday dismissed evidence from a number of scientific studies suggesting that troops who fought in the 1991 Gulf war were suffering from illnesses caused by their service.
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is about to publish research that concluded that many veterans of the war suffer from neurological damage caused by exposure to toxic chemicals.
The report found that many had unusual brain damage that would cause some of the symptoms and might have been caused by exposure to chemicals or vaccines.
It pointed to organo-phosphate pesticides at British and US bases in the Gulf, vaccines given to troops, or the release of Iraqi sarin nerve gas as possible causes.
Meanwhile, Prof Simon Wesseley, who led an MoD-funded survey of 20,000 British troops, told Lord Lloyd's inquiry in August that it found that the more vaccines soldiers were given the more likely they were to be ill. But the MoD insisted yesterday that "there is no clinical evidence to suggest that the known effects of the suspected exposures have affected the health of veterans". Officials argued that "the vast body of research undertaken has found no link between specific causes and the symptoms".
The officials were speaking on the publication of a new report by the MoD entitled: The 1990/1991 Gulf Conflict: Health and Personnel Related Lesson Identified.
They denied that the date of publication almost 14 years after the war was aimed at trying to counter the anticipated effects of the publication of the US report and Lord Lloyd's independent inquiry, which is expected to publish its report this month.
The officials declined to comment on the US government's Binns Report until after it was published and denied that there was any contradiction between Prof Wesseley's findings and their stance. Although the MoD funded his study they did not accept his conclusions on the use of vaccines because they were not matched in any other studies and they had to consider the research as a whole, officials said.
Prof Wesseley told the inquiry: "Those [veterans] who had the most vaccinations were nearly twice as likely to get ill." Those who had a combination of the anthrax and whooping cough vaccines were 40 per cent more likely to suffer symptoms, he said.
On the use of depleted uranium ammunition, blamed by some veterans for their illnesses, the report says "there is no scientific or medical evidence to link DU to ill-health".
Of organo-phosphate pesticides, it merely says that the conflict "pointed up the need for greater awareness of the risks associated with a range of potentially lethal materials - like pesticides". The report does not mention the other most frequently cited cause - release of sarin nerve gas when US troops demolished an Iraqi weapons dump.
About 6,000 British servicemen and women claim to have "Gulf War Syndrome".
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Defence says no deal signed on weapons testing
ABC
5 November 2004
http://www.abc.net.au/centralqld/news/200411/s1235755.htm
The Defence Department says nothing has been finalised in regard to allowing the US to test new-generation weapons in Australia.
Australian defence expert Ross Babbage has revealed the plan, saying the US military could be testing its new smart bombs in Queensland and the Northern Territory within three years.
The department says that under a training concept announced in July, Australia and the US will maintain a mutually beneficial program of joint exercises in Australia.
It says negotiations over the details are at an early stage and no agreement for the testing of next-generation 'smart' bombs has been signed.
The department says talks will continue over coming months and it will consult state and local governments, as well as local communities.
Professor Babbage has recently been involved in high-level talks in Washington.
He says up to 20,000 United States troops will descend on Queensland's Shoalwater Bay, north of Rockhampton, in 2007 to participate in new warfare training and experimentation exercises.
Professor Babbage says smart bombs may be used.
"I think there'll be occasionally phases where they do that within impact zones that are already well-known and often used," he said.
"I think what we are really going to be seeing though is more innovative defence force movements, more widespread defence force movements in exercises and trialing just to try some of these concepts out."
Professor Babbage says training exercises involving the US will also be expanded in the Northern Territory, and some exercises may include bombing runs into Top End training areas.
"You won't see an aircraft carrier conducting operations in the immediate Darwin area I don't expect," he said. "You might have an occasional carrier visit.
"But what you might see for instance at Delamere Range down the track a bit, and the Bradshaw training area over in the western side of the Northern Territory ... is aircraft movements in to the Delamere Range from let's say an aircraft carrier operating down the west coast."
The Federal Opposition has thrown its support behind any increase in US military exercises in Australia.
Opposition defence spokesman Robert McClelland says Labor supports the move if Australia's neighbours are informed.
"It's important for the Government to keep our Asian neighbours in the loop of what's going on so they can be assured there's nothing clandestine occurring," he said.
"It's part of the process of developing new technologies, which of course happens all around the world in all modern countries. It's important to keep that dialogue going."
However, some people living in areas near the training sites have concerns.
Yeppoon resident Peter Murray organised a protest rally when the idea of increased military training was first raised. He says he has major concerns about the latest proposal.
"The actual specifics of the weapons is a major concern," he said. "We know the Americans are using plutonium and uranium-depleted weapons in some of their casings and some of their armoury.
"Also, the use of nuclear-powered ships coming into the regions and the prospects of maybe a mishap."
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War Crimes and Iraq
CounterPunch
By CONN HALLINAN
November 5, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/hallinan11052004.html
"...The Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives"
Article 48, 1977 addition to the Geneva Conventions, Part IV
The above "Basic Rule" is at the heart of the Geneva Conventions, the international treaty that tries to be the thin line that separates civilization from savagery. It is not something the Bush Administration has paid much attention to as it goes about the "pacification" of Iraqi cities where local insurgents are resisting the American occupation.
Consider the following.
On Oct. 8, U.S. fighter bombers carried out what the Pentagon called a "precision strike" against "terrorist leaders" in Falluja, a sprawling city of 300,000 west of Baghdad. For the past two months Falluja has been the target of a bombing campaign. According to the New York Times, the attack wounded 17 people, nine of whom were women and children. The victims were apparently from a wedding party that had just dispersed.
The Times went on to quote a "senior Pentagon official" who said, "We know what the strike was supposed to hit and we hit it. If a wedding party was going on, well, it was in concert with a meeting of a top Zarqawi lieutenant." Zarqawi is a Jordanian who has claimed credit for numerous roadside bombings and assassinations in Iraq.
But according to Article 50 of the Conventions, "The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character."
In short, the attack violated the Conventions, and the "Pentagon official"---most likely Assistant Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz--- should be arrested and tried for violating international law. Since the attack constituted a "grave breach" of the Conventions, the official could also be charged under the 1996 U.S. War Crimes Act.
In the same article, the Times also quoted a "senior Bush Administration official" as saying that the bombing was helpful for exploiting "fault lines" in Falluja, and that it would push the "citizenry" of Falluja to deny sanctuary and assistance to the insurgents, "adding "that's a good thing."
The "official" might, indeed, think it was "a good thing," but it also violated Article 51, which states: "The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack."
A "Pentagon official" also told the Times: "If there are civilians dying in connection with these attacks, and with the destruction, the locals at some point have to make a decision. Do they want to harbor the insurgents and suffer the consequences that come with that?"
In other words, terrify the civilian population into cooperating, a strategy that Article 51 explicitly forbids: "Acts or threats of violence, the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population, are prohibited."
The violations of the Convention are not limited to the bombing campaigns. The Washington Post recently revealed that the Bush Administration allowed the CIA to transfer Iraqi combatants out of the country (a violation of Article 49) and to hide them from the Red Cross (a violation of Article 63).
According to an FBI report, FBI agents visiting Abu Ghraib Prison, witnessed hooded and chained Iraqi prisoners being slapped by U.S. soldiers, who told the agents it was a sleep depravation technique. The agents also saw prisoners held naked in tiny isolation cells. The Defense Department readily admits it uses loud music, painful restraints, and a semi-drowning technique called "water boarding," to "soften up" prisoners for interrogation.
All of the above behavior breaks numerous parts of the Convention. Article 85, for instance, says that, "Sleeping quarters shall be sufficiently spacious and well ventilated." Article 90 instructs that, "The clothing supplied by the Detaining Power to internees and the outward marking placed on their clothing shall not be ignominious or expose them to ridicule." Article 117 says, "Imprisonment in premises without daylight, and in general, all forms of cruelty without exception are prohibited"
Besides transgressions of Geneva, the agents also witnessed violations of several other international treaties the U.S. is a signatory to.
Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."
The UN Convention Against Torture prohibits, "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession," adding "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever may be invoked as a justification for torture."
On Oct. 27, Theo van Boven, UN director of reports on torture, expressed "serious concern" over "allegations of attempts to circumvent the absolute nature of the prohibition of torture and other forms of ill treatment in the name of countering terrorism, particularly in relationship to interrogation and conditions of detention of prisoners." While he did not charge the U.S. by name, there is no argument about to whom he was referring to.
The Bush Administration likes to invoke the so-called changed nature of the post-9/11 world as the attacks created new conditions that the Conventions no longer apply to, somehow trumping U.S. adherence to international law. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales dismisses the Geneva Conventions as "quaint," and the U.S. Justice Department wrote up memos giving the CIA the right to violate both international laws and the U.S. War Crimes Act.
But systematic violations of the Geneva Conventions by the U.S. hardly started with 9/11. Indeed, they are characteristic of virtually every conflict the U.S. has been involved in since the end of World War II. The following are just a few examples:
Bombing attacks in the first Gulf War and the Kosovo War, systematically targeted power plants and grids, railway stations, refineries, communication networks, sewerage treatment facilities, and water purification plants, in spite of Article 54 of the Geneva Conventions which prohibits attacking any objectives "indispensable to the survival of the civilian population."
One could even make a case that the use of hundreds of tons of Depleted Uranium Ammunition (DUA) in Kosovo and the two Gulf wars constitutes a war crime. The Conventions clearly require the victorious party to assume responsibility for the conquered civilian population and to clean up the chaos of war. DUA has poisoned water supplies in Iraq, parts of Kuwait, and Yugoslavia, and birth defectsand cancer incidences are far higher in areas where DUA was used. The U.S., however, claims that DUA poses no potential health risks,therefore it doesn't have to remove the low- level radioactive debris.
It is not only a record Americans should be ashamed of, it is one that should make us afraid. The Geneva Conventions and other international laws were not drawn up by bleeding heart liberals, nor were they designed to protect weaker nations. They were a response to the enormous numbers of civilian casualties inflicted by World War II, and as a practical way to shield everyone's armed forces from humiliation, torture and death at the hands of an adversary.
If we are cavalier or dismissive about international law, it will encourage others to be so as well. The most likely victims of that policy will be we civilians, as well as our own uniformed forces. If we torture prisoners and hide them from the eyes of organizations like the Red Cross, why shouldn't others do the same to our soldiers and civilians?
In a recent commentary in the Financial Times, Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, wrote: "The struggle against terrorism cannot be legitimate if it undermines basic values shared by humanity. The right to life and protection against murder, torture and degrading treatment must be at the heart of the actions of those engaged in this struggle. The struggle will lose credibility if it is used to justify acts otherwise considered unacceptable, such as the killing of people not participating in hostilities."
Apart from the inhumanity our actions engender, as an entirely practical matter, to do anything less than Kellenberger suggests is to place our own people in harm's way.
Conn Hallinan is a Lecturer in Journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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Environmentalists express concern about smart bombs
The World Today
Reporter: Ian Townsend
5 November, 2004
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1235637.htm
ELEANOR HALL: As we've just been hearing from Professor Babbage in that report, the prospect of more US troops training and testing weapons in Australia is likely to raise concerns in some quarters.
Environmental lobbyists say they are particularly worried about the impact of the training on the Shoalwater Bay region in Central Queensland, as Ian Townsend reports.
IAN TOWNSEND: Shoalwater Bay is on the Tropic of Capricorn, inside the Great Barrier Reef. Nearby is the city of Rockhampton and resort communities on the coast.
They've been living together relatively well for decades, but there's increasing concern amongst many people about the upgrading of the base, about more troops, more exercises and weapons testing. Peter Murray lives in nearby Yeppoon and organised a protest in August when the upgrade of Shoalwater Bay to a joint training facility was announced.
PETER MURRAY: The actual specifics of the weapons is a major concern. We know the Americans are using plutonium and uranium depleted weapons in some of their casings and some of their armoury. Also the use of nuclear powered ships coming into the region and the prospects of maybe a mishap, which we certainly would hate to see happen.
IAN TOWNSEND: Is there much concern in the local community?
PETER MURRAY: Look, there's been a tremendous... you know, I would say that eight out of 10 people are very concerned.
IAN TOWNSEND: Many locals have long been concerned about the accuracy of weapons being fired on the base.
That's been heightened this morning by reports from the US that a fighter plane has accidentally fired 25 rounds of ammunition at a school in New Jersey, instead of at a military target range more than five kilometres away. No one was hurt, but this makes Peter Murray who lives near the Shoalwater Base in Queensland even more uneasy.
PETER MURRAY: Well my fears there are numbered, obviously because they're going to be testing new technology, there may be some doubts about their accuracy, their effect on the environment and you know, it's a marine mammal breeding area. The dugongs, the whales pass through there every year.
IAN TOWNSEND: And there are the environmental concerns for the area. Pat O'Brien is the president of the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia, who also lived at Yeppoon, until recently.
PAT O'BRIEN: The damage that some of these things are capable of doing is just horrific, you know, and it certainly is going to put, I think there's going to be a feeling within a lot of people in the central Queensland community that they're now going to be a target. And you know, I can see a lot of anger coming over this, and I can see a lot of political heads rolling unless a politicians get on top of the bureaucrats and say okay, we've got to have a good effective community-based advisory system in place so that the community actually knows what's happening. And unless that happens, I can see a lot of trouble in the wind.
IAN TOWNSEND: Denis Doherty is coordinator the Australia Anti-bases Coalition, which has held regular protests at American bases in Australia in the past. It's already planning a campaign to fight this new move.
DENIS DOHERTY: So we see that as a quantitative leap of US military presence in Australia and we are implacably opposed to it, and we are already organising to resist it.
IAN TOWNSEND: How would you do that?
DENIS DOHERTY: We will be ah... we'll do the full range of non-violent direct action down to petitions and letter writing and full and protests right across as many states and capitals as we can.
ELEANOR HALL: Denis Doherty from the Australian Anti Bases Coalition speaking there to Ian Townsend.
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The lowly, ill-regarded tumbleweed might be good for something after all.
05.11.2004
Geological Society of America
http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/geowissenschaften/bericht-35816.html
A preliminary study reveals that tumbleweeds, a.k.a. Russian thistle, and some other weeds common to dry Western lands have a knack for soaking up depleted uranium from contaminated soils at weapons testing grounds and battlefields. "There is some use to what we consider noxious weeds," said geologist Dana Ulmer-Scholle of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro.
Depleted uranium (DU) is used in armor-piercing munitions. Although it produces only a low level of radiation, the metal poses a hazard in soils because it - like some other heavy metals - is toxic if ingested. Other plants have been known to draw out DU from soils in wetter climes "but no one wanted to try doing it in arid regions," said Ulmer-Scholle.
Ulmer-Scholle's work is underwritten by the US Department of Defense, which is looking for innovative, cost-effective, and efficient ways of cleaning up soils at weapons testing areas and battlefields where DU has been used. Ulmer-Scholle will be presenting the promising results of tumbleweeds and other weeds in arid lands on 10 November at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver.
In her study, Ulmer-Scholle and her colleagues Bonnie Frey, Terry Thomas, and Michael Blaylock first sought out DU contaminated soils at an inactive munitions testing ground in New Mexico. Then they planted selected native and non-native plants in a test garden and in pots to see how much DU the plants absorbed from the soil.
Among the plants that sucked up lots of DU was Indian mustard (Brassica juncea), she reports. But that plant it is not well suited to deserts and needed irrigation. Better adapted to the dry environs, she said, were Russian thistle (Salsola tragus), the grain crop quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) and purple amaranth (Amaranthus blitum). "Our goal is to use plants with the least amount of water and the minimum amount of care," said Ulmer-Scholle. They also found that sprinkling the ground with citric acid enhanced the plants' ability to absorb DU.
Russian thistle is a non-native plant to North America and is considered a nuisance in most parts of the western US. It springs up almost anywhere soils have been disturbed and each plant scatters its hundreds of seeds by detaching from its roots and tumbling along the ground in the wind.
Using tumbleweeds and other unpopular plants for DU clean-up needn't spread noxious weeds either, Ulmer-Scholle explained. It turns out that the plants tested do their best DU absorbing before they flower and long before they set seeds. So part of the trick to using weeds to clean up DU is to harvest the plants before they flower, she said.
The fact that plants absorb uranium is not news, since old uranium prospectors used to use Geiger counters on junipers to find buried uranium lodes. But finding a plant that grows fast on little water and can be easily harvested to carry away the depleted uranium - that's another story. "We tried it here (in Southern New Mexico) and also in a natural uranium mine site in northern New Mexico," she said. The weeds picked up even more uranium in more contaminated soils. "So we got more where there was more in the soils."
As for why some plants absorb uranium, that's still a mystery, says Ulmer-Scholle. It could be that the plants use the metal to create pigments. One way she hopes to test that possibility is to grow native plants used for dyes, she said.
Phytoremediation of Depleted Uranium in an Arid Environment Environmental Geosciences, Poster Session II Wednesday, 10 November, 1:30 -5:30 p.m., CCC Exhibit Hall
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Iran: U.S. Nuclear Fears Overblown
Los Angeles Times
By Javad Zarif
November 5, 2004
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes381.htm
More than 18 months of intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Iran failed to produce a smoking gun. In fact, the report released in September by the IAEA confirmed the organization's original finding from November 2003 that "to date there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities ... were related to a nuclear weapons program."
But what good did that do Iran? While the IAEA was making "steady progress" in understanding the Iranian program and resolving the outstanding issues, the United States mobilized its substantial power and influence on the IAEA board of governors, which may very well push us all to an unwanted confrontation of uncontrollable magnitude that will benefit no country, group or cause, save for few extremists on all sides.
American officials apparently believe that Iran's declared peaceful nuclear program is just a cover for developing atomic weapons. But this is based on two erroneous assumptions, which have been repeated often enough to become conventional wisdom.
The first is that Iran has vast oil and gas resources and therefore does not need nuclear energy. Although it is true that Iran is rich in oil and gas, these resources are finite and, given the pace of Iran's economic development, they will be depleted within two to five decades. Further, it is much more economically advantageous for Iran to export these resources than to burn them; they are the major source of our hard currency.
Thus diversification - including the development of nuclear energy - is the only sound and responsible strategy for Iran.
Even the State Department was convinced of this in 1978 when it stated in a memo that the U.S. was encouraged by Iran's efforts to expand its non-oil energy base and was hopeful that the U.S.-Iran Nuclear Energy Agreement would be concluded soon and that U.S. companies would be able to play a role in Iran's nuclear energy projects.
The second assumption is that because Iran is surrounded by nuclear weapons in all directions - the U.S., Russia, Pakistan and Israel - any sound Iranian strategists must be seeking to develop a nuclear deterrent capability for Iran as well.
It is true that Iran has neighbors with abundant nuclear weapons, but this does not mean that Iran must follow suit. In fact, the predominant view among Iranian decision-makers is that possession or pursuit of nuclear weapons would only undermine Iranian security. Viable security for Iran can be attained only through inclusion and regional and global engagement.
Iran today is the strongest country in its immediate neighborhood. It does not need nuclear weapons to protect its regional interests. In fact, to augment Iranian influence in the region, it has been necessary for Iran to win the confidence of its neighbors, who have historically been concerned with size and power disparities.
More globally, Iran, with its current state of technological development and military capability, cannot reasonably rely on nuclear deterrence against its adversaries in the international arena or in the wider region of the Middle East.
There are also serious ideological restrictions against weapons of mass destruction, including a religious decree issued by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, prohibiting the development and use of nuclear weapons. Moreover, such an unrealistic option would be prohibitively expensive, draining the limited economic resources of the country.
In sum, a costly nuclear-weapon option would reduce Iran's regional influence and increase its global vulnerabilities without providing any credible deterrence.
At the same time, Iran has a right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, and it is determined to exercise its rights like many other countries.
To build international confidence, Iran agreed to the most comprehensive and intrusive IAEA inspection regime and started its implementation in December. It has also maintained a voluntary suspension of its rightful uranium enrichment activities since November 2003. Iran is also negotiating with France, Germany and Britain to reach long-term assurances on nuclear cooperation and transparency. These negotiations will be difficult and require political will and good faith.
Yet dialogue is the only approach that can allay the concerns of all. If history and Iranian political psychology are any guide, pressure, intimidation and attempts to deprive Iran of its rights can only backfire.
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Iran, EU Nuke Talks Progress, But No Deal Yet
By REUTERS
November 5, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-iran.html?pagewanted=all
PARIS (Reuters) - A senior Iranian negotiator said Tehran had made progress in talks on Friday with French, British and German diplomats seeking to persuade the Islamic republic to give up its uranium enrichment program.
But Hossein Mousavian, head of the Iranian delegation, said it was unclear whether the remaining differences would be resolved in the afternoon session despite compromises made in an initial three hours of talks.
``We have reached a satisfactory compromise on some issues,'' Mousavian told reporters during a short break in the talks at the French foreign ministry.
``But there are some other issues left. We are going to have a second round of negotiations. Maybe this will take another three or four hours before we can say whether we are able to agree on a compromise or not,'' he said.
Iran is offering a six-month suspension of its enrichment program, which Washington believes will be used to produce atomic weapons, diplomats close to the talks said.
But the European Union's ``Big Three'' powers are pushing Iran to agree to an indefinite suspension.
``We still want a termination of the enrichment program and all related activities,'' a Western diplomat close to the EU-Iran talks said.