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NUCLEAR
Volga court opens inquiry into rumors of nuclear disaster
Gulf Illness forces retirement
Tumbleweeds Absorb Depleted Uranium from Arid Soil
France to Host Nuclear Fusion Project - EU Source
Nuclear waste convoy rolls toward German dump after protester's death
US says any Iran accord must end nuclear weapons
Two Issues Could Hinder Deal to Freeze Iran's Nuclear Program
Iran Says It Reached Temporary Deal on Uranium Output
UN nuclear watchdog to issue report on South Korea next week
IAEA cites South Korea for hidden nuclear activities: report
ElBaradei Warns of Radioactive Material Trafficking
TVA nuclear cleanup fund grows 44 percent
Nuclear Waste Reclassification May Be Allowed in Washington
MILITARY
Sudanese Rape Victims Find Justice Blind to Plight
French Unleash Force Against Chaos in Ivory Coast
Ivory Coast Loyalists Confront French Troops
Macedonians Defeat Bid to Block Rights for Albanian Minority
CONTRACTS AWARDED
China to accelerate nuclear power construction
With Jets and Armor, Thousands of Troops Enter Rebel-Held City
Fighting Around Fallujah Intensifies
Defense Minister Exhorts Iraqis: 'Liberate This City'
ATTACK BY JOINT FORCE
Netanyahu Reportedly Backs Down in Bout With Sharon
Palestinian Delegation Hoping to See Arafat
Palestinian Aides Try to Unravel Mystery of Arafat's Condition
LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS ON BUSH STAR WARS PLAN
Veteran Sues Over Reactivation 13 Years After Army Discharge
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
U.S. Judge Halts Military Trial of Qaeda Suspect at Guantánamo
First a terrorist, now a spy
U.S. Unprepared Despite Progress, Experts Say
Negotiators See New Hope for Intelligence Bill
Mexico to Press U.S. on Stalled Migrant Plan
Guantánamo Prisoners Getting Their Day, but Hardly in Court
Freedom for Chinese Detainees Hinges on Finding a New Homeland
Dirty hands
POLITICS
Abramoff Allies Keeping Distance
Abu Ghraib abuses tapped to theatre
The E-Vote Factor: Kerry Conceded But Did He Really Lose?
Worse Than 2000: Tuesday's Electoral Disaster
Furor Continues Over Specter Comments on Nominees
ENERGY
Utah Town Nation's First Green Power Community
OTHER
Seaweed May Have Future Use As Cleaner of DDT-Polluted Soil
Rapid Arctic Warming Brings Sea Level Rise, Extinctions
ACTIVISTS
Train Kills French Nuclear Protester
A Hidden Story Behind Sept. 11? One Man's Ad Campaign Says So
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Volga court opens inquiry into rumors of nuclear disaster
(AFP)
Nov 8, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041108/sc_afp/russia_nuclear_041108194556
MOSCOW - A prosecutor's office in the Volga region opened an official inquiry into the origin of rumors of a nuclear disaster at a local plant that sowed panic across the region, the news agency Ria-Novosti reported on Monday.
The rumors began Friday after a technical incident at the Balakovo nuclear power plant which local authorities characterized as not serious.
As rumors of a nuclear catastrophe that cast radioactive particles into the air spread, so did the panic.
Inhabitants in towns across the region such as Penza, Saransk, Saratov and Samara rushed out to purchase iodine, and universities and companies urged people to stay inside and close their shutters.
Iodine, when taken orally, is said to prevent nuclear radiation from damaging the body's cells.
"Unidentified individuals spread misinformation about a nuclear disaster ... which not only caused panic but became a public health threat because people ingested iodine," explained Nona Guellert, with the Balakovo prosecutor's office.
According to Guellert a dozen people were hospitalized for swallowing iodine.
The nuclear plant was back to normal operations on Saturday said authorities.
-------- depleted uranium
Gulf Illness forces retirement
Mysterious disease renders Army veteran unable to keep teaching
Lars Jacoby
Nov. 8, 2004
The Arizona Republic
http://www.azcentral.com/community/chandler/articles/1108gilbertvet08Z6.html
Many veterans who served during Operation Desert Storm suffer from a variety of symptoms commonly called Persian Gulf Illness.
Several things are believed to cause the illness, including exposure to depleted uranium and oil well fires.
Shawn Livingston, 43, of Gilbert, knows the pain that the mysterious illness can cause. She suffers from pain in her joints, as well as degenerative disks. advertisement
The illness has forced Livingston to retire from teaching, because she wasn't able to give her students the same effort she could 10 years ago when she jumped into teaching after the first Gulf War.
"Everything kind of caught up to me," Livingston said of the illness. "It kills me, because part of the reason I got into teaching was for the kids."
The former Army linguist said she enjoyed teaching her students about their country and all the freedoms it has to offer - something she knows not everyone in the world can claim.
"I'm totally in support of it," Livingston said of the war in Iraq. "I was over there, I saw the atrocities firsthand that Saddam Hussein committed on his people and the Kuwaiti people."
The former Islands Elementary teacher signed up for the Army at 28 and maintains that despite her illness she contracted from her time there, she would do it all over again.
"If I could, I would go back in a heartbeat," she said.
----
Tumbleweeds Absorb Depleted Uranium from Arid Soil
November 8, 2004
DENVER, Colorado, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2004/2004-11-08-09.asp#anchor3
Tumbleweeds, known also as Russian thistle, and some other weeds common to dry Western lands can absorb 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.
Ulmer-Scholle will be presenting the results of her study of weeds in arid lands on Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver.
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 climates, "but no one wanted to try doing it in arid regions," said Ulmer-Scholle.
Ulmer-Scholle's work is funded by the U.S. 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.
In her study, Ulmer-Scholle and her team worked with DU contaminated soils at an inactive munitions testing ground in New Mexico. 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 took up lots of DU were Russian thistle, Salsola tragus; the grain crop quinoa, Chenopodium quinoa; and purple amaranth, Amaranthus blitum.
They also found that sprinkling the ground with citric acid enhanced the plants' ability to absorb DU.
Russian thistle is not native to North America and is considered a nuisance in most parts of the western United States. It springs up where soils have been disturbed and each plant scatters its seeds by detaching from its roots and tumbling along the ground in the wind.
Using tumbleweeds need not spread noxious weeds, Ulmer-Scholle explained, because the plants tested do their best 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 mechanisms used by plants to absorb uranium, is still not understood, says Ulmer-Scholle.
-------- europe
France to Host Nuclear Fusion Project - EU Source
(Reuters)
By Yves Clarisse
Nov 8, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041108/sc_nm/nuclear_eu_fusion_dc_4
BRUSSELS - The European Union (news - web sites) is confident of a deal on Tuesday for France to host a $12 billion global nuclear fusion project after Japan signaled it would give up its bid in return for compensation, an EU source said on Monday.
The European Union and five other industrial powers plan to build the world's first futuristic reactor that would generate energy through nuclear fusion in an attempt to harness the source of the sun's power and tame it for humanity.
But the six partners in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) have been split over where to locate the reactor, with Washington backing Tokyo's bid in what was seen as a payback for French opposition to the Iraq (news - web sites) war.
Negotiators from the EU, United States, South Korea (news - web sites), Japan, Russia and China began meeting on Monday in Vienna, headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to seek a deal.
"The agreement foresees Iter in Cadarache," the source said, referring to the French site north of Marseille. "They are preparing an agreement under which the Japanese would receive something."
In Vienna, an official at the U.N. nuclear watchdog said a statement would be issued after the talks on Tuesday.
While an EU diplomat in the Austrian capital said there was still no final recommendation on Monday, a Western diplomat said it appeared Japan had given up hope and acknowledged it would not get the reactor but was negotiating for compensation.
The EU has been ratcheting up diplomatic pressure to host ITER and in September asked the European Commission (news - web sites), its executive arm, to assess the cost of going ahead even if the United States did not participate.
BRUSSELS OPTIMISTIC
EU ministers had been expected to decide on the prestigious project, which has big industrial and technological spin-off benefits, on Nov. 25-26.
A Commission spokesman declined to confirm that a deal had been struck but said the EU executive was hopeful.
"We are optimistic," spokesman Fabio Fabbi said. "We hope to have a positive result with ITER in Cadarache."
While the EU, backed by China and Russia, wanted ITER to be built in Cadarache, the United States along with South Korea had preferred Rokkasho, a remote fishing village in northern Japan.
Non-EU countries such as Brazil and Switzerland had also expressed interest in joining the project on the EU side.
The ITER project would create the world's first sustained nuclear fusion reaction, which would last for several minutes. Fusion is low in pollution since it has a virtually limitless supply of fuel in the form of sea water.
France's Ministry for Research would not confirm or deny that Cadarache had been chosen.
"One has to remain extremely cautious," a source close to Research Minister Francois d'Aubert said. "Negotiations are still ongoing and for the moment, they have not been concluded."
In a bid to end the stalemate, France proposed doubling its contribution for the 4.77 billion euros needed to build the reactor in Cadarache over 10 years. Paris is ready to pay 914 million euros or 20 percent of the costs.
The EU will pay 40 percent of the costs, while China and Russia will give a 10 percent contribution. The remaining 20 percent will come from other participating parties. (additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau in Vienna)
-----
Nuclear waste convoy rolls toward German dump after protester's death
(AFP)
Mon Nov 8, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041108/sc_afp/germany_france_nuclear_041108205456
HANOVER, Germany - Demonstrators in Germany chained themselves to a railway to stop a shipment of highly radioactive nuclear waste from France, a day after a protester was crushed to death under the train's wheels.
Amid sorrow and anger over the death of the 21-year-old man who had attached himself to the track near the eastern French city of Nancy, a number of defiant activists blocked the tracks near Uelzen, northern Germany.
The consignment, which is carrying 12 containers of spent fuel rods, resumed its journey from Uelzen after about an hour and three protesters were detained. Subsequent protests by thousands of demonstrators along the route led to brief delays.
The shipment had left the retreatment plant at La Hague in northern France on Saturday evening and crossed on to German soil late Sunday after a delay of several hours following the protestor's death.
The man had a leg severed by the train and died despite receiving emergency treatment at the scene.
Late Monday afternoon, the shipment rolled into the northern German town of Dannenberg, where the waste was to be transferred onto trucks and driven to a storage facility near Gorleben, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) away.
Several hundred demonstrators moved to block the road to Gorleben, ignoring orders by police to clear the route.
In Dannenberg, farmers protesting against the convoy blocked a street with their tractors, each festooned with a black crepe bow in memory of the dead demonstrator.
Many in town hung black flags in mourning. In front of a church where activists held a spontaneous vigil for the man late Sunday, demonstrators placed candles and flowers.
Germany, which has no treatment facilities of its own, sends spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants for reprocessing at the La Hague plant before they are returned here for storage.
The consignment is the seventh to be returned to Germany since 1996 and an estimated 11,000 officers are guarding the convoy.
Anti-nuclear and environmental campaigners say the shipments are dangerous and that the waste will contaminate the water table at Gorleben.
Following the death of the protester, German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin of the ecologist Greens party called on both sides "to avert dangers of this kind" during the final stretch of the convoy's 600-kilometer odyssey.
But a spokesman for environmentalist group Robin Wood said the blockades were justified.
"We think it is necessary and legitimate to continue our protests despite the incident in France," said Juergen Sattari.
A representative from a regional organization opposed to the shipments, Dieter Metk, said that the death of the protester had only mobilized resistance.
"Many people think that we should not give up in this situation," Metk said, saying it was "shocking" that the shipment had continued late Sunday after the fatal accident.
Demonstrators have turned out to this scenic region of northern Germany for what have become traditional cat-and-mouse games with police.
More than 5,000 anti-nuclear protestors -- a diverse band of local farmers, teenagers with dreadlocks and veteran environmentalists -- began the protests Saturday in northern Germany to rally against the imminent arrival of the shipment.
In large part due to the expense and complexity of the waste transports, as well as a campaign pledge by the Greens party, Germany has agreed to phase out its nuclear power plants by 2020.
-------- iran
US says any Iran accord must end nuclear weapons
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Nov 08, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041108163358.4oj78wgm.html
The United States insisted Monday that any nuclear accord with Iran must prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons and that it was in contact with European allies over a preliminary agreement with Tehran.
"The international community is resolved not to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. And we are committed to pursuing this through peaceful diplomatic means and this is what we are continuing to do," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
"I have seen the reports on a preliminary agreement. We've been in touch with our European friends involved in these efforts. We appreciate their efforts.
"We're still working to find out more details of what that may be. We will see what the results are later this week," McClellan added.
An Iranian negotiator, Hossein Moussavian, announced Sunday that Iranian and European Union officials have reached a "preliminary agreement" on easing concerns over the Islamic republic's nuclear programme following negotiations in Paris.
"We reached a preliminary agreement at the experts level," Moussavian told state television from the French capital after what has been described as two days of "difficult discussions".
"This agreement is to be taken to the capitals of the four countries, and in the next days, if the capitals approve it, it will be announced officially," he said, adding that he was "not pessimistic".
Iran and the EU states of Britain, France and Germany held talks on getting Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment in order to avoid being hauled before the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
The United States accuses Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons under cover of its civilian atomic energy program and wants the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to refer Tehran to the Security Council when the agency meets in Vienna on November 25.
McClellan highlighted that the IAEA board has five times called on Iran to fully cooperate with the international community and to suspend all enrichment and reprocessing activities.
"The board set the November deadline and this is a time when Iran should take this opportunity and comply," added the spokesman.
-----
Two Issues Could Hinder Deal to Freeze Iran's Nuclear Program
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 8, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32727-2004Nov7.html
NEW YORK, Nov. 7 -- A European deal to freeze Iran's nuclear program, provide the Islamic republic with lucrative trade incentives and avoid sanctions by the U.N. Security Council could be signed by midweek if two critical issues can be quickly resolved, U.S., European and Iranian officials said in interviews Sunday.
Iran has refused to accept a full suspension on all its nuclear-related work and wants a commitment from France, Britain and Germany that a second stage of negotiations will be wrapped up within six months. The European trio wants the later negotiations to be open-ended and expects Iran to maintain a total suspension during that process, diplomats from Britain and France said on the condition of anonymity.
If the deal goes through, European powers have promised Iran a diplomatic and economic package along with a guarantee that it will not be referred to the Security Council, where it could face sanctions.
"If this is approved by all four parties, we will witness an important change in Iran's relations with Europe and much of the international community in [the] not-too-distant future," Iranian negotiator Hossein Mousavian told Iranian television Sunday.
The Bush administration has pushed unsuccessfully for nearly two years to get Iran to the Security Council and has refused to participate in public diplomacy with Tehran. But without proof of a nuclear weapons program, or evidence that Iran is breaking international law, allies have refused to go along with Washington's strategy.
Instead, Britain, France and Germany have devoted the past year to negotiation and compromise with Iran. Talks have been rocky at times but could produce a deal within days.
If negotiations fall apart, Washington expects the Europeans to back its quest for action by the council, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton wrote in a letter Friday to his counterparts in Paris, London and Berlin, U.S. officials said.
Much of the terms for the Euro-Iranian accord were worked out in two days of meetings that ended Saturday in Paris.
U.S. officials briefed by the three European countries said they believe the deal will go through if Iran accepts a full suspension. Currently, Iran is pushing for an exemption on an early step in the uranium conversion process.
Although the exemption would leave Iran far away from being able to make bomb-grade uranium -- and Iran has said it has no intention of doing so -- it would still get a push in that direction, said David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.
"It would still be a significant step forward and too easy for Iran to conduct the next conversion step in secret," Albright said.
U.S. officials said they will continue to lobby European allies over the next several days to push for the full suspension and an open-ended negotiating period. The officials discussed the negotiations on the condition of anonymity.
"The Iranians will have to give on the timing and the parameters of a suspension," one official said. "Our hope is that the Europeans will agree with that."
Washington also wants more aggressive U.N. inspections, to monitor Iran's compliance with the deal. Legally, Iran isn't obligated to such inspections, but in the past two years, it has granted inspectors access to enrichment facilities and military sites they asked to see.
France, Britain, Germany and Iran signed a similar deal in October 2003; it fell apart within six months, mostly because the terms of the suspension were loosely defined. Iran had also expected European help, which didn't come, in getting its file closed with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
A new deal needs to be worked out soon so the IAEA can verify Iran's suspension before the agency's board meets to discuss Tehran's case on Nov. 25. The IAEA has told parties involved that it will need at least 10 days to complete the work.
Iran, rich in oil and gas, has said its uranium enrichment facility is part of a peaceful nuclear fuel program. But U.S., European and Israeli officials suspect that the scale of Iran's efforts, conducted in secret over 18 years, indicates that it ultimately wants to produce a nuclear weapon.
--------
Iran Says It Reached Temporary Deal on Uranium Output
November 8, 2004
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/international/middleeast/09irancnd.html?hp&ex=1099976400&en=c434d1b1d6512914&ei=5094&partner=homepage
PARIS, Nov. 8 - Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi of Iran today praised the outcome of weekend talks with European negotiators, saying that a preliminary agreement had been reached to suspend Iran's production of enriched uranium immediately. But he emphasized that any suspension would only be temporary.
"We hope that the deal between Iran and Europeans can be finalized and create necessary confidence," Mr. Kharrazi said of the 22 hours of difficult negotiations in Paris on Friday and Saturday between an Iranian delegation and senior officials of France, Germany, Britain and the European Union.
But, Mr. Kharrazi added, "The talk is about continuing the suspension for a short period to build confidence."
Paradoxically, both Mr. Kharrazi and his negotiator in Paris, Hussein Mousavian, were more optimistic in public than the Europeans in describing the negotiations. The two Iranians described the result as a "preliminary agreement" while all of the European players said only that "considerable progress" had been made toward a "preliminary agreement."
That seems to indicate the desire of the Iranian officials to push the agreement through Iran's murky political leadership, where there is universal agreement that Iran has the right to produce enriched uranium and must not agree to a permanent ban.
Mr. Kharrazi's comments in Tehran to state-run television underscored the fact that the Europeans gave in on the issue of whether Iran's suspension of uranium enrichment would be permanent, European officials said. But the Europeans also resisted Iran's demand that the suspension last only six months, the officials added.
Instead, the suspension will continue only as long as Iran and the Europeans are involved in negotiations for a comprehensive package of rewards for Iran in exchange for a suspension of its production of enriched uranium, which can be used in both civilian and military nuclear programs.
The Iranian side is in the midst of studying the text of a preliminary agreement that was discussed over the weekend, and European officials said there were still areas of disagreement between the two sides when the talks broke up.
But the Iranians have made clear in their public statements both before and after the negotiations that they want a deal.
If a deal is in place by the time the 35 countries that make up the leadership of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, meet on Nov. 25 in Vienna, it will block a move by the United States to send the Iran problem to the Security Council for possible sanctions.
In Brussels today. Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said that an agreement would eliminate the need to refer Iran to the Security Council. "I think if we get an agreement we will not see any reason why," he told Reuters.
In Australia today, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, called the agreement "a step in the right direction," adding that he hoped a deal would be finalized in "the next few days" and would lead Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment and reprocessing programs.
Mr. Kharrazi's call for the need to "build confidence" is code for the Iranian demand that it be given a package of rewards as proof that it is not suspending its enrichment program and getting nothing in return.
Among the incentives that the Europeans proposed to Iran were the reaffirmation of Iran's right to a nuclear energy program for peaceful purposes; support in Iran's acquisition of a light water research reactor; resumption of talks on a trade agreement between the European Union and Iran; support for Iran's membership in the World Trade Organization; continuing to define as a terrorist organization the Iranian opposition group known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq; access to imported nuclear fuel at market prices for Iran's reactors; and help with regional security concerns, including combating drug trafficking.
In Iran today, the hard-line daily Jomhuri-e-Eslami denounced the talks on its front page and criticized the Iranian negotiators who conducted them.
"Despite the fact that the Europeans cannot be trusted has been proven to all, unfortunately these people have again reached agreement with these three traitor European countries," the newspaper said.
In October 2003, Iran and the trio of European countries reached agreement in Tehran for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and to accept stricter international inspections of its nuclear sites. But Iran violated the agreement this year, asserting that the Europeans had reneged on their promises of economic and political incentives.
-------- korea
UN nuclear watchdog to issue report on South Korea next week
(AFP)
Nov 8, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041108/wl_asia_afp/skorea_nuclear_iaea_041108190712
VIENNA - The UN nuclear agency is to present a report on South Korea (news - web sites) next week ahead of a decision on whether the US ally should be taken to the UN Security Council for violating international nuclear safeguards, diplomats said.
Seoul has been under investigation by the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since revealing in September that its scientists secretly enriched a tiny amount of plutonium in 1982 and uranium in 2000.
But Seoul says the laboratory experiments were not linked to nuclear weapons programs.
Still, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has expressed "serious concern" about the activities.
South Korean diplomats "have been lobbying very hard" with the Vienna-based IAEA "not to be taken to the Security Council" as they stress the nuclear violations were one-time events in the past which were in any case not sanctioned by the government, a European diplomat close to the IAEA told AFP.
He said the South Koreans may be afraid of "losing face" or "afraid of what North Korea (news - web sites) will say," as the United States is leading an international effort to keep North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.
ElBaradei will be releasing a report next week ahead of a meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors on November 25 that will decide what to do about South Korea, diplomats said.
One diplomat said the IAEA must still evaluate results from an inspection team that wrapped up its work in South Korea Sunday and was also moving slower than thought, with this week the original target date for the report, since ElBaradei is currently traveling and not in Vienna.
A Western diplomat said the key question would be whether the IAEA says "it needs more time to investigate South Korea or whether the report is going to be definitive" about whether South Korea has violated the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
After North Korea kicked IAEA inspectors out, the agency in 2003 took Pyongyang to the Security Council for violating the NPT.
The IAEA is still fighting to get its inspectors back into North Korea, while the Council has until now refrained from imposing sanctions.
But a report to the Security Council does not necessarily mean the IAEA is seeking help in cracking down on a rogue state.
When the IAEA took Libya this year to the Security Council for violating the NPT, it did this merely for form's sake as it praised Libya for coming clean and helping the IAEA to dismantle Tripoli's nuclear program.
Diplomats said a reporting of South Korea would almost surely be like the Libyan case, as South Korea has cooperated with the IAEA.
But the European diplomat said South Korea was resisting even this sort of report to the Security Council, probably worried about fall-out with North Korea.
IAEA inspectors had Sunday completed their investigation into South Korea's past nuclear experiments.
The IAEA has sent inspectors to South Korea three times to inspect nuclear facilities, interview scientists and take samples.
South Korea operates 19 nuclear power plants producing 40 percent of its energy needs.
North Korea, citing concern about Seoul's secret nuclear experiments and "hostile" US policy, boycotted a planned new round of six-nation talks aimed at ending the communist state's atomic weapons drive.
----
IAEA cites South Korea for hidden nuclear activities: report
AFP
Thu Nov 11, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041111/wl_asia_afp/skorea_nuclear_iaea_041111190650
VIENNA (AFP) - The UN atomic energy agency cited South Korea (news - web sites) for conducting secret uranium and plutonium-making activities that violated international nuclear safeguards on a wider scale than Seoul had previously declared.
But the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the tests were experimental and small-scale, and that South Korea had cooperated with the agency in investigating the matter, in a report released Thursday.
The IAEA report could clear the way to the agency bringing South Korea before the UN Security Council for the lapses when the IAEA's board of governors meets in Vienna on November 25.
This could prove embarrassing to South Korea's main ally the United States which is leading a drive to get North Korea (news - web sites) to give up plans to make nuclear weapons.
Washington is also calling on the IAEA to report Iran to the Security Council for similar breaches of safeguards monitoring authorized by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that it says are in Tehran's case proof of a hidden nuclear weapons program.
But the report says the IAEA investigation into South Korea is continuing and this could lead IAEA board members to put off ruling on the South Korean dossier.
South Korea had in August admitted to the IAEA that its scientists had conducted secret experiments in separating plutonium in the 1980's.
Seoul also reported laser enrichment of uranium "in 2000 by scientists at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) in Daejeon" that refined uranium to an average level of 10.2 percent and up to the highly enriched level 77 percent, which is close to weapons-grade, according to the report.
The IAEA made the uranium enrichment public in September, even if Seoul at first denied producing highly enriched uranium.
The IAEA report said it has now discovered that South Korean scientists had also made natural uranium metal which is used in enriching uranium and in 1979-1981 conducted some experiments in enriching uranium chemically.
South Korea claims these were all small laboratory experiments that produced only 200 milligrams of enriched uranium, that they were done without government approval and that such activity has been stopped.
The IAEA report said South Korea produced 0.7 grams of plutonium in 1982, but added that this had an "isotopic content of about 98 percent of PU-239," which is weapons grade.
These amounts are very small as it takes from 15-25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium to make an atomic bomb while the amount for plutonium is seven kilograms.
The IAEA said that "although the quantities involved have not been significant, the nature of the activities ... and the failures by the ROK to report the activities in a timely manner in accordance under its Safeguards Agreement is ... a matter of serious concern."
"They haven't told us things they should have" but since then "they have provided a lot of good cooperation," a diplomat close to the IAEA said.
The report said South Korea has provided "active cooperation," including access to sites and allowing environmental swipe sampling.
"There is no indication that these undeclared experiments have continued," the diplomat said.
The report said "at least ten" laser enrichment related experiments "were carried out at KAERI facilities between 1993 and 2000" and that South Korea has said "these experiments were authorized only by the president of KAERI in Daejeon, involved some 14 KAERI scientists and were conducted in the broader context of a stable isotope separation project."
North Korea, citing concern about Seoul's secret nuclear experiments and "hostile" US policy, boycotted in October a planned new round of six-nation talks aimed at ending the communist state's atomic weapons drive.
But US Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said in October that there was no comparison with secret nuclear experiments carried out by South Korea in the past and ongoing atomic programmes in North Korea and Iran.
-------- terrorism
ElBaradei Warns of Radioactive Material Trafficking
National Journal Group
November 8, 2004
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2004_11_8.html#729137A1
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said today that the number of incidents of radioactive material trafficking is expected to exceed the 60 reported last year (see GSN, Oct. 29).
During a conference in Sydney on nuclear proliferation, ElBaradei warned of the growing threat of nuclear terrorism, according to Reuters.
"We need to do all we can to work on the new phenomena called nuclear terrorism, which was sprang on us after 9/11 when we realized terrorists had become more sophisticated and had shown an interest in nuclear and radioactive material," he said.
"We have a race against time because this was something we were not prepared for," ElBaradei added.
There have been 630 trafficking incidents over the last 10 years, ElBaradei said (Reuters, Nov. 8).
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer yesterday also warned that terrorist groups were seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, according to Agence France-Presse.
"There's absolutely no doubt that terrorists, or at least some terrorists, are endeavoring to get hold of nuclear materials as well as other forms of weapons of mass destruction," Downer said (Agence France-Presse/Khaleej Times, Nov. 7).
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- tennessee
TVA nuclear cleanup fund grows 44 percent
Associated Press
Nov. 08, 2004
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/10129163.htm
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - A Tennessee Valley Authority fund to pay for shutting down and cleaning up its three nuclear plants has grown by more than 44 percent since 2002 thanks to a rebounding stock market.
The nation's largest public utility reports the fund reached $720 million on Sept. 30, the end of fiscal 2004. That's up $221 million from the $499 million fund balance at the same time two years earlier at the depth of the market downturn.
"We've averaged better than a 20 percent annual rate of return in our investments over the past two years," said John Hoskins, senior vice president and treasurer for TVA.
"We're not back to where we were in 2000, but over the long term we recognize that investing in stocks tends to yield the best long-term returns."
TVA estimates it will need more than $2.4 billion to decommission its Watts Bar and Sequoyah stations in Tennessee and its Browns Ferry station in Alabama.
That liability is nearly four times more than what TVA now has reserved, though the utility is optimistic the fund will reach its goal by the time the money is needed.
TVA, which provides electricity to about 8.5 million consumers in Tennessee and parts of Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, receives no tax dollars. With a $7 billion budget, the utility operates exclusively on revenues from power production.
Its Browns Ferry station is now licensed until 2016, but TVA has applied for a 20-year extension from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Sequoyah plant is licensed to 2021 and Watts Bar to 2035. License extensions for Sequoyah also are expected to be sought.
Last week, the NRC granted extensions to two nuclear plants in Illinois, bringing the number of U.S. reactors with extensions to 30.
If TVA gets the extension for Browns Ferry, Hoskins said the federal utility would need only $589 million now in its cleanup fund.
"The estimated liability costs of decommissioning these plants has gone up, but our fund balance has grown much faster," Hoskins said.
"Given the relatively long time horizon before we expect to shut down these reactors, these funds will continue to grow and should be more than adequate to meet our future obligations."
TVA first set aside $100 million for the cleanup fund in 1986. The balance soared with the stock market through the 1990s, but dropped by $230 million, or nearly 30 percent, during 2001 and 2002.
In its last report to the NRC two years ago, TVA estimated the fund then at $385 million. The next biennial report due in March will reflect the $720 million balance.
"We just want to make sure there is sufficient money to clean up these plants and not be dependent solely upon the owner of the plant at the time it ultimately shuts down," said Michael Dusaniwskyj, an NRC economist who oversees the funds.
"TVA and other utilities each identified ways that they would meet these obligations," he said.
The Department of Energy maintains a separate fund from taxes on nuclear power generation to pay for long-term storage of highly radioactive spent fuel rods.
-------- washington
Nuclear Waste Reclassification May Be Allowed in Washington
November 8, 2004
YAKIMA, Washington, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2004/2004-11-08-09.asp#anchor1
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that it is too soon to decide whether the Department of Energy (DOE) should be allowed to reclassify high-level nuclear waste at a site in Washington state.
The ruling overturns the decision of a federal judge in Idaho last year who agreed with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Snake River Alliance, the Yakama Nation and the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes that reclassification of the waste violated the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
If the waste is reclassified it could be left in tanks at the Hanford Nuclear reservation and mixed with grout, or, it could be shipped to other federal facilities for disposal.
Last month, the DOE attempted to ship high-level waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico, which is approved to accept only less radioactive transuranic waste. The state of New Mexico blocked the move.
Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire and her colleagues in three other states in September 2003 described as "wholly unnecessary" a DOE legislative proposal that would give the agency broad latitude in deciding how to categorize and dispose of high-level nuclear waste at Hanford.
"DOE's proposal is simply another attempt to get around what Congress intended for the safe disposal of high-level radioactive waste at Hanford and other nuclear facilities around the country," said Gregoire, whose bid for the Washington governor's post remains too close to call today, six days after the election.
Earlier this year, Congress passed the reclassification measure for South Carolina and Idaho, permitting the waste to be classified as "incidental." The reclassification does not apply to Washington state.
The DOE declined comment on the appellate court's decision.
About 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste from plutonium production from the 1940s through 1989 is buried in Hanford's 177 underground tanks. At least 67 of the tanks have leaked radioactivity into the soil, contaminating the aquifer and menacing the Columbia River less than 10 miles away.
The 1989 Tri-Party Agreement, a Hanford cleanup pact, requires the Energy Department to remove as much waste as technically possible from the Hanford tanks, but not less than 99 percent.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Sudanese Rape Victims Find Justice Blind to Plight
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 8, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32621-2004Nov7?language=printer
OTASH, Sudan -- The breeze ruffled Katuma Abdullah Adam's green scarf as the sheik and his helpers slowly poured water over her head. Once, twice, three times they repeated the ritual as the pregnant 15-year-old wept in shame.
"You can now enter paradise," the sheik said, ushering Katuma inside a dark hut so her swollen body could also be washed, along with her nose and mouth, as a symbolic cleansing of the sin she had suffered.
To the family of Katuma, who was raped and impregnated by an Arab militia fighter five months ago in the war-torn region of Darfur, this shamanistic cure was the only form of redemption available in a situation where legal justice is elusive, officials are embarrassed to discuss rape and the chances of catching and prosecuting attackers are next to none.
While a ritual bath cannot substitute for a court of law, according to Sudanese culture it may help mitigate the negative long-term social effects of rape -- the public ostracism of the victim, her devaluation as a future bride and the lifelong stigma that will fall on any child born of the crime.
According to the United Nations and human rights groups, thousands of women have been raped by gunmen in the course of a 20-month conflict that pits African rebel groups against Sudanese troops and pro-government Arab militias known as the Janjaweed. The United Nations says more than 70,000 people have died.
In August and September, the French medical charity Doctors Without Borders reported that it had treated 123 cases of rape in South Darfur, at least 100 of which occurred during attacks on villages by armed men. Victims said they were assaulted at gunpoint and in some cases gang-raped.
Despite widespread documentation of the rapes by international groups and promises by the government to investigate and prosecute rape cases, sexual violence remains a low official priority. Sudanese society ostracizes rape victims and associates them with deep shame.
There is also little public trust in the police and the courts, because Janjaweed militiamen accused of the crimes are seen as backed by the government.
A recent report by Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group, called rape "a weapon of war in Darfur," often accompanied by racial insults, whipping, undressing and public sexual acts as a form of humiliation. To the Arab Janjaweed, attacking African women is seen as a way to mortify African rebel groups, the report said.
Many women have also reported being told by rapists that they wanted to produce Arab babies and weaken African tribal lines.
Amnesty International documented hundreds of rape cases and described the horrific long-term social consequences for the women. But U.N. officials and others said international pressure had done little to make local officials address the plight of women who are victims of rape, as well as resulting health problems and pregnancies.
"The government as a whole is in denial about the scale and the severity of the problems," said Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, who visited Darfur in late September. "Cases where attempts are made by women to report to the police are disbelieved, or in any event, no further action is taken on their report."
On a recent trip to South Darfur, U.S. Reps. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) and Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) visited camps in the region and were told they would see a "rape tent," where victims could report the crimes. When they arrived at the designated camp, however, there was no such tent. Refugees said there never had been one.
Jackson shook his head and said: "These guys are professional sugarcoaters. What are we going to do about this?"
Abdullal Abu Bakar, who works for the government and runs the camp, winked conspiratorially and laughed, partly from embarrassment. "There was not a single case, I tell you," he said. "That's why we closed the tent.' "
Innocence Lost
Katuma Adam still sees the men in her nightmares. It was late May, the height of the rainy season, when the Janjaweed gunmen attacked her village in North Darfur. One of them grabbed her. His hand slipped under her dress.
"He pushed into me and it was hurting me very much," she recounted recently, after the ritual washing in a shelter built of sticks and rags, inside a camp for victims of violence in Darfur. "I had no strength. I just shut my eyes."
Afterward, she said, she was covered in blood and crying. "I felt very, very thirsty and in shock." She was not yet 15.
There was nowhere Katuma could turn for help -- no counseling services, no legal aid offices, no sympathetic law enforcement agency. Darfur, a region engulfed by human crisis and flooded with refugees, barely has a functioning police force or justice system.
For weeks after the attack, Katuma remained sequestered in her hut, her head pillowed on a pile of rocks. She stayed inside even through the thick afternoon heat, too ashamed to emerge and seek shade under a tree like others in the camp. She said her legs felt like stone and her mind was numb with depression. She worried constantly about her child's future, and her own.
"I will never find love," she said after the cleansing ceremony. "Will this washing help me find a husband?" Katuma and her mother, Aisha Bakhet Adam, consented to be identified by name.
Aisha Adam, 43, a sturdy widow with six children, has no time for melancholy musings. She is on a mission. Every day, she listens to radio reports about the war. She knows that many people have died and many more have been displaced. And she knows that in four months, her daughter will give birth to a child of the Janjaweed.
Aisha Adam has few illusions about the chances of proving the rapist's guilt. What she needs is evidence of her daughter's innocence, a way to convince potential suitors and their families that she did not ask to be raped. A police report or a court case would be ideal, she said, but she had no idea how to approach the government.
After thinking it over, she decided the water ritual might help reduce her daughter's shame and protect her unborn child from becoming a social outcast.
So on a recent day, the mother crawled out of her waist-high hut, doffed an orange head scarf and oversize sunglasses and trudged purposefully along the footpaths of this garbage-strewn camp until she found Adam Abdul Karim, a local sheik, waiting in a food line. She told him she needed his help.
"I don't think the government will ever catch this man, and I don't think my daughter will ever mend her heart unless we do something now," she told him. "I am very ashamed, [but] I am trying to hide my embarrassment and help my daughter. Right now, we are alone with this problem."
Karim consulted a sheaf of ragged notes and suggested he perform the ritual washing. It was a custom normally applied in local African tribes when a woman's husband died or she gave birth to a child out of wedlock. This would be the first time at this camp, Karim said, that it would be used to exonerate a victim of sexual violence.
"She is unclean, touched by her enemy," he said. "This is one option we can try."
Officials See No Evil
The government of Sudan says it takes rape seriously, and its officials say they are making a sincere effort to address the problem. Under sharia, or Islamic law, rape is viewed as a serious crime; the penalty is 10 years in jail and 100 lashes.
Recently, the government also suspended a law requiring women to report a rape to the police before they can receive medical help. Nevertheless, there remains a widespread belief among senior officials that the victims are fabricating their stories.
"That is not our culture," said Hussein Ibrahim, a minister with the government's Humanitarian Affairs Commission. "It's just impossible and all half-truths. Okay, maybe there are one case or two cases, like anywhere, like in the United States or Britain. But they are not widespread."
But medical workers and human rights activists said they have been dismayed and angered by official suggestions that rape victims are making up sensational stories. Even as children are being born from militia rapes, they said, not a single arrest has been made or a single case brought to court since the war began.
"I don't think it's fair to say the women are fabricating this," Arbour said during a recent visit to Khartoum, the capital. "I would find it very, very bizarre that the women would lie, considering the shame they receive for saying they are raped. There are very severe levels of sexual violence here that are not being properly addressed."
Arbour said she saw no evidence of a government rape-inquiry commission that had been promised, and that despite making appointments, she was unable to locate anyone from the commission.
Inside Katuma's hut, the sheik's female helpers washed her back, her face, her nostrils, her mouth. They emptied pitchers down her left side, then her right. Water dripped from her entire body and tears ran down her cheeks. She stood in a muddy pool of water.
"I don't want this," the pregnant girl mumbled. "I want to lie down." Already shy, she dreaded being stared at, having people know. She did not want her picture taken, did not want to go outdoors, and said she might just remain in the camp forever.
Outside, a cluster of ragged children peered through holes in the straw walls, dying of curiosity. They pressed in so hard they nearly knocked over her hut.
In the gloom, Karim supervised the work and nodded in satisfaction. But still, he said, Katuma's life would be hard.
"The man will want a virgin wife without a baby first," he explained. "Maybe, years from now, people will understand she was hurt in war by the enemy and is now clean. But it would be better if the courts and the government could . . . set an example that it was okay and it wasn't the fault of the women. Even a few arrests would help."
--------
French Unleash Force Against Chaos in Ivory Coast
Key Points Seized As Armed Mobs Hunt Foreigners
By Parfait Kouassi
Associated Press
Monday, November 8, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31795-2004Nov7?language=printer
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, Nov. 7 -- The French military used overwhelming force Sunday to put down an explosion of anti-French violence in its former West African colony, deploying troops, armored vehicles and helicopter gunships against machete-waving mobs that went from house to house hunting for foreigners.
In the second day of military operations, French forces seized strategic control of the largest city, Abidjan, commandeering airports and posting gunboats under bridges. French military helicopters swept in to rescue a dozen trapped expatriates from the rooftop of a hotel.
The chaos erupted Saturday when Ivory Coast warplanes launched a surprise airstrike that killed nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker. The government called the bombing a mistake.
France hit back within hours, wiping out Ivory Coast's newly strengthened air force -- two Russian-made Sukhoi jet fighters and at least three helicopter gunships -- on the ground.
The slain troops were among 4,000 French peacekeepers and 6,000 U.N. troops who have served as a buffer between Ivory Coast's rebel north and loyalist south since civil war broke out in September 2002.
The airstrike on the peacekeepers came after government forces last week broke a cease-fire in place for more than year and bombed rebel positions.
The peacekeepers are trying to hold together a nation whose stability is vital in a region where several nations are only just recovering from devastating civil wars in the 1990s. Ivory Coast is the world's top cocoa producer and until the late 1990s stood as West Africa's most prosperous and peaceful nation.
On Sunday, loyalist mobs rampaged in a second day of looting and burning, outraged by the crushing French military response.
Gunshots echoed and smoke billowed over Abidjan and the capital, Yamoussoukro, as huge crowds destroyed foreign and locally owned businesses alike. Acrid black smoke rose from barricades of burning tires.
A reporter watched marauders clutching machetes and iron bars enter one neighborhood, demanding if any French lived there.
"If there are any whites in this neighborhood, we're going to get . . . them," one man shouted.
"It's better to kill the whites than steal their stuff," another yelled.
About 14,000 French citizens live in Ivory Coast. In Abidjan, they crouched in their homes.
"We are all terrified and try to reassure each other," one French resident said by telephone. "We have been told by the embassy to stay at home. . . . It is a difficult situation to live through."
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants from neighboring Muslim nations also went into hiding.
"We're afraid because who knows, maybe this is civil war," said one man, who would identify himself only as Ouedraogo, who was holed up in a mosque with about 30 others.
The Red Cross said it treated about 150 people wounded in the violence; most had been shot. The group had no figures on deaths. State television showed the bodies of what it said were five loyalists.
French armored vehicles moved into some residential neighborhoods, scattering rioters with volleys of tear gas and percussion grenades. At one spot, Ivorian military police watched, unmoving, as French forces confronted the crowds.
French helicopters also fired percussion grenades to break up mobs holding the bridges and besieging the French military base in Abidjan.
About 300 fresh French troops landed Sunday at the Abidjan airport, which had been in French hands since a gun battle with Ivorian forces a day earlier. About 300 more troops were on the way. Also, heavily armed French reinforcements moved south from Yamoussoukro to help restore calm in Abidjan.
The U.N. Security Council, in emergency session late Saturday, demanded an immediate halt to all military action in Ivory Coast, and France blamed Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo for the violence.
Gbagbo appealed for calm Sunday in his first public comments since the cease-fire was broken Thursday, asking "all demonstrators to go back to their homes." He thanked the army and loyalists, and accepted no blame for the bombing of the French post.
--------
Ivory Coast Loyalists Confront French Troops
November 8, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Ivory-Coast.html
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) -- Thousands of government loyalists massed outside the home of Ivory Coast's president Monday, facing off against French armored vehicles in response to urgent appeals for a ``human shield'' around the hard-line leader, amid fears of an overthrow.
French and Ivory Coast military leaders, appearing together on state television, appealed for calm following three days of violent protests the Red Cross said had wounded more than 500 people. Two hospitals reported five dead and 250 wounded in Monday's clashes alone.
The U.N. Security Council met to consider sanctions and the African Union came out in support of French and U.N. intervention, isolating President Laurent Gbagbo.
Chaos erupted Saturday when his air force killed nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker in an airstrike on Ivory Coast's rebel-held north. The government later called the bombing a mistake, which France rejected.
On Monday, French armored vehicles moved in around Gbagbo's home in Ivory Coast's commercial capital, Abidjan.
``Their presence here is scaring people. They're crying and they think that President Gbagbo is going to be overthrown,'' presidential spokesman Desire Tagro told the Associated Press by telephone.
The French denied surrounding the house or intending to oust Gbagbo, saying forces only were securing a temporary base at a hotel a few hundred yards away for about 1,300 foreigners who had taken refuge at a French military base.
``Everything should go back to normal,'' French mission commander Gen. Henri Poncet said on state TV, alongside Ivory Coast chief of army staff Gen. Matthias Doue. ``It is absolutely not a matter of ousting President Laurent Gbagbo.''
State radio and TV, however, delivered urgent calls for loyalists to gather at Gbagbo's house.
Thousands responded, chanting against the French: ``The whites don't like the blacks, but we don't care!'' Some signs declared, ``Ivory Coast is a sovereign state.''
The crowd swarmed one foreigner -- by appearance an immigrant from a neighboring northern country -- caught up in their midst, kicking and beating him. ``Kill him,'' young men shouted, before he was dragged into the crowd.
Six men, faces painted black, forced an AP reporter from his taxi at gunpoint and commandeered the vehicle.
French forces fired warning shots, witnesses and protesters said. Doctors said many of those treated Monday had been trampled trying to get away, although they reported removing bullets from several wounded.
French military spokesman Col. Henry Aussavy said he knew of no one shot by French forces. Ivory Coast security forces also have moved forcefully at times against the loyalists.
Red Cross official Kim Gordon-Bates said the casualty toll since Saturday had climbed to ``over 500 wounded -- much more than that.'' Loyalist mobs were blocking efforts to set up an emergency clinic for the injured, he said.
A standoff arose outside Abidjan, as several hundred loyalist youths stood on a main road, blocking a 70-vehicle heavily armed convoy of French reinforcements trying to enter the city.
Tensions crossed Ivory Coast's borders, with U.N. officials telling AP that more than 1,000 refugees have fled into neighboring Liberia. Guinea, to the north, said it was sending military reinforcements to its border.
After Saturday's airstrike on the French military post, France hit back, wiping out Ivory Coast's newly built-up air force -- two Russian-made Sukhoi jet fighters and at least three helicopter gunships -- on the ground.
Machete-waving mobs sought revenge against French targets. With armored vehicles and helicopter gunships deployed, France used tear gas and concussion grenades to quell the mobs.
On Monday, residents assessed the damage to a skyscraper-lined city that once was West Africa's most prosperous -- thanks to Ivory Coast's position as the world's top cocoa producer.
``Everything is burned,'' said one woman, a teacher at a French school that was looted and torched in the anti-French riots. ``They have stolen everything they could.''
French military planes flew home the bodies Monday of the nine French soldiers killed in the bombing, along with 34 wounded soldiers.
France has more than 4,000 peacekeepers in Ivory Coast, helping a 6,000-man U.N. force uphold what had been a more than one-year cease-fire in a civil war that broke out in September 2002. The cease-fire ended last week when the government opened three days of bombing of the rebel north.
In Paris, French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie rejected claims the strike on the French post was a mistake and demanded reopening of peace talks.
The European Union, African Union and a West African leaders bloc all condemned Ivory Coast's attack Saturday.
At the United Nations, a draft Security Council resolution circulated Monday called for an arms embargo on Ivory Coast and a travel ban and asset freeze against those blocking peace, violating human rights and preventing the disarmament of combatants.
South African President Thabo Mbeki was heading to Ivory Coast on Tuesday for emergency talks.
For decades, Ivory Coast was the economic powerhouse and stabilizing force in West Africa, until an economic downturn and growing political unrest opened the way for its first-ever coup in 1999. Gbagbo was installed amid an uprising by his supporters the next year, during an aborted vote count for the first post-coup presidential elections.
Associated Press reporter Nafi Diouf in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.
-------- balkans
Macedonians Defeat Bid to Block Rights for Albanian Minority
Reuters
Monday, November 8, 2004; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32730-2004Nov7.html
SKOPJE, Macedonia, Nov. 8 -- Macedonia was a rung higher on the ladder to European Union and NATO membership on Monday after easily defeating a referendum bid to block a law giving its Albanian minority more rights.
Nudged by the United States and Brussels, most Macedonians stayed away from the polls on a rainy Sunday, dooming what the West had viewed as a retrograde step.
Independent monitors said turnout was 26.3 percent, barely more than half the 50 percent needed for the referendum to be valid.
Albanian opponents of the referendum welcomed the result.
"The people have demonstrated they are willing to live in a multiethnic state which promotes European values and concepts," said Emira Mehmeti of the Albanian party in the Socialist-led coalition government.
The government is committed to gaining membership in NATO and the E.U., which has required Macedonia to respond to 3,000 questions before talks about membership in the bloc can begin.
In a boost to moderates, the U.S. government last week recognized the country's chosen name, Republic of Macedonia, rather than the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, overruling years of resistance by Greece, which said the name implied claims on its territory. There is a Greek region called Macedonia.
The State Department called the move a reward for progress in Macedonia, but the timing was hardly accidental. The E.U., Macedonia's main source of aid, had also left no doubt about the result it was hoping for in Sunday's ballot.
Organizers of the vote alleged massive fraud. But the leader of Macedonia's main opposition party, Nikola Gruevski, tacitly conceded failure. About 500,000 people had backed the referendum out of 1.7 million eligible voters, he asserted, and that was a large enough number for the government to "hear the voice of the people."
The law at issue was a key part of the Western-brokered Ohrid peace plan that quelled an Albanian insurgency after seven months of clashes with government forces in 2001. The West viewed implementation of the plan as too slow.
The accord makes Albanian an official language in areas where Albanians represent more than 20 percent of the population. Street signs in the capital will be in Albanian as well as Macedonian. Symbolically, the plan makes Albanians full partners in Macedonia, a status many felt they had long been denied. Opponents say the measures will split the country.
-------- business
CONTRACTS AWARDED
Washington Post
Washington Technology
Monday, November 8, 2004; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33034-2004Nov7?language=printer
Maximus Inc. of Reston won a 10-year, $268 million contract from the British Columbia Ministry of Health Services to provide benefit operations administrative services.
General Dynamics Corp. of Falls Church won a $9 million contract to provide transmission conversions to the U.S. Army's Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
SI International Inc. of Reston won a $6.8 million task order from the Agriculture Department to provide IT support for the Veterinary Services Processes Streamlining System.
BAE Systems Applied Technologies Inc. of Rockville won a $7.93 million contract from the Naval Air Systems Command Aircraft Division to exercise an option for technical and engineering services to support its air traffic control and landing systems.
Honeywell Technology Solutions Inc. of Columbia won a $7.53 million contract from the Naval Air Systems Command Aircraft Division to provide engineering and logistics services to support the light airborne multipurpose system data link.
Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co. of Newport News won a $492.1 million contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command to exercise an option for continuation of the CVN 21 design effort; long lead time material and nonnuclear advance construction and system development, engineering services, and feasibility studies for future aircraft carrier programs.
Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding of Newport News won a $111.7 million contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command for logistics support for SSN 688, SSN 21 and SSBN class operational submarines and design services for SSN 21 class submarines.
CACI AB Inc. of Alexandria won a $17 million contract from the Naval Air Systems Command Aircraft Division to provide program management and technical services supporting the chief of Naval Air Forces and the Naval Air Systems Command Naval Aviation Readiness Integrated Improvement Program.
General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems of Suffolk won an $8.9 million contract from the Fleet and Industrial Supply Center Norfolk Detachment Philadelphia for services in support of the U.S. Joint Forces Command's Joint Experimentation Program and Joint Futures Lab.
General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems of Suffolk won contracts for $7.84 million and $5.4 million from the Fleet and Industrial Supply Center, Norfolk Detachment, Philadelphia for services in support of the U.S. Joint Forces Command's Joint Experimentation Program and Joint Futures Lab.
Microsoft Corp.'s Washington office won a $14.5 million contract from the Headquarters Standard Systems Group at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama to help develop standard software configurations to provide support for the deployment and operations for the desktop image roll-out and server platforms, provide practices and procedures for automated software distribution process, provide software configuration sustainment, software asset management, provides automated capability for feature updates, provide software change development for security vulnerabilities, provide security risk mitigation, provide security updates (patches), and build a unified help desk.
CACI Technologies Inc. of Chantilly won a $15.7 million contract from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center for independent verification and validation program acceptance testing, providing engineering services in support of tactical command, control and communications systems.
Accenture LLP of Reston won a $19.8 million contract from the U.S. Army Contracting Agency for evaluation, configuration, development, and software integration services to put in place human resources management software.
AAI Corp. of Hunt Valley won a $7 million contract from the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command in Huntsville, Ala., for performance-based contractor logistical support of the Shadow Unmanned Aerial Vehicle System.
AT&T Wireless Service of Beltsville, Verizon Wireless of Laurel and Nextel of California Inc., an affiliate of Reston-based Nextel, each won $20 million a contract from the Fleet Industrial Supply Center to provide nationwide commercial cellular phone service for the Navy regions under Commander, Naval Installations as well as other CONUS Navy activities.
B&B Dredging Co. of Portsmouth won a $6.4 million contract from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for rental of a hopper dredge with attendant plant operators for maintenance dredging of navigation channels.
Sigal Construction Corp. of Washington won a $9.9 million contract from the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for maintenance and repair of Karrick Hall.
Northrop Grumman Systems of Linthicum Heights won a $1 million contract from the Army for research and development services for the Saudi Arabia National Guard.
Center for Studying Health System Change of Washington won a $1 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Smart & Associates LLP of Towson won a $1.3 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Pitney Bowes Government Solutions of Landover won a $4.24 million contract from the U.S. Postal Service for operation of the Critical Parts Center in Indianapolis.
Milvets Systems Technology Inc. of Lanham won a $1.5 million contract from the Labor Department for OSHA CIO administrative services.
Chemonics International Inc. of Washington won a $31.9 million contract from the Agency for International Development for technical assistance for financial services and real estate activity in Egypt.
Ecology Services Inc. of Columbia won a $4.5 million contract from the Health and Human Services Department to provide solid and medical pathological waste collection and recycling services.
Management Concepts Inc. of Vienna won a $3.3 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
U.S. Investigations Services, doing business as USIS Professional Services Division of Falls Church, won a $5 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Northrop Grumman Advanced Information Systems Inc. of Falls Church won a $5.3 million contract from the U.S. Postal Service for operation of the Indianapolis Repair Center in Indianapolis.
George Mason University of Fairfax won a $1.4 million contract from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency for blast effects computational support.
Technical Support Services of Alexandria won a $25.7 million contract from the Navy for warehouse and transportation support services.
Motorola Inc. of Columbia won a $1.8 million contract from the Army for communication, detection and coherent radiation equipment.
Colonna's Shipyard Inc. of Norfolk won a $3.1 million supply contract from the Navy for ships, small craft, pontoons and floating docks.
Staff writer Judith Mbuya contributed to this report.
-------- china
China to accelerate nuclear power construction
Xinhua News Agency
November 8, 2004
http://www.canelect.ca/english/article.html?SMContentIndex=0&SMContentSet=0
BEIJING, Nov 8, 2004 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Chinese Vice-Premier Zeng Peiyan urged to accelerate the construction of nuclear power plants.
During his recent inspection of Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute, Zeng said accelerating nuclear power construction would help to improve China's energy structure, boost the development of related industries and safeguard the national economic and energy security.
After more than 20 years of efforts, Zeng said, China now has the ability to build 300,000 kilowatt-level and 600,000 kilowatt- level nuclear power stations. It can also manufacture key equipment for one million kilowatt-level nuclear power stations.
He said that in certain important fields, China has approached or reached internationally advanced levels in the construction of nuclear power stations.
In addition, the country has already established a rapid response system conforming to international norms to deal with nuclear safety and nuclear accidents.
He said China should try to design, build, manufacture and operate the plants in reliance with its own efforts while enhancing international cooperation, in particular in project- related technology bidding and technical introduction.
He also urged to promptly establish a national nuclear technology company.
-------- iraq
With Jets and Armor, Thousands of Troops Enter Rebel-Held City
November 8, 2004
The New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS and ROBERT F. WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/international/08CND_IRAQ.html?ei=5094&en=8b32979d8c8d9235&hp=&ex=1099976400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 8 - American forces began an assault in Falluja today, using airpower and armor to attack suspected guerrilla targets and sending thousands of troops into neighborhoods considered to be the center of the Iraqi insurgency.
The operation started this morning with bombing by American jets, while artillery and heavy gunfire thundered across the city as American troops seized control of two strategic bridges, a hospital and other objectives in the first stage of a long-expected invasion aimed at the center of the Iraqi insurgency.
Troops backed by tanks and armored combat vehicles punched their way into the Askari and Jolan neighborhoods of the city's northern sector this evening.
Marines and army troops breached an earth berm that runs along the railroad tracks just north of Falluja and poured into the city.
A mujahedeen fighter who gave his name as Abu Mustafa said in a telephone interview that American soldiers were engaging in street fighting in at least one part of the city, the northeastern.
The invasion is code-named Phantom Fury. Conceived about a month ago, the plan grew in part from intelligence suggesting that 1,000 to 2,000 insurgents were taking cover in the small towns and rural areas surrounding Falluja, and would probably move inward in the event of an Ainvasion to try to disrupt their force.
Between 10,000 and 15,000 American soldiers and marines backed by newly trained Iraqi forces besieged the city for what American commanders said was likely to be a brutal, block-by-block battle to retake control and capture, kill or disperse an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 hard-core insurgent fighters. The battle could prove the most important since the American invasion of Iraq 19 months ago.
The forces charged with isolating Falluja and blocking any insurgents fleeing the city or attacking from the outside are equipped with M-1 Abrams tanks, armored Stryker vehicles, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and Humvees.
"We will inspect all vehicles, and we are prepared to recognize humanitarian aid and medical supplies, " said Col. Michael D. Formica, the Army commander responsible for coordinating the isolation of the city.
Military aircraft dropped leaflets on Falluja today warning citizens about the assault, and advising them to stay in their homes. As many as 90 percent of the city's residents have left, officials say, but some may not have heard about an emergency curfew imposed by the prime minister, Ayad Allawi.
Hours before the battle started, Mr. Allawi, faced with an expanding outbreak of insurgent violence across the country, formally proclaimed a state of emergency for 60 days across most of Iraq. The proclamation gave him broad powers that allow him to impose curfews, order house-to-house searches and detain suspected criminals and insurgents.
Today, he said that the American-led operation in Falluja had his full backing.
"I gave my authority to the multinational forces, Iraqi forces," he said at a news conference.
"Yesterday evening the Iraqi forces were able to take control of Falluja hospital to defeat the terrorists and armed groups so the citizens of Falluja will get help," he said.
Mr. Allawi said that four foreign terrorists were detained in a raid on the hospital and 38 people were killed, but it was not clear whether they were Iraqis. "They were barricaded in the hospital to carry out their terrorist acts," Mr. Allawi said.
For more than a week, Dr. Allawi had been saying the window for a peaceful solution was fast closing, even though no peace talks were actually taking place between leaders of Falluja and the Iraqi government. His statement this afternoon was simply the formal proclamation of a decision he appears to have settled on days, if not weeks, ago, undoubtedly with strong guidance from American commanders and the Bush administration.
The prime minister then flew via helicopter to the Marine base called Camp Falluja, on the outskirts of the besieged city, to allow the news media to see him rallying the American and Iraqi troops to battle.
"The people of Falluja have been taken hostage," he told Iraqi soldiers swarming around him, "and you need to free them from their grip."
"May they go to hell!" the soldiers shouted, to which Dr. Allawi replied: "To hell they will go."
At his appearance in Baghdad, Dr. Allawi unveiled the first measures of the state of emergency that he declared on Sunday to be in effect for 60 days. He said the Baghdad International Airport will be closed for 48 hours, and the borders with Syria and Jordan will be sealed indefinitely except to allow movement of trucks carrying food and emergency supplies.
All roads going running in and out of Falluja and the provincial capital of Ramadi, just 30 miles west, have been shut down, he said, and a round-the-clock curfew was imposed on the two cities starting at 6 p.m. today. Residents have been banned from carrying weapons.
The measures in Falluja had little practical value, since the city of 300,000 has never been controlled by the interim government. For Americans, the city has been a "no go" zone since early May, when the Marines, in the wake of a bloody and ill-fated assault, relinquished authority to an Iraqi militia made up partly of the very insurgents they had been fighting. Mujahedeen quickly seized power and installed a Taliban-like government there, and the battle now under way is aimed at setting right the huge misstep made last spring.
Dr. Allawi has said that Falluja, Ramadi and other cities rife with insurgents must be brought under control well before January, when the country will hold its first democratic elections. But the offensive in Falluja is a big gamble. Many of the guerillas might have already left and could be awaiting the withdrawal of the American troops to return. And civilians in Falluja and across Iraq, especially Sunni Arabs, who dominate the province that includes Falluja, could become so infuriated at the invasion that they boycott the elections, throwing the legitimacy of the outcome into question.
A wave of bloody attacks by guerillas over the weekend and today left scores dead and raised doubts about whether a concentrated assault in Falluja will actually dampen the insurgency.
Today, the American military said in a statement that an American soldier was killed by small arms fire when his patrol was attacked in eastern Baghdad.
Two car bombs aimed at Christian churches exploded within minutes of each other in southern Baghdad this evening. The first, at St. George Church, did not cause any injuries, but the second, less than a miles east at St. Matthew Church, drew Iraqi police and ambulances to the scene, the military said. Four people were killed and at least 30 wounded, a police official said.
Late today, a powerful car bomb exploded outside Yarmouk Hospital, the site of the capital's largest emergency room, where most of the injured from the church bombing had been taken. There was no immediate report of casualties.
In the northern city of Mosul, where the Stryker Brigade is losing ground in the guerilla war, insurgents armed with Kalashnikovs poured out into the streets at a major intersection at 3 p.m. to fire at American troops, witnesses said.
One resident, Yasir Abdul-Razzaq, said he saw small groups of fighters carrying around mortar tubes and exchanging coordinates with each other over cellphones before launching the projectiles. American soldiers fired back and called in helicopters.
A senior American military official in Baghdad said the number of roadside bombs and suicide car bombs had doubled across Iraq recently, with the biggest increase in Mosul.
News agencies reported that two suicide car bombs exploded in Ramadi today, near American convoys, though no casualties were reported. Another detonated along the perilous five-mile airport road in Baghdad, apparently next to a sport utility vehicle, the type of car favored by Western contractors. A Reuters photographer at the scene said he saw American soldiers dragging three corpses from the vehicle, though the bodies could not be identified.
Before American jets began their bombing of Falluja this morning, American troops in front of the hospital took intense fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades from insurgents across the river. American Bradleys and tanks began returning fire.
It was the second time in six months that a battle had raged in Falluja. In April, American troops were closing in on the city center when popular uprisings broke out in cities across Iraq. The outrage, fed by mostly unconfirmed reports of large civilian casualties, forced the Americans to withdraw.
American commanders regarded the reports as inflated, but it was impossible to determine independently how many civilians had been killed. The hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumors about heavy casualties.
In Washington today, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was asked whether the battle for Falluja would continue until there was a "clear and final" victory, unlike last spring's campaign for the city.
"I cannot imagine that it would stop without being completed," Mr. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from near Falluja for this article, Edward Wong and James Glanz from Baghdad, and Christine Hauser from New York.
--------
Fighting Around Fallujah Intensifies
Premier Puts Most of Iraq Under State of Emergency
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 8, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31732-2004Nov7?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Nov. 8 -- U.S. ground forces fought insurgents on the outskirts of Fallujah early Monday, and U.S. warplanes pounded the insurgent-held city, as a full military assault appeared increasingly imminent. On Sunday, Iraq's interim government had announced a state of emergency for most of the country.
Overnight, Iraqi forces backed by U.S. troops seized Fallujah's main hospital, located across the Euphrates River from the bulk of the city -- connected by the ironwork bridge from which the burned bodies of U.S. security contractors were hanged last spring. The largely symbolic action put an Iraqi imprimatur on an offensive that will necessarily be led by American armor, aircraft and troops, which Monday morning were still awaiting orders to advance. U.S. commanders have not said when the major offensive would start.
The state of emergency was issued by the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi. The order, which imposes martial law, heightened a sense of crisis in Iraq and fueled fears that an offensive in Fallujah would unleash a wave of counterattacks, which insurgents appeared to have already begun elsewhere in the country. Violence in six cities in the past two days has killed more than 80 people.
"This will send a very powerful message that we are serious," Allawi said after meeting with cabinet ministers who approved the emergency measure for all areas of the country except the relatively peaceful Kurdish northeast. The order will run for 60 days but could be extended through elections planned for January.
"We want to secure the country so elections can be done in a peaceful way and the Iraqi people can participate in the elections freely, without the intimidation by terrorists and by forces who are trying to wreck the political process in Iraq," Allawi said. "So this is a message. I hope the terrorists get it because we are not going to be easy on them."
It was not immediately clear which emergency powers Allawi intended to invoke or how they would help his government assert control of the country, which he described as largely calm during a visit to Washington six weeks ago.
Technically, the state of emergency gives the government wide powers to impose curfews, restrict movement and suspend liberties. But Iraq's security services have struggled to stand up to insurgents who operate with better weapons and intelligence, especially in the Sunni Muslim midsection of the country where resistance has proved most stubborn. U.S. and allied foreign military forces routinely operate on their own, making arrests, engaging in firefights and patrolling independent of civil authorities.
Insurgents on Sunday again targeted police stations and other symbols of the interim government. Twenty-two police officers were killed in Haditha and Haqlaniya, two towns northwest of Fallujah, and the attackers included foreign Arabs, according to news reports. Many of the officers were lined up and shot, according to the reports.
Those assaults followed a flurry of car bombings and mortar attacks Saturday that killed more than 30 people in Samarra, a Sunni Muslim city about 65 miles north of Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi forces had reclaimed the city from insurgents last month in an operation that has been cast as a model for the attack on Fallujah.
Twenty-one Iraqi National Guard recruits were killed over the weekend as they were returning to their homes in Najaf after traveling to the capital to join up. The Najaf police chief, Ghalib Jazaari, said gunmen, tipped off by informers in the recruiting office, killed 13 of the recruits Saturday and eight more Sunday as they passed through the town of Latifiyah, a hotbed of insurgents about 70 miles north of Najaf. "We have the bodies of the first 13 here," Jazaari said.
In other attacks Sunday, a car bomb exploded in Baghdad outside the home of the interim finance minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, killing two people. Mahdi was not home during the attack, the Associated Press reported. And two U.S. soldiers were killed and five were wounded in attacks in and around Baghdad, news services reported.
In addition, two provincial officials were assassinated south of Baghdad as they traveled to the funeral of another official. An Iraqi policeman was shot dead while driving to his home in Baghdad, the military said, and his police car was stolen.
A British contractor was killed in the southern city of Basra, according to Britain's Defense Ministry.
The wave of attacks came as insurgents vowed to take the battle across Iraq if 10,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops proceed with a threatened offensive against Fallujah, a city that has become a symbol of resistance since it fell under insurgent control in April.
The assault appeared imminent. U.S. forces cited Allawi's emergency decree in announcing that they had sealed off the city late Sunday, declaring in a statement that troops were "finishing final preparations for an assault on Fallujah."
Senior Marine commanders gathered troops for hollered pep talks, invoking the 1968 assault on the Vietnamese city of Hue, a battle that looms large in the lore of the Corps.
"The window is closing, absolutely," Allawi said, adding that Fallujah residents "have been taken hostage by a bunch of terrorists and bandits and insurgents who were part of the old regime. They had been involved in atrocities when Saddam [Hussein] was around. Our government is determined to safeguard the Iraqi people."
Allawi's warning was immediately answered by a Sunni group that has been a leading voice for the resistance.
"This will increase the violence," said Mohammed Bashar Faidhi, spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, which represents 3,000 Sunni Muslim clergy in Iraq. "The government is like a man walking in the dark who wants to avoid a small hole and falls into a big hole."
"At this point, the government can't even protect itself," Faidhi said. "How can it impose a state of emergency? Allawi, when he travels, half of the American Army accompanies him!"
Faidhi said the clerics' association supported a proposal aimed at reducing support for armed struggle by addressing Sunni concerns about U.S. influence on the election process and restricting the movements of U.S. forces. But Faidhi said the group's skepticism was being realized as preparations for the assault on Fallujah advanced.
"After breaking into Samarra, new people joined the resistance in order to get revenge," he said. And if Fallujah is attacked, "I don't exaggerate when I say the resistance will double."
In Haditha, about 30 insurgents mounted a three-hour coordinated assault on the city's police headquarters starting at 9 p.m. Saturday.
"First of all, we were attacked by mortars," Lt. Muneef Abdullah said. "Then the armed men came and started shooting and throwing hand grenades. When we tried to defend ourselves, they started launching" rocket-propelled grenades.
"We called the Americans to come and help us," he said, "but unfortunately they took three hours, as if they were coming to a wedding."
Other accounts of the attacks on the police stations in Haditha and Haqlaniya, in western Anbar province, which includes Fallujah, said that some of the Iraqi police officers were killed execution-style. The Reuters news agency said the attackers took the captured policemen to an oil-pumping station and shot them to death.
Last month, insurgents massacred 49 unarmed Iraqi army recruits after capturing them on a road northeast of Baghdad. A group led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian linked to al Qaeda, asserted responsibility for those killings.
Special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.
--------
Defense Minister Exhorts Iraqis: 'Liberate This City'
Battle for Fallujah Will Test New Force as U.S. Military Partner
By Jackie Spinner and Omar Fekeiki
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 8, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32729-2004Nov7?language=printer
NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 7 -- Promising promotions to all soldiers who go into battle, the interim Iraqi defense minister, Hazim Shalan, called on his army Sunday to "liberate" Fallujah, a signal that U.S. forces had won the blessing of the interim government to proceed with an operation to retake the insurgent-held city.
"This is the first time in the history of Iraq we have seen people being slaughtered like sheep under the umbrella of Islam," Shalan told Iraqi troops gathered at a base near Fallujah. "Your conscience and families call for you. They call for you to liberate this city."
Dancing, singing and thrusting their rifles in the air, the Iraqi soldiers seemed to know a rallying cry when they heard one.
"We are here to defend our country," said Ali, 28, a soldier from Nasiriyah who is in the Iraqi army's 1st Brigade. Like many of the Iraqi soldiers interviewed here, he gave only one name. "We have to get rid of terrorism. All the world looks down on Iraq now because of the terrorists who are not Iraqi. We will make them see Iraqi men ending the terrorism in Iraq."
Although the battle for Fallujah will be led by U.S. forces, the operation is a test for the new Iraqi army, whose soldiers will be used mostly to secure areas after the Americans move through.
U.S. military leaders have touted the presence of the Iraqi forces as a crucial element in the planned assault on the city, which they did not succeed in retaking six months ago after a smaller-scale Marine offensive was called off for political reasons.
"Your warrior brothers in the U.S. Marine Corps are proud to stand next to you," Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, told Iraqi soldiers who surrounded him Sunday during the defense minister's visit to the camp.
"You are the future of your country, and we will be proud to be a part of that future with you," Sattler said as a crowd of Iraqi troops pressed toward him. "We will take all of our spirit into the fight to give Fallujah back to the Fallujah people."
The soldiers hooted with delight, pumped their fists and clapped Sattler on his beige flak jacket.
Marine commanders have not given a timeline for the offensive, but at an outpost near the city Sunday, a battle seemed imminent. Convoys of heavily armored vehicles lined up in long columns as soldiers loaded gear. The chow hall was nearly empty by dinnertime. Troops were told that meals would soon be served only to go -- to prevent crowds from forming in a central location. The Internet cafe and Post Exchange also planned to close indefinitely once the battle got underway.
By late Sunday night, artillery could be heard flying over the outpost, part of which was under light restrictions, meaning drivers had to cut their headlights and use night-vision goggles. Troops wandered around under a bright moon, shadows slipping across the white sand. Self-propelled howitzers shot off booming rounds that echoed from artillery batteries.
"You're rested, you're ready, and we're prepared," Lt. Col. James Rainey of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division, told his staff as their mobile command center was broken down around them. "This is going to be the biggest fight any of us will do in the near future. . . . No matter what you think about the Iraqi war or the Iraqi government, this fight is 100 percent about terrorists -- terrorists who want to come to your house and kill you."
Fallujah, which the U.S. military last entered in April, has become a hub for fighters from countries including Syria, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, according to U.S. intelligence officers. They estimate that about 3,000 foreigners are in the city, poised to fight American troops.
The U.S. and Iraqi forces will be entering a combat zone considered challenging even for the most sophisticated armies, an urban battlefield reportedly laced with booby traps. The Marines already have warned that they could take heavy casualties.
The leader of the elite Iraqi Internal Threat Force, who gave his name as Mohammed Abbas, said his troops were ready for anything.
In earshot of U.S. military officers who are advising him, Abbas complained about the weapons Iraqi soldiers have available, primarily AK-47 assault rifles.
"The developed armies develop new weapons," he said. "In Iraq, we didn't have a chance. Our communications gear is not like the Americans use. The American soldiers have lighter and more developed equipment. Our weapons are old."
Even so, Abbas, who was an Iraqi army officer under deposed president Saddam Hussein, said he was confident his troops would be victorious.
"We know our enemy, even if they have developed weapons," he said. "As Iraqi people and army, we'll fight them with traditional weapons. We have our strategy and mentality. What made the Iraqi soldier fight the American soldiers in 1990 and last year, despite their high technology, is the same we will use in this battle."
As he walked the dusty grounds of the outpost, Abbas, who later acknowledged that the name he gave was an alias, beckoned a soldier to run faster when he called for him. Waving his hands in the air, Abbas declared that all his men were heroes and that "this," he said, nodding to his surroundings, "is my kingdom."
His soldiers squatted on the ground in front of him, waiting for direction, as he paced. "This one is 19," he said, pointing to a baby-faced recruit holding his rifle firmly. "And this one is 25."
Haider, 20, from Basra, who had not seen or talked to his family in a week, said he joined the Iraqi army initially to make a living.
"But later, when I saw the security situation deteriorating the country and all these terrorists coming to Iraq from outside, I changed my mind," he said. "I believe I have a big responsibility in my country. People depend on us. We will fight for them."
Muhammed, 24, from Mosul, echoed a sentiment expressed by other Iraqi soldiers. Though he was fully prepared to battle the foreign rebels, he would not fight the residents of the city, Muhammed said.
"No Iraqis will be a target for us," he said. "I cannot fight an Iraqi. He is my brother."
--------
ATTACK BY JOINT FORCE
Early Target of Offensive Is a Hospital
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
November 8, 2004
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/international/middleeast/08hospital.html?oref=login
FALLUJA, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 8 - The assault against Falluja began here Sunday night as American Special Forces and Iraqi troops burst into Falluja General Hospital and seized it within an hour.
At 10 p.m., Iraqi troops clambered off seven-ton trucks, sprinting with American Special Forces soldiers around the side of the main building of the hospital, considered a refuge for insurgents and a center of propaganda against allied forces, entering the complex to bewildered looks from patients and employees.
Ear-splitting bangs rang out as troops used a gunlike tool called a doorbuster, which uses the force from firing a blank .22-caliber cartridge to thrust forward a chisel to break heavy door locks.
Iraqi troops eagerly kicked the doors in, some not waiting for the locks to break. Patients and hospital employees were rushed out of rooms by armed soldiers and ordered to sit or lie on the floor while troops tied their hands behind their backs.
In less than an hour, the compound was secure. Most of the Iraqis had their cuffs snipped off and were sitting up along hallways in the hospital's main building. Doctors were back to attending to the most seriously ill, watched by Iraqi and American troops. There were broken doors and windows, but little in the way of more severe damage. And there was only one injury: an Iraqi soldier who accidentally discharged his Kalashnikov rifle, injuring his lower leg.
Two companies from the Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion and American Special Forces teams that have been training the Iraqi battalion for the better part of a year joined in the attack on the hospital. The operation was the latest for the 36th Battalion, with men drawn from across the country, including some from Sunni heartland cities like Ramadi and Tikrit where the insurgency is fierce. Iraqis in the unit are eager to demonstrate that they can be a credible fighting force against the insurgents.
But unlike some of their past operations - most notably at a mosque courtyard in Samarra last month where they killed 4 insurgents and apprehended 24 others - the Iraqi special forces met little resistance this time.
A few hundred yards away, an important strategic as well as symbolic battle was playing out: American troops, fighting to secure the western end of the two bridges across the Euphrates River, received intense fire from fortified insurgent positions on the east side of the river. One of the bridges was the scene of the grisly episode on March 31, when Iraqis hung the charred and dismembered bodies of at least two of four American security contractors who had been killed from the bridge's spans.
Both the bridges and the hospital are situated on a peninsula formed by the Euphrates as it flows past downtown Falluja, on the east side of the river - a logical area, American commanders say, for insurgents to fall back if driven from central Falluja.
American officials also say the hospital has been a haven for insurgents in what has been a "no-go" zone for American forces for months. And they have made little secret of their irritation with what they contend are inflated civilian casualty figures that regularly flow from the hospital - propaganda, they believe, for the Falluja insurgents, whom they blame for much of the car bombings, beheadings and other acts of terror in Iraq.
In all, there were 160 Iraqis found at the hospital, according to the American Special Forces commander, and at least five people suspected of being foreign fighters, including one from Syria.
One they can be sure about: A man who identified himself as a fighter from Morocco was wheeled down the hallway, where he pointed out several others he said were also anti-American fighters from other countries.
American troops said they found four or five men at the hospital armed with Kalashnikov rifles, and at least one hand grenade. A poster hanging in an examination room on the first floor displayed scenes of carnage in Iraq and a row of flag-draped American coffins. The writing on the poster encouraged jihad, a translator said.
Perhaps the most intriguing discovery of the night - aside from the Moroccan - were two cellphones found on the roof of the hospital. The Americans said they were clear evidence that someone was monitoring the area in front of the hospital.
"Cellphones work fine on the first floor, if you want to talk to your family," the American Special Forces commander said. "It's pretty clear they were on the roof spotting."
Dr. Rasheed al-Janabi, a general surgeon at the hospital, said many patients had left in the past few weeks in anticipation of an attack, though some, he said, including several wounded by American bombs, were in no shape to leave. "For many days we see on TV that an attack is coming," he said. Only about 30 percent of the Falluja population is left in the city, he said.
He denied that the hospital was a haven for insurgents. "Fighters?" he shrugged. "I don't know about fighters."
One of the Iraqi soldiers, sitting on a desk nearby, voiced skepticism.
"Doctors from around here are afraid of the terrorists," said the soldier, Hassan, who like many of the Iraqi troops was afraid to give his full name. "They're afraid they'll threaten them or shoot them."
-------- israel / palestine
Netanyahu Reportedly Backs Down in Bout With Sharon
November 8, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/international/middleeast/08cnd-isra.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 8 - The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, succeeded today in facing down an ultimatum from his finance minister and party rival, Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to Israel radio, Mr. Netanyahu has withdrawn his threat to resign on Tuesday, despite Mr. Sharon's refusal to schedule a national referendum over his plan to unilaterally withdraw all Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and a few hundred from the West Bank.
Mr. Netanyahu's office, however, said that he had not yet made a decision. To keep him, Mr. Sharon and the Likud Party faction voted today to refer a referendum decision to a parliamentary committee, which will draft legislation for one. It is meant to be a face-saving gesture, since the parliament would vote down any referendum bill.
The small National Religious Party, however, will make good on its threat to pull out of Mr. Sharon's battered minority government in the absence of a Gaza referendum or new elections. Mr. Sharon also refused the party's request to delay the Gaza evacuation until Yasir Arafat's successors are decided.
The party, which supports the settlers, voted tonight to withdraw its remaining four members of the government, including the minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Zevulun Orlev. But the party, which has already split, was expected to quit the government before a Gaza withdrawal in any event.
Still, Mr. Sharon would have only 55 seats in the 120-member Parliament, and without significant support from the opposition, would have trouble passing a state budget. His Gaza plan was approved by 67 members of Parliament, many of them from the Labor and left-wing opposition, but Labor has said it would not necessarily vote with Mr. Sharon on the state budget, which must be passed by the end of March.
Labor is pressing to join the government, but the Likud central committee has explicitly prohibited Mr. Sharon from inviting Labor to do so.
Three other ministers had joined Mr. Netanyahu in the threat to resign, but they have publicly or privately rescinded their ultimatums, leaving Mr. Netanyahu isolated.
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Palestinian Delegation Hoping to See Arafat
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 8, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32109-2004Nov7.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 7 -- Denying reports that Yasser Arafat has suffered major organ damage but acknowledging that details of his condition remain uncertain, senior Palestinian officials said they planned to travel to Paris on Monday to assess the health of the Palestinian leader and meet with doctors and French authorities.
"We're going to really find out his condition and be close to him, even though it will only be for 24 hours," the foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, said on Sunday, adding that he would accompany Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, the temporary head of the Palestinian Authority, and Mahmoud Abbas, acting chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
But Arafat's wife, Suha Arafat, lashed out in a television interview on Monday that the planned visit by Palestinian leaders to see him was aimed at "burying (him) alive," the Associated Press reported.
In a screaming telephone call from Arafat's hospital beside, she told the al-Jazeera satellite television network that she was issuing "an appeal to the Palestinian people." She accused Arafat's top lieutenants of conspiring to usurp the role her husband has held for four decades as Palestinian leader.
"You have to realize the size of the conspiracy. I tell you they are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive," she said, using his nom de guerre. "He is all right, and he is going home. God is great."
Shaath said Arafat's doctors would determine whether members of the high-level delegation will be allowed to see the Palestinian leader, 75, who remains in critical condition in a French military hospital outside Paris.
The senior officials hope the visit "will allay the extreme anxiety going on here because of a lot of disinformation," Shaath said in a telephone interview. "It has been said that he died, that he is suffering from brain damage, liver damage -- all of that is untrue. The man is in critical condition, but it is not deteriorating."
Arafat was flown to Paris on Oct. 29, suffering from a life-threatening medical condition. Doctors have not released details of his illness. Suha Arafat has restricted access to her husband and to information about his health, provoking dismay among Palestinian officials, according to Arafat associates who accompanied him to Paris.
Shaath said Arafat is suffering from a loss of blood platelets that has left him weak, but that doctors have not determined what is causing the loss.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, asked in an interview with LCI television on Sunday about Arafat's health, said that "he is alive," adding, "His condition is very complex, very serious and stable right now." Asked to respond to reports that Arafat is brain-dead, Barnier replied, "I wouldn't say that."
Israeli officials, meanwhile, said warnings about potential attacks against Israelis by militant groups have decreased in the past week as interim Palestinian leaders have pleaded with the organizations to curb anti-Israeli violence and unrest in the Palestinian territories while Arafat is struggling for his life.
"It seems the old guard has taken matters to hand, and it appears they are controlling the situation," Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Sunday during the weekly cabinet meeting, according to Israeli news accounts. "It appears they are calling for a united stance and an end to Hamas terror. However, there is no guarantee they will be successful."
Mofaz told the ministers that "there has been a certain decrease in the scope of the warnings," the cabinet reported in a communique released after the session, but added that general warnings of attacks in Israel continue.
Correspondent Glenn Frankel in Paris contributed to this report.
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Palestinian Aides Try to Unravel Mystery of Arafat's Condition
November 8, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/international/middleeast/08cnd-mide.html?ei=5094&en=27ab00c2e3a58ec9&hp=&ex=1099976400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
JERUSALEM, Nov. 8 - In a drama with some of the characteristics of a Greek tragedy and some of a French farce, there was a brewing confrontation tonight over the comatose figure of Yasir Arafat between his distraught wife, Suha, and his political heirs.
Mrs. Arafat, sophisticated, blonde and 34 years younger than her revolutionary icon husband, has used French privacy laws to keep the true state of her husband's health a mystery to the world - and to the Palestinians who were closest to him, not to mention the ordinary people who claim him as the father of their nation.
French officials say they are fed up with her maneuvering, and so are the Palestinian leaders trying to keep their people calm and establish a legitimate line of succession to the 75-year-old Mr. Arafat, who kept all positions of real power to himself.
Exasperated and worried, senior Palestinian leaders arrived in Paris tonight to find out for themselves whether Mr. Arafat is alive or clinically dead, curable or not. But as they scheduled meetings for Tuesday with President Jacques Chirac of France and his foreign minister, Michel Barnier, it was still not clear whether they would be allowed to visit the bedside of Mr. Arafat.
The Palestinians abruptly canceled and then rescheduled the trip today after Mrs. Arafat accused them, in what she called "an appeal to the Palestinian people'' from Mr. Arafat's bedside, of trying to bury her husband alive and take over his powers.
"You have to realize the size of the conspiracy,'' she told Al Jazeera television in a telephone call she initiated. "I tell you that a number of contenders to the throne are coming to Paris and they are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive," she said, using Mr. Arafat's nom de guerre. "He is all right and he is going home. God is great."
French officials, who are themselves impatient with the mystery surrounding the condition of Mr. Arafat, said they had urged the Palestinian leaders to come to try to break Mrs. Arafat's hold over the situation, though the French presidency officially denies it. They also successfully urged the Palestinians to reinstall the trip to Paris after they had canceled it in anger over Mrs. Arafat's remarks, Palestinian officials said.
Under French law, Mrs. Arafat has the right to control all information about her husband and all decisions about his treatment and perhaps his eventual death, French officials said.
The officials said Mr. Arafat was in a coma but was not brain dead. Doctors at the Percy Army Training Hospital outside of Paris have told the Élysée Palace that "the coma is technically reversible although it is unlikely," one French official said, but Mr. Arafat could linger for some time.
Gen. Christian Estripeau, the hospital spokesman, provided another cryptic briefing this evening. "His condition is stable," the general said, and added, "Mr. Arafat's medical condition forces us to limit visits." Whether that will be a reason for the Palestinian delegation not to see Mr. Arafat was unclear.
The Palestinian delegation is extremely high-ranking, consisting of all the institutional successors to Mr. Arafat's many titles as the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, of its largest faction, Fatah, and president of the Palestinian Authority. The group consists of Mahmoud Abbas, secretary general and No. 2 of the P.L.O.; Ahmed Qurei, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority; Nabil Shaath, the Authority's foreign minister; and Rawhi Fattouh, the speaker of the parliament, an Arafat loyalist who would become president of the Authority upon Mr. Arafat's death for 60 days until new elections can be held.
They were authorized to come by the central committee of Fatah, the largest faction in the P.L.O., which Mr. Arafat also heads.
The appeal of Mrs. Arafat, who is widely reviled among Palestinians, would be too easily considered the outpourings of a spouse distraught over the death of a husband and an icon, Palestinian officials said.
In her appeal, Mrs. Arafat also shouted, "It is revolution until victory," one of Mr. Arafat's most famous slogans from his long revolutionary past, dropped only when he agreed to recognize the existence of the state of Israel. She was appealing to the young militants of Palestine not to let the institutional inheritors of Mr. Arafat win, said Eran Lerman, an Arabic-speaking former Israeli intelligence officer who is the regional director of the American Jewish Committee.
"It is crass and unfair to put her appeal down just to wanting money," Mr. Lerman said. "She seemed to be trying to preserve the model of political legitimacy in Palestinian affairs that is revolutionary and charismatic, and not institutional." That debate has been vivid in Arab life in the last generation since the death of President Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt in 1970 and is also apparent today in Iraq, Mr. Lerman said. "She was appealing to the hotheaded young militants" to resist the succession of the more institutional men in suits."
Her appeal was widely scorned by Palestinians today, however. Mr. Arafat's National Security Adviser, Jibril Rajoub, said to reporters: "About the chairman's wife, he chose her to be his wife. We respected this and continue to respect this. She was not part of the Palestinian leadership."
Sufian Abu Zaida, the Palestinian deputy cabinet minister, told Israel radio: "For a woman who did not see her husband for three years, it is very strange that at the end of his days, his wife decides who will enter and who will not enter. This is an absurd situation," he said, raising his voice, "for Suha to sit there and decide when and how and who."
Yasir Abed Rabbo, a senior P.L.O. figure, accused Mrs. Arafat of "hysteria."
Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian legislator, said Mr. Arafat is a head of state, and not just a husband and father. "This is their right to go to Paris - to dispel all these misconceptions and rumors," she said, calling Mrs. Arafat's comments "provocative and divisive."
Mr. Qurei, at the beginning of a cabinet meeting, was more gentle, saying: "We express our utmost regret at the comments made by sister Suha," adding that Mr. Arafat "belongs to the Palestinian people."
In Nablus, Palestinians finishing their shopping for the evening meal, to break the Ramadan fast, sharply criticized Mrs. Arafat.
"All of us are worried about the president's health," said Umm Khalil, 58, pausing with three bulging plastic bags in her hands. "She has no right to say, 'Don't come.' They are his comrades, his colleagues, his friends." She said that Mrs. Arafat's statement was "meaningless," before appending hastily, "I'm fasting - I don't want to criticize or attack anyone."
Ghazi Ali Hassan, a 61-year-old farmer shopping in Nablus, also pointed out that Mr. Abbas and Mr. Qurei are old friends of Mr. Arafat. "I don't think they are going to betray him as she is trying to suggest. No one knows his health situation, and we have a right to know."
He added of Mrs. Arafat, "Where has she been for four years?" Listening in, Salahadin Salem, 51, picked up on that thought. "She was not next to him when he needed her. She was away in Paris, enjoying her life."
Said Hindieh, 44, a gas station attendant, said: "President Arafat is not owned by one person or group. Arafat is the symbol of the Palestinian people."
He said that Palestinians deserved to know the status of their leader, and that learning it from Mr. Abbas and Mr. Qurei would send an important and reassuring signal that their institutions were continuing to function. "Whatever the opinion of Abu Ala and Abu Mazen, they have official titles," he said, referring to Mr. Abbas and Mr. Qurei, respectively. "She was expecting that everybody would stand with her, but to the contrary the people are against her."
The Israeli press suggested today that Mr. Arafat might have a main burial service in Egypt, where Arab leaders would not have to pass through Israeli border controls, and then be buried in the Gaza Strip, where his father and sister are interred. But Egypt denied the report.
Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Jerusalem, Elaine Sciolino from Paris and James Bennet from Nablus in the West Bank.
-------- space
LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS ON BUSH STAR WARS PLAN
From: "Global Network" <globalnet@mindspring.com>
Date: Mon Nov 8, 2004 1:08pm
PUBLIC COMMENTS NEEDED ON PENTAGON STAR WARS PLAN
http://www.acq.osd.mil/mda/peis/html/public.html#peis
The Bush administration's Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is now calling for public comment on their Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for the Ballistic Missile Defense System. Public comment is due by November 17, 2004. People from all countries are urged to send comments. (See below for details.)
The PEIS analyzes the potential impacts to the environment as MDA proposes to develop, test, deploy, and plan for their new Star Wars plan.
The PEIS considers three options:
Alternative 1, missile defenses without space-based weapons.
Alternative 2, missile defenses with space-based weapons.
Alternative 3, no action.
Conceptually, the Star Wars plan under review would be a layered system of weapons, sensors, Command & Control, Battle Management, and Communications; each with specific functional capabilities, working together to "defend" against all classes and ranges of threats in all phases of flight. Multiple "defensive" weapons would be used to create a layered system of multiple intercept capabilities.
WRITTEN COMMENTS:
Written comments regarding the PEIS should be sent to MDA BMDS PEIS, c/o ICF Consulting, 9300 Lee Highway, Fairfax, VA. 22031 or e-mailed to mda.bmds.peis@i... by November 17, 2004. We encourage people who live outside the U.S. to also send comments.
KEY POINTS TO MAKE: (Please use your own words)
1) This new Star Wars program as outlined in the PEIS will be destabilizing thus creating new momentum to move the deadly and dangerous arms race into the heavens. This will create more global instability.
2) Testing and deployment of weapons in space will create massive amounts of new space debris making the environment of space even more contaminated and thus unavailable for future space flight.
2) This new Star Wars plan will be extraordinarily expensive requiring massive cuts in health care, education, public services, and environmental clean-up.
3) The likely use of nuclear power for eventual space-based weapons would be an environmental disaster.
4) Space-based weapons, described in the PEIS as being "defensive", could easily serve an offensive purpose as outlined in the Space Command's Vision for 2020 that says the U.S. will "deny" other nations the use of space.
5) Toxic rocket exhaust pollution is now contaminating the Earth and punching a hole in the ozone layer. This plan would dramatically expand these polluting launches.
6) For all these reasons we support the "No Action Alternative."
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 729-0517 (207) 319-2017 (Cell phone) globalnet@m...
http://www.space4peace.org
-------- us
Veteran Sues Over Reactivation 13 Years After Army Discharge
November 8, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/national/08reserve.html
HONOLULU, Nov. 7 (AP) - A veteran of the first Persian Gulf war is suing the Army after it ordered him to report for duty 13 years after he was honorably discharged from active duty and 8 years after he left the Reserves.
The veteran, David Miyasato of Kauai, received word of his reactivation in September, but says he believes he completed his eight-year obligation to the Army long ago.
"I was shocked," Mr. Miyasato said Friday. "I never expected to see something like that after being out of the service for 13 years."
His federal lawsuit, filed Friday in Honolulu, seeks a judgment declaring that he has fulfilled his military obligations.
Harry Yee, an assistant United States attorney, said his office would defend the Army. He declined to comment further.
Mr. Miyasato, 34, was scheduled to report to a military facility in South Carolina on Tuesday.
Within hours of filing the lawsuit, however, Mr. Miyasato received a faxed letter from the Army's Human Resources Command saying that his "exemption from active duty had not been finalized at this time" but that he had been given an administrative delay for up to 30 days, said his lawyer, Eric Seitz.
Mr. Miyasato, who is married and has a 7-month-old daughter, enlisted in the Army in 1987 and served in Iraq and Kuwait during the first gulf war as a petroleum supply specialist and truck driver.
Mr. Miyasato said he received an honorable discharge from active duty in 1991, then served in the Reserves until 1996 to fulfill his eight-year enlistment commitment.
The Army announced last year that it would activate an estimated 5,600 soldiers to serve in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Army officials are tapping members of the Individual Ready Reserve - soldiers who have been discharged from the Army, Army Reserve or the Army National Guard, but still have contractual obligations to the military.
Mr. Miyasato said he never re-enlisted, signed up for any bonuses or was told that he had been transferred to the Individual Ready Reserve or any other Reserve unit.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
U.S. Judge Halts Military Trial of Qaeda Suspect at Guantánamo
November 8, 2004
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/politics/08cnd-gitm.html?hp&ex=1099976400&en=5dde45074728cf9f&ei=5094&partner=homepage
WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - A federal judge today halted the Guantánamo Bay trial of a Yemeni prisoner suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda, ruling that the special military tribunals like the one the suspect is facing at the naval base in Cuba are contrary to principles of American justice.
The ruling, handed down this afternoon by Judge James Robertson of Federal District Court in Washington, halted the trial of the suspect, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the moment news of it reached the military authorities at the base.
Judge Robertson sharply rebuked the Bush administration for its position that because the several hundred Guantánamo detainees have been classified as "enemy combatants," they are not entitled to the protections normally given to prisoners of war.
"The government has asserted a position starkly different from the positions and behavior of the United States in previous conflicts, one that can only weaken the United States' own ability to demand application of the Geneva Conventions to Americans captured during armed conflicts abroad," the judge wrote in his 47-page opinion.
Judge Robertson said lawyers who follow the Guantánamo cases have found "examples of the way other governments have already begun to cite the United States' Guantánamo policy to justify their own repressive policies."
Mr. Hamdan was captured in Afghanistan late in 2001 during the American military campaign to oust the Taliban following the terror attacks of Sept. 11. In 2003, the Defense Department announced that he had been found suitable for trial by special military commission because he was suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda "or was otherwise involved in terrorism directed against the United States."
But Judge Robertson said today that there is a built-in unfairness in the special military tribunals, which, unlike regular courts-martial, severely limit a defendant's access to evidence being used to try him. The Bush administration has defended such secrecy procedures on national-security grounds, but the judge was not persuaded.
"A tribunal set up to try, possibly convict, and punish a person accused of crime that is configured in advance to permit the introduction of evidence and the testimony of witnesses out of the presence of the accused is indeed substantively different from a regularly convened court-martial," the judge wrote.
What happens next at Guantánamo was not clear this afternoon. "We are going through the ruling now to determine what it means," a public affairs officer for the military commissions, Maj. Lee Reynolds of the Army, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
First a terrorist, now a spy
Identity ordeal continues for Connecticut nuclear engineer
AP Wire
By Matt Apuzzo,
Monday, November 8, 2004
http://www.rep-am.com/story.php?id=12096
CROMWELL -- As a Muslim and frequent flyer, businessman Syed Maswood is used to being wrongly suspected as an Islamic terrorist. But he's not used to being called a U.S. spy.
The Connecticut nuclear engineer, whose home was raided this spring but who was never charged in a terrorism investigation, was arrested on a September business trip in the United Arab Emirates on suspicion of being a CIA and FBI informant.
He spent a night in jail before U.S. Embassy officials won his release -- only to return to the United States and be detained and questioned a second time by Homeland Security officials, he said.
Suspected of being a terrorist at home and a spy overseas, Maswood believes he's the victim of two forces: prejudice against Muslims in the United States and distrust of Americans abroad.
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, said he hasn't heard of other cases like Maswood's.
But it doesn't surprise him that Maswood is detained in U.S. airports. And given a growing anti-American feeling in the Muslim world, Hooper said it's not surprising that an American would be held on vague charges overseas.
"Nothing surprises me anymore," Hooper said.
Though he has been charged with no crime, Maswood, a 41-year-old U.S citizen and father of three, has become accustomed to airport searches. He has spent months writing government officials, demanding to know why he is searched and held when he travels.
"We have looked into the matter and determined that you will no longer encounter any automatic special attention beyond normal probabilities, upon future returns to the United States," the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement wrote him in August.
He said he carried that letter with him when he left for a Middle East business trip in late September and had no problems leaving the country.
Maswood sells radiological detection devices. He was to discuss the installation of U.S.-mandated equipment to detect radioactive material at UAE ports.
When he landed in Dubai the evening of Sept. 28, however, his passport was flagged. He was wanted for arrest.
"What do you mean I'm wanted?" Maswood said. "On what grounds?"
He said police wouldn't say. He was handcuffed and taken to jail. He surrendered one of his cell phones, but didn't tell police he had a second in his pocket.
Police searched his bag and his wallet, smiling when they found his National Republican Congressional Committee membership card. "'We found George Bush,"' Maswood remembers them saying.
Wearing a polo shirt and khakis, Maswood stood in a holding cell rank with urine and excrement and surrounded by razor wire. Hiding in the bathroom, Maswood used his second cell phone to call the U.S. Embassy for help. The consul who took Maswood's case would not comment but e-mails from the embassy and provided by Maswood verify the events.
As midnight passed into dawn, Maswood was taken from cell to cell, still unaware of the charges. Some of his cellmates had been there for days and had resigned themselves to sitting in urine, smoking cigarettes and nursing the sores from the shackles.
Occasionally, Maswood said, the guards asked how Muslims were treated in the United States. He replied they were treated better than he was in jail.
He did not tell them his home was searched in a case that has not led to charges. He didn't discuss the prison at Guantanamo Bay, where 550 terror suspects have been held for nearly three years, most of them without being charged.
"They just want to get even with Americans," Maswood said. "The U.S. has lost its moral position."
Embassy officials arrived in the afternoon and helped win Maswood's release. He was ordered to return Oct. 2 to meet with the prosecutor. That's when he first heard talk that he was providing information to the CIA and FBI.
Maswood believes it all stems from a report he filed in 2002 against a former employee, a Jordanian man suspected of discussing business with Iran. The U.S. Commerce Department requires exporters to file such reports.
His UAE attorney said the charge is a form of libel -- providing false information to the U.S. government. Maswood left the country Oct. 18. Embassy officials have advised him in writing not to return to the country, saying American citizens are frequently mistreated or abused in UAE prisons.
When he landed in Newark, N.J., exhausted from his trip, he said Homeland Security officials scanned his passport and immediately ushered him away. It was the fourth time he'd been detained but the first time since receiving the letter from Homeland Security.
He showed it to officials in New Jersey, but he said they couldn't verify its authenticity. After waiting for four hours, he said, officials released him. When he asked why he was held, he said a woman told him to ask the FBI.
Neither the FBI nor Homeland Security would comment.
Maswood continues to write government officials, criticizing U.S. domestic policy and demanding to know what he has done wrong.
His wife and mother think he causes problems by drawing attention to himself. Maswood won't hear it.
"The damage (Osama) bin Laden has done to us is nothing compared to the damage we have done by moving away from this higher moral position," he said.
Maswood's paperwork is mounting, taking over half his basement office. He's not about to stop writing.
And he's going to keep flying.
----
U.S. Unprepared Despite Progress, Experts Say
By John Mintz and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 8, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32738-2004Nov7?language=printer
The United States remains woefully unprepared to protect the public against terrorists wielding biological agents despite dramatic increases in biodefense spending by the Bush administration and considerable progress on many fronts, according to government officials and specialists in bioterrorism and public health.
Although administration officials have spoken at times about bioterrorism's dangers, they are more alarmed than they have signaled publicly, U.S. officials said. As President Bill Clinton did, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have thrust themselves into the issue in depth.
"There's no area of homeland security in which the administration has made more progress than bioterrorism, and none where we have further to go," said Richard A. Falkenrath, who until May was Bush's deputy homeland security adviser and is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Unlike many other areas of domestic defense, which are centralized in the Department of Homeland Security, responsibility for biodefense is spread across various agencies. It is coordinated by a little-known White House aide, Kenneth Bernard, whose power is relatively limited.
Biological and nuclear attacks rank as officials' most feared types of terrorist attacks. Because of the technical difficulties in creating such weapons, they reckon the chances of a devastating attack are currently small. But the consequences of a big biological strike could be epically catastrophic, and rapid advances in science are placing the creation of these weapons within the reach of even graduate students, they said.
Given the escalating risks, many public health and bioterrorism experts, members of Congress and some well-placed Bush administration officials express mounting unease about what they believe are weaknesses in the nation's biodefenses:
• The great majority of U.S. hospitals and state and local public health agencies would be completely overwhelmed trying to carry out mass vaccinations or distribute antidotes after a large biological attack. Hobbled by budget pressures and day-to-day crises, many health agencies say they cannot comply with federal officials' urgent demands that they gear up for bioterrorism.
• Overlapping jurisdiction among federal agencies working on biodefenses -- including the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services -- leads to confusion inside and outside government about who is in charge of preparations for, and response to, bioattacks.
• In tabletop exercises, missteps by top administration officials reveal that more work is required to plan how the government should communicate with the public after an attack and manage the potential flight of perhaps millions of people from city centers.
• Despite considerable progress since the 2001 attacks, the National Institutes of Health, which has the lead role in researching biological warfare vaccines and antidotes, remains largely wedded to its traditional role of doing basic research and is not producing enough new drugs. Large drug firms with track records of developing medications have little interest in making bioterrorism vaccines and treatments.
• Because of the scientific complexities, no technology exists to detect a biological attack as it occurs. Under the most advanced current program, called Biowatch, technicians remove filters from air-sniffing units in about 30 cities once a day and carry them to labs for computerized analysis in search of about 10 biological agents.
In this way, a biological attack could be discovered within a day. Without Biowatch, no one would know about a smallpox attack, for example, until the first symptoms appeared about 10 days later.
Though it clearly has far to go, the Bush administration has sharply stepped up biodefense efforts. Spending has increased 18-fold since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, from $414 million in fiscal 2001 to a proposed $7.6 billion this year, according to a study by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Biosecurity Center.
Administration officials say that in each area where critics note weaknesses, they already have made great progress. "There is no comparison between where we are today and where we were before 9/11," said Stewart Simonson, assistant HHS secretary for public health emergency preparedness. "On 9/11 we had 90,000 doses of smallpox vaccine ready to go. Today we have 300 million."
The government "is on a wartime footing," said Anthony S. Fauci, the NIH official who heads biodefense research. "People who say we haven't made progress are not well informed about what it takes to make vaccine," he said, citing steps to develop vaccine for the ebola virus since 2001. "This is light speed. . . . Usually vaccines can take many years or decades."
The government also has launched other initiatives. One gives officials early warning of a biological attack by correlating pharmacy data about, for example, cough medicine sales with spikes in symptoms such as high fever and rashes observed at medical clinics. Another plan calls on mail carriers to deliver drugs after an attack.
Administration officials say most gaps in U.S. biological defenses result from the sheer vastness of the task ahead -- radically transforming entire sectors of society to mount defenses. They cite the need to induce an intensely skeptical drug industry to invest in biowarfare research, and the challenge of redirecting cash-starved hospitals and local health agencies into the unfamiliar field of mass casualty response.
In this age of bioterrorism dangers, long-tolerated weaknesses in the U.S. health care system have become serious national security vulnerabilities.
Daunting Array of Bioagents
The list of biological agents available to terrorists is daunting: smallpox, plague, tularemia, botulism and viral hemorrhagic fever, to name a few. Experts believe the most likely biological attack would be small, like the anthrax attacks that killed five people three years ago. But as that incident showed, even a few grams of microbes can cause widespread disruption.
Anthrax bacteria remain among the easiest microbes to manufacture and weaponize. The government has little in the way of defenses, primarily a few million doses of an old vaccine that requires six injections to confer immunity weeks later. A planned newer vaccine requires several inoculations. In the event of an attack, health officials foresee being swamped not only by crowds demanding inoculation, but also by paperwork on who has been treated.
Deepening their alarm is the prospect of new genetically engineered pathogens that could be both more deadly and more difficult to detect and treat. A 2003 CIA study described the effects of these genetically altered strains as potentially "worse than any disease known to man."
Because of "explosive growth" in biotechnology, the skills needed to make microbes resistant to antibiotics and vaccines are widely available, the CIA report said. Unlike nuclear weapons research, which is more detectable and can generally be conducted only by large government labs, bioweapons can be made by individuals in secret.
"The diversity of new BW agents could enable such a broad range of attack scenarios that it would be virtually impossible to anticipate and defend against," the CIA review said.
Although many in the scientific community are skeptical about the prospect of genetically altered superbugs, barriers to the creation of new pathogens have been falling rapidly. "We are at a transformative moment in science," said Tara O'Toole, director of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Biosecurity.
Terrorism experts believe the capacity to produce sophisticated bioweapons is still beyond the grasp of terrorist groups such as al Qaeda but easily within the reach of states such as Iran, as well as microbiologists in countries where extremist sympathies run deep. And terrorists need little expertise to mount a potentially devastating attack on livestock or crops, experts note.
"You don't need to manipulate genetics to spread foot-and-mouth disease in cattle," said David Franz, who headed the military's top biodefense research lab at Fort Detrick, Md. "You can see economic damage that adds up not to millions, but to tens of billions of dollars."
Drill Led to Breakdown
In a May 2003 exercise, the victims of a mock bioterrorism attack began to trickle into Chicago's emergency rooms complaining of fever and chills -- first in twos and threes, then by the dozens and hundreds. Soon it was thousands, and people were dying of respiratory failure all over the Midwest. But at least physicians were able to diagnose the microbe afflicting the actors in the drill : the plague.
Over the next several days, the telephone networks crashed at some Chicago hospitals and at government offices taking part in the "Topoff 2" exercise, and one was forced to use ham radios. Hospitals ran out of beds, equipment and nurses. Civic leaders gave conflicting advice on what to do. Three days later, Chicago's health system was close to collapse. Thousands of untreated people were on the streets infecting others, and 47,000 were dead or dying.
The scenario is not as far-fetched as it sounds. The government's real-world test involved thousands of emergency personnel and mock patients responding to the imagined release of aerosolized germs at O'Hare International Airport and at a Chicago Blackhawks hockey game on a Saturday night.
Just as conceivable is the breakdown of the U.S. public health system after an actual, large-scale biological attack, experts say.
According to former White House official Falkenrath, the U.S. government's reliance on state and local health agencies to speedily distribute vaccines and drugs is "the Achilles' heel" of U.S. biodefenses.
"The single biggest problem is the nonperformance of state and local public health agencies" in drawing up plans that U.S. officials have requested on how they would respond rapidly to a biological attack, he said. The plans would detail how officials expect to deliver medicine to people after the drugs are flown to airports. "From tarmac to bloodstream, their time frames are way too lackadaisical," he said.
Federal officials have given state health agencies and hospitals $4.4 billion in the past three years to develop such plans. But experts say that beyond buying computers or walkie-talkies and hiring some staff, the funds have hardly helped them prepare for large-scale bioterrorist strikes.
"This won't be solved by money alone," said Elin Gursky, a biodefense specialist at the private Anser Institute for Homeland Security.
Federal statistics show that among the 50 states, only Florida, Illinois and Louisiana are close to being ready to swiftly distribute vaccines or antidotes from the national stockpile, according to the nonprofit Trust for America's Health, which studies public health issues.
Local and state health officials say their underfunded agencies, which focus mostly on caring for the poor, have received inadequate federal funds and guidance on what the states should address in their bioterrorism master plans.
"The public health system has been running full steam without a break since 9/11," said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. "To do added things that are being requested, it's going to need more resources."
Most U.S. hospitals also lack the "surge capacity" to respond to a bioattack -- the ability to rapidly bring in hundreds of trained medical professionals to care for a huge influx of very sick people. Expanding staffs runs counter to the decades-long trend of hospitals reducing staff sizes because of budget pressures.
"The main priority of our biodefense program should be enlisting hospitals and private doctors to prepare [for bioattacks], but hospitals and private doctors are not now in the game," said a federal official with direct knowledge of the shortcomings. "This issue has completely fallen through the cracks. . . . No part of the federal government can deal with mass casualties."
"There's a lack of an overarching federal game plan in biodefense," said Shelley Hearne, executive director of the Trust for America's Health. "States aren't being told, 'Here are the things you need to do, and why.' . . . Nobody's in charge."
But in some respects, too many are in charge. The jurisdictions of the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services overlap in many areas of biodefense. Overall, HHS handles health matters, while Homeland Security handles crises. But the two departments, for example, offer sometimes indistinguishable biodefense training for local health agencies.
Administration officials say the two departments mesh well, with their roles delineated in a recent presidential directive. But bureaucratic bottlenecks persist, as the two departments' lawyers and contracting officers hash out turf, experts said.
One such case involved the Strategic National Stockpile, set up in 1999 as an arm of HHS's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is a repository of tons of biodefense drugs and vaccines that can be flown anywhere in the nation within 12 hours.
Experts said the CDC did a good job managing the stockpile, and its employees grumbled when they were moved into Homeland Security last year, where officials have no expertise handling drugs or fashioning emergency medical doctrine. Every time CDC wanted to add drugs to the stockpile, the permission of Homeland Security lawyers was needed, slowing even basic functions. So with no public fanfare, the stockpile was returned to CDC in August.
The administration's most prominent action in bioterrorism -- the initiative last year to inoculate 500,000 health workers against smallpox -- fizzled. The plan was hatched in late 2002 as the country prepared to invade Iraq. Officials feared Iraq or terrorists might attack this country with the bioterrorism agent.
But workers, concerned about health risks, refused to sign up. Officials had failed to line up legal guarantees that the government would compensate workers sickened by immunizations. The worries gave way to complacency when U.S. troops failed to find smallpox or other biological weapons in Iraq.
In the end, about 40,000 people were inoculated -- 8 percent of the goal. The episode suggests the government continues to have trouble communicating with the health community and the public about bioterrorism dangers.
"The biggest consequence is the loss of credibility," Jerome M. Hauer, former director of HHS's Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness, said of the episode. "How do you get people to trust you again?"
New Drugs Slow in Coming
To counteract the attack that officials are nearly certain will come one day, the nation needs long lists of new biowarfare antidotes and vaccines. But despite intense effort by NIH, the arrival of usable drugs has been slow, experts and U.S. officials said. Besides the complex science involved, NIH's tradition of academic-oriented basic research, and a lack of focus on creating new drugs are responsible, they said.
NIH's bioterrorism budgets have jumped from $53 million in 2001 to $1.7 billion in 2005, as Congress and other parts of the administration increased pressure on the agency to change.
"Some of the criticism of the past was valid," NIH's Fauci said. "But we've already shown we've been successful" in pushing scientific concepts toward becoming reality, he said. "This is a change in the culture."
Experts said NIH drags its feet researching such areas as skin patch vaccines, which could be given more quickly than shots, and vaccine-boosting compounds called adjuvants, which allow limited stocks to be used on more people. Fauci said NIH is working on these questions.
Even so, officials said, a top priority is persuading large drug firms to make big investments in biological warfare research -- in essence, creating a biodefense industry from scratch.
"Big pharma" is now not interested for several reasons, industry and government officials say. Big firms are accustomed to huge profits on their drugs for arthritis, ulcers, impotence and the like, and foresee returns a fraction of that size for biodefense work.
The industry also fears lawsuits against firms developing such drugs, and government temptation to nationalize patents on biodefense drugs in a crisis.
In July, Congress approved Project Bioshield, which allocates $5.6 billion over 10 years to induce the industry to begin investing in these drugs. But industry executives say they are waiting for much larger sums, as well as stronger legal liability and patent protections.
"The measures the U.S. government has taken to date (including Bioshield) will not be enough to entice pharmaceutical industry leaders into this field," according to a recent study by the University of Pittsburgh biosecurity center based on interviews with 30 top industry and government officials.
Health experts say that the recent loss of half the nation's flu vaccine supply because of contamination in a British plant does not bode well for future efforts on the more daunting scientific challenge of bioterrorism.
Some believe that Bush should publicly declare the seriousness of the government's bioterrorism concerns, name a bioterrorism "czar" to focus public attention, and initiate vastly expanded research into new drugs. Administration officials said that such steps are unnecessary and that the current arrangement works fine.
But the biosecurity center's O'Toole disagreed.
"The country cannot do what's needed to get prepared for bioattacks without very visible national leadership from the president," said O'Toole, who worked in the Clinton Energy Department. "We're not yet treating this like a national security emergency."
--------
Negotiators See New Hope for Intelligence Bill
November 8, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/politics/08panel.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 - Congressional negotiators seeking a bill to create the job of national intelligence director say they are resuming their talks in earnest and believe the legislation can be pushed through Congress in this month's lame-duck session - despite predictions that the bill would die if not passed before the Nov. 2 election.
The proponents of the bill, which would enact major recommendations of the independent Sept. 11 commission and place a single cabinet-level official in charge of all the nation's spy agencies, say they were heartened when President Bush said at a news conference on Thursday that he wanted Congress "to pass an effective intelligence reform bill that I can sign into law.''
Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who is the chief Senate negotiator in talks to work out a final bill, said, "The president's statement gave a real boost to our negotiations; he put this at the top of his agenda."
However, Ms. Collins warned, "I do continue to think that if we don't do it this year, all is lost."
Representative Jane Harman of California, the chief House Democratic negotiator, said she was convinced the bill could be passed in the Congressional session scheduled to begin Nov. 16 if President Bush pressured House Republicans and ordered the Pentagon not to disrupt the talks. "The White House has to step up to do this," Ms. Harman said.
Whatever their hopes for a post-election compromise, lawmakers and members of the Sept. 11 commission agree that Congress missed its best chance to approve the bill when a House-Senate conference committee failed to reach agreement in the politically charged weeks before Nov. 2. Congressional leaders had been eager to get a bill to the president before the election to show voters they were serious about improving the work of the nation's intelligence and counterterrorism agencies.
Lawmakers also agree that the conference committee remains divided. A coalition of House Democrats and the bipartisan Senate delegation wants broad powers for a national intelligence director, while House Republicans want to limit those powers.
The House Republicans have a powerful constituency: Pentagon officials, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers. In a letter last month, General Myers endorsed much of the House bill and said the Pentagon needed to retain much of its control over intelligence spending to support troops on the battlefield.
The chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican former governor of New Jersey, said in an interview that he intended to contact the White House this week to press for its help in pushing the bill through Congress. "Talking to people in Congress and people in the White House, I believe they want to get it done, and they really want to get it done now," Mr. Kean said.
The Congressional negotiators are trying to reconcile two very different bills passed last month, both presented as a response to the recommendations of the commission.
The Senate bill, passed 96 to 2, has been endorsed by the White House and by members of the commission. It would create a national intelligence director with most of the powers sought by the commission.
The panel's final report cataloged the blunders of the nation's spy agencies in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks. The report found that the government's efforts to foil terrorist attacks was hindered by poor coordination among intelligence agencies, notably the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and said the agencies should be brought under the control of a single intelligence director.
The House bill, passed 282 to 134, would give the intelligence director more limited budget and personnel authority, as requested by Defense Department officials. The Pentagon is estimated to control about 80 percent of the intelligence budget, much of it through the National Security Agency, the government's chief eavesdropping agency, which is part of the Defense Department.
Senator Collins, the chief Republican author of the Senate bill, has said that she cannot compromise on the fundamental powers of a national intelligence director. She argues that without broad authority to force cooperation among spy agencies, the job will fail.
But she said Senate negotiators might now be willing to consider a final bill containing some of the law-enforcement and immigration provisions placed in the House bill by Republican leaders, even though they were not among the specific recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission.
"I recognize that the House cares greatly about the immigration provisions, and the Senate should not reject them out of hand," Ms. Collins said. "There are some provisions - the addition of more border patrol agents, for example - that have widespread support, and I am prepared to support them."
Ms. Collins and other lawmakers say they remain worried about interference in the negotiations from the Pentagon and from a more unlikely source: the former staff director of the Sept. 11 commission, Philip D. Zelikow, a University of Virginia historian.
Mr. Zelikow complicated the pre-election negotiations - and angered proponents of the Senate bill, including commission members - when he sent a memorandum to Capitol Hill last month suggesting that a compromise offered by House Republicans could provide a national intelligence director with sufficient powers. House Republicans released the memorandum publicly to show that they were not an obstacle to a final bill.
Representative Harman, who supports the Senate bill, said that Mr. Zelikow had proved to be a "rogue actor in this play" and that the memorandum and General Myers's letter had been "dirty bombs" that undermined the Senate's negotiating stance.
She said that while leaders of the Sept. 11 commission had issued statements within days distancing themselves from Mr. Zelikow's memorandum, they had been slow to act, bolstering the position of House Republicans. "The Zelikow e-mail should have been disavowed in nanoseconds," Ms. Harman said.
Mr. Zelikow did not return phone calls to his office.
-------- immigration / refugees
Mexico to Press U.S. on Stalled Migrant Plan
November 8, 2004
By GINGER THOMPSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/international/americas/08mexico.html?pagewanted=all
MEXICO CITY, Nov. 7 - In meetings with the United States this week, Mexico will urge the Bush administration to pay more attention to Latin America in its second term and to move forward on proposals that would give legal status to millions of illegal migrants.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and the secretary of homeland security, Tom Ridge, will travel to Mexico on Monday for meetings of the United States-Mexico Binational Commission. It will be Mr. Powell's first foreign trip since President Bush's re-election last week. The commission is scheduled to discuss a range of issues, including trade, border security and the fight against drug trafficking. Migration tops Mexico's agenda.
Gerónimo Gutiérrez, the under secretary for North America in Mexico's Foreign Ministry, said in a telephone interview that Mexico had cooperated with the United States in its efforts to prevent terrorism and curb drug trafficking and on programs to stop the smuggling of migrants across the border. He suggested that it was time for the United States to reciprocate that spirit of cooperation.
"For us, this meeting represents an opportunity to accelerate the pace of the bilateral agenda, especially migration," Mr. Gutiérrez said. "It's time for the United States to establish new mechanisms to deal with migration."
Mr. Bush, whose election was bolstered by increasing support from Hispanic voters, has promised sweeping immigration changes since the beginning of his first term, when he proclaimed Mexico one of the United States' most important allies. Last January, Mr. Bush sent Congress a proposal that would give temporary work permits to illegal migrants working in the United States.
Authorities estimate there are eight million illegal immigrants in the United States, more than half of them Mexican. Because of the estimated $14 billion that Mexicans in the United States sent home last year - making remittances the country's second most important source of income after oil - those immigrants are a powerful constituency for Mexico's president, Vicente Fox. He has made immigration change his chief foreign policy priority.
The United States, however, has so far failed to deliver on its promises for immigration change. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration set aside the migration agenda to focus on the effort to prevent terrorism, and later on the invasion of Iraq. But Mr. Bush promised that if he was re-elected, he would get migration talks back on track and push for his guest-worker proposal, which has drawn criticism from Republicans and Democrats.
At the meeting of the United States-Mexico Binational Commission, Mexico intends to challenge the Bush administration to do just that.
Mr. Fox raised the issue of migration in a congratulatory telephone call to Mr. Bush last week.
"What I discussed with President Bush is the fact that the next years represent a window of opportunity, given that neither of our countries will have elections," Mr. Fox told reporters at a meeting among Latin American leaders last week. "Relations with the United States are excellent, deep, friendly, productive, and we have to be optimistic that we will take advantage of this one-year window of opportunity we have."
Optimism, however, has faded across Latin America since the beginning of Mr. Bush's first term. The region has tilted decidedly left, moving away from the United States' foreign policies and free market changes. In Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, Chile and Uruguay, voters frustrated by vast disparities between the rich and poor, soaring crime, systematic corruption and impunity have turned out to support leftist leaders whose campaigns questioned - and in some cases flatly rejected - the thinking from Washington and Wall Street.
Mr. Bush's popularity across the region dropped significantly after the invasion of Iraq. Mexico was one of the decisive votes against the invasion at the United Nations Security Council. Only the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Honduras have sent troops to Iraq.
But in a meeting among 19 Latin American leaders last week, most expressed an interest in strengthening relations with Washington. Political analysts also have said that Mr. Bush's victory is the best hope for real progress on a range of pending negotiations, including the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and migration changes. A second-term president, whose party controls Congress, they contend, will be in a better position to push through changes than John Kerry would have been.
"I think this is the better option for Mexico and Latin America," said Isabel Studer, of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, a research group. "If Kerry would have been elected with a Republican Congress, we would have had four years of paralysis. Bush will have more political leverage to push for issues that are important to us."
-------- prisons / prisoners
Guantánamo Prisoners Getting Their Day, but Hardly in Court
November 8, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/national/08gitmo.html?pagewanted=all&position=
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Nov. 7 - Each day, several shackled detainees are marched by their military guards into a double-wide trailer behind the prison camp's fences and razor wire to argue before three anonymous military officers that they do not belong here.
One, a 27-year-old Yemeni, spent more than an hour on Saturday telling a panel that he was not a member of Al Qaeda or a sympathizer, saying that he had never fought against the United States and should never have been detained here at Guantánamo as an unlawful enemy combatant.
The Yemeni, a scraggly-bearded man bound hand and foot, sat in a low chair, his shackles connected to a bolt in the floor, frustrating his efforts to gesture with his hands to make his arguments. Inside the small, harshly lighted room, he alternated between pleading his case and angrily criticizing the process as unfair. Although he spoke Arabic that had to be translated by a woman sitting beside him, there was no mistaking his contempt for the panel members, who sat on a raised platform about 10 feet away and whose questions he ridiculed frequently.
These briskly conducted proceedings, which have received little notice, constitute the Bush administration's principal answer to the Supreme Court's ruling regarding the rights of detainees who have been imprisoned since the administration began its fight against terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks. The court ruled 6 to 3 in June that the detainees had a right to challenge their detentions in federal court, saying that even though the base is outside the sovereign territory of the United States, federal judges have jurisdiction to consider petitions for writs of habeas corpus from those who argue that they are being unlawfully held.
The hearings here have come under heavy criticism because they do not meet the traditional standards of court proceedings. For one thing, the detainees are left to argue their cases for themselves, without assistance from lawyers.
The hearings, formally called combatant status review tribunals, were hurriedly devised and put into place just weeks after the Supreme Court's ruling. The administration, which has been battling to have the military retain as much control as possible over the detainees, told a federal court in Washington last week that the tribunals more than satisfy the Supreme Court ruling. The government argued that because of the tribunals, federal judges should reject the dozens of petitions they have received from defense lawyers asking them to intervene.
Capt. Charles Jamison of the Navy, who oversees the tribunal proceedings here at Guantánamo, said he expected to have them completed for all 550 remaining prisoners by the end of the year. So far, some 320 detainees have appeared before the tribunals, and so far, the Pentagon has passed final judgment on 104. Of that group, 103 were found to have been properly deemed unlawful enemy combatants and properly imprisoned; one detainee was released.
Those deemed unlawful enemy combatants will have a chance to argue in a separate proceeding that they should be released because they are no longer a threat.
Even without any legal proceedings, the United States has released more than 150 Guantánamo detainees to their home governments, saying they no longer posed a threat, and it is expected that many of the remaining ones will also be released.
The Yemeni who appeared Saturday denied through his translator that he had any affiliation with Al Qaeda. He said the United States had no proof and "should know that a person is innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around." Throughout the hearing, the man, whose name may not be published under the conditions set by the military, complained, sometimes with sarcasm, that "this is like a game."
An officer not on the panel acted as sort of a prosecutor in assembling the charges, while yet another acted as the detainee's personal representative to explain the proceedings but not to serve as a defense lawyer. All the officers had their name tags covered by tape.
Critics have complained that the tribunals are fatally flawed, not only because the detainees do not have lawyers but because they are generally hampered in disputing any charges because they are not allowed to see most of the evidence against them because it is classified.
Captain Jamison said the tribunals were administrative procedures and thus did not have to meet standards of regular criminal proceedings.
One official said it was apparent from the unconvincing explanations of many detainees as to why they had been carrying a gun or were at a battle site that they were indeed enemy combatants.
Like detainees at all the hearings, the Yemeni was given an unclassified summary of the charges, but the evidence to support the most serious accusations is classified and was considered in a closed session after he was taken back to his cell.
In the public session, an officer told the panel that the man was "a supporter of Al Qaeda" because he had traveled to Pakistan from his home country and had been "recruited by Jama'at al-Tabligh," an organization based in Pakistan that posed as an Islamic missionary group but was really a cover for helping Qaeda terrorists with travel arrangements.
The man asked the panel, "Where's the proof?" He said that if the government was claiming he had a connection to Al Qaeda, "there should be evidence that I support Al Qaeda." The Army colonel who was the panel's president responded, "We're not here to debate these points." She said, "This is what we're given and this is your opportunity to give us your story."
The Yemeni was disdainful of another panel member, a Navy commander, who asked him if he believed in jihad, answering that he did so as all Muslims did but that that did not mean he meant harm to America.
Another detainee, a 33-year-old Afghan who served as a municipal police commissioner in his village, tried to convince a different military panel on Thursday that he was an unwilling member of the Taliban government. The man admitted that he had supervised a ritual stoning to death of three people charged with adultery but said he had not chosen the people or the penalty.
A Tunisian detainee on Thursday decided at the last moment to refuse to attend his hearing. His personal representative, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, said the Tunisian man said he had been told by Allah not to attend. The officer, however, offered the detainee's responses to the charges that he was a member of Al Qaeda and had a Kalashnikov assault rifle when he was captured.
About a third of the detainees decline to attend the tribunals, officials said, and they are then tried in absentia, as was the Tunisian prisoner. The military has established a panel at the Pentagon to hear many of those cases. There are four panels here at Guantánamo.
The detention of hundreds of men at Guantánamo has led to a variety of legal proceedings, some wholly contained within the military and others involving federal courts.
Last week, for example, a military commission heard pretrial motions in the set of war-crimes trials being conducted on a different part of the base. Four detainees have been charged in those proceedings.
The war-crimes trials before a military commission have faced difficulties, including translation problems and complaints from military lawyers that the officers on the panel are unsuitable. Although the war-crimes proceedings are separate from reviews of the detainees' enemy combatant status, the two collided last week. One of the three officers on the military commission trying war crimes asked to see the information from the combatant review tribunal for David Hicks, 29, an Australian who is charged with terrorism and attempted murder and whose case was being considered last week.
Joshua Dratel, a civilian lawyer from New York representing Mr. Hicks, erupted in anger in the courtroom, saying it was outrageous for the commission to consider information from a proceeding with lesser guarantees of due process.
"This man is on trial for his life," Mr. Dratel said. He said that for the military commission to consider accepting evidence from the other proceeding - a proceeding in which the prisoner cannot confront his accuser or see all of the evidence against him - showed that the war-crimes trials were "not just on a different island from the rest of the world but a different planet."
Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, the deputy chief judge of the Air Force who is defending another detainee before the war-crimes commission, said it was wrong for an enemy combatant review tribunal to question a detainee who was represented by a lawyer in other proceedings. Colonel Shaffer represents Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan, who is charged with conspiracy to commit murder and terrorism. The colonel instructed Mr. Qosi to demand that one of his lawyers accompany him to the enemy combatant tribunal. She said they simply tried him in absentia and declared him an enemy combatant.
Conversations with senior military officials suggest that there is an informal expectation that after most of the detainees are found to be enemy combatants, the military will start releasing what eventually will be a majority of them after yet another set of proceedings. Those proceedings, called annual review boards, are expected to start as early as next month and are supposed to determine if the enemy combatant remains a threat and may be released. One official said that approach would allow the military to assert that most of the detainees were not wrongfully imprisoned, but it would also provide a solution for the administration's desire not to hold such a large number for years.
The administration has asserted that the Guantánamo detainees are not entitled to the prisoner-of-war protections of the Geneva Conventions as they do not meet the criteria of regular soldiers. International lawyers have criticized the United States, saying that the Geneva Conventions require hearings to determine whether they can be deemed other than P.O.W.'s.
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Freedom for Chinese Detainees Hinges on Finding a New Homeland
November 8, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/national/08uighur.html
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Nov. 7 - One of the most vexing and peculiar problems that the imprisonment of people suspected of being terrorists at the naval base here has caused for the Bush administration has been what to do with the ethnic Uighur detainees here.
Guantánamo has 22 Uighur (pronounced WEE-ger) detainees, most captured in Afghanistan. They traveled there from their homeland in the Xinjiang Province of China where the mostly Muslim Uighurs have fought a low-level insurgency against Beijing's rule for years.
United States military officials have concluded that at least half of the Uighurs here are eligible for release, but the prisoners have said they do not want to be returned to China because they fear they will be tortured or killed as terrorists. That has sent United States officials scrambling to find a third country willing to accept the Uighurs. So far, several European countries, including Norway and Switzerland, have declined. European newspapers in other countries have reported that their governments have refused as well.
Beijing, for its part, has asserted that the Uighurs are terrorists and that the United States should return them to China to demonstrate its commitment to fighting terrorism around the world. A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry warned last week that relations between Washington and Beijing could be harmed if the United States sent any Uighurs to a third country.
One of the Uighurs held at Guantánamo went before a special tribunal on Friday to argue that he was not an unlawful enemy combatant and should not have been arrested in Afghanistan and kept in the detention camp here. The man, a 33-year-old with an artificial left leg, told the military panel that he was not an enemy of the United States and that he hoped America would one day help the Uighur independence movement.
After taking an oath before Allah that he would tell the truth, the man said, "It's true that I went to Afghanistan," explaining that he did so to find a place for his family to live free of Chinese oppression. He disputed a statement that he had told an interrogator that he had been a member of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, which was defined by the government as an extremist Muslim group in China.
"We fought against the Chinese government for years," he said. "That does not mean we are Al Qaeda." He said he had sought military training and the proper use of a gun to fight the Chinese in the future.
At various times, he said that there was no proof he had been involved with Al Qaeda. "Do you have any proof that I am with Al Qaeda? Any real proof?"
When he was told that there was evidence of his association but that it was classified and he could not see it, he said, "I can't bring any evidence against the classified information I cannot see."
-------- torture
Dirty hands
November 08, 2004
By Nat Hentoff
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20041107-100742-4366r.htm
Of all the countries in the world that terrorize their own people, one of the very worst is Uzbekistan, ruled by the brutal head of state Islam Karimov, where religious and political prisoners are very often tortured. Because of a leaked confidential memorandum to the British Foreign Office by Craig Murray, its ambassador to Uzbekistan, protesting such abuses as boiling two prisoners to death, he has been removed by Tony Blair's government.
The London edition of the Financial Times - with additional reporting and commentary in its American edition - broke the story on Oct. 11: "Uzbek officials are torturing prisoners to extract information [about reported terrorist operations], which is supplied to the U.S. and passed through its Central Intelligence Agency to the U.K., says Mr. Murray."
The story then quoted the former ambassador's confidential Foreign Office report (seen by a Financial Times reporter): "I have to deal with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met very few where torture, as defined in the United Nations Convention [against torture], was not employed."
Responding to the memorandum, the British government said that it has never used torture to get information nor "incited others to do so." But - similar to what American defenders of torture have said about its alleged use in secret CIA interrogation centers - Tony Blair's government added:
"We have to bear in mind the need for intelligence for counter-terrorism to arrest threats to British lives. Where there was reliable intelligence with a direct bearing on terrorist threats it would be irresponsible to ignore it out of hand."
On the BBC Oct. 15, Steve Crawshaw, director of the London office of Human Rights Watch, eviscerated that rationale: "You can't wash your hands and say we didn't torture, but will use what comes out of torture."
The connection between the torture chambers of Uzbekistan and the confessions supplied to the CIA by that governmentwas underlined by Philip Stephens in the Oct. 19 Financial Times: "Uzbekistan provides a vital base for U.S. operations in neighboring Afghanistan. U.S. financialaid(to Uzbekistan)provides a bulwark against Russian influence."
Because we support Mr. Karimov's government, we - as an Oct. 16 Financial Timeseditorial points out - have "given it the confidence to sell a long-running campaign against internal dissidents as part of the campaign against Al Qaeda."
Uzbekistan and the United States, accordingly, are partners in the war on terrorism. It is not easy to rebut the argument that if torture can indeed obtain information that will save lives, it would be irresponsible not to use it.
Not all results of torture are reliable, especially when the pain is so severe that the victim will say anything to stop it; but some torture, its advocates claim, has produced accurate vital information.
Worth considering - as Republican leadership in the Housesupports sending detainees to countries known for torturing prisoners, provided those countries give so-called "assurances" they'll restrain themselves -isthe Financial Times' Philip Stephens' analysis of this moral dilemma. After having been sacked as ambassador to Uzbekistan, Mr. Murray described himself as "a victim of conscience." What Mr. Stephens has done is connect conscience with what history has shown about the results of partnerships with torturers:
"We have been here before. The same logic (of the British Foreign Office) saw the U.S. support the Taliban in Afghanistan and, along with the Europeans, arm Saddam Hussein against Iran. How dearly we have since paid for such geopolitical realism."
The war on terrorism, he continues, "becomes the excuse for a foreign policy that is at once immoral and ultimately self-defeating. Do not the same political leaders now propping up Mr. Karimov (and his regime in Uzbekistan) proclaim that repression is terrorism's best friend (creating conditions that lead to terrorism) while freedom its most lethal enemy? I could have sworn Tony Blair has said as much a dozen times."
So has George W. Bush. I'm convinced the president believes that, and so do I. But if we are to make a credible case for freedom in countries without it, how can we continue to work with an Islam Karimov?
A February report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, according to the Feb. 17 Independent in London, concludes that the United States has been using techniques outlawed under the 1984 torture convention in CIA interrogation of Al Qaeda detainees. And "U.S. authorities have returned or sent a number of prisoners for further interrogation to countries where there are strong grounds to suspect they will be tortured."
As the IISS states, the United States can no longer "assume a high moral position" or be credible about the values we want - and hope - to see take root in repressive countries.
Ignoring the screams of the horrifically tortured doesn't keep our hands from being stained with their blood.
-------- POLITICS
-------- corruption
Abramoff Allies Keeping Distance
Lobbyist Under Scrutiny for Dealings With Indian Tribes
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 8, 2004; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32633-2004Nov7?language=printer
Shortly after Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, tribal leaders of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians approached lobbyist Jack Abramoff with a problem. The tribe's Silver Star Hotel & Casino had barely opened and already legislation was moving forward in Congress calling for Indian casinos to be taxed in the same manner as Las Vegas gambling facilities.
Abramoff knew how to take care of the Choctaws. He convinced the House Republican leadership that it had violated a core principle of the new conservative majority: It had raised taxes. The legislation was scuttled.
With Indian gambling revenue now exceeding $16 billion annually, Abramoff's success saved the tribes hundreds of millions of dollars. Soon, he was representing half a dozen other Indian tribes, some paying his firm $2 million or more a year.
In less than a decade, Abramoff's ties to Republican congressional leaders and powerbrokers in the conservative movement catapulted him into the highest ranks of Washington lobbyists. By 2003, Abramoff's clients -- including the Business Roundtable, Atofina Chemicals, Humana, Primedia Inc. and tribal clients -- paid his law firm $11.57 million in fees, one of the highest such sums in Washington.
Paving the way for Abramoff's rise were his ties to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist and former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed.
Abramoff's success lay in his ability to portray clients as exemplars of successful free market competition under attack by overzealous Democrats. On behalf of Indian tribes and other clients, Abramoff convinced the GOP majority that Democrats were bent on regulating and taxing the entrepreneurial vitality out of the U.S. economy. In effect, he turned conservative orthodoxy into a cash spigot.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), said Abramoff convinced him that "it was the conservatives who would be the saviors of the Indians by providing an environment where they could be self-sufficient and run their own affairs instead of being like inner-city welfare recipients."
Now, however, the $66 million that Abramoff and his business partner, public affairs consultant Michael Scanlon, charged Indian tribes has become the focus of separate investigations by a federal grand jury and Congress. The controversy has produced disclosures embarrassing to some of Abramoff's political allies.
Already, the inquiries have revealed that Abramoff and Scanlon -- DeLay's former spokesman -- channeled money to Reed and Norquist's organizations. Reed has been forced to explain receipt of money channeled from casinos through Abramoff; Norquist, in turn, has denied that the payments he received drove the pro-tribe agenda of Americans for Tax Reform.
Abramoff declined to be interviewed for this story. In an e-mailed response to questions from The Washington Post, Abramoff spokesman Peter G. Mirijanian said: "The current controversy has temporarily prevented him from engaging in the activism which animated his life and gave him fulfillment, and this pains him greatly."
Ideologue to Lobbyist
The 1994 Republican takeover of the House and Senate was a crucial moment in Abramoff's transformation from a conservative ideologue into an influential lobbyist. He became a valuable commodity, a conservative K Street figure with direct access to the newly powerful right wing of the Republican Party.
Abramoff, 46, grew up in Margate, N.J., and moved in his early teens to Beverly Hills, where his father was president of the Diners Club credit-card franchises. At Beverly Hills High, Abramoff was an all-conference football lineman and regional weightlifting champion. He graduated from Brandeis University in 1980 and later received a law degree from Georgetown.
Abramoff came to Washington in 1981 after becoming chairman of the College Republicans. The organization has produced some of the party's top operatives: Karl Rove, now President Bush's chief political adviser, was elected chairman in 1973. Lee Atwater, who went on to manage George H.W. Bush's successful 1988 presidential bid, ran southern operations for the Rove campaign.
In 1981, Norquist became Abramoff's executive director at the College Republicans. Reed signed on as an intern and took over as executive director in 1983.
While at the College Republicans, Abramoff, Norquist and Reed quickly earned reputations as zealots. Abramoff wrote in the 1983 annual report: "It is not our job to seek peaceful coexistence with the Left. Our job is to remove them from power permanently." The group's recruits were required to memorize a speech that included the lines: "Democrats are the enemy. Wade into them! Spill their blood!"
Two years later, Abramoff and Norquist took over Citizens for America, a conservative advocacy group created by drugstore magnate Lewis Lehrman. After the two arranged a costly "summit meeting" of anti-communist leaders in Angola, Lehrman, according to media accounts, let Abramoff and Norquist go.
In 1986, Abramoff became chairman of the International Freedom Foundation, which was secretly financed with $1.5 million a year from the white South African government, according to sworn testimony to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Mirijanian said Abramoff denies receiving money from the South African government.
Between 1986 and 1994, Abramoff was president of Regency Entertainment Group, a company that financed ideologically conservative movies, including the 1989 film "Red Scorpion."
Abramoff took a job as a Washington lobbyist for the firm Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds in 1994. In its hiring announcement, the firm said that Abramoff "maintains strong ties to Speaker Newt Gingrich, Majority Leader Dick Armey, Majority Whip Tom Delay and [House] Republican Policy Committee Chairman Chris Cox and their staffs."
Using His GOP Ties
Those ties brought the Choctaws to Abramoff. To win their battle, Abramoff sought out DeLay. The two had become friends and allies in the course of Abramoff's work for conservative causes, and Abramoff had supported DeLay's bid to become whip. Abramoff also turned to Norquist.
Norquist formed a coalition of anti-tax organizations to oppose the tax on Indian casino gambling. The coalition lobbied lawmakers, wrote letters and called editorial writers. The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper, ran an editorial declaring that "Republicans should not be in the business of increasing anybody's taxes" and should "jettison the House tax on Indian gambling."
The Choctaw began contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to Americans for Tax Reform and similar groups. Norquist won't disclose how much, but Abramoff told the Wall Street Journal in 2000 that the Choctaw have given "several million dollars" to outside groups, and that Americans for Tax Reform was a leading recipient.
Abramoff convinced the House whip that not only did the proposal raise taxes, but also that Indian tribes could become Republican allies . Noting that some Indians were moving toward the GOP, DeLay said in 1995 that "people recognize that Jack Abramoff has been an important part of this transition."
Later, Abramoff brought in Reed, who was paid $4.2 million from 2001 to 2003 to mobilize Christians to oppose the plans of those threatening Abramoff's Indian gaming clients. In 2001, Abramoff left Preston Gates and joined the Miami-based law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP.
In 1995, Abramoff took on another major client, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, an American protectorate in the Pacific. Again, he capitalized on his ability to exploit conservative ideology.
The Marianas sought to retain exemptions from U.S. immigration and labor laws to import laborers from China at $3.05 an hour -- $2 under the federal minimum wage -- to make garments labeled "Made in the U.S.A." Abramoff portrayed the Marianas as a case study of the success of the free market unfettered by wage and immigration laws.
DeLay became Abramoff's strongest ally, leading the fight against Democratic efforts to impose wage, hour and immigration regulations on the protectorate. On a trip to the Marianas, DeLay told officials, according to media accounts:
"When one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff, your most able representative in Washington, D.C., invited me to the islands, I wanted to see firsthand the free-market success and the progress and reform you have made."
Now, however, DeLay and many of Abramoff's past friends and allies are keeping their distance. DeLay's staff has issued a statement in his name declaring that "if anybody is trading on my name to get clients or to make money, that is wrong and they should stop it immediately."
In an e-mail, Mirijanian said that Abramoff "hopes that eventually his actions will be seen in context and this difficult period will pass. When that happens, he will assess how he can best serve the causes and community he cherishes."
-------- propaganda wars
Abu Ghraib abuses tapped to theatre
Aljazeera
By Rana Husseini in Amman
Monday 08 November 2004,
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/4268F260-CD4F-49F2-A44C-44F1EB12B6CA.htm
As the trials and courts martial of US military personnel involved in the Abu Ghraib prison abuses get under way, the Arab world is finding new ways to grapple with the issue.
Arab media pundits took to criticising the US for what they saw as its double standards - on the one hand espousing democractic principles and, on the other hand, allowing torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prison inmates.
Live television talk shows were flooded with callers from the Arab world who expressed their outrage and shock at the Abu Ghraib abuses.
In Jordan, however, a theatre director decided to take the issue one step further.
Director Muhammad Shawaqfa, 47, wanted to capture the anger and frustration of the "Arab street" directed at the "biased US policy in the Middle East" and its "unjust war in Iraq".
His theatre production, A New Middle East, has resonated with Arab audiences because of its strong anti-interventionist and pro-Arab undertones.
One recurrent theme that he follows through from one scene to the next is the premise that things happen in the Middle East only if the US wills it.
Gripping scenes
"I wanted through this play, and especially the Abu Ghraib scene, to tell everyone, look, this is the democracy that the US is talking about in the Middle East," Shawaqfa told Aljazeera.net.
Writers also described it as a "sad and funny play at the same time because it reminded us of our miserable situation".
The play spares none of the graphic pains associated with Abu Ghraib prison.
The play highlights US policy in the Middle East
"I miss my dog back home," says Lynndie England as she holds a cigarette in one hand and drags an Iraqi detainee with a dog leash in the other.
Then she lets out a wild and menacing laugh, which rings through the halls of Abu Ghraib prison.
Audience members watching were gripped by the intensity and the depravity of the scene.
"This scene was very tough on me - to depict her [England] character because I am against torture and the killing of anyone," actress Suhair Fahd told Aljazeera.net speaking about the role she is playing at the Amoun Theatre in Amman, Jordan.
"I felt I needed to show the world the horrific abuses that were taking place at the prison and I studied England's character carefully and discovered that she was enjoying the abuse against Iraqi prisoners," Fahd added.
Torture and abuse
The play reveals the importance of the Abu Ghraib scandal to contemporary Arab society and may shed insight into growing anti-US feelings in the region.
Fahd's portrayal of England was particularly difficult, she says
Newspapers critics agree, saying the play, which started showing in July 2004 and is playing through the month of Ramadan, highlights the gap between the rich and the poor and blames "American democracy [for] causing this gap".
For example, an actor in the role of a US soldier is seen escorting an Iraqi prisoner with a plastic bag wrapped around his head. He pulls the plastic bag off his head, asks the prisoner to drink water, then kills him, laughing out loud.
The issue of human rights is a particularly sensitive one in the region. Play critic for Jordan's daily Al Rai newspaper Jamal Iyad believes the US passed laws and policies after 11 September 2001 which restricted human rights and some freedoms.
Arab defiance
Arab reaction to US influence in the region is personified in the character of Uncle Ghafil, played by Hussein Tubaishat, a popular veteran of Jordanian soap operas. In one of the scenes, he throws US dollar notes in the face of a US producer writing a screenplay which embraces "western objectives of destroying the Arab nation and its moral system".
"[The play] said a lot of the things that we were unable to say"
Amir Statiya, theatre patron
"Take your dollars because we will continue to fight and resist until the last drop of our blood," Uncle Ghafil yells at the producer. In a scene, which ostensibly shows the fate of those who speak out against US politics in the Middle East, it is the character of Uncle Ghafil who is now tortured and abused.
But in a line which plays well with Arab audiences, he declares he "does not fear anything any more".
Vox populi
Despite its controversial and somewhat macabre scenes, the play has become popular with Arab audiences.
The play has resonated well with the Arab street
Amir Statiya, 29, said he enjoyed the play because "it said a lot of the things that we were unable to say".
A 25-year-old mother who took her five-year-old said the play reflected the views of the Jordanian street, but was saddened in some parts "because it reminded us of the US and Israeli oppression".
"I wanted to tell the Jordanian audience that this is your future as the US wants it," Shawaqfa said.
The play continues its run until next spring.
-------- us politics
The E-Vote Factor: Kerry Conceded But Did He Really Lose?
democracynow.org
November 8th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/08/1513252
Serious questions are being raised about the use of electronic voting machines in the 2004 presidential election. In an Ohio county, Bush mistakenly received some 3,900 extra votes. We speak Johns Hopkins University professor Aviel Rubin and investigative reporter Bev Harris. [includes rush transcript] President Bush arrives back in Washington today after spending a 3-day weekend at Camp David. Since John Kerry conceded to Bush last Wednesday, the president and his advisers have talked extensively about what they call Bush's strong mandate to govern following the November 2 election. But as the rumor mill swirls about a reshuffling of Bush's cabinet and John Kerry returns to the Senate, there are many people who are not willing to simply move on from last Tuesday's election.
Many of John Kerry's supporters were stunned last Wednesday when their candidate conceded the presidency to Bush. Just hours earlier, his running mate John Edwards told a rally of their supporters in Boston that they would not stop until every vote was counted, a reference to the hundreds of thousands of provisional ballots in the key state of Ohio that some Democrats believed could have tipped the balance. But it's not just the provisional ballots.
Even though Kerry has stopped fighting for the presidency, serious questions abound about the use of electronic voting machines. Take this story: In a voting precinct in Ohio's Franklin County, records show that 638 people cast ballots. Yet, George W Bush got 4,258 votes to John Kerry's 260. In reality, Bush only received 365 votes. That means Bush got nearly 3,900 extra votes. And that's just in one small precinct. This in a state that Bush officially won by only 136,000 votes. Elections officials blamed electronic voting for the extra Bush votes.
Meanwhile, a number of Congresspeople are asking the General Accounting Office to investigate electronic voting and the 2004 election and the nonprofit group Blackbox Voting has begun the process of filing the largest Freedom of Information Act request in history.
- Bev Harris, investigative reporter and author of the book "Black Box Voting." She has announced plans to file the largest FOIA action in history by seeking the internal logs from voting machines from every county that used electronic voting machines.
- Aviel Rubin, professor at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of the report "Analysis of an Electronic Voting System" the initial study of security flaws in voting machine software. He served as an election judge in Baltimore County on November 2nd.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the woman behind that process, investigative reporter, Bev Harris. She is the author of the book, Black Box Voting. We also are joined by Professor Aviel Rubin who teaches at Johns Hopkins University and is co-author of the report, "Analysis of an Electronic Voting System," the initial study of security flaws in voting machine software. He served as an election judge in Baltimore county on November 2. Bev Harris, let's begin with you. What exactly -- what kind of information are you looking for now?
BEV HARRIS: Well, first, we're seeking internal audit logs of the machines, which are public record. There's nothing proprietary about this. It's interesting so far. We have been getting responses, but the officials who run the machines, the county officials, are really so clueless. They don't know what their machines' records are, or how to print them out. So we find ourselves guiding them through the menus on their own software to show them how to print this information out which is a bit scary. But we also sought documentation on all of the troubled slips in all of the documentation of any problems that they had. Right now, we're following up, you know, we have all of the anomalies such as the viewer mentioning, and we're following up with specific public records requests, for example, give me the internal log of machine number such and such of that precinct, or depending on the type of anomaly they're reporting, we are seeking the specific types of records that will shed more light on that.
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to go to a break and then come back to this discussion of the counting of the votes last Tuesday. This is Democracy Now!. We'll be back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, as we continue on the issue of the electronic voting machines and the overall count in the election. Our guest are Bev Harris, author of the book, Black Box Voting, has plans to file the largest Freedom of Information Act Request in history, by seeking the internal logs from voting machines of every county that used electronic voting machines, and Aviel Rubin, professor at Johns Hopkins University, who served as an elections judge in Baltimore county on November 2 and is co-author of the report, "Analysis of the Electronic Voting System." Professor Rubin, your assessment of what happened Tuesday.
AVIEL RUBIN: Well, I think that we have a problem now, which is that we have dug ourselves a big hole by running an election using systems that -- there's really no way to tell what's going on inside the voting machines. So, when -- I'd like to separate out all of the talk about the glitches and things not working from the idea that somebody, you know, security -- somebody may have rigged the machines or tampered with them. And I think the fact that we're using systems where it's impossible to tell is very scary. So, Bev talked about these problems that they're trying to uncover, and we have seen the news stories about problems, but what I worry about are the ones that may have happened that are totally undetectable. For example, it doesn't make bug news if a voting machine switches 5% of the votes from one candidate to another, because nobody ever knows it because we have a secret ballot in this country. I think it's very important that we move away from systems where nobody can really see what's going on inside at the time of the election. And there's no capability of doing a recount towards more verifiable, auditable systems, for example, if you had a voter verified paper ballot.
AMY GOODMAN: Why the opposition? You had the Election Monitoring Group, that the State Department brought in itself from the OSCE, the Organization of Security and Cooperation Europe. Some of their election monitors were saying that this is worse than the situation in Serbia, another one referring to the Venezuelan elections and saying, their electronic voting machines, people were given a ticket that they dropped in a box and randomly around the country, they can compare the paper trail in the boxes to the voting machines. Why is there such fierce opposition to having any paper trail, which means zero possibility of recount?
AVIEL RUBIN: I have always been very surprised that the people running elections are not jumping at the chance of having a way to recount the election. I think that, you know, the best thing would be to get one of those people on the show and ask them that question, because it doesn't make any sense it me. From the vendor's perspective, they would sell a more expensive, more feature-rich product if they could add photograph verifiable printout. I have been completely confused about why they're -- everybody is not embracing this concept.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you convinced, Professor Rubin, that President Bush won this election?
AVIEL RUBIN: I don't know. I think that as long as we use systems where you cannot really tell what's going on inside the machine -- you know, when I was an election judge, I watched people walk into the precinct, walk up to Diebold machines, vote, and walk out. And at the end of the day we printed results. And I was thinking if I had written that program that's running on those machines, I could have made any outcome that I wanted come out. So, you know, do I believe that Bush really won? Well, I don't know.
AMY GOODMAN: What about this letter, Bev Harris, that has been signed by three Congress members, including Florida Congress member Robert Wexler, John Conyers, and Gerald Nadler. Can you talk about it? We have hardly seen any reference to it.
BEV HARRIS: Well, you know, the concern I have is, we have got to go after this from all fronts. I haven't seen any reference to it in the media. I have also been told from sources that I have inside the media that are fairly high up that particularly in TV, there's been -- there is now a lockdown on this story. It is officially and from an executive producer level, let's move on time. And I am very concerned about that, because it looks like we're going to have to go to places like BBC, to get the real story out. I find it amazing that we went ahead with an election without even auditing it. You are never going to find the problems with the machines that you can quantify until you at least do the basic canvassing that's in the current election procedures, such as, comparing how many people showed up to vote with how many signatures are in this poll book with how many votes show up in the machines. They haven't even done that. And to make it even worse, Ohio, they don't even know how many provisional ballots there are. They don't know if there's 150,000 or 500,000. They don't seem to be able to tell us what records they have. This is amazing, and I knew this was going to happen. They set up this thing. They said we're going to have provisional ballots nationwide. They didn't set up any auditing for them. And so, in case after case, we're not able to account for those ballots. We ought to know, because they're cast at the precinct. We ought to know how many provision ballots we have on election night. Why wouldn't we if we have proper book keeping?
AMY GOODMAN: There's been serious questions raised about New Mexico, but does it hurt trying to find out the ultimate counts that John Kerry and John Edwards so immediately conceded, despite the fact that Edwards had said as they promised during the campaigns, making references to Al Gore squelching protests four years ago, that they would make sure that the votes were counted?
BEV HARRIS: Oh yes, they conceded very prematurely. As I was saying in Ohio, they don't even know if they won or lost in Ohio, really. They are basing this on, I think, a verbal okay from someone in the Secretary of State's office that said, that they were being assured there was only 150,000 provisional ballots. Well I said, where is the source data on that? What auditing do they have on those? They couldn't tell me. You see, I don't understand how you would concede anyway without even beginning the canvassing, because with these voting machines, we don't have adequate auditing in place, but we have some. The full auditing we have does -- it does find some anomalies that are quite big and sometimes they flip elections. So, you know, why not just wait a couple of days. The other thing I'm seeing is that in some parts the media gave a huge push to hurry, hurry, hurry, certify. This was happening in New Mexico. They're saying -- they're putting tremendous pressure on Governor Bill Richardson to hurry and certify the election. Well why? You have x-number of days to certify the election. One would think you would want it to be right, and you'd think would you want to go through and you want to check out the information. And understand, a lot of this is already election procedures. We keep saying that election procedures are what really save us from the insecure and mysterious machines, and that the election procedures would catch anomalies. Understand, that they have not done the election procedures yet in most cases. They have chosen to go ahead and call elections without doing the very procedures that they say protect the system.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us, Bev Harris, who is filing the largest Freedom of Information Act request in the history of the act, and Professor Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University.
AVIEL RUBIN: Thanks a lot.
AMY GOODMAN: Thank you.
--------
Worse Than 2000: Tuesday's Electoral Disaster
By William Rivers Pitt
truthout | Report
Monday 08 November 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110804A.shtml
Everyone remembers Florida's 2000 election debacle, and all of the new terms it introduced to our political lexicon: Hanging chads, dimpled chads, pregnant chads, overvotes, undervotes, Sore Losermans, Jews for Buchanan and so forth. It took several weeks, battalions of lawyers and a questionable decision from the U.S. Supreme Court to show the nation and the world how messy democracy can be. By any standard, what happened in Florida during the 2000 Presidential election was a disaster.
What happened during the Presidential election of 2004, in Florida, in Ohio, and in a number of other states as well, was worse.
Some of the problems with this past Tuesday's election will sound all too familiar. Despite having four years to look into and deal with the problems that cropped up in Florida in 2000, the 'spoiled vote' chad issue reared its ugly head again. Investigative journalist Greg Palast, the man almost singularly responsible for exposing the more egregious examples of illegitimate deletions of voters from the rolls, described the continued problems in an article published just before the election, and again in an article published just after the election.
Four years later, and none of the Florida problems were fixed. In fact, by all appearances, they spread from Florida to Ohio, New Mexico, Michigan and elsewhere. Worse, these problems only scratch the surface of what appears to have happened in Tuesday's election. The fix that was put in place to solve these problems - the Help America Vote Act passed in 2002 after the Florida debacle - appears to have gone a long way towards making things worse by orders of magnitude, for it was the Help America Vote Act which introduced paperless electronic touch-screen voting machines to millions of voters across the country.
At first blush, it seems like a good idea. Forget the chads, the punch cards, the archaic booths like pianos standing on end with the handles and the curtains. This is the 21st century, so let's do it with computers. A simple screen presents straightforward choices, and you touch the spot on the screen to vote for your candidate. Your vote is recorded by the machine, and then sent via modem to a central computer which tallies the votes. Simple, right?
Not quite.
A Diebold voting machine.
Is there any evidence that these machines went haywire on Tuesday? Nationally, there were more than 1,100 reports of electronic voting machine malfunctions. A few examples:
- In Broward County, Florida, election workers were shocked to discover that their shiny new machines were counting backwards. "Tallies should go up as more votes are counted," according to this report. "That's simple math. But in some races, the numbers had gone down. Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward."
- In Franklin County, Ohio, electronic voting machines gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in one precinct alone. "Franklin County's unofficial results gave Bush 4,258 votes to Democratic challenger John Kerry's 260 votes in Precinct 1B," according to this report. "Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, said Bush received 365 votes there. The other 13 voters who cast ballots either voted for other candidates or did not vote for president."
- In Craven County, North Carolina, a software error on the electronic voting machines awarded Bush 11,283 extra votes. "The Elections Systems and Software equipment," according to this report, "had downloaded voting information from nine of the county's 26 precincts and as the absentee ballots were added, the precinct totals were added a second time. An override, like those occurring when one attempts to save a computer file that already exists, is supposed to prevent double counting, but did not function correctly."
- In Carteret County, North Carolina, "More than 4,500 votes may be lost in one North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Local officials said UniLect Corp., the maker of the county's electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes. Officials said 3,005 early votes were stored, but 4,530 were lost."
- In LaPorte County, Indiana, a Democratic stronghold, the electronic voting machines decided that each precinct only had 300 voters. "At about 7 p.m. Tuesday," according to this report, "it was noticed that the first two or three printouts from individual precinct reports all listed an identical number of voters. Each precinct was listed as having 300 registered voters. That means the total number of voters for the county would be 22,200, although there are actually more than 79,000 registered voters."
- In Sarpy County, Nebraska, the electronic touch screen machines got generous. "As many as 10,000 extra votes," according to this report, "have been tallied and candidates are still waiting for corrected totals. Johnny Boykin lost his bid to be on the Papillion City Council. The difference between victory and defeat in the race was 127 votes. Boykin says, 'When I went in to work the next day and saw that 3,342 people had shown up to vote in our ward, I thought something's not right.' He's right. There are not even 3,000 people registered to vote in his ward. For some reason, some votes were counted twice."
Stories like this have been popping up in many of the states that put these touch-screen voting machines to use. Beyond these reports are the folks who attempted to vote for one candidate and saw the machine give their vote to the other candidate. Sometimes, the flawed machines were taken off-line, and sometimes they were not. As for the reports above, the mistakes described were caught and corrected. How many mistakes made by these machines were not caught, were not corrected, and have now become part of the record?
The flaws within these machines are well documented. Professors and researchers from Johns Hopkins performed a detailed analysis of these electronic voting machines in May of 2004. In their results, the Johns Hopkins researchers stated, "This voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We identify several problems including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. We show that voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal software."
"Furthermore," they continued, "we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered and executed without access to the source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable, showing that not only can an insider, such as a poll worker, modify the votes, but that insiders can also violate voter privacy and match votes with the voters who cast them. We conclude that this voting system is unsuitable for use in a general election."
Many of these machines do not provide the voter with a paper ballot that verifies their vote. So if an error - or purposefully inserted malicious code - in the untested machine causes their vote to go for the other guy, they have no way to verify that it happened. The lack of a paper ballot also means the end of recounts as we have known them; now, on these new machines, a recount amounts to pushing a button on the machine and getting a number in return, but without those paper ballots to do a comparison, there is no way to verify the validity of that count.
Worst of all is the fact that all the votes collected by these machines are sent via modem to a central tabulating computer which counts the votes on Windows software. This means, essentially, that any gomer with access to the central tabulation machine who knows how to work an Excel spreadsheet can go into this central computer and make wholesale changes to election totals without anyone being the wiser.
Bev Harris, who has been working tirelessly since the passage of the Help America Vote Act to inform people of the dangers present in this new process, got a chance to demonstrate how easy it is to steal an election on that central tabulation computer while a guest on the CNBC program 'Topic A With Tina Brown.' Ms. Brown was off that night, and the guest host was none other than Governor Howard Dean. Thanks to Governor Dean and Ms. Harris, anyone watching CNBC that night got to see just how easy it is to steal an election because of these new machines and the flawed processes they use.
"In a voting system," Harris said on the show, "you have all the different voting machines at all the different polling places, sometimes, as in a county like mine, there's a thousand polling places in a single county. All those machines feed into the one machine so it can add up all the votes. So, of course, if you were going to do something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it be more convenient to do it to each of the 4000 machines, or just come in here and deal with all of them at once? What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer."
Harris then proceeded to open a laptop computer that had on it the software used to tabulate the votes by one of the aforementioned central processors. Journalist Thom Hartman describes what happened next: "So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS tabulation software, go back to the normal Windows PC desktop, click on the 'My Computer' icon, choose 'Local Disk C:,' open the folder titled GEMS, and open the sub-folder 'LocalDB' which, Harris noted, 'stands for local database, that's where they keep the votes.' Harris then had Dean double-click on a file in that folder titled Central Tabulator Votes,' which caused the PC to open the vote count in a database program like Excel. 'Let's just flip those,' Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, 'We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds.'"
Any system that makes it this easy to steal or corrupt an election has no business being anywhere near the voters on election day.
The counter-argument to this states that people with nefarious intent, people with a partisan stake in the outcome of an election, would have to have access to the central tabulation computers in order to do harm to the process. Keep the partisans away from the process, and everything will work out fine. Surely no partisan political types were near these machines on Tuesday night when the votes were counted, right?
One of the main manufacturers of these electronic touch-screen voting machines is Diebold, Inc. More than 35 counties in Ohio alone used the Diebold machines on Tuesday, and millions of voters across the country did the same. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Diebold gave $100,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2000, along with additional contributions between 2001 and 2002 which totaled $95,000. Of the four companies competing for the contracts to manufacture these voting machines, only Diebold contributed large sums to any political party. The CEO of Diebold is a man named Walden O'Dell. O'Dell was very much on board with the Bush campaign, having said publicly in 2003 that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
So much for keeping the partisans at arm's length.
Is there any evidence that vote totals were deliberately tampered with by people who had a stake in the outcome? Nothing specific has been documented to date. Jeff Fisher, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District, claims to have evidence that the Florida election was hacked, and says further that he knows who hacked it and how it was done. Such evidence is not yet forthcoming.
There are, however, some disturbing and compelling trends that indicate things are not as they should be. This chart displays a breakdown of counties in Florida. It lists the voters in each county by party affiliation, and compares expected vote totals to the reported results. It also separates the results into two sections, one for 'touch-screen' counties and the other for optical scan counties.
Over and over in these counties, the results, based upon party registration, did not come close to matching expectations. It can be argued, and has been argued, that such results indicate nothing more or less than a President getting cross-over voters, as well as late-breaking undecided voters, to come over to his side. These are Southern Democrats, and the numbers from previous elections show that many have often voted Republican. Yet the news wires have been inundated for well over a year with stories about how stridently united Democratic voters were behind the idea of removing Bush from office. It is worth wondering why that unity did not permeate these Democratic voting districts. If that unity was there, it is worth asking why the election results in these counties do not reflect this.
Most disturbing of all is the reality that these questionable Diebold voting machines are not isolated to Florida. This list documents, as of March 2003, all of the counties in all of the 37 states where Diebold machines were used to count votes. The document is 28 pages long. That is a lot of counties, and a lot of votes, left in the hands of machines that have a questionable track record, that send their vote totals to central computers which make it far too easy to change election results, that were manufactured by a company with a personal, financial, and publicly stated stake in George W. Bush holding on to the White House.
This map indicates where different voting devices were used nationally. The areas where electronic voting machines were used is marked in blue. A poster named 'TruthIsAll' on the DemocraticUnderground.com forums laid out the questionable results of Tuesday's election in succinct fashion: "To believe that Bush won the election, you must also believe: That the exit polls were wrong; that Zogby's 5pm election day calls for Kerry winning Ohio and Florida were wrong (he was exactly right in his 2000 final poll); that Harris' last-minute polling for Kerry was wrong (he was exactly right in his 2000 final poll); that incumbent rule #1 - undecideds break for the challenger - was wrong; That the 50% rule - an incumbent doesn't do better than his final polling - was wrong; That the approval rating rule - an incumbent with less than 50% approval will most likely lose the election - was wrong; that it was just a coincidence that the exit polls were correct where there was a paper trail and incorrect (+5% for Bush) where there was no paper trail; that the surge in new young voters had no positive effect for Kerry; that Kerry did worse than Gore against an opponent who lost the support of scores of Republican newspapers who were for Bush in 2000; that voting machines made by Republicans with no paper trail and with no software publication, which have been proven by thousands of computer scientists to be vulnerable in scores of ways, were not tampered with in this election."
In short, we have old-style vote spoilage in minority communities. We have electronic voting machines losing votes and adding votes all across the country. We have electronic voting machines whose efficiency and safety have not been tested. We have electronic voting machines that offer no paper trail to ensure a fair outcome. We have central tabulators for these machines running on Windows software, compiling results that can be demonstrably tampered with. We have the makers of these machines publicly professing their preference for George W. Bush. We have voter trends that stray from the expected results. We have these machines counting millions of votes all across the country.
Perhaps this can all be dismissed. Perhaps rants like the one posted by 'TruthIsAll' are nothing more than sour grapes from the side that lost. Perhaps all of the glitches, wrecked votes, unprecedented voting trends and partisan voting-machine connections can be explained away. If so, this reporter would very much like to see those explanations. At a bare minimum, the fact that these questions exist at all represents a grievous undermining of the basic confidence in the process required to make this democracy work. Democracy should not ever require leaps of faith, and we have put the fate of our nation into the hands of machines that require such a leap. It is unacceptable across the board, and calls into serious question not only the election we just had, but any future election involving these machines.
Representatives John Conyers, Jerrold Nadler and Robert Wexler, all members of the House Judiciary Committee, posted a letter on November 5th to David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States. In the letter, they asked for an investigation into the efficacy of these electronic voting machines. The letter reads as follows:
November 5, 2004
The Honorable David M. Walker Comptroller General of the United States U.S. General Accountability Office 441 G Street, NW Washington, DC 20548
Dear Mr. Walker:
We write with an urgent request that the Government Accountability Office immediately undertake an investigation of the efficacy of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election, how election officials responded to difficulties they encountered and what we can do in the future to improve our election systems and administration.
In particular, we are extremely troubled by the following reports, which we would also request that you review and evaluate for us:
In Columbus, Ohio, an electronic voting system gave President Bush nearly 4,000 extra votes. ("Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes," Associated Press, November 5)
An electronic tally of a South Florida gambling ballot initiative failed to record thousands of votes. "South Florida OKs Slot Machines Proposal," (Id.)
In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots could hold more data that it did. "Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes," (Id.)
In San Francisco, a glitch occurred with voting machines software that resulted in some votes being left uncounted. (Id.)
In Florida, there was a substantial drop off in Democratic votes in proportion to voter registration in counties utilizing optical scan machines that was apparently not present in counties using other mechanisms.
The House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff has received numerous reports from Youngstown, Ohio that voters who attempted to cast a vote for John Kerry on electronic voting machines saw that their votes were instead recorded as votes for George W. Bush. In South Florida, Congressman Wexler's staff received numerous reports from voters in Palm Beach, Broward and Dade Counties that they attempted to select John Kerry but George Bush appeared on the screen. CNN has reported that a dozen voters in six states, particularly Democrats in Florida, reported similar problems. This was among over one thousand such problems reported. ("Touchscreen Voting Problems Reported," Associated Press, November 5)
Excessively long lines were a frequent problem throughout the nation in Democratic precincts, particularly in Florida and Ohio. In one Ohio voting precinct serving students from Kenyon College, some voters were required to wait more than eight hours to vote. ("All Eyes on Ohio," Dan Lothian, CNN, November 3)
We are literally receiving additional reports every minute and will transmit additional information as it comes available. The essence of democracy is the confidence of the electorate in the accuracy of voting methods and the fairness of voting procedures. In 2000, that confidence suffered terribly, and we fear that such a blow to our democracy may have occurred in 2004.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this inquiry.
Sincerely,
John Conyers, Jr., Jerrold Nadler, Robert Wexler
Ranking Member, Ranking Member, Member of Congress House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution
cc: Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner, Chairman
"The essence of democracy," wrote the Congressmen, "is the confidence of the electorate in the accuracy of voting methods and the fairness of voting procedures. In 2000, that confidence suffered terribly, and we fear that such a blow to our democracy may have occurred in 2004." Those fears appear to be valid.
John Kerry and John Edwards promised on Tuesday night that every vote would count, and that every vote would be counted. By Wednesday morning, Kerry had conceded the race to Bush, eliciting outraged howls from activists who were watching the reports of voting irregularities come piling in. Kerry had said that 10,000 lawyers were ready to fight any wrongdoing in this election. One hopes that he still has those lawyers on retainer.
According to black-letter election law, Bush does not officially get a second term until the electors from the Electoral College go to Washington D.C on December 12th. Perhaps Kerry's 10,000 lawyers, along with a real investigation per the request of Conyers, Nadler and Wexler, could give those electors something to think about in the interim.
In the meantime, soon-to-be-unemployed DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe sent out an email on Saturday night titled 'Help determine the Democratic Party's next steps.' In the email, McAuliffe states, "If you were involved in these grassroots activities, we want to hear from you about your experience. What did you do? Did you feel the action you took was effective? Was it a good experience for you? How would you make it better? Tell us your thoughts." He provided a feedback form where such thoughts can be sent.
Use the form. Give Terry your thoughts on the matter. Ask him if those 10,000 lawyers are still available. It seems the validity of Tuesday's election remains a wide-open question.
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'
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Furor Continues Over Specter Comments on Nominees
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 8, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32630-2004Nov7.html
Several influential conservative Republicans indicated yesterday that Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who is in line to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee next year, has not succeeded in tamping down the furor he created last week when he appeared to warn President Bush not to select Supreme Court nominees who oppose abortion rights.
Senator-elect John Thune (R-S.D.), who defeated Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D) in a race that turned in part on stalled judicial nominations, said newly elected members of the GOP's 55-member majority will raise questions with Senate leaders this week about Specter's elevation.
Thune said he was "troubled" by Specter's statements and vowed "there will be some questions asked by those of us who are coming in as freshmen who ran our campaigns built around that very central theme that we need to have good judges on the bench." Thune made the comments in an interview on ABC's "This Week."
Specter's comments were also derided by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and, most forcefully, by James Dobson, who has been credited with helping to mobilize the vote for Bush as head of the Christian group Focus on the Family.
Specter "is a problem, and he must be derailed," Dobson said on "This Week." Senate offices were swamped with calls about Specter late last week, and the uproar is "not going to go away," Dobson said. "Republican senators know they've got a problem."
Specter himself spent another day trying to explain that his statements Wednesday were not intended as a "warning" to Bush about judicial nominees. Instead, he told CBS's "Face the Nation," he was merely recognizing "a political fact" that candidates who oppose abortion rights are likely to be defeated because the GOP does not have the 60 votes needed to break a Democratic filibuster, despite Republican election gains.
Specter, the only pro-choice Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said Friday that that does not mean he would apply an abortion "litmus test" to nominees, and he noted that he supported the nominations of Justice Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, both thought to favor narrowing abortion rights. Rehnquist's recent diagnosis of thyroid cancer has raised expectations that there might be a high court nomination soon, the first of Bush's tenure.
Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser and architect of his election victory, declined to say yesterday whether Specter should chair the Judiciary Committee, calling it an internal Senate matter. But he said the White House was reassured by Specter's most recent comments.
"I saw his later statement where he said he was not applying a litmus test and that he upheld his commitment to the president -- that if he were to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee there would be quick hearings . . . and the appellate nominees would be brought to the floor for an up-or-down vote of the entire Senate," Rove said on NBC's "Meet the Press," adding, "Senator Specter's a man of his word. We'll take him at his word."
Specter's controversial comments came after he narrowly won election to a fifth term, surviving a tough primary challenge with the aid of campaign appearances on his behalf by Bush. After his victory, news reports said he seemed to warn Bush against nominating anyone who would oppose abortion rights.
"When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely," Specter said. "The president is well aware of what happened when a bunch of his nominees were sent up with the filibuster."
Specter is in line to succeed Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), whose term as chairman has expired.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Utah Town Nation's First Green Power Community
November 8, 2004
MOAB, Utah, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2004/2004-11-08-09.asp#anchor4
More than music was onstage Saturday at the annual Moab Folk Festival at the ball field in this Utah town. A community of four towns, population about 9,000, was recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as the nation's first Green Power Community.
In August, the City of Moab, Castle Valley, Pack Creek Ranch, and Spanish Valley, Utah became the first community in the nation to meet and exceed the EPA Green Power Partnership's minimum benchmark for green power usage with voluntary purchases.
Moab was officially recognized by the EPA's Green Power Partnership at the Annual Moab Folk Festival. Matt Clouse, director of the EPA's Green Power Partnership, presented the Mayor of the City of Moab and the Mayor of Castle Valley with the award.
"We are honored and excited to be first in the nation as a green power community,"said Moab Mayor David Sakrison. "This designation clearly symbolizes our community's commitment to both the development of renewable energy technologies and protecting our environment."
The green power campaign in the Greater Moab Area was led by the Moab Green Power Steering Committee, which is made up of citizens, business leaders, and public officials and was aided by Utah Clean Energy and Utah Power.
Green power is electricity generated from renewable energy sources.The Moab Area Community is purchasing green power generated from wind power.
By having four percent of the Moab Area Community's electricity offset by green power, the EPA estimates the environmental benefit is equivalent to avoiding the generation of four million pounds of carbon dioxide or planting roughly 750 acres of trees.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Seaweed May Have Future Use As Cleaner of DDT-Polluted Soil
By Cheryl Lyn Dybas
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, November 8, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32728-2004Nov7.html
Seaweed: You find it in chocolate milk, ice cream and sherbet. Mayonnaise, cheese and instant pudding. Latex and cosmetics. Sushi and fertilizers. Now seaweed may have another use: cleaning up soil polluted by the pesticide DDT.
Ian Singleton of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in England and Ravi Naidu of the University of South Australia experimented with a concoction of powdered green and red seaweed mixed into DDT-contaminated soil. They found that 80 percent of the toxic chemical disappeared within six weeks. The reason, Singleton and Naidu discovered, is that small amounts of seaweed facilitate the breakdown of DDT by microbes that live in soil.
The polluted soil was from a stockpile at the Southern Waste Depot in Maslins, South Australia, that had come originally from an orchard. The seaweed came from Glenelg Beach, a popular strand where Naidu often walks.
The shoreline there is covered with so much washed-up seaweed that the local government is reviewing plans to remove tons of green and red wrack that drift ashore with the tides, Naidu said.
"It was a eureka moment," he said, "when one morning I stood ankle-deep in seaweed and realized here's a substance that's got the right combination of elements" to work in DDT bioremediation -- cleaning up pollutants by biological means.
"Some of the best discoveries indeed are found by serendipity," said microbiologist Peter Adriaens of the University of Michigan. "DDT tends to be found in huge contamination sites, acres and acres in size. This research on seaweed could be scaled up at low cost, and it would be much easier to do than other technologies that have been tried."
Soil contaminated with DDT is a major worldwide problem, Naidu said, because concentrations of the banned pesticide continue to build up in the environment for years after its use. "DDT's toxicity, and bioaccumulation and biomagnification along the food chain cause damage to ecological systems and threaten human health."
Once called "the miracle insecticide," DDT came into widespread agricultural and commercial use in the late 1940s. In 1948, Switzerland's Paul Hermann Mueller was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for developing it. During the 30 years it was widely applied in the United States, more than 675,000 tons were sprayed onto cotton and other crops. The peak year was 1958, when nearly 80 million pounds of DDT blanketed American farmlands.
The picture changed in 1962 with Rachel Carson's best-selling book, "Silent Spring." Her portrait of a world where no birds sang made the public aware of the perils of DDT. Over the next decade, research confirmed that DDT was responsible for thinning the eggshells of birds and killing many. Numbers of eagles, hawks and other birds plummeted. Carson's book also raised questions about DDT's harmful effects on people. Scientists later confirmed a link between DDT and human ills such as cancer, infertility and various nervous system disorders. In 1972, the pesticide was outlawed in the United States.
In 2001, DDT was banned internationally under the United Nations' Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, but about 25 countries including South Africa still use it. The pesticide is essential, say officials in these nations, to fight rampant malaria.
DDT kills mosquitoes; malaria is transmitted to humans via mosquito bites. According to U.N. estimates, malaria kills one child every 30 seconds and more than a million people each year. "Half of the world's population lives in the 103 countries where the whine of a mosquito can herald sickness and death," Pascoal Mocumbi, former prime minister of Mozambique, wrote in an editorial in the journal Nature. African countries are pushing for development of less toxic pesticides and more effective drugs to combat malaria, but, in the meantime, they say they cannot afford to give up DDT.
That dismays biochemical engineer and DDT expert Malcolm Sumner, retired from the University of Georgia, who believes "one can't condone the use of DDT in today's world. We now know that it takes decades for it to disappear. South Africa, for example, has been bombarded over and over again with DDT since just after World War II. This very persistent pesticide has become part of the landscape in soils there, by the tons."
He called Naidu's and Singleton's work "a breakthrough: the development of a concept that could work on a large scale to accelerate the natural breakdown of DDT."
Although there has been no new use of DDT in the United States for more than 30 years, American soils still bear witness to its use, especially in formerly heavily treated areas, such as those along Georgia's Savannah River.
It is as though soil is sealed in an impenetrable box, says Naidu, who, along with Singleton and others, reported the research results in the April 2004 issue of the Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology: "DDT gets into this 'box,' so the microbes that would normally break it down can't get at it. Seaweed has sodium in it. Sodium opens that box. It separates the tightly bound matrix that holds soil particles together and allows microbes to get in."
Seaweed is also a source of carbon, Singleton said, that stimulates the microbes' growth. "With millions of microbes living in every square foot of soil, they play a major role in the fate of DDT in the environment," he said. With the addition of seaweed, "the pesticide degrades much faster than its usual long process."
The initial breakdown of DDT depends on microbes that function best without oxygen. The scientists wet the soil to encourage these "anaerobic" microbes, Naidu said. "They're very particular about their working conditions." In fact, too much seaweed added to the soil hindered the bacteria's efforts. "When a lot is used," Naidu said, "the excess carbon and sodium get in the way of the process."
By trying varying amounts of seaweed, "we were able to find the right ratio of seaweed to soil to break down the most DDT," Naidu said. "Exactly 0.5 percent."
Now that they have found the magic number, Naidu and Singleton are ready to test their results on large samples of DDT-contaminated soil.
"We'd like to do another pilot run, but this time on five or 10 tons of soil," Singleton said. "If we can enlist the aid of seaweed to clean up a site the size of a football field, for example, we'll have taken a major leap forward in dealing with the world's DDT problem."
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Rapid Arctic Warming Brings Sea Level Rise, Extinctions
November 8, 2004
REYKJAVIK, Iceland, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2004/2004-11-08-02.asp
The Arctic is warming quickly, at nearly twice the rate as the rest of the planet, an international team of 300 scientists has determined. Increasing greenhouse gases from human activities are projected to make it even warmer, according to the four year scientific study of the region, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.
At least half the summer sea ice in the Arctic is projected to melt by the end of this century, along with a portion of the Greenland Ice Sheet, as the region is projected to warm an additional 4 to 7 degrees Celsius (7 to 13 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.
Much larger changes are projected that will have major impacts worldwide - global sea levels will rise and global warming will intensify, warns the final report of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA).
A researcher observes the edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet in 2001. (Photo courtesy Ted Scambos, National Snow and Ice Data Center) The assessment is the result of a collaboration by the scientists of eight Arctic countries and six Indigenous Peoples organizations.
In Alaska, Western Canada, and Eastern Russia, average winter temperatures have increased as much as 3 to 4 degrees C (4 to 7 degrees F) in the past 50 years, the scientists say.
Over the long term, Greenland contains enough melt water to eventually raise sea level by about seven meters (about 23 feet), the assessment projects. Many coastal towns and facilities around the Arctic face increasing risks from erosion and flooding due to rising sea levels, decreased sea ice, and thawing coastal permafrost.
Globally, more than 17 million people live less than one meter (39 inches)above sea level in Bangladesh, while places like Bangkok, Calcutta, Dhaka and Manila, and Florida, Louisiana and New Jersey in the United States, are also at risk from rising sea levels.
Over the next 100 years, climate change is expected to accelerate, contributing to major physical, ecological, social, and economic changes, and the Assessment has documented that many of these changes have already begun.
"The impacts of global warming are affecting people now in the Arctic," says Robert Corell, chair of the ACIA. "The Arctic is experiencing some of the most rapid and severe climate change on Earth. The impacts of climate change on the region and the globe are projected to increase substantially in the years to come."
Arctic summer sea ice is projected to decline by at least 50 percent by the end of this century, and some climate models show nearly complete disappearance of summer sea ice.
This is very likely to have devastating consequences for some Arctic animal species such as ice-living seals and for local people for whom these animals are a primary food source. At the same time, reduced sea ice extent is likely to increase marine access to some of the region's resources.
If the Arctic Ocean becomes ice-free in summer, it is likely that polar bears and some seal species would be driven toward extinction, the scientists said.
"Clearly, the assessment is signaling an urgent SOS for the Arctic, but the speed and extent of global warming's damage depends on us," said Katherine Silverthorne, director of WWF's U.S. Climate Change Program.
"If we limit our emissions of heat- trapping carbon dioxide now by increasing energy efficiency and using clean energy technologies like wind and solar power, we can still help protect the Arctic and slow global warming," she said.
Forest fires, insect infestations, and other disturbances are projected to increase in frquency and intensity in a warming climate, the ACIA report said, and climate change will cause vegetation shifts.
These changes in vegetation, along with rising sea levels, are projected to shrink the tundra area to its lowest extent in "at least the past 21,000 years," the assessment found. The breeding area for birds and grazing area for animals will be so much smaller that threatened species will become extinct and even species that are numerous today will "decline sharply," the scientists project.
The assessment was commissioned by the Arctic Council - a ministerial intergovernmental forum comprised of the eight Arctic countries and six Indigenous Peoples organizations - and the International Arctic Science Committee - an international scientific organization appointed by 18 national academies of science.
The assessment's findings and projections were released today and will be presented in detail at a four day scientific symposium in Reykjavik that opens Tuesday, the ACIA International Scientific Symposium.
The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment was formally initiated in 2000 at the Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council at Point Barrow, Alaska as a joint project implemented by the Arctic Council's Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) and Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) Working Groups, and the International Arctic Science Committee.
As specified in the Barrow Declaration, the goal of the assessment is to "evaluate and synthesize knowledge on climate variability and change and increased ultraviolet radiation, and support policymaking processes and the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
The Arctic Council, made up of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden, and the United States, directed ACIA to address "environmental, human health, social, cultural, and economic impacts and consequences, including policy recommendations."
The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment Secretariat is located at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Funding for the Secretariat is provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says the report comes at a time of increasing pressure on the administration of President George W. Bush to enact U.S. emissions reductions. During election week, the Queen of England privately pressured UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to press the U.S. on global warming policy, and she opened a climate change summit of senior government officials from the UK and Germany to discuss the problem, the NRDC says.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the Kyoto Protocol last, bringing the accord into effect worldwide 90 days after the United Nations is notified of the ratification
"President Bush needs to change his approach to global warming in light of the damage already being seen in the Arctic," said Dr. Daniel Lashof, science cirector of the NRDC Climate Center.
"It is now clear we have to cut the pollution that causes global warming to prevent dangerous changes in the climate. The purely voluntary approach taken in the President's first term will leave the nation and the world in great danger from the threat of global warming."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Train Kills French Nuclear Protester
November 8, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/international/europe/08france.html?pagewanted=all
NANCY, France, Nov. 7 - A French antinuclear protester was killed Sunday in eastern France when his leg was severed by a train carrying radioactive waste to Germany, a police official said.
The incident was not far from where two other antinuclear protesters had chained themselves to the tracks near here, briefly delaying the train, rail officials said.
Paramedics quickly treated the protester after he was struck by the train near Avricourt, but he died en route to a nearby hospital, the police official said on condition of anonymity. The official said at least one other protester had been injured.
An early investigation indicated that the protester, Sebastien Briat, 21, from the nearby Meuse region, died from injuries sustained when he and other protesters were surprised by the train as they prepared to chain themselves to the rails, police officials said.
The train's driver braked suddenly but did not avoid hitting the protester, the officials said.
About 12 miles up the rails in Laneuveville-devant-Nancy, the police intervened to cut the chains that two protesters from the group Sortir du Nucléaire, or Out of Nuclear, had used to secure themselves to the tracks, said officials from the French railway authority, S.N.C.F.
The train was delayed for about two hours, before continuing its route to a rail terminal in Danneberg, Germany, from a reprocessing plant in western France. It was carrying 12 containers of nuclear waste destined for a storage site in Gorleben, Germany.
At least 4,500 people demonstrated Saturday at the radioactive waste way station in Gorleben, part of regular protests prompted by concerns about the safety of the nuclear material. Spent fuel from Germany's nuclear power plants is sent to France and Britain for reprocessing under contracts that oblige Germany to take back the waste.
Some previous shipments of radioactive waste to Gorleben have drawn thousands of protesters. The demonstrations have faded, however, since the German government embarked on a plan last year to phase out nuclear power and close its remaining 18 nuclear power plants by about 2020.
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A Hidden Story Behind Sept. 11? One Man's Ad Campaign Says So
November 8, 2004
By IAN URBINA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/nyregion/08ads.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 - The grainy 30-second commercials are eerie and cryptic, and they suggest a government cover-up of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. One implies that no plane flew into the Pentagon. The other suggests that 7 World Trade Center, which collapsed late in the afternoon that day, was detonated from within.
The advertisements, which ran repeatedly here and in New York between Oct. 20 and Nov. 2 on several cable networks, including CNN, Fox News and ESPN, offer a Web site, an address and a phone number but give little indication who is behind them.
The ads are the latest salvo from James W. Walter, a millionaire from Santa Barbara, Calif., who over the years has financed programs promoting voter registration in low-income neighborhoods and prison reform. Recently he has taken a growing interest in the investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks. The television commercials, as well as ads in magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Daily News, are part of a $3 million national campaign paid for by Mr. Walter in an effort to press for the reopening of the investigation by the independent Sept. 11 commission.
"It just isn't possible that 19 screw-ups with box cutters pulled this whole thing off," Mr. Walter said in a telephone interview Friday as he traveled from Florida to California by train. He has traveled by train since Sept. 11, 2001, he said, because he has been too scared to fly.
"We've never gotten solid answers on why Tower 7 collapsed when it was two full blocks away from where the planes hit," he said. "We've also never received an answer for how such a large plane left such a small hole in the side of the Pentagon."
The independent commission, which issued its final report in July, disputed some commonly held beliefs about the attacks but not the general conclusion, that 19 young terrorists hijacked planes and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
For Mr. Walter, though, what started as a hunch about official negligence has blossomed into a full-blown conspiracy theory involving government officials looking for a pretext to send troops into Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mr. Walter has tapped into a long tradition in which national tragedies - from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to the downing of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 - inflame the most feverish imaginations.
But in New York, the ads may have found a particularly receptive audience.
A Zogby poll of New Yorkers' opinions about the 9/11 investigation, released last month, indicated that 49 percent of New York City residents and 41 percent of New York state residents believed that some federal officials "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act." The poll also found that 66 percent of New York City residents and 56 percent of state residents wanted a fuller investigation of the "still unanswered questions."
Using the poll findings to make their case, relatives of victims of the attacks and others skeptical of the commission's investigation have asked Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, to open an investigation into what they said were unanswered questions.
Glenn P. Corbett, a professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who is part of an investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center towers by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said that he was not surprised by the lingering speculation about the attacks, but that there were clear answers to most questions raised by Mr. Walter's ad campaign.
The hole left by the attack on the Pentagon was not bigger, Mr. Corbett said, because the wings were lighter than most other parts of the plane and probably disintegrated on impact with the ground and the building. The reason 7 World Trade Center collapsed straight down, he said, was most likely the large amounts of diesel fuel stored in the building's lower levels. The fuel was meant to power emergency generators.
"The conspiracy theorists fail to recognize that there was structural damage in Building 7 caused by flying debris after the first two towers collapsed," Mr. Corbett said. "This led to fires that burned for several hours which eventually collapsed Building 7, too."
One skeptic who wants Mr. Spitzer to open an investigation is W. David Kubiak, who lives in Kennebunkport, Maine, and runs a Web site called 911Truth.org. He said that not all doubters had gone as far as Mr. Walter in their conspiracy theories. Most people in his group, he said, including families of 9/11 victims, simply want more of an explanation why there were so many problems that day involving emergency communication and the chain of command.
"I guess I'm one of the few people with the wherewithal to push the issue," said Mr. Walter, who says he is worth about $7 million, most of which he inherited from his father's building materials company in Tampa, Fla. Besides making financial donations to various causes, Mr. Walter, 57, also founded Walden Three, a nonprofit group in Santa Barbara that researches futuristic ideas for environmentally friendly urban development. Much of his time, Mr. Walter said, is spent working on a science fiction novel that he hopes to publish to promote utopian visions for city planning.
"Sometimes Jimmy gets a little carried away with his own ideas," said Assia Mortensen, who works occasionally as an editor for Walden Three. "But at root, he's an eccentric sweetheart with a lot of money and he shares it with a lot of important groups."
Mr. Walter said he was no stranger to adversity, having overcome an addiction to cocaine. He also has Tourette's syndrome, he said.
"I have a hard time not speaking up when I see something that doesn't seem right," Mr. Walter said. "I guess that is just the way I am."
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purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.