NucNews - January 16, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR Challenging the Greatest Force on Earth: Nuclear Weapons Sunday, January 16, 2005 11:35:01 PM Greenpeace USA http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/features/details?item_id=704919 In June of 1972, Greenpeace co-founder David McTaggart raised a pair of binoculars from the deck of his 38-foot ketch, Vega. He and two crewmembers had been 70 days at sea, and they were stationed in the forbidden zone outside Moruroa, the Pacific atoll where the French government tested nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. As the French signaled imminent detonation, McTaggart recorded a farewell message to his loved ones. Listen to his audio diary entry here. The French military had been ghosting the Vega throughout its stay in the forbidden zone, and communicated orders to leave. Helicopters had buzzed the masts. The crew of the Vega had expected to be boarded and physically removed from the area. But on June 17, the French released a balloon signaling detonation despite the presence of the protestors. In preparation for the fallout, McTaggart, Nigel Graham and Grant Davison made wooden blocks to seal the vents of Vega. They made plans to throw their stove and generator fuel overboard so it wouldn't ignite. They'd agreed that if they survived the blast and the shockwave that two would stay below and one would go up into the deadly fallout on deck wrapped in oilskins to motor them out of the forbidden zone. They'd prepared the matchsticks they would draw to determine who that would be. And they'd radioed a telegram to their Vancouver base saying "BALLOON RAISED OVER MORUROA LAST NIGHT STOP GREENPEACE THREE SIXTEEN MILES NORTHEAST STOP SITUATION FRIGHTENING PLEASE PRAY AND ACT." But instead of detonating, the next day the French sent a minesweeper to "escort" Vega out of the blast zone. When McTaggart and the crew refused, a high-seas game of maneuvers ensued which ended with the ramming of Vega and the detention of McTaggart and his crew. The weapon was detonated on June 26. But the voyage of the Vega drew worldwide attention to nuclear weapons testing and renewed pressure on the French to abandon the program from many quarters. McTaggart was relentless. On his return to Moruroa in 1973, he so infuriated the French military that he and his crew were beaten to the point that McTaggart lost vision in one of his eyes for several months. With the entire Pacific united in outrage and opposition, the French government at last relented - partially - and moved its weapons testing program underground. You Can't Sink a Rainbow Fast forward to July 1985. The Greenpeace flagship the Rainbow Warrior was in Auckland, New Zealand, having just completed a journey in the Pacific where it moved a whole population from their home, radioactive since the U.S. tests at Bikini atoll in the 1950s. Greenpeace was again preparing a voyage into Moruroa to protest the continued French nuclear testing program there as part of an expanded campaign against underground weapons testing by the United States, UK and the Soviet Union. The Mitterrand government, exasperated, sent in scuba divers who planted two limpet mines on the hull of the Rainbow Warrior. The subsequent blasts sank the ship, and took the life of a young photographer, Fernando Pereira. The French effort to stop the Greenpeace protests backfired, as a worldwide outcry and investigation revealed the plot, and galvanized opposition to the testing program in the Pacific. Greenpeace built another Rainbow Warrior and in the early 1990s we returned to Moruroa to continue our protests. In 1995, just weeks before the 10th anniversary of the bombing, French President Chirac again announced the resumption of the nuclear testing program, galvanizing, once again, a truly global protest. With a huge flotilla, Greenpeace sailed the Rainbow Warrior into the area, and the boat was detained, this time for months. Fortunately, it was worth the effort. The French nuclear weapons testing program finally came to an end in January 1996. The Threat Today The efforts of McTaggart, the tragedy of the Rainbow Warrior, and our ongoing campaign against nuclear weapons testing achieved an uneasy truce. We drove the testing program out of the atmosphere, then stopped testing altogether. But look around the world today. A treaty banning nuclear weapons testing has been signed, but remains unratified by the United States. The Bush administration speaks openly of the possibility of renewed nuclear weapons testing to create "more usable" nuclear weapons. The other nuclear powers murmur about renewing their own testing programs in response, and nations such as North Korea and Iran strive to join the nuclear club, newly expanded to include Pakistan and India. The threat of global nuclear annihilation has receded. The deathlock embrace of "Mutually Assured Destruction" between the United States and Soviet Union is gone. But George Bush talks about developing "bunker busting" nuclear weapons. Nuclear warheads lie in insecure warehouses in Russia, weapons grade plutonium transits the planet and nuclear power plants keep the deadly fuel cycle, which feeds weapons systems alive. The pressure on smaller states to develop a nuclear capability to defend themselves is higher than ever, and for violent extremists of every ilk, a nuclear weapon is the ultimate prize. The threat of a nuclear weapon actually being used is probably higher now than it has ever been. Peace: Back by Popular Demand On the 20th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, we're gathering people from all over the world to work with us to end to the nuclear threat forever. 2005 is also the 60th anniversary of the horrific bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - devastation that today could be wrought by a suitcase-sized weapon. It cannot happen again. Not ever. -------- britain Armed guard at all British nuclear stations By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor 16 January 2005 UK Herald http://www.sundayherald.com/47152 Armed police are being permanently deployed for the first time at all of Britain’s operating nuclear power stations to protect them from possible terrorist attack. Officers from the UK Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary are being stationed at Hunterston in North Ayrshire, Torness in East Lothian, and at nuclear reactors in England and Wales. The officers routinely carry guns and are authorised to engage in “hot pursuit” of suspects. The government and the nuclear companies stress that the deployment is not in response to a “specific terrorist threat”, but the move is seen by experts as a recognition that nuclear stations are now a potential target for terrorist groups. “This shows that they believe that there is a real threat,” said Dr Frank Barnaby, a nuclear consultant who used to work at the government’s Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire. “There is a probability that an attack will take place.” Armed police units began to arrive at power stations in December, though no official announcement was made. The deployment was ordered by Roger Brunt, the director of the Office for Civil Nuclear Security, which is part of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). “This is a prudent enhancement of existing security arrangements at civil nuclear sites,” said a DTI spokesman. “Security is continually reviewed and has been significantly enhanced since 9/11.” The spokesman declined to give any details of the deployment, including the numbers of police involved, but it is known that there are a total of around 600 members of the UK Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary, all of whom are trained in the use of firearms. In the past they have been based at only a few particularly sensitive nuclear sites, where plutonium or other material that could be made into atomic bombs were kept. In Scotland they have been based at the former fast-reactor research facility at Dounreay in Caithness and at the semi-military reactors at Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway, but they have never been stationed at ordinary nuclear power plants generating commercial electricity. The armed officers’ deployment at Scotland’s two commercial stations, Torness and Hunterston, represents a major escalation in security precautions. Conscious that the arrival of armed officers might create a stir among local residents, the directors of Torness and Hunterston have written to their local liaison committees. The provision of the first “on-site armed response capability” should be seen as “reassuring”, they said. “There is absolutely no suggestion that any of our sites are a specific terrorist target. This latest move is purely the result of a considered review of security arrangements and contingency plans by one of our regulators.” Anti-nuclear groups regard the police deployment as “understandable” given the problems that private security guards have protecting nuclear stations. But they are disturbed about the dangers posed to civil liberties. “Armed police will be used, not only to guard nuclear sites, but also to protect materials being transported in and out of the power stations,” said Pete Roche, a consultant to Greenpeace. “This has worrying implications for human rights. Do we really want to live with an energy system which is so risky that it requires armed police to guard it? This is one of the fundamental dilemmas posed by nuclear power.” -------- canada Steer clear of missile defence Thomas Axworthy thinks Canada's role should be to prevent nuclear terrorism Jan. 16, 2005. 01:00 AM Toronto Star http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1105743771267&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795 Ambassador Paul Cellucci has again entered the fray over ballistic missile defence by opining to reporters that Canada will probably sign on to the scheme by March. Crunch time is fast approaching for the Martin government. In making its decision, the government should focus on three essential issues. First, the proposed system to "hit a bullet with a bullet" doesn't work. The latest test, on Dec. 15, failed as have most before it. The Bush administration is deploying a weapon system before it is even operational, a triumph of ideology over common sense. Second, advocates maintain that deployment has nothing to do with placing weapons in outer space. This is true because the current plan is to use land-based interceptors, but the U.S. Air Force has made it clear that the current system is only the first step in attaining the Pentagon's goal of American supremacy in outer space. Denying this explicit objective is naive at best and dissembling at worst. Canada's tradition is to oppose proliferation. In 1983, one of the central components of Pierre Trudeau's peace mission was a ban on high-altitude anti-satellite missiles. The third and most essential fact is that even if a ballistic missile defence system did work, it would have no impact on the world's greatest security threat — nuclear terrorism. Graham Allison, a former assistant secretary of defence, has written in a new book that nuclear terrorism is "the ultimate preventable catastrophe." The danger is real as Allison makes clear: Russian General Alexander Lebed, for example, acknowledged that 84 of the 132 special KGB "suitcase" nuclear weapons were not accounted for in Russia. Russia has enough heavily enriched uranium and plutonium to make 44,000 potential nuclear weapons. And we know that Al Qaeda has made its intentions clear, asserting that, "we have the right to kill 4 million Americans." Yet, while spending $86 billion dollars on the war in Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from using non-existent weapons of mass destruction, and $10 billion on ballistic missile defence that doesn't work, the Bush administration has been slow to make "loose nukes" an absolute priority. As a G-8 member, Canada could take the lead by pledging $1 billion and challenging the rest of the NATO Alliance to do the same, so that $10 billion annually is allocated to the priority — the same amount as on missile defence. In three years, the job would be done. Such an effort would have the added benefit of making Russia a co-leader with NATO in the worldwide fight against nuclear terror. Helping Russian President Vladimir Putin block the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorists, when Russia itself has recently experienced the horror of the Beslan attack on children, would solidify the Canadian-Russian relationship. "Always do right," said president Harry Truman, "This will please some and surprise the rest." Doing right is saying no to ballistic missile defence, and yes to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Thomas S. Axworthy is chairman of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, Queen's University, Kingston. -------- iran Iran to Show Nuke Samples Are Peaceful ALI AKBAR DAREINI Sun, Jan. 16, 2005 Associated Press http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/10661078.htm TEHRAN, Iran - Iran said Sunday that environmental samples taken from a military complex this weekend by U.N. nuclear inspectors will prove that the country's atomic program is for peaceful purposes and not making weapons, as the United States alleges. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency took samples from landscaped areas of the huge Parchin complex, which Washington believes may be involved in nuclear weapons research. "We know what the result will be. Since we have never done any illegal activity, definitely the result will prove our declarations," Asefi told reporters. The U.N. nuclear watchdog had been pressing Tehran for months to be allowed to inspect the Tehran-area complex, long used to research ammunition, missiles and high explosives. The United States has alleged that the Iranians may be testing high-explosive components for a nuclear weapon, using an inert core of depleted uranium at Parchin as a dry run for how a bomb with fissile material would work. President Bush's communications director, Dan Bartlett, told CNN's "Late Edition" that the White House wanted to resolve Iran's nuclear file through negotiation, primarily by relying on European allies and the IAEA. But he added that Bush has not ruled out resolving the issue militarily. "No president at any juncture in history has ever taken military options off the table. That is known. But what President Bush has shown (is) that he believes we can emphasize the diplomatic initiatives that are under way right now," Bartlett said Sunday. Bush has accused Iran of being part of an "axis of evil" with North Korea and prewar Iraq. Iran had said it would allow U.N. nuclear experts to take environmental samples from green spaces outside the complex's ammunition production workshops, but it would not allow them to inspect military equipment. Iranian officials also said they would closely watch the inspectors to prevent any possible theft or spying. Iran repeatedly has denied any work on secret nuclear weapons programs, saying its nuclear activities are for peaceful energy purposes only. Asefi said Iran and the Europeans will begin a new round of talks in Geneva later this week focusing on nuclear issues as well as political and security cooperation. Under international pressure, Iran agreed in November to suspended uranium enrichment and all related activities for at least three months while negotiating with the European Union about economic and technological aid, avoiding U.N. Security Council sanctions. The IAEA agreed to police the suspension. Asefi said Iran will resume uranium enrichment one day. "We said from the very beginning that the suspension is a voluntary and temporary measure," he said without elaborating. Also Sunday, Asefi said Iran was investigating reports that Germany had seized an Iranian-bound shipment of four special high-voltage motors that could be used for a nuclear facility. "We are investigating the reports. If true, it will be the same restrictions Europeans have imposed against Iran and we protest such measures," he said. ---- Iran confident after key UN nuclear inspection TEHRAN (AFP) Jan 16, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050116083725.wr5lugee.html Iran said Sunday it was confident that UN inspectors would disprove US allegations that it is conducting secret nuclear weapons work, and said its negotiations with the Europeans on the issue were "on a good track". A team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agencyvisited the previously off-limits Iranian military site of Parchin, near Tehran, on Thursday. "They visited, they took some samples from the open area and they returned home. We know what the results are because we have no illegal activity," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. "After they study the results they can confirm our position," he added. The spokesman also told reporters that talks with the European Union on finding a long-term solution to international worries over Iran's nuclear drive were going well. "The Iran-EU negotiations are continuing and are on a good track," he said. The two sides this week kicked off a fresh round of talks on a potentially lucrative trade pact after a deal clinched in November by the European bloc's three most powerful members -- Britain, France and Germany -- for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. The trade deal forms part of a package of possible incentives Iran could earn if the talks also manage to produce "objective guarantees" the country is not seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has agreed to suspend uranium enrichment activities while the talks are in progress. The country insists it only wants to produce fuel for nuclear reactors, but there are fears the sensitive fuel cycle work could be geared towards making weapons. Asefi said Iran would one day resume enrichment, but he held back from giving any timetable. "It is clear that we will resume enrichment. We have said from the beginning that suspension is voluntary and short-term. We will eventually resume enrichment," he said. The Europeans are pushing for Iran to accept a long-term suspension of its work on the nuclear fuel cycle, including the enrichment of uranium, to ease international alarm. In return, Europe's three major powers are offering Iran civilian nuclear technology, including access to nuclear fuel, increased trade and help with Tehran's regional security concerns. Asefi said political negotitations with the EU would begin in March but he also said Iran did not want to see the United States also join the negotiating process. "We don't feel that there is a need for the US to take part in these talks. There is a precondition needed for this, which goes back to the US attitude," the spokesman said. "There is no need for face to face negotiations. One should only enter negotiations when you know there will be a result." Iran has consistently claimed it is only giving up enrichment voluntarily to build confidence and reserves the right to enrich uranium when it wishes since its nuclear program is a peaceful effort geared to making electricity. Tehran gave permission for inspectors to take environmental samples from the massive Parchin site, located around 30 kilometers (20 miles) southeast of Tehran, in order to disprove the US allegations of secret weapons-related activities. Washington has voiced concern that the Iranians may be working on testing high-explosive charges with an inert core of depleted uranium at Parchin as a sort of dry test for how a bomb with fissile material would work. -------- korea U.S. called 'nuclear criminal' January 16, 2005 (AP) http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050115-112520-1056r.htm SEOUL — A day after reportedly indicating a willingness to rejoin nuclear disarmament talks, North Korea returned to its usual anti-American rhetoric yesterday, accusing the United States of being a "nuclear criminal" with double standards. North Korea's state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun accused Washington of "conniving at, patronizing and cooperating with the pro-American forces" in Israel, Japan and South Korea to develop nuclear arms while pressuring North Korea to abandon its program. In an unusual overture Friday, the reclusive North offered to become a "friend" of the United States if Washington did not make inflammatory remarks about leader Kim Jong-il's regime, according to a group of U.S. congressmen who had just visited the communist state. Mr. Kim shunned the delegation, which was forced to meet with his deputies. The United States, North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia have struggled for months to convene a fourth round of talks to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear programs. Previous rounds, held in Beijing, ended without breakthroughs. Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican and a member of the congressional group, said they met with North Korea's No. 2 leader, Kim Yong-nam; Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun; and Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan during their three-day visit, and the meetings were more positive than expected. The North Korean report yesterday did not say whether Pyongyang was willing to rejoin negotiations with the United States and four other regional powers, as it had implied to the visiting congressmen. The nuclear dispute erupted in late 2002 when Washington accused North Korea of running a uranium enrichment program in violation of international nonproliferation accords and cut off free oil shipments. North Korea denied the claim, quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and restarted its mothballed plutonium weapons program. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- new mexico Was LANL shutdown necessary and worth it all? by Brad Lee Holian, Special to the Los Alamos Monitor Sunday, January 16, 2005 http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2005/01/10/headline_news/news06.txt Director Pete Nanos took the unilateral action of completely shutting down Los Alamos National Laboratory, following a security incident and then a safety incident last July. Was a complete shutdown necessary? Was it worth it? The recent security difficulties at LANL began with the Wen Ho Lee incident about six years ago, was quickly followed by the missing hard drives in 2000, and in July 2004, the missing CREM (classified removable electronic media). At the end of the Wen Ho Lee matter, we found that no Red Chinese spy had burrowed into the lab, and if there was a security leak about a Los Alamos-designed nuclear weapon, it wasn't from anyone at Los Alamos. The hard drives were found behind a copying machine, and no national secrets were deemed lost. The "missing" CREM from last summer was soon found to be a procedural inventory error, once again with no secrets lost. These were not trivial matters, by any means, but they also did not live up to the level of political hype that roared like wildfire through the national media. Likewise, the "millions of dollars of fraudulent purchases" that were supposed to have occurred at LANL a couple of years ago turned out to be about $200,000, out of an annual budget of over $2 billion - that is, less than one one-hundredth of a percent. Again, this fraud, perpetrated by two lab employees (one a manager), was surely no small matter; both men were indicted, and both pled guilty. But to put this into perspective, this is far from the routine level of waste and abuse at the Department of Defense; this is nothing remotely comparable to the Enron scandal. In talking with colleagues at other Department of Energy laboratories, it became clear that when it comes to security or accountability, Los Alamos appears to be neither significantly worse nor significantly better than any other place in the DOE complex. In terms of security, the shutdown was not necessary. So, how about the question of safety? In a letter to all hands a month or two before the shutdown, the former admiral praised the staff for great strides in improving safety and security practices made - of course - under his leadership. But when the two incidents occurred, he turned right around and vilified the staff, angrily using pejorative terms like "arrogant," "buttheads" and "cowboys." In order to see whether or not his criticism was valid, a couple of my colleagues and I, with little else to do in the early days of the shutdown, decided to look up data in the public domain on rates of accidents for Los Alamos, other DOE labs and comparable industries. Do the data show that Los Alamos is "hundreds of times worse than any other place in the DOE complex," as one high DOE official claims? The answer is: not at all. While seven years ago the lab's safety record was worse than the chemical industry nationwide, a successful safety-awareness program was implemented, and the accident rate dropped significantly. In fact, Los Alamos began to lead the DOE complex in safety about four years ago, and the rate since then has been comparable to the industry leader, DuPont Chemical. It has been about half the rate of the chemical industry nationwide and four times better than the manufacturing industry. In terms of safety, the shutdown was not necessary, but did it really hurt anything? Almost everyone agrees that Los Alamos' highest value contribution to the country is world-class scientific research. Shutting all operations down for three months -most experimental facilities have by now been closed for almost six months - has meant that fully one-quarter of the lab's annual budget has been diverted from the science that taxpayers had come to expect from Los Alamos. The question must then be turned around: was the training of some 800 managers (7 percent of the work force) in the vulnerabilities of the work they are supposed to supervise and the reams of self-assessment paperwork they churned out worth the lost science? Lab management argues that in shutting down the lab, Nanos showed that he really cares about the individuals who are injured (or are nearly killed) and their families, rather than only "the statistics." The implication is that we scientists care only about statistics, but I would argue that we care far more about the human costs - arguably more than management - since we are the troops in the trenches. The shutdown itself has had human costs, too: there has been a serious erosion in trust, a deep loss of morale and an upheaval in careers that have taken years to build. Now, there is the threat that good graduate students may not want to risk their future at a place as politically unstable as Los Alamos. All we were saying in reporting the safety statistics is that there was no objective, publicly available evidence to justify the catastrophic measure of shutting down the whole laboratory. Lately, management apologists have begun turning the statistics game on its head, claiming that Los Alamos is much more dangerous than the previous publicly available data suggest. Moreover, they say the data we reported on earlier are somehow "flawed." So, which is it? Were the statistics about LANL's safety that appeared in the public domain simply window-dressing? Are there secret data available only to management, showing, say, that the plutonium pit-manufacturing facility is horribly unsafe by nuclear-industry standards? LANL management really can't have it both ways, now, can they? Physicist Brad Lee Holian has worked in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory for 32 years. -------- new york BROOKHAVEN LAB POLLUTION - 70 years to clean water? Officials say faster job that some seek would be too costly BY ANN GIVENS STAFF WRITER Newsday January 16, 2005 http://www.newsday.com/features/printedition/longislandlife/ny-hubak4113925jan16,0,7532183.story?coll=ny-lilife-print To some environmentalists, 70 years is too long to spend cleaning up contamination in the groundwater at Brookhaven National Laboratory. That's how long laboratory officials propose taking to get rid of the radiation there, using the most efficient method. Lab officials say that the radioactive isotope that is polluting the water, strontium-90, isn't spreading, and that there is no danger in taking longer than they had planned to clean it up. The lab's original estimate for the cleanup, which began in 2000, was 30 years, although it anticipated re-evaluating the time frame. But some lab watchdogs say such delay would set a bad precedent. "We'll all be dead in 70 years, so we should take responsibility and clean it up sooner," said Adrianne Esposito, associate executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy organization, and a member of the lab's Community Advisory Council. "It sends the wrong message to say that it's OK to leave this area contaminated for the next two generations." 50-year target sought Esposito is pushing to complete the strontium-90 cleanup within 50 years, and says lab officials don't know yet how much that would cost. A final decision has not been made on which method to use and how long the cleanup will take. Lab officials are gathering comments on the matter through Friday and say they'll take public opinion into account when they decide. The conflict between lab officials and some environmentalists comes on the heels of a honeymoon period between the two groups following an April 2004 lab decision to clean up 99 percent of the contamination at its graphite research reactor, a plan that environmentalists had been doggedly pushing for years. In the past, "the lab has met or exceeded the cleanup goals," said Richard Amper, executive director of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society and a member of the lab's Community Advisory Council. "We wouldn't want to see that trend reversed." But Don Garber, who represents the Affiliated Brookhaven Civic Organizations on the lab's Community Advisory Council, said he is not troubled by the lab's proposal. "There's no great public health gain by pumping like crazy," he said. "Even with the longer cleanup ... [the contamination] is still right in the core of the lab area. You'll get the stuff before it moves 15 feet." Two-part effort Michael Bebon, the lab's deputy director of operations, said two parts of the cleanup are under discussion. The first is cleanup of the Magothy Aquifer, water-saturated sand about 200 feet below the lab. The aquifer is contaminated with volatile organic chemicals, probably dating to when an Army base sat on the Upton property, he said. The lab proposes pumping the contaminated water into "extraction wells" to capture the volatile chemicals, a process expected to take about 55 years. Esposito, of the citizens campaign group, said she would prefer to see this cleanup done in 30 years. The second part of the plan that's being discussed is the removal of the strontium-90, much of which leaked into the groundwater years ago from the graphite research reactor. Bebon said that when the filters that trap the radiation are used quickly, they tend to pull minerals out of the water along with the radiation, rapidly using up the filters and making the process more expensive. Bebon said it is more sensible to filter the water slowly, so that only the strontium- 90 will be extracted. He said if the lab takes about 70 years to clean up the strontium-90, the option it is endorsing, it will cost about $9.7 million, while doing it over 30 years would cost federal taxpayers $50 million. Bebon said the radiation won't migrate within the next 70 years and will pose no danger to public health. "We've tried to strike a balance, without posing a risk to human health," Bebon said. To submit comments on the plan, residents may send an e-mail to tellDOE@bnl.gov, fax to 631-344-3444, or write to: Michael Holland, attn: ESD, Site Manager, Brookhaven Site Office, U.S. Department of Energy, P.O. Box 5000, Upton, NY 11973. -------- wyoming DOE to reveal Wyoming nuke waste numbers Jackson Hole WY Zone, January 16, 2005 http://www.jhzone.com/viewinfo.cfm?ObjectID=3A1E510F-CD87-4F71-8020264E56B2596A In response to concerns raised by Jackson residents, U.S. Department of Energy officials are preparing estimates of how much nuclear waste would be produced by a new plutonium facility. DOE is proposing consolidating plutonium-238 production at the Idaho National Lab, which sits about 100 miles west of Jackson. Three DOE representatives returned to Jackson for a second round of meetings Jan. 5 after Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free, a Jackson-based group, complained about a lack of answers regarding the proposed plutonium facility. KYNF board member Tom Patricelli said he was concerned the facility might produce the kind of waste that would later need to be treated in an incinerator. KYNF defeated an earlier proposal by the Idaho lab to build a nuclear waste incinerator. DOE representative Tim Frazier stressed last week that the facility would generate little waste. The new 50,000 square foot facility would be designed to produce about five kilograms of plutonium per year, he said. Frazier promised to try to provide KYNF ballpark estimates of potential waste and emissions this week. DOE wants to move plutonium production from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and purification and encapsulation of plutonium from Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico to Idaho. Plutonium-238 is about 270 times more radioactive per unit of weight than plutonium-239, the common ingredient in atomic bombs. Thus, even a few tiny particles of plutonium 238 can carry a radioactive punch, experts warn. -------- us nuc waste Relicensing of nuclear plants raises waste storage concerns JACOB JORDAN Sun, Jan. 16, 2005 Associated Press http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/10660712.htm COLUMBIA, S.C. - South Carolina's nuclear power plants have been given the go-ahead to operate many years into the future, raising some concerns about how radioactive waste produced at these aging reactors will be stored. Operating licenses for the state's seven nuclear reactors have been renewed into the 2030s and beyond for some facilities, but some watchdog groups are troubled the waste those reactors produce will be left behind. They say the relicensing process, which involves environmental and safety approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was streamlined and boosted the industry for years to come. Nuclear industry officials disagree, citing an outstanding safety record and efficient energy. Oconee Nuclear Station, one of the nation's oldest nuclear power plants, was just the second facility in the country to have its license renewed for an additional 20 years into the 2030s. The plant began operating in the early 1970s and says it has generated more electricity than any other nuclear station in the United States. But it's also generated tons of waste, or spent nuclear fuel. A recent report by the Environmental Working Group found that because of the extended operating licenses and delays with a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the waste generated could be left at the sites indefinitely. "What we basically found was the Bush administration told us a whopper two years ago when it said Yucca Mountain would solve our nuclear waste problems," said Dusty Horitt, one of the report's authors. "We found that even if Yucca Mountain opens up on time, we will be storing nuclear waste in our local communities for years to come." Leaving the material on site is a concern for many, since some waste is stored above ground in sealed containers near schools, rivers and lakes. Linda Conley, a spokeswoman for Oconee Nuclear Station, which is owned and operated by Duke Energy Corp., said safety and security are top concerns. Conley said some the waste at the site is stored in water, which shields workers from radiation, and some of it is kept in aboveground containers, or dry cask storage. Most of the facilities in South Carolina use both methods to store waste. The Oconee facility is expanding its dry cask storage, like other plants in the state, since the waste currently has no where to go. Oconee was expecting to ship the waste to Yucca Mountain, but underfunding and legal delays have prevented the repository from opening. A planned opening in 2010 likely will be delayed. Oconee is ready for the site to open, Conley said, noting that Duke has contributed millions of dollars each year to a "nuclear waste fund" to support a repository. "We want something back for that money," she said. "We want to have a place to store our spent fuel. But then we obviously have a commitment to our customers to continue to safely operate." The dry cask storage expansion will serve the facility through 2009. "We certainly don't want to build more than we need to," Conley said. "But we would have plans ... to continue those expansions all the way through the end of our license." If even Yucca opens, the Environmental Working Group report said the repository can't hold all the nation's nuclear waste. At Oconee, more than 1,000 metric tons of waste will be left on site after the license extensions expire, the report said. That's slightly less than the amount of waste currently stored at the site, the report said. South Carolina Electric & Gas' V.C. Summer plant stores its waste in pools. Spokesman Eric Boomhower said there's enough capacity to safely store spent fuel there through 2018. The Jenkinsville plant then would move to dry storage, he said. David McNeil, a spokesman for Progress Energy's H.B. Robinson plant near Florence, said the industry has an outstanding record of wet and dry storage, and the relicensing process was rigorous. It involved environmental and safety reviews by the company and commission, which lasted several years. However, Kevin Camps of the Washington-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service says the NRC has made relicensing easy. "Unfortunately, a lot of utilities are deferring maintenance or trying to get around having to even to do the maintenance so that kind of exacerbates that problem," he said. "So we're very concerned." McNeil said South Carolina has benefited from getting its energy from a variety of sources, which can control costs and avoid shortages. "Nuclear power is one of the most efficient sources of electric generation," he said. -------- MILITARY -------- asia Taiwan deploys missiles on mobile launchers: report TAIPEI (AFP) Jan 16, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050116052856.n3mm6b2m.html The military has begun to deploy mobile launcher trucks installed with fixed-base missiles around Taiwan to counter Chinese weapons trained on the island, it was reported Sunday. The trucks carry home-grown Hsiung Feng II anti-ship missiles which are difficult to detect by aerial reconnaissance, the Liberty Times said. The defense ministry declined to comment on the report. Taiwan's Defense Minister Lee Jye has said China has at least 600 ballistic missiles facing the island, and the number is likely to rise to 800 before the end of 2006. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has vowed to invade if the island, which has been ruled separately since 1949, formally declares independence. In June Taiwan's cabinet approved a special budget of 610.8 billion Taiwan dollars (18.2 billion US) to purchase sophisticated weaponry from Washington over a 15-year period starting in 2005. The budget requires parliament's final approval. -------- spies Comment: Phillip Knightley: The big secret of espionage is that spying doesn’t work January 16, 2005 The UK Sunday Times - Comment http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-1442015,00.html On the face of it, spying should be easy. You go out into the world and try to uncover dangers that threaten your nation. You recruit agents, bribe and blackmail people in the know, put all this into a report, give it a reliability assessment and then hope that it makes its way to someone with the power to act on it. It’s a sexy, well paid job, certainly not nine to five, with a reasonable pension and, like the mafia, secret recognition from those in the know. There are downsides: lots of moral dilemmas, the shame of using people, bitter bureaucratic infighting and the constant nagging doubt about whether it makes any difference to the bigger picture. The government is convinced that it does and also seems to imagine that it’s a job that can be regulated, evaluated and probably sharpened up. Hence its new Labour solution, announced last week, that everything that has gone wrong in British intelligence recently can be put right by throwing some private enterprise initiatives into the mix. Spying is much more complicated than it appears. How reliable is that Iraqi general to whom you have promised British citizenship, a place for his son at Oxford and Ł50,000 a year for the rest of his life? He has been reliable until now. But as things are collapsing in Iraq and he is anxious to secure his future, has he exaggerated his information — or even invented it? There is also the possibility that in the new circumstances he has changed sides. Like most relationships between spy and agent, this is a close personal one in which trust plays a large part. The officer will have to reach down into his instinct and make a decision on which lives could depend. A long-time CIA agent recently blew the whistle on how the agency evaluated intelligence reports. It looked simple — ABCD for the reliability of the source, and 1234 for the accuracy of the information. A1 meant that the source was unimpeachable and the information unquestionably true, while D4 indicated that the source was totally unreliable and the information demonstrably false. In his long career the agent said that he never saw an A1 and only a handful of D4s. In nine cases out of 10 the designation was C3 — the source usually reliable, the information possibly true. Logically this meant that the usually reliable source was sometimes unreliable and that the information described as possibly true could just as possibly be false. “It follows that US intelligence spent hundreds of millions of dollars over a period of 40 years ferreting out vital information that we did not as a matter of principle choose to believe — or for that matter disbelieve,” the agent said. Every morning, and it works much the same in London, all this data was delivered to the president, and the prime minister of Britain, as an intelligence briefing. Then it was left for them to decide what might be true and what might not — hence Tony Blair’s constant theme during the run-up to the Iraq war: “If you only knew what I knew.” British intelligence tried to add a little certitude to its reports by running them through the joint intelligence committee (JIC) whose experts (“more academic than practical”) contributed their own assessment. But in the end more opinion tends to confuse matters. And since the JIC has more to do with politicians it is more sensitive to what those politicians want or hope to hear. These hopes get passed down the line and the original source can find himself under pressure to produce what his masters want rather than what he believes to be true. He usually does so. How the insertion of a businessman into this process as a supposedly impartial assessor reporting to John Scarlett, the MI6 chief, will help is hard to imagine. Businessmen as spies is not a new idea for the profession. In the 1930s the businessman/spy was quite common. They were not successful and tended to vanish with the service bank account just before audit time. Others freelanced and sold their information to the highest bidder. One aspect of the proposed reforms that would appeal to many involved is that it is almost impossible in the intelligence game to blame anyone for anything. No matter what goes wrong the intelligence community always has a plausible excuse. “You didn’t warn us about the insurgency that followed the Iraq war.” Excuse — “We didn’t have enough experienced people on the ground nor the funds to recruit them.” Another example: “You said there was going to be an attack on Heathrow; it didn’t happen.” Excuse — “That was because the terrorists found out we were on to them and aborted their operation.” Another one: “Information about the time needed to fire weapons was vague and confusing.” Excuse — “Too many outsiders fiddled with our raw intelligence.” Inquiries into the intelligence services produced little. There are only two certainties about such inquiries: the services will emerge with larger staff and a bigger budget. Oh yes, and nobody will resign and some may even be promoted. Confronted with all the shortcomings of the secret services, its supporters reply that it would be unthinkable not to have a secret service, forgetting that we did not have one until 1911. Anything is better than nothing. But is this true? According to a study by the Royal Institute for International Affairs, western intelligence’s success in predicting Soviet moves was no better than that of America’s think tanks. The intelligence community does everything it can to avoid assessment of its efficiency, usually by falling back on the unanswerable statement: “We have had some marvellous successes but we can’t talk about them because they’re secret.” A bold government could try an experiment to decide whether, stripped of its legends, the intelligence game is a vast confidence trick. The other great world collector and assessor of information is journalism. Let’s give a team of journalists and a team of spies an assignment to report on a specific international development and, based on that report, to produce an assessment of what is likely to happen. The spies would use their usual covert sources, the journalists their open ones. The test would show us who had performed better. The odds look good for the journalists. Sergei Kondrashov, a retired KGB chief of counter-intelligence, told me at a conference in Germany that if the KGB was forced to choose between a Russian mole in the US administration and a subscription to The New York Times, he would take The New York Times any day. ---- How George Washington really won the Revolution GEORGE WASHINGTON, SPYMASTER By Thomas B. Allen National Geographic, $16.95, 184 pages, illus. REVIEWED BY JAMES SRODES January 16, 2005 Washington Times Books http://www.washtimes.com/books/20050115-095707-2184r.htm If you have a pre-teen you want to coax into serious reading, then "George Washington, Spymaster" will be a welcome gift. That is if you can bear to hand it over if you should dip into it yourself. Much of the drama of the American Revolution saga lies in the fact that a collection of farmers, artisans, and laborers could take on the world's undisputed superpower of the day and win independence through a grueling, disaster-plagued war on our own home ground. Initially ill-trained and laughably equipped, there was one area where Washington's Continental Army was superior. Author Thomas B. Allen quotes Major George Beckwith, the head of British intelligence operations at the end of the war: "Washington did not really outfight the British, he simply outspied us!" In a time when intelligence and national security is front and center as a public issue, this book sets an important historical marker. Washington, and, it turns out, many of our Founding Fathers had a surprisingly sophisticated grasp of the craft of intelligence. By using their hard won insights into where the British were and what they intended to do, they preserved their ragged resources and used them to killing advantage. To the point, much of what Washington did to get intelligence is trade craft as up to date as today's headlines. He put spies behind the lines, he used disinformation about his own plans, and he waged propaganda warfare against the redcoat troops and against the British people back home. There were codes and ciphers, dead drops, double agents and counterintelligence ops galore. Thomas B. Allen writes about this with considerable experience. He is the author of 30 books and a prolific writer for National Geographic. With co-author Norman Polmar, he has produced such standard intelligence titles as "Code-name Downfall;" "Merchants of Treason;" and "Spy Book, the Encyclopedia of Espionage." This is no kid's book, make no mistake. National Geographic is trying to create a new genre — the first reader's book. This is a book that makes no concession to the reader's age but rather presents a solid tale in adult language and lets the story carry the day. There are no platitudes or bits of moral instruction that so irritate the younger reader. Indeed, this is a good starting place for an older reader who is embarking in nonfiction where English is his second language. So how did George Washington get to be such a spy master? Mr. Allen takes us back to another war when American colonists considered themselves patriotic Englishmen under threat from the French and their Indian allies on the Ohio frontier. Virginia governor Robert Dinwiddie commissioned Washington, not yet then 21, to journey into the Ohio country to check out rumors that the French and Indians were rousting out English settlers and building fortifications in an ominous incursion into British territory. Washington already had a reputation as a land surveyor for Lord Fairfax and was an experienced traveler in this perilous country and in a remarkable 78-day journey made it to near where Pittsburgh now stands and back to Williamsburg where his first hand observations about French intentions to launch what turned into the French and Indian War. By the end of the war Washington had acquired a reputation as the most skilled colonial military figure. Even though we know the outcome in advance, Mr. Allen tells a real ripping yarn about Washington and his spies during the Revolutionary War itself. The codes, the agents in place, Nathan Hale and Major Andre, signals using washing on a line, intercepted letters and duplicity abound. Through it all is Washington, who knew what he needed to find out and knew how to set about getting it. But that was Washington. What about the rest of colonial America? It turns out that even in those early years Americans were skilled at the subterfuge and techniques of information management to a high degree. This was out of sheer necessity, as Mr. Allen notes. Post riders often dumped mail onto tavern tables where any casual observer could peek at correspondence. Government too was intrusive in private affairs to an astonishing degree. The near betrayal of Paul Revere's famed ride is a story in itself. Committees of Correspondence sprang up throughout the colonies so that the rising patriot movement could communicate securely. So too, America's first foreign station chief, Benjamin Franklin, operated a textbook intelligence operation first in London from 1757 through 1775 when he was ostensibly a lobbyist for many of the colonial grievances. From 1777 through 1783 Franklin ran covert military operations against the English coast with one hand while with the other he inveigled first French military aid for the patriot army and finally the crucial French military intervention that insured Washington's victory at Yorktown. By the end, the reader can't help a feeling that the British never really knew what was going on. But Washington did, and that was the difference. James Srodes is the author of "Franklin: The Essential Founding Father." -------- homeland security / national intelligence No gas for D.C. street vendors on Jan. 20 January 15, 2005 By Marguerite Higgins and Chris Baker THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/business/20050114-095940-9045r.htm Most street vendors in downtown Washington will not be permitted to use propane tanks to warm the food and beverages they sell during the presidential inauguration Thursday, when the temperature is expected to reach the upper 30s. The Secret Service decided Wednesday to ban propane tanks due to security concerns, spokesman Jonathan Cherry said. He said he was not aware if heating alternatives, such as microwaves, were banned within the security perimeter the agency has established for the inauguration. The perimeter covers a wide swath of downtown, roughly encompassing the area from Second Street NE and SE to the east, K Street NW to the north, 23rd Street NW and SW to the west and E Street SW to the south. Vendors who learned of the decision this week were outraged. "If I don't sell hot dogs, what is my business? I am a hot dog vendor," said Berhan G. Adenay, who has operated her cart at Pennsylvania Avenue and 10th Street NW since 1992. As a street vendor, Ms. Adenay said she does not have access to electricity, so she isn't able to use a microwave to heat her hot dogs during the one-day ban. Propane is her only option, she said. Ms. Adenay was particularly distressed because the fee she paid this year to obtain a permit to operate a propane tank in the city quadrupled to $100. "I pay $100 for propane permit. Now I can't use it?" she said. The propane ban represents the latest restriction placed on the vendors during President Bush's inauguration. All vendors — including those who sell merchandise — will be limited to spots along G Street NW during the inauguration. The District will issue 58 vendor licenses Tuesday for the spots, which are on the 1000 and 1100 blocks of G Street. "Frankly, [the vendors] are in a bad spot," said Matt Hussman, public space manager for the Downtown Business Improvement District, a nonprofit group that promotes downtown merchants. G Street is too far from the inaugural parade route along Pennsylvania Avenue NW, he said. "It's going to be hard for them to make money." Yesterday afternoon, Mr. Hussman distributed fliers that explained the restrictions to the vendors. It included an application for the 58 licenses that the city will issue for the inauguration. The licenses will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis, Mr. Hussman said. Mike Yohannes, a vendor near the Old Post Office Pavilion downtown, said he will apply for one of the temporary licenses. Ms. Adenay said she never experienced such severe restrictions during past inaugurals. Temperatures are expected to reach into the upper 30s with partly cloudy skies for the swearing-in ceremony and parade Thursday, according to the National Weather Service Baltimore/Washington Office. The normal high temperature is 42 during mid-January, a forecaster said. -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars Discussion on ethics, integrity in journalism By Jeffrey Charis-Carlson For the Iowa City Press-Citizen Sunday, January 16, 2005 http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050116/NEWS01/501160305/1079 This week's Q & A is with Stacey Cone, professor in the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Q: Last week, CBS fired four executives for their roles in a discredited report on the president's National Guard service. An independent panel said CBS failed to determine the accuracy of what turned out to be forged documents that claimed George W. Bush had received preferential treatment. At the same time, African American conservative commentator Armstrong Williams said the Bush Admin-istration had paid him $240,000 to publically endorse its "No Child Left Behind Act." What connections can you draw between these journalistic shortcomings? A: What CBS was guilty of is poor news judgment. That's much less of an ethical violation. What Armstrong Williams did was an egregious breach of journalistic ethics. To not disclose to the public that you are being paid to promote a particular position is cheating. It is a violation of the public trust and a denigration of the journalistic standards and practices that we need if we are going to maintain the government-press relations on which a democracy depends. It is just astounding to me that people can engage in this type of activity. Of course, if you talk to people with a public relations background, they will see this situation completely differently. Armstrong Williams does have PR background, but he has said he wanted to be held to the same standard as journalists. Once he made that claim, there then were very close connections between the two. Q: During the build up to the election, some people on the CNN's "Crossfire" appeared as opinion journalists while serving as consultants to the Kerry campaign. They disclosed their status at the time, but where exactly should the line between media objectivity and personal politics be? A: I wouldn't have done it, but as long as you are forthcoming, it doesn't violate ethical standards. I do think Jon Stewart was right, however, when he came on "Crossfire" and said: "You're part of the problem. You're part of what is hurting democracy." It's important to remember that these ethical questions fall across a spectrum. I think there is much less of an ethical breach if you've come clean by admitting you are working with a campaign and you will be promoting a specific agenda. That's quite different than what Armstrong Williams is guilty of. Q: Is there any way to know how many similar relationships might be among governments or corporations and journalists? A: I think such relationships are happening more often, and we are finding out about them more often. In March of 2003, for example, one of the Bush Administration's agencies was caught creating video news reports and sending them out. They were basically hiring actors to pose as reporters and producing what appeared to be a news package, but it was all just paid-for propaganda for the Bush's Medicare project. It's a complete corruption of the way journalism is supposed to be working in our system of government. Q: Is this a recent change in the role of the media, or has it been evolving? A: For quite a long time there has been a struggle between two competing views of democracy. The first is the perspective that we ought to have a 'participatory democracy.' In that view, truthful information is absolutely essential if the public is going to be able to trust their own judgment and make good decisions. The other perspective is that of an 'elite democracy.' From that view, we are still free in that we are electing leaders, but those leaders are allowed to execute their best judgment at any time. From this perspective, it's okay for the government to put out those video news releases, because they convince people of what the leaders have decided. It does matter if those are real journalists or not in those packages. This competition over how to define democracy has been going one for decades. Over time, the concept of participatory democracy has declined and that of elite democracy is now clearly in ascendancy. There are many historical reasons for this, but you can trace it back to public education, to the growth of public relations and advertising, to the infusion of PR and advertising techniques in journalistic efforts, and to the public's mellowing at the idea of PR strategies. It's important to remember that between WWI and WWII, the American public was horrified at the thought of propaganda. Some scholars go as far as to say that the American public was obsessed with trying to prevent propaganda from getting a hold of them. But now, journalism is inundated with PR strategies and the public isn't as concerned with ensuring that the news they receive has been subjected to the traditional journalistic editorial method. Q: What is the difference between propaganda and journalism? A: In today's society, the great tragedy is that it is very hard to discriminate between the two. And it's not just television news. Clearly Stephen Glass at the "New Republic" and Jayson Blair at the "New York Times" have shown that this is a widespread problem. But it is also a problem in that the public is confused over what journalists are supposed to do. Take ABC Primetime's investigation of the Food Lion chain a few years ago. What the investigators discovered was an issue of public health: Food Lion was bleaching meat. But the public thought that the methods used by the ABC investigators were at fault. Likewise, when ABC conducted a test of American security by sending a sample of depleted uranium, everyone started roasting journalists. To me, it seems that the public is confused. And it all goes back to public education, to how we don't do a good job in this country explaining media literacy and the media's role in society. Q: And what is the media's proper role? A: The news media has a social responsibility to inform the public, and they have to live up to that responsibility in a trustworthy and honest way. Once you've lost the public trust, you've changed the course of democratic government. For example, CBS was not nearly as much guilty of an ethical transgression in the current case as they were when they originally decided to sit on Abu Ghraib story for a while. Withholding information from the public is an ethical transgression. But that's what happens when journalists start taking cues from the PR handbook. The idea that the ends justify the means is increasingly become a part of the journalist's method of operation. Q: Bloggers were the first ones to poke holes in the documents used by CBS. How does the internet change the playing field in terms of government/media relations? A: It's adding to the confusion. There are positive aspects to the Internet and many negative aspects. On the negative side is that information is getting out that hasn't been vetted and is inaccurate. The public becomes inundated with lots of information and is left wondering what is and isn't credible. And, when you are overwhelmed with information, is becomes easier to tune-out the information and not engage any further. So, it adds to the frustration and confusion that is diminishing the democratic system. On the other hand, the Internet allows us to have more vocal participation in the system. There are more ideas out their in the public view. That's the basis of our system: that it's better to have more voices out their than fewer voices. There are a number of media and legal scholars, however, who are beginning to call that statement into question. Q: Any other point you would like to make? A: In terms of Armstrong Williams, I would just like to add that Congress passed a law in 1913, and has worked every decade since to try and enforce it, which says that anyone working in publicity for the federal government cannot be paid without Congressional approval. I doubt very much whether Congress approved the hiring of Armstrong Williams. So, it's not only an ethical violation it's, like those administration video news releases, a violation of the law. I think the greater problem is that very few newspapers, your own included, didn't even cover the video news report story. When no attention is given to it at all, it shows either that people are not paying attention or that they just don't care. Both of which are pretty serious shortcomings in our kind of government. ---- Letter: U.S. motives make elections In Iraq a farce Sunday, January 16, 2005 Binghamton, NY Press & Sun Bulletin http://www.pressconnects.com/today/opinion/stories/op011605s141860.shtml Our government has called the Iraqis, resisting our occupation and puppet government, "insurgents," thinking that to be a derogatory term. But is it? Were not the Minute- Men who resisted British rule in 1776 also "insurgents?" Every July Fourth, we celebrate the courage of those who struggled to free our country from foreigners, who ruled and siphoned off our assets. The weaponry was different then. Our patriotic insurgents did not behead, kidnap or suicide-bomb civilians. Nor did the British have 500-pound or cluster bombs to drop from the skies, depleted uranium to cause long-term genetics damage, or Fallujah-type armaments to level cities. But the motivation was the same; we wanted to rid ourselves of foreign domination. The upcoming elections in Iraq will be a farce. They are more about pitting the Shiites against the Sunnis, in a divide-and-conquer ploy to keep American bases there to protect "our" oil, than they are about promoting "democracy." Conspicuously missing on the ballot will be the question asked in the U.N.-supervised East Timor election, "Do you want to be free of foreign occupation?" -------- us politics For Inauguration in Wartime, a Lingering Question of Tone January 16, 2005 By JOHN TIERNEY The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/politics/16tone-top.html?pagewanted=all&position= WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 - Inaugurations are always balancing acts: part coronation, part celebration of democracy, part touchdown dance in the end zone. But they become even trickier during times of war, particularly when television images of dancers in black tie can be instantly juxtaposed with soldiers in body armor. President Bush, like most of his wartime predecessors, is not halting the inaugural partying, but this year's planners are striving for a solemn mood. The inaugural events, with the theme of "Celebrating Freedom and Honoring Service," will begin Tuesday with a tribute to the military. After Mr. Bush takes the oath on Thursday, there will be a "Commander-in-Chief Ball" that evening for 2,000 troops who have either served in Iraq or Afghanistan or are headed there. Separate gestures are being made by corporate sponsors like Amgen, a biotechnology firm, which is assigning all its inaugural tickets to employees serving in the National Guard. "Our tone throughout the inaugural events will show gratitude toward those who protect the ideals that make our nation so great," said Jeanne L. Phillips, the chairwoman of the inaugural committee, which seeks to raise $30 million to $40 million through ticket sales and private donations to pay for the events. The organizers expect 55,000 people at the nine inaugural balls on Thursday evening and 500,000 spectators at the parade that afternoon from the Capitol to the White House. There will also be a rock concert on Tuesday, candlelit dinners on Wednesday and a concluding prayer service on Friday morning. Some critics say spending so much on these parties seems ill-timed both because of the Iraq war and the tsunami catastrophe in Asia. Anthony D. Weiner, a Democratic congressman preparing to run for mayor of New York, sent President Bush a letter on Tuesday suggesting that the millions in inaugural funds be sent to the troops in Iraq. "Precedent suggests that inaugural festivities should be muted - if not canceled - in wartime," Mr. Weiner wrote, noting that in 1945 Franklin D. Roosevelt limited the celebration to a cold luncheon at the White House. But that subdued inauguration was partly due to Roosevelt's failing health and was not the norm during other wars, said Paul F. Boller Jr., a historian at Texas Christian University and the author of "Presidential Inaugurations." From the War of 1812 through Vietnam, presidents have generally let the parties go on while also acknowledging the soldiers' hardships. James Madison, who held the first inaugural ball in 1809, held another during the War of 1812 after giving an angry Inaugural Address denouncing the British. In 1865, after Lincoln gave his famous address promising to bind the nation's wounds and care for Civil War soldiers' orphans and widows, he shook hands with 6,000 people at a White House reception that turned so rowdy the police were summoned to stop people from carrying off silverware, china and pieces of the curtains. Dwight D. Eisenhower originally requested a simple inaugural in 1953, during the Korean War, but it turned into "the biggest, flashiest, most expensive and impressive Inauguration party of them all," according to a description in The New York Times. The parade featured an Alaskan dog team, three elephants and a float depicting Mr. Eisenhower playing golf. The new president smiled in the reviewing stand when he was lassoed by a California cowboy, but was later said to be irritated. In 1969, when Richard M. Nixon was inaugurated during the Vietnam War, there were six inaugural balls along with what The Times called the tightest security in history and the first large protest ever held at an inauguration. Mr. Nixon impressed many Democrats with his conciliatory speech promising bipartisanship at home and peace abroad, but during the parade some protesters chanted pro-Vietcong slogans and hurled rocks and beer cans at Mr. Nixon's limousine. In retrospect, the "hundreds of long-haired young people" protesting the Nixon inauguration sound like a small, disorganized force compared with the antiwar groups expected for the "counterinauguration" events this week. These groups are organizing rallies, marches, a "die-in" and boycotts of workplaces and stores on Thursday to protest the Iraq war and the cost of the inauguration. Michael K. Deaver, an aide to Ronald Reagan who was chairman of the 1985 inauguration, said the complaints about this year's extravaganza sounded familiar. "You're always criticized for spending money, because every inaugural is more expensive than the last one," Mr. Deaver said. "There are a lot of people who worked hard on the campaign and want to celebrate, and they should be allowed to. At the same time, tone is very important - the tone of what's going on in the world, what sacrifices Americans are making. I would hope the president's message is going to reflect the mood of the country." If past speeches are any guide, Mr. Bush can be expected to give a somber speech that will praise America and ask for God's help while offering few if any specific policies and absolutely no jokes. Professor Boller, who has forced himself to read every inaugural speech ("I deserve a medal," he said), cannot point to a single instance of humor, or at least not intentional humor. "Martin Van Buren got a big laugh inadvertently," Professor Boller said, alluding to an awkward sentence in his 1837 address. After noting that "the Revolution that gave us existence as one people was achieved at the period of my birth," Van Buren said that he contemplated with "grateful reverence that memorable event," meaning the Revolution but sounding to the crowd as if he revered his own birth. David Frum, a speechwriter for Mr. Bush during his first term, said that he expected Thursday's speech to be simpler than the one four years ago. "Second inaugurals tend to be shorter and more businesslike: here's what we've done, here's where we are, here's what remains to be done," Mr. Frum said. "The country wants some indication of how much sacrifice in international affairs he's going to be asking. Does the war continue? Does he broaden it or find a way to wind it down?" Mr. Frum said that the war and the tsunami catastrophe were not reasons to scale back the inaugural, and noted that Bill Clinton's inaugurals were held while conflict was raging in Bosnia and hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees were suffering. One of Mr. Clinton's former aides, Paul Begala, also defended next week's festivities. "Eight weeks ago, I participated in an enormous celebration of the Clinton presidency," Mr. Begala said, referring to the opening of the Clinton library in Arkansas. "There were 30,000 people, rock stars, movie stars. Nobody said it was unseemly to do that during wartime. Why? Because people understood that we weren't just celebrating one man's presidency. We were celebrating the American presidency, and it's the same thing with the inauguration." To some extent, the criticism of inaugural extravagance reflects the longstanding concern about turning the president into royalty. Complaints that George Washington had "monarchical" pretensions prompted him to consider beginning his second term of office with a private swearing-in ceremony at home. He ultimately took the oath in the Senate chamber, but limited his second inaugural address to four sentences. Some of his successors also tried scaling back the ceremonies. There were no inaugural balls for Woodrow Wilson in 1913 and 1917, and none for succeeding presidents until 1933, when one was held at the depths of the Depression for Roosevelt. But there were no balls to start his later terms, and in 1945 he dispensed with the swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol as well as the parade. "Roosevelt was the only one who ever took the oath at the White House," Professor Boller said. "His health had something to do with it, but so did his concern that you shouldn't be having gaiety in Washington when there was wartime austerity in the rest of the country." Roosevelt proposed a buffet luncheon with chicken ŕ la king, and then the White House's famously frugal housekeeper, Henrietta Nesbitt, decided even that was too lavish. She served cold chicken salad, rolls without butter, poundcake and coffee. Roosevelt, who was not feeling well, got through the occasion by sending his son James to his room to smuggle him a tumbler of bourbon. ---- Bush's Choice for Energy Secretary Was One of Texas' Top Five Worst Polluters By: Jason Leopold http://www.jasonleopold.com Independent Media TV January 16, 2005 http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=10285&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported In the bizarro world that President Bush lives in, it pays "literally" to be a miserable failure, a criminal and a corporate con man. Those are just some of the characteristics of the dastardly men and women who were tapped recently to fill the vacancies in Bush's second-term cabinet. But one of the President's most outrageous decisions (besides naming Alberto Gonzales, who concocted a legal case for torturing foreign prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Attorney General) has got to be choosing 66 year-old Sam Bodman to serve as Secretary of Energy. This is a guy who for a dozen years ran a Texas-based chemical company that spent years on the top five lists of the country's worst polluters. It's not just a few clouds of smoke emanating from an oil refinery or a power plant that got Bodman's old company, Boston-based Cabot Corporation, those accolades. It was the 54,000 tons of toxic emissions that his company's refineries released into the air in the Lone Star state in 1997 alone that made Cabot the fourth largest source of toxic emissions in Texas. Cabot is the world's largest producer of industrial carbon black, a byproduct of the oil refinery process. In 2000, the year Bodman left Cabot to join the Bush administration as Deputy Commerce Secretary, Cabot accounted for 60,000 of the more than half-a-million tons of toxic emissions released into the Texas air, according to report by the Texas State Summary of Emissions. A loophole created in the 1972 Texas Clean Air Act exempted or "grandfathered" industrial plants built before 1971 from new, stricter pollution control rules. But in the mid-1990s companies such as Cabot were supposed to curb the pollution coming from its refineries. Environmentalists demanded that then Gov. Bush rein in the polluters and close the so-called grandfather loophole as the air in Texas became smoggier. Instead, in 1997, then Gov. Bush asked two oil company executives to outline a voluntary program that allowed the grandfathered polluters to decide on their own exactly how much to cut the pollution at their plants. The oil execs summoned a meeting of two dozen industry reps at Exxon offices in Houston and presented them with the program. In a memo obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, one executive wrote that "clearly the insiders from oil and gas believe that the Governor's office will 'persuade' the (Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission) to accept what program is developed between the industry group and the Governor's Office." "And they did. And two years later this joke of a program was enacted into law by a bill written by the general counsel for the Texas Chemical Council who also lobbies for energy and utility companies. The bill was denounced by newspapers across the state," according to a March 5, 2000 report in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. According to people familiar with the legislation, Sam Bodman was part of the original working group that drafted legislation that then Gov. Bush signed into law that basically permitted Cabot and other companies to continue to emit the same level"and in some cases more"toxic emissions as they had been years earlier without so much as receiving a slap-on-the-wrist by then Gov. Bush. Bodman personally contributed $1,000 to Bush's presidential campaign and $20,000 to Republican committees in the 1999-2000 election. Bodman is the wealthiest member of the Bush administration. His net worth is estimated to be between $42 million and $164 million, the bulk of it in Cabot stock, deferred compensation and other benefits. Bodman shoddy environmental record aside, he may also be complicit in one of Africa's deadliest wars. In October 2002, Bodman's former company came under fire when a United Nations Panel of Experts produced a report accusing the company, along with several other US corporations, of helping to fuel the wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) while he ran Cabot by purchasing coltan from Congo during the conflict and illegally plundering the country's vast natural resources. Cabot has publicly denied the allegations in the UN report, but a report by the Belgian Senate states that Eagle Wings Resources International had a long‑term contract to supply Cabot with coltan, which it too purchased from Congo during the war. Eagle Wings was also identified in the UN report as contributing to the war. In response, environmental Friend of the Earth United States (FOE) and the UK-based human rights group Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) filed a complaint with the US State Department last August against Cabot and several other western corporations for its role in aiding the rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo by conducting business there, essentially inadvertently aiding a violent conflict that contributed to widespread human rights abuses. RAID an FOE filed a complaint with the U.S. State Department last August claiming Cabot and other western corporations having violated the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) "Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises," a set of international standards for responsible corporate behavior. The UN panel said in its report that a "three-year investigation found that sophisticated "elite networks" of high‑level political, military and businesspersons, in collaboration with various rebel groups, intentionally fueled the conflict in order to retain control over the country's vast natural resources. The Panel implicated many Western companies for directly or indirectly helping to fuel the war." The State Department is the agency in charge of deciding whether US companies breach the OECD guidelines. Despite the allegations included in the UN report and the complaint filed by the two activist groups, the State Department has refused to launch an independent investigation into whether Cabot, under Bodman's leadership, and the other US companies might have contributed to the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to the UN report, an increase in the export of columbo tantalite, otherwise known as coltan from which the metal tantalum is extracted, in 1999 and 2000 resulted in "a sharp increase in the world prices of tantalum…leading to a large increase in coltan production in eastern DRC…While the processors of coltan and other Congolese minerals in Asia, Europe and North America may not have been aware of what was happening in the DRC, the Panel's investigations uncovered such serious concerns that it was decided to raise the international business community's awareness…" Cabot is the world's largest refiner of coltan. The other US corporations identified in the UN report, Kemet and Vishay, both purchase processed tantalum from Cabot. Under Bodman's leadership an unknown amount of the coltan Cabot Corporation was purchasing could have originated from the DRC. Cabot Corporation has stated publicly that "to the best of its knowledge none [of its coltan came] from environmentally sensitive areas in Africa, but it can't be sure." As Energy Secretary, Bodman will be looking out for the energy behemoths he used to commiserate with while he was chairman and chief executive of Cabot, Vice President Dick Cheney being one of them. Many of those energy corporations have donated millions to fund President Bush's inaugural parties. And Cheney wants Bodman to reward their pals by making a convincing case why the President's controversial energy policy should sail through Congress, the environment be damned. Jason Leopold is the author of the forthcoming book Off the Record: An Investigative Journalist's Inside View of Dirty Politics, Corporate Scandal, and a Double Life Exposed (Rowman & Littlefield). He can be reached at jasonleopold@h.... Visit his website at www.jasonleopold.com (c) Jason Leopold Reprinted with Permission. Original Link: http://www.jasonleopold.com -------- ACTIVISTS Putin Reforms Greeted by Street Protests By STEVEN LEE MYERS January 16, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/international/europe/16moscow.html HIMKI, Russia, Jan. 15 - Mikhail I. Yermakov, a retired engineer, has never before taken to the streets to protest - not when the Soviet Union collapsed, the wars in Chechnya began, the ruble plummeted in 1998 or President Vladimir V. Putin last year ended his right to choose his governor. On Saturday, however, he joined hundreds of others in the central square of this gritty industrial city on the edge of Moscow in the latest of a weeklong wave of protests across Russia against a new law abolishing a wide range of social benefits for the country's 32 million pensioners, veterans and people with disabilities. Demonstrations were held in at least three other cities in the Moscow region, in the capital of Tatarstan and, for the fourth straight day, in Samara in central Russia. In St. Petersburg, several thousand demonstrators blocked the city's main boulevard, with some calling for Mr. Putin's resignation. Taken together, the protests are the largest and most passionate since Mr. Putin came to power in 2000. They appear to have tapped into latent discontent with Mr. Putin's government and the party that dominates Parliament, United Russia. "It is spontaneous, and this is the most dangerous thing for the authorities," Mr. Yermakov, 67, said, as speakers denounced the government from a step beneath a hulking bust of Lenin. "It is a tsunami, and United Russia does not understand that it is going to hit them." The law, which took effect on Jan. 1, replaced benefits like free public transportation and subsidies for housing, prescriptions, telephones and other basic services with monthly cash payments starting at a little more than $7. In a sign of bureaucratic inefficiency, some of those eligible have yet to receive any payments. Mr. Putin and United Russia's leaders have defended the law as an important reform ending a vestige of the old Soviet Communist system, but they clearly failed to anticipate the depth of opposition from those who relied most on the subsidies: millions of Russians living on pensions of less than $100 a month. The protesters have denounced the payments as insufficient to cover the cost of the benefits and as miserly for a country that recently reported a budget surplus of nearly $25 billion. As the protests unfolded in city after city across Russia, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Aleksei II, who typically allies himself with what is known here as "the party of power," questioned the law and the government's handling of it. "What counts is that this policy should be fair and effective," he said in a statement on Thursday. "It should be met with understanding by the people. The latest events show that these principles are not observed in full." Aleksei P. Kondaurov, a Communist member of the lower house of Parliament, said the law and the protests underscored the shortcomings of the political system that had evolved under Mr. Putin, one dominated by United Russia, which has refused to debate with opposition parties, let alone compromise with them. "It was clear that it was not carefully calculated," Mr. Kondaurov said of the new law in an interview. Mr. Kondaurov predicted the protests would grow and spread to other pressing social issues, which he said Mr. Putin's government and United Russia were ignoring. At a minimum, the protests have raised doubts about Mr. Putin's other proposed reforms, including those in banking, housing and electricity, which were supposed to be the centerpieces of his second term. "It's not going to be like Ukraine," Mr. Kondaurov said, drawing a parallel, as some have here, to the far larger demonstrations that overturned last November's presidential elections there. "But it is clear to me that a political and economic crisis is taking shape in Russia." After first brushing off the protests, United Russia's leaders have begun scrambling to respond. They have accused the Communists and other parties of inflaming tensions and have tried to deflect blame to regional governments, which they say are responsible for implementing the benefit changes. Some local governments, most prominently the Moscow city administration, have vowed to reinstate the benefits stripped at the federal level, but few other regions are wealthy enough to afford to do so. On Friday, the chairman of Parliament's social and labor committee, Andrei N. Isayev, said that next week, lawmakers would consider raising pensions by 15 percent in February, rather than 5 percent in April, as now planned. Others in United Russia have also tried to distance themselves from Mr. Putin's new government, which has been in place for only 10 months. The Parliament's deputy speaker, Lyubov K. Sliska, said Friday that she did not rule out the dismissal of Prime Minister Mikhail Y. Fradkov and his cabinet. But the protests have continued to grow. They began quietly, with a rally organized by the Communist Party in Solnechnogorsk, near Moscow, on Jan. 9, the 100th anniversary of the 1905 uprising. A day later, here in Khimki, several hundred people briefly blocked the main highway to St. Petersburg in what several of those involved called a spontaneous uprising. After a scuffle with the police, 12 elderly protesters were arrested, but initial threats to prosecute them were quickly dropped. Since then the protests have erupted in at least a dozen other cities, drawing thousands. In Tula, 110 miles south of Moscow, aging protesters clashed with bus conductors who refused to allow them to board city transport without paying, prompting the city to post police officers on the buses. In Novosibirsk, in Siberia, a dozen pensioners mailed their cash payments for transit - the equivalent of a little more than $3 - to Boris V. Gryzlov, the leader of United Russia and parliamentary speaker, according to the Regnum news agency. The protesters here in Khimki's central square on Saturday represented those who have fared the worst in Russia's post-Soviet transition. Mr. Yermakov's monthly pension equals roughly $85 a month. As a resident of the Moscow region, a separate administration from that of the city government, he qualified for a supplement of $7 to replace the subsidies lost under the new law. The bus fare for three trips to the small tract of land he is allowed for planting a vegetable garden, four miles away, will take nearly half that amount. Vladilena T. Berova, whose given name is an homage to Vladimir Lenin, served at the end of World War II as a corporal in Soviet intelligence and went on to work as a psychotherapist for five decades in Moscow. Now 78 and widowed, she survives on 2,000 rubles a month, about $71. "The fascists took my youth," she said, referring to the war. "And now these people are taking away my old age." The protests have included something still rare in today's Russia: personal criticism of Mr. Putin, who has remained popular by projecting an image of stability, one carefully protected by officials and state television. "Instead of listening to us, he is listening to an organ," Mr. Yermakov said, referring bitingly to Mr. Putin's participation in the unveiling of a newly restored organ in St. Petersburg on Friday with Germany's president, Horst Köhler. The benefits law has already been credited, at least in part, with a slip in Mr. Putin's ratings, as well as a general decline in the public's mood. A poll by the Levada Center, released on Saturday, said that only 39 percent of Russians considered Mr. Putin the most trusted politician. That is still higher than anyone else, but a drop from 58 percent a year ago. Sergei Y. Glazyev, a member of Parliament who challenged Mr. Putin during last year's presidential election, said in an interview that "the people's struggle for social rights" should be decided in a national referendum, rather than imposed by the Kremlin and its governing party. Voters, he said, had been fooled. "A majority of those who voted for Putin," he said, "had a quiet different expectation of what they would get."