NucNews - January 22, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety The Cork is Off the Bottle Nuclear Incident in Montana By JENNIFER VAN BERGEN and RAYMOND DEL PAPA January 22 / 24, 2005 A CounterPunch Exclusive http://www.counterpunch.com/ A retired high-level government source was called yesterday to respond to a nuclear incident in Montana. Apparently the silo doors of numerous ICBM missiles were opened. Two such incidents during the Cold War era nearly started World War III. When silo doors open, it indicates the intention to launch missiles against another nation. According to an essay published by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF), an organization dedicated to abolition of nuclear weapons: "The US experienced several near-accidents at its Cheyenne Mountain early warning station in the late 1970s. Twice, the equipment at the base generated false indications of a nuclear missile strike from Russia and nearly prompted US retaliation on both occasions." According to Phil Patton, author of "Dreamland: A Cultural History of Area 51," an incident also occurred in 1980 in which "a multiplexer chip failed in a Nova 840 computer and sent a false missile warning to the national command center." Pattons says that it was the second such incident in less than a year. "In the first one, fake data from a war-sim was mistaken for the real thing, and the Pentagon was notified that a Soviet missile strike was under way. It took about eight minutes to determine that the end of the world was not, in fact, at hand." Today, there are 200 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles at Malmstrom Air Force Base at five missile alert facilities in Montana, with four operational missile squadrons assigned as combat-ready forces to continuously operate, maintain, and secure "strategic nuclear deterrence." One of these squadrons declares on its web page that its squadron works "every day of the year, 24 hours per day" to "keep America free by operating and safeguarding her most destructive power." According to the NAPF essayist, Justin Murray, "Despite the end of the Cold War, the United States and Russia once again find themselves on the brink of a nuclear Armageddon," but the threat "does not stem from hostilities or a premeditated, intentional strike but from miscalculation and computer errors." Murray states that both the U.S. and Russia maintain thousands of nuclear weapons in launch warning mode. While launch procedures in the U.S. demand almost instantaneous decision-making by the President, the situation in Russia is even more hazardous, where decay of early warning systems elevate the possibility of false alarms. Of course, the unasked and unanswered question here is: what about terrorists? There seems to be no indication that the incident in Montana is a terrorist-related one. However, the incident begs two crucial questions: first, are our systems inadequately protected?, and second, does the increase in development of more nuclear weapons under President Bush create greater dangers? (We already have approximately 9600 warheads and are talking about developing a new line of small nuclear weapons called "bunker busters.") The answers are no and no. First, the systems are inadequately protected because whenever you have a very sophisticated electronic system (and, in this case, systems), there is the potential for an accident ­ and already there have been enough incidents to warrant shutting these dangerous systems down. Second, there is no such thing as adequate control of nuclear weapons. Their management and control simply cannot be guaranteed. The return to proliferation of nuclear weapons is risking an End Game ­ THE End Game. Although we might labor under the false belief that the Nuclear Genie is back in the bottle, even if she is, the cork is definitely not on. The incident in Montana, which may never make it into the mainstream press, proves this. Jennifer Van Bergen, J.D., is the author of The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America (Common Courage Press, 2004). She has written and spoken extensively on civil liberties, human rights, and international law. She and Raymond Del Papa are currently organizing a major Forum on Dissent Since 9/11 in Miami from March 11-13. See www.partnersinprotest.org. She may be contacted at jvbxyz@earthlink.net -------- australia United States nuclear dump won't fix problem Amanda Hodge, The Australian 01/22/2005 http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/NewsArticle.cfm?NewsID=2075 http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12012337%255E2702,00.html THE US offer to take Australia's spent nuclear fuel for the next decade does not solve the problem of where to dump the radioactive waste in the longer term. The agreement between the US and Australia drew criticism yesterday from the NSW Government, conservationists and the federal Opposition, who all called for a debate about future plans for the storage and transportation of nuclear waste. Under the US deal, about 800 spent nuclear fuel elements from a replacement nuclear reactor at Sydney's Lucas Heights will be transported to the US between now and 2016 in four shipments. However, NSW Environment Minister Bob Debus said the arrangement failed to address how the waste would be safely stored in the interim and then transported. The NSW Government opposes the storage and transport of radioactive waste within its borders, as do all other states and territories. "The state, and particularly the people of southern Sydney, remain in the dark about how long the waste will continue to be stored in NSW and how the commonwealth will ensure it's safe to transport to a secure port," Mr Debus said yesterday. "We're not talking about low-level nuclear waste used in hospitals -- some of this material is highly dangerous. "The NSW Government has repeatedly requested the federal Government to take an open approach on this, and instead we hear of a quick-fix, backroom deal devoid of detail." The Australian Conservation Foundation said the deal did nothing to minimise the risk of storing large volumes of nuclear waste at Lucas Heights, in the middle of a heavily populated suburb, and failed to explain what would be done with the estimated 1500 cubic metres of long-lasting nuclear waste already accumulated at Lucas Heights. "The commonwealth is only talking about spent fuel but there's a whole lot of other waste that reactors produce," ACF spokesman David Noonan said. State and territory governments mutinied last year after a federal government shortlist of potential dump sites across the nation was leaked to the media. Commonwealth land in Puckapunyal in Victoria and Jervis Bay in NSW were among the locations on the list, which emerged just weeks after John Howard backed down in his tussle with South Australia to locate the dump at Woomera in the state's north. The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation believes the US deal removes the need for the federal Government to find a dump location before an operator's licence is granted for the replacement research reactor. But the federal Opposition and the Australian Democrats said the question remained of what to do with the nuclear waste due for return from reprocessing in France in 2015, as well as the waste generated from the new Lucas Heights reactor, once the deal with the US ended. THE US offer to take Australia's spent nuclear fuel for the next decade does not solve the problem of where to dump the radioactive waste in the longer term. The agreement between the US and Australia drew criticism yesterday from the NSW Government, conservationists and the federal Opposition, who all called for a debate about future plans for the storage and transportation of nuclear waste. Under the US deal, about 800 spent nuclear fuel elements from a replacement nuclear reactor at Sydney's Lucas Heights will be transported to the US between now and 2016 in four shipments. However, NSW Environment Minister Bob Debus said the arrangement failed to address how the waste would be safely stored in the interim and then transported. The NSW Government opposes the storage and transport of radioactive waste within its borders, as do all other states and territories. "The state, and particularly the people of southern Sydney, remain in the dark about how long the waste will continue to be stored in NSW and how the commonwealth will ensure it's safe to transport to a secure port," Mr Debus said yesterday. "We're not talking about low-level nuclear waste used in hospitals -- some of this material is highly dangerous. "The NSW Government has repeatedly requested the federal Government to take an open approach on this, and instead we hear of a quick-fix, backroom deal devoid of detail." The Australian Conservation Foundation said the deal did nothing to minimise the risk of storing large volumes of nuclear waste at Lucas Heights, in the middle of a heavily populated suburb, and failed to explain what would be done with the estimated 1500 cubic metres of long-lasting nuclear waste already accumulated at Lucas Heights. "The commonwealth is only talking about spent fuel but there's a whole lot of other waste that reactors produce," ACF spokesman David Noonan said. State and territory governments mutinied last year after a federal government shortlist of potential dump sites across the nation was leaked to the media. Commonwealth land in Puckapunyal in Victoria and Jervis Bay in NSW were among the locations on the list, which emerged just weeks after John Howard backed down in his tussle with South Australia to locate the dump at Woomera in the state's north. The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation believes the US deal removes the need for the federal Government to find a dump location before an operator's licence is granted for the replacement research reactor. But the federal Opposition and the Australian Democrats said the question remained of what to do with the nuclear waste due for return from reprocessing in France in 2015, as well as the waste generated from the new Lucas Heights reactor, once the deal with the US ended. Please visit NPRI's web site at www.nuclearpolicy.org -------- canada Canadian town under radiation microscope Port Hope home to uranium processing plant Study will test few townspeople for radiation exposure KATE HARRIES ONTARIO STAR REPORTER Jan. 22, 2005. 01:00 AM http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1106349010475&call_pageid=970599119419 PORT HOPE—An internationally recognized nuclear medical expert will study residents here for evidence of sickness resulting from exposure to radioactive materials. Dr. Asaf Durakovic, research director of the Uranium Medical Research Center in Washington, D.C., a non-profit organization that also has an office in Toronto, says he agreed to undertake the study at the request of a local committee. "There are sick people in Port Hope who are not being cared (for) by anyone," Durakovic says. "If someone asks us for assistance, we have no moral or ethical right to refuse such a request." While Health Canada has found that cancer and mortality statistics in this town of 15,000 are comparable with Ontario as a whole and other similar communities in the province, some residents are welcoming the study as the first in which there will be actual physical tests of people. "This is a very big step forward," says Faye More, chair of the Community Health Concerns Committee, an independent citizens' group that has been pushing for a health study of Port Hope residents for 10 years. "These aren't theoretical models on computers. We're finally doing an investigation into the possible effect on people who live here." The Uranium Medical Research Center tested Iraqi civilians exposed to bombing during Operation Iraqi Freedom and found high levels of depleted uranium in some people. Durakovic says committee members presented him with clinical histories of specific individuals and hearsay evidence of the prevalence in the town of cancers and respiratory, renal and immune system problems that could be attributable to uranium exposure. He says he feels the town's history as the home of a nuclear processing facility for more than 70 years points to the need for a properly structured study. The project has the potential for controversy, coming at a time of renewed interest in the activities of uranium giant Cameco Corp., which is seeking federal approval for a plan to produce a new and more potent nuclear fuel here. Cameco vice-president Robert Steane has raised questions about the credibility of the Uranium Medical Research Center, charging that it is an activist organization that is neither independent nor objective. "We are sure we share a desire that any public health testing does not lead to unsupportable findings that needlessly alarm the residents of Port Hope," Steane wrote in a recent letter to the health concerns committee, demanding assurances that the testing follow recognized scientific protocols. Port Hope Mayor Rick Austin also questions the value of the study, noting the small number of participants that are proposed — around a dozen people. "Can that give you a good indication?" he asks, adding: "As a mayor, I would like to go forward rather than backwards. There's nothing we can do about the past." Such skepticism is widespread, says Port Hope resident Derrick Kelly, one of about 100 people who attended a meeting the week before Christmas to hear Durakovic outline his plans. "Most old-time Port Hopers like myself have got so bored of the issue," Kelly says, adding that there's a willingness to believe the reassurances of experts and an unwillingness to rock the boat. But Kelly says he's concerned, and questions whether Cameco should be operating in the centre of the town. A silent auction at the meeting raised $2,600 toward the cost of the testing — which More says will be $30,000 for a "minimal" investigation. More says she thinks it's "offensive" that the only way to get the study done is by locals taking it into their own hands. `We're finally doing an investigation into the possible effect on people who live here' Faye More, citizens' committee She says the work should have been done by the federal government, which started the contamination of the area with Crown corporation Eldorado Nuclear Ltd. and now — through the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission — regulates Cameco, a private company that took over Eldorado's uranium processing plant in 1988. The federal government is undertaking a $260 million clean-up of pre-1988 radioactive wastes found in soils and buildings throughout the town, but will not look into possible human effects, More says. She also discounts two Health Canada studies. The studies, released in 2000 and 2002, used data from the Ontario Cancer Registry and Canadian Mortality Database to conclude that cancer incidence and mortality in Port Hope were comparable to elsewhere in Ontario. The findings were "on the whole, reassuring," the nuclear safety commission said in a release at the time, explaining that while some statistically significant differences were found in some categories, "such chance findings are expected due to random fluctuations in rare disease rates." Differences included brain cancers in Port Hope children at four times the provincial average and 2 1/2 times as high in women. Critics like Toronto epidemiologist Eric Mintz, who last year produced a critique of the two studies, take issue with the federal government's interpretation of the data. "The patterns of excess rates for some cancers, (for) example, brain cancer, are suggestive of problems," Mintz says, adding that he found the federal report's description of results as "reassuring" to be inappropriate. Earlier, in 1996-97, public health consultant Dr. Trevor Hancock was retained by the Atomic Energy Control Board (the Nuclear Safety Commission's predecessor) to develop a plan for a study that would test and interview residents, but it was not implemented. More says her committee has repeatedly asked the federal government to fund a health study, without success. "We had felt that Port Hope people have already paid through the nose in a variety of ways and should not be required to fund their own health studies," More says. But now the time seems right, she says, as Cameco's plan to process slightly enriched uranium has spawned a resurgence of opposition to the presence of the nuclear plant in the heart of town. A group called Families Against Radioactive Exposure is pushing for a review panel environmental assessment of Cameco's proposal, rather than the screening process that has been approved by Nuclear Safety Commission staff and has been underway for more than a year. The review panel process would provide for public hearings and could fund some aspect of the research being undertaken by Durakovic, More says. Durakovic told the meeting last month that the point of his study will be to determine if some residents who are sick also have physical evidence of exposure. He said the estimates on which governments based their assessment of risk are often flawed and are no substitute for biological studies of what is actually present in people's bodies. "We live in an environment that is poisoned, probably to the point of no return," he said, ranking Port Hope with other sites close to nuclear facilities in the former Soviet Union, the United States and China where "unsuspecting populations" have been poisoned. The Uranium Medical Research Center will do a triage of volunteer residents based on detailed medical histories, selecting 12 to 20 people, says Ted Weyman, the centre's deputy director. Urine samples will be sent for testing to a laboratory in Germany and another one in Japan, along with samples from a control group from another undetermined Ontario community. If any subjects test positive, the research team will then look at possible links between symptoms and their exposure history. It will be possible to identify what type of uranium caused the radiation, although not the timing of the exposure, Weyman said. The final step will be peer review and publication of the study. The whole process is expected to take about six months. -------- depleted uranium The horror of Depleted Uranium is not limited to Iraq – it may well be at our doorsteps The information which some governments are concealing is presented here. James Denver January 22, 2005 http://www.uruknet.info?p=9084 :: The original address of this article is : http://www.caduceus.info/articles/denver.htm 'I’m horrified. The people out there – the Iraqis, the media and the troops – risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It’s going to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car.’ The speaker is not some alarmist doom-sayer. He is Dr Chris Busby, the British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of Liverpool in the Faculty of Medicine and UK representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk, talking about the best kept secret of this war: the fact that, by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq, Britain and America have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis but the whole world. For these weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that – whipped up by sandstorms and carried on trade winds – there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate – including Britain. For the wind has no boundaries and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer, leukaemia, brain damage, kidney failure, and extreme birth defects – killing millions of every age for centuries to come. A crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time. These weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate – including Britain. Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story is a dirty story in which the facts have been concealed from those who needed them most. It is also a story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get the medical care they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are not to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted uranium was used. A dirty Tyson ‘Depleted’ uranium is in many ways a misnomer. For ‘depleted’ sounds weak. The only weak thing about depleted uranium is its price. It is dirt cheap, toxic, waste from nuclear power plants and bomb production. However, uranium is one of earth’s heaviest elements and DU packs a Tyson’s punch, smashing through tanks, buildings and bunkers with equal ease, spontaneously catching fire as it does so, and burning people alive. ‘Crispy critters’ is what US servicemen call those unfortunate enough to be close. And, when John Pilger encountered children killed at a greater distance he wrote: ‘The children’s skin had folded back, like parchment, revealing veins and burnt flesh that seeped blood, while the eyes, intact, stared straight ahead. I vomited.’ (Daily Mirror) The millions of radioactive uranium oxide particles released when it burns can kill just as surely, but far more terribly. They can even be so tiny they pass through a gas mask, making protection against them impossible. Yet, small is not beautiful. For these invisible killers indiscriminately attack men, women, children and even babies in the womb – and do the gravest harm of all to children and unborn babies. A terrible legacy Doctors in Iraq have estimated that birth defects have increased by 2-6 times, and 3-12 times as many children have developed cancer and leukaemia since 1991. Moreover, a report published in The Lancet in 1998 said that as many as 500 children a day are dying from these sequels to war and sanctions and that the death rate for Iraqi children under 5 years of age increased from 23 per 1000 in 1989 to 166 per thousand in 1993. Overall, cases of lymphoblastic leukemia more than quadrupled with other cancers also increasing ‘at an alarming rate’. In men, lung, bladder, bronchus, skin, and stomach cancers showed the highest increase. In women, the highest increases were in breast and bladder cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (.1) On hearing that DU had been used in the Gulf in 1991, the UK Atomic Energy Authority sent the Ministry of Defence a special report on the potential damage to health and the environment. It said that it could cause half a million additional cancer deaths in Iraq over 10 years. In that war the authorities only admitted to using 320 tons of DU – although the Dutch charity LAKA estimates the true figure is closer to 800 tons. Many times that may have been spread across Iraq by this year’s war. The devastating damage all this DU will do to the health and fertility of the people of Iraq now, and for generations to come, is beyond imagining. The radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years killing millions of every age for centuries to come. This is a crime against humanity which may rank with the worst atrocities of all time. We must also count the numberless thousands of miscarried babies. Nobody knows how many Iraqis have died in the womb since DU contaminated their world. But it is suggested that troops who were only exposed to DU for the brief period of the war were still excreting uranium in their semen 8 years later and some had 100 times the so called ‘safe limit’ of uranium in their urine. The lack of government interest in the plight of veterans of the 1991 war is reflected in a lack of academic research on the impact of DU but informal research has found a high incidence of birth defects in their children and that the wives of men who served in Iraq have three times more miscarriages than the wives of servicemen who did not go there. Since DU darkened the land Iraq has seen birth defects which would break a heart of stone: babies with terribly foreshortened limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumours where their eyes should be, or with a single eye – like Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads. Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown outside textbooks showing the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the Pacific. Doctors report that many women no longer say ‘Is it a girl or a boy?’ but simply, ‘Is it normal, doctor?’ Moreover this terrible legacy will not end. The genes of their parents may have been damaged for ever, and the damaging DU dust is ever-present. Blue on blue What the governments of America and Britain have done to the people of Iraq they have also done to their own soldiers, in both wars. And they have done it knowingly. For the battlefields have been thick with DU and soldiers have had to enter areas heavily contaminated by bombing. Moreover, their bodies have not only been assaulted by DU but also by a vaccination regime which violated normal protocols, experimental vaccines, nerve agent pills, and organophosphate pesticides in their tents. Yet, though the hazards of DU were known, British and American troops were not warned of its dangers. Nor were they given thorough medical checks on their return – even though identifying it quickly might have made it possible to remove some of it from their body. Then, when a growing number became seriously ill, and should have been sent to top experts in radiation damage and neurotoxins, many were sent to a psychiatrist. Over 200,000 US troops who returned from the 1991 war are now invalided out with ailments officially attributed to service in Iraq – that’s 1 in 3. In contrast, the British government’s failure to fully assess the health of returning troops, or to monitor their health, means no one even knows how many have died or become gravely ill since their return. However, Gulf veterans’ associations say that, of 40,000 or so fighting fit men and women who saw active service, at least 572 have died prematurely since coming home and 5000 may be ill. An alarming number are thought to have taken their own lives, unable to bear the torment of the innumerable ailments which have combined to take away their career, their sexuality, their ability to have normal children, and even their ability to breathe or walk normally. As one veteran puts it, they are ‘on DU death row, waiting to die’. Whatever other factors there may be, some of their illnesses are strikingly similar to those of Iraqis exposed to DU dust. For example, soldiers have also fathered children without eyes. And, in a group of eight servicemen whose babies lack eyes seven are known to have been directly exposed to DU dust. They too have fathered children with stunted arms, and rare abnormalities classically associated with radiation damage. They too seem prone to cancer and leukaemia. Tellingly, so are EU soldiers who served as peacekeepers in the Balkans, where DU was also used. Indeed their leukaemia rate has been so high that several EU governments have protested at the use of DU. The vital evidence Despite all that evidence of the harm done by DU, governments on both sides of the Atlantic have repeatedly claimed that as it emits only ‘low level’ radiation DU is harmless. Award winning scientist, Dr Rosalie Bertell who has led UN medical commissions, has studied ‘low level’ radiation for 30 years.(2 )She has found that uranium oxide particles have more than enough power to harm cells, and describes their pulses of radiation as hitting surrounding cells ‘like flashes of lightning’ again and again in a single second.(2) Like many scientists worldwide who have studied this type of radiation, she has found that such ‘lightning strikes’ can damage DNA and cause cell mutations which lead to cancer. Moreover, these particles can be taken up by body fluids and travel through the body, damaging more than one organ. To compound all that Dr Bertell has found that this particular type of radiation can cause the body’s communication systems to break down, leading to malfunctions in many vital organs of the body and to many medical problems. A striking fact, since many veterans of the first Gulf war suffer from innumerable, seemingly unrelated, ailments. In addition, recent research by Eric Wright, Professor of Experimental Haematology at Dundee University, and others, have shown two ways in which such radiation can do far more damage than has been thought. The first is that a cell which seems unharmed by radiation can produce cells with diverse mutations several cell generations later. (And mutations are at the root of cancer and birth defects.) This ‘radiation induced genomic instability’ is compounded by ‘the bystander effect’ by which cells mutate in unison with others which have been damaged by radiation – rather as birds swoop and turn in unison. Put together, these two mechanisms can greatly increase the damage done by a single source of radiation, such as a DU particle. Moreover, it is now clear that there are marked genetic differences in the way individuals respond to radiation – with some being far more likely to develop cancer than others. So the fact that some veterans of the first Gulf war seem relatively unharmed by their exposure to DU in no way proves that DU did not damage others. The price of truth That the evidence from Iraq and from our troops, and the research findings of such experts, have been ignored may be no accident. A US report, leaked in late 1995, allegedly says, ‘The potential for health effects from DU exposure is real; however it must be viewed in perspective... the financial implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs would be excessive.(’3) Clearly, with hundreds of thousands gravely ill in Iraq and at least a quarter of a million UK and US troops seriously ill, huge disability claims might be made not only against the governments of Britain and America if the harm done by DU were acknowledged. There might also be huge claims against companies making DU weapons and some of their directors are said to be extremely close to the White House. How close they are to Downing Street is a matter for speculation, but arms sales makes a considerable contribution to British trade. So the massive whitewashing of DU over the past 12 years, and the way that governments have failed to test returning troops, seemed to disbelieve them, and washed their hands of them, may be purely to save money. The possibility that financial considerations have led the governments of Britain and America to cynically avoid taking responsibility for the harm they have done not only to the people of Iraq but to their own troops may seem outlandish. Yet DU weapons weren’t used by the other side and no other explanation fits the evidence. For, in the days before Britain and America first used DU in war its hazards were no secret.(4 O)ne American study in 1990 said DU was ‘linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and to] chemical toxicity – causing kidney damage’. While another openly warned that exposure to these particles under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neuro-cognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects(.5) A culture of denial In 1996 and 1997 UN Human Rights Tribunals condemned DU weapons for illegally breaking the Geneva Convention and classed them as ‘weapons of mass destruction’ ‘incompatible with international humanitarian and human rights law’. Since then, following leukaemia in European peacekeeping troops in the Balkans and Afghanistan (where DU was also used), the EU has twice called for DU weapons to be banned. Yet, far from banning DU, America and Britain stepped up their denials of the harm from this radioactive dust as more and more troops from the first Gulf war and from action and peacekeeping in the Balkan and Afghanistan have become seriously ill. This is no coincidence. In 1997, while citing experiments, by others, in which 84 percent of dogs exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer of the lungs, Dr Asaf Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington was quoted as saying, ‘The [US government’s] Veteran Administration asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body.’ He concluded, ‘uranium… does cause cancer, uranium does cause mutation, and uranium does kill. If we continue with the irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, and denial of the fact that human life is endangered by the deadly isotope uranium, then we are doing disservice to ourselves, disservice to the truth, disservice to God and to all generations who follow.’ Not what the authorities wanted to hear and his research was suddenly blocked. During 12 years of ever-growing British whitewash the authorities have abolished military hospitals, where there could have been specialized research on the effects of DU and where expertise in treating DU victims could have built up. And, not content with the insult of suggesting the gravely disabling symptoms of Gulf veterans are imaginary they have refused full pensions to many. For, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the current House of Commons briefing paper on DU hazards says ‘it is judged that any radiation effects from…possible exposures are extremely unlikely to be a contributory factor to the illnesses currently being experienced by some Gulf war veterans.’ Note how over a quarter of a million sick and dying US and UK vets are called ‘some’. The way ahead Britain and America not only used DU in this year’s Iraq war, they dramatically increased its use – from a minimum of 320 tons in the previous war to at minimum of 1500 tons in this one. And this time the use of DU wasn’t limited to anti-tank weapons – as it had largely been in the previous Gulf war – but was extended to the guided missiles, large bunker busters and big 2000 pound bombs used in Iraq’s cities. This means that Iraq’s cities have been blanketed in lethal particles – any one of which can cause cancer or deform a child. In addition, the use of DU in huge bombs which throw the deadly particles higher and wider in huge plumes of smoke means that billions of deadly particles have been carried high into the air – again and again and again as the bombs rained down – ready to be swept worldwide by the winds. The Royal Society has suggested the solution is massive decontamination in Iraq. That could only scratch the surface. For decontamination is hugely expensive and, though it may reduce the risks in some of the worst areas, it cannot fully remove them. For DU is too widespread on land and water. How do you clean up every nook and cranny of a city the size of Baghdad? How can they decontaminate a whole country in which microscopic particles, which cannot be detected with a normal geiger counter, are spread from border to border? And how can they clean up all the countries downwind of Iraq – and, indeed, the world? So there are only two things we can do to mitigate this crime against humanity. The first is to provide the best possible medical care for the people of Iraq, for our returning troops and for those who served in the last Gulf war and, through that, minimize their suffering. The second is to relegate war, and the production and sale of weapons, to the scrap heap of history – along with slavery and genocide. Then, and only then, will this crime against humanity be expunged, and the tragic deaths from this war truly bring freedom to the people of Iraq, and of the world. Read the full article in issue 60 of Caduceus... : http://www.caduceus.info/backissues.htm References 1. The Lancet volume 351, issue 9103, 28 February 1998. 2. Rosalie Bertell’s book Planet Earth the Latest Weapon of War was reviewed in Caduceus issue 51, page 28. 3. http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1.htm#TABL_ResearchRepo rtSummaries 4. http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.01/020117moret.htm The secret official memorandum to Brigadier General L.R.Groves from Drs Conant, Compton and Urey of War Department Manhattan district dated October 1943 is available at the website www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-GenGroves21feb03.ht m 5. http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_iitab11.htm#tabL_researchreportsumma ries -------- korea N. Korea Tells U.S. Lawmaker It Has Atom Bombs - Report Sat Jan 22, 2005 07:52 AM ET (Reuters) http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=7399547 SEOUL - A top North Korean official has told U.S. legislators that the communist state possessed nuclear weapons, Radio Free Asia reported on Friday. North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan said the country was a nuclear weapons state but its nuclear arsenal was defensive in nature and Pyongyang did not intend to possess it forever, Radio Free Asia quoted U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon as saying. Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, led a six-member congressional delegation to North Korea last week and met with its senior officials. North Korea aimed to denuclearize itself and it was willing to move toward that end in a transparent manner, Weldon quoted the North's Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun as saying. "The president of the country said that he foresaw the day when America and North Korea would be friends," Weldon was quoted as telling a forum in Washington last week about his meeting with the North's number-two official and president of its assembly, Kim Yong-nam. Weldon has said since his return he had not met with the North's leader Kim Jong-il, who rules the country as chairman of its defense commission. North Korea is believed to possess one or two nuclear weapons and possibly more than eight. It has boasted to have transformed spent plutonium from reactors into materials for nuclear weapons, but has never formally declared to possess nuclear weapons. North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China have met for three rounds of talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons ambitions. North Korea has boycotted a fourth round planned before the end of September. -------- terrorism Boston Terror Plot Suspect in Custody Saturday, January 22, 2005 Fox News http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,145152,00.html BOSTON — One of the 13 Chinese nationals allegedly involved in a terror plot against Boston was in custody and being questioned by authorities on Saturday, FBI sources told FOX News. Authorities were interrogating Mei Xia Dong about her involvement in a possible terrorist plot (search) against Boston that was made public in an FBI report Friday. Airport and transit authorities responded to the report by boosting security — adding patrols, activating radiation detectors and posting pictures of some of the suspects. FBI agents were looking into an uncorroborated tip that 16 people — 13 Chinese nationals, two Iraqis and one other person whose nationality was not released — might be planning an attack. The agency announced Wednesday that it was investigating four Chinese nationals, and a Transportation Security Administration (search) official said later that a security briefing indicated the FBI also was looking for two Iraqis. The number jumped by 10 Thursday "as a result of the ongoing investigation" but did not signal that credible evidence about a plot had emerged, FBI spokesman Joe Parris said. The 14th person was identified on the FBI's Web site as Jose Ernesto Beltran Quinones, but his nationality was not given. "Information is still uncorroborated and from a source of unknown reliability and motive," Parris said. Another federal law enforcement official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, said the tip was received by the California Highway Patrol (search). The tipster claimed the four Chinese — two men and two women — entered the United States from Mexico and were awaiting a shipment of "nuclear oxide" that would follow them to Boston. Several radioactive compounds take form as oxides and could be used in a dirty bomb, expert Charles Ferguson said. Plutonium and americium oxides, in the right amounts, would be dangerous to human health, while uranium oxide would be less so, he said. "They vary in potency," said Ferguson, science and technology fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. "If it was plutonium, we could have a problem on our hands." At Logan Airport, where two of the planes were hijacked for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the tip was being taken seriously, according to Dennis Treece, director of corporate security. The most visible sign was more patrols. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the city's transit agency, also increased security and activated radiation detectors in response to the threat, said Deputy Chief John Martrino. He said the detectors are put in use whenever the city is on higher-than-normal security alert. Pictures of four Chinese suspects released by the FBI were taped inside booths where subway tokens are sold by transit employees, and operators of underground parking garages started searching vehicles. Dong, the suspect in custody, was not one of the four in the pictures released by the FBI. Barbara Fisher of suburban Belmont, waiting for the subway at Boston's South Station, said she wondered if she should plan another way to get to her vocational training classes if the subway shut down. But she said she was reassured when authorities said the threat was uncorroborated. "You can't be too nervous," she said. "I'm not changing my life." Patrice Diaz-Migoyo, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he believes it's hard to assess threats because of past government intelligence failures and secrecy. "Do I personally feel threatened? No," he said, standing inside an upscale downtown shopping mall where security is usually tight. "Should I? I have no means to judge." But he said the news reports brought back memories of the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. "My first reaction, because I lived in Greenwich Village on Sept. 11, was annoyance if I happened to be in the two cities that got struck," he said. The Rev. John R. Odams, pastor of Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Boston's Dorchester section, said he wasn't worried. "Emotional terrorism is probably a greater threat to us," he said as he waited for a train. "We need to look at the bigger picture. "It seems there are so many other dangers in our society that end up getting ignored — housing, homelessness, poverty — that are in some ways more threatening," Odams said. ---- Retaliation investigated as possible motive for tip on Boston terror threat By DENISE LAVOIE Associated Press Writer Saturday, January 22, 2005 http://www.napanews.com/templates/index.cfm?template=story_full&id=16D2E5A5-FFBF-4FBB-BBB5-0B03B2C571F9 BOSTON -- The tipster who told federal officials about a potential terrorist plot involving Chinese and Iraqi immigrants may have fabricated the story out of revenge, a federal law enforcement official said Friday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the tipster may have been angry because a group of illegal immigrants had failed to pay for smuggling them into the country. That scenario is one of many being examined in the case, said the official in Washington, who declined to describe other theories being explored. FBI agents have been looking into an uncorroborated tip that 16 people might be planning an attack on Boston. They include 13 Chinese nationals, two Iraqis and a man identified on the FBI's Web site as Jose Ernesto Beltran Quinones, whose nationality was not given. Gov. Mitt Romney said Friday that he has become "less concerned, not more concerned" about the threat since it was first reported Wednesday. The original tip was received by the California Highway Patrol, according to another federal law enforcement official in Washington who also spoke on condition of anonymity. The tipster claimed that four of the Chinese -- two men and two women -- entered the United States from Mexico and were awaiting a shipment of "nuclear oxide" that would follow them to Boston. Several radioactive compounds take form as oxides and could be used in a dirty bomb, said Charles Ferguson, a science and technology fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. Plutonium and americium oxides, in the right amounts, would be dangerous to human health, while uranium oxide would be less so, Ferguson said. Security was increased in Boston, where two of the planes were hijacked for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Associated Press writer Curt Anderson in Washington contributed to this report. ---- Plot Inquiry Is Expanded in Boston By KATIE ZEZIMA January 22, 2005 NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/22/national/22boston.html?pagewanted=print&position= BOSTON, Jan. 21 - Officials said on Friday that an unknown informant who told the authorities that a Chinese group was plotting a terrorist attack here could have been a disgruntled trafficker of immigrants who was not paid or was in a drug deal gone awry. The possibilities were among several being investigated as the transit police stepped up security, patrolling the subway with radiation detectors and posting photographs of four suspects at token booths and on signs. "We've enhanced coverage in the core system," the deputy chief of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, John Martino, said. "We've added patrols." The patrols are "standard practice" in terrorist alerts or large events like the Boston Marathon, Mr. Martino said. Officials in adjacent New Hampshire have put their radiation detection material on standby, said Bruce Cheney, director of the State Division of Emergency Services, Communications and Management. Federal officials announced on Wednesday that they had received a tip of "uncorroborated and unknown reliability" that four Chinese were planning an unspecified attack here. The tip suggested that the four entered California from Mexico. A public safety official said the tipster had alerted the California authorities that the four were to intercept some type of nuclear or radiological material in New York. The F.B.I. announced on Thursday that it was looking for 10 additional people in the case. Those photographs were not released. None of the 14 appeared on terrorist watch lists or was considered a "person of interest" by the F.B.I., officials said. Officials have played down any threat for two days. United States Attorney Michael J. Sullivan raised the possibility that the tip could be a hoax and that the suspects might not be in the United States. Other officials also voiced skepticism. "This is no different than many reports that we deal with every day," one federal law enforcement official said. A public safety official said the response from the authorities and the news media had blown the actual threat out of proportion. "I think our response may have made it look more serious than I think it has been up to this point," the official said. Gov. Mitt Romney, who returned from the presidential inauguration festivities in Washington on Wednesday night to assure the public that Boston was safe, said at a news conference on Friday that he had become "less concerned, not more concerned" about the threat. Some Bostonians seemed to agree with him as they appreciated the fact that federal officials issued some information about the investigation. "I think it's good that they let us know, even if they don't think it's something we should be incredibly concerned about," Elena Krasnovsky, 28, a graduate student from Waltham, said. "I'm not in a state of panic." Marty Rifkin, 55, a lawyer from Los Angeles, stared at a poster of the suspects hanging at the Park Street station. Mr. Rifkin said he did not see Boston as being "that hot of a target" and was not worried about an attack, especially because all the information had not been corroborated. Eric Lichtblau contributed reporting from Washington for this article. -------- u.s. nuc weapons Yucca opponent, former Reid adviser joins NRC By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU Saturday, January 22, 2005 Las Vegas Review-Journal http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Jan-22-Sat-2005/news/25713794.html WASHINGTON -- Gregory B. Jaczko, a physicist and former U.S. Senate adviser who has been critical of the Yucca Mountain Project, was sworn in Friday to a seat on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Jaczko was appointed by President Bush on Wednesday to fill a vacancy on the five-member commission that regulates the management of nuclear power plants, the handling of nuclear materials, and the disposal of radioactive spent fuel. A New York native, Jaczko, 34, was science adviser to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a leading Yucca Mountain critic who negotiated the appointment with White House officials. The agreement required Jaczko to recuse himself for a year from any Yucca Mountain matters. Bush filled a second NRC vacancy with Peter B. Lyons, a physicist and adviser to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a nuclear power proponent. Lyons, 61, is a former management official at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Lyons, a Nevada native and graduate of Boulder City High School, is expected to take office at the commission on Tuesday, the agency said. Jaczko was sworn in at the NRC by chairman Nils Diaz in a brief ceremony held in a private conference room, an NRC spokesman said. Commissioners Edward McGaffigan and Jeffrey Merrifield attended, as did Jaczko's parents and sister, according to Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen. Reid did not attend but was represented by four aides who were Jaczko colleagues, Hafen said. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- new mexico Los Alamos, NM Nuclear lab back to work January 22, 2005 (AP) http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050121-111639-7629r.htm LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — One of the nation's leading nuclear weapons laboratories is ready to resume normal operations after security and safety lapses last summer forced a shutdown of hazardous, high-risk operations at the lab. Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Pete Nanos told employees this week it should "look like a normal day" at the lab by Jan. 31, with "productive work proceeding without impediment." "I'm not going to give up the progress we made," he said. "It's been a long six months, and we've all paid the price in one way or another." Los Alamos shut down nearly all its divisions for review after two computer disks believed to contain classified information were reported missing and an intern sustained an eye injury from a laser. Nearly all of the lab's nonhazardous projects were restarted soon afterward, but some high-risk operations — mostly involving weapons work — have had to wait. The lab identified about 3,000 issues that needed to be improved, including better training, a new way to store and track computer disks containing top-secret information, and a safety program under which individuals take responsibility for their actions, according to lab spokesman Kevin Roark. Mr. Nanos insisted the lab wants "a continually improving state where we don't slip backward." "This will be a tough year, but I feel that fundamentally we are moving in the right direction and laying the groundwork to ensure this institution's future," he said. -------- MILITARY -------- israel / palestine Gaza deployment raises hope January 22, 2005 By Lara Sukhtian ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050121-095219-5005r.htm EREZ CHECKPOINT, Gaza Strip — About 3,000 armed Palestinian police were deployed across the northern Gaza Strip yesterday to prevent rocket fire on Israeli communities, raising hope that the two sides have found a way to end more than four years of bloody conflict and resume peace talks. The deployment, with officers patrolling in shiny new pickup trucks, came after Israel and the Palestinians renewed security coordination earlier this week. In parallel, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is negotiating with armed groups to win their commitment to a cease-fire, and his associates said he is making progress. About 3,000 members of the Palestinian security forces took up positions in northern Gaza yesterday, security officials said. Additional forces were to deploy in the southern half of the strip by tomorrow. After the outbreak of fighting in 2000, Palestinian police had increasingly stayed off the streets, for fear of being targeted by Israeli troops. The Islamist militant group Hamas indicated it is suspending rocket attacks while negotiations continue. "One can't be negotiating and firing rockets at the same time. It just doesn't work," Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri said. He also said the talks are moving in a "positive direction." The militant groups have not yet committed to a cease-fire. "I don't know how soon we shall have results," Mr. Abbas told reporters yesterday. Israel's deputy defense minister, Zeev Boim, said Israel would respond with "great force" to renewed Palestinian rocket fire. In Israel, a 17-year-old girl from the town of Sderot near Gaza died yesterday of injuries she sustained in a Palestinian rocket attack last week. Militants have not fired rockets since Wednesday. In the troop deployment, officers fanned out across northern Gaza. Near the Erez crossing with Israel, 10 policemen in green uniforms and carrying assault rifles checked vehicles heading to nearby Israeli positions. From the northern town of Beit Lahiya, a frequent rocket-launching area, about five dozen members of Palestinian military intelligence, wearing red berets, set out on patrol in new pickup trucks. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sent messages to Mr. Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, expressing hope for peace in the region. In a further sign of easing tensions, the army yesterday opened the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border, the Palestinians' only link to the Arab world, to incoming traffic. The crossing has been closed since a Dec. 12 attack on the Israeli military post there killed five soldiers. ---- Al Aqsa Brigades spokesman says group ready for cease-fire By Amos Harel and Arnon Regular, Haaretz Service and News Agencies January 22, 2005 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/530080.html The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militant group linked to the ruling Fatah party, will agree to a mutual cease-fire if Israel pledges to halt its attacks on the Palestinians and stop targeted killings of wanted Palestinians, the group's spokesman announced Saturday. A masked Abu Mohammed, Al Aqsa's spokesman in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, made the announcement at a Gaza news conference. Flanked by gunmen, Abu Mohammed - using a nom-de-guerre - said the armed group would accept a truce "if it is mutual and if Israel also commits to it." At the news conference, Abu Yusef - another Al Aqsa spokesman - said local leaders who made a similar announcement earlier Saturday were not authorized to speak for the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades has splintered during four years of violence and has no clear central leadership. Abu Mohammed said Israel must agree, under the terms of a cease-fire, to release Palestinians prisoners from its jails. "We think that all the factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad believe that this cease-fire must be mutual," Abu Mohammed said. Earlier Saturday, Al Aqsa militants spoke at a separate Gaza City news conference, and said they were ready for a cease-fire with Israel. The militants said they would agree to a truce, "but the Israeli government has to announce a comprehensive cessation to all military operations in our land." IDF: Attacks almost cease due to Gaza raids A mortar shell landed near an Israel Defense Forces position near the Gaza settlement of Neveh Dekalim on Saturday night, Israel Radio reported. No injuries were reported. A senior IDF officer said earlier Saturday that as a result of military operations in Gaza, the number of attacks in the past three days has drawn close to zero, Army Radio reported. The officer also said there has been no mortar or rocket fire on Israeli towns during this time. A security official suggested on Saturday that Israel could ease up on military operations against Palestinians if Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas achieves a cease-fire deal with militant groups. "I would say in simple language that we would respond to quiet. If there is no reason to carry out a certain operation, we wouldn't do so," Giora Eiland, the head of the National Security Council told Israel Radio. Abbas is negotiating a truce deal with militants in the Gaza Strip amid a lull in rocket and mortar fire and a new deployment of Palestinian security police. Eiland also said he expected Abbas to disarm militants. Report: Abbas instructs PA police to fire on militants Abbas has instructed PA policemen to open fire on any Qassam launching militants in northern Gaza, Channel One reported Friday evening. Palestinian security services on Friday finished deploying around 2,000 paramilitary police officers around the border towns Beit Hanun and Beit Lahia and other parts of northern Gaza, in an effort to prevent rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli targets. Abbas said in a statement earlier on Friday that the PA will deploy security forces in the southern Gaza Strip within two days. According to the Channel One report, Abbas also fired the Palestinian manager of the Karni border crossing in the central Gaza Strip, after an internal probe revealed he had aided militants in carrying out a terror attack which killed six Israeli civilians at the crossing last week. The militants drove an explosive-laden truck into the Palestinian side of border crossing, and destroyed a wall separating it from the Israeli side by detonating it. After the wall was blown up, two suicide bombers entered the Israeli side of the crossing, set off their belts, and killed six Israeli workers. U.S. to send Burns to the region The United States announced Friday it would send Assistant Secretary of State William Burns to the region to assess chances of serious peacemaking between Israel and Palestinian leaders. Steps taken by Abbas to tighten security are reason for encouragement, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "We have always stressed how important it is for the Palestinians to organize themselves to end the violence, and we welcome steps that are being taken in that direction," he said. An agreement reached Thursday approved a deployment in the northern Gaza Strip alone, but the parties were said to be discussing further PA deployments in other parts of the strip. The PA completed the deployment of security forces in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, according to the statement issued by Abbas. In Beit Hanun, armed policemen inspected vehicles and a squad in a jeep patrolled a nearby road leading to the Erez border crossing, witnesses said. "Our orders are clear: to control these areas and to stop attacks," said Ismail al-Dahdouh, a senior Palestinian officer, after briefing a group of 100 security personnel. But when asked what would happen if his men encountered militants en route to carrying out an attack, Dahdouh told Reuters "We will avoid clashing with them and we will talk to them in a positive way." In response to the deployment, Vice Premier Shimon Peres told Israel Radio that Abbas' "initial steps are very impressive." Moussa Arafat, head of the PA's National Security Service, presented the plan to IDF officers at a meeting at the Erez checkpoint on Wednesday night. The deployment, which was approved Thursday by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, was coordinated with Israel to ensure that Israeli forces did not mistake the policemen for terrorists and open fire. The agreement states that the two forces will maintain a distance of a few hundred meters between them. Meanwhile, Abbas is continuing his efforts to pursuade militants to halt the attacks, thereby avoiding a confrontation between the PA and the militants. "Talks with Hamas are positive and are continuing," Abbas' statement said. Aides close to the chairman said Abbas' has discussed with militant groups the need for restraint in order to ensure Israel implements a planned pull-out from the Gaza Strip. The relative quiet in northern Gaza continued Thursday. For the second day in a row, no Qassams were fired at Sderot. The IDF attributes this quiet both to the PA's efforts - over the last 24 hours, Palestinian policemen have deployed in force in several cities and towns in Gaza where no agreement with the IDF was necessary - and to the Muslim holiday of Id al-Adha. Palestinian sources also cited both of these factors as contributing to the quiet. "The factions are waiting to see what Abbas has [to offer]," said a spokesman for the militant Popular Resistance Committees, also linking the lull to Id al-Adha, which ends on Sunday. A Palestinian man was shot and lightly wounded by IDF gunfire near the village Salem, north of Jenin on Friday afternoon. The man was trying to damage the separation fence with an ax when he was shot. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who briefly broke off contacts with the new Palestinian leadership after the Karni attack in Gaza last week, sent greetings to Abbas on the occasion of a Muslim holiday. "Abbas responded by saying he appreciated Sharon's kind wishes and urged him to work together to achieve peace for the Palestinians and the Israelis," Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said. Jihad denies reports it struck cease-fire deal with Abbas Senior Islamic Jihad leader Mohammed al-Hindi said Friday that Israel would have to agree to the group's conditions, such as stopping attacks and raids and freeing Palestinian prisoners, before it would consider halting attacks against Israelis. "We have said clearly and frankly that no cards can be given free for the Zionist enemy," he said. "Sharon wants to withdraw from Gaza in calm. If he wants calm, he has to pay the price." The militant group denied reports earlier Friday that it had agreed in principle with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to a cease-fire. Meanwhile, Egypt will likely host a high-level meeting in Cairo in the coming days with Palestinian officials and Hamas leaders to finalize an agreement that could lead to a cease-fire, an official said Friday. Israel reopening Rafah crossing into Gaza Israel was to reopen the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt in one direction Friday, enabling Palestinians to enter Gaza from abroad but not to leave, Israel announced Thursday. The crossing has been closed since December 12, when it was damaged in a Palestinian attack on a nearby army outpost that killed five soldiers. The prolonged closure has left thousands of Palestinians stranded on the other side. The IDF also reopened the Gush Katif junction in Gaza on Thursday, though only until 3 P.M. The junction was closed for 24 hours following a Palestinian attack there that killed Oded Sharon, a Shin Bet security service officer. Sharon, 36, was laid to rest Thursday in his hometown of Gan Yavneh. In the West Bank, IDF troops operating in Ramallah arrested seven militants before dawn Friday, among them one Tanzim man, Army Radio reported. -------- russia / chechnya Chechen unrest continues to plague Kremlin January 22, 2005 By David R. Sands THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050121-095218-4007r.htm A terrorist attack in the province bordering Chechnya and fresh protests by survivors of the Beslan school massacre have revived fears that the Kremlin's campaign to ease tensions in the North Caucasus region has failed. The incidents also have put new pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Putin, addressing a gathering of state prosecutors in Moscow yesterday, blamed foreign terrorist groups and "international criminal gangs" for the continuing unrest, but polls show that many in Russia believe the incidents are directly linked to Moscow's stalled military campaign against Chechen separatists. "A whole series of terrorist acts organized and executed last year by international criminal gangs shows the need for a radical restructuring of state security activity," Mr. Putin said. In the Caucasus republic of Dagestan on Jan. 15, Russian special forces backed by tanks and flamethrowers fought two pitched battles with insurgents believed to have strong ties to the Muslim insurgents in Chechnya. Four Russian security agents, including a member of the Federal Security Bureau (FSB), were killed in the incidents. The bodies of four militants were recovered after a 17-hour siege from a house in Makhachkala, the republic's capital. Andrei Smirnov, an analyst with the Jamestown Foundation, which tracks political trends in the region, said the incident was particularly unnerving because Mr. Putin began the current campaign against Chechen separatists after a similar incursion into Dagestan in August 1999. The two republics have heavy Islamic majorities and longstanding cultural and political ties, and Moscow analysts have worried that Chechen militants such as warlord Shamil Basayev hope to ease the pressure on Chechnya by exporting instability to the rest of the region. Mr. Smirnov said that a new group, Shariah Jamaat, headed by Dagestani Islamist radical Rabbani Khalilov, an ally of Basayev, is behind a string of attacks over the past year that killed 30 local police and FSB officers in 2004 "After five years of war in Chechnya, Dagestan is now nearer detonation than ever before," according to Mr. Smirnov. Russian law-enforcement sources told the ITAR-Tass news agency that the Makhachkala terrorist cell planned a strike similar to the Beslan school seizure in September. Basayev claimed responsibility for the Beslan massacre, in which about 340 hostages, including nearly 200 schoolchildren, were killed in the three-day standoff and in a confusing rescue operation. Growing public protests in Beslan this week highlighted another political headache for Mr. Putin. Residents, including many of the parents and grandparents of slain Beslan students, say they don't believe official accounts of the attack, insisting instead that at least some of the attackers escaped and that many received aid from sympathizers in Ingushetia, the neighboring Muslim region that has long clashed with North Ossetia. An estimated 130 to 150 Beslan residents blocked the main regional highway that passes close by the town for a second straight day yesterday. They are demanding an independent investigation of the hostage crisis and the resignation of North Ossetian President Aleksandr Dzasokhov. -------- war crimes U.S. balks at global court use for Darfur January 22, 2005 By Nicholas Kralev THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050121-114910-2469r.htm The United States yesterday rejected European efforts to have the International Criminal Court prosecute war crimes committed in Sudan's Darfur region, saying the court is accountable to no one and cannot be trusted. "We have had a number of objections to the International Criminal Court and therefore don't believe it's the best option for this," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters. A senior State Department official later said that allowing the ICC to take charge of the Darfur case would cut the United States out of the process, because it is not a party to the court, and that the Security Council does not exercise supervision over the tribunal. "The ICC is a total non-starter," the official said. "It's not subject to any oversight, and we have a law that says we can't cooperate with it, so it's doubtful that we'll be able to contribute to the case." Instead, the Bush administration prefers a new, Africa-based court to be set up, similar to the tribunal prosecuting those believed responsible for the genocide in Rwanda in the early 1990s, which was created by the U.N. Security Council, the official said. The United States was among the first to call attention to the mass killings of tens of thousands in Darfur and the first to call them genocide, so it would be unfair to leave it out, he added. Washington has been pushing for harsh measures against Sudan in the Security Council, but it has not received support for economic sanctions. "At every turn of the way, we've tried to say when we thought it was happening again and trying to get it to stop," Mr. Boucher said. The administration strongly opposed the creation of the Hague-based ICC primarily because the White House fears the court will be used for politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. officials and military personnel. It has negotiated bilateral agreements with 69 of its 139 signatories exempting Americans on their territory from the court's jurisdiction. But beyond concerns about Americans, the senior official said the administration does not trust the ICC because the court "authorizes prosecutors to go out and prosecute whomever they please" anywhere in the world. Sudan, like the United States, has neither signed nor ratified the 1998 Rome statute that created the court. For the court to try officials in Sudan, it would set a precedent of court jurisdiction in countries that are not parties to the ICC, he said. "We do believe that there needs to be accountability and that we will work with others to find the best possible solution to ensuring accountability," Mr. Boucher said. "We think there are a range of options that need to be discussed and looked at." A Rwanda-type court is "certainly one of them," he said. "It's appropriate for the Security Council to create and control these kind of mechanisms." An administration official later made clear that a new tribunal in Africa is Washington's preference. A U.N. commission has been investigating reported war crimes in Darfur by Arab militias linked to the government in Khartoum, and its findings are expected as early as next week. "When those results come out, we will look at a range of options for accountability in Darfur," Mr. Boucher said. "We have done some discussion already with others involved in the Security Council." European members of the Security Council, including Britain and France, approached the United States recently to advocate putting the ICC in charge of Darfur cases, but Washington resisted, officials said. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan seemed to be siding with the Europeans on Wednesday when he said the ICC was the "most logical place" to deal with Darfur. "They need to be held accountable so that we don't give the impression that impunity is allowed to stand," Mr. Annan said of the those responsible for the atrocities. The dispute over the ICC is the second major disagreement to arise between the United States and Europe a month before President Bush's much-publicized trip to the continent. The other one involves the European Union's plan to lift its arms embargo against China. Earlier this week, an official Sudanese committee of inquiry determined that serious human rights abuses were committed in Darfur, but it rejected claims of ethnic cleansing and systematic rape, Agence France-Presse reported. "Serious human rights violations took place in the three states of Darfur, in which all parties to the conflict were involved to varying degrees, thus leading to human suffering of the people of Darfur, causing internal displacement and people taking refuge in neighboring Chad," the committee said. "The commission has concluded that incidents of rape and sexual abuses took place in the various states of Darfur, but it has not been proven to the commission that there was systematic and widespread abuse that would constitute a crime against humanity," the report said. -------- torture U.S. claims Arar suit a risk to national security Jan. 22, 2005 MICHELLE SHEPHARD Toronto Star http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1106349012240&call_pageid=970599119419 The United States government is attempting to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar, claiming the litigation would jeopardize national security. Invoking the rarely used "state secrets privilege," U.S. Department of Justice lawyers filed a motion with the New York eastern district court this week, stating that the release of any information concerning the U.S.'s involvement in Arar's deportation to Syria could jeopardize "intelligence, foreign policy and national security interests of the United States." Lawyers with New York's Centre for Constitutional Rights, who filed the lawsuit on Arar's behalf a year ago, said the government is abusing claims of national security in order to avoid a review of its policies and handling of terrorism suspects. "They're asking the court to sanction their cover-up basically," lawyer Maria LaHood said yesterday. Arar was detained by immigration officials at New York's JFK airport on Sept. 26, 2002, and subsequently held as a terrorism suspect in a Brooklyn jail, where he says he repeatedly asked to be sent back to Canada. On Oct. 8 he was flown on a private jet to Syria, via Jordan. Arar says he was tortured and held without charges for a year before returning to Canada. The Centre for Constitutional Rights launched Arar's lawsuit last January alleging that former attorney-general John Ashcroft, former homeland security secretary Tom Ridge and other officials within President George W. Bush's administration knew Arar would be tortured when he was deported. Arar alleges he was a victim of the government's controversial policy of "extraordinary rendition," where American authorities can circumvent their own restraints on interrogations by sending suspects to countries that employ harsh tactics. -------- POLITICS -------- budget Bush plans leanest budget January 22, 2005 By Donald Lambro THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050121-114916-6519r.htm President Bush will propose a virtual freeze on overall non-defense discretionary spending in next year's budget and will abolish or consolidate wasteful, duplicative programs, according to administration budget officials. Deep spending cuts are slated for housing and community development block grants, scientific research, agriculture and veterans programs, among other departments and agencies that, along with higher tax revenue from a growing economy, could shrink last year's $400 billion deficit by more than $150 billion, said budget officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The officials said the budget will essentially freeze aggregate discretionary spending at this year's levels. Last year, Congress kept the rise in discretionary appropriations, excluding defense and homeland security, to less than 1 percent as Mr. Bush requested. But overall non-emergency discretionary spending increased by about 4 percent. Mr. Bush and his administration have come under increasing criticism from spending critics who accuse them and Republicans in Congress of campaigning on budget-cutting rhetoric while pursuing big government policies over the past four years. The president, in an interview with The Washington Times last week, said the new budget he will submit to Congress "will be a tough budget." White House budget officials say the budget for fiscal 2006, which begins Oct. 1, will be their leanest ever. Spending critics say they will believe it when they see it. "It wouldn't take much to make it the leanest budget in years, given the spending spree they've been on in the last several years," said Brian Riedl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation. "Overall spending has jumped 23 percent in the last three years. Non-defense, non-homeland security discretionary spending has leaped 39 percent in the last three years. We've been on a course of runaway spending, unrestrained entitlements and crippling debt which will lead to higher taxes and a poor economy," Mr. Riedl said in an interview. Administration officials do not deny that spending in the first three years of Mr. Bush's first term climbed significantly, but they say that the sharp increase was largely the result of emergency security needs, economic aid, and the military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed the September 11 terrorist attacks. But they also say that the budget's non-defense, non-entitlements expansion was dramatically slowed last year. "The president proposed less than 4 percent growth in overall discretionary spending and less than 1 percent growth outside of non-defense, non-homeland security and that's what Congress delivered last year," said Chad Kolton, spokesman for White House budget Director Josh Bolten. "We've definitely dialed [previous spending increases] way back," he said. Administration insiders and congressional budget officials said this week that the budget Mr. Bush will send to Congress early next month will propose freezing or substantially cutting many agencies and programs that fall within the discretionary budget that must be appropriated each year. The $5 billion Community Development Block Grant, a favorite target of budget cutters, could be sliced in half. Public housing programs will be flat-lined. National Science Foundation research funds will be frozen. Even the Veterans Administration's budget, which has seen big increases in the past four years, will have its growth slowed. The administration also plans a much more expansive effort to eliminate programs and to merge and consolidate others in its upcoming budget, according to White House officials. But Congress has rejected the president's efforts to eliminate programs in the past. Last year, Mr. Bush proposed eliminating 65 mostly small federal spending programs that totaled about $3 billion "and even these met with stiff resistance from Congress," Mr. Riedl said. Veteran budget analysts think that Mr. Bush could make some progress in restraining the growth of spending this year, but say it's going to require a Herculean effort on his part. "I think it's achievable but it's going to be a very tough row to hoe. It's going to take a lot of firmness by the president and a willingness on the part of Republicans to be team players," said Robert Reischauer, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office who now heads the Urban Institute. Still, Mr. Reischauer cautioned that, even if non-homeland, non-defense discretionary spending is held flat, "it will still be a long way from meaningful deficit reduction because entitlements and defense and homeland security are the engines of spending growth." Freezing only that portion of the budget, which represents one-sixth of total spending, "makes only a modest contribution to deficit reduction goals," he said. -------- propaganda wars / media Book claims real Reagan hot tempered, headstrong By Donald Lambro THE WASHINGTON TIMES January 22, 2005 http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050121-114915-2108r.htm Craig Shirley learned two things when writing his book about Ronald Reagan's unsuccessful 1976 campaign to take the Republican nomination away from Gerald Ford: Mr. Reagan's explosive temper in private, and the depth of his self-confidence — his "utter belief in his abilities." Unfailingly genial and affable in public, Mr. Reagan had a rarely seen temper that could explode like a volcano. Mr. Shirley describes a conference telephone call in which Mr. Reagan gave Bill Brock, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, "unshirted hell" for refusing to release funds the California governor had raised for the national committee and wanted to use for a Panama Canal "truth squad." The temper could get physical, Mr. Shirley writes in "Reagan's Revolution," a detailed history of that important campaign. When an aide handed him the script of a Ford television commercial that characterized him as a warmonger, aides "saw the anger rise in his face. Reagan slammed his fist against the bulkhead of the plane and yelled, 'That damned Stu Spencer!' " — a reference to Mr. Ford's chief campaign strategist. "Reagan cut his hand from hitting it so hard." That 1976 campaign, in which Mr. Reagan came within a handful of delegates of denying the nomination to the party's unelected incumbent, set in motion a historic shift in Republican politics. "I've always thought the '76 campaign was fascinating but had never been really covered in book length, and in my view it is his most important campaign," Mr. Shirley, a Washington public-relations man, said in an interview with The Washington Times. "If he doesn't run in 1976, then he doesn't run in 1980 and there would be no Republican revolution, no fall of the Berlin Wall and no realignment of the two parties the way they are today." Most younger Americans, said Mr. Shirley, who was a college junior in 1976, cannot remember the moribund state of the Republican Party after the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Nixon. Nearly everyone agreed the party was dying. "The Republican Party stood for nothing and antagonized everybody," he said. "Even after Nixon resigned, for two years of Gerald Ford's presidency Republican identification continued to go down from 26 percent to 18 percent. Ford continued the pursuit of Nixon's liberal policies, picking Nelson Rockefeller as vice president, appointing liberals to the Cabinet, proposing tax increases and, with Henry Kissinger, pushing detente with the Soviet Union." Mr. Reagan's autobiography, "An American Life," dismisses the 1976 campaign in a couple of pages, and "Revolution," an account of Mr. Reagan's rise to power by Martin Anderson, his chief domestic adviser, devotes little more attention than that. "It's a period of political history that has not been written about much. This is the missing chapter in Reagan's life." Mr. Shirley's 417-page treatment deals with the campaign in minute detail — from the New Hampshire primary, where Mr. Reagan came within 1,317 votes of upsetting a sitting president, to the pivotal North Carolina primary, where after five straight primary losses his candidacy took off, with an emphasis on retaining sovereignty over the Panama Canal, standing up to the Soviet Union and curbing the size and growth of government. "I never had as full an appreciation of Reagan's convictions and utter belief in his abilities until I got into writing this book," Mr. Shirley said. "And that really comes out in North Carolina. He had lost five primaries in a row and had the stuffing kicked out of him. Every day, someone was calling for him to get out of the race — and that never worked with Reagan. You didn't tell Reagan what to do. All that did was stiffen his spine and make him more resolute." Even Nancy Reagan, concerned about her husband's health, tried to persuade his press secretary and confidante, Lyn Nofziger, to talk him into quitting. Mr. Nofziger tells how Mr. Reagan walked into the room and "overheard part of the conversation, and assumed that it was Nofziger telling Mrs. Reagan that he should get out, instead of the other way around. "Reagan yelled, 'Lynwood, I'm not going to quit! I'm going to stay in this until the end.' Reagan was angry, but he could also feel something out there that we couldn't. Finally, it seemed to him that his message was getting through." After his victory in North Carolina — with the help of Sen. Jesse Helms and political strategist Tom Ellis — Mr. Reagan began winning primaries in a see-saw battle that went all the way to Kansas City, Mo., where Mr. Ford won the nomination with a 117-delegate margin. But the times and the nation's politics were changing. Mr. Reagan had won a legion of followers, setting the stage for his comeback campaign against President Jimmy Carter in 1980. "After 1976, everybody was campaigning as a child of Ronald Reagan, running on tax cuts, cutting government spending. That was the key to his legacy, to turn the Republican Party into a more conservative party. By 1978, everybody was running against abortion, [in favor of] building the B-1 bomber, keeping the Panama Canal, prayer in the schools," Mr. Shirley recalled. "It is difficult to find a conservative Democrat today, but they were plentiful in 1975. It is difficult to find a liberal Republican today, but they were plentiful in 1975." ---- From Europe, Opinions on the Inaugural January 22, 2005 NY Times COMMENTARIES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/22/international/europe/22europe.html?pagewanted=print&position= Following are excerpts from newspaper commentaries in Europe after the inauguration of President Bush. Translations are by The New York Times. The Times of London This will not be a revolutionary movement. Nor will the differences between some European governments and the Oval Office disappear. The U.S. will continue to regard the threat posed by radical Islamists, the dangers of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the behavior of rogue states such as North Korea with more urgency than France and Germany. These countries should ask themselves whether their assessment of these perils is so much more modest because of evidence, or the inconvenience that acknowledging their intensity would entail. They might also ponder what it is about the promotion of freedom that they regard as so alien and objectionable. The Daily Telegraph (London) Now comes the hard part. President George W. Bush's elegy to freedom yesterday and his vision of it flowering around the world fitted into the long tradition of inaugural speeches that blend America's optimism with smugness about the reach and benefits of its power. But unlike most of his predecessors, Mr. Bush has repeatedly made clear that he sees "spreading freedom" as more than a slogan. For him it is a mission. ... Officials know full well that Mr. Bush will, if he thinks necessary, sweep Iraq's problems under the Oval Office carpet and seek to bring an end to North Korea's and Iran's nuclear programs. Frankfurter Rundschau So which way now, Mr. President? Words alone do not give us much of a clue; this much we have learned from Bush. In his first term, he declared the war on terror - without any doubt a good idea - and along the way he massively cut down on civil liberties in the U.S.A. and demolished the relations with many allies. He promised peace and democracy for Iraq - who would have wanted to oppose this - and turned the bloody dictatorship of Saddam into an anarchic stronghold of terror, paying with the lives of many thousands, also American deaths. ... Idealism, freedom and a reform of the social welfare system: the most powerful man in the world has found big words for his second term. But once again he will be judged by his actions. La Repubblica (Rome) [Mr. Bush] finally feels at peace with himself, is satisfied with himself and thus is even more disturbing. ... There is the sense of a man who now considers the entire world as his own parish. Die Tageszeitung (Berlin) If you take seriously what Bush said before and during his inaugural address, you will really dread this U.S. government. ...The message of yesterday's big - and many U.S. citizens thought too big - and carefully staged inauguration is clear: The continuity from his first term will remain, but at the same time this U.S. government will have more sense of mission and do whatever it thinks is right and won't have anybody else disturb it. ... The horror is justified. Le Monde (Paris) We can fear that, in the eyes of Mr. Bush, the criteria for tyranny would essentially be hostility toward the United States and that he would be inclined to close his eyes to the democratic failings of regimes that show cooperativeness. ... Bush 1 changed the foreign policy of the United States. Bush 2 wants to change the American social contract. The outcome of his activism abroad makes us fear similar traumas at home. Libération (Paris) It's on a cloud that George W. Bush went through these three days of ceremonies, galas, candlelight dinners and balls. Flushed pink with happiness, blinking from the emotion, his face was everywhere on television. The fireworks feted him. The onlookers cheered him. Sixty million dollars went up in festive smoke. The Texan, who generally likes to present himself as an average guy, gave in to the pleasure of majesty. El Mundo (Madrid) The president has charged himself with nothing less than "ending tyranny in the world." If Bush decided to fully apply this maxim to the letter, he should immediately cut off relations with countries like China and Saudi Arabia, which are not exactly models of liberty. -------- us politics Bush Pulls 'Neocons' Out of the Shadows By Doyle McManus Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 22, 2005 http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news3/latimes13.html WASHINGTON — In the unending struggle over American foreign policy that consumes much of official Washington, one side claimed a victory this week: the neoconservatives, that determined band of hawkish idealists who promoted the U.S. invasion of Iraq and now seek to bring democracy to the rest of the Middle East. For more than a year, since the occupation of Iraq turned into the Bush administration's biggest headache, many of the "neocons" have lowered their profiles and muted their rhetoric. During President Bush's reelection campaign, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, one of the leading voices for invading Iraq, virtually disappeared from public view. But on Thursday, Bush proclaimed in his inaugural address that the central purpose of his second term would be the promotion of democracy "in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" — a key neoconservative goal. Suddenly, the neocons were ascendant again. "This is real neoconservatism," said Robert Kagan, a foreign policy scholar who has been a leading exponent of neocon thinking — and who sometimes has criticized the administration for not being neocon enough. "It would be hard to express it more clearly. If people were expecting Bush to rein in his ambitions and enthusiasms after the first term, they are discovering that they were wrong." On the other side of the Republican foreign policy divide, a leading "realist" — an exponent of the view that promoting democracy is nice, but not the central goal of U.S. foreign policy — agreed. "If Bush means it literally, then it means we have an extremist in the White House," said Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center, a conservative think tank that reveres the less idealistic policies of Richard Nixon. "I hope and pray that he didn't mean it … [and] that it was merely an inspirational speech, not practical guidance for the conduct of foreign policy." A senior Bush aide who met with reporters Friday to explain the meaning of the speech waved away a question about its endorsement of neoconservative ideas. "I've never understood what that neoconservative label means, anyway," he said, refusing to be identified by name because, he said: "We should be focusing on the president's words, not mine." But the aide went on to repeat, with emphasis, some of Bush's words that put democratization of other countries at the center of his foreign policy. "It is a top priority for his second term," the aide said. "He's raised the emphasis. He's raised the profile…. He's made it clear that he's going to turn up the pressure a bit. He's going to try to accelerate the process." The administration would begin unveiling specific steps to increase the pressure for democracy in undemocratic countries, the Bush aide said, but he refused to describe any at this point. At her confirmation hearings this week, Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice named six countries as "outposts of tyranny" that would get special attention from the second-term Bush administration: Cuba, Burma, North Korea, Iran, Belarus and Zimbabwe. On Friday, the senior official who briefed reporters said the administration also would be pressing friendly regimes to institute democratic reforms; he mentioned Russia, China, Pakistan and Egypt "as illustrations." Much of the pressure, he said, would be private rather than public, and the administration would be careful to avoid undermining a leader like Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, whom it counts as a democratic reformer. Another senior official — a prominent neoconservative who also refused to be named — said Bush's theme reflected several "lessons learned" in the last 30 years. Chief among them, he said, was an argument that neoconservatives often made about the Soviet Union and, more recently, Iraq: that a central goal of the United States should be "systemic change" — changing hostile states' regimes, not merely their policies. Still, he cautioned, "A policy promoting democracy also has to be a realistic policy…. We have to consider … what are the risks of overly rapid change? What's the downside?" The definition of neoconservatism has been hotly debated in recent years as the neocon camp has grown in numbers and influence. One of the movement's fathers, Irving Kristol, once defined it — in contrast to traditional conservatism — as "forward-looking, not nostalgic … cheerful, not grim." In domestic affairs, he wrote, neocons tend to accept the need for a strong federal government, not a weak one. In foreign policy, they believe in a broad definition of the national interest, not a narrow one; they are more willing than most traditional conservatives to commit American power, including military power, to such causes as democracy and human rights. "Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces," Kristol wrote in 2003. "No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary." Ronald Reagan, who committed the United States to help anti-communist "freedom fighters" in countries from Afghanistan to Nicaragua, often has been described as the most neoconservative president — until now. Nixon, who was equally anti-communist but who sought diplomatic agreements with communist powers like Russia and China, was the leading realist. Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, fell squarely into Nixon's realist tradition; when the Soviet Union began to disintegrate in 1990, he sought to slow down the process for the sake of stability, not speed it up. The elder Bush's top foreign policy advisor, Brent Scowcroft, occasionally has been acidly critical of the younger Bush's more adventurous policies; on Friday, Scowcroft refused to comment on Bush's inaugural speech. "He's in enough trouble already," an associate said. The president has not always been as much of a neocon as his speech Thursday suggested. When he first ran for president in 2000, Rice, then his top foreign policy advisor, wrote an article promising that Bush would pursue a modest, limited foreign policy, and criticized the attempts at democratization and "nation-building" of the Democratic administration of President Clinton. But after Sept. 11, the invasion of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq, Bush was drawn progressively toward the neoconservative view that the only way to stop terrorism in the long run was to bring democracy, first to the Middle East, and in Thursday's speech, to the entire world. As they drafted the speech this month, White House political aide Karl Rove and chief speechwriter Michael Gerson held a two-hour seminar with a panel of foreign policy scholars, including several leading neocons — newspaper columnist Charles Krauthammer, Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University and Victor Davis Hanson of Stanford's Hoover Institution — according to a person who was present. Another sign of the administration's bent: Several of the leading realists of the first term, notably Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his closest aides, have left. But leading neoconservatives, including Wolfowitz, are staying. And at least one, National Security Council aide Elliott Abrams, is said to be in line for a more prominent job at the State Department or NSC. -------- ACTIVISTS Late Protest Shattered Event's Relative Calm 78 Arrested After Adams Morgan Vandalism By Manny Fernandez and Del Quentin Wilber Washington Post Staff Writers Saturday, January 22, 2005; Page B01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27648-2005Jan21 An impromptu demonstration by a crowd spilling from a "counter-inaugural ball" in Adams Morgan late Thursday turned into one of the biggest Inauguration Day disturbances, leaving windows smashed and nearly 80 people arrested. Self-described anarchists, fans who had attended the punk-rock ball and passersby joined in a melee in the area of 18th Street and Columbia Road NW, where police said they spray-painted buildings with the red "A" anarchists use as their symbol, threw a brick through the windshield of a police vehicle and smashed out glass windows and doors at a police substation and at Riggs Bank and Citibank branches. "It is just ridiculous how some people conducted themselves," Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said yesterday. "It's not a reflection on all demonstrators. But a hard-core group came to town and caused damage to property. . . . You can't let them destroy the city. Nobody has a right to do that. "They are just thugs and hoodlums who did that," Ramsey said. Of 72 people arrested on misdemeanor charges of parading without a license, 67 were released after paying a $50 fine, and two were released but are required to appear in court later. Three others were released yesterday after spending the night in jail. Police said six juveniles also were charged with curfew violations. Damage resulting from the incident was estimated at $15,000, police said. The crowd of a couple hundred people was made up of anarchists who had attended the ball and several inaugural demonstrations earlier in the day, as well as people who decided on a whim to join the noisy, late-night procession. Police said the demonstrators were mostly in their early- to mid-twenties and largely came from out of town. Nathan Bladh, 21, a jeweler from Escondido, Calif., in town to protest the inauguration, was outside the 18th Street NW hostel where he was staying when the protesters streamed by. "We thought it would fun to join in," he said. A few minutes later, Bladh was kneeling in the snow, having been arrested by police who surrounded the demonstration. Bladh later paid a $50 fine. He also went to Superior Court yesterday to support a friend who had been arrested, one of the three people who appeared before Magistrate Judge Richard H. Ringell. Protesters said that police were aggressive and that some officers used pepper spray on protesters who already had been restrained. Police officials said they received no reports of misconduct or internal affairs complaints. Police Cmdr. Cathy Lanier, who supervises the department's special operations division, said she had no choice but to make arrests because the crowd had become rowdy and violent. "This was a group of a couple hundred that wanted to rampage through the streets of the city," Lanier said. The incident was the last of at least three confrontations between police and demonstrators Thursday. They were provoked in large part by demonstrators who identified themselves as anarchists. Throughout rallies and marches protesting Bush's second swearing-in, the anarchists were more aggressive than their mostly peaceful antiwar peers. The late-night vandalism occurred in an ethnic and cultural hub of Washington far removed from the downtown symbols of government. But one marcher said the property destruction, particularly at Citibank and the police substation, was done for political purposes to protest businesses and institutions responsible for exploitation and oppression. D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) criticized protesters for damaging property in an area of town that is largely liberal and diverse. "Adams Morgan is not associated with the Republican Party," he said. "We are not the home of George W. Bush." The trouble began shortly after 11 p.m., after the ball ended. The show, a benefit concert at Calvary Methodist Church at 1459 Columbia Rd. NW organized by Washington area activist group Positive Force DC, featured Anti-Flag and other acts. The demonstrators marched from the church. A participant said they were heading for the Constitution Ball at the Washington Hilton Hotel on Connecticut Avenue NW, scheduled to end at 1 a.m. Some of the marchers carried tin-can torches, and they held banners with such slogans as, "The people of the world say no to war." Protesters unfurled a large banner reading, "From D.C. to Iraq, with occupation comes resistance," from a building with a Starbucks on the ground floor. Carniel Klirs, 19, a sophomore at American University who was among those arrested, said marchers switched directions several times to thwart police. "When we saw cops to the left, we turned right," said Klirs, who paid $50 and was released. "When they were ahead of us, we turned back." Staff writer Henri Cauvin and staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.