NucNews - March 21, 2005
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- canada
Bruce Power has tentative deal to restart two units of nuclear power station
Mon Mar 21, 4:42 PM ET (CP)
GILLIAN LIVINGSTON
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20050321/ca_pr_on_na/bruce_power_restart_1
TORONTO - Bruce Power has reached a tentative agreement with a provincial negotiator for the potential restart of two laid-up units at its nuclear generating station near Tiverton, Ont., the company said Monday.
The potential restart of Units 1 and 2 of the Bruce generation station, which have been shut down since the mid-1990s, would return another 1,500 million watts of electricity to Ontario - enough to meet the annual needs of one million homes, or about 10 per cent of the province's market.
The proposed deal is now being considered by Ontario Energy Minister Dwight Duncan and requires cabinet approval before being finalized, said Angie Robson, a spokeswoman for the minister.
The final startup of the reactors would still require approval from federal regulators.
All financial details of the proposed agreement are confidential and won't be released until a final deal is reached, Robson said.
The startup of the two units has been under consideration for 15 months and, if it goes ahead, would mean all eight reactors at Bruce's nuclear station were operational, Bruce Power CEO Duncan Hawthorne said in an interview.
"Obviously it's a significant step forward for us," he said.
The company and the province's negotiator have been in talks since September.
So far, work on the restart has dealt with environmental assessments, planning and engineering work, Hawthorne said.
Actual reconstruction work could begin quickly upon receipt of government approval, he added.
"It's a very significant capital investment," Hawthorne said.
For the Liberal government, this is the first tentative deal with a producer since it revamped the electricity industry in a bid to get more generation online and began to increase prices so consumers pay closer to the real cost of electricity.
"The government is considering the deal carefully as we work to close the gap between electricity supply and demand with a reliable, sustainable and diverse portfolio of competitively priced power," Duncan said in a release.
The changes the government made to de-politicize and stabilize the electricity market, such as creating the Ontario Power Authority which can sign long-term deals with producers, were a factor in reaching a deal, Hawthorne said.
"What effectively they're seeking to do is provide some confidence to allow people to invest, and what we've said before is we need that as much as anyone and perhaps more than most because the level of investment we would make is significantly higher," Hawthorne said.
Stability is required since any power producing agreement would have to last beyond one government's time in office, he said.
The restart of the two units would replace about 20 per cent of the province's coal-fired generation, Duncan said.
The province remains committed to shut the province's five coal-fired electricity plants by 2007, a goal some electricity experts say will be difficult to accomplish.
Originally placed in service in 1977, Units 1 and 2 were laid up in the late 1990s by the former Ontario Hydro, which is now known as Ontario Power Generation. OPG owns the nuclear power plant and leases it to Bruce Power, which restarted Units 3 and 4 in 2003.
All of Bruce Power's major investors have given approval in principle for the restart, Hawthorne said.
Bruce Power is currently controlled by Saskatoon-based uranium producer Cameco Corp., Calgary-based pipeline operator TransCanada Corp. and BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust, part of the OMERS public-sector pension plan.
Cameco said in a separate announcement Monday that it has given the green light to the project, in principle, but added that the process of reaching a binding agreement isn't complete.
Cameco shares (TSX:CCO - news) closed at $57.01, down $1.19, while TransCanada stock (TSX:TRP - news) closed at $29.85, up 26 cents, on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
-------- depleted uranium
Depleted Uranium: Cause and Effect 4 Hour Special
From: davey garland
Date: Tue Mar 22, 2005 5:46am
Please pass out to lists
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Depleted Uranium: Cause and Effect 4 Hour Special on The `X' Zone
Radio Show and TalkStar Radio Network
Monday, March 21, 2005:
Hamilton, Ontario: On Thursday evening, March 24 at 10 PM, Rob McConnell, host and executive producer of the TalkStar Radio Network's `The `X' Zone Radio Show" will be making broadcast history by dedicating his 4 hour show to the horrors and world-wide effect of Depleted Uranium.
McConnell's show, The `X' Zone, which is produced from his studio in Hamilton, Ontario and syndicated internationally by the US-based TalkStar Radio Network, beams around the world on two satellites (Galaxy 4R and AMC-4) and the Internet via audio streaming (http://www.talkstarradio.com) Monday through Friday from 10 PM – 2 AM Eastern.
The `X' Zone Radio Show, now in its 10 year, deals in the world of the paranormal and the science of parapsychology, government conspiracies and cover-ups. Just prior to the 2004 US Presidential elections, McConnell asked US Presidential and US Congressional candidates that if elected, "would they see to the release of all government presently being held on UFOs?"
All candidates said yes, but none of them were elected.
The show's interest in Depleted Uranium started a few short weeks ago when a listener sent McConnell internet images of what the listener believed was an "alien baby." The alien baby turned out to be a child suffering from the effects of Depleted Uranium.
McConnell's subsequent investigation into Depleted Uranium and the effects that these weapons of mass destruction are having on the world today, including the long term effects on the world and her inhabitants were shocking and are a crime against humanity.
"I knew that as a broadcaster and a member of the media, that this is a story that has to be told," said McConnell. "The stories and the efforts of the people who are desperately trying to make a difference … doing their part to save the world and humanity, and bring the parties responsible for this atrocity to justice, deserve our time, attention and support."
McConnell's guest list for his DU (Depleted Uranium) Special includes international experts and speakers:
• Bob Nichols - Writer, Project Censored Award Winner. Uranium Weapons material in hundreds of newspapers, magazines, Internet, radio and TV shows.
• Leuren Moret - Famous former Nuclear Weapons Lab scientist. Spoken in 42 countries on dangers of US Uranium Weapons.
• Major Doug Rokke, Ph.D. Ret - A Warrior. The Pentagon's man in charge of Depleted Uranium Project and clean up. Till he said "Oh my God, we can't use uranium weapons. It kills our own troops."
• Karen Parker, JD - A veteran American lawyer at the UN, she wrote the book on uranium weapons law. Lead attorney on international lawsuits on use of uranium weapons.
• Joyce and Dave Riley - Famous film makers of uranium weapons documentary.
• Susan Riordan - Famous Canadian uranium weapons celebrity. Her husband, Captain Terry Riordan, was internally contaminated by ceramic uranium oxide gas and dust in the First Gulf War. Terry died in 1996. 12,000,000 pounds of Uranium weapons [Ramsey Clark number.] later Susan asks the American Generals "Why are you doing this? It is insane!"
British and American coalition forces were using depleted uranium (DU) shells in the war against Iraq and deliberately flouting a United Nations resolution which classifies the munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction.
DU contaminates land, causes ill-health and cancers among the soldiers using the weapons, the armies they target and civilians, leading to birth defects in children.
Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's depleted uranium project -- a former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville University and onetime US army colonel who was tasked by the US department of defence with the post-first Gulf war depleted uranium desert clean-up -- said use of DU was a 'war crime'.
According to a August 2002 report by the UN subcommission, laws which are breached by the use of DU shells include: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Charter of the United Nations; the Genocide Convention; the Convention Against Torture; the four Geneva Conventions of 1949; the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980; and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which expressly forbid employing 'poison or poisoned weapons' and 'arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering'. All of these laws are designed to spare civilians from unwarranted suffering in armed conflicts.
DU has been blamed for the effects of Gulf war syndrome -- typified by chronic muscle and joint pain, fatigue and memory loss -- among 200,000 US soldiers after the 1991 conflict.
It is also cited as the most likely cause of the 'increased number of birth deformities and cancer in Iraq' following the first Gulf war.
'Cancer appears to have increased between seven and 10 times and deformities between four and six times,' according to the UN subcommission.
The Pentagon has admitted that 320 metric tons of DU were left on the battlefield after the first Gulf war, although Russian military experts say 1000 metric tons is a more accurate figure.
In 1991, the Allies fired 944,000 DU rounds or some 2700 tons of DU tipped bombs. A UK Atomic Energy Authority report said that some 500,000 people would die before the end of this century, due to radioactive debris left in the desert.
The use of DU has also led to birth defects in the children of Allied veterans and is believed to be the cause of the 'worrying number of anophthalmos cases -- babies born without eyes' in Iraq. Only one in 50 million births should be anophthalmic, yet one Baghdad hospital had eight cases in just two years. Seven of the fathers had been exposed to American DU anti-tank rounds in 1991. There have also been cases of Iraqi babies born without the crowns of their skulls, a deformity also linked to DU shelling.
A study of Gulf war veterans showed that 67% had children with severe illnesses, missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems and fused fingers.
For more information on Rob McConnell and The `X' Zone Radio Show, please visit http://www.xzone-radio.com or call, (905) 575-5916 or by e-mail to xzone@talkstarradio.com.
For information on re-broadcasting or carrying The `X' Zone Radio Show, please contact Victor Ives at TalkStar Radio Network victor@talkstarradio.com or by calling (503) 638-4839.
The `X' Zone Radio Show is a division of REL-MAR McConnell Media Company, Inc. of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
----
Aussies to hunt uranium hazard
By Ian McPhedran
21mar05 news.com.au network
http://townsvillebulletin.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,12607629%255E421,00.html
http://www.thesundaymail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,12607629%255E421,00.html
A TEAM of Australian experts will travel to Iraq's Al-Muthanna province to find and remove depleted uranium munitions potentially hazardous to the 450 Diggers being sent there.
During a live fire exercise yesterday on the second anniversary of the Iraq war, task group commander Lt-Col Roger Noble said the depleted uranium war waste threat was low, but he was taking no chances.
"There will be an Australian hazardous materials survey done right at the beginning," Lt-Col Noble said during the exercise involving troops and armoured vehicles from the army's Darwin-based 2nd Cavalry Regiment and 5/7 Battalion.
"A team will come in and identify any potential threat."
The team, training at Mt Bundey south of Darwin yesterday, will go to Iraq sometime next month, and troops are due to be in place and operating by mid-May.
Tonnes of the potentially deadly depleted uranium munitions remain in Al-Muthanna province and the British have also conducted a survey Australian commanders are using to map the threats.
The Australian troops will be based in the province from early May and yesterday was the last day of the final large-scale "live fire" rehearsal before the men and 40 armoured vehicles depart for southern Iraq.
Lt-Col Noble and his boss, CO of the 1st Brigade Brigadier John Cantwell, said their soldiers were ready.
They will help protect Japanese engineers and aid workers, and train members of the Iraqi security forces.
Brigadier Cantwell said the departure would be staggered, starting with some troops in mid-April followed by vehicles and troops by sea and air in the weeks after that.
He said he was very happy with what he was seeing from the soldiers.
Lt-Col Noble said the Australian Light Armoured Vehicle was the best vehicle in Iraq for the job they had to do and, even without planned security upgrades, was more than adequate for the job.
"That is battle-proven in Baghdad where it survived two bombs at point-blank range without a penetration," Lt-Col Noble said.
Vehicles are being fitted with extra protection for the mission.
He said his men would face several human and environmental threats, including the searing heat of the Iraqi desert.
Lt-Col Noble said the Al-Muthanna Task Group would have support from British helicopters, particularly for medical evacuation.
-------- iran
Iran says 'examining Russian proposal' ahead of key nuclear talks
TEHRAN (AFP) May 21, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050521094451.ynputak5.html
Iran said Saturday that it was "examining" a proposal on its uranium work it said has been made by Russia just days ahead of crisis nuclear talks with Britain, France and Germany.
Top nuclear negotiator Cyrus Nasseri told AFP that "the Russians have made a proposal" under which Iran would apparently be able to resume uranium conversion work at a plant in Isfahan, but the gas produced would be sent to Russia for the ultra-sensitive process of enrichment.
The resulting nuclear fuel would then be transferred back to Iran to power the Bushehr power station, which is being built with Russian assistance.
"We are in the process of examining this proposal," Nasseri said, but gave no further details.
However his comments were at odds with Washington, who said a similar proposal had been made by Iran -- and not the Russians.
"There is apparently an Iranian idea like this that they have floated with the Russians," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday, before going on to rubbish the proposal.
"Let me point out a couple of things: First of all, Russia has already agreed to provide at least the first decade's worth of enriched uranium fuel for Iran's nuclear reactor at Bushehr," he said. "So Iran would have no need to do any conversion work whatsoever."
The proposal, which the US says is Iranian, "only reinforces our view that Iran's enrichment and conversion effort is, in fact, designed to contribute to the capabilities that are needed to develop nuclear weapons."
Boucher said the US, Russia, the EU and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "have all agreed that Iran should not be allowed to develop the capabilities necessary to make nuclear weapons."
Iran agreed in November with Britain, France and Germany to suspend its uranium conversion and enrichment activities, which Washington believes conceals its nuclear armament intentions.
However the Islamic republic is seeking to resume uranium conversion, a move that would violate its deal with the EU-3 and leave it facing the threat of UN Security Council action.
Emergency talks between Iranian nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani and the three European foreign ministers are due to take place on Tuesday and Wednesday.
----
Iran: the coming war
Dan Plesch 21 - 3 - 2005
Published by openDemocracy
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-3-77-2383.jsp
Will the United States attack Iran? Eight major arguments say no. Each one dissolves on inspection, says Dan Plesch.
Do not be in the least surprised if the United States attacks Iran. Timing is an open question, but it is hard to find convincing arguments that war will be avoided, or at least ones that are convincing in Washington.
There are eight arguments currently in circulation. How do they stand up?
First, is it likely that Iran will “do a Libya” – open all its facilities to American and British intelligence officials and surrender any illicit weapons along with its missile programmes? Such a policy would command little support amongst the Iranian public, let alone within the political-religious leadership.
Second, will the European Union succeed in brokering a compromise in which Iran fully satisfies the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors, the United States and Israel? Privately and not so privately, senior US officials – such as vice-president Dick Cheney, newly appointed undersecretary of state Robert S Joseph, and nominee for United Nations ambassador John Bolton – deride the EU’s efforts as futile.
Third, are the military obstacles too great to permit a successful US attack on Iran? This may turn out to be the case. However for Washington – and indeed for Israel – this conclusion is literally unthinkable.
The military strategy adopted under President Bush’s father, continued under President Clinton and accelerated under the current administration is based on the idea that the US should have “full spectrum dominance” of all aspects of warfare and be so far ahead that, in the words of the current national security strategy, any state will be “dissuaded” from even trying to compete.
An attack on Iran would have to take into consideration a number of risks. But from the perspective of those considering a military option, Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons merely makes all of these problems harder – and in that sense provides an additional argument for pre-emptive action.
Perhaps more importantly, none of the arguments made about the consequences of an attack on Iraq – whether or not they proved true – influenced the decision to go to war; some, such as the need to provide enough troops to prevent the outbreak of disorder, were simply ignored.
Fourth, it is sometimes claimed that the US does not have enough troops to attack Iran. But the US army is engaged in a reorganisation to provide more frontline forces from headquarters and training units, and in any case the US air force is wholly available for the task of blowing up Iran – and it was barely used in Iraq beyond the first few weeks.
Fifth, it is argued that the Iranians may have hidden their activities in inaccessible parts of their huge country. This is likely to be the case – though whether these are banned WMD programmes or permitted activities is an open question. However, as Seymour Hersh writes in the New Yorker, special forces are already in Iran preparing the target list. An aerial attack would not involve a ground invasion and would leave the Iranians to pick up the pieces.
Sixth, could the Iranians cause immense trouble with Iraq’s Shi’a community and through Hezbollah with Israel? Perhaps, but how much stronger would Iran’s hand be if it was believed to have nuclear weapons? Moreover, the Iraqi Shi’a did not collectively defect to Tehran’s side during the Iran-Iraq war, and may be more concerned to develop their own interests than to be drawn into a new war. The present US pressure on Syria in Lebanon is partly related to Syria’s alleged involvement with the Iraq insurgency, but it can also be seen as isolating Hezbollah and clearing the way for action against it, prior to or in conjunction with an attack on Iran.
Iran’s military has considerable experience drawn from the long war with Iraq in the 1980s. It has, no doubt, closely watched US military tactics around its borders. It certainly retains some options to launch counter-missile attacks on Israel, as well as at the US navy and US bases along the Persian Gulf – from Kuwait to Bahrain and the straits of Hormuz.
At the same time, the US armed forces have been preparing for this contingency for many years and it would be hard to be the military commander telling President Bush that Iran is just not “doable”. As the former counter-terror official Richard Clarke has written, a second-world-war-style advance by US armies to Tehran from the Gulf coast is not possible, but this is not part of the planning anyway. As John Pike of the indispensable globalsecurity.org puts it: “they think that they can just blow up what they want to blow up and let the ant-heap sort itself out afterwards.”
Seventh, wouldn’t a war with Iran cost too much and risk plunging the US into recession? US conservatives are quick to point out that as a percentage of gross domestic product, US military spending is barely half the Reagan-era peak of 6.5% of GDP; and of course, military spending is the one Keynesian tool of economic policy that conservatives permit themselves.
Eighth, would US public opinion and US politicians prevent the war? There are few who would come to the defence of what is widely seen as a fanatical religious state that repeatedly calls for the end of the state of Israel. As one of John Kerry’s staff said to me: “why do you disarmament advocates oppose our doing it militarily?”
So when might the attack on Iran occur? The Bush administration has, from its perspective, allowed the Europeans and the non-proliferation diplomats enough time to fail. They will certainly use the UN conference on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament from 2-27 May 2005 as an opportunity to grandstand.
For US domestic political purposes a “crisis” in spring 2006 when the EU and the UN can once more be confronted with their alleged failures, and challenged to support US leadership, would be timely for mid-term elections in which the ultra-conservative coalition will wish to consolidate its gains and eliminate any nascent moderate or realistic Republican candidate in good time for the 2008 presidential election. At present Senators Lugar, Hagel and McCain all see themselves as being able to exploit the president over his ideological policies.
But surely in the aftermath of Bush’s kiss-and-make-up tour of Europe, this analysis is fanciful? Perhaps. One former British special forces officer told me that the visit frightened him more than anything he had seen in the last five years. Something like the Godfather’s last visit to an old family retainer on whom he has just put out a contract.
For details of Dan Plesch’s work, and his book The Beauty Queen’s Guide to World Peace see his website http://danplesch.net/
----
US will have to give Iran security guarantees: ElBaradei
PARIS (AFP) Mar 21, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050321110640.1uix314w.html
The United States will eventually have to step in if the EU is to give Iran security assurances in exchange for guarantees not to develop nuclear weapons, UN atomic agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Monday.
ElBaradei said "the United States will have to step in because security assurances very much need the Americans."
The European Union has since December been trying in talks to get Iran to abandon crucial nuclear fuel cycle activities in return for a package of trade, technology and security rewards.
The United States is now backing the Europeans by offering to help out with the incentives.
ElBaradei said that "at the proper time the United States will have to be fully engaged" because "regional security (in the Middle East) is not a European affair."
----
From MAD to Nuts
Ian Black
Monday March 21, 2005
The Guardian
World watch
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1442321,00.html
Iran is offering to send George Bush truckloads of pistachio nuts if he will dismantle America's huge nuclear arsenal - a cheeky response to the president's grudging readiness to try diplomacy to end the dangerous stand-off over Tehran's atomic ambitions.
Last week's riposte followed the announcement that the US will support Europe's idea of dangling economic incentives in front of the Islamic Republic in exchange for guarantees not to develop nuclear weapons. But if these carrots do not tempt, the way will be open to the stick of UN sanctions and perhaps American - or Israeli - air strikes.
The problem, though, is far wider than skirmishing between Bush and this most troublesome of his "outposts of tyranny". Washington wants to redraw the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the cold war bargain that allows the five "official" nuclear powers to keep their weapons - while working towards disarmament - and all others to renounce them in return for being permitted to develop civilian nuclear energy.
Under the NPT, Iran has done nothing wrong since coming clean about its secret uranium enrichment programmes, with the mullahs (hotly, but unconvincingly, denying they are seeking weapons) pursuing the same goal as the shah. The heart of this thorny issue is that any state that has the self-sufficient capacity to generate nuclear power can also produce an explosive device. The only difference is one of intent; thus the importance of outside inspections.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN's international atomic energy agency, wants to tackle this problem with a global moratorium on enrichment and plutonium reprocessing. But Bush is signalling a two-tier approach, denying "rogue" states the right to any nuclear materials so there can be no switch to building bombs under cover of legitimate civilian programmes.
That marks a significant shift in nuclear thinking that began after 9/11. It would mean a permanent nuclear apartheid based not on the original deal, but on who could acquire a weapon. Just as the US has turned a blind eye to Israel's nuclear arsenal, it is now doing the same to Pakistan and India - outside the NPT but its allies in the "war on terror" - while singling out Iran and North Korea.
This is not to underplay the significance of Tehran and Pyongyang acquiring a bomb, but to underline the problem if arms controls are not applied universally, and simply become a discriminatory instrument of US policy. The difficulty is compounded by the dismal failure of the nuclear powers to meet the treaty's central requirement of moving towards disarmament.
Back in 1995, the NPT was renewed indefinitely, amid justified self-congratulation about how well it had stopped proliferation. Since then, though, the cold war peace dividend has been squandered. The US is violating at least the spirit of the treaty by developing weapons such as low-yield "bunker-busting" bombs. Britain has reduced its deployment of Trident missiles but is unwilling to go further unilaterally. The nuclear weapons states, argues expert Rebecca Johnson, are behaving as if disarmament were a voluntary concession rather than a binding obligation.
Hopes for a treaty ending the production of fissile material for military purposes, promised in 2000, have faded - setting the stage for an ill-tempered five-yearly review of the NPT in New York in May.
This is arcane stuff, and the gathering drama over Iran will attract more attention. But the link between the general and the particular is indissoluble. Progress is unlikely when the EU-Iran talks resume this week, while bickering and accusations of bad faith and double standards over the NPT will hardly help galvanise international support for punitive action against Tehran. Sensible ideas for getting out of this bind - and moving beyond an untenable nuclear status quo - would be worth quite a few truckloads of the very finest pistachios.
-------- korea
North Korea says it has 'increased nuclear arms'
Mon Mar 21, 2:32 PM ET Asia - AFP
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050321/wl_asia_afp/nkoreanuclear_050321193203
SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea said it had increased its nuclear arsenal in preparation for a preemptive invasion by the United States, the Yonhap news agency quoted Pyongyang's state media as saying.
The Stalinist regime vowed last month to bolster its nuclear weapons, as it abruptly pulled out of multi-party talks aimed to halt its nuclear weapons programme and accused Washington of plotting to overthrow it.
"We have taken a serious measure by increasing nuclear arms in preparation for any invasions by enemies," Yonhap quoted the North Korean Central Broadcasting Station as saying late Monday.
It said joint US-South Korean military manoeuvres that started at the weekend were "a preparatory war against us."
The latest statement came as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrapped up a tour of the region in which the nuclear standoff topped the agenda.
In a dramatic rejection of the Bush administration's policy on North Korea, the reclusive state said last month it would no longer engage in the six-party talks over its nuclear weapons programme.
"We had already taken the resolute action of pulling out of the (Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty) and have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's ever-more-undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the DPRK (North Korea)," state media said at the time.
Washington believes North Korea possesses one or two crude bombs and may have reprocessed enough plutonium for half-a-dozen more, from spent fuel rods at its Yongbyon nuclear complex.
"(North Korea's) nuclear weapons will remain nuclear deterrent for self-defence under any circumstances," the statement said.
It accused Washington of seeking to topple North Korea's political system at any cost and threatening it with nuclear attack.
"This compels us to take a measure to bolster (North Korea's) nuclear weapons arsenal in order to protect the ideology, system, freedom and democracy chosen by the people in the DPRK," it said.
----
U.S. Says It May Need New Ways to Deal with N. Korea
Mon Mar 21, 2005 06:57 AM ET
(Reuters)
By Saul Hudson
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7958343
BEIJING - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday Washington and its Asian allies would have to find new ways of dealing with North Korea if it continued to shun nuclear disarmament talks.
Rice, concluding a sweep through Asia designed to revive the negotiations, also gave her strongest hint to date that the United States was prepared to report North Korea to the United Nations should the talks fail.
"Obviously, everyone is aware of the other options in the international system," Rice told a news conference in Beijing.
"Of course if we cannot find a way to resolve the North Korean issue in this way (through six-party talks), then we will have to find other means to do it."
She did not elaborate.
Rice's remarks were the first time she had explicitly referred to looking beyond the possible collapse of the talks. The comments could also undermine her stated goal of the trip, which was to find a common strategy to resume the negotiations.
U.S. impatience has been rising over the talks, which have been on hold since June, and Rice's remarks exposed a split between the United States and its partners in the negotiations.
Chinese President Hu Jintao told Rice Sunday that China's commitment to the six-party talks process was "firm and unshakable," the official Xinhua news agency reported.
While U.S. officials have declined to specify what steps were under consideration, hard-liners in the Bush administration want to call off the talks and report North Korea to the United Nations for possible economic sanctions.
Rice's trip to Beijing is also sensitive for coming a week after China's parliament passed an anti-secession law authorizing the use of force against Taiwan if it moved toward independence. In talks with Chinese leaders, she urged them to show goodwill.
The Bush administration, which has said it would do whatever was necessary to help the island defend itself, fears the new law will ratchet up tensions in the region.
"I said to my Chinese hosts that we would hope that...after having made dialogue across the Strait more difficult, that they would take steps to reduce tensions now with Taiwan," she said.
ILL-TIMED?
Rice also warned that European Union plans to lift an embargo on arms sales to China might alter the military balance in Asia and would be ill-timed. Luxembourg, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, has said it wants the issue resolved by June.
"From the U.S. point of view...it would not be the right signal. It might serve to alter the balance in a place the United States in particular has security interests," Rice said.
Her comments came at the tail end of a whirlwind visit to Asia on which she also underlined U.S. commitment to democracy in Afghanistan and prodded Pakistan to schedule elections. In India, she also expressed concern over a planned gas pipeline from Iran, which Washington says has a secret nuclear weapons program.
But North Korea dominated Rice's tours of Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo, partners in the North Korea talks along with Russia, who have all urged the United States to remain patient with the six-party process.
Rice's aides say the top U.S. diplomat has made gestures on her trip, such as recognizing North Korea's sovereignty and promising to respect its government, to coax the reclusive state back to negotiations.
Nevertheless, Rice has begun to lay the groundwork with her Asian partners for how to deal with North Korea if it stays away, said a senior State Department official who declined to be named.
Rice has pressed China, Pyongyang's biggest benefactor and closest ally, to use its leverage over North Korea, despite Sino-U.S. tensions over Taiwan and Beijing's military spending.
She also raised the sensitive issue of human rights and democracy in talks with Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing Monday, and urged China to embrace religious freedom and consider political reforms to match the country's economic progress.
"We...talked a good deal about the need for China to think about a more open political system that will match its economic opening and allow for the full creativity of the Chinese people," Rice said.
Days before her visit, China freed one of its highest-profile political prisoners and Washington opted not to seek a U.N. rebuke of Beijing's rights record, in what appeared to be reciprocal concessions. (Additional reporting by Benjamin Kang Lim and Lindsay Beck in Beijing and Mark Felsenthal in Washington)
-------- russia
Russian Admiral Says West Blocking Submarine Safety Deal
Created: 21.03.2005 Moscow News
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/03/21/ruseurosubs.shtml
Russia’s navy chief accused Britain and the US today of blocking an agreement between the world’s leading naval powers to prevent underwater collisions and other incidents, The Scotsman writes.
Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov said that for the past two years Russia and France have been discussing a deal similar to an existing one concerning surface forces, but neither Washington nor London has agreed to start talks on the issue.
“Secrecy, which sometimes has nothing to do with security, is the main problem here,” said the admiral.
The Russian nuclear submarine Kursk exploded and sank in the Barents Sea in August 2000 during a naval exercise, killing all 118 seamen on board.
Russian naval officials initially pointed the finger at Nato, saying a U.S. submarine might have collided with the Kursk.
But an investigation by military prosecutors concluded in July 2002 that the Kursk had sunk after a leak of volatile torpedo fuel triggered an explosion of the submarine’s weaponry.
In the days after the submarine sank, Russia struggled in its rescue efforts to try and save the lives of sailors who might have survived the blast, holed up in the wreckage in an air-pocket.
But almost until the very end, Moscow refused offers of help from Western nations, with critics accusing the authorities of obsessive secrecy.
-------- treaties
Danger nuclear mistakes will be repeated
March 21, 2005 Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Opinion/Danger-nuclear-mistakes-will-be-repeated/2005/03/20/1111253882668.html
Double standards continue to shape policy in Australia and the US, writes Richard Broinowski.
Pro-nuclear pundits are becoming excited about prospects of new Australian uranium sales. Under pressure to limit greenhouse gas emissions, Japan, South Korea, India and China are said to be planning to build nuclear power reactors. Some European countries are reconsidering their moratoriums against new nuclear power facilities. The US may augment its ageing inventory of 105 reactors.
The spot price for uranium has increased sharply in recent months, raising speculation about the economic bonanza this could bring to Australia.
The Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory and Olympic Dam in South Australia could be augmented by up to 28 other mines across Australia that are just waiting on escalating prices to open for business, we are told. Australia could at once correct its trade deficit, realise its role as the Saudi Arabia of uranium, and help rid the planet of greenhouse gas emissions from hydrocarbons.
The Coalition is eager to get in on the bonanza, even if it can't seem to remember the original conditions of export laid down by the Coalition government under Malcolm Fraser in 1977. While announcing yet another inquiry into Australia's "non-fossil" resources - read uranium - the Resources Minister, Ian Macfarlane, said in Canberra last week that he wanted to maximise uranium sales, but only "to countries who have signed all the relevant non-proliferation clauses and regulations". Well, no, Minister. Let's get our terms correct. Surely only to countries which have ratified the entire nuclear non-proliferation treaty and which have negotiated a separate bilateral agreement with Australia. In such a dangerous business, defining the conditions of sale precisely is important.
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As well, the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, says Australia and China have begun to negotiate a bilateral treaty on uranium. How tight will this be? Are you going to insist that China must seek our permission to transfer, enrich beyond 20 per cent or re-process Australian uranium on a case-by-case basis as the original safeguards stipulated, or allow the commercially more attractive option of a program approach, as we've done with Japan and South Korea? Will Australian companies be allowed to negotiate commercial contracts before a bilateral agreement is in place with the Chinese Government, as happened with the Japanese, thus weakening our capacity to insist on a proper safeguards regime?
Political indifference to expanding Australian uranium sales - in the Labor Party as much as the Coalition - is in sharp contrast with the popular concern that threatened to divide Australian society in the late 1970s and '80s. Fraser's conditions of export announced in 1977 were much tighter than those of today. And in 1982, Labor almost tore itself apart at the party's national conference. Bob Hawke and the Labor Right prevailed over the Left by scrapping the party's 1977 blanket moratorium against mining, allowing contracts negotiated under the Fraser government to run until 1996, and brokering a new three-mine policy. Ranger and Nabarlek were allowed to continue to operate in the Northern Territory. Western Mining's gigantic new copper, gold and uranium mine at Roxby Downs became Australia's third uranium mine.
Where is the public controversy today? Over possible exports of uranium to China, and the bilateral treaty that would have to precede it, there has been little public discussion. In the Labor Party, only the West Australian Premier, Geoff Gallop, has announced his unequivocal opposition to uranium mining in his state. Meanwhile, the Opposition spokesman on resources, Martin Ferguson, enthusiastically favours the export of uranium, including to China. Failures in the past to isolate our uranium completely from nuclear weapons programs will apparently not be revisited or reflected on. The failures look like being repeated, particularly in China.
And Australia looks like being caught out over another nuclear issue. The next five-year review of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty will be held at the United Nations in New York from May 2 to 27. Little has appeared in the Australian media about this crucial conference. But at a Canberra seminar on March 11, some of Australia's official thinking was revealed. Two senior Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials maintained that the Government continues strongly to favour nuclear non-proliferation. "Practical and realistic" steps must be adhered to. In particular, rogue states such as North Korea and Iran must be forced to stop their nuclear weapons programs. Their non-compliance threatens the whole treaty. But nothing was said about nuclear weapons already held outside the provisions of the treaty by India, Pakistan and Israel.
The Australians said a team of Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials will tour Australia in April, before the treaty review conference, to ascertain public attitudes to all nuclear issues.
What is troubling about all this is that the Australian presentation could have been drafted in Washington. No divisions of opinion were discernible between the Australians and a US policy paper presented to the conference by a middle-level American diplomat. The nuclear activities of rogue states and terrorists are the main targets. The successful efforts of India, Pakistan and Israel to illegally acquire nuclear weapons are no longer an issue.
Significantly, the Australians didn't mention, let alone condemn, nuclear weapons-related activities of the US sanctioned since 2001 by President George Bush. But the American diplomat at the conference had no problem turning most of them into virtues. They include the unilateral abrogation of the anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia, refusal to ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty and research and development of new miniaturised nuclear weapons. Astonishingly, the US diplomat said she was not aware of plans by the US Department of Energy to build a new plutonium facility to rearm ageing nuclear weapons and prime new ones.
Australian diplomats may argue with their American colleagues at the margins, for example, over the desirability of the US ratifying the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, or interpretation of the Fissile Materials Cut-Off Treaty. But what really shapes their position is the unstated but well-understood Australian Government policy that its great protector - the US - should never forfeit its overwhelming superiority over all other nations in nuclear weaponry.
Double standards will therefore continue to shape nuclear policy in Canberra and Washington, and erode the non-proliferation treaty. Do as we say, not as we do. Australia may consider nuclear weapons an exclusive part of the defensive armouries of its ally. But other countries outside the Western alliance will disagree, and increasingly want to develop their own.
Richard Broinowski is a former Australian diplomat and author of Fact or Fission - the truth about Australia's nuclear ambitions (Scribe Publications, 2003).
-------- u.n.
Nuclear Energy May Be Back in Vogue, UN Says
March 21, 2005 — By Louis Charbonneau, Reuters
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=7372
PARIS — Expectations of a sharp rise in energy demand and the risk of climate change are pushing many countries to return to the idea of nuclear power, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said on Monday.
Even the most conservative estimates predict at least a doubling of energy usage by mid-century, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told a conference on nuclear energy in the 21st century.
He said any discussion of the energy sector "must begin by acknowledging the expected substantial growth in energy demand in the coming decades."
It was unclear what role nuclear power would play, though it appeared to be an increasingly important one, he said.
"All indicators show that an increased level of emphasis on subjects such as fast growing energy demands, security of energy supply, and the risk of climate change are driving a reconsideration, in some quarters, of the need for greater investment in nuclear power," ElBaradei said.
"The IAEA's low projection, based on the most conservative assumptions, predicts 427 gigawatts of global nuclear energy capacity in 2020, the equivalent of 127 more 1,000 megawatt nuclear plants than previous projections," he said.
ElBaradei pointed to nuclear energy policy plans in China, Finland, the United States and possibly Poland as proof that nuclear power may be returning to vogue.
But he warned despite an improved atomic energy industry: "Nuclear power was dealt a heavy blow by the tragedy of the 1986 Chernobyl accident, a blow from which the reputation of the nuclear industry has never fully recovered."
The explosion at the Chernobyl plant in then-Soviet Ukraine, the world's worst civil nuclear accident, spewed a cloud of radioactivity across Europe and has been blamed for thousands of deaths from radiation-linked illness. More than 100,000 people had to be resettled.
On the topic of climate change and the threat posed by greenhouse gases, ElBaradei said nuclear energy in combination with renewable sources of energy represented a safe alternative to fossil fuels.
"Nuclear power emits virtually no greenhouse gases. The complete nuclear power chain, from uranium mining to waste disposal, and including reactor and facility construction, emits only 2-6 grams of carbon per kilowatt hour," he said.
"This is about the same as wind and solar power and one to two orders below coal, oil and even natural gas."
Source: Reuters
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- utah
Environmental Rasism, Tribal Sovereignty and Nuclear Waste
High-Level Atomic Waste Dump Targeted at Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation in Utah
March 21, 2005 NIRS
http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/pfsejfactsheet.htm
"There is nothing moral about tempting a starving man with money."
– Keith Lewis, of the Serpent River First Nation in Ontario, reflecting on his impoverished community’s 50 years of working in and living near uranium mines & mills, and the health and environmental catastrophe that has resulted.
Nevadans and Utahans living downwind and downstream from nuclear weapons testing, uranium mining, and radioactive waste dumping have suffered immensely during the Nuclear Age. But even in the "nuclear sacrifice zones" of the desert Southwest, it is Native Americans--from Navajo uranium miners to tribal communities targeted with atomic waste dumps-- who have borne the brunt of both the front and back ends of the nuclear fuel cycle.
The tiny Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians Reservation in Utah is targeted for a very big nuclear waste dump. Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a limited liability corporation representing eight powerful nuclear utilities, wants to "temporarily" store 40,000 tons of commercial high-level radioactive waste (nearly the total amount that presently exists in the U.S.) next to the two-dozen tribal members who live on the small reservation. The PFS proposal is the latest in a long tradition of targeting Native American communities for such dumps. But there is another tradition on the targeted reservations as well–fighting back against blatant environmental racism, and winning. Skull Valley Goshute tribal member Margene Bullcreek leads Ohngo Gaudadeh Devia (or OGD, Goshute for "Mountain Community"), a grassroots group of tribal members opposed to the dump. In addition to many other activities, OGD has filed an environmental justice contention before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Atomic Safety Licensing Board (ASLB).
Both the federal government and the commercial nuclear power industry have targeted Native American reservations for such dumps for many years. In 1987, the U.S. Congress created the Office of the Nuclear Waste Negotiator in an effort to open a federal "monitored retrievable storage site" for high-level nuclear waste. The Negotiator sent letters to every federally recognized tribe in the country, offering hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars to tribal council governments for first considering and then ultimately hosting the dump. Out of the hundreds of tribes approached, the Negotiator eventually courted about two dozen tribal councils in particular.
Resistance from members within the targeted tribes, however, prevented the proposed dumps from opening. Grace Thorpe, founder of the National Environmental Coalition of Native Americans and an emeritus member of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service board of directors, rallied her fellow tribal members and defeated the dump targeted at her own Sauk and Fox reservation in Oklahoma. Tribal members on other targeted reservations turned to Thorpe, and to such Native-led groups as Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) and Honor the Earth, to learn how to organize their community to resist the federal nuclear waste dump.
The Negotiator eventually set his sights on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico. But tribal member Rufina Marie Laws spearheaded her community’s resistance against her own tribal council and the Negotiator, thwarting the dump. After having failed to open the intended dump, Congress defunded and dissolved the Office of the Nuclear Waste Negotiator in 1994.
The commercial nuclear power industry, however, picked up where the Negotiator had left off. Led by Northern States Power (now Xcel Energy), 8 nuclear utility companies formed a coalition that attempted to overcome the resistance at Mescalero. A tribal referendum, however, doomed the dump to eventual failure. The utility coalition regrouped as Private Fuel Storage, and then turned to the Skull Valley Goshutes in Utah, another community that had been on the Negotiator’s target list.
At the same time, the nuclear power industry contributed large sums to Congressional and Presidential campaigns, and lobbied hard on Capitol Hill to establish a "temporary storage site" at the Nevada nuclear weapons test site, not far from the proposed federal permanent underground dump for high-level atomic waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Both these proposed "temporary" and permanent dump sites would be on Western Shoshone land, as affirmed by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. Yucca Mountain is sacred to the Western Shoshone, and their National Council has long campaigned to prevent nuclear dumping there.
Several incarnations of the nuclear power industry-backed "Mobile Chernobyl" bill appeared between 1995 and 2000. They were so dubbed because, if enacted, they would have launched the beginning of tens of thousands of dangerous irradiated nuclear fuel shipments to Nevada. Grassroots efforts across the country, combined with Nevadan leadership in Congress and an unwavering veto pledge by President Clinton, has successfully stopped "Mobile Chernobyl" in its tracks on Capitol Hill for the past five years.
Having lost its bid to "temporarily" store its deadly wastes on Western Shoshone land near Yucca Mountain, nuclear utilities have re-focused their hopes for "interim" relief on Nevada’s neighbor, Utah. PFS must have done its homework: it would be hard to find a community more economically and politically vulnerable than the Skull Valley Goshutes to the Faustian bargain of getting "big bucks" in exchange for hosting the nation’s deadliest poisons.
Just 25 tribal members live on the tiny Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians Reservation, an hour’s drive west and south from Salt Lake City in Tooele County, Utah. The remaining 100 Band members live in surrounding towns in Tooele County, in Salt Lake City, and elsewhere. The reservation is already surrounded by toxic industries. Magnesium Corporation is the nation’s worst air polluter, belching voluminous chlorine gas and hydrochloric acid clouds; hazardous waste landfills and incinerators dot the map; with a name straight out of Orwell’s 1984, Envirocare dumps "low level" nuclear waste in the next valley and is applying to accept atomic trash hundreds of times more radioactive than its present license allows. Dugway Proving Ground has tested VX nerve gas, leading in 1968 to the "accidental" killing of 6,400 sheep grazing in Skull Valley, whose toxic carcasses were then buried on the reservation without the tribe’s knowledge, let alone approval. The U.S. Army stores half its chemical weapon stockpile nearby, and is burning it in an incinerator prone to leaks; jets from Hill Air Force Base drop bombs on Wendover Bombing Range, and fighter crashes and misfired missiles have struck nearby. Tribal members’ health is undoubtedly adversely impacted by this alphabet soup of toxins. Now PFS wants to add high-level nuclear waste to the mix.
This toxic trend in Tooele County has left the reservation with almost no alternative economy. Pro-dump tribal chairman Leon Bear summed up his feelings: "We can’t do anything here that’s green or environmental. Would you buy a tomato from us if you knew what’s out here? Of course not. In order to attract any kind of development, we have to be consistent with what surrounds us."
Targeting a tiny, impoverished Native American community, already so disproportionately overburdened with toxic exposures, to host the United States’ nuclear waste dump would seem a textbook violation of environmental justice. But the nuclear utilities did not let such considerations slow down their push for the PFS dump on the Skull Valley Reservation.
Two days after Christmas in 1996, without the knowledge or approval of the Skull Valley Goshute General Council (the 60 adult members who govern the tribe), Tribal Chairman Leon Bear signed a lease agreement with PFS for an undisclosed amount of money. To this day, no tribal member outside the three member tribal executive committee knows how much money the tribe would receive for hosting the nation’s atomic waste dump. The NRC, which must issue a license in order for the dump to open, ruled in its June, 2000 Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) that the dump does not violate environmental justice, because PFS will pay the tribe so handsomely. Estimates of the secretive pay-off to the tribal council range from 60 to 200 million dollars.
PFS’s strategy is simple: use unlimited amounts of money to buy out any potential opposition to locate a dump on the reservation. In 1999, PFS entered into an undisclosed monetary agreement with resistant local cattle ranchers, and in May 2000 signed a deal with Tooele County in exchange for support of the dump. In an area of economic scarcity, money talks loudly. "It's pretty clear that utilities are willing to spend billions to move the spent fuel out of their back yard into ours," said Utah Governor Mike Leavitt, who adamantly opposes the PFS dump.
"The real issue is not the money," Bullcreek, has said. "The real issue is who we are as Native Americans and what we believe in. If we accept these wastes, we're going to lose our tradition."
Bullcreek, a tribal member who resides on the reservation with her children, disagrees with NRC’s ruling that the dump presents "no disproportionately high and adverse impacts on low income or minority populations." (DEIS, pg. LXX of the introduction).
She first became concerned by the way in which Chairman Bear had gone about signing the lease (without first bringing it to the general council for a vote). As she looked into it, she learned about the dangers of high-level nuclear waste, about the ways the PFS dump would threaten her tribe’s health, culture, traditions and reservation community life. The NRC’s ruling assumes that, given enough money, tribal members such as Bullcreek and her family could simply move from the reservation if they didn’t like the sight of a nuclear waste dump out their kitchen window.
Such false logic fails to recognize traditional tribal members’ inextricable spiritual attachment to the land they and their ancestors inhabit.
"Cedar and Sage are sacred here," says Bullcreek. "I cut willow branches over there to cradle my babies like my mother did, and my grandmother did, and her mother and her mother. Their bones are on this land. If you think this is desolate then you don’t know the land. You don’t know how to be still and listen. There is peace here. I felt I had to be outspoken or lose everything that has been passed down from generations. The stories that tell why we became the people we are and how we should consider our animal life, our air, things that are sacred to us. Leon Bear is trying to convince himself that what he is doing is right, but this waste will destroy who we are."
Bullcreek is fighting the dump because it would ruin that peace and her family’s ancient connection to the land. If the dump is built, she has said she would be forced to move away from the homeland she loves. Has NRC considered the fact that for Bullcreek-–a fluent speaker of her native tongue-–to move away from the community would be yet another severe blow to the endangered Goshute language? What about other similar adverse impacts to the traditional culture? NRC’s ruling that the dump is justified because of the large economic benefit for the tribe (DEIS, p. 6-28) also fails to recognize that Chairman Bear seems to have no intention of sharing proceeds from PFS with opponents to the dump. OGD’s contention before the Licensing Board challenges this NRC finding of no environmental justice (EJ) violation.
Tribal opposition to the dump has taken a number of other, complementary paths as well. Tribal member Sammy Blackbear, who lives with his four children on the reservation, has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, alleging that it violated its trust responsibility to the tribe by quickly approving an illegitimate lease agreement between Chairman Bear and PFS. Over twenty tribal members, including Bullcreek, have joined as co-plaintiffs. Blackbear is also working with his U.S. Congressman to investigate allegations that Chairman Bear has used PFS income to bribe some tribal members into supporting the lease agreement and dump proposal, while blocking other payments due tribal members who oppose the dump.
Bullcreek and Blackbear are actively working with concerned citizens of Utah to develop an alternative economic plan for their reservation. An effort is underway to obtain solar panels and wind turbines for installation in the community as a clean, renewable source of electricity. Both are also working with allies in the political and grassroots arenas outside the reservation, to counter the vast resources of the powerful nuclear utilities and other corporations promoting PFS.
OGD’s EJ contention before the ASLB could be key to stopping the dump. A successful EJ contention against Louisiana Energy Services (LES) was essential in defeating a proposed uranium enrichment plant targeted at an impoverished rural African-American community. The NRC Licensing Board overseeing the LES case quoted President Clinton’s Executive Order 12898 in its ruling: "[T]o the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law…each Federal agency shall make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations in the United States."
OGD and its legal representatives must now navigate the complex legal and bureaucratic labyrinth of the NRC’s Atomic Safety & Licensing Board. The huge financial costs—difficult for a small group such as OGD to raise--required to effectively participate in NRC hearings poses the question, is the NRC ASLB process itself a violation of environmental justice? OGD’s contention hearing, originally scheduled for June, has now been delayed until December, 2001.
If the NRC’s DEIS ruling--that the proposed dump is not an EJ violation because PFS will pay the tribe a relatively large sum of money–stands uncontested, it could serve as a precedent to "justify" federal regulatory agencies licensing toxic facilities that target impoverished minority communities, so long as the polluting corporation "compensates" the victims with "enough" money to "live with it" or relocate elsewhere. Offering reservation communities "enough" money to "put up with" or relocate away from proposed toxic facilities on their homeland nevertheless despoils or removes the land in which traditional culture and spirituality is rooted.
Dangling big bucks in front of impoverished reservation communities, tempting them to do something they otherwise would not, enables corporations to "divide and conquer," by setting tribal councils against traditionals, and tribal members against each other. Even though no waste has been dumped yet, Bullcreek says PFS is already ripping her community apart.
The outcome of the PFS fight may set important precedents for tribal sovereignty and environmental protection on reservations. The nuclear power industry is attempting to evade environmental regulations and State of Utah opposition by hiding behind the shield of tribal sovereignty. If successful, this could threaten to undermine tribal sovereignty itself.
"Sovereignty isn’t selling your independence and your heritage to the highest bidder," Bullcreek says. "What choice will we have after they park all that radioactive waste on our land?"
The lease agreement signed by Chairman Bear and PFS requires that the tribe "use its sovereign nation status to support and promote this Lease and Project," and that the tribe "not, at any time, pass any law, rule or regulation which could adversely affect or burden this Lease or the Project…" (Lease between Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians and PFS, May 20, 1997, p. 18). The lease also forbids the tribe from setting any environmental protection standards that are stronger than federal standards (p.24). The agreement, in effect, forfeits control of the reservation dumpsite to PFS, and regulation to the federal NRC.
Calling on the State of Utah to take action by entering dialogue with the Goshutes about compensation, remediation and clean up of existing environmental devastation on and around Skull Valley, Indigenous Environmental Network director Tom Goldtooth said "We recognize the sovereignty of the Skull Valley Tribal Council to make decisions on behalf of their people, but the Tribe is in this situation to begin with because of unjust policies that have negatively impacted their inherent rights to maintain a healthy, economically viable community. The Tribe is not the enemy here, Private Fuel Storage is. The State needs to look at policies that threaten the Tribe’s health and well-being and work to rectify those first."
"The nuclear industry is using Native land and Native people as a loophole to keep their reactors running," says Honor the Earth spokesperson Winona LaDuke. "The nuclear industry needs to be called to the table for seeking a political solution to the deadly environmental problem of nuclear waste they created by targeting isolated Native communities. It’s bad policy and it’s wrong."
"Our reservation is sacred. This is the only land we have–the only thing the government left us after taking most of our country," Bullcreek said.
Radioactivity, because of its disproportionate harmful impact on Native Americans over the past 60 years, has been called the "smallpox blanket of the Nuclear Age," referring to the practice of giving infested blankets to tribes to wipe them out and clear their lands for expropriation.
"It is time to right the injustices of the past, and develop just and honorable relationships with Native peoples," said Winona LaDuke.
Fighting against the PFS high-level nuclear waste dump targeted at the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes is the front line of that struggle for Native American environmental justice against corporate greed and environmental racism.
What You Can Do
April 26, 2001–the 15th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe–has been declared a National Day of Action against PFS’s environmental racism and the "Mobile Chernobyl" its dump would launch. Demonstrations are being organized at the reactors and/or headquarters of the 8 utilities that comprise PFS, calling upon them to withdraw from the consortium.
Actions are also being organized along the targeted transport routes nationwide, seeking to win local resolutions against the tens of thousands of irradiated fuel shipments that would go to Utah and Nevada if the PFS and Yucca Mountain dumps go into operation. Sample resolutions are on NIRS’ website.
Other action ideas: Host a letter writing party targeting the PFS companies’ CEOs. Write letters to the editor and op-ed pieces. Organize a fundraiser to help pay for OGD’s legal actions. Hold a teach-in or press conference in your community or campus. Check the NIRS website frequently for materials, new information and ideas. Contact NIRS to plug into the action nearest you, to find out other ways to become involved, and to be connected to other groups across the country working on these issues.
Prepared February 15, 2001, by Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Waste Specialist, Nuclear Information Resource Service, 1424 16th Street, NW, Suite 404, Washington, D.C., 20036. 202.328.0002; f: 202.462.2183; kevin@nirs.org , http://www.nirs.org
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Rice Warns Europe Not to Sell Advanced Weaponry to China
Military Balance At Risk, Allies Told
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 21, 2005; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51181-2005Mar20?language=printer
BEIJING, March 20 -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sternly warned European allies on Sunday that they "should do nothing" that alters the military balance of power in Asia through sales of sophisticated weapons to China, suggesting that those arms ultimately could be directed at Americans.
"It is the United States -- not Europe -- that has defended the Pacific," Rice said at a news conference in Seoul before she flew to Beijing for talks with Chinese officials. Later, like two of her predecessors, she attended a service at a government-sanctioned church, making a symbolic political statement about the lack of religious freedom in China.
The European Union had appeared all but certain this year to lift an embargo on weapons sales imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of democracy demonstrators. U.S. officials have expressed dismay over the decision, especially after China passed a law this month authorizing the use of force against Taiwan if it moves toward formal independence. Rice also held talks this weekend in Japan and South Korea, both of which fear that China will improve its military capabilities.
Rice cited U.S. concerns about the rise of Chinese military spending and the increasing sophistication of Chinese military power. "The European Union should do nothing to contribute to a circumstance in which Chinese military modernization draws on European technology or even the political decision to suggest that it could draw on European technology," she said.
The United States would bolster its forces in response to such sales to keep the current military balance intact, she added.
Hours after Rice made her statement, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in London that the rising tensions between China and Taiwan have made it harder to lift the embargo.
Nearing the end of her week-long tour of Asia, Rice consulted closely with officials in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing about efforts to persuade North Korea to return to nuclear disarmament talks. Rice struck a careful public balance this weekend, offering softer diplomatic language while also visiting an underground military command center in South Korea that would direct a war against the North.
While Rice stressed that the United States was committed to a diplomatic resolution, she has begun to suggest that U.S. patience with the North Koreans was waning. "It is true that we need to resolve this issue," she told reporters in Seoul. "It cannot go on forever."
Rice has begun discussing with her Asian counterparts what other diplomatic steps should be taken if North Korea fails to return to the talks soon, or fails to make a reasonable counteroffer if the talks resume, according to a senior State Department official. He declined to describe those steps, but some key U.S. officials have pressed to take the matter to the U.N. Security Council. North Korea has warned that such a step would be tantamount to a declaration of war.
Rice spoke at length about North Korea on Sunday with Chinese President Hu Jintao and about Taiwan with Premier Wen Jiabao, the official said. In the evening, she attended a one-hour Palm Sunday service at Gangwashi Protestant church, a spare and functional building in an alley west of Tiananmen Square.
The senior pastor, Du Fenyying, introduced Rice to the 600 congregants as "the American secretary of state, Sister Rice." Rice listened to a translation of the service through headphones.
Rice describes herself as deeply religious, and her attendance was billed by her aides as a strictly private matter. Though visiting the church had political overtones -- she could have attended church on Sunday morning in Seoul -- she barely touched on human rights and democracy in her discussions with China's top leaders. She will discuss those topics Monday with a lower-level official, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, the senior official said.
Rice's church visit was not unprecedented. Two presidents -- George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton -- have attended church in China, as did two secretaries of state, James A. Baker III in 1991 and Madeleine K. Albright in 1998. Although Rice did not speak, Albright -- in the same church -- made a statement calling for the free exercise of religious beliefs.
Last week, the State Department chose not to pursue a resolution critical of China at the U.N. Human Rights Commission, citing in part new regulations that provide for family churches whose members worship in homes. But human rights groups say the new rules actually tighten the Chinese government's controls on worship. Mickey Spiegel, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the regulations appear to eliminate "any gray area through which small local groups without a structure could use someone's home or shop as a meeting place where like-minded believers could quietly congregate."
Correspondent Philip P. Pan contributed to this report.
----
Rice warns Europe on arms sales
March 21, 2005
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050321-121130-9743r.htm
BEIJING -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Europe in unusually blunt language yesterday that it should not contribute to China's military buildup by selling it weapons and arms technology.
She argued that U.S. forces deployed to defend places such as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan could one day suffer if the European Union goes ahead with plans to lift a 16-year-old embargo on weapons sales to China.
"It is the United States not Europe that has defended the Pacific," she said as she neared the end of her first trip to Asia since taking office two months ago.
"There are concerns about the rise of Chinese military spending and potentially Chinese military power and its increasing sophistication," Miss Rice told reporters in Seoul before she flew to Beijing.
"The United States will, of course, maintain and modernize its forces to make certain that the military balance can be maintained in the Asia-Pacific, so that the region can continue along a peaceful path," she said.
A senior State Department official traveling with Miss Rice said later, "We don't want to see a situation where American forces are facing European technologies."
Tensions between the Republic of China (Taiwan) and mainland China have been rising in recent months, reaching new heights with China's adoption of a law last week that allows it to use force to prevent Taiwan's formal independence.
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao assured Miss Rice yesterday that the anti-secession law was meant to contain independence forces on Taiwan and that "nonpeaceful means" were only "a last resort," U.S. and Chinese officials said.
"We hope the United States will understand, respect and support the Chinese legislative action," Mr. Wen was quoted by state radio as saying.
But in London yesterday, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the new Chinese law had complicated efforts to lift the embargo. That law and the lack of progress on human rights in China have "created quite a difficult political environment," he said on ITV television.
The European arms embargo was imposed to protest the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations. The European Union says lifting the ban would be a symbolic political gesture recognizing the changes China has made since then.
But the United States says China's human rights record hardly deserves to be rewarded.
To underscore the lack of religious freedom in China, Miss Rice last night attended a Palm Sunday service at Gangwashi Christian Church, just a few blocks from Tiananmen Square.
The church, which had been visited in 1998 by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, is sanctioned by the Chinese government, unlike thousands of underground "house churches" whose members risk arrest.
Miss Rice did not discuss democracy and human rights issues with President Hu Jintao and Mr. Wen in Beijing yesterday, a senior State Department official said. Instead, she planned an in-depth conversation about those matters with Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing today.
Last week, the United States decided not to seek what had become a traditional annual resolution condemning China at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
Miss Rice and Mr. Hu spent most of their meeting yesterday talking about North Korea and how it could be persuaded to return to six-party talks on its nuclear- weapons program, the senior official said.
He pointed out that the secretary had been using words such as "respect" and "sovereign state" regarding Pyongyang during her trip to "give the Chinese some diplomatic language to persuade North Korea to come back" to the negotiating table.
But the official said the United States and other participants in the talks are beginning to consider "other diplomatic means" if North Korea continues to resist.
He declined to give more details, only noting Miss Rice's comments that the current situation "can't go on forever."
-------- business
GPTC Acquires 100% Interest in Past Producing Uranium Mine
March 21, 2005 -- (BUSINESS WIRE)
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050321005353&newsLang=en
LAS VEGAS--March 21, 2005--Golden Patriot, Corp. ("GPTC") (OTCBB:GPTC) is extremely pleased to announce that it has entered into an option agreement to acquire 100% of the Lucky Boy Uranium Project in Gila County, Arizona from Handley Minerals Inc. GPTC will earn 100% interest in the project in consideration of GPTC incurring $925,000 in exploration and development costs on the Lucky Boy Project during a period of three years from the date of the exercise of the option. GPTC is also to pay property costs totaling $75,000 over three years. Operations are expected to commence within the second quarter 2005.
The Lucky Boy Uranium Project consists of 14 BLM claims and an 80 acre State Lease contiguous to the claims. The Lucky Boy Project is a past producer and was one of the first producing uranium mines in the state of Arizona.
The Lucky Boy Uranium Project is at the site of the old Lucky Boy mine. The Lucky Boy mine, using heap leaching and ion exchange recovery, produced about 5,000,000 pounds of uranium ore in the 1950s.
GPTC has retained Ashworth Explorations ("Ashex") to run the work program. Ashex has been in business for over 25 years as a mineral exploration contractor.
GPTC has granted Rodinia Minerals Inc. an option to back-in for 40% of GPTC's interest in the Lucky Boy Project, after GPTC has spent $500,000 on the project.
In the last two years, the contracted price at which energy companies purchase uranium has more than doubled, as stockpiles and scraps supplies have dried up. On the demand side, more material will be needed to fuel a new wave of environment friendly nuclear power generators. The rift between uranium mining and the needs of nuclear power plants has been stable for the last decade at around 40-45%. According to iNi data, between 1985 and 2003 commercial reserves of uranium in the world diminished by 50%. Only 55% of the uranium consumed in 2003 had been mined that year. However, uranium reserves are being depleted with every passing year.
Conrad Clemiss, President of GPTC stated, "This project is a huge step forward for GPTC. The company has been quiet in the past few months due to weather delays on the Dun Glen Prospect, but as the Lucky Boy Project commences operations and our other gold prospects get underway, this quarter will be a very active one for GPTC. Considering that uranium prices are near 20 year highs, it could not be a better time for GPTC to get involved with this exciting prospect."
Golden Patriot, Corp.
GPTC is actively engaged in the acquisition and exploration of high priority gold properties in northern Nevada. To date GPTC's holdings total 178 claims covering 2,935 acres. With our team of highly skilled, experienced management and geologists, we are taking steps toward development.
To receive timely updates and information on any future developments as they occur please email us at info@goldenpatriotcorp.com.
Disclaimer: This announcement may contain forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, limited operating history, limited access to operating capital, factors detailed in the accuracy of geological and geophysical results including drilling and assay reports; the ability to close the acquisition of mineral exploration properties, and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. More information is included in Golden Patriot, Corp. filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and may be accessed through the SEC's web site at http://www.sec.gov.
Contacts
Golden Patriot, Corp.
Conrad Clemiss, 604-646-6906
-------- iraq
Insurgents Recycle Iran-Iraq War Weapons
Mon Mar 21, 2:55 AM ET
By ANTONIO CASTANEDA, Associated Press Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050321/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_recycled_weapons
MANDALI, Iraq - Hundreds of thousands of rusty munitions — leftovers from the Iran-Iraq war — are scattered across the green fields and gentle hills of the two countries' common border. Long ignored, they are now being harvested by insurgents who recycle them into crude but highly deadly bombs to use against U.S. and Iraqi troops.
Saddam-era ordnance, repackaged as roadside bombs or bundled together to use in car bomb attacks, has been the leading killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Concerned about the growing trend, the military is paying Iraqis thousands of dollars for information about weapons caches.
"The munitions that are stockpiled in this area will for some time to come be a constant source of improvised explosive device material for someone that's willing to take the time to get them," Lt. Col. William M. Hart said.
Hart commands the 1st Squadron of the 278th Regiment from Athens, Tenn. His unit patrols about 60 miles of the Iraq-Iran border where much of the 1980-88 war was fought. It is impossible to know how many insurgent bombs originated from these weedy minefields. But the potential is enormous.
"We need to be working ... to limit munitions trafficking from the border westward into the population centers," Hart said. "If we do that, we will have been effective in at least taking away some of the insurgency's logistical support base."
The U.S. Army is reluctant to discuss reward amounts. Officials realize they are competing with insurgents and others buying old weapons, and they don't want to start a bidding war.
"We'd be naive to think we're the only ones paying them for munitions," said the 1st Squadron's Lt. Capt. Kevin Mick, a native of Columbia, Tenn., who frequently visits with villagers to check for new caches.
Since the regiment's arrival in November 2004, locals have turned in over 7,000 munitions.
Critics say the program provides incentives for poor, untrained Iraqis to do dangerous work. Advocates say Iraqis are helping to demilitarize their country and disable weapons that could be used to kill or maim civilians and soldiers.
The military has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to the Army Corp of Engineers and private contractors to destroy munitions throughout the country. But there are still more than enough to guarantee insurgents a steady supply for the foreseeable future.
Estimates of the number of mines before the 2003 U.S. invasion range between 8 million and 12 million. In the western half of the Diyala province, next to the border area, more than 1,400 improvised bombs have been located since November 2003, according to U.S. military statistics.
The weapons remain a threat to life along the border, where roads are lined by piles of stones or sticks stuck in the ground — primitive warnings of nearby danger. Anti-personnel mines can be seen jutting from the sand, and mortars and rocket-propelled grenades that skipped across the desert a quarter century ago lie buried in soft beds of sand, still dangerously sensitive.
Iraqi soldiers said earlier this month they found the bodies of two shepherds amid a herd of aimless sheep, the apparent victims of leftover munitions.
U.S. soldiers patrolling near the border recently picked up 21 pieces of rusty munitions from a villager who flagged down the same group a few hours later to say he had also collected some 200 anti-tank mines. A shepherd on the same road two days earlier stopped a convoy of Humvees to point out a protruding land mine just off the road.
-------- un
Bolton faces confirmation fight
March 21, 2005
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050320-101810-8711r.htm
Democrats say John Bolton may win confirmation to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but he is going to have a rough fight, and senators from both parties said just how difficult the fight will be will depend on how he defends his past comments about the role of the United Nations.
"He may be confirmed, but it's going to be a very rocky trip," said Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which will first consider the nomination, probably early next month.
President Bush nominated Mr. Bolton, who is undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, earlier this month, surprising Democrats who had thought Mr. Bolton would be marginalized in a new Bush administration.
Senators from both parties say Mr. Bolton will have to explain past comments questioning the usefulness of the United Nations, more recent comments that irked foreign leaders, and his record at the State Department.
"He's been working on arms control for the past four years, right? But on his watch, Iran and North Korea raced to join the nuclear club," said Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat. "Throw in a long history of not wanting to work with our allies, and you've got a nominee who will have a tough time making a case that he's the right guy for this job."
Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar said he expects the confirmation hearing to take place the week Congress returns from its Easter recess. While not specifically endorsing Mr. Bolton, the Indiana Republican said he will work to have him confirmed.
Others on the committee are enthusiastic. Sen. Norm Coleman, Minnesota Republican, said Mr. Bolton is the right man to push the United Nations from within to restore its credibility.
"Oil-for-food tarred that credibility. I think in Bolton you get somebody who wants to make sure the U.N. is working with us to do the right thing," Mr. Coleman said.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican and a member of the committee, said the president showed strong leadership by choosing Mr. Bolton in the face of a difficult confirmation battle.
Still, he said, the outcome rests with Mr. Bolton. "How this goes will depend on his confirmation hearing and how he handles it," Mr. Alexander said.
And interest groups are arming senators with background information to try to sink Mr. Bolton's nomination.
"Right now, there's information-gathering. People are sending stuff to Dodd, and to [ranking Democrat Sen. Joseph R.] Biden and to Lugar to armor them," said Larry Burns, executive director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a nonprofit group that promotes economic and political issues for the Western Hemisphere.
A senior Democratic aide said there is not a push for a filibuster of Mr. Bolton right now, but opponents -- both inside and outside of Congress -- said it's still possible for Republicans to force the Bush administration to withdraw the nominee.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- torture
Torture doublespeak
March 21, 2005 Washington Times
By Nat Hentoff
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20050320-085647-4303r.htm
This is the second in a series of columns on America's rendition of suspected terrorists to countries known for torturing prisoners.
The word "covert" has long been associated with the CIA's use of "extraordinary renditions" by which suspected terrorists, believed to have essential information, are sent to countries our own State Department condemns for torturing prisoners. This is no longer a secret, as shown March 6 on CBS -TV's "60 Minutes," which began with: "Witnesses tell the same story: masked men in an unmarked jet seize their target, cut off his clothes...Tranquilize him and fly him away."
The next night, on ABC-TV's "World News Tonight," chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross reported: "Flight logs shown to ABC News detail trips to Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan." And on "60 Minutes," Scott Pelley had noted that one of these kidnapping planes "made at least 600 flights to 40 countries... after 9/11." And on March 7, on Fox News, a network not notable for criticizing the Bush administration, Senior Judicial AnalystJudgeAndrew Napolitano emphasized that "the United States signed over four treaties prohibiting this practice of extraordinary rendition. And the treaties required that the signing countries enact criminal statutes prohibiting them.
"They carry 20-year penalties for anybody having anything to do with... planning it (and) supplying planes." Mr. Napolitano added: "The president... can't change a treaty, he can't change a law... the most he can say to his CIA operatives is: 'On my watch, you won't be prosecuted.' " But there is a growing disquiet among certain CIA operatives that despite the "special rules" the administration has given the CIA, there might be consequences for those agents who have broken both our laws and the international treaties we have signed.
On "60 Minutes," Mr. Pelley interviewed Michael Scheuer, who helped begin the rendition program under Bill Clinton and, until recently, was a senior CIA counterterrorist official. Mr. Scheuer said: "Basically, the NationalSecurity Council gave us the mission... take people off the streets so they can't kill Americans." Mr. Scheuer, who still believes these renditions are productive, characterizes them as "finding someone else to do your dirty work."
Or, as one Bush administration official told the Washington Post (Dec. 26, 2002): "If we're not there in the room, who is to say?" However, Mr. Scheuer candidly told Mr. Pelley: "Oh, I think from the first day we ever did it there was a certain macabre humor that said sooner or later this this this sword of Damocles is going to fall, because if something goes wrong, the policy maker, the politicians and the congressional committees aren't going to belly up to the bar and say, 'We authorized this.'" On March 6, in the House of Representatives, Rep. Edward Markey, Massachusetts Democrat, held the sword of Damocles over the head of President Bush when he declared that "the president needs to rescind his extraordinary rendition 'outsourcing torture' directive... I call on the President to declassify this secret order of his immediately.
"The war against terrorism," Mr. Markey continued, "is a war against those who engage in torture. If we fight our enemy using the same inhumane and morally bankrupt techniques that we are trying to stop, we will simply become what we have beheld. I call on President Bush to stop the outsourcing of torture immediately, in deed as well as word." On ABC-TV's "World News Tonight," Mr. Markey said hopefully: "Like Abu Ghraib, it took a while for the outrage to build. The more the American people find out we are allowing other countries to torture in our name, there is going to be an outcry in this country."
I am listening hard, but I don't hear that outcry yet, certainly not among the Republican leadership in Congress, which refuses to authorize an independent investigation of the CIA's "renditions." One of the CIA's jets transporting suspected terrorists made 10 trips to Uzbekistan. Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to that country, told Mr. Pelley about the techniques of Uzbek interrogators: "drowning and suffocation, rape was used... also the insertion of limbs in boiling liquid... it's quite common." Mr. Murray also told Brian Ross of ABC News that he received photos of one prisoner who was actually boiled to death.
That corpse may not have been a person the CIA kidnapped, but how do we know? In a March 6 New York Times story on these horrifying renditions, a CIA official "would not discuss any legal directive under which the agency operated, but said that the CIA has existing authorities to lawfully conduct these operations."
The authority came directly from the president in a Sept. 17, 2001 "memorandum of notification." Then why doesn't the president let us and Congress see this directive? Meanwhile, Fox News reports that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says "the United States would never send terrorism suspects to countries where they would be tortured." But he did admit that once they had been sent, "the U.S. government didn't have control over how they were tortured." Isn't this manipulation of words what George Orwell chillingly called "doublespeak"?
-------- POLITICS
-------- voting
Democracy protesters challenge Kyrgyzstan vote rigging
CHRIS STEPHEN
Mon 21 Mar 2005 The Scotsman
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=301442005
OPPOSITION supporters in Kyrgyzstan attacked and burned a police station and seized several public buildings yesterday in protest against disputed elections.
A crowd of more than 10,000 pro-democracy protesters stormed the police station in the provincial city of Jalalabad, forcing officers on to the roof, before setting it ablaze.
The attacks cap a week of escalating demonstrations following 13 March elections which the opposition and international monitors described as fraudulent.
Last night opposition supporters were in control of five government buildings in Jalalabad after security forces fled the city.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which described the elections as flawed, has appealed to both sides for calm.
Protesters accuse President Askar Akayev’s party of using massive fraud to ensure victory in the elections.
Fighting first broke out on Saturday when riot police stormed the headquarters of the city’s governor, captured earlier in the week by opposition supporters, and made 20 arrests.
Police also stormed a building occupied by the opposition in the nearby town of Osht. Here, more than 200 were arrested, many of whom had been living in a tented compound in the town centre, built as a permanent protest.
But the government appears to have miscalculated opposition support. By Saturday night thousands were on the streets of both towns, and protesters gathered in the capital, Bishtek. Crowds surrounded the police headquarters early yesterday morning, breaking into the building. The prisoners arrested the day before were set free and offices set on fire with petrol bombs. The police ran to the roof, firing shots in the air to keep the crowd away. A truce was then negotiated, during which the police were allowed to leave the roof, before the building was burned down.
There were no reports of casualties, but the protests then moved to the mayor’s headquarters. Troops were deployed to guard the building, but they fled without opening fire, and protesters captured this building. By late last night it appeared that opposition supporters were in control of the town, with police and army units leaving the city.
The government offered to convene talks with the demonstrators, but Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the opposition leader, last night said these would be a "waste of time" unless the president himself was involved.
"The authorities’ decision to use force against people won’t bring any good. It will just provoke anger," he said.
So far the clashes have been bloodless, and opposition supporters have labelled their protests the Pink Revolution, after the colour of their campaign. They hope to follow the success of the pro-democracy groups in December’s Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
Kyrgyzstan has a history of political violence. Several demonstrators were shot dead by police three years ago.
The 13 March election produced a two-third’s majority of MPs loyal to Mr Akayev. They included his son and daughter, both of whom were elected as loyalist MPs.
But the OSCE and the American embassy said there was evidence of widespread irregularities both in the counting and through pro-government domination of the media.
Kyrgyzstan is the smallest of a clutch of Central Asian republics which won independence when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. Mr Akayev has been accused by the opposition of using dictatorial methods to keep power.
The country is a potential east-west flashpoint because it contains air bases of both the United States and Russia. The US set up its base following the World Trade Centre attacks, and uses it to supply troops in Iraq and the Far East.
-------- ACTIVISTS
A Marine's Choice, A Mother's Conflict
Antiwar Parent Copes With Enlistment, Then Death
By Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 21, 2005; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/specials/homefront/miller_article.html
The memory remains vivid in Tracy Miller's mind: She is stepping carefully over the guys sprawled out on her living room floor, doing her best not to wake them as she heads toward the door.
The one whose legs are sticking out from under the coffee table is her son, Nicholas Ziolkowski. The others, none of whom bothered to use the blankets she offered, are the Marine Corps buddies he brought home for the weekend from Camp Lejeune, N.C.
Cpl. Nicholas L. Ziolkowski (AP)
She gently closes the door of her Towson home and heads to the District, where the protest against the invasion of Iraq is underway. When she arrives, thousands have jammed the Mall, from the Capitol almost to the Washington Monument.
The chants, the speeches, the subversive mix of indignation and mischief all remind her of her college days, when she marched against the Vietnam War.
It is January 2003. She is a 52-year-old single military mom, with a son who was so eager to enlist that he shipped out to boot camp less than two months after his high school graduation. The next stop could be the war.
When she returns home, one of her son's friends asks why she went to the protest. Nick remains silent. He already knows. His mother -- the Towson University academic adviser, the liberal, the pacifist who will later affix a "Mothers Opposing Bush" bumper sticker to her car -- has always hated war. Which is why she struggled to accept that her son grew up to be not just a Marine, but a Marine sniper.
She thinks about the question for a moment, then answers carefully. These boys are almost certainly headed for combat in Iraq. To say what she really thinks -- that the country is rushing to war -- might plant doubts that could distract them at a critical moment.
So she says simply, "I just want to see you back here real soon."
It is a Saturday afternoon. Nick is 13 or 14 years old, and Miller has just picked him up from the "Young Marines" program he recently joined. He isn't in a particularly good mood.
It was boring, he huffs. They didn't get to do any fun stuff such as run the obstacle course, or learn cool fighting moves. All they did was march and drill, he complains. He doesn't want to go back.
Thank goodness, she thinks. She wasn't thrilled that he had wanted to try the "Young Marines," which the Corps uses as a recruiting tool. But saying no only have would increased the allure. Maybe now the fascination with the Marines will end. Then again, maybe not. It is clear that like a lot of boys, he's got an adventurous streak. What she doesn't yet know is whether it is an adolescent fad or a calling.
"Well," she reminds him, "if you join the Marines, you're going to have to do a lot more drilling."
It is a sunny spring day, and Miller is driving Nick, now 17, to a friend's house through the green hills of Baltimore County's horse country. She is well aware that he soon plans to enlist in the Marines.
She always has supported her children (Nick's brother, Peter, is almost two years older), and she wants them to think for themselves, to follow their passions. She has nothing against the military. She's even recommended it to students who she thought could use a little structure.
She even can see how it could benefit Nick, never a stellar student. But she also isn't sure that he's thought this all the way through, and she's not ready to accept that he is joining just yet.
"Why do you want to join the military and hurt people?" she asks.
Nick looks at her as if she doesn't understand him at all.
"I don't want to hurt people," he says. "I want to help people."
If you want to help people, she says, then why not become a doctor? They help people all the time. At least go to college and join the ROTC.
But before she can press her case any more, they arrive at the friend's house, and he pops out of the car.
It is Sept. 28, 2001, graduation day at Parris Island, S.C. Miller and her ex-husband, Andrew Ziolkowski (they divorced when Nick was 5) are in the stands, unable to tell which of the hundreds of starched uniforms and buzz cuts, marching in perfect lockstep, is their son.
She can't help but be proud. She wrote him every day he was away, often varying how she addresses him. "Hi Honey." "Darling Nick." "Dearest Nick."
The one she wrote shortly after he left begins, "Sweetheart Nick," and continues: "I love you and am proud of you and glad you are happy."
His letters were just as affectionate. "Dearest Mother," one begins, "Look babe, I have no time to write. But I got your letter and started to cry almost. I have fun here but I'm so sad of how much you love me and I don't show much in return. I love you more than words, you are a special person."
Coming so soon after Sept. 11, the ceremony has taken on a deeper urgency. The Marines no longer are just the vehicle for self-improvement that Miller was hoping would help Nick. The country is at war.
Nick also has changed. Skinny when he went to boot camp, he is now gaunt. He stands up straight and looks his parents in the eyes. When Nick calls his father "Sir," he says: "Nick, it's me Dad."
And when he calls his mother "Ma'am," she gives him an exasperated look.
But after two days of "Ma'am," he is calling her mom again.
It is 6 one morning last November, a few days after Nick was killed by a sniper's bullet in Fallujah at age 22. She starts the day with one more memory.
Nick is 20 or 21. She is half-asleep when he crawls into bed next to her and says, "Can I have a back rub?" He has loved back rubs ever since preschool, when the teachers used them to coax the kids asleep at nap time.
She rolls over sleepily and runs her hand up and down. The hair on his neck is prickly short, the way the Marines make him keep it.
Tomorrow: A father struggles to complete the work his son began.
--------
ACLU to keep tabs on protest
March 21, 2005
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050320-101809-2477r.htm
The American Civil Liberties Union has warned the 950 volunteers expected to take part next month in an Arizona border vigil against illegal immigration that it is assigning monitors to ensure none of the aliens are abused.
The warning came in the wake of meetings last week by five senators from Mexico's three political parties, who voiced their concerns to Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, state legislators, civic leaders and the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
"We're very worried about it," Sen. Sadot Sanchez Carreno of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and chairman of the Mexican Senate's human rights committee, told reporters in Phoenix.
In the days following the meetings, Mexico filed a diplomatic note with the United States asking for assurances the volunteers, who begin their monthlong vigil April 1 as members of the "Minuteman Project," do not abuse Mexicans caught illegally entering the United States.
Geronimo Gutierrez, undersecretary for North American affairs at Mexico's Foreign Ministry, wrote that actions by the volunteers "could be in violation of federal and state laws to the detriment of Mexican citizens," adding that Mexico did not want "the rights of its citizens transgressed."
Meanwhile, the ACLU of Arizona announced it was training legal observers to follow and document the activities of the Minuteman volunteers.
"The purpose of legal observers is to deter abuses, document the actions of these individuals and highlight the real tragedies that occur along the border," ACLU spokesman Ray Ybarra said. "Perhaps someday, we will live in a society where no human being will have to face death and hatred in pursuit of work that this country requires."
Mr. Ybarra also said the organization will have lawyers on standby ready to file civil cases against the volunteers, who he described as "vigilantes" who will "attempt to take out their frustrations on a group of individuals who are simply in search of a better life."
He said they could "come to our state as 'vigilantes' and end up leaving as 'defendants.'Â "
James Gilchrist, a California accountant who organized the Minuteman Project, said the volunteers will be posted at 200-yard intervals a mile inside the border to observe illegal aliens coming into this country and report them to the U.S. Border Patrol, but will not confront them.
"We are American citizens who want to freely assemble under the First Amendment to express our displeasure with federal, state and local appointees who have been charged with U.S. immigration laws and have left us wide open for another terrorist attack," Mr. Gilchrist said.
Mr. Charlton, according to spokeswoman Sandy Raynor, told the Mexican lawmakers U.S. authorities also would monitor the volunteers and that "anyone who violates anyone else's civil rights within the United States will have to face punishment."
Steve Wilson, spokesman for Mr. Goddard, said the attorney general told the legislators he had little jurisdiction over U.S. immigration laws or possible civil rights violations, but his office would seek to ensure no violence was aimed at the aliens or the volunteers.
--------
Report from a new anti-war vigil in Lafayette Park
by Jim Macdonald
Email: jsmacdonald (at) riseup.net (unverified!) 20 Mar 2005
Modified: 21 Mar 2005
http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/119791/index.php
Today, a new anti-war vigil appeared in Lafayette Park. DC activists Mitch and Genevieve, with endorsements from the DC Anti-War Network (DAWN) and Proposition 1 (occupants of the vigil that has been in Lafayette Park for the last 24 years), launched what they hope will be a weeklong 24/7 vigil.
The vigil, whose theme is "Convert the War Machines," was largely inspired by the Proposition 1 anti-nuclear vigil founded by William Thomas in 1981. Today was Thomas's birthday, and during a party thrown for him by DAWN, participants in the group spoke of how Thomas had personally inspired them to become activists. In fact, my own activism dates back to an encounter I had with the ongoing White House vigil back in 2000. Genevieve and Mitch likewise hope to serve as an inspiration for White House visitors to take action and to think about the various aspects of the war machine.
All-in-all, there have been no troubles as of yet in maintaining the vigil. Police expressed surprise at the new displays and have repeatedly asked questions but have taken no action against it. Several DAWN participants helped watch the vigil, allowing Genevieve to take breaks. A news crew from ABC 7 ran a positive piece about the action, quoting Genevieve as saying, "You cannot force democracy on a country, and you can't liberate it with guns." Many tourists have looked curiously on the displays and have engaged in the discussion that is the essence of democracy.
As I watched the vigil throughout the evening, I spoke with many high school students. War is maintained by the recruitment of the young to join the military, and I conveyed to them that there were new laws in place making it easier for military recruiters to have access to them and their records. They seemed genuinely upset by this fact, and one hopes that they will begin informing and organizing their high schools against these acts. These children have become the perpetual lifeblood of the war machine, and it will ultimately be these children who will help decide whether this country continues to choose war over peace.
Thomas was genuinely touched by the birthday presents, especially having new neighbors just outside the front lawn of the White House. When his vigil started, Pennsylvania Avenue was a thorofare of traffic, relevant to the residents of the District of Columbia. Since it has been closed, many activists have shied away from the spot, noting that it does not represent the real DC. While this remains true, there are enormous opportunities for dialogue and outreach here that people in other cities do not have. What's more, action on the White House has had a real effect in the past. During the 1991 Gulf War, drummers beat and protesters converged for 40 days. President Bush claimed that the drums kept him up all night. While the current President Bush rarely seems to be home, one would hope that the presence of noise and energy at this location might inspire people to take action the way it inspired me.
I hope that you will support Mitch and Genevieve's vigil, or stop by and sit with them, or give them a spell so that they might use the bathroom. Bring some friends, and if you can, commit to time there. Use the opportunity for informational outreach. Bring some drums or some songs and be merry. And, in the meantime, let's figure out the best way to resist, to cut into the supply of troops that have made this perpetual war machine possible.
I will report back again tomorrow, and I hope that others who have witnessed the vigil will also share their reports.
--------
From New York to Fayetteville, London to Rome - Major Protests Mark Second Anniversary of Iraq Invasion
Monday, March 21st, 2005
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/21/1455252
On Saturday, major protests were held around the country and the world to mark the second anniversary of the invasion in Iraq. From New York to Fayetteville, London to Rome, people took to the streets to demonstrate against the war. We bring you the words of some of the people who took to the streets. [includes rush transcript] On Saturday, major protests were held around the country and the world to mark the second anniversary of the invasion in Iraq.
Anti-war protests were held in over 800 cities and towns across the US - including rallies, marches, civil disobedience actions and silent vigils.
In Fayetteville, North Carolina as many as 4,800 gathered outside the military base Fort Bragg. It was the largest protest at the base since the Vietnam War.
In New York, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the United Nations and marched to Times Square carrying hundreds of flag-draped coffins. Thousands marched through Harlem to Central Park. Members of the War Resisters League staged acts of civil disobedience outside military recruiting stations throughout the city. 36 people were arrested.
In San Francisco, several thousand protesters marched from Dolores Park to Civic Center Plaza with the crowd stretching for about 15 blocks.
In Los Angeles, thousands marched through Hollywood, and in Chicago hundreds of police escorted a thousand protesters as they marched to an afternoon rally at the Federal Plaza.
In Albuquerque, some 300 demonstrators gathered in front of the New Mexico National Guard Armory and glued pieces of paper featuring the names and faces of dead American soldiers to the sidewalk.
Protests continued yesterday in Boston thousands of antiwar protesters converged on Boston Common in a peaceful demonstration that ended with four arrests.
Overseas the largest protest came in London where between 45,000 and 100,000 people marched through the city. Thousands of people also took to the streets in Madrid, Barcelona, Istanbul, Athens, Oslo, Japan and Australia.
Meanwhile, President Bush made an uncompromising defense of the invasion in his weekly radio address saying, "On this day two years ago, we launched Operation Iraqi Freedom to disarm a brutal regime, free its people, and defend the world from a grave danger."
Today we spend the rest of the hour going around the country to bring you the protesters in their own words. We begin here in New York where about 20 people staged civil disobedience at the military recruiting center in Times Square. The recruiting center decided to close that day in anticipation of protests.
- Carmen Trotta, of the Catholic Worker speaking at a protest in Times Square, New York City.
Some of the protesters speaking in New York on Saturday. Afterwards, they laid down on Broadway and were arrested. 36 people were arrested in total. A mother of a soldier deployed in Iraq witnessed the civil disobedience in times square from the sidewalk. This is her reaction.
- Mother of Soldier deployed in Iraq, speaking at a protest in Times Square, New York City.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: This is Carmen Trotta of the Catholic Worker.
CARMEN TROTTA: At this point over 1500 young Americans have not returned from Iraq. Tens of thousands of others have returned maimed in body and spirit. We remember those dead Americans and we remember the more than 100,000 Iraqis killed in a criminal slaughter by this nation in this war. We call for the immediate, unilateral withdrawal of U.S. forces in the interest of supporting the troops and bringing them home. At this point we have written, we have marched, we have spoken out, there is no more room for talking. We come here today to put our bodies in front of the recruiting center to prevent people from being recruited into a war to kill and be killed. This day The New York Times in its op-ed pages maintains the line that we either went to Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction or to overthrow a dictator. In the op-ed section, no one seems to be of the opinion that we went to Iraq because Iraq rests upon the second largest oil reserves in the world. Clearly the war is a criminal and colonial venture. The media had better start reporting it as such, instead of reporting the lies that you could see in Technicolor here any day at Times Square at the recruiting station, in fact the most trafficked recruiting station in the country. Again, I beg you to remember the 100,000 dead due to the “Shock and Awe” campaign, the ongoing criminal and colonial occupation of Iraq. When will the American people seize upon their own liberties and begin to demand some protection for their children being sent often times unwillingly to a theater of war in Iraq?
AMY GOODMAN: Carmen Trotta of the Catholic Worker. Some of the protesters speaking in New York on Saturday. Afterwards, they laid down on Broadway and were arrested. 36 people were arrested in total. A mother of a soldier deployed in Iraq witnessed the civil disobedience in Times Square from the sidewalk. This was her reaction.
MOTHER OF A SOLDIER WHO WAS DEPLOYED IN IRAQ: This is a very unusual kind of protest. People that come here know that if they protest to the fullest that they will be arrested. They carry coffins. They dress as the dead soldiers, and some of them have pictures of actual dead soldiers. My own son was in Iraq from beginning to end during an 11-month period. He came back alive. I've never been more frightened and horrified in my life. Every day, each day I heard a soldier died, not knowing whether it was my own son. So, what these people do for me is so important, and I support them wholly and fully. They're laying down their lives willing to get arrested to say, no, not in my name.
AMY GOODMAN: The mother of a soldier deployed in Iraq.
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Thousands Protest in Fayetteville in Largest Army Base Demonstration Since Vietnam
Monday, March 21st, 2005
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/21/1456200
A protest near Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina was the largest protest of any kind there since a 1970 protest against the Vietnam War. We hear some of the speeches from the rally. [includes rush transcript] We go to Fayetteville, North Carolina. The protest near Fort Bragg was the site of one of the largest protests in this country on Saturday.
Some 4,800 people gathered in what was the largest protest of any kind in Fayetteville since a 1970 protest against the Vietnam War.
More than 10,000 soldiers from Fort Bragg are serving in Afghanistan and Iraq - and the Fayetteville Observer reports that about 80 service personnel with ties to the region have been killed since 2002.
- Lou Plummer, a veteran of the National Guard and the father of the current military resister Andrew Plummer.
- David Potorti, a founding member of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.
- Cindy Sheehan, her son Casey was a soldier who died in Sadr City in 2004.
- Michael Hoffman, founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He served 4 years in the Marine Corps and participated in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
- Kevin and Joyce Lucey, Their son, Jeffrey, committed suicide three weeks after he was discharged from a military hospital.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: We go now to the first speaker at the protest rally Saturday, Lou Plummer. He is a veteran of the National Guard and the father of a current military resister, Andrew Plummer.
LOU PLUMMER: My name is Lou Plummer. I live here in Fayetteville and have been a member of this peace group that we started on the first day of the war, since the day that it started. And a lot of people want to criticize what we do and say it's political. Yeah, some of it is political. But most of it is personal. In this community when you talk about the military, when you talk about the war, you're talking about people's lives. There are husbands and wives right now that have been separated from their families for three out of the last four years. And what we're doing today is we're reuniting families, we're saving lives, and we're making a difference, and everybody knows it. Thank you.
Yesterday was a real special day for me. The day the war started here in Fayetteville, there were a few of us out holding up our signs, letting the government and the military know that they were fighting a war we didn't believe in, and my son who was a petty officer in the Navy was home on leave, and he went with me down to the demonstration, and we were standing there holding our signs. And when the press came up and were asking their questions, they asked Drew, they said, “What do you think about the war?” And he said something really, really radical. He said, “I don't think our guys should be dying in Iraq. So, I guess the opposite of that is our guys should be dying in Iraq.” And then he further said, “I think the war is about oil, but hey, you know, I enlisted, and I’m going to do what they tell me.”
And for making those three simple statements, he was charged by the U.S. military with disloyalty, which is a violation of Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He was tried by the Navy, and he was convicted. And when he went to his captain’s mast, they asked him, “Do you sympathize with the enemy?” And I wish he had had the foresight to say, “No, I don't like George Bush,” but he said, “No, I don't sympathize with the enemy.” And they said, “Are you going to sabotage the ship?” And he said, “No, I’m not going to sabotage the ship.” And then they said, “Well, do you regret what you said?” And he said, “No, I don't regret what I said.” And I am just about as proud of him for doing that as anything he's ever done.
Well, it's been a long road since the day the war started. As you can imagine, a young sailor, on a ship full of people who believe in the war, who speaks out against it, doesn't have an easy road. Last month, after being AWOL for six months, my son was arrested. He was put in jail. He was transported to Great Lakes Naval Station, Illinois, and yesterday he was discharged from the U.S. Navy. And it's people like you that brought him home and kept him out of this war, and I just want him to come up here and see the people that supported him when he spoke out. Come here, son. This is my son, Drew Plummer, and both of us want to thank you for being here. All right.
ANDREW PLUMMER: Thank you all. Thank you all so much.
AMY GOODMAN: Lou Plummer with his son Andrew Plummer at Fort Bragg, protesting outside the military base.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to David Potorti, the founder of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.
DAVID POTORTI: On September 11, 2001, my brother became a victim of international terrorism, and in the days that followed, it became clear that his death would be used as an excuse to wage war on the world. As one of my friends, Rita Lazar, wrote only a few days after the death of her brother at the World Trade Center, it is in my brother's name and mine that I pray that we, this country that has been so deeply hurt, not do something that will unleash forces we will not have the power to call back. Today, three and a half years later, we see clearly the forces that we unleashed after September 11, and we see clearly the negative consequences of unleashing those forces on our families, on military families, on Iraqi and Afghan families, on our Constitution, on our reputation, and on the security of our nation and of the entire world. So, as we commemorate the second anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, I ask you to remember September 11, because it is in the name of those killed on September 11 that we today occupy a country that had nothing to do with September 11, a country which posed no threat to our country, a country which had no connection to al Qaeda before the war, but has one now because of the war.
Today I ask you to remember September 11, because it was a day when we had an historic choice to join the rest of the world or to condemn the world to a series of endless wars and an endless series of victims. Today, on the second anniversary of the Iraq war, we see clearly the consequences of making the wrong choice after September 11. And today it is time to return to that historic moment when we had an opportunity to join the rest of the world in pursuing real solutions to terrorism instead of terrorizing the rest of the world with pre-emptive war. Today, let us remember the suffering of our families on September 11, which was well documented, but let us also remember the families who have suffered in the name of September 11: Afghan families, Iraqi families, Spanish families, Japanese families, South Korean families, Canadian families, British families, Italian families and all of the other military families and civilians whose suffering has not been so well documented. Let us remember those who return to Dover Air Force Base in coffins in the middle of the night so we can't see them and those who sit forgotten in veterans' hospitals, those who will be victimized for the rest of their lives by the images of terrorism and violence and war as a result of our wrong choices after September 11.
It is to this human family of victims that I pledge my allegiance and declare that I will not support the killing of children who are just like my children, the killing of parents who are just like my parents, and the killing of brothers who are just like the brother I lost at the World Trade Center. I will not respond to terrorism by becoming a terrorist, and I will not support a war fought in my name that terrorizes the people of Iraq, terrorizes our troops, and terrorizes the world. I pledge my allegiance to the victims and join my friends on this stage and in this audience and around the world who say, “Stop the war, and bring our troops home now!” Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: David Potorti lost his brother James Potorti at the World Trade Center, September 11, 2001. Also in Fayetteville at the protest, Cindy Sheehan. Her son Casey was a soldier who died in Sadr City, 2004.
CINDY SHEEHAN: I often get introduced as a mother who lost her son in Iraq. I didn't lose Casey. I know right where he is. He is in a grave in Vacaville, and I know who put him there: George Bush and the rest of the arrogant and ignorant neo-cons in D.C. who murdered my son and tens of thousands of other innocent people. Before I temporarily leave that subject, why are they still in our Capitol? Why are they still running our country? From state-sponsored terror and sustained torture, we have to face it: We're governed by psychopathic killers who need to go. On a very personal note, I told [inaudible] today it has two anniversaries. One is a second anniversary of the so-called shock and awe. Today is also the first anniversary of when my son's deployment began in Iraq. In 16 days, my family will suffer the one-year death-iversary of Casey. Casey was a brave, honest, loving, kind and gentle soul who was needlessly and senselessly killed for lies. Since this war is based on lies and betrayals -- this is very awkward -- not one more drop of blood should be spilled, not one more penny for killing. If our Congress votes to give Mr. Bush $81 billion more, they should soak their hands in blood and not ink from sham elections in Iraq. On this day, we should remember the terrible loss of our country that we have suffered and the devastating losses, too, of the Iraqis, especially we families who have paid the terrible price for our leaders’ recklessness. I have a challenge for George W. Bush. [inaudible] democracy, why doesn't he march his daughters over there. I'm done. But if he won't send his kids, he should bring our kids home now!
AMY GOODMAN: That was Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son in Iraq last year. This is Democracy Now! As we turn now to Michael Hoffman, he served four years in the Marine Corps and also participated in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, speaking in Fayetteville.
MICHAEL HOFFMAN: Two years ago today, many of us standing on this stage were poised ready to wreak destruction upon Iraq. We've seen that destruction. We've partaken in it. We have lost our friends and taken lives, and we are here to tell the truth about what is happening in Iraq now. We have seen the destruction. We have seen what is really going on in Iraq right now. We know of the lives wasted, and we know that the only solution to this problem that we have created is to end the occupation now. In the U.S. military, we were trained to fight and kill. We have never learned how to rebuild a government, how to rebuild a water system, how to fix a power grid. We cannot do those things. The people of Iraq can. And the only way they can begin to do that is for us to leave. But I do not say we need to abandon the people of Iraq. For what we have done to that country, we owe them. We owe them more than we can ever repay them. But that means real aid to the people of Iraq, not aid tied to the World Trade Organization or the World Bank. This is aid for the Iraqis, administered for the Iraqis. When the Iraqis say we need $3 million worth of building supplies, we give them $3 million worth of building supplies. And that is how we aid the people of Iraq. But the other side is we need to aid those who come home. When we joined the military, we signed a contract. But a contract works two ways. We said we would be willing to fight and die for our government. The government said they would take care of us after we do fight, and they are welching on that promise right now. We are here in Fayetteville now to say that we will stand by the troops, that we will support them, that we will fight for the benefits that we earned, that we were promised, and you will help us fight for that. We know that. And we're here to tell all of them in Fort Bragg, in Camp Lejeune, where I was stationed, Pope Air Force Base, all around the country and around the world, that we will stand by them and fight for them. And that is what we are here to do, and we will continue to fight until this war is over and every last veteran is given the care that was promised to them when they joined the U.S. military.
AMY GOODMAN: Mike Hoffman was part of the invasion of Iraq. We turn now to Joyce and Kevin Lucey. Their son, Jeffrey, also fought in Iraq. He came home, was eventually put in a military hospital, and three weeks after being discharged, committed suicide.
JOYCE LUCEY: Whatever happened to the young man's heart, swallowed by pain as he slowly fell apart? These words were in a song our son listened to over and over again last May and June. In a way, they described Jeff. I'm the mother of Corporal Jeffrey Michael Lucey. Yesterday would have been his 24th birthday. I say would have been, because Jeff died on June 22, at the age of 23. He chose to end his life after struggling with the demons of post-traumatic stress several months after his return from Iraq. He was deployed with his Marine Reserve unit from January 2003 until July 2003. His 22nd birthday was celebrated in Kuwait the day before the war started. He never wanted to go to Iraq. He felt we were going there for the wrong reasons, but he went because he was a good Marine and he was loyal to his unit. His dad and I have struggled every day since my husband found Jeff hanging by our garden hose in the basement. What did our son die for? We have yet to receive an answer we are comfortable with. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Yet this was used to promote fear and justify the actions taken by our government. Some may say Jeffrey returned unharmed, but the man who came home without obvious physical wounds was destroyed by the dark hidden pain of the emotional cost of this war. How many other Jeffreys will this conflict claim? And, again, the question is “why?” Do the recent Iraqi elections justify our invasion of Iraq? Does it make us feel less anger about the death of our son and the 1500-plus that have died? No, it does not. Jeff's unit has returned to Iraq for their second tour. When will this end? We feel the end needs to begin now.
KEVIN LUCEY: Glorious words and sound bites are used in regards to our troops. But then upon their return, when they and their loved ones seek help, it is probable that they will have to meet hurdles, challenges, and to some of the injured, these may be daunting, so daunting that they give up. It is unconscionable and morally repugnant that billions and billions of dollars are poured into the war effort with very little in being devoted to the care of these men and women upon their return. In fact, some has recommended that they bear more of the burden of the cost. We argue in various forms about the rationale for the war and its urgency. Regardless of the absence of weapons of mass destruction, regardless of the lack of proof of terrorist networking, regardless of the lack of imminent threat, we must deal with the horrible reality of war and the impact of loved ones. And what of our sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, family and friends returning? Regardless of your stance on this war, we should -- no, we are obligated by all that is right and good to -- I'm sorry. Jesus -- to truly not give just adequate, but the best of care. Whether democrat or republican, be you from a red state or blue, let not another parent find their child as we found ours, seeking relief from such horrific, unmanageable torment. Let not another mother or sister endure such an agonizing tormented journey to come home to find that their home has been changed forever, to a tomb for some in a connection to his life to memories. It was as I cradled him and took the hose from around his neck, I began crying out "why?" and have yet to stop.
AMY GOODMAN: Kevin and Joyce Lucey. They lost their son, Jeffrey, after he returned from Iraq and committed suicide.
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Opposition protesters storm key government buildings in Kyrgyzstan
3/21/2005
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-03-21-kyrgyzstan-protests_x.htm
OSH, Kyrgyzstan (AP) — Thousands of protesters, some armed with clubs and Molotov cocktails, seized control of key government buildings and the airport in Kyrgyzstan's second-largest city Monday, prompting security officers and local officials to flee and loosening the government's grip over a swath of this former Soviet republic.
The opposition also took control of government buildings in four other cities and towns across Kyrgyzstan's impoverished south, Interior Ministry spokesman Nurdin Jangarayev said. Protesters burned and stomped on portraits of President Askar Akayev and seized protective shields from police. Others were seen running through the streets carrying bottles of flammable liquid.
The protests on Monday won the first concession from Akayev — an order of a probe into allegations of widespread vote-rigging in two rounds of parliamentary elections since Feb. 27. The allegations have led to demands for Akayev's resignation and to weeks of increasingly violent protests in this central Asian republic.
The opposition has charged that Akayev, 60, who is prohibited from seeking another term, planned to manipulate the parliamentary vote to gain a compliant legislature that would amend the constitution to allow a third term. He has denied wanting another term.
Abdil Seghizbayev, an Akayev aide, vowed that security forces would not take action against the protesters, but said peace talks would only be possible after order is restored.
"Neither the authorities nor opposition leaders can control the crowd right now," he said. "If an (opposition) leader emerges who can control the protesters, the government will be ready to talk to him."
The capital, Bishkek, has remained calm, but the opposition vowed Monday to press on until Akayev resigned.
Roza Otunbayeva, leader of the Ata-Jurt Movement, one of the main opposition groups, and a former foreign minister, ruled out any talks with Akayev.
"We have one aim only: to oust this government ... There is no need for talks anymore," she said.
But another opposition leader, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, said talks would be possible if Akayev attended.
In Osh, many police, security forces and local officials fled the demonstrators, some of whom shouted: "Akayev, Go!" Others burned a billboard bearing Akayev's portrait. The protesters seized the governor's office, regional police and security stations, while about 100 others took control of Osh airport after meeting no resistance, police said.
Security officers sat on their packs at the airport in the face of protesters, awaiting evacuation.
"This is a new day in our history," exulted Omurbek Tekebayev, an opposition official in Osh.
Another opposition member, Anvar Artykov, told the crowd: "Power in Osh has been taken over by people! ... I congratulate you on our victory and urge you to maintain order."
On Sunday, protesters in the town of Jalal-Abad burned much of the police headquarters, freed 70 detained protesters and occupied the governor's office.
About 15,000 people demonstrated peacefully in Jalal-Abad on Monday, a local government spokesman said, and the Interior Ministry said hundreds more were rallying in at least two other towns in this nation of 5 million.
No casualties were reported Monday. Police denied media reports that four officers had been beaten to death.
Nevertheless, the opposition demonstrations forced Akayev to take action. He ordered the Central Election Commission and the Supreme Court to investigate the elections, telling them "to pay particular attention to those districts where election results provoked extreme public reaction ... and tell people openly who is right and who is wrong," said a statement from his office. "The disputes need to be solved fully and fairly."
Protests against Akayev, who has led this mainly Muslim nation for 15 years, began after the February election and swelled after subsequent run-offs that the opposition and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said were seriously flawed.
The Kyrgyz government has denied the accusation, and Russia joined the fray Monday.
In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry condemned the protests, saying, "Extremist forces must not be allowed to use political instability to create a threat to the democratic foundations of Kyrgyz statehood."
It also rebuked the OSCE for its critical evaluation of the elections, urging it to "be more responsible in formulating its conclusions to prevent destructive elements from using these assessments to justify their lawless actions."
A Central Asia expert with the Russian newspaper Vremya Novostei, Arkady Dubnov, said the situation in Kyrgyzstan was irreversible.
"The only question now is when the government will be changed," he told Ekho Mosvky radio, adding that the protests were "another link" in the chain of political change sweeping through the former Soviet Union.
Peaceful revolutions have swept former Soviet republics Georgia and Ukraine in the past two years.
Kyrgyzstan's opposition parties have long been fractured along regional lines and have resisted moves to unite them. With pressure on Akayev to step down, rival opposition leaders are positioning themselves as possible successors.
Akayev was long regarded as the most reform-minded leader in ex-Soviet Central Asia and the country won praise for its comparative openness. But the leader in recent years has shown increasing signs of cracking down.
In 2002, his reputation was tarnished after police killed six demonstrators who were protesting the arrest of an opposition lawmaker.
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