NucNews - April 4, 2005



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Researchers bridge superconductivity gap

04/04/2005 Chemie.DE News Center

http://www.chemie.de/news/e/44807/?pw=a&defop=and&wild=yes&sdate=01/01/1995&edate=04/04/2005

University of California scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory working with a researcher from Chonnam National University in South Korea have found that magnetic fluctuations appear to be responsible for superconductivity in a compound called plutonium-cobalt-pentagallium (PuCoGa5). The discovery of this "unconventional superconductivity" may lead scientists to a whole new class of superconducting materials and toward the goal of eventually synthesizing "room-temperature" superconductors.
 
In research reported in the scientific journal Nature, Nicholas Curro and a team of researchers provide evidence of how magnetic fluctuations, rather than interactions mediated by tiny vibrations in the underlying crystal structure, may be responsible for the electron pairing that produces superconductivity in the mixture of plutonium, cobalt and gallium.
 
Superconductivity is an unusual state of matter in which electrical current flows without resistance through a material as a result of the material's electrons acting in pairs. Since the discovery at Los Alamos of PuCoGa5 roughly two years ago, a burning question has been whether the compound was just another garden-variety superconductor, a so-called s-wave superconductor, or an unconventional one that is mediated by magnetic fluctuations, a d-wave superconductor.
 
Although the temperatures at which superconductivity is observed are usually quite low, a handful of compounds like PuCoGa5 have been found to possess superconductivity at temperatures warmer than minus 427 degrees Fahrenheit. Even though that temperature seems low, PuCoGa5 possesses highest superconducting transition temperature among actinide based compounds found so far. This "unconventional superconductivity" suggests that PuCoGa5 may be one of a very small handful of superconductors whose superconductivity actually derives from magnetic correlations.
 
Scientists theorize that having found one unconventional superconductor like PuCoGa5, they may find more in the future. Making the research even more intriguing is the fact that plutonium is a base actinide material of the compound. This new class of magnetically mediated superconductors might encompass a broad range of materials, metals to oxides, and be the path toward superconductor science's ultimate goal to someday synthesize a "room-temperature" superconductor that would be the basis for the dissipation-less flow of electric current through power lines, and for an even more minute generation of computer chips.

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Official: Pope supported U.S. nuclear buildup in Europe

By JAMES GORDON MEEK
New York Daily News
Posted on Mon, Apr. 04, 2005

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/11305429.htm

WASHINGTON - Pope John Paul II gave his blessing to the late President Ronald Reagan's plans to put nuclear missiles across Western Europe, a former U.S. representative at the Vatican said Sunday.

Though European leaders were "weak-kneed" about confronting the Soviet nuclear empire, Reagan won the Pope's support for matching the communists nuke for nuke along the Iron Curtain, said Jim Nicholson, who served until recently as President Bush's ambassador to the Holy See.

The purpose of the pontiff's secret approval was to confront the Soviet Union's placement of its growing arsenal in Eastern Bloc states near free European nations, said Nicholson, now the Veterans Affairs secretary.

Nicholson said Reagan "regularly" sent military emissaries to show the pontiff satellite imagery of Soviet missiles spreading across occupied Europe.

"The pope supported us in putting cruise missiles into Europe at that time, which few people know," Nicholson told "Fox News Sunday."

A top U.S. general who spoke Polish would be dispatched to the Vatican "regularly and lay this out and tell the pope what was going on militarily," Nicholson recalled.

"And the pope said to President Reagan, `They are needed; you should do it,'" Nicholson said.

Experts and former defense officials said they were unaware of the pope's backing of America's nuclear buildup in Europe - but were hardly surprised, given his anti-communist stance.

"I think it's true," said Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress, who was a senior Pentagon official in the Reagan administration. "It does seem logical. That was a tough time to get the missiles in."

John Pike, a defense analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, said John Paul II was "thick as thieves" with the CIA in trying to bring down communism in his native Poland, and he might have endorsed the confrontation.

"I wouldn't put it past him" to support Reagan's missile plan, Pike said.

But one group it might have surprised was the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, which denounced nuclear proliferation in the 1980s as immoral.


two from the Pope on nuclear weapons:

"Nuclear weapons are so powerful in their destructive capacities, and nuclear strategies are so inclusive in their designs, that the popular imagination is often paralyzed by fear. This fear is not groundless. The only way to respond to this legitimate fear of the consequences of nuclear destruction is by progress in negotiations for the reduction of nuclear weapons and for mutually agreed upon measures that will lessen the likelihood of nuclear warfare. I would ask the nuclear powers once again to reflect on their very grave moral and political responsibility in this matter. It is an obligation that some have also juridically accepted in international agreements; for all it is an obligation by reason of a basic co-responsibility for peace and development." Pope John Paul II - 1986

"The alarming increase of arms, together with the halting progress of commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, runs the risk of feeding and expanding a culture of competition and conflict, a culture involving not only States but also non-institutional entities, such as paramilitary groups and terrorist organizations." Pope John Paul II, January 1, 2001

On the NPT specifically (Vatican/Holy See rep):

"While militarism of all kinds must be checked, the abolition of nuclear weapons is the prerequisite for peace in the 21st century. What has been promised for a long time by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) must be achieved.

Despite all the difficulties in achieving full compliance with the NPT, the Holy See never wavers from what its Delegation has said previously in this Committee: "Nuclear weapons are incompatible with the peace we seek for the 21st century.

They cannot be justified. They deserve condemnation. The preservation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty demands an unequivocal commitment to their abolition. This is a moral challenge, a legal challenge, and a political challenge. That multiple-based challenge must be met by the application of our humanity" (Statements of the Holy See before the First Committee of the 52nd and 53rd Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly, 15 Oct. 1997 & 19 Oct. 1998)."

...

"At the same time, the Conference on Disarmament should help the NPT process by commencing substantive discussions on all nuclear disarmament issues. This could encourage and expand the START process, which all the Nuclear Weapons States should join.

Various new initiatives are opening the way to progress in some of the more pressing areas of nuclear disarmament. In view of the 2000 NPT Review Conference, the Nuclear Weapons States will, moreover, be called to give proof of their determination to move towards the elimination of nuclear weapons. Without progress in this field, it will be difficult to advance in the implementation of all the provisions of the Treaty and to achieve its much needed universality." Statement By H.E. Arch. Renato R. MARTINO Apostolic Nuncio, Permanent Observer of the Holy See before the First Committee of the General Assembly 1999

On dearlerting etc (Vatican/Holy See rep):

"It should be an immediate objective of the international community to eliminate non-strategic nuclear weapons, de-alert strategic weapons by removing warheads from delivery vehicles, establish a legally-binding negative security assurances regime, and secure from the Nuclear Weapons States a pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons." Statement By H.E. Arch. Renato R. MARTINO Apostolic Nuncio, Permanent Observer of the Holy See before the First Committee of the General Assembly 1999

 Full text below on 4 docs:

1. MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE JOHN PAUL II TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS 1982 
2. MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE JOHN PAUL II FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE WORLD DAY OF PEACE 1 JANUARY 1986 
3. Statement By H.E. Arch. Renato R. MARTINO at the First Committee of the General Assembly New York, 14 October 1999 
4. NUCLEAR ARMS AND LANDMINES February 2005 Office of Social Development & World Peace United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Cheers Dimity

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MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE JOHN PAUL II TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS 1982

Mr. President, Ladies and gentlemen: representatives of Member States,

1. In June 1978, my Predecessor Pope Paul VI sent a personal message to the First Special Session of the United Nations devoted to Disarmament, in which he expressed his hopes that such an effort of good will and political wisdom by the international community would bring the result that humanity was looking for. Four years later you are gathered here again to ask yourselves if those initiatives have been-at least partially-realized.

The answer to that question seems neither very reassuring nor very encouraging. If one compares the situation in the area of disarmament four years ago with that of today, there seems to be very little improvement. Some, in fact, think that there has been a deterioration at least in the sense that hopes born of that period could now be labeled as simple illusions.

Such a stance could very easily lend itself to discouragement and impel those who are responsible to seek elsewhere for the solution to these problems-general or particular-which continue to disturb the lives of people.

That is, in fact, how many see the current situation. Figures from various sources all point to a serious increase in military expenditures represented by a greater production of different kinds of weapons along with which, according to specialized institutes, there is a new rise in the sale of weapons. Recently the news media has given a great deal of attention to research and use on a wider scale of chemical weapons. Moreover new kinds of nuclear weapons have also come into existence.

Before an assembly as competent as this one, there is no need to repeat the figures which your own organization has published on this subject. It is sufficient, as an indication, to refer to the study according to which the sum total of military expenditures on the planet corresponds to a mean of $100 per person per year, a figure which for many people who live on this earth is all they would have annually to survive.

Faced with these facts, I willingly want to express my satisfaction that the United Nations Organization has proposed to confront the problem of disarmament once again, and I am grateful for the courtesy so graciously extended to me to address some words to you on this occasion.

While it is not a member of your organization, for some time the Holy See has had a Permanent Mission of Observer, a post which allows it to follow your daily activities. No one is unaware of how much my Predecessors valued your work. I myself, especially at the time of my visit to the headquarters of the United Nations, have had the opportunity of making my own their words of appreciation for your organization. Like them I understand the difficulties. And while I am ever hopeful that your efforts be crowned with even more important and better results, I recognize its precious and irreplaceable role in helping ensure a more tranquil and peaceful future for the world.

This is the voice of one who has no interests nor political power, nor even less military force. It is a voice which is heard here again in this hall thanks to your courtesy. Here where practically all the nations, great and small, of the world come together, my words are meant to be the echo of the moral conscience of humanity "in the pure sense," if you will grant me that expression. My words bear with them no special interests or concerns of a nature which could mar their witness value and make them less credible.

A conscience illumined and guided by Christian faith, without doubt, but which is by that fact nonetheless profoundly human. It is therefore a conscience which is shared by all men and women of sincerity and good will.

My voice is the echo of the concerns and aspirations, the hopes and the fears of millions of men and women who, from every walk of life, are looking toward this Assembly asking, as they hope, if there will come forth some reassuring light or if there will be a new and more worrisome disappointment. Without claiming a mandate from all these people, I believe I can make myself the faithful interpreter to you of the feelings which are theirs.

I neither wish nor am I able to enter into the technical and political aspects of the problem of disarmament as they stand before you today. However, I would like to call your attention to some ethical principles which are at the heart of every discussion and every decision that might be looked for in this field.

2. My point of departure is rooted in a statement unanimously agreed upon not only by your citizens but also by the governments that you lead or you represent: the world wants peace; the world needs peace. In our modern world to refuse peace means not only to provoke the sufferings and the loss that-today more than ever-war, even a limited one, implies: it could also involve the total destruction of entire regions, not to mention the threat of possible or probable catastrophes in ever vaster and possibly even universal proportions.

Those who are responsible for the life of peoples seem above all to be engaged in a frantic search for political means and technical solutions which would allow the results of eventual conflicts "to be contained." While having to recognize the limits of their efforts in this direction, they persist in believing that in the long run war is inevitable. Above all this is found in the specter of a possible military confrontation between the two major camps which divide the world today and continues to haunt the future of humanity.

Certainly no power, and no statesman, would be of a mind to admit to planning war or to wanting to take such an initiative. Mutual distrust, however, makes us believe or fear that because others might nourish designs or desires of this type, each, especially among the great powers, seems to envisage no other possible solution than through necessity to prepare sufficiently strong defense to be able to respond to an eventual attack.

3. Many even think that such preparations constitute the way-even the only way-to safeguard peace in some fashion or at least to impede to the utmost in an efficacious way the outbreak of wars, especially major conflicts which might lead to the ultimate holocaust of humanity and the destruction of the civilization that man has constructed so laboriously over the centuries.

In this approach one can see the "philosophy of peace" which was proclaimed in the ancient Roman principle: Si vis pacem, para bellum. Put in modern terms, this "philosophy" has the label of "deterrence," and one can find it in various guises of the search for a "balance of forces" which sometimes has been called, and not without reason, the "balance of terror."

As my Predecessor Paul VI put it: "The logic underlying the request for the balances of power impels each of the adversaries to seek to ensure a certain margin of superiority, for fear of being left at a disadvantage" (Message to the United Nations General Assembly, May 24, 1978: The Teachings of Pope Paul VI, vol. 11, 1978, p. 202).

Thus in practice the temptation is easy-and the danger always present-to see the search for balance turned into a search for superiority of a type that sets off the arms race in an even more dangerous way.

In reality this is the tendency which seems to continue to be prevalent today perhaps in an even more accentuated fashion than in the past. You have taken as your specific purpose in this Assembly to search how it could be possible to reverse this trend.

This purpose could seem to be in a sense "minimalist," but it is of vital importance. For only a real renewal can raise the hope that humanity will commit itself on the road that leads to the goal that everyone so much desires, even if many still consider it a utopia: total disarmament, which is mutual and surrounded by such guarantees of effective controls that it gives to everyone confidence and necessary security.

In addition this special session surely reflects another truth: like peace, the world wants disarmament; the world needs disarmament.

Moreover, all the work which has gone on in the Committee for Disarmament, in the various commissions and sub-commissions and within governments, as well as the attention of the public, all give witness to the importance that is being placed today on the difficult question of disarmament.

The actual convocation of this meeting indicates a judgment: the nations of the world are already overarmed and are overcommitted to policies that continue that trend. Implicit in this judgment is the conviction that this is wrong and that the nations so involved in these actions need to re-think their positions.

However, the situation is a complex one where a number of values- some of the highest order-come to play. It is one where there are divergent viewpoints that can be expressed. We must therefore face up to these problems with realism and honesty.

That is why, before all else, I pray to God that He might grant you the strength of spirit and good will that will be needed for you to complete your task and further the great cause of peace, which is the ultimate goal of all your efforts at this special session.

That is why my every word is intended to be a word of encouragement and of hope: encouragement that you may not let your energies weaken at the complexities of the questions or at the failures of the past and unfortunately the present; hope because we know that only people who build in hope can have the vision necessary to progress patiently and tenaciously towards goals that are worthy of the best efforts and the common good of all.

4. Perhaps no other question of our day touches so many aspects of the human condition as that of armaments and disarmament. There are questions on the scientific and technical level; there are social and economic questions. There are deep problems of a political nature that touch the relations between states and among peoples.

Our world-wide arms systems impinge in great measure on cultural developments. But at the heart of them all there are present spiritual questions which concern the very identity of man, and his choices for the future and for generations yet to come. Sharing my thoughts with you, I am conscious of all the technical, scientific, social, economic, political aspects, but especially of the ethical, cultural and spiritual ones.

5. Since the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the "atomic age," the attitude of the Holy See and the Catholic Church has been clear. The Church has continually sought to contribute to peace and to build a world that would not have recourse to war to solve disputes. It has encouraged the maintenance of an international climate of mutual trust and cooperation. It has supported those structures which would help ensure peace. It has called attention to the disastrous effects of war. With the growth of new and more lethal means of destruction, it has pointed to the dangers involved and, going beyond the immediate perils, it has indicated what values to develop in order to foster cooperation, mutual trust, fraternity and peace.

My Predecessor, Pius XII, as early as 1946, referred to "the might of new instruments of destruction" which "brought the problems of disarmament into the center of international discussions under completely new aspects" (Address to the College of Cardinals, December 24, 1946).

Each successive Pope and the Second Vatican Council continued to express their convictions, introducing them into the changing and developing situation of armaments and arms control. If men would bend to the task with good will and with the goal of peace in their hearts and in their plans, then adequate measures could be found, appropriate structures erected to ensure the legitimate security of every people in mutual respect and peace; thus the need for these grand arsenals of fear and the threat of death would become superfluous.

The teaching of the Catholic Church in this area has been clear and consistent. It has deplored the arms race, called nonetheless for mutual progressive and verifiable reduction of armaments as well as greater safeguards against possible misuse of these weapons. It has done so while urging that the independence, freedom and legitimate security of each and every nation be respected.

I wish to reassure you that the constant concern and consistent efforts of the Catholic Church will not cease until there is a general verifiable disarmament, until the hearts of all are won over to those ethical choices which will guarantee a lasting peace.

6. In turning to the current debate that concerns you, and to the subject at hand, we must recognize that no element in international affairs stands alone and isolated from the many-faceted interests of nations. However, it is one thing to recognize the interdependence of questions; it is another to exploit them in order to gain advantage in another. Armaments, nuclear weapons and disarmament are too important in themselves and for the world ever to be made part of a strategy which would exploit their intrinsic importance in favor of politics or other interests.

7. Therefore, it is important and right that every serious proposal that would contribute to real disarmament and that would create a better climate be given the prudent and objective consideration it deserves. Even small steps can have a value which would go beyond their material or technical aspects. Whatever the area under consideration, we need today freshness of perspective and a capacity to listen respectfully and carefully to the honest suggestions of every responsible party in this matter.

In this context there is what I would call the phenomenon of rhetoric. In an area already tense and fraught with unavoidable dangers, there is no place for exaggerated speech or threatening stances. Indulgence in rhetoric, in inflamed and impassioned vocabulary, in veiled threat and scare tactics can only exacerbate a problem that needs sober and diligent examination.

On the other hand, governments and their leaders cannot carry on the affairs of state independent of the wishes of their peoples. The history of civilization gives us stark examples of what happens when that is tried. Currently the fear and preoccupation of so many groups in various parts of the world reveal that people are more and more frightened about what would happen if irresponsible parties unleash some nuclear war.

In fact, just about everywhere peace movements have been developing. In several countries, these movements, which have become very popular, are being supported by an increasing sector of the citizenry from various social levels, different age groups and backgrounds, but especially by youth. The ideological bases of these movements are multiple. Their projects, proposals and policies vary greatly and can often lend themselves to political exploitation. However, all these differences of form and shape manifest a profound and sincere desire for peace.

May I also join myself to the spirit of your draft appeal to public opinion for the birth of a truly universal consciousness of the terrible risks of war. May that consciousness in its turn lead to a general spirit of peace.

8. In current conditions "deterrence" based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable. Nonetheless in order to ensure peace, it is indispensable not to be satisfied with this minimum which is always susceptible to the real danger of explosion. What then can be done? In the absence of a supranational authority of the type Pope John XXIII sought in his Encyclical Pacem in terris, one which one would have hoped to find in the United Nations Organization, the only realistic response to the threat of war still is negotiation. Here I would like to remind you of an expression of Saint Augustine which I have already cited in another context: "Destroy war by the words of negotiations, but do not destroy men by the sword." Today once again, before you all, I reaffirm my confidence in the power of true negotiations to arrive at just and equitable solutions. Such negotiations demand patience and diligence and most notably lead to a reduction of armaments that is balanced, simultaneous and internationally controlled.

To be even more precise: the development of armaments seems to lead to the increasing interdependence of kinds of armaments. In these conditions, how can one countenance a balanced reduction if negotiations do not include the whole gamut of arms? To that end the continuation of the study of the "Complete Program of Disarmament" that your organization has already undertaken, could facilitate the needed coordination of different forums and bring to their results greater truth, equity and efficacy.

9. In fact, nuclear weapons are not the only means of war and destruction. The production and sale of conventional weapons throughout the world is a truly alarming and evidently growing phenomenon. No negotiations about armaments would be complete if they were to ignore the fact that 80 percent of the expenditures for weapons are devoted to conventional arms. Moreover, the traffic in these weapons seems to be developing at an increasing rate and seems to be directed most of all toward developing countries. Every step taken to limit this production and traffic and to bring them under an ever more effective control will be an important contribution to the cause of peace. Recent events have sadly confirmed the destructive capacities of conventional weapons and the sad plight of nations tempted to use them to solve disputes.

10. To focus, however, on the quantitative aspects of armaments, nuclear and conventional, is not enough. A very special attention must be paid to the qualitative improvement of these arms because of new and more advanced technologies. Here one confronts one of the essential elements in the arms race. To overlook this would be to fool ourselves and to deal dishonestly with those who desire peace.

Research and technology must always be at the service of man. In our day, the use and misuse of science and technology for other purposes is a too well-known fact. In my address to UNESCO on June 2, 1980, I spoke extensively with men of culture and science on this subject. May I be allowed today at least to suggest that a significant percentage of the research that is currently being expended in the field of arms technology and science be directed towards life and the welfare of man.

11. In his address to the United Nations Organization on October 4, 1965, Pope Paul VI stated a profound truth when he said: "Peace, as you know, is not built up only by means of politics or the balance of forces and interests. It is constructed with the mind, with ideas, with works of peace." The products of the mind-ideas-the products of culture, and the creative forces of peoples are meant to be shared. Strategies of peace which remain on the scientific and technical level and which merely measure out balances and verify controls will never be sufficient for real peace unless bonds that link peoples to one another are forged and strengthened. Build up the links that unite people together. Build up the means that will enable peoples and nations to share their culture and values with one another. Put aside all the narrow interests that leave one nation at the mercy of another economically, socially or politically. In this same vein, the work of many qualified experts plumbing the relationship between disarmament and development is to be commended for study and action. The prospect of diverting material and resources from the development of arms to the development of peoples is not a new one. Nonetheless, it is a pressing and compelling one which the Catholic Church has for a long time endorsed. Any new dynamism in that direction coming from this Assembly would be met with the approbation and support of men and women of good will everywhere.

The building of links among peoples means the rediscovery and reassertion of all the values that reinforce peace and that join people together in harmony. This also means the renewal of what is best in the heart of man, the heart that seeks the good of the other in friendship and love.

12. May I close with one last consideration. The production and the possession of armaments are a consequence of an ethical crisis that is disrupting society in all its political, social and economic dimensions. Peace, as I have already said several times, is the result of respect for ethical principles. True disarmament, that which will actually guarantee peace among peoples, will come about only with the resolution of this ethical crisis. To the extent that the efforts at arms reduction and then of total disarmament are not matched by parallel ethical renewal, they are doomed in advance to failure. The attempt must be made to put our world aright and to eliminate the spiritual confusion born from a narrow-minded search for interest or privilege or by the defense of ideological claims: this is a task of first priority if we wish to measure any progress in the struggle for disarmament. Otherwise we are condemned to remain at face-saving activities.

For the root cause of our insecurity can be found in this profound crisis of humanity. By means of creating consciences sensitive to the absurdity of war, we advance the value of creating the material and spiritual conditions which will lessen the glaring inequalities and which will restore to everyone that minimum of space that is needed for the freedom of the spirit.

The great disparity between the rich and the poor living together on this one planet is no longer supportable in a world of rapid universal communications, without giving birth to a justified resentment that can turn to violence. Moreover the spirit has basic and inalienable rights. For it is with justice that these rights are demanded in countries where the space is denied them to live in tranquillity according to their own convictions. I invite all those struggling for peace to commit themselves to the effort to eliminate the true causes of the insecurity of man of which the terrible arms race is only one effect.

13. To reverse the current trend in the arms race involves, therefore, a parallel struggle on two fronts: on the one side, an immediate and urgent struggle by governments to reduce progressively and equally their armaments; on the other hand, a more patient but nonetheless necessary struggle at the level of the consciences of peoples to take their responsibility in regard to the ethical cause of the insecurity that breeds violence by coming to grips with the material and spiritual inequalities of our world.

With no prejudice of any kind, let us unite all our intellectual and spiritual forces, those of statesmen, of citizens, of religious leaders, to put an end to violence and hatred and to seek out the paths of peace. Peace is the supreme goal of the activity of the United Nations. It must become the goal of all men and women of good will. Unhappily still in our days, sad realities cast their shadows across the international horizon, causing the suffering of destruction, such that they could cause humanity to lose the hope of being able to master its own future in harmony and in the collaboration of peoples.

Despite the suffering that invades my soul, I feel empowered, even obliged, solemnly to reaffirm before all the world what my Predecessors and I myself have repeated so often in the name of conscience, in the name of morality, in the name of humanity and in the name of God: Peace is not a utopia, nor an inaccessible ideal, nor an unrealizable dream. War is not an inevitable calamity.

Peace is possible.

And because it is possible, peace is our duty: our grave duty, our supreme responsibility. Certainly peace is difficult; certainly it demands much good will, wisdom, and tenacity. But man can and he must make the force of reason prevail over the reasons of force. That is why my last word is yet a word of encouragement and of exhortation. And since peace, entrusted to the responsibility of men and women, remains even then a gift of God, it must also express itself in prayer to Him who holds the destinies of all peoples in His hands.

May I thank you for the activity you undertake to make the cause of disarmament go forward: disarming the engines of death and disarming spirits. May God bless your efforts and may this Assembly remain in history a sign of reassurance and hope. Vatican, 7 June 1982.

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MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE JOHN PAUL II FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE WORLD DAY OF PEACE 1 JANUARY 1986 http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_19851208_xix-world-day-for-peace_en.html

PEACE IS A VALUE WITH NO FRONTIERS NORTH-SOUTH, EAST-WEST: ONLY ONE PEACE

1. Peace as a universal value

At the beginning of the New Year, taking my inspiration from Christ, the Prince of Peace, I renew my commitment and that of the whole Catholic Church to the cause of peace. At the same time I extend to every individual and to all peoples of the earth my earnest greeting and my good wishes: Peace to all of you! Peace to all hearts! Peace is a value of such importance that it must be proclaimed anew and promoted by all. There is no human being who does not benefit from peace. There is no human heart that is not uplifted when peace prevails. All the nations of the world can fully realize their interlinked destinies only if, together, they pursue peace as a universal value.

On the occasion of this l9th World Day of Peace, in the International Year of Peace proclaimed by the United Nations Organization, I offer to everyone as a message of hope my profound conviction: "Peace is a value with no frontiers". It is a value that responds to the hopes and aspirations of all people and all nations, of young and old, and of all men and women of good will. This is what I proclaim to everyone, and especially to the leaders of the world. The question of peace as a universal value needs to be faced with extreme intellectual honesty, sincerity of spirit and an acute sense of responsibility to oneself and to the nations of the earth. I would ask those responsible for political decisions affecting the relationships between North and South, between East and West, to be convinced that there can be ONLY ONE PEACE. Those upon whom the future of the world depends, regardless of their political philosophy, economic system or religious commitment, are all called to help construct a single peace on the basis of social justice and the dignity and rights of every human person.

This task requires a radical openness to all humanity and a conviction of the interrelatedness of all the nations of the world. This interrelatedness is expressed in an interdependence that can prove either profoundly advantageous or profoundly destructive. Hence, worldwide solidarity and cooperation constitute ethical imperatives that appeal to the consciences of individuals and to the responsibilities of all nations. And it is in this context of ethical imperatives that I address the whole world for 1 January 1986, proclaiming the universal value of peace.

 2. Threats to peace

In putting forward this vision of peace at the dawn of a new year we are deeply aware that in the present situation peace is also a value that rests on foundations that are very fragile. At first glance our goal to make peace an absolute imperative may seem to be utopian, since our world gives such ample evidence of excessive self-interest in the context of opposed political, ideological and economic groups. Caught in the grip of these systems, leaders and various groups are led to pursue their particular aims and their ambitions of power, progress and wealth, without taking sufficiently into account the necessity and duty of international solidarity and cooperation for the benefit of the common good of all peoples who make up the human family.

In this situation blocs are formed and maintained which divide and oppose peoples, groups and individuals, making peace precarious and setting up grave obstacles to development. Positions harden and the excessive desire to maintain one's advantage or to increase one's share often becomes the overriding rationale for action. This leads to exploitation of others and the spiral grows towards a polarization that feeds on the fruits of self-interest and the increasing mistrust of others. In such a situation, it is the small and the weak, the poor and the voiceless who suffer most. This can happen directly when a poor and comparatively defenceless people is held in subjection by the force of power. It can happen indirectly when economic power is used to disenfranchise people of their rightful share and to hold them in social and economic subjection, generating dissatisfaction and violence. The examples are sadly too numerous today.

The spectre of nuclear weapons, which has its origin precisely in the opposition of East and West, remains the most dramatic and compelling example of this. Nuclear weapons are so powerful in their destructive capacities, and nuclear strategies are so inclusive in their designs, that the popular imagination is often paralyzed by fear. This fear is not groundless. The only way to respond to this legitimate fear of the consequences of nuclear destruction is by progress in negotiations for the reduction of nuclear weapons and for mutually agreed upon measures that will lessen the likelihood of nuclear warfare. I would ask the nuclear powers once again to reflect on their very grave moral and political responsibility in this matter. It is an obligation that some have also juridically accepted in international agreements; for all it is an obligation by reason of a basic co-responsibility for peace and development.

But the threat of nuclear weapons is not the way that conflict is made permanent and increased. The increasing sale and purchase of arms - conventional but very sophisticated - is causing dire results. While the major powers have avoided direct conflict, their rivalries have often been acted out in other parts of the world. Local problems and regional difference are aggravated and perpetuated through armaments supplied by wealthier countries and by the ideologizing of local conflicts by powers that seek regional advantage by exploiting the condition of the poor and defenceless.

Armed conflict is not the only way that the poor bear an unjust share of the burden of today's world. The developing countries must face formidable challenges even when free of such a scourge. In its many dimensions, underdevelopment remains an ever growing threat to world peace.

In fact, between the countries which form the "North bloc" and those of the "South bloc" there is a social and economic abyss that separates rich from poor. The statistics of recent years show signs of improvement in a few countries but also evidence of a widening of the gap in too many others. Added to this is the unpredictable and fluctuating financial situation with its direct impact on countries with large debts struggling to achieve some positive development.

In this situation peace as a universal value is in great danger. Even if there is no actual armed conflict as such, where injustice exists, it is in fact a cause and potential factor of conflict. In any case a situation of peace in the full sense of its value cannot coexist with injustice. Peace cannot be reduced to the mere absence of conflict; it is the tranquillity and completeness of order. It is lost by the social and economic exploitation by special interest groups which operate internationally or function as elites within developing countries. It is lost by the social divisions that pit rich against poor between States or within States. It is lost when the use of force produces the bitter fruit of hatred and division. It is lost when economic exploitation and internal strains on the social fabric leave the people defenceless and disillusioned, a ready prey to the destructive forces of violence. As a value, peace is continually endangered by vested interests, by diverging and opposing interpretations, and even by clever manipulations for the service of ideologies and political systems that have domination as their ultimate aim.

 3. Overcoming the current situation

There are those who claim that the present situation is natural and inevitable. Relations between individuals and between States are said to be characterized by permanent conflict. This doctrinal and political outlook is translated into a model of society and a system of international relations that are dominated by competition and antagonism, in which the strongest prevails. Peace born from such an outlook can only be an "arrangement", suggested by the principle of Realpolitik, and as an "arrangement" it seeks not so much to resolve tensions through justice and equity as to manage differences ahd conflicts in order to maintain a kind of balance that will preserve whatever is in the interests of the dominating party. It is clear that "peace" built and maintained on social injustices and ideological conflict will never become a true peace for the world. Such a "peace" cannot deal with the substantial causes of the world's tensions or give to the world the kind of vision and values which can resolve the divisions represented by the poles of North-South and East-West.

To those who think that blocs are inevitable we answer that it is possible, indeed necessary, to set up new types of society and of international relations which will ensure justice and peace on stable and universal foundations. Indeed, a healthy realism suggests that such types cannot be simply imposed from above or from outside, or effected only by methods and techniques. This is because the deepest roots of the opposition and tensions that mutilate peace and development are to be found in the heart of man. It is above all the hearts and the attitudes of people that must be changed, and this needs a renewal, a conversion of individuals.

If we study the evolution of society in recent years we can see, not only deep wounds, but also signs of a determination on the part of many of our contemporaries and of peoples to overcome the present obstacles in order to bring into being a new international system. This is the path that humanity must take if it is to enter into an age of universal peace and integral development.

 4. The path of solidarity and dialogue

Any new international system capable of overcoming the logic of blocs and opposing forces must be based on the personal commitment of everyone to make the basic and primary needs of humanity the first imperative of international policy. Today countless human beings in all parts of the world have acquired a vivid sense of their fundamental equality, their human dignity and their inalienable rights. At the same time there is a growing awareness that humanity has a profound unity of interests, vocation and destiny, and that all peoples, in the variety and richness of their different national characteristics, are called to form a single family. Added to this is the realization that resources are not unlimited and that needs are immense. Therefore, rather than waste resources or devote them to deadly weapons of destruction, it is necessary to use them above all to satisfy the primary and basic needs of humanity.

It is likewise important to note that an awareness is gaining ground of the fact that reconciliation, justice and peace between individuals and between nations given the stage that humanity has reached and the very grave threats that hang over its future - are not merely a noble appeal meant for a few idealists but a condition for survival of life itself . Consequently, the establishment of an order based on justice and peace is vitally needed today, as a clear moral imperative valid for all people and regimes; above ideologies and systems. Together with and above the particular common good of a nation, the need to consider the common good of the entire family of nations is quite clearly an ethical and juridical duty.

The right path to a world community in which justice and peace will reign without frontiers among all peoples and on all continents is the path of solidarity, dialogue and universal brotherhood. This is the only path possible. Political, economic, social and cultural relations and systems must be imbued with the values of solidarity and dialogue which, in turn, require an institutional dimension in the form of special organisms of the world community that will watch over the common good of all peoples.

It is clear that, in order effectively to achieve a world community of this kind, mental outlooks and political views contaminated by the lust for power, by ideologies, by the defence of one's own privilege and wealth must be abandoned, and replaced by an openness to sharing and collaboration with all in a spirit of mutual trust.

That call to recognize the unity of the human family has very real repercussions for our life and for our commitment to peace. It means first of all that we reject the kind of thinking that divides and exploits. It means that we commit ourselves to a new solidarity, the solidarity of the human family. It means looking at the North-South tensions and replacing them with a new relationship, the social solidarity of all. This social solidarity faces up honestly to the abyss that exists today but it does not acquiesce in any kind of economic determinism. It recognizes all the complexities of a problem that has been allowed to get out of hand for too long, but which can still be rectified by men and women who see themselves in fraternal solidarity with everyone else on this earth. It is true that changes in economic growth patterns have affected all parts of the world and not just the poorest. But the person who sees peace as a universal value will want to use this opportunity to reduce the differences between North and South and foster the relationships that will bring them closer together. I am thinking of the prices of raw materials, of the need for technological expertise, of the training of the work force, of the potential productivity of the millions of unemployed, of the debts poor nations are carrying, and of a better and more responsible use of funds within developing countries. I am thinking of so many elements which individually have created tensions and which combined together have polarized North-South relations. All this can and must be changed.

If social justice is the means to move towards a peace for all peoples, then it means that we see peace as an indivisible fruit of just and honest relations on every level - social, economic, cultural and ethical - of human life on this earth. This conversion to an attitude of social solidarity also serves to highlight the deficiencies in the current East-West situation. In my message to the Second Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Disarmament, I explored many of the elements that are needed to improve the situation between the two major power blocs of East and West. All of the measures recommended then and reaffirmed since that time rest on the solidarity of the human family travelling together along the path of dialogue. Dialogue can open many doors closed by the tensions that have marked East-West relations. Dialogue is a means by which people discover one another and discover the good hopes and peaceful aspirations that too often lie hidden in their hearts. True dialogue goes beyond ideologies, and people meet in the reality of their human lives. Dialogue breaks down preconceived notions and artificial barriers. Dialogue brings human beings into contact with one another as members of one human family, with all the richness of their various cultures and histories. A conversion of heart commits people to promoting universal brotherhood; dialogue helps to effect this goal.

Today this dialogue is more needed than ever. Left to themselves, weapons and weapons systems, military strategies and alliances become the instruments of intimidation, mutual recrimination and the consequent dread that affects so much of the human race today. Dialogue considers these instruments in their relationship to human life. I am thinking first of all of the various dialogues in Geneva that are seeking to negotiate reductions and limitations in armaments. But also there are the dialogues being conducted in the context of the multilateral process initiated with the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a process which will be reviewed once again next year in Vienna and continued.

Concerning the dialogue and cooperation between North and South one can think of the important role entrusted to certain bodies such as UNCTAD, and of the Conventions of Lomé, to which the European Community is committed. I am thinking too of the kinds of dialogue that take place when borders are open and people can travel freely. I am thinking of the dialogue that takes place when one culture is enriched by contact with another culture, when scholars are free to communicate, when workers are free to assemble, when young people join forces for the future, when the elderly are reunited with their loved ones. The path of dialogue is a path of discoveries, and the more we discover one another, the more we can replace the tensions of the past with bonds of peace.

 5. New relationships built on solidarity and dialogue

In the spirit of solidarity and with the instruments of dialogue we will learn: - respect for every human person; - respect for the true values and cultures of others; respect for the legitimate autonomy and self-determination of others; - to look beyond ourselves in order to understand and support the good of others; - to contribute our own resources in social solidarity for the development and growth that come from equity and justice; - to build the structures that will ensure that social solidarity and dialogue are permanent features of the world we live in. The tension born of the two blocs will be successfully replaced by the interconnected relations of solidarity and dialogue when we learn to insist on the primacy of the human person. The dignity of the person and the defence of his or her human rights are in the balance, because they always suffer in one way or another from those tensions and distortions of the blocs which we have been examining. This can happen in countries where many individual liberties are guaranteed but where individualism and consumerism warp and distort the values of life. It happens in societies where the person is submerged into the collectivity. It can happen in young countries which are eager to take control of their own affairs but which are often forced into certain policies by the powerful, or seduced by the lure of immediate gain at the expense of the people themselves. In all this we must insist on the primacy of the person.

 6. The Christian vision and commitment

My brothers and sisters in the Christian faith find in Jesus Christ, in the Gospel message and in the life of the Church lofty reasons and even more inspiring motives for striving to bring about one single peace in today's world. The Christian faith has as its focus Jesus Christ, who stretches out his arms on the Cross in order to unite the children of God who were scattered (cf. Jn 11:52), to break down the walls of division, (cf . Eph 2:14), and to reconcile the peoples in fraternity and peace. The Cross raised above the world symbolically embraces and has the power to reconcile North and South, East and West.

Christians, enlightened by faith, know that the ultimate reason why the world is the scene of divisions, tensions, rivalries, blocs and unjust inequalities, instead of being a place of genuine fraternity, is sin, that is to say human moral disorder. But Christians also know that the grace of. Christ, which can transform this human condition, is continually being offered to the world, since "where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Rom 5:20). The Church, which carries on Christ's work and dispenses his redeeming grace, has precisely as her purpose the reconciling of all individuals and peoples in unity, fraternity and peace. "The promotion of unity", says the Second Vatican Council, "belongs to the innermost nature of the Church, since she is 'by her relationship with Christ, both a sacramental sign and an instrument of intimate union with God, and of the unity of all mankind' " (Gaudium et Spes, 42). The Church, which is one and universal in the variety of the peoples that she brings together, "can form a very close unifying effect on the various communities of individuals and nations, provided they have trust in the Church and guarantee her true freedom to carry out her mission" (ibid.).

This vision and these demands which arise from the very heart of faith, should above all cause all Christians to become more aware of situations that are out of harmony with the Gospel, in order to purify and rectify them. At the same time Christians should recognize and value the positive signs attesting that efforts are being made to remedy these situations, efforts which they must effectively support, sustain and strengthen.

Animated by a lively hope, capable of hoping against hope (cf. Rom 4:18), Christians must go beyond the barriers of ideologies and systems, in order to enter into dialogue with all people of good will, and create new relationships and new forms of solidarity. In this regard I would like to say a word of appreciation and praise to all those who are engaged in international volunteer work and other forms of activity aimed at creating links of sharing and fraternity at a level higher than the various blocs.

7. International Year of Peace and final appeal Dear friends, brothers and sisters all: at the beginning of a new year I renew my appeal to all of you to put aside hostilities, to break the fetters of the tensions that exist in the world. I appeal to you to turn those tensions of North and South, East and West into new relationships of social solidarity and dialogue. The United Nations Organization has proclaimed 1986 the International Year of Peace. This noble effort deserves our encouragement and support. What better way could there be to further the aims of the Year of Peace than to make the relationships of North-South and East-West the basis of a peace that is universal!

To you, politicians and statesmen, I appeal: to give the leadership that will incite people to renewed effort in this direction.

To you, businessmen, to you who are responsible for financial and commercial organizations, I appeal: to examine anew your responsibilities towards all your brothers and sisters. To you, military strategists, officers, scientists and technologists, I appeal: to use your expertise in ways that promote dialogue and understanding.

To you, the suffering, the handicapped, those who are physically limited, I appeal: to offer your prayers and your lives in order to break down the barriers that divide the world. To all of you who believe in God I appeal that you live your lives in the awareness of being one family under the fatherhood of God.

To all of you and to each one of you, young and old, weak and powerful, I appeal: embrace peace as the great unifying value of your lives. Wherever you live on this planet I earnestly exhort you to pursue in solidarity and sincere dialogue: Peace as a value with no frontiers: North-South, East-West, everywhere one people united in only one Peace.

>From the Vatican, 8 December 1985. JOANNES PAULUS PP. II



__________________________________ 

Statement By H.E. Arch. Renato R. MARTINO Apostolic Nuncio, Permanent Observer of the Holy See before the First Committee of the General Assembly General and Complete Disarmament http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/documents/rc_seg-st_doc_14101999_disarmament_en.html New York, 14 October 1999

Mr. Chairman, At this last meeting of the Committee in this century, our eyes naturally look to the horizon, to scan what is ahead in the 21st century. But before doing so, we must reflect on the century about to close in order to learn from experience. With profound sorrow, we must record that the war deaths in the 20th century were much greater in number than all the war deaths in previous centuries from the first century A.D. More than 110 million people were killed in this century's wars. Nor has the killing diminished in the last decade of the century, the so-called post-Cold War period. East Timor, Kosovo, Serbia, Iraq, Bosnia, North Ireland, Haiti, The Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Sri Lanka: these are just some of the affected areas from nearly all the regions of the world whose hopes for growth and prosperity were stifled by chronic conflicts.

Despite the undoubted advance of civilization as a whole, acts of barbarism in our time have sunk to new depravities. Exterminations, genocide, mass killings, deportation, tortures in the extreme have scarred the memory of this century. Distinctions between military combatants and civilians have disappeared; human rights violations against women and children occur in unprecedented numbers. In the past decade, two million children have been killed in armed conflicts; four to five million more have been disabled and more than 12 million made homeless. Terror and violence, now so common, speak of deliberate victimization.

Such brutality must be stopped by international legal authority. The carnage occurring within States, as well as the conflict between States, must be addressed by competent legal authority operating under the mandate of the United Nations Security Council. We will not be able to build a path to peace in the 21st century unless there is universal recognition and acceptance that the Security Council is the pre-eminent authority in enforcing peace and security.

We are daily witnesses to cruel wars and massacres that go far beyond all humanitarian norms and in which civilians are often both victims and protagonists. Such conflicts are fed by the availability of small arms and light weapons. The Holy See has repeatedly urged that effective measures be taken to stem the trade of these arms and continues to support them. However important international or regional measures may be, they will not be effective unless States establish national controls on the sale and transfer of such weapons.

Still further measures must be taken to stem the illicit sale and transfer of small arms and light weapons. They continue to find their way into the hands of irregular forces, guerrillas and terrorists and also play a nefarious role in drug cartels and organized crime syndicates. In this regard, it is encouraging to note the growing attention being given to the control of the sale of ammunition for these weapons. It is also important to continue to reinforce practical disarmament measures by which arms, used in internal conflicts, are collected and destroyed with the agreement of all concerned. This is a peacebuilding measure and also assures that the same arms will not be used to kill still other innocent victims.

The First Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Total Elimination of Landmines has given witness to what determined will of States can achieve in the field of small arms. Every effort must be made to make it universal and implement fully its provisions. Anti-personnel landmines must be totally eliminated in the name of humanity. The peaceful development of many societies will be hindered until the mine clearance process is also completed Adequate funding must be assured for both the removal of landmines and their destruction.

While militarism of all kinds must be checked, the abolition of nuclear weapons is the prerequisite for peace in the 21st century. What has been promised for a long time by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) must be achieved. Despite all the difficulties in achieving full compliance with the NPT, the Holy See never wavers from what its Delegation has said previously in this Committee: "Nuclear weapons are incompatible with the peace we seek for the 21st century. They cannot be justified. They deserve condemnation. The preservation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty demands an unequivocal commitment to their abolition. This is a moral challenge, a legal challenge, and a political challenge. That multiple-based challenge must be met by the application of our humanity" (Statements of the Holy See before the First Committee of the 52nd and 53rd Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly, 15 Oct. 1997 & 19 Oct. 1998).

The Holy See favours a new set of "Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament" to be adopted at the 2000 Review of the NPT. The new Principles and Objectives, building on the 1995 work, should reinforce the political accountability that is critical to the vitality and viability of the NPT process.

It should be an immediate objective of the international community to eliminate non-strategic nuclear weapons, de-alert strategic weapons by removing warheads from delivery vehicles, establish a legally-binding negative security assurances regime, and secure from the Nuclear Weapons States a pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons. At the same time, the Conference on Disarmament should help the NPT process by commencing substantive discussions on all nuclear disarmament issues. This could encourage and expand the START process, which all the Nuclear Weapons States should join.

Various new initiatives are opening the way to progress in some of the more pressing areas of nuclear disarmament. In view of the 2000 NPT Review Conference, the Nuclear Weapons States will, moreover, be called to give proof of their determination to move towards the elimination of nuclear weapons. Without progress in this field, it will be difficult to advance in the implementation of all the provisions of the Treaty and to achieve its much needed universality.

Chemical and biological weapons stand along side nuclear arms as a threat to all of humanity. As State Party to the Convention, the Holy See will continue to urge all States to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention without delay. Its stringent verification procedures guarantee its full observance and yet protect national interests in other fields of chemical production. The Holy See would welcome similar measures as regards the Biological Weapons Treaty and urges that the negotiation of a verification protocol to the Treaty be given all the attention it merits at present. The conscience of humanity must make it strikingly clear that all weapons of mass destruction violate the very principles of peaceful co-existence, collaboration and solidarity among nations and peoples.

Mr. Chairman, This Committee has done valuable work through the years. Now, on the threshold of not just a new century but of a new Millennium, let us pause to put our work in focus. It is not just the details of resolutions that should command our attention; rather it is the sweep of history.

History is calling us forward, to use the blossoming of our intelligence and the new-found technological prowess to prevent war. Diplomatic initiatives, civil society support and most of all political will are required to nourish the international community's desire for peace. We are blessed that new techniques of early warning of conflict are available, along with the tools of preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peace-building. Powerful new tools to prevent war include confidence-building measures, transparency and information exchange, mutual constraints on force deployments, negotiated reductions in armed forces, and restriction on the arms trade.

All these approaches to peace need to be combined into a unified program to prevent war. A comprehensive approach, reflecting new ways of thinking, new understandings and new solutions to security, will strengthen existing peace-making and disarmament programs.

It may indeed take a long time to build a permanent global security system. But taken in phases, people would take heart that movement to fulfil a vision is occurring. Sequenced steps, making war rare along the way, will save thousands of lives and huge sums of money. The length of time to achieve the goal of a world without war should not deter us from starting now. Without such a program, the killing will continue.

Mr. Chairman, We must begin the new Millennium with the firm conviction that war is not inevitable. War and mass violence usually result from deliberate political decisions. Rather than intervening in violent conflicts after they have erupted and then engaging in post-conflict peace-building, it is more humane and more efficient to prevent such violence in the first place. This is the essence of a culture of peace approach.

Overcoming our sadness at the past, we must take hope in the future. As the third Millennium dawns, we must re-dedicate ourselves to sharing in God's continued development of the planet. We have the ability to build peace in the new Millennium. That is our great strength. Let us join to create the political will to establish such a culture of peace. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

 ________________________________________________


NUCLEAR ARMS AND LANDMINES February 2005 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

 The alarming increase of arms, together with the halting progress of commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, runs the risk of feeding and expanding a culture of competition and conflict, a culture involving not only States but also non-institutional entities, such as paramilitary groups and terrorist organizations. -- Pope John Paul II, January 1, 2001

 NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Reductions. More than a decade after the end of the Cold War, the threat of global nuclear war is more remote, but we live in a still dangerous time of nuclear proliferation and a continuing risk of nuclear use. Since the end of the Cold War, deployed strategic nuclear weapons have been cut by 40% and intermediate-range nuclear weapons have been eliminated. Decrying the slow pace of negotiations, in November 2001 the Bush administration announced unilateral cuts in deployed strategic nuclear weapons. In May 2002, the U. S. and Russia agreed to a treaty that codifies these unilateral cuts by reducing deployed strategic warheads to 1,700-2,200 on each side by 2012. This is a significant reduction from the 6,000 warheads permitted under START I and the 3,000-3,500 permitted under START II. As with previous reductions, an undetermined number of the 4,000 weapons "cut" from the U. S. arsenal would be stored, not dismantled. Unlike other treaties, this is a "good faith" treaty that does not contain verification measures. The treaty expires on the same date that its reductions become mandatory. There are no current plans to further reduce these weapons. The treaty does not cover thousands of tactical (short-range) nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Use. Three U.S. documents issued in 2002 - Nuclear Posture Review, National Security Strategy and National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction - make clear that the United States continues to threaten the use of nuclear weapons in response to the use of chemical or biological weapons by non-nuclear states.

New Nuclear Weapons. In FY 2004, Congress repealed a ban on research and development of new nuclear weapons and appropriated $7.5 million for research on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator ("bunker buster") and $6 million for research on low-yield nuclear weapons ("mini-nukes"). Development of these weapons would require separate Congressional approval. In FY05, the Administration has requested $27 million and $9 million, respectively, for on-going research on these weapons. In November 2004 Congress deleted these funds, but there may be attempts to restore this funding in FY06. Congress also reduced from $30 million to $7 million the Administration's request for funds toward construction of a new facility to build nuclear weapons.

Testing. In October 1999, the U.S. Senate failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) that bans nuclear testing. The Bush administration opposes ratification of this treaty but has committed to maintaining the current U. S. moratorium on testing. At the same time, the Administration requested $30 million in FY05 to ready the Nevada test site for possible testing.

USCCB Position: The end of the Cold War has led to some progress in reducing nuclear weapons, but these efforts have not been commensurate with the dramatic changes in world politics. The U.S. and other nuclear powers must move away from reliance on nuclear weapons for their security. A global ban is more than a moral ideal; it should be a policy goal. The positive example of the U.S. will be important to international efforts to address nonproliferation and the successful control of nuclear materials in this age of terrorism.

Arms Reductions. The 2002 Moscow Treaty is a welcome indication of how progress in political relationships and progress in arms control can be mutually reinforcing. The USCCB has urged the Administration and Congress to view the treaty not as an end but as one of many steps that must be taken to achieve the goal of a mutual, verifiable global ban on nuclear weapons. Much deeper, more irreversible cuts, in both strategic and tactical weapons, are both possible and necessary. In June 2000, the USCCB joined 18 retired military leaders and 20 other religious leaders in calling for deeper cuts and ultimately a global ban.

Development of New, Usable Weapons. The continued readiness of the United States to use nuclear weapons, especially against non-nuclear threats, and the potential development of new weapons, notably the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator and low-yield nuclear weapons, for this purpose should be opposed. A minimal nuclear deterrent may be justified only to deter the use of nuclear weapons. It is long past time for the United States to commit itself never to use nuclear weapons first, to reject unequivocally proposals to use nuclear weapons to deter non-nuclear threats, and to reinforce the fragile barrier against the use of these weapons. We abhor any use of nuclear weapons. Testing. The U.S. should ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The CTBT will thwart the development of new nuclear weapons, and will impede efforts of other nations to obtain them. U. S. ratification would buttress the moral credibility of nonproliferation efforts.

 Resources: Recent documents include: Statement on Nuclear Weapons by Bishop Wilton Gregory (8/06/2004), Statement on Nuclear Treaty by Bishop Gregory (5/24/2002), Statement on Landmines by Bishop John Ricard (3/01/2004), Letter to Senate on New Nuclear Weapons by Bishop Ricard (9/15/03). See links for Arms Control and Disarmament, Arms Trade, Landmines, Nuclear Weapons and War and Peace for more extensive documentation: http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/international/topicissues.htm.

For further information: Stephen Colecchi, 202-541-3160 (ph); 54I-3339 (fax); scolecchi@usccb.org 

Office of Social Development & World Peace
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
3211 4th Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20017-1194 (202) 541-3000

from Dimity Hawkins
Executive Officer
Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia)
ph: +61 (03) 8344 1637
mobile: 0431 475 465
fax: +61 (03) 8344 1638
dimity.hawkins@mapw.org.au
http://www.mapw.org.au
PO Box 1379, Carlton VIC 3053


-------- britain

Warning on nuclear waste disposal  
 
There will be further consultations on the nuclear waste question

Monday, 4 April, 2005 (BBC)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4407421.stm

Proposals to send Britain's nuclear waste into space or to the bottom of the sea are impractical, a government advisory committee has warned. 

The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CORWM) recommends waste be either buried underground or stored temporarily in facilities above ground. 

Nuclear power plants and weapons have left the UK with a radioactive legacy which presently has nowhere to go. 

There will be yet more waste when nuclear stations are decommissioned. 

Locations undecided 

The committee has consulted experts and the public over the past 18 months, and has come up with four options which it considers viable. 

They are: deep disposal, phased deep disposal, shallow burial of short-lived waste and interim storage. 

Deep disposal is the process of permanently burying the waste between 300m (980ft) and 2km (1.2 miles) underground in an area of suitable geology; where the rocks act as a protective chamber.

Phased deep disposal is the same process except the waste will be retrievable.

Shallow burial of short-lived waste refers to burying waste that is radioactive only for a short time just below the surface.

Interim storage is a temporary management solution. Waste could be stored above the ground or just below the surface but it must be outside the biosphere.

There is no recommendation on where the sites should be located. 

Alternatively, the waste could be put in secure storage above ground until better technologies become available. 

These options will now go for further consultation. 

But the committee excluded from its shortlist blasting waste into space, storing it on ice sheets or below the sea. 

The total volume of nuclear waste in the UK is 470,000 cubic metres when conditioned and packaged - enough to fill the Albert Hall five times over. 

This includes waste that will arise in the next 100 years from existing nuclear power stations and their decomissioning. 

Debate re-opened 

The final CORWM report will be submitted next summer to the UK government, as well as authorities in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. 

Committee chairman Gordon MacKerron commented: "We want to listen to everyone's thoughts - be they members of the public, environmental groups, local authorities, waste managers or regulators. 

 
Barrels of nuclear waste were tipped into the sea in the 1950s and 60s 

"Now we can start to focus on the best options and see which will work and which won't." 

However, Friends of the Earth warned against making an irreversible decision on nuclear disposal. 

Campaigner Roger Higman said: "The simple, most important thing we have been calling for is for whatever we do to be retrievable and reversible. 

"The most radioactive waste is going to be high level in a thousand years' time so whatever happens, we have got a problem. 

UK NUCLEAR WASTE VOLUMES 
High-level waste - 2,000 cubic metres
Intermediate-level waste - 350,000 cubic metres
Low-level waste - 30,000 cubic metres
Spent fuel - 10,000 cubic metres
Plutonium - 4,300 cubic metres
Uranium - 75,000 cubic metres 

"There is no safe way of disposing of nuclear waste and one of the most important lessons is not to create any more, which means we should not have nuclear power plants." 

Nuclear waste comes from the process used to generate electricity via nuclear power, from making and maintaining nuclear weapons, and using nuclear technology in hospitals, laboratories and industry. 

A recent study found that, on average, people in Britain live about 42km (26 miles) away from one of more than 30 radioactive waste sites, including power plants and military bases, in the UK. 

An existing site at Drigg, in Cumbria, for example, allows only for the disposal of low-level radioactive waste. 

Some scientists question the need for CORWM at all. 

They say it is simply re-opening a debate which Britain has already been through, and which they believe many other countries have successfully resolved. 

----

CoRWM Compiles Provisional Shortlist of Waste Options

4th April 2005 Press Release CORWM

http://www.corwm.org.uk/content-594
 
The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) has announced its suggested shortlist of options for the long-term management of UK nuclear waste.  This list, plus proposed ways to assess the options, is being put out for public consultation from 4 April.
 
This marks the launch of the second phase of CoRWM's Public and Stakeholder Engagement programme (PSE 2).
 
Members of the Committee assessed a long-list of 15 options against nine criteria such as risk to human health, the environment and the security of the waste. The four proposed options for the best long-term management for high and intermediate level waste are:

Deep disposal 
Phased deep disposal 
Shallow burial of short-lived waste 
Interim storage1 
Among those options now officially dropped are:
Disposal in space 
Disposal in ice sheets 
Direction injection into rock 
Disposal at sea 
Indefinite storage 

The UK will produce 470,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste with no long-term solution2.This would be enough waste to fill London's Royal Albert Hall five times. A recent study also found that on average people in Britain live about 26 miles away from a radioactive waste site3.
 
The PSE Programme has proved to be the widest-ever public consultation on nuclear waste in Britain, with meetings, workshops and discussion groups taking place across the country. The first round ran from November 2004 till January 2005 and the current round will go until June 27. A further round of consultation later this year will involve citizens in the full assessment phase. 
 
The final CoRWM report will be submitted next summer to the UK Government and the devolved administrations4. People are also asked to register their views on CoRWM's website (www.corwm.org.uk).
 
Committee Chair Gordon MacKerron commented: "This is an exciting time for CoRWM. We want to listen to everyone's thoughts be they members of the public, environmental groups, local authorities, waste managers or regulators."
 
"All have played their part in helping us draw up our final shortlist. Now we can start to focus on the best options and see which will work and which won't."
 
Environment Minister, Elliot Morley, added: "The CoRWM programme will ensure that there is a complete decision-making audit trail, making clear why options have been ruled out and why the eventual Government policy decision has been taken.  We are ultimately talking of solutions that will cost billions of pounds and decades to implement. Taking a little time now to get the decision right represents time and money well spent."
 
Defra's Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Howard Dalton, said: "I will be working with CoRWM to ensure that they can take account of the best available scientific evidence in considering the best options for the management of the UK's legacy of radioactive waste."
- Ends -
 
For further media information, please contact Sara Knudsen or David Prescott at the CoRWM press office on Tel: 020 7255 5468 or on 0781 402 4266.
 
Notes to editors:
 
Deep disposal is the process of permanently putting the waste at between 300 metres and 2km underground in a an area of suitable geology where the rocks act as the protective chamber. 
Phased deep disposal is the same process as deep disposal except the waste will be retrievable. 
Shallow burial of short-lived waste Waste with short-lived radioactivity buried just below the surface. 
Interim storage is not permanent storage. It is a temporary management solution. Waste could be stored above the ground or just below the surface but it must be out of the biosphere. 
Source: DEFRA. 470,000 cubic metres (m3). This will be made up of: 
2,000 m3 of High Level Waste 
349,000 m3 of Intermediate Level Waste 
33,000 m3 of Low Level Waste 
74,935 m3 of Uranium 
4,260 m3 of Plutonium 
10,012 m3 of spent fuel 
On average, based on 9,328 postcode sectors, people in the UK live about 26 miles from the nearest site with high and intermediate level waste, or low level radioactive waste that is unsuitable for disposal at the UK's existing facility at Drigg in Cumbria. Nuclear waste sources include nuclear power plants and military bases. It is stored at over 30 sites around the country

Established by the UK, Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh Environment ministers, CoRWM began work in November 2003 to oversee a review of options for managing solid radioactive waste in the UK and to recommend the option, or combination of options, that can provide a long-term management strategy, providing protection for people and the environment. CoRWM's recommendations will not cover where the waste will be managed. 



<a name="du"></a>

-------- depleted uranium

Does US military 'recognize' its own regulations on DU?

Traprock Peace Center / Uruknet.com April 4, 2005

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m10827&l=i&size=1&hd=0

http://www.traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_regs.html

Does US military 'recognize' its own regulations on DU?

Will it now comply with environmental and health care mandates for both US and Iraq?

Retired Major Doug Rokke, Ph.D. (USAR, retired), who was an Army health physicist during the Gulf war and was then responsible for trying to 'clean up' radiologically contaminated US equipment (RCE's) there, has been calling on the military to follow its own regulations < http://www.traprockpeace.org/rokke_du_3_ques.html >.

He and Damacio Lopez continue to make this call < http://www.traprockpeace.org/doug_rokke_damacio_lopez.html >.

These Army regulations and the "Handling Procedures for Equipment Contaminated with Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities" < http://traprockpeace.org/du_pam_700-48.pdf > specify stringent requirements for handling RCE's, as well as providing medical surveillance, training, and environmental protection among other requirements.

[You may also download the Procedures at the military's site: http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/p700_48.pdf ]. For instance, the regulations require protecting the environment in the war zone - Iraq in this case - (Army Regulation 700-48, 2-4) and medical care for any "individual" who "may have been exposed" to DU contamination. (Army Regulation 700-48, 2-5). (The US has used DU in many US states and other countries; we focus on Iraq here, given the current crisis and the huge amounts of DU used. The regulations apply wherever DU has been used.)

Reading these regulations and procedures, one must wonder how the US can justify - morally or legally - using such a weapon. (See the Karen Parker, J.D., article on the illegality of DU Weaponry under international humanitarian law: http://traprockpeace.org/karen_parker_du_illegality.pdf )

Very recently, two US military publications have taken noticee of the regulations. But again, what of the Iraqis - a people who will be left to live with what the US has left behind? And, will the military follow these reminders of their regulations, even concerning US soldiers?

The Nov-Dec, 2004 issue of the US military's Hazardous Technical Information Services Bulletin, VOL. 14 NO. 6; pages 7-8, references requirements for the "Management and Handling of Equipment Contaminated With Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities." You may download the entire Bulletin here < http://www.traprockpeace.org/c0501.pdf >

or at the original military site - http://www.dscr.dla.mil/userweb/htis/nov-dec04.pdf (We offer a local download option because sometimes government documents disappear, and because some people do not like to pick up cookies at military websites.)

Dr. Abdul H. Khalid, Chemical Engineer, HTIS, writes:

The U.S. Department of Army (DA) Regulation (AR 700-48) outlines formal policy and procedures for the management of equipment contaminated with depleted uranium (DU) or radioactive commodities. This publication is available online at: http://traprockpeace.org/du_pam_700-48.pdf

The DA Pamphlet (PAM 700-48) recommends handling procedures for equipment contaminated with depleted uranium (DU) and/or other low-level wastes (LLRW). PAM 700-48 applies to DA commands, installations, and activities. The current revision updated symbols, removed obsolete publications, and added technical references. This publication is available at http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/p700_48.pdf

These documents are of great help to generators of excess radioactive materials who wish to collect and consolidate these materials in preparation for removals off-post.

He goes on to give contact information for Radioactive Waste Disposal Offices in order to receive "guidance on radioactive waste materials, their proper disposal procedures, and technical information on LLRW." See the Bulletin, pages 7-8, for the complete article: http://www.traprockpeace.org/nov-dec04.pdf

We note, though, that a regulation more than just "outlines formal policy and procedures..." Federal regulations are federal law. The regulation states "By order of the Secretary of the Army...[t]regulatin prescribes policy and procedures for the management of equipment contaminated with Depleted Uranium or radioactive commodities." (emphasis added) 

In January, 2005, the Central Region Review - U.S. Army Environmental Center, Central Regional Office, Kansas City, MO

January, 2005 - Regions 6 & 7 picks up this thread. See the section Federal Actions - Other Regulatory Activity and General Information, page 27. (The regulation is not exactly highlighted as it was put on page 27, but it's there nonetheless). Download it here < http://www.traprockpeace.org/c0501.pdf > or at the government site - http://aec.army.mil/usaec/reo/c0501.pdf

The January note validates Mr. Khalid's article, as well as what Doug Rokke has been saying for years, to a point. I say "to a point" because it also understates the force of the regulations, turning law into mere policy. The January note reads:

Handling Procedures for Equipment Contaminated with Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities (DA PAM 70048) and Management of Equipment Contaminated with Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities (AR 700-48). Department of the Army pamphlet PAM 700-48 provides recommended handling procedures for equipment contaminated with depleted uranium and other low-level radioactive materials or wastes. Army Regulation, AR 700-48, outlines formal procedures and policies for the management of handling contaminated equipment. These documents can be accessed at http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/p700_48.pdf

and http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_pam_700-48.pdf. Guidance on radioactive waste material, proper disposal techniques, and technical information is available from the following points of contact: Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Headquarters, 8725 John J. Kingman Highway, Suite 2533, Fort Belvoir, Virginia 22060, or telephone (703) 767-6331; Department of Defense, Army Industrial Operations Command Executive Agency, ATTN: AMSIO-SF, Rock Island, Illinois, or telephone (309) 782-2033; US Air Force, IERA/SDRH, 2402 E. Drive Brooks AFB, Texas, or telephone (210) 536 3489; Naval Sea Command Detachment, Radiological Affairs Support Office, PO Drawer 260, Yorktown, Virginia, or telephone (757) 887-4692. 

[Please note: I did not add a link to the Traprock website in either of the above two military documents. They did indeed cite Traprock for a copy of the military's own regulations. We're flattered but surprised to be an offical source of federal law.]

Finally, someone in the military has taken note of the military's own regulations. Thank you Dr. Khalid. Still, the force of the mandate has been understated. Even if the military were encouraged to act concerning US soldiers posts, and what about the mess that the US (and the UK, to a lesser degree) have left in Iraq? The land and air are contamined by radioactive dust and debris from hundreds of tons of uranium muntions that have been used in Iraq since the first Gulf War.

We don't know how much DU was used in the current war. Estimates range from the military's figures of 100 plus tons, to about 2000 tons if DU was used in bunker busters. The US is not helping much to get to the bottom of this, as it has refused (unlike the UK) to divulge where it has used DU in Gulf War II. Even accepting US figures, about 450-500 tons would be a convervative estimate of the amount used since the first Gulf War. (I suspect it is much higher: http://traprockpeace.org/bunker_busters_kilpatrick.html .) Additionally, hundreds of Iraqi vehicles have been left behind, in violation of Army regulations.

Army Regulation 700-48, Section 2-4 (my emphasis added)

c. Handling.
(1) The unit/team/individual responsible for the equipment, whether friendly or foreign, at the time of damage or contamination is responsible for taking all action consistent with this regulation and DA PAM 700-48....
(6) All equipment, to include captured or combat RCE, will be surveyed, packaged, retrograded, decontaminated and released IAW Technical Bulletin 9-1300-278, DA PAM 700-48 and other relevant guidance.

Further, the dumping (abandonment) of much of this equipment in open air 'grave yards' violates 700-48, 2-4:

e. Disposal.
(1) In general, environmental impact must be considered prior to equipment retrograde. Retrograde operations must minimize the spread of contamination preventing further harm to personnel and damage to equipment.
(2) Radioactive material and waste will not be locally disposed of through burial, submersion, incineration, destruction in place, or abandonment without approval from overall MACOM commander. If local disposal is approved, the responsible MACOM commander must document the general nature of the disposed material and the exact location of the disposal. As soon as possible the MACOM commander must forward all corresponding documentation to the Chief, Health Physicist, AMCSF-P, HQAMC. (emphasis added)

In the photo at right, Tedd Weyman of the Uranium Medical Research Center < http://www.umrc.net/ > inspects an Iraqi tank destroyed by DU, at a 10 hectare open air dump for destroyed Iraqi equipment, including RCE's. The photo is a copyrighted screen shot from the award-winning German public television documentary, "The Doctor, the Depleted Uranium and the Dying Children." photo © 2003 Telepool http://www.telepool.de

US HAS ADMITTED HEALTH RISKS

We, in the anti-Du activist community, hear from US military apologists all the time that there is no evidence of adverse health effects. They're spinning rubbish. Without citing all of the scientific evidence here (that's a whole book - see the proceedings of the World Uranium Weapons Conference: http://traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_hamburg03.html http://traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_hamburg03.html), the military's own documents condemn their argument. For example,

*Occasionally, a US government memo becomes public - such as the Los Alamos memo (where proponency - lying - is the order of the day), or the Defense Nuclear Agency memo that admits to DU's threat to health - http://traprockpeace.org/twomemos.html

*Or, a military figure says some truth about DU in a non-public setting, such as a presentation to manufacturers 
http://traprockpeace.org/wakayama2.pdf

*Or a Pentagon scientist, such as Dr. Alexandra Miller, reports some uncomfortable research (about chromosomal damage and bystander effects) as she did at MIT. Her presentation on the DU health panel at MIT, with Dr. Thomas Fasy, is available at http://traprockpeace.org/mit_health.html

*And sometimes GI's talk about the horror of fiendish DU fire - as happened after A-10's attacked Marines at An Nasiriyah with 30 mm DU rounds - http://traprockpeace.org/du_friendly_fire.html

Here's a quote from a Marine field historian who heard these testimonies:

"It's bad enough to be shot, but to be shot with a depleted uranium round that basically turns you into a hand full of mush."
- Col. Reed Bonadonna, field historian, talking to NPR's Jackie Northam

*And, sometimes, a freedom of information act request turns up an astonishing admission of 14 years of knowledge of DU's hazard to health: http://traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_milner.html


The Department of Defense is a huge organization. It can't control all information, and occasionally some truth gets out. It's up to us to act on that truth.

ACT

Call your elected officials and tell them (they work for you) to take action to abolish uranium weapons. And please call your favorite meda and ask that they cover the issue. Some media have given excellent coverage (RNNTV in metro NYC; WAMC in Albany; the Christian Science Monitor; Vanity Fair; King TV5 in Washington State; and the Seattle Intelligencier to name a few. But where are NPR, the New York Times and the Washington Post? Has your local media covered DU?

If media, a Congressional aide, or your organization is looking for an expert on DU, please call us - we'd be happy to offer suggestions.


Charles Jenks
Traprock Peace Center
Deerfield, MA
413-773-7427
(ask for Sunny Miller, Executive Director,
re: recommendations on experts)

April 1, 2005

Traprock Peace Center
103A Keets Road, Deerfield, MA 01342 (413) 773-7427 http://www.traprockpeace.org 

Together We Explore Nonviolence, Foster Community, Work to end war, Promote Communication & Take Initiatives on Environmental and Justice issues

Traprock Peace Center, founded in 1979, is a 501 c 3 charitable educational non-profit organization.
Donations are tax deductable. 

Please call (413) 773-7427 or email us charles@mtdata.com if you have any questions about Traprock Peace Center

 
:: Article nr. 10827 sent on 02-apr-2005 05:05 ECT


:: The address of this page is : www.uruknet.info?p=10827

:: The incoming address of this article is : 
   http://www.traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_regs.html 


----

Global Peace And Justice Auckland Newsletter #86

Monday, 4 April 2005 SCOOP

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0504/S00034.htm

Monday, April 11, 2-3 pm Functions Room, Auckland University Students Association (above cafeteria)7-30pm, Room 3.407, Auckland University Engineering School.. DEPLETED URANIUM - 'Poisoning Eden: Nuclear Weapons, Energy and Depleted Uranium' - Dr Chris Busby is a British expert on low-level radiation and DU. His mission is to raise awareness among political leaders, their advisers, opinion-formers and the general public about the health effects of low-level radiation with specific reference to DU and other radioactive waste from nuclear electricity generation. He will be the first expert to speak publicly on this issue in New Zealand. DU has the potential to become the Agent Orange of the 21st century, with wider health implications for not just New Zealand defence personnel but all New Zealanders working in Iraq and Afghanistan. The tour has been organised in response to reported health effects following use of Depleted Uranium (DU) weapons by US and UK forces in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq by a group of concerned Christchurch citizens called the DU Education Team (DUET), who are concerned about the short and long term impacts of DU on civilians in the countries where it has been used, and on New Zealand personnel deployed in those countries. Organised by DU Education Team (DUET); for more information about the Auckland meeting contact Marion Hancock tel (09) 373 2379


--------

WI Judge: Army taking too long on Jefferson Proving Ground plan

By: Peggy Vlerebome
Madison WI Courier Staff Writer
4/4/2005 3:00:00 PM 

http://www.madisoncourier.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=253&ArticleID=23183

A federal administrative judge says that Save the Valley and the people who live around Jefferson Proving Ground have had to wait too long to find out what the Army intends to do about the radioactive depleted uranium it left behind after testing munitions.

The judge, Alan S. Rosenthal, wrote in a memo Thursday that the “responsibility for this state of affairs cannot be laid at the doorstep of (Save the Valley). Rather, it has been brought about by the conduct of the (Army) over the course of the past five years, conduct that has received to a significant extent the seeming indulgence of the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) staff.”

Rosenthal, who is with the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel, wrote the memo to bring his concerns to the attention of the appointed commission. He wrote that he and Paul B. Abramson, special assistant and also an administrative judge, do not have the authority to tell the Army or the NRC staff what to do. The Army had obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in order to test depleted uranium at JPG.

The Army has changed its approach for dealing with the depleted uranium several times, and the NRC staff has repeatedly said it needs more information from the Army for the various proposals.

The NRC staff announced in late 1999 that a hearing could be requested on a license-decommissioning plan the Army had submitted, and Save the Valley’s request for such a hearing was granted in 2000. 

“It is now five years later and there has yet to be a single filing by any party addressed to (Save the Valley’s) quite legitimate concerns regarding what disposition is to be made of the amassed DU munitions on the JPG site,” Rosenthal wrote. “And, perhaps of still greater significance, more than a decade has now passed since the testing activities were brought to an end.”

When Save the Valley requested a hearing, the Army asked that scheduling of a hearing be put off because it was thinking about changing what it proposed to do.

More than a year later, the Army submitted a new plan, but the NRC staff said it needed more information, some of it site-specific data that the Army would have to gather at the former proving ground for a part of the process called site-characterization. 

The Army, however, said it would be too dangerous to collect the information because of the presence of unexploded ordinance in the same area as the depleted uranium.

“Some eleven years have now elapsed since the licensee (the Army) terminated testing activities on its JPG site that left behind an accumulation of DU munitions,” Rosenthal wrote. “Perhaps more to the point, this past March 23 was the fifth anniversary of the grant of the hearing request of Petitioner (Save the Valley), an organization with members who live in proximity to that site and who profess concern about the site’s condition — a concern scarcely unreasonable given that, according to what the licensee (the Army) apparently represented to the staff, the site cannot now be even characterized without subjecting the personnel and that of contractors to an unacceptable safety risk.”

The Army withdrew that plan in mid-2003 and proposed an approach that never has been tried anywhere. Called a possession-only license, it would be renewable every five years until technology or science enabled the Army to safely gather the data the NRC staff said was needed.

“As a result of its failure over an extended period — justified or unjustified — to provide the information the staff requested, the licensee (the Army) has, in effect, possessed the very POLA (possession-only license) that is the subject of the present proceeding,” Rosenthal wrote. “Indeed, it might be reasonably said that it has had the equivalent of such a license for the entire eleven years or so since it ceased the testing of the DU munitions. It seems highly unlikely that such was the contemplation of the staff or the commission at the time of the grant of the materials license under which the testing was performed — to the contrary, we think it most probable that the expectation was that, upon cessation of operations at the JPG site, a decommissioning plan would be forthcoming in relatively short order.”

The NRC staff says it needs more information before it can proceed with its review of proposal for a possession-only license.

But the Army also told the regulatory commission staff in January that it would submit a letter to clarify its “planned path forward,” as the Army was again considering a change.

Richard Hill, president of Save the Valley, said of Rosenthal: “I believe that he has run out of patience.”

Hill said Save the Valley and its attorneys are “looking into what it does all mean.

“Obviously, it does mean that years have gone by now,” Hill said. “There should have been some concrete direction that they should be going in. It keeps changing all the time.

“The way things are going, nothing is being done.”

 
----

Depleted uranium: A death sentence here and abroad 

By Leuren Moret
Apr 4, 2005, 20:02 Axis of Logic

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_16634.shtml
http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml

“Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” - Henry Kissinger, quoted in “Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW’s in Vietnam” 

Vietnam was a chemical war for oil, permanently contaminating large regions and countries downriver with Agent Orange, and environmentally the most devastating war in world history. But since 1991, the U.S. has staged four nuclear wars using depleted uranium weaponry, which, like Agent Orange, meets the U.S. government definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Vast regions in the Middle East and Central Asia have been permanently contaminated with radiation. 

And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that “Gulf-era veterans” now on medical disability since 1991 number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period. 

 The American Free Press dropped a “dirty bomb” on the Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies. That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed malignancies in just 16 months. 

Since these soldiers were exposed to vaccines and depleted uranium (DU) only, this is strong evidence for researchers and scientists working on this issue, that DU is the definitive cause of Gulf War Syndrome. Vaccines are not known to cause cancer. One of the first published researchers on Gulf War Syndrome, who also served in 1991 in Iraq, Dr. Andras Korényi-Both, is in agreement with Barbara Goodno from the Department of Defense’s Deployment Health Support Directorate, that in this war soldiers were not exposed to chemicals, pesticides, bioagents or other suspect causes this time to confuse the issue. 

This powerful new evidence is blowing holes in the cover-up perpetrated by the Pentagon and three presidential administrations ever since DU was first used in 1991 in the Persian Gulf War. Fourteen years after the introduction of DU on the battlefield in 1991, the long-term effects have revealed that DU is a death sentence and very nasty stuff. 

Scientists studying the biological effects of uranium in the 1960s reported that it targets the DNA. Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in soldiers from the 2003 war as “spectacular ... and a matter of concern.” 

This evidence shows that of the three effects which DU has on biological systems - radiation, chemical and particulate - the particulate effect from nano-size particles is the most dominant one immediately after exposure and targets the Master Code in the DNA. This is bad news, but it explains why DU causes a myriad of diseases which are difficult to define. 

In simple words, DU “trashes the body.” When asked if the main purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing people, Fulk was more specific: “I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people.” 

Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes. This phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the U.S. military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure. 

Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served now have medical problems. 

The number of disabled vets reported up to 2000 has been increasing by 43,000 every year. Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs told American Free Press that he believes there are more disabled vets now than even after World War II. 

They brought it home 

Not only were soldiers exposed to DU on and off the battlefields, but they brought it home. DU in the semen of soldiers internally contaminated their wives, partners and girlfriends. Tragically, some women in their 20s and 30s who were sexual partners of exposed soldiers developed endometriosis and were forced to have hysterectomies because of health problems. 

In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of their post-war babies were born with severe birth defects. They were born with missing legs, arms, organs or eyes or had immune system and blood diseases. In some veterans’ families now, the only normal or healthy members of the family are the children born before the war. 

The Department of Veterans Affairs has stated that they do not keep records of birth defects occurring in families of veterans. 

How did they hide it? 

Before a new weapons system can be used, it must be fully tested. The blueprint for depleted uranium weapons is a 1943 declassified document from the Manhattan Project. 

Harvard President and physicist James B. Conant, who developed poison gas in World War I, was brought into the Manhattan Project by the father of presidential candidate John Kerry. Kerry’s father served at a high level in the Manhattan Project and was a CIA agent. 

Conant was chair of the S-1 Poison Gas Committee, which recommended developing poison gas weapons from the radioactive trash of the atomic bomb project in World War II. At that time, it was known that radioactive materials dispersed in bombs from the air, from land vehicles or on the battlefield produced very fine radioactive dust which would penetrate all protective clothing, any gas mask or filter or the skin. By contaminating the lungs and blood, it could kill or cause illness very quickly. 

They also recommended it as a permanent terrain contaminant, which could be used to destroy populations by contaminating water supplies and agricultural land with the radioactive dust. 

The first DU weapons system was developed for the Navy in 1968, and DU weapons were given to and used by Israel in 1973 under U.S. supervision in the Yom Kippur war against the Arabs. 

The Phalanx weapons system, using DU, was tested on the USS Bigelow out of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1977, and DU weapons have been sold by the U.S. to 29 countries. 

Military research report summaries detail the testing of DU from 1974-1999 at military testing grounds, bombing and gunnery ranges and at civilian labs under contract. Today 42 states are contaminated with DU from manufacture, testing and deployment. 

Women living around these facilities have reported increases in endometriosis, birth defects in babies, leukemia in children and cancers and other diseases in adults. Thousands of tons of DU weapons tested for decades by the Navy on four bombing and gunnery ranges around Fallon, Nevada, is no doubt the cause of the fastest growing leukemia cluster in the U.S. over the past decade. The military denies that DU is the cause. 

The medical profession has been active in the cover-up - just as they were in hiding the effects from the American public - of low level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power plants. A medical doctor in Northern California reported being trained by the Pentagon with other doctors, months before the 2003 war started, to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from the 2003 war for mental problems only. 

Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating returning soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they talked about the soldiers or their medical problems. They were also threatened with jail. 

Reporters have also been prevented access to more than 14,000 medically evacuated soldiers flown nightly since the 2003 war in C-150s from Germany who are brought to Walter Reed Hospital near Washington, D.C. 

Dr. Robert Gould, former president of the Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), has contacted three medical doctors since February 2004, after I had been invited to speak about DU. Dr. Katharine Thomasson, president of the Oregon chapter of the PSR, informed me that Dr. Gould had contacted her and tried to convince her to cancel her invitation for me to speak about DU at Portland State University on April 12. Although I was able to do a presentation, Dr. Thomasson told me I could only talk about DU in Oregon “and nothing overseas ... nothing political.” 

Dr. Gould also contacted and discouraged Dr. Ross Wilcox in Toronto, Canada, from inviting me to speak to Physicians for Global Survival (PGS), the Canadian equivalent of PSR, several months later. When that didn’t work, he contacted Dr. Allan Connoly, the Canadian national president of PGS, who was able to cancel my invitation and nearly succeeded in preventing Dr. Wilcox, his own member, from showing photos and presenting details on civilians suffering from DU exposure and cancer provided to him by doctors in southern Iraq. 

Dr. Janette Sherman, a former and long-standing member of PSR, reported that she finally quit some time after being invited to lunch by a new PSR executive administrator. After the woman had pumped Dr. Sherman for information all through lunch about her position on key issues, the woman informed Dr. Sherman that her last job had been with the CIA. 

How was the truth about DU hidden from military personnel serving in successive DU wars? Before his tragic death, Sen. Paul Wellstone informed Joyce Riley, R.N., B.S.N., executive director of the American Gulf War Veterans Association, that 95 percent of Gulf War veterans had been recycled out of the military by 1995. Any of those continuing in military service were isolated from each other, preventing critical information being transferred to new troops. The “next DU war” had already been planned, and those planning it wanted “no skunk at the garden party.” 

The US has a dirty (DU) little (CIA) secret 

A new book just published at the American Free Press by Michael Collins Piper, “The High Priests of War: The Secret History of How America’s Neo-Conservative Trotskyites Came to Power and Orchestrated the War Against Iraq as the First Step in Their Drive for Global Empire,” details the early plans for a war against the Arab world by Henry Kissinger and the neo-cons in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That just happens to coincide with getting the DU “show on the road” and the oil crisis in the Middle East, which caused concern not only to President Nixon. The British had been plotting and scheming for control of the oil in Iraq for decades since first using poison gas on the Iraqis and Kurds in 1912. 

The book details the creation of the neo-cons by their “godfather” and Trotsky lover Irving Kristol, who pushed for a “war against terrorism” long before 9/11 and was lavishly funded for years by the CIA. His son, William Kristol, is one of the most influential men in the United States. 

Both are public relations men for the Israeli lobby’s neo-conservative network, with strong ties to Rupert Murdoch. Kissinger also has ties to this network and the Carlyle Group, who, one could say, have facilitated these omnicidal wars beginning from the time former President Bush took office. It would be easy to say that we are recycling World Wars I and II, with the same faces. 

When I asked Vietnam Special Ops Green Beret Capt. John McCarthy, who could have devised this omnicidal plan to use DU to destroy the genetic code and genetic future of large populations of Arabs and Moslems in the Middle East and Central Asia - just coincidentally the areas where most of the world’s oil deposits are located - he replied: “It has all the handprints of Henry Kissinger.” 

In Zbignew Brzezinski’s book “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives,” the map of the Eurasian chessboard includes four regions strategic to U.S. foreign policy. The “South” region corresponds precisely to the regions now contaminated permanently with radiation from U.S. bombs, missiles and bullets made with thousands of tons of DU. 

A Japanese professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki, has calculated that 800 tons of DU is the atomicity equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs. The U.S. has used more DU since 1991 than the atomicity equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs. Four nuclear wars indeed, and 10 times the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from atmospheric testing! 

No wonder our soldiers, their families and the people of the Middle East, Yugoslavia and Central Asia are sick. But as Henry Kissinger said after Vietnam when our soldiers came home ill from Agent Orange, “Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used for foreign policy.” 

Unfortunately, more and more of those soldiers are men and women with brown skin. And unfortunately, the DU radioactive dust will be carried around the world and deposited in our environments just as the “smog of war” from the 1991 Gulf War was found in deposits in South America, the Himalayas and Hawaii. 

In June 2003, the World Health Organization announced in a press release that global cancer rates will increase 50 percent by 2020. What else do they know that they aren’t telling us? I know that depleted uranium is a death sentence ... for all of us. We will all die in silent ways. 



-------- iran

What is Iran's Nuclear Program Really For?
Iran insists its nuclear program is only for civilian purposes 
  
05.04.2005 Deutsche Welle

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1543062,00.html

DW-WORLD: Does Iran have the ability to build a nuclear bomb?

Oliver Thränert: Iran is creating the prerequisites by building a uranium enrichment facility in Natans. Enriching uranium is one avenue to building a nuclear weapon. At the same time, they are building a heavy water reactor from which they could produce plutonium. Plutonium is the second avenue to build such a bomb. Iran declares both developmental steps as a civilian undertaking, which, the Europeans and the Americans for different reasons have doubts about.

What are the Europeans doing to dissuade the Iranians from their nuclear program?

The Europeans and the Americans don't want to cut off the Iranians entirely from using nuclear technologies. Rather, they want to allow them to continue to use light water reactors, for example. The Europeans would even be prepared to sell a light water reactor (a nuclear power plant), if Iran would agree to do without heavy water technology, which in view of its military uses, is very dangerous. 

What is the European Union's aim in its talks with Iran?

In any case the issue is to convince Iran to stop anything that could lead to a complete nuclear fuel cycle, that is, to independent uranium enrichment. It is a very dangerous technology which at the moment only 10 countries possess -- and most of them also have nuclear weapons. If you have the technology in the first place, you can use such facilities to enrich uranium by 5 percent and thus build fuel rods for reactors -- or you enrich it up to 90 percent and use it to produce nuclear weapons. One and the same facility can -- without much constructional alteration -- be used for civilian and military purposes. 

If Iran is not satisfied with light water reactors, is it fair to assume that they are pursuing aims other than civilian ones?

The Iranians argue that they want to be independent. If you operate reactors but can't produce your own fuel rods you're dependent on others. And they say they often can't rely on their trade and cooperation partners. Also, after the Islamic revolution in 1979, the company Siemens stopped construction of a reactor. A certain amount of fear of isolation on the part of the Iranian elite plays a role here. On the other hand, the facility's size and the fact that there's no connection between it and the building schedule for reactors suggests that is really an enrichment facility for military purposes.

The various positions appear incompatible. How can a solution be found?

To start with, we'll have to wait for the Iranian presidential election in June, since the nuclear question naturally plays a role in the election campaigns too: Nobody wants to be the one to give in to Western demands. I could imagine that if Rafsanjani is elected a solution could be found. He's a centrist, a representative of the Iranian trade bourgeoisie, and interested in improved trade relations -- with Europe above all. At the same time, he has the chance to establish a broad basis to reach a compromise with the Europeans.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, ElBaradei, said the US would have to provide Iran with a security guarantee for the country to give way on the nuclear issue. How do you see the role of the US?

The US has changed its position since President Bush's visit to Europe and clearly declared at the highest level that they back the Europeans in their efforts. They have gone so far as to say that Iran could be accepted in the World Trade Organization and the US would abstain from vetoing them there. I don't believe the US would express a security guarantee. I think that will be the sticking point in the end. On the one side, the Iranians would gain a lot, also economically, from a compromise. On the other side, there are these security concerns, which again have to do with America. At the moment, there's no real perspective in this matter.

Dr. Oliver Thränert is head of the Security Policy Research Unit at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin.

Martin Schrader interviewed Oliver Thränert (ncy)
 


-------- russia

Senior Russian official warns political infighting could lead to collapse
 
MOSCOW (AFP) Apr 04, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050404043522.vy6jktc2.html

Following popular revolts in several ex-Soviet states a senior Russian official on Monday warned politicians to avoid infighting to prevent a possible collapse of the vast nuclear-armed country.
The chief of the administration of President Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev, urged the country's political parties to develop coherent platforms and policies to provide a healthy alternative, while warning against internecine infighting in the government.

"If we do not manage to consolidate the elite, Russia could cease to exist as a unified state," he warned in an interview published Monday in Expert magazine.

The recent ouster of pro-Russian regimes following massive street protests in three ex-Soviet nations of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan has sparked consternation and concern among Russian officials.

"We have managed to strengthen the state's unity and to ensure enough stability for economic growth over recent years. But if we relax now and let ourselves be carried whichever way the waves go, the results would be disastrous," Medvedev said.

While Putin's approval ratings have remained high, there has been growing popular discontent with his handling of the war in Chechnya and social reforms.

"There are still serious problems that could cause public upheaval and lead to social cataclysms," when Russia itself goes to the polls in 2008 to choose a new president, Medvedev admitted.

"The main risk is destabilisation of public life due to terrorism or primitive economic mistakes and accompanied by wide-scale infighting among the elite," he pointed out.



-------- u.s. nuc facilities


--------  georgia

Browns Ferry nuclear plant guards to resume contract negotiations

By SAMIRA JAFARI
Associated Press Writer
April 04, 2005

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050404/APN/504040944

Security officers at the Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear power plant at Athens will resume contract talks this month with Pinkerton Government Services, after an earlier contract was rejected by union members.

Leaders of the union said guards at the Brown Ferry Nuclear Plant were being paid less than other Pinkerton nuclear security officers despite their long hours and rigorous training in a post-Sept. 11 environment.

Negotiations are set to resume April 13 and will have the assistance of a federal mediator.

Pinkerton spokesman Jim McNulty declined comment Monday, citing the upcoming contract talks.

The officers' 4-year-old contract with TVA subcontractor Pinkerton expired on March 1 after the new contract proposal was unanimously rejected by the union, the United Government Security Officers of America, Local 22.

Leaders of the union, which covers 130 Pinkerton officers at Browns Ferry, said their wage and benefit troubles date back to 1998, when TVA went from employing its own security officers to hiring a private security contractor.

Eric McMillen, Local 22 president, said the majority of security officers took an hourly pay cut from $14.65 to little more than $10 in the switch and the wages haven't improved since. Plus, the workload of the officers has significantly increased since security measures and training were heightened after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, but their wages are what they were eight years ago, he said.

Browns Ferry spokesman Craig Beasely said TVA in 2004 asked Pinkerton to review the officers wages and make a retroactive pay and wage adjustment. He wasn't sure what steps, if any, Pinkerton had taken in the last year to improve the officers pay, but McMillen said nothing has changed.

"They still haven't complied. We haven't gotten anything retroactively paid," he said.

TVA has taken a hands-off approach to the contract negotiations between Pinkerton and its officers.

However, federal contractors like TVA are responsible for making sure their subcontractors meet wage and benefit requirements under the federal Service Contract Act, which provides for wage, safety and health standards on federal contracts, according to the Department of Labor.

TVA disputed being a federal contractor under the SCA in a series of letters to the DOL between 1999-2003, saying "TVA is a wholly owned corporation of the United States..." and not subject to the provisions of the act.

In a final March 31, 2003 decision, the DOL rejected TVA's arguments and ordered the nation's largest public utility to include fair wage provisions from the act in all its service contracts, which would ensure employees that they would receive adequate wages.

Beasely said TVA in December 2004 agreed to comply with the DOL's ruling.

But the Local 22 claims that TVA continues to allow Pinkerton to pay unfair wages and benefits without scrutiny.

"If they make them enforce the SCA, we won't need to sit down and negotiate anything," he said.


-------- nevada

YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Workers describe sabotage

Whistle-blower case lists efforts to bypass water meter, violate EPA guidelines

By KEITH ROGERS 
Monday, April 04, 2005
Las Vegas Review-Journal 

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Apr-04-Mon-2005/news/26185740.html

Pipe fitters on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project were told by a foreman two years ago to sabotage the tunnel's main water line and make a special pipe to bypass a meter that measures how much of the state's water is used. 

That's according to a claim made in a Labor Department whistle-blower case and in interviews last month with former contract workers at the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. 

Before Ronald Dollens of Pahrump was fired in May 2003 by Yucca Mountain Project contractor Bechtel SAIC, he said he endured "a lot of harassment" for reporting what he perceived as violations of worker safety laws and Environmental Protection Agency laws, including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. 

It's unclear whether the bypass was ever installed, but a labor investigator has recommended that Bechtel SAIC pay Dollens $250,000 for retaliating once he raised the complaints. 

"There was sabotage that went on. A pipe that went into the portal was purposely broke for overtime," Dollens said. 

In a separate incident, he said, pipe fitters made a special pipe section so that groundwater, pumped from a well near Yucca Mountain, could be installed temporarily to bypass the place where the state's water is measured. 

Later that year, in November 2003, Nevada State Engineer Hugh Ricci denied the Department of Energy permanent rights to 140 million gallons per year of groundwater to build and operate a repository at Yucca Mountain for the nation's spent nuclear fuel and highly radioactive defense wastes. 

During federal court proceedings over the water issue, however, the state agreed to allow temporary use of water at Yucca Mountain to refill four potable water storage tanks for restroom facilities and emergencies. 

In a statement that Dollens filed for a Labor Department investigation into his wrongful termination claim, he said his foreman, Mike Oettinger, asked him and co-worker Dale Cain in November 2002 "to purposely break a line that ran into the tunnel just so we could get overtime pay fixing the pipe that would be broken." 

"I told Mike, 'You're crazy,' and so did Dale. We then left and, when we came back to work on Monday, and in the Plan of the Day meeting, they told everyone to thank Mike Oettinger for coming in on his day off to fix a broken pipe. ... I asked Mike Oettinger if he had broken the pipe, and he just laughed and said, 'Don't ask,' " Dollens stated in his affidavit. "Nothing ever happened for this pipe sabotage." 

Reached Friday at his home in Amargosa Valley, Oettinger wouldn't comment on the case or the allegations. 

A spokesman for Bechtel SAIC, Jason Bohne, also wouldn't comment on the allegations, citing ongoing litigation. 

Cain said he was frustrated by the situation and doesn't stand to gain anything for confirming Dollens' story. 

"I'd just like to see those people tell the truth for a change. There's nothing they can do to me," he said in a telephone interview Thursday. 

In a previous interview, Cain described how Oettinger discussed a plan with them for bypassing the water meter at the pumphouse for well J-13 at the Nevada Test Site. 

"His plan was that the water was metered at a certain point, and they would be able to tell when he turned the pumps on," Cain said. 

"If you eliminate the piece with the meter and then put a straight, spool piece in it, then you could bolt it up on two ends and then unbolt it, put the meter back in and nobody knew," he said. 

"That was exactly how the idea was explained to us. Me and (Dollens) knew what was right and wrong," Cain said. 

Cain and Dollens said they never saw the bypass piece installed. 

"I observed the piece being made and delivered. Whether it got used, who knows?" Cain said. 

Cain was laid off in December 2003 for an unrelated incident. Cain said it was Oettinger who initiated proceedings that led to that termination. 

Last year on April 1, Christopher Lee, deputy regional administrator for the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration in San Francisco, recommended Dollens receive a $250,000 punitive award from Bechtel SAIC for "reckless conduct indifferent to the rights of the whistle-blower." 

The penalty, Lee wrote in a letter to Dollens' attorney, Sangeeta Singal, and Bechtel SAIC's attorney, Mark Ricciardi, "appears appropriate to act as a deterrent to any such further retaliatory actions." 

Bechtel SAIC's attorneys objected to the suggested punitive award, and the case is now before Administrative Law Judge William Dorsey. A trial date has not been set. 

Singal claimed Bechtel SAIC had created a hostile work environment for Dollens because, among other things, he protested "when a supervisor instructed the workers to steal water from the state of Nevada and change the water spools to bypass the state's water meter," according to Lee's letter, 

That, Singal said, was in addition to protests Dollens lodged when a supervisor instructed pipe fitters to purposely punch holes in air conditioning systems to vent Freon, a toxic refrigerant. That was also in addition to purposely damaging the main water line to the tunnel so they would have to work overtime to repair it. 

Lee wrote that, because of inadequate information, he could not establish if water line sabotage, air conditioning tampering and theft of the state's water had in fact occurred. 

Nevertheless, the investigation found that Dollens had been humiliated on March 23, 2003 for reporting an unsafe condition at the site's 1-million-gallon potable water tank. Lee said the humiliation took the form of yelling at Dollens. 

A month later, on April 24, 2003, Dollens called for a "stop work" order after Oettinger told him and another pipe fitter to work on some valves in the J-13 pumphouse. 

The workers were worried that if they opened the wrong valve, they could possibly spill radioactive-laced water from old tanks at the test site. 

"These tanks are old, and I did not want to be the cause of contaminating the area," Dollens' affidavit says. 

Lee's findings state, "This event led to a subsequent confrontation with his supervisor." 

Dollens blames a heart attack he suffered on the stress from the confrontation. 

That eventually led to Dollens' firing, according to the investigator. 

Singal also is representing three other former Yucca Mountain contract workers -- Greg Dann, Lon Fuller and Tom Koscik -- who claim they were fired by Bechtel SAIC because they refused to sign affidavits for the company in the Dollens case.


-------- us nuc waste

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/apr/04/518548622.html?nuclear

April 04, 2005

Yucca e-mails show widespread problems

Correspondence indicates falsification of
data
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@...>
SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU

Yucca E-mails

Excerpts of some of the government
e-mails about scientific testing at Yucca
Mountain. The names and positions of the people
involved have not been released,'but the e-mails
come from the U.S. Geological Survey and the
Energy Department.


a.. "Still don't know quite how to
handle the air temp glitch. I'm continuing to keep
mum about this, but, from a scientific integrity
standpoint, it is tempting to let the end users
know exactly what was provided to them in terms of
effectively cooler future climate simulations.
Problem is, I don't know how to do this without
looking bad." E-mail May 11, 1998

a.. "Like you've said all along, YMP
(Yucca Mountain Project) has now reached a point
where they need to have certain items work no
matter what, and the infiltration maps are on that
list. If USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) can't find
a way to make it work, (redacted) will (but for
now they are definately (sic) counting on us to do
the job.) E-mail Dec. 17, 1998

a.. "Science by peer pressure is
dangerous but sometime (sic) it is necessary."
E-mail April 2, 1999

a.. "Some nights I have a hard time
going to sleep because I realize the importance of
trying to get the right answer, and I now how many
serious unknowns are still out there and how many
quick fixes are still holding things together...
I'm looking forward to putting the YMP nonsense
far behind me." E-mail April 4, 1999

a.. "Don't look at the last 4 lines.
Those lines are a mystery that I believe somehow
relate to the work (redacted) was doing in
entering the 1994 data. These lines are not used
by (redacted) (we stop at 9/30/84). I've deleted
the lines from the "official" QA version of the
files (which do have headers). In the end I keep
track of 2 sets of files, the one that will keep
QA happy and the ones that were actually used."
E-mail Nov. 15, 1999

a.. "Please do not tell anyone how
this was done because then we will need to get
this whole thing through software QA!" E-mail Feb.
17, 2000

a.. "I can fudge the attachment for
(redacted) for now but eventually someone may want
to run (redacted) to see what numbers come out and
at that point there will be problems, although it
is my belief for now that an impact analysis would
reveal that the differences are not critical to
the end result." E-mail March 6, 2000

a.. "The programs, of course, are all
already installed otherwise the (redacted) would
not exist. I don't have a clue when these programs
were installed. So I've made up the dates and
names (see red edits below). This is as good as
its (sic) going to get. If they need more proof, I
will be happy to make up more stuff, as long as
its (sic) not a video recording of the software
being installed." E-mail March 30, 2000


WASHINGTON -- Questions about the quality
assurance program at Yucca Mountain have been
raised before, but the contents of government
employee e-mails, released Friday, suggest blatant
falsification of data and create a whole new set
of problems.

Changing data in water studies and
maintaining two sets of quality assurance reports,
as the e-mails indicate, are more than just
paperwork errors, experts say. A poor quality
assurance program alone can shut down a project,
but the data mistakes could also have caused
serious miscalculations and could affect other
areas of the project, experts said.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who released 93
pages of redacted internal e-mails through his
House Federal Workforce and Agency Organization
subcommittee, said the Energy Department had led
Congress all along to believe the project was
based on "sound science" and that it was safe, but
his review of the e-mails lead him to believe this
was clearly not the case.

"The general theme is, 'Let's rush to get
the project done,' " Porter said.

Porter said as he reviewed the unredacted
documents it became clear that information had
been deliberately falsified over a period of
years.

"It literally makes me sick to my stomach,"
Porter said.

The Energy Department continues work on the
license application for the proposed nuclear waste
repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest
of Las Vegas, a spokeswoman said. But Yucca
critics say these latest revelations will be the
hardest obstacle for the Energy Department to
overcome.

"I've never seen anything like this," said
Joe Egan, a lawyer who handles Yucca issues for
the state. "I think it is unprecedented in the
nuclear industry and I think it is going to
profoundly affect this project."

The e-mails contain conversations by unnamed
employees from 1998 through 2000 complaining about
problems with water infiltration data, project
funding, work hours and the project's management.
The text implies, and at times clearly states, how
they worked around the project's quality assurance
program.

The quality assurance program was supposed
to guarantee that the science used to ensure that
the nuclear dump doesn't endanger the public is
sound and that the data results can be traced back
and justified.

The e-mails tell a different story, however.


...
"They may be expecting to see something that
at least looks like a scientific notebook
documenting work in progress. I can start making
something up but then the (redacted) projects will
need to go on hold," according to a January 2000
e-mail.


...
"Like you've said all along, YMP (Yucca
Mountain project) has now reached a point where
they need to have certain items work no matter
what, and the infiltration maps are on that list,"
according to a December 1998 e-mail.


...
"Ideally, one would assume that the more
information you provide QA (quality assurance),
the better the QA. In reality, it seems that the
opposite is true. At any rate, its a damn shame to
be wasting time with this sort of thing," from an
April 1999 e-mail.


...
"In the end I keep track of 2 sets of files,
the ones that will keep QA happy and the ones that
were actually used," according to a November 1999
message.


...
"I don't want to be too critical here -- I
could probably tear apart any of our models. Did
somebody say seepage?," an April 1998 Energy
Department memo notes.

The internal documents described how the
employees "fudge" data and reflect a disdain for
the quality assurance program. An August 1999
e-mail in the Energy Department's file says "Piss
on QA."

Egan said he doubts the problems illustrated
in the e-mails are limited only to these
employees.

"If QA is that bad here, it is very likely
that bad elsewhere," Egan said.

Egan said he has seen nuclear power plant
projects stopped because of quality assurance
problems. Yucca critics point to a nuclear power
plant in Ohio that was nearly completed in the
1980s, but because some construction documents
were not in order, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission refused to issue an operating license.
Plant owners refitted it into a coal plant.

"You just can't take safety for granted,"
Egan said. "This is nuclear safety we're talking
about. I think there is a distinct possibility
they will not submit a license application."

The Energy Department announced the
discovery of the e-mails last month. Department
officials discovered them while reviewing
documents to go into the License Support Network,
a database of the repository project's documents
that will be used during the license hearings.

Egan pointed out that the Atomic Safety
Licensing Board's rejection of the department's
first attempt at its document collection, prompted
by complaints from Nevada, led to this discovery.
The first collection, submitted last June, did not
contain volumes of e-mails the state felt needed
to be included but the department said was not
relevant.

Egan did not know specifically what he would
find in the released e-mails, but knew something
in the documents would be useful to the state.

"In litigation e-mails are always the best
source," Egan said. "People are very candid in
e-mails. It looks like they thought they were
deleting them. They attempted to destroy the
evidence."

Several e-mails advise recipients to
"destroy this memo."

Egan and other Nevada officials as well as
Energy and Interior Department officials will
testify at a House Federal Workforce and Agency
Organization subcommittee hearing, chaired by
Porter, on Tuesday.

Porter reviewed unaltered e-mails, the
Interior and Energy departments sent to the
subcommittee early last week but released redacted
versions Friday in advance of the hearing.

Porter complained that neither department
cooperated in giving redacted copies as well,
forcing his committee to go through the documents
and take out information that could compromise
ongoing investigations by the FBI and both
departments' inspector generals.

It is a criminal investigation until the
Justice Department says otherwise. According to
the United States Code, anyone who "knowingly and
willfully falsifies, conceals or covers up by any
trick, scheme or device a material fact ..." from
the government can be fined and serve up to five
years in prison.

The Energy Department said it did not redact
e-mails for public release nor discuss the e-mails
due to the ongoing investigations.

"The department determined it would not be
possible to redact the documents in a way that
would allow us to say with any certainty that
their release would not compromise the ongoing
investigations," Anne Womack Kolton, department
spokeswoman, said.

Porter's press release included an undeleted
internal Energy Department memo that said, "These
e-mails describe deliberate failures to follow
quality assurance procedures and irreproducible
results related to the infiltration of water into
the repository... Depending on the current status
of the work to which he (the author of the
e-mails) contributed, these e-mails may create a
substantial vulnerability for the program."



-------- MILITARY 


-------- biological weapons

Navy Funds Nanotech Biowarfare Agent Detection

AMHERST, Massachusetts, April 4, 2005 (ENS)

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2005/2005-04-04-09.asp#anchor5

A team of chemists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been awarded a three year, $1.3 million grant by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to develop new, more accurate techniques for detecting the presence of harmful agents. 

In their study, professors Richard Vachet, Vincent Rotello and Sankaran “Thai” Thayumanavan will use a combination of nanotechnology and mass spectrometry to isolate and identify minute amounts of two types of hazardous substances: endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and microcystins, water-borne toxins that are considered potential bio-warfare agents. 

“Effective detection of EDCs is important because exposure to these compounds is implicated in breast cancer, weakened immune systems, thyroid dysfunction and reproductive problems in young adults,” says Vachet, the principle investigator on the project. “The Navy needs sensitive ways to check that its waste disposal methods are effective and safe.” 

EDCs, a broad class of chemicals found in pesticides, detergents and other industrial products, are increasingly found in water and cannot be completely removed by wastewater treatment systems on land or aboard ships. 

Rotello and Thayumanavan will design nanoparticles measuring 20 billionths of a meter that are coated with chemicals to capture the target compounds. 

Since the surface area to volume ratio increases as the size of particles decreases, the researchers could increase the capture of the target compounds by as much as 100 times more than currently used methods. “That's a huge jump,” says Vachet. 

Once the compounds are gathered on the nanoparticles, they will be controllably assembled into larger super-structures for analysis by Vachet using mass spectrometry. 

Using a laser, Vachet will release the captured compounds and use a spectrometer to measure their mass and identify the substances with “unprecedented sensitivity,” he says. 

Vachet says much of the grant will support research assistantships for undergrads, grad students and postdoctoral students. The grant will also fund new equipment needed for detection technology as well as specialized chemicals to manufacture the nanoparticles. 


-------- israel / palestine 

Israel plans to dump tons of garbage in West Bank

Mon., April 04, 2005
By David Ratner, 
Haaretz Correspondent

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/560414.html

For the first time since 1967, Israel has decided to transfer garbage beyond the Green Line and dump it in the West Bank.

The project was launched despite international treaties prohibiting an occupying state from making use of occupied territory unless it benefits the local population.

In addition, pollution experts say such use of the Kedumim quarry - located in an old Palestinian quarry between the Kedumim settlement and Nablus - will jeopardize Palestinian water sources.

The dump operators plan to deposit some 10,000 tons of garbage from the Dan and Sharon regions every month in what was known as the Abu Shusha quarry, the largest in the West Bank.

In the last few days trucks and bulldozers have been covering the quarry's floor with brown soil to turn it into a garbage dump. Huge semi-trailer trucks are to bring the Sharon and Dan garbage, which will be amassed at the Hadarim garbage station near Tel Mond prison, to the quarry.

The construction is being carried out by Baron Industrial Park, a company jointly owned by the councils of Kedumim and Karnei Shomron and the Shomron Regional Council. The Hadarim site is operated by D.S.H., a private, Netanya-based garbage disposal company owned by the Valensi family.

The initiative started out as an idea to rehabilitate a 15-dunam plot in the quarry by filling it with building waste, junk and shredded tires. It evolved into a huge project spread over dozens of dunams for household garbage, operated as a private business and expected to yield tens of millions of shekels.

Transferring Israeli garbage to the West Bank will be much cheaper for D.S.H. than taking it to a site in Israel. Local and regional councils pay NIS 90 to NIS 105 for removing a ton of garbage to a transit station in Israel. They pay the dump some NIS 40 per ton for depositing the waste and the transporter gets another NIS 30 per ton.

The profit is NIS 20 to NIS 35 per ton. But burying the garbage in the Kedumim dump, according to an internal Baron Park document, will cost a mere NIS 30 per ton, leaving a greater profit in the hands of the entrepreneurs and operators.

Transferring the Israeli garbage to Samaria will bring the company a profit of NIS 6 per ton, totaling some NIS 60,000 a month.

Israel's construction and operation of the Kedumim dump appears to be in violating the international law, as it involves transferring garbage to territory defined as occupied.

Second, experts warn that the dump would jeopardize the Mountain Aquifer, one of the largest freshwater sources in Israel and Palestine. This is because the dump, which was originally used for "dry waste," will receive and absorb household garbage with organic substances.

It is also unclear whether the procedures for constructing and operating the dump on state land were carried out according to the law, or how bulldozers are working at the site before a final construction permit has been issued.

Why has the civil administration failed to take measures against Baron Industrial Park for allowing D.S.H. - six months ago - to dump hundreds of tons of garbage in the site in violation of the law and before the Environment Ministry and Water Commission approved it?

West Bank sources say the reason for the civil administration's inaction is that everyone is afraid of Daniella Weiss, the council head of Kedumim, one of the owners of Baron Park.

The biggest mystery is how D.S.H., of all companies, was allowed to build and operate a very profitable waste site on state land without any tender being issued, as required by law.

The Kedumim dump will create an absurd situation. The West Bank is filled with illegal Palestinian garbage dumps, which constitute serious environmental hazards and jeopardize the groundwater, because the civil administration refuses to let Palestinians build modern waste disposal sites. The most modern dump being built there - the Kedumim dump - is intended only for garbage from Israel.

"We are dealing with a double crime," says MK Yossi Sarid, former environment minister. "On the one hand, Israel is preventing the Palestinians from making use of the quarry and its resources, and in exchange we are giving them the Sharon's garbage. I believe this is a violation of international treaties."

Iche Meir, the director of the union of Samaria local authorities for the environment, said the work had been done without the union's approval and was illegal.

The civil administration issued an order to stop the work on the site and Baron Park was instructed to move the garbage and start the insulation work on the quarry floor again, as a condition for the Environment Ministry's approval.

Haaretz has learned that although the environment minister has not yet approved the work on the dump, and despite the civil administration's order to stop the construction, the bulldozers are still working on the site.

A civil administration spokesman commented that he was unable to provide the answers to the legal issues, due to lack of time. He said the Kedumim council head gave D.S.H. a permit to operate a garbage dump before the plan was approved by the authorities and this is why the civil administration ordered the work to stop.


-------- latin america

The Cuban gulag

By Nat Hentoff
April 04, 2005 Washington Times

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20050403-093742-9908r.htm
     
    Fidel Castro has never lacked for protectors around the globe when critics call attention to his swaggering contempt for human rights. Once more a galaxy of some 200 artists and intellectuals from a number of countries are petitioning the U.N.'s alleged Human Rights Commission to defeat a resolution by the United States again exposing Mr. Castro's gulags where the International Committee of the Red Cross is forbidden by the dictator to visit. 
 
    Among these defenders of Fidel who claim the United States does not have the moral authority to indict Mr. Castro in view of America's record of treating detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries are actor Danny Glover, novelist Alice Walker and historian Howard Zinn (who last year criticized Fidel for locking up dissenters). Also on board are Nobel Peace Prize laureates Nadine Gordimer of South Africa and Jose Saramago of Portugal. 

    While I, too, have frequently written about how American treatment of detainees violates both our laws and international treaties, that doesn't stop me from praising Amnesty International for its powerful recent report "Cuba: Prisoners of conscience: 71 longing for freedom." Wherever there is injustice, sunlight, as Justice Louis Brandeis once said, should be used as a disinfectant. 

    In Cuba, as Amnesty International emphasizes: "Those who attempt to express views or organize meetings or form organizations that conflict with government policy and/or the aims of the socialist state are likely to be subjected to punitive measures including loss of employment, harassment and intimidation, and often imprisonment." In America, there are many who criticize the Bush administration's war on civil liberties as it continues to fight a war on terrorism; but we are free to speak, publish and organize without fear of a late-night knock on the door by authorities signifying the end of our liberty. 

    During Mr. Castro's March 2003 crackdown on dissentingCuban human-rights workers, journalists and independent librarians (who opened their homes as libraries to books censored in official libraries) they were sentenced to 20 years and more. Described accurately as "prisoners of conscience" by Amnesty International, many of them are held in savage conditions. 

    "Some," reports Amnesty International, are in confinement for infractions of prison rules in "celdas tapiadas, 'walled-in cells'... said to be very small with no light and no furniture; they lack sanitary provisions including drinking water, and are often infested with rats, mice and cockroaches; the prisoners are not allowed out, not allowed visitors and are not allowed to take exercise and sometimes are not permitted to wear any clothing nor given any bedding." In the interest of accuracy, Amnesty International does point out that "during 2004 and early 2005 a total of 19 prisoners of conscience were released, 14 of whom were only granted "licencia extrapenal," or a "conditional release" permitting them to carry out the rest of their sentences outside prison for health reasons, in the knowledge they could be detained again" by their vigilant jailer, Dictator Castro. 

    There are two new prisoners of conscience, notes Amnesty International, including Raul Arencibia Fajardo, 41. His crime? He was a member of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights and the Human Rights' Friends Club. What do the Nobel laureates protecting Fidel think of that? Amnesty is also investigating seven more cases of imprisoned dissidents. 

    Fidel's supporters condemn America's embargo on Cuba, but fail to make a corollary point, which Amnesty International underscores. It "recognizes that the imposition by the United States of a trade embargo undermines Cuba's ability to provide appropriate nutrition and proper medical care to prisoners. However, it has also been reported that in some cases where the prisoners' relatives provided medicines, these were withheld by prison authorities without any reasonable motive." 

    Amnesty International "calls on the Cuban government to order the immediate and unconditional release of all prisoners of conscience, and to ensure that an independent and impartial inquiry is held into allegations of ill-treatment by prison guards and, that the officials implicated in these allegations are immediately suspended from duty and those responsible brought to justice." Don't hold your breath. 

    Maybe, however, if those distinguished Nobel laureates, artists and intellectuals petitioning on behalf of Fidel would also directly make these requests by Amnesty International to the Maximum Leader of Cuba, where, his protectors say, "there is not a single case of missing persons, torture or extra-judicial killing," Fidel might actually show a concern, however fleeting, for human rights. Will they? Maybe Nadine Gordimer and Danny Glover would consider initiating such a petition. The prisoners in the "walled-in cells" would surely be grateful to these internationally renowned protectors of Fidel and allegedly of human rights. 


-------- space

Historic Voyager Mission May Lose Its Funding 

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 4, 2005; Page A08 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23500-2005Apr3?language=printer

In a cost-cutting move prompted by President Bush's moon-Mars initiative, NASA could summarily put an end to Voyager, the legendary 28-year mission that has sent a spacecraft farther from Earth than any object ever made by humans.

The probable October shutdown of a program that currently costs $4.2 million a year has caused consternation among scientists who have shepherded the twin Voyager probes on flybys of four planets and an epic journey to the frontier of interstellar space.

"There are no other plans to reach the edge of the solar system," said Stamatios Krimigis, a lead investigator for the project since before its launch in 1977. "Now we're getting all this new information, and here comes NASA saying, 'We want to pull the plug.' "

NASA officials said the possibility of cutting Voyager and several other long-running missions in the Earth-Sun Exploration Division arose in February, when the Bush administration proposed slashing the division's 2006 budget by nearly one-third -- from $75 million to $53 million.

The administration is rearranging NASA's finances to fund Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration" to the moon and eventually Mars. Cuts in aeronautics funding prompted by the initiative have already provoked an uproar at some NASA centers.

Some members of Congress have also criticized the aeronautics cuts, and last year several joined the public outcry over NASA's decision to cancel a servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, a move apparently unconnected -- at least initially -- to the moon-Mars proposal.

"Voyager is the same [as Hubble] -- one of the classic American contributions to space," said research physicist Louis J. Lanzerotti, who last year led a Hubble study for the National Academies of Science. "Voyager's photographs are all over astronomy textbooks."

Dick Fisher, NASA's deputy director for the Earth-sun division, acknowledged that Voyager's looming demise is a direct result of the new budget. He said the agency based its proposed cuts on a "senior review" by outside experts who in 2003 gave Voyager a low priority among the division's 13 "extended" missions.

"If we use that set of goals, we would be looking at certain missions that would have to be terminated," Fisher said in a telephone interview. "We have to [decide] whether to sweat the rest of the budget to pay for this."

An extended mission begins when a spacecraft has finished its original task but is still able to contribute new science. The best known one underway is that of the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which are exploring the Martian desert a year after the end of their 90-day "design" mission.

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, destined originally for a five-year journey to Jupiter and Saturn, have been extended repeatedly ever since. Most systems are functioning well, and both spacecraft are expected to provide usable data until their plutonium power sources are used up -- probably in 2020.

Fisher said NASA has made no final decision on the cuts but has notified project scientists of its intentions and asked for cost-trimming proposals. He said the agency will make final decisions this month, perhaps by April 15.

The other programs on the block are Ulysses, launched in 1990 to study the sun; Geotail (1992), Wind (1994) and Polar (1996), to trace the interaction between solar events and their effects on Earth; FAST (1996), to study Earth's aurora; and TRACE (1998), to investigate the solar atmosphere and magnetic fields.

The impulse for Voyager arose in the early 1970s because of space geometry, Krimigis said in a telephone interview. Every 175 years, the solar system's four major outer planets -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune -- are aligned in a way that one spacecraft can pass close to all four without carrying extra propellant.

"I think it was the science adviser at the time, and the NASA administrator, who went to visit [then-President Richard] Nixon," Krimigis said, noting that Nixon was lukewarm on the mission. "They told him that the opportunity only arose once every 175 years -- 'and Jefferson missed it.' " Nixon signed on.

The twin probes were launched less than a month apart in the summer of 1977. Each weighed 1,800 pounds and carried 11 cameras and instruments. Computer memory was 80 kilobytes (an entry-level PC today has nearly 10,000 times as much). Electricity came from nuclear-powered generators fueled by the heat of decaying plutonium. Krimigis said they knew from the start that the probes could get a lot farther than Jupiter and Saturn.

And they did. A "Grand Tour" of the four planets ended in 1989. Both spacecraft visited Jupiter and Saturn, after which Voyager 2 went on to the first and, thus far, only flybys of Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 headed toward the frontier of interstellar space, overtaking the earlier Pioneer 11 spacecraft, launched in 1973, whose power supply is dead.

Today Voyager 1, about 9 billion miles from Earth and traveling at 46,000 mph, and Voyager 2, about 7 billion miles away doing 63,000 mph, are flirting with the edge of the solar system, where the sun's magnetic field and the solar wind give way to interstellar wind. 

Virtually nothing is known about this boundary. Data from the spacecraft show periodic jumps in radiation levels -- expected when the solar wind is no longer able to block incoming cosmic rays -- followed by smaller declines.

"By 2006, the spacecraft may have crossed into the outermost layer of solar atmosphere, where the supersonic wind has slowed and heated to a million degrees as it interacts with the interstellar wind," said California Institute of Technology physicist Edward C. Stone, Voyager's chief scientist from the outset. "If Voyager is terminated, we will lose the opportunity to observe [this] interaction."

For Stone, 69, and Krimigis, 66, Voyager has been what Stone described in an e-mail as "the defining event that has shaped my career for the last 30 years," and the Voyagers have amassed accomplishments unsurpassed by any spacecraft. 

The two probes have discovered 22 moons at four planets. Voyager 1 has traveled farther than any other spacecraft, and took the first portrait of the solar system from the outside looking in.

The probes found exploding volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io, huge fault canyons on Uranus's moon Miranda, geysers on Neptune's moon Triton, and flew by Saturn's methane-enshrouded moon Titan almost 14 years before the European Space Agency's Huygens probe landed there this January.

The Voyager mission today has a full-time staff of 10 people, down from 300 at the height of the Grand Tour. The probes' software has no storage capability, so they must transmit their instruments' readings in real time.

The signal takes 12 hours to reach far-away Earth.


-------- us

Army says it's fixing Stryker

Monday, April 4, 2005
MATTHEW COX
Army Times

http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20050404/topstories/119035.shtml

SPRINGFIELD, Va. -- The Army's newest combat vehicle, the Stryker, is already being redesigned because of soldiers' complaints about its safety and performance, military officials said.
Click Here
Several key systems are being redesigned to give future Strykers better mobility, increased protection and greater killing power, officials said.

But many of the changes won't be in place until late 2006 or spring 2007.

The changes stem from soldiers' complaints outlined in a report from the Center for Army Lessons Learned, which focused on the performance of the Army's first Stryker brigade during its maiden combat tour in Iraq.

By 2007, according to the report, Stryker brigades will be able to shoot on the move with greater accuracy day and night. They'll also have armored shields protecting vulnerable hatches and an improved tire inflation system that can better handle the vehicle's weight in combat.

Army officials in the Stryker program said the improvements were in the works long before the report was completed in December 2004, a couple of months after 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, had come home to Fort Lewis, from its yearlong tour.

The Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, released the report to the public Thursday.

"There wasn't a single surprise in there. In every case, they are being worked," said Steven Campbell, Stryker systems coordinator for the assistant Army secretary for acquisitions, logistics and technology.

Eric Miller, senior defense investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, said the report's findings show the Army should have fully tested the Stryker before sending it to a combat zone. Stryker brigades are meant to serve as the model for the Army's effort to create a lighter, more agile force.

The Army has deployed two of the seven Stryker brigades it plans to field by the summer of 2008. With each brigade taking with it more than 300 vehicles, those seven brigades will cost the Army $7.6 billion.

Soldiers in the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, have praised the vehicle during several interviews with the Army Times in Iraq, describing it as the only vehicle they would want to take into combat.

One of the major criticisms in the report deals with slat armor, the cage-like system intended as an interim solution to protect against rocket-propelled grenades. In addition to being too heavy and interfering with certain Stryker features, the report said, the slat armor performance "is less than expected against certain types of rocket-propelled grenades."

Stryker program officials say slat armor, overall, has been highly effective against threats in Iraq. Out of the 345 documented hostile acts against Stryker vehicles and their crews in Iraq to date, there have been 17 deaths, said Lt. Col. Perry Caskey, a Stryker systems officer.

Two of those deaths were caused from shrapnel hitting the soldiers out of the hatches and one from a 190-pound device exploding underneath a Stryker. The details surrounding the other 14 combat-related deaths were not available, Caskey said.

"If you look at the report, it sounds like slat armor is a dog, but you talk to the soldiers, and they love it," Campbell said.

Despite the report's criticisms, it recommends continuing to use slat armor. Stryker officials say improvements are in the works and that it is perfecting armor that will be ready when the fourth Stryker brigade is fielded in December 2006.

Among the other concerns in the report and the military's response:

•  Soldiers standing up in the top hatches are vulnerable to being hit. Some have taken to placing sandbags around the hatches for protection.

The military says it is developing a shield that should first appear on the fourth Stryker brigade. "We are trying to take advantage of better technology to do more than just sand bags," Campbell said.

• Slat armor adds about 5,000 pounds to the Stryker, requiring soldiers to frequently check and increase the tire pressure on the eight-wheeled vehicle. Stryker officials said they knew that tire pressure would have to be increased manually when they issued the slat armor, but there was no time to develop an improved tire inflation system before the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, deployed. An improved inflation system should be fielded with the fourth Stryker brigade.

• The Remote Weapons Station that is designed to let the gunner zero in on a target and fire from inside the Stryker does not always fire accurately when the vehicle is on the move or at night.

The Army has replaced it with a stabilized version so Stryker crews will be able to engage targets accurately while moving up to 25 mph, Campbell said. He added that the goal is to have the changes in place when the fifth Stryker brigade is certified in May 2007.

• Desert heat causes computer systems for communications and intelligence to malfunction because of a lack of air-conditioning. Campbell said the problem is "on the table but not a top priority."

"If it is 130 degrees outside, it doesn't matter which vehicle you have," he said. "Things are going to operate a little slow."

Based at Fort Lewis

The Army's second Stryker brigade -- the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division -- began heading to Iraq in October from its base at Fort Lewis. That unit is the second Stryker brigade to fight in Iraq; both brigades have suffered dozens of casualties. 

----

From Video War Games to Signing Up for Military?
Youths Try Out Gear and Maybe Get Career Ideas at an Annual High School Cadet Drill Contest

Monday, April 4, 2005
by Jason Felch
Los Angeles Times

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0404-05.htm

Tim Casper, a crew cut-sporting 15-year-old from Victorville, peered into the computer monitor and hunched slightly as he maneuvered the video game's soldier into a flanking position.

Using a keyboard, Casper ordered the soldier to lob a grenade, then slap a new magazine into his assault rifle. Creeping past the burned-out shell of a Humvee, the soldier fired a quick burst into the back of what looked like the enemy.

"That's me, dude," said Jeremy Donnelly, 15, looking up from a video screen across from Casper.

The classmates, both Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets at Victor Valley High School, were playing "America's Army," a realistic, multiplayer combat video game designed by the Army as a recruiting tool.

They were among about 2,000 teenage cadets from 40 local and national high schools who gathered in El Segundo on Saturday to show off their skills in the seventh annual West Coast National JROTC Drill Competition.

Students in crisp dress uniforms performed their drills with straight backs and steeled looks of determination, the heels of their polished shoes clicking on concrete.

Others practiced their flying skills in a Navy flight simulator or peered through infrared sights mounted on military assault rifles.

Across the country, about 3,000 JROTC units such as these teach self-discipline and leadership skills. They are not geared explicitly to recruiting students into the military, officials said. But amid recent military recruiting shortfalls, finding new ways to attract teenagers has become a priority, and recruiters from all branches of the military were out in force.

"It's a lot more difficult to find the best candidates because you're recruiting at a time of war," said Maj. Martin Casado. He is commanding officer of the Los Angeles Marine Corps recruiting station, which reaches from San Luis Obispo to Redondo Beach.

Events like this one, held by Raytheon, one of the nation's largest defense contractors, help the effort, recruiters say.

On display for the hundreds of teenagers, parents, children and veterans who turned out were the tools of war. "Can I pull the plug," a small boy asked his father, clutching a "baseball" grenade from the Vietnam era.

Across the lot, a teenager peered into the steel belly of an M1A1 Abrams tank and said to his friends: "That thing makes me want to join the Army."

"I want my son to go into the military," said Marie Calleja, watching closely as her 9-year-old, Charles, struggled to bring the telescopic sight of an AR-15 assault rifle to his eye. "We don't want him to go over there and get killed, but the percentages are pretty small."

Calleja's husband, Charlie, a Vietnam veteran, agreed. "JROTC programs would be really beneficial for the whole country," he said. "The program will teach them respect and self-discipline. These kids are running wild these days."

Others are concerned about the message the program sends to children with few other opportunities.

"These events are often done in areas where students feel like they have no other options," said Andy Griggs, a member of the Coalition Against Militarism In Our Schools, a Los Angeles group opposed to the recruitment efforts. Griggs said in a phone interview that military recruiters often outnumber college recruiters at poorer schools in Los Angeles.

"It costs the military $18,000 per year to recruit one high school student," he added. "In California, we spend $6,000 a year to educate these students."

For Tim Casper and Jeremy Donnelly, the Army's video simulation of combat is as close as they can get to the real thing, for the moment.

"I want to join either the Marines or the Air Force," Casper said. "I kind of wish I was old enough to be over there now. It's a good cause. The Iraqis are trying to threaten us."

Donnelly, still enthralled by the video game, disagreed without looking up. "I don't think the main threat is Iraqis. I think it's anyone who threatens our freedom."

Turning to Casper, he barked: "Secure that area for me." 


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE



-------- prisons / prisoners

Attorney General Told to Investigate Prison Computer Recycling

WASHINGTON, DC, April 4, 2005 (ENS)

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2005/2005-04-04-09.asp#anchor2

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been directed to investigate a whistleblower complaint that a prison computer recycling operation is exposing prison staff and inmates to harmful levels of toxic materials, according to a letter from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel released Thursday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). 

The computer recycling at issue is conducted by inmate workers at the maximum-security federal penitentiary at Atwater, near Merced, California and at six other federal prisons. 

Atwater has operated a computer recycling plant since 2002 but the operation has been plagued by safety problems and shutdowns. 

The Office of Special Counsel directed Attorney General Gonzales to conduct an investigation based on the complaint of Atwater's Safety Manager Leroy Smith, a 13 year Federal Bureau of Prisons employee with a spotless record and past performance awards. 

Smith filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) and sought whistleblower redress with the Office of Special Counsel. 

Smith said that inmates using hammers break computer terminals down to components parts for recycling. Particles of heavy metals, such as lead, cadmium, barium and beryllium, are released when inmate workers break the glass cathode ray tubes during shipping and disassembling. Containment systems used by the prison for dust particles are not effective. 

The factory at Atwater provides an open food service in the contaminated work areas, which Smith said is a hazard to inmate workers and staff. 

Smith's complaint names Federal Prison Industries, Inc. (UNICOR), and alleges that UNICOR and Atwater employees abused their authority, by ordering reactivition of operations in the computer recycling facility without implementation of the safety measures Smith prescribed and without his written authorization. 

On Tuesday, more than two months after Smith’s complaint, OSHA entered the Atwater prison to conduct its required inspection. Contrary to its own rules, OSHA negotiated a pre-scheduled time for its inspection with prison authorities. 

The Gonzales report to the Office of Special Counsel was due on February 28, 2005. As the whistleblower, Smith has a right to see and comment upon the report before the Office of the Special Counsel decides whether more investigation is needed, and before its release to the public. 

“Wipe samples taken off skin, clothing, floors and work surfaces have shown dangerous levels of hazardous dust,” said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, 

“While the inmates are not going anywhere, staff who go home with toxic dust on their clothing risk spreading contamination to their families,” Ruch warned. 

San Francisco attorney Mary Dryovage, who is representing Smith in his whistleblower action, said, “It is a shame that conscientious public servants have to run a gauntlet of retaliation just to do their jobs.” 

The Federal Bureau of Prisons is an agency under the U.S. Department of Justice, headed by the new U.S. Attorney General and former White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales. In his new position, Gonzales oversees one of the largest prison systems in the world. 

Read the Special Counsel’s order for Department of Justice review at: http://www.peer.org/docs/ca/05_31_3_smith.pdf 

For more on the OSHA complaint filed by the prison safety staff see: http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=490 


-------- ENERGY 


-------- alternative energy

New Jersey Wind Panel Spinning Its Wheels, Enviros Warn

TRENTON, New Jersey, April 4, 2005 (ENS)

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2005/2005-04-04-09.asp#anchor3

New Jersey’s largest environmental groups convened Thursday to critique the wide holes in the current plans for the Blue Ribbon Panel on Offshore Wind, and offer up a supplemental plan for an open, unbiased and substantive approach to New Jersey’s energy future. 

The organizations called for a rigorous, policy-based process to provide the energy our economy needs without harming New Jersey’s environment. 

“Under their current plan, the goal of the Panel - to develop the policies that will govern offshore wind - will not be met in adequate time," said Emily Rusch, energy advocate for New Jersey Public Interest Group. "Knowing our state’s desperate need to reduce air pollution and retire our aging nuclear plants, it is inexcusable not to immediately begin crafting the policies that will best guide its development.” 

On December 23, 2004, Acting Governor Richard Codey signed Executive Order #12, creating a nine member Blue Ribbon Panel on Development of Wind Turbine Facilities in Coastal Waters, representing environmental, academic, tourism and local government interests. 

The Panel is charged with researching the feasibility of offshore wind turbine facilities as an alternate energy source for New Jersey. The research will include a cost benefit analysis; a comparison to other electric power sources such as fossil, nuclear and renewable fuels; and an assessment of the State's long-term electricity needs. 

The executive order prohibits funding and permitting of any offshore windmill projects during the panel’s 15 month study. The Panel will submit policy recommendations to the Governor by March 2006. 

New Jersey currently depends on fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and oil, and nuclear power to meet most of the state's energy needs. The environmental groups point out that burning fossil fuels results in high levels of asthma attacks and other illnesses from air pollution, acid rain threatening ecosystems in the Highlands, and rising sea levels along the New Jersey shore. 

New Jersey’s nuclear power plants are growing older, posing safety risks to New Jersey communities. Despite our reliance on unsustainable sources, our energy use is predicted to increase by 14 percent over the next decade. 

"We are deeply troubled that they have turned this process into a charade where their minds are made up and they do not want to have a fair a open process. The ones who will suffer from this poor process will be New Jersey and its environment," said Jeff Tittel, Director of the Sierra Club. 

In three months, the Panel has only had one meeting, the group say. 

While they have scheduled public meetings to discuss the concept of offshore wind, they have overlooked their main task: the nuts and bolts of where, when, and how offshore wind could and should be built. No meetings have been scheduled to discuss the details of permitting wind power, and it is unclear whether agency officials or the panel members themselves will develop those guidelines, and if other experts and stakeholders will be at the table. 

The environmental organizations called upon the Panel to start an open, public process with experts to immediately begin to flesh out the appropriate policies to guide the siting and development of offshore wind, and even offered suggestions for useful experts and resources. 

The organizations stressed the timeline of the moratorium, which will be lifted next March, and highlighted that the panel should be working to present policies this summer, so that any regulations for offshore wind are in place by March. Under that timeline, technical meetings with outside stakeholders and experts should begin without delay. 

“As the Garden State and a coastal state on the front lines of global warming, New Jersey should not be putting up unnecessary road blocks for clean renewable energy like offshore wind. We need a public process to develop the needed policies, and the Panel’s current plan does not get us there,” said David Pringle, Campaign Director for New Jersey Environmental Federation. 

NJPIRG recently completed a report, The Environmental Case for Wind Power in New Jersey, which makes a comparison between wind energy and New Jersey’s current energy sources. The report makes several recommendations for an environmental permitting process for wind development on land that could also be relevant to offshore development. The report can be found online at: http://www.njpirg.org 


-------- OTHER


-------- environment

Oil Platforms May Be Used for Fish Farms

April 04, 2005 
By Cain Burdeau, 
Associated Press

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=7458

NEW ORLEANS — Thousands of oil and natural gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico could be converted into deep-sea fish farms raising red snapper, mahi mahi, yellow fin tuna and flounder, under a plan backed by the Bush administration.

For years, marine biologists and oil companies have experimented using the giant platforms as bases for mariculture, but commercial use of the platforms as fish farms never got off the ground because of the federal government's reluctance to open up the oceans to farming.

Yet in December, President Bush proposed making it easier to launch fish farms off the nation's coasts. That could be done by resolving a "confounding array of regulatory and legal obstacles," the White House said.

Fish farming in the rough-and-tumble ocean, done by enclosing thousands of fish in submerged pens serviced by scuba divers, is limited commercially to waters within state jurisdiction, where permits have tended to be easier to get. Moi is grown in Hawaii, and cobia is farmed near Puerto Rico. Salmon farming is common, but it takes place mostly in the calm waters of fjords and bays.

But, fish farmers say, the future is rosy and fast-approaching.

"In Asia, they're starting to creep off into the open waters; there's a lot of talk of doing it in Ireland. In the Mediterranean, they are now looking at moving out into open waters and experimenting with new cages," said Richard Langan, who heads the University of New Hampshire's Open Ocean Aquaculture program. He is experimenting with a variety of species -- cod, Atlantic halibut, haddock, summer flounder and mussels.

With seafood now accounting for about $7 billion in the nation's foreign trade deficit, advocates of deep-sea farming say mariculture would bolster American seafood production and provide much-needed employment to coastal communities harmed by the eclipse of traditional fishing.

"Aquaculture is an issue that is here, and now we're already in the middle of it and how is the U.S. going to play in the game?" said Michael Rubino, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's aquaculture coordinator. "It's already being done in a big way in Korea, Taiwan and China. In the U.S., we'd like to start small, prove the concept and learn by doing."

The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy recommended in its report last year to move forward with offshore aquaculture, but to hold it to high environmental standards. In a response to the commission's report, Bush in his "Ocean Action Plan" listed offshore farming legislation as a priority this year.

The new frontier is federal waters, Rubino said. "There's no good framework in terms of where this should be done, how it should be done, how the rules of the game should be applied."

The Gulf could be just the place where such a framework is developed.

Oil and gas platforms function as barn-like bases: They're big enough to store feed, their deck winches and cranes can lift and drop pens in and out of the water and, if needed, fish farmers can spend the night onboard.

And unlike many in Florida and California, the people along the coasts of Louisiana and Texas by and large welcome the offshore industry and its array of spindly legged and blinking rigs and platforms.

"The Gulf has tremendous potential," said Granvil Treece, an aquaculture specialist at the Texas Sea Grant. "There's been a logjam so far, and that's been because of permitting mostly."

There are an estimated 3,500 idle platforms in the Gulf -- and each one of them could be a candidate for a new lease on life as a fish farm.

"The oil companies are looking for a way of leaving platforms in place and delaying the disassembly and expensive process of dismantling and removing a platform," said George Chamberlain, president of the St. Louis-based Global Aquaculture Alliance. It costs about $2 million to bring a platform ashore, Treece said, but another option, the "Rigs-to-Reefs" program converting a platform into an artificial reef, costs about $800,000. Chamberlain said the cost of production in fish farming continues to decline.

So far farming from the Gulf's platforms has only been experimental. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, for example, Occidental Petroleum Corp. teamed up with Texas Sea Grant scientists to grow redfish. Feeding the penned fish brought out some ingenious ideas and presented some problems.

Project officials learned computers could be used to open feed gates. With so many platforms far out in the Gulf a boat can't go out every day to unload fish feed as farmers do with salmon in the fjords of Scandinavia and North America.

"We dumped feed amounts in depending on how many fish were in the pens and what weight we wanted to grow them to," said Russell Miget, a Texas Sea Grant fisheries specialist who worked on the project.

Severe storms damaged some pens and fish got out. And Treece said studies show that the ocean-raised redfish worked out to cost a whopping $22 a pound, whereas redfish sold for $3.50 a pound at market. Also, just to run the platform's navigational lights and fight off corrosion cost about $50,000 a year, he said.

Miget remembered standing on a platform with an Occidental representative contemplating the future of fish farming. Responding to a question, Miget estimated that in ideal conditions, the platform could gross $6 million a year.

"The Occidental employee turned to me and said: 'We produce $6 million in gas every month off this platform,'" Miget said. "That put it in perspective."

While advocates believe it could work and be profitable, it's less sure whether any legislation Bush proposes will get the support of environmentalists.

Critics worry about turning the nation's oceans into the equivalent of ugly, dirty feedlots -- but for fish instead of cattle.

"It's much like chickens or hogs or other confined feeding operations on land and putting them in the ocean," said Roger Rufe, president of The Ocean Conservancy. "There are considerable issues with that, pollution issues."

Not to worry, Treece said, who believes the Gulf's strong currents "should take care of that," he said. "The solution to pollution is dilution, and that's what you got out here -- lots of dilution."

"We've found environmental impacts to be relatively minor," Rubino said. "You don't want to crowd these together and stick them on top of coral reefs."

He added: "This is a big coastline. We're not needing a lot of space."

Critics also question whether the government should designate sections of the ocean for farming and, in effect, privatize a public resource.

Another concern: Hatchery-raised fish could be put out in open-water farms, escape into the wild and corrupt wild populations' genetic pools.

Alaskan fishermen, for example, warn that their wild stocks are being infiltrated by Atlantic salmon bred in fish farms.

"The potential for Atlantic salmon to compete with our natural wild salmon or to spread diseases is an ongoing concern and part of the reason the United Fishermen of Alaska opposes finfish farming," said that group's executive director, Mark Vinsel.

The efficiency of fish farming is another question. Fish farmers have been known to feed eight pounds of fish for every pound of fish they raise, said Andy Rosenberg, a U.S. Ocean Commission member and former deputy director of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Fish farming, he said, "has the potential to produce high-quality seafood, but you need to do it carefully and it needs to be managed in a comprehensive way."


-------- imf / world bank / wto (economics)

WWF Assails World Bank Dam Project in Laos

SWITZERLAND: April 4, 2005
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30201/story.htm

GENEVA - The World Wide Fund (WWF) on Friday slammed the World Bank's backing of a $1.2 billion hydroelectric dam in Laos, saying the controversial project would disrupt farming and fishing.

In a statement, the global conservation group also charged that the World Bank had "never provided a convincing and rational explanation of the need for the additional electricity produced" and earmarked for Thailand.

On Thursday, the bank's board agreed to provide as much as $270 million in funding and risk guarantees for the Nam Theun 2 hydroelectric dam being built by Electricite de France and two Thai companies in cooperation with the Communist-run government.

"WWF is particularly concerned that the NT2 dam, which involves a major diversion of water from the Nam Theun River to the Xe Bang Fai River, will disrupt the farming and fishing activities of up to 130,000 people," it said.

It called for thorough assessment of hydropower projects in the Mekong basin, which has more than 1,300 species of fish, making it a "biodiversity hotspot" and major food source for 50 million people.

Wild elephants, already endangered, will be threatened by the flooding of 40 percent of the Nakai Plateau in southern Laos, according to the Swiss-based WWF.

"We fear that this dam rather than reducing poverty will only increase human misery and environmental degradation," said Ute Collier of WWF's dams and water infrastructure programme.

Sales to neighbouring Thailand of 95 percent of the power that the dam will generate will be a key income source for landlocked Laos, a country of 5.6 million people with per capita annual income of just $320, according to the World Bank.

But WWF said that electricity supply in Thailand currently outstripped demand and even with significantly higher demand over the next decade, additional needs could be met more sustainably through energy efficiency measures and small-scale renewable energy projects.

The dam is expected to generate 1,070 megawatts of power beginning in 2010. 



-------- ACTIVISTS

Student Protest Stops CIA at NYU

April 4, 2005 antiwar.com

http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=5443

A planned CIA recruiting event at New York University (NYU) was canceled after the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN) called a protest demanding the CIA abandon its recruiting program at NYU. Twenty hours before the recruiting event was scheduled to begin, its organizers sent an e-mail to all those who had registered, headlined, "The CIA Speaker Event scheduled for Thursday, March 31 @6PM has been CANCELED due to the possibility of a protest by the Campus Antiwar Network."

The event – which was scheduled to include speakers from the CIA, a dinner, and a raffle for prizes such as an iPod Shuffle – was organized by students in an NYU marketing class whose classwork for the semester is to market the CIA to their peers at NYU. They will be graded on their efforts; the CIA, which provided them a $2,500 budget for their project, retains ownership of the marketing campaign they create. The CIA hired the company EdVenture Partners to broker this arrangement.

This alliance between the university and the CIA to market CIA employment on campus is taking place at only two universities this semester: NYU and the University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA). Students at both schools have rallied in protest against the program.

"We believe they're testing the waters to see how brazenly they can recruit on campuses without encountering student opposition, before spreading programs like this to colleges across the country," said Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a senior at NYU and member of the Campus Antiwar Network. "Forcing them to cancel their big speaking event is a huge victory. It showed them they can't market an agency that supports torture and murder around the world without a fight."

After the event was canceled, about 20 students rallied in celebration outside the building where it was scheduled to have been held, passing out fact sheets about the CIA's history of assassination attempts and support for brutal dictatorships. Ten students went to challenge the event's organizers to a public debate on campus about the CIA – an offer that was declined.

"Their marketing campaign says they want to 'dispel the myths' about the CIA," said David Florey, a senior at NYU and member of the Campus Antiwar Network. "But they refused our offer to debate. They can't dispel the reality of the CIA's own practices. It's not a myth that the CIA organized the program in Afghanistan that trained Osama bin Laden."

A National Movement

NYU's protest comes in the context of a counter-recruitment movement that has swept colleges and high schools across the country. Students at schools ranging from Seattle Central Community College and San Francisco State University on the West Coast, to City College New York and and Southern Connecticut State University on the East Coast, have chased military recruiters off their campus this school year.

Expensive private colleges like NYU don't get the same kinds of military recruiters. The only recruiters NYU has seen this year came from the Judge Advocate General (the legal arm of the military), which faced protest from NYU students opposed to the discriminatory Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy and the prosecution of war resisters. But students at NYU see their CIA Off Campus campaign as a contribution to the national counter-recruitment movement.

"We know that because of the general affluence of the students at NYU, direct military recruitment will never be as fruitful as the government would hope, but in the past few months, we've seen a significant increase in the presence of other forms of recruitment for militaristic operations," said Sam Pipp, a sophomore at NYU and member of the Campus Antiwar Network. "This CIA recruitment in the guise of a class represents a campaign of sorts on the part of the government to pull as many as they can into the military machine."

"We're here as part of a growing counter-recruitment movement that has the potential to stop Bush's ability to carry out his agenda of war and terror," said Leia Petty, a member of the Campus Antiwar Network, at the protest. "We're here to say that torture and terror are not career opportunities, and we don't intend to back down until the CIA drops all efforts to recruit at NYU."

Just the Beginning

Two days before NYU's protest, students at UTPA had protested the CIA recruiting event at their campus, where the CIA is explicitly marketing itself as an employer of choice for Latinos. "I think the students in the marketing class are naive to think they're offering any opportunity to Hispanics," said Samantha Garcia, president of Students for Peace and Justice and the University Socialist Forum at UTPA, two groups that protested the CIA. Garcia noted the CIA's history of involvement in Latin America, such as its involvement in the overthrow of Chile's left-wing leader Salvador Allende and its support of Nicaragua's Contras.

At both schools, students plan to keep fighting the CIA presence and opposing the U.S. occupation in Iraq, which they see as intimately connected. "Bush says we're bringing democracy to Iraq," Wrigley-Field said. "But the history of the CIA shows the U.S. is the last country that can bring democracy anywhere."

----

A final plea for world peace

Natasha Bita and Peter Wilson
April 04, 2005 The Australian

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12746150%255E2703,00.html

POPE John Paul II made a final plea for peace last night, in a posthumous message he had prepared for the Sunday mass that turned into a moving farewell by 130,000 pilgrims huddled in St Peter's Square.

"To humanity, which at times seems lost and dominated by the power of evil, of egoism and of fear, the Lord rises again to offer the gift of his love that forgives, reconciles and reopens the soul to hope," said his message, read by Vatican interior minister Archbishop Leonardo Sandri. "It is a love that changes the heart and bestows peace. How much the world needs to comprehend and embrace the divine mercy." 

The Pope was mourned by thousands of pilgrims who gathered in St Peter's Square last night during the eucharist mass – the first since his death. 

His head resting on golden pillows, the Pope's red-gowned body lay in state in a room of the papal palace, where scarlet-capped cardinals, bishops, political leaders and diplomats filed past and knelt in homage. 

"Our souls are shaken by the painful fact that our father and shepherd, John Paul II, has left us," Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Angelo Sodano told mourners, who wept and waved banners proclaiming "Thank you", "Goodbye" and "You will always be with us". 

Earlier, it was one big slow bell that let the people of Rome know John Paul II had finally gone. 

High in the facade of St Peter's Basilica, the old bell began clanging every three or four seconds, its message rolling through the clear Roman night over the Tiber River into central Rome – along quiet streets and into hundreds of restaurants and hotels and thousands of apartments. 

The Vatican press office had already begun alerting the news agencies by email and text messages that the Pope had died, but the people of Rome got their news from the big, slow clanging of that centuries-old bell. 

Everybody knew what it meant, and the streets heading to the Vatican quickly filled with people walking, driving or weaving through the instant traffic jams on motor scooters. 

Something like 40,000 people had already been in that huge square before the Pope died. The crowd had built up during the final three-day death-watch. 

At 8pm, when the Pope's closest aides gathered around his bed for what would be his final mass, they could hear the singing and praying of the rosary outside his third-floor window. 

A Vatican statement said later that John Paul II's final hours were marked by the uninterrupted prayer of all those who were assisting him in his pious death and by the choral participation in prayer of the thousands of faithful who had been gathered in St Peter's Square. 

Kneeling and sitting around the Pope's bed were the people who were the closest thing he had to a family since his own parents, brother and sister all died during his youth. 

His two secretaries, both Polish priests, two other Polish clerics, a Ukrainian cardinal, and the four Polish nurses who have cared for him for many years, shared John Paul II's final moments.

An Italian medical team of three doctors and two nurses was also in the room as the Pope's eastern European colleagues gave him the last rites and conducted the mass. For the first time, he did not even try to co-celebrate the service but his Polish secretaries did not let his less intimate colleagues, the Vatican's top office-holders, into the room until he had died. 

Leonardo Sandri, the Argentinian archbishop who is Vatican undersecretary of state, appeared on the steps of St Peter's about 10pm to say the Pope had died. 

The news subdued the crowd, but after a minute or so they responded with a round of applause, an Italian custom for honouring the life of somebody who has died. 

As the bell tolled, there was some quiet sobbing but no wailing or hysterics. This was not a death that could have taken anybody by surprise, and there was a sense of relief mixed with the quiet sadness. 

The crowd drawn by the bell, estimated by the police to number 130,000, joined in silence as they entered the huge cobbled square, and the loudest noise between the tones of the bell was the babbling of two beautiful marble fountains in the clear night. Even when the official band of about 20 clerics and nuns who stood in a tight bunch on the immense steps of the Basilica began leading the crowd in prayers, the crowd muttered gently in response. 

By 10.40pm, the square was full and police made the latecomers stand in surrounding streets, with four large screens in the square broadcasting close-ups of the clerics leading the prayers. 

Thousands stood staring at the Pope's window, which would remain lit all night, or offered comfort to friends. "This is a blow. He is family, like a father," said Cristiana Piovanelli, a 43-year-old bank worker. "I know it's a blessing for him, but it's so hard for us to lose him." 

Hundreds carried candles, flowers or prayer cards. Near the obelisk in the centre of the square, a group of 16 teenage German girls knelt in a circle around a cross of candles. 

"It's touching how everybody wants to share their grief," said Petra Schirdman, a German visitor amazed by the diversity of the people in the square. Twenty-year-olds with pierced noses and tears in their eyes stood quietly beside elderly Roman couples, Asian nuns and family groups. "They all just want to be together and have this spiritual moment." 

When the prayers stopped at 11.10pm, there were more rounds of applause. 

By 2am, most of the older devotees had drifted off, leaving the square to teenagers who sang quietly as they and continued their vigil. A few hundred were still there at dawn as workers prepared the square for gatherings over the next two or three weeks, which should be some of the biggest in Rome's history. 

--------

Free Mordechai Vanunu - Info & Action Alert #54 - April 4, 2005

>From the U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu
http://www.vanunu.com and http://www.nonviolence.org/vanunu/ 

** PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY TO SYMPATHETIC LISTS **

1)  INITIAL COURT HEARING POSTPONED
2)   International Call-In Day TODAY
3)  U.S. says Israel must give up nukes (Ha'aretz)

=======
1) INITIAL COURT HEARING POSTPONED

Note from Mordechai Vanunu:
Just to let you know the court hearing will be on Apr'12th, 15:00.court in the Russian compound.

The Israel democracy, justice saga will continue in the wrong direction. Israel spies yet don't have the courage to admit their very stupid mistake in this  case. I hope they will wake up before Apr' 21st and let me go.
                
[The preliminary hearing was originally scheduled for April 6.]

=======
2) INTERNATIONAL CALL-IN DAYS 

TO CALL FOR FULL FREEDOM FOR MORDECHAI VANUNU

REMINDER:  MONDAY, APRIL 4 - CALL, FAX OR EMAIL THE ISRAELI 
AMBASSADOR IN YOUR COUNTRY

Join in sending a flurry of email, faxes and phone calls to the Israeli Ambassador in your country on the following Mondays, leading up to the one year review of post-prison restrictions that have prevented nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu from leaving Israel:
April 4 and April 18 - to tell Israel not to renew the restrictions and to let Mordechai Vanunu go.

ESPECIALLY IN LIGHT OF THE NEW CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST MORDECHAI VANUNU ON MARCH 17, PLEASE JOIN IN PROTEST OF HIS CONTINUED PERSECUTION 

The severe restrictions placed on Mordechai Vanunu upon his release from prison April 21, 2004 are a grave injustice which keep Vanunu from truly being free after serving his full 18 year sentence in Ashkelon Prison.  The restrictions violate Vanunu's freedom of speech and association, and forbid him from leaving Israel. 
  
These March 17 indictments, just a month before Vanunu's restrictions are to 
be reviewed, are a further outrage.  We need to tell  Israel to stop punishing him, dismiss these indictments, lift the restrictions and let him go.

Visit http://mfa.gov.il/mfm or
http://www.embassyworld.com/embassy/israel1.html to find the contact information for Israeli Embassies in your country.

For those in the U.S., information for Israeli Embassy in D.C.:

Daniel Ayalon, Ambassador of Israel
3514 International Drive NW
Washington, DC 20008 US
Phone: 202-364-5500
Fax: 202-364-5607
Email: ambassador_sec@israelemb.org

For more information about the Vanunu case, see http://www.vanunu.com



--------

New Zealand: CALL OUT FOR VISUAL EVIDENCE OF POLICE TACTICS OF CONTROL. 

Global Peace And Justice Auckland Newsletter #86
Monday, 4 April 2005, 11:43 am

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0504/S00034.htm

In the wake of recent events, there has been a call to assemble visual evidence documenting police attitudes towards demonstrators and activists. The material we're looking for can cover a broad range of situations that fit within the general theme. If required, your anonymity can be assured. If you have any photographs and moving image evidence of "over-zealous" etc. police actions against activists and members of the public in general, could you please contact me (and send photographs to): Email: bern@ihug.co.nz Tel: 09 3765994 Cell: 021 104 5624. Tapes (clearly labelled with your return address) can be sent to: Geraldene Peters, P.O. Box 6117 , Wellesley Street, Auckland 1036. Alternatively, if you're in Auckland we can try to arrange a pick-up.



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