NucNews - May 16, 2005



-------- NUCLEAR 

Letting Nukes Happen

May 16, 2005 NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/opinion/16mon1.html?pagewanted=print

Step by step North Korea and Iran are advancing their capability to build nuclear weapons, and Washington appears to have no clear strategy for stopping them. Given how far along both countries already are in their nuclear programs, neither can any longer simply be coerced into turning back. The only strategy with any real chance of success would offer strong positive inducements for abandoning nuclear weapons development backed up by universally agreed threats of total economic and political isolation if bomb work continued. Perversely, this is the one formula that the Bush administration has refused to seriously consider.

Other options range from too little to impossible. Europe is right to warn Tehran that any fresh preparations for uranium enrichment could bring the Iranian issue before the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions. But those sanctions might be impossible to enforce without an unlikely degree of cooperation from Russia and China. Besides, the real problem is not finding a means to punish Iran, but persuading it to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions. When it comes to North Korea, the prospects are even bleaker now that China has announced that it is unwilling to apply economic or political sanctions to pressure North Korea into halting its nuclear weapons programs. China, as the North's main energy supplier and only ally, is the one country capable of applying effective pressure on Kim Jong Il. That makes Washington's latest threats of punitive action sound empty.

Despite all the dark hints of "surgical" American air strikes against either North Korea, Iran or both, there is actually little the United States can do militarily. Halfway measures like air strikes that left the present regimes smarting but still in charge would invite devastating retaliation. North Korean artillery could devastate South Korea's densely populated capital, Seoul, just across the border. Pro-Iranian, armed Shiite groups in Iraq and Afghanistan could strike at American troops in both of those countries. And even if the Bush administration convinced itself once again that a regime-changing knockout punch was conceivable, such an assault would be beyond the reach of the American military so long as the bulk of United States ground forces remain bogged down in Iraq.

The White House is stuck with a reality it is unwilling to deal with because it finds unappetizing any of the alternatives that might work. For North Korea, that would mean offering inducements including guarantees against United States attack, a clear path to American diplomatic recognition and generous aid. For Iran the package would have to include security assurances from Washington, guarantees of internationally safeguarded reactor fuel and expanded trade and investment.

Nobody likes rewarding tyrants and nuclear outlaws. But refusing to deal with them, or standing aside while other countries do all the offering, is not a very serious solution to what is now an alarmingly serious problem. The way things are now headed, it is only a matter of time before both North Korea and Iran become full-fledged nuclear weapons states. It's time to try a different approach.



-------- accidents and safety

Sharper sense of nuclear safety

The Japan Times: May 16, 2005

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?ed20050516a1.htm

The latest annual report from Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission is a troubling reminder that accident prevention remains a key priority for the nation's nuclear power industry. The head of the commission acknowledges in the foreword that last August's tragedy in Mihama, Fukui Prefecture -- Japan's deadliest nuclear accident ever -- could have been prevented if sufficient precautions had been taken.

The accident, which killed five workers and injured six others, involved the rupture of a water pipe in one of the reactors of Kansai Electric Power Co. The affected workers were heavily exposed to superheated steam bursting from the broken section of pipe. In September 1999, two workers died from radiation exposure at a uranium-purification facility in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture.

The basic assumption is that people are liable to make mistakes. To make up for human shortcomings, a wide array of safety technologies have been developed. But believing that technologies can eliminate all accidents once and for all is wishful thinking. In the nuclear industry, at least in its present stages of development, there is no such thing as absolute safety.

According to the white paper, as many as 24 accidents and disorders, including minor ones, occurred in 2004. The number might have been reduced if safety laws and regulations had been followed more strictly. But, again, these rules cannot provide absolute guarantees of safety. They do not always apply to specific risks and dangers that may arise in the course of day-to-day operations.

That is why it is absolutely necessary to raise the level of safety awareness among those involved, particularly frontline managers and workers. Experience shows clearly, and tragically, that lapses in mental alertness and attitude toward safety can lead to major accidents.

In fact, as the commission's chairman admits, negligence was the underlying factor in the Mihama accident. The pipe corrosion that directly caused its rupture was preventable not only because it was technically possible to stop the thinning of the pipe wall, but also because some of the people involved knew where it would occur yet kept that knowledge to themselves.

The Mihama tragedy has focused attention on another critical problem: the aging of nuclear plants. The Mihama reactor involved had gone into operation 27 years earlier. That's not "old" by industry standards, but the steady corrosion of the pipe -- wall thickness in the affected area was said to be as thin as paper -- demonstrated that the pipe was aging steadily.

At present, 53 reactors are in operation across the country. A number of them are reportedly more than 30 years old, the oldest being 35. Current operation plans put the service life at 40 years or more. This means that many reactors will top 30 years old in the next decade, which is considered "advanced in age."

As the report points out, the aging problem is compounded by the fact that it develops very slowly. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to detect early signs of aging. If these signs are overlooked, they may lead eventually to disaster, as happened in the Mihama No. 3 reactor.

The aging process involves a complex combination of factors, including heat, water flows, vibrations and radiation. Because of this, experts say, the process is likely to take various -- and possibly unpredictable -- forms, depending on how these factors interact. In this respect, experience at older nuclear plants overseas should provide useful lessons.

Notably, the white paper takes up a question that has not received much attention in the past: how to ensure safety when obsolescent nuclear facilities are dismantled. A case in point is the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute's experimental power reactor, which, after 13 years of operation, was scrapped over a period of 10 years beginning in 1986. Its radioactive waste was also disposed of.

The fact is that current safety regulations focus on the construction and operation of nuclear facilities, but not on their dismantlement. Rightly, a bill to update the law governing nuclear reactors is now being discussed in the Diet. It responds to a commission report calling for a review of safety rules for the disassembly of nuclear facilities.

As nuclear safety goes, experience still seems lacking in many respects, despite decades of operation. Indeed, the poor safety record is a constant wake-up call to the nuclear industry as well as the government. Their priority task, now and in the future, is to assure the safety of nuclear plants and facilities beyond any reasonable doubt.



-------- britain

 Poll shows opposition to nuclear power

Monday, 16 May, 2005 (BBC)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4552177.stm

More than half of people (52%) questioned for a poll commissioned by Newsnight believe it is wrong for the government to consider nuclear power as an energy source for the future.

The results of the ICM poll will be unveiled on the flagship BBC TWO current affairs programme tonight at 10.30pm in a special nuclear debate.

The poll asked whether respondents thought it would be right or wrong for the government to consider nuclear power as an energy source for the future. The results show that 39% agreed it was right. A total of 9% responded that they did not know.

Jeremy Paxman will chair the special Newsnight debate

The survey also asked which sources of energy respondents believed was the most feasible way of meeting the UK's future energy demands while reducing Carbon Dioxide emissions.

A total of 57% of those polled chose renewable sources such as wave, tidal, solar and wind power.

The poll found that 21% of those questioned believed nuclear power stations were the most feasible compared to 12% for coal/gas power stations. Again 9% said they did not know.

The debate on nuclear power will take up two-thirds of tonight's programme and will be presented by Jeremy Paxman from the Science Museum.

London's Science Museum will host the debate

It comes on the day the Royal Society examines Britain's energy policy and any actions that need to be taken to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, on the eve of the Queen's Speech.

The debate will include a panel of leading politicians, policy makers, nuclear industry experts, academics and environmentalists including Malcolm Wicks, Minister of State for Energy; David Willetts, Shadow Secretary of State for Productivity, Energy and Industry; and Andrew Stunell MP.

The Newsnight Debate will be shown on BBC2 on Monday 16 May 2005. 

----

Half 'opposed to nuclear power'
The poll comes as the Royal Society debates Britain's energy policy

Monday, 16 May, 2005 (BBC)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4552051.stm

More than half of people are opposed to an expansion of nuclear power, a BBC poll suggests.

Some 52% of people questioned for BBC Two's Newsnight said it was wrong for the government to consider nuclear power as a future source of energy.

Approximately 39% of the 1,004 people questioned said they thought it was right and 9% did not know.

Asked what was the best way to meet energy demands cleanly, 57% backed renewable energy and 21% nuclear power.

Meanwhile, 12% backed coal or gas stations as the most feasible way to supply energy demands while cutting CO2 emissions.

Is Britain's future really nuclear?

The ICM poll asking respondents to say whether they thought it would be right or wrong for the government to consider nuclear power as an energy source for the future came as the Royal Society examines Britain's energy policy.

The Nuclear Industry Association believes it has a key role to play in helping Britain achieve its CO2 emission targets.

Its chief executive Keith Parker said: "Nuclear power supplies 20% of UK electricity at the moment without CO2 emissions so clearly it has a major role to play at present."

He also pointed out that nuclear power does not give out any of the chemicals, such as sulphur, that cause acid rain.

Nuclear debate

Jean McSorley, nuclear campaigner for environmental group Greenpeace, said: "It sends a clear message to the government that people really are supporting renewables".

She said she thought the scale of opposition to nuclear power was more than the Newsnight poll figures suggested and said she thought the figure would go up as the reality of where nuclear plants and nuclear waste would be sited hit home.

Energy expert Professor Ian Fells said that without nuclear's contribution to Britain's effort at cutting CO2 emissions, the country would soon be seeing black outs and power cuts.

He said both nuclear power and renewable energy was required to meet Britain's future energy demands.

"I am getting quite concerned now that major decisions haven't been taken."

The BBC Two current affairs programme will be holding a 30 minute debate on the issue featuring leading policy makers, nuclear industry experts, academics and environmentalists.

Also on the panel will be energy minister Malcolm Wicks, Shadow Trade Secretary David Willetts and Liberal Democrat Andrew Stunnell.

Newsnight's nuclear debate is at 22.30 BST on BBC Two.



-------- canada

Bruce Power Ontario Bruce 6 nuke back

Mon May 16, 2005 08:10 AM ET

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=GD1M42HQZQCTECRBAEKSFFA?type=topNews&storyID=8501521

NEW YORK, May 16 (Reuters) - Bruce Power's 840-megawatt unit 6 at the Bruce B nuclear power station in Ontario returned to service on May 14 following the replacement of its main output transformer, the Ontario-based energy company said in a statement.

A fire damaged the transformer on April 15.

The 6,660 MW Bruce station is located in Tiverton on the shores of Lake Huron about 155 miles (249 km) northwest of Toronto. There are four 825 MW units, 1 to 4, at the A station and four 840 MW units, 5 to 8, at the B station. Units 1 and 2, built in the late 1970s, have not operated since 1999 because they needed extensive upgrades.

Units 3, 4, 5 and 8 remained at high power.

Unit 7 shut on May 7 for a planned two-month inspection outage.

One MW powers about 1,000 homes, according to the North American average.

Separately, Bruce Power reached a tentative agreement with a provincial negotiator in March for the potential restart of units 1 and 2.

The government is considering the terms of the agreement. Bruce Power's board has already approved of the agreement.

The former province-owned energy company Ontario Hydro shut Units 1 and 2 in 1997 and 1995, respectively, because they needed extensive upgrades. The units entered service in 1977.

The return of Units 1 and 2 would replace about 20 percent of the province's 7,500 MW of coal-fired generation, which the government wants to shut by the end of 2007 for pollution and health-related reasons.

Bruce Power is a partnership owned by uranium miner Cameco Corp. (CCO.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) (31.6 percent), energy company TransCanada Corp. (TRP.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) (31.6 percent), BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust, established by the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (31.6 percent), the Power Workers' Union (4 percent) and the Society of Energy Professionals (1.2 percent). 



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

-------- depleted uranium

Depleted uranium victims plead for understanding, help

Monday, May 16, 2005 Mid Hudson News

http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/DU_forum-16May05.htm

Army National Guard Specialist Gerard Matthew is a veteran of the Iraq war. He has an 11-month-old daughter who was born with a deformed right hand. If she tries to stand, and falls, she will not put out here arms to protect herself.

Matthew, himself, suffers constant headaches and blurred vision.

He has tested positive for depleted uranium, a component used in tank armor, and weapons shells. Dust from unexploded shells can be inhaled. The symptoms can be devastating.

Matthew and Sgt. Herbert Reed were part of a panel, Saturday afternoon, organized by the Saugerties Committee for Peace and Social Justice.

Reed told the fifty people who gathered, that he was told, by military doctors, that his tests results were not a cause for concern. “Right, they said we had acceptable levels of depleted uranium. Acceptable to whom?”

Reed has serious physical debilities and suffers memory loss.

Event organizer Angela Morano says their hope is to broaden awareness of the problem. “As a nation, we need to understand that these are the type of weapons we are using,” she said. “They are harmful to us, not only to our enemy, if you want to call someone our enemy, but they are harmful to us as well.”

Morano said they are working with members of Congress, including Rep. Maurice Hinchey, to get proper testing and treatment for affected veterans.

Also on the program, two representatives of Veterans for Peace, both Vietnam veterans, who take their message into schools. “I don’t hate recruiters”, said Jim Murphy. “I just want to put them out of business.” 

----

DU is covered up in New Orleans

From: Saxon Rold <dockyne@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon May 16, 2005 7:34pm

Bob Smith, Chair Depleted Uranium Awareness Committee P.O.
Box 480, Franklinton, Louisiana 70438 (504) 581-1086

PRESS RELEASE:

On May 12th, Peter Kovacs, the Managing News Editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the region’s major daily newspaper, in a telephone conversation with veterans advocate Bob Smith, and a Times-Picayune political analyst stated that a story concerning a bill giving the right for service women and men from Louisiana to a best practices health-screening test for exposure to depleted uranium would not be published.

The reason Kovacs gave was because the bill was not costing the state any money.

Kovacs went on to say that the Times Picayune criteria for newsworthiness was how much it would cost. The fact that the bill supports the troops’ health concerns is not the criteria.

Four other media outlets in the region have already covered the story expressing concerns for the troops.

On Tuesday, May 3rd, The Louisiana State House of Representatives passed a bill to give the right to all Louisiana Servicemen and women returning from Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom for testing for depleted uranium contamination. Louisiana is the first state in the nation to have their House pass this type of bill. The vote was 101 to 0 in favor.

The Louisiana Brigade, with approximately 4,500 National Guardsmen, is expected to return home from Iraq between October and December 2005.

DU is radioactive and can cause leukemia, DNA breakdown, various other cancers, and birth defects in offspring of soldiers who have come into contact with it.

The VA and the DOD have been conducting testing that is not sensitive enough to detect whether a soldier has been contaminated.

This bill would have helped alleviate that by pressuring the State’s Adjutant General to insure that the test mandated by DOD orders and Army regulations would be executed.

The “money” criteria used by the New Orleans Times-Picayune is shocking in light of the fact that the country is at war and legislation supporting the troops health concerns is of utmost importance.

F O R   I M M E D I A T E   R E L E A S E

Bob Smith Chair
Depleted Uranium
Awareness Committee Louisiana Activist Network



-------- india 

Nuclear engineers from India arrive in Russia for consultations

16.05.2005, 11.22 (Itar-Tass)

http://www.tass.ru/eng/level2.html?NewsID=2035948&PageNum=0

NOVOVORONEZH, May 16 - A group of nuclear engineers from India has arrived in the town of Novovoronezh for consultations and training at the Rosenergoatom Training Centre. In future, the Indian experts will work at the Kudankulam nuclear power plant which is being built in southern India with Russia’s assistance, Chief of the Novovoronezh Training Centre Alexander Ivanchenko told Tass.

First, the Indian experts will take a course in theory and then will go to the Kalinin nuclear power plant in the northwest of Russia for training to operate the VVER-100 nuclear reactor similar to a nuclear reactor at the future Indian nuclear power plant.

The Indian nuclear engineers will finalize training at the Novovoronezh Center and then will work on the premises of the Indian nuclear plant guided by Russian experts.

The first nuclear reactor of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant will be commissioned in 2007, and the second nuclear reactor - in 2008.



-------- iran

Iran in nuclear climbdown ahead of talks
Parliament votes to oblige government to develop fuel cycle

Compiled by Lebanon Daily Star staff
Monday, May 16, 2005

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=15105

Iran said Sunday it was postponing its threatened resumption of sensitive nuclear activities, but insisted the climbdown was merely a temporary gesture ahead of "last chance" emergency talks with European officials.

The move came hours after a defiant Iranian Parliament voted to oblige the government to develop a nuclear fuel cycle - which would include the controversial process of enriching uranium.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, warned that long-term nuclear negotiations could not continue without Iran first resuming uranium work.

"We cannot continue the negotiations with the Europeans without having resumed some of our activities," Rowhani told state television, adding Iran's decision to resume conversion of uranium - a precursor to enrichment - was "still valid."

"We are in favor of negotiations. We can negotiate for months, but we cannot negotiate under the present conditions," Rowhani argued, repeating the demand to resume nuclear activities that were suspended in November 2004 as part of a deal with Britain, France and Germany.

Iran announced earlier that it was postponing a restart of work at Isfahan, a move that would have violated the accord, following appeals from the so-called EU-3 and their offer of four-way talks.

The three European nations also warned Iran that it could wind up on the desk of the United Nations Security Council.

"We are in favor of the principle of negotiating," Rowhani said, adding that "the fact that the resumption of our activities will be delayed by several days is not a problem."

Speaking in Vienna, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier confirmed that he, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw would meet Iranian authorities in the coming days.

Iranian media reports said the meeting would take place in either Geneva or Brussels.

"The coming days will be the last chance for the Europeans," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.

"With or without an agreement, we will restart our activities. The Security Council does not worry Iran," Asefi said.

But he acknowledged that Iran had also received appeals from South Africa, Malaysia and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan - who telephoned Iran late Saturday - to hold more talks.

Iran's hard-line Parliament also took a defiant stand Sunday, passing a bill that obliges the government to "guarantee" the Islamic Republic's production of its own nuclear fuel.

The motion, which obliges Iran "to take action to obtain peaceful nuclear technology, including provision of the fuel cycle for generating 20,000 megawatts of electricity," was approved by 188 out of 205 lawmakers present.

"The Europeans are trying to turn the suspension into a permanent cessation which is what we, the Parliament, are rejecting outright today," lawmaker Kazem Jalali said following the vote, which was broadcast live on state radio.

Asefi said the government was obliged to do what parliament had decided.

Uranium conversion involves turning mined uranium "yellow cake" into uranium tetra fluoride and then into uranium hexafluoride, a feed gas for centrifuges that carry out the highly sensitive enrichment process. - AFP, Reuters

----

Iran Parliament Calls for Resuming Nuclear Fuel Development

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
May 16, 2005 NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/international/middleeast/16iran.html?pagewanted=print

TEHRAN, May 15 - Iran's Parliament passed a nonbinding resolution on Sunday insisting that the government resume developing nuclear fuel, defying the American and European demand for a halt in all nuclear activity because they contend that Iran seeks to build a nuclear bomb.

The resolution, seeking production of enough nuclear fuel to produce a substantial amount of electricity, comes from a Parliament dominated by hard-liners. It ratchets up the pressure on the government not to compromise in talks scheduled for next week between Iran and the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany to try to break the deadlock on the issue.

Hassan Rowhani, the senior nuclear negotiator, announced that Iran would not immediately carry out its threat to resume some aspects of processing uranium. But he warned in an interview on state television that negotiations could not drag on without Iran resuming some fuel activity, although he did not specify what that might entail.

"We cannot continue the negotiations with the Europeans without having resumed some of our activities," said Mr. Rowhani, a senior cleric on the National Security Council. He added that Iran's declaration that it would resume converting uranium ore to the gas used in the first stage of enrichment "remained valid."

The European states negotiating with Iran warned last week that if it resumed any stage in the cycle of fuel enrichment, including any introductory stages, they would halt talks and refer the issue to the United Nations Security Council for possible international penalties. The Europeans persuaded Iran to suspend uranium enrichment last November, before negotiations, but the Iranians did not fully comply until February. At low levels, uranium enrichment provides the fuel for electricity, but at higher levels, it can be used for nuclear bombs.

Asked Sunday on CNN when penalties might be sought from the Security Council, Stephen J. Hadley, the United States national security adviser, said it depended on the negotiations. "And if in fact the Iranians do not abide by the temporary suspension, which has been negotiated, then it's pretty clear," Mr. Hadley said.

Mr. Rowhani said Iran was waiting to restart the enrichment process because of appeals not to abandon the negotiations from the European Union, Russia, Japan and Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general.

"We are in favor of negotiations; we can negotiate for months, but we cannot negotiate under the present conditions," he said. "The fact that the resumption of our activities will be delayed by several days is not a problem."

Hamid-Reza Asefi, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at his weekly briefing on Sunday that the suspension of all fuel activity could last an additional 10 days. "The coming days will be the last chance for the Europeans," he said. "With or without an agreement, we will restart our activities."

Given Iran's history of hiding significant parts of its enrichment activity, the European Union has demanded that it prove its peaceful aims by permanently suspending all domestic production and importing whatever fuel is needed to produce electricity. The union is offering a package of economic incentives in return.

The idea of developing nuclear fuel from the uranium ore deposits in Iran's central desert has become an issue of national pride for Iranians. They insist they only want to master the complete cycle of creating nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes, their right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Iranian officials say that since their nation has been treated as an international pariah, it must be able to produce its own fuel, because any boycott might cripple its planned nuclear reactors, even as Iran's population increases and electricity demand surges.

"We need security of supply," said Ali Salehi, a professor at Sharif University of Technology and one of Iran's leading nuclear specialists. "We would like to get energy from all possible sources."

No government branch or candidate in the June 17 elections wants to appear soft on the nuclear issue.

"Do we have to beg the world to provide us with fuel?" thundered Kazem Jalali, a member of Parliament who spoke in favor of the nuclear fuel resolution. "We have not been able to master nuclear technology in the past several years, and this shows the international community has prevented us from having it."

The 20-minute debate was broadcast live on the radio, and 188 of the 205 members voted for the resolution. It specified that Iran should develop enough nuclear fuel to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity. That goes far beyond the government plan to develop 7,000 megawatts in the next 15 years.

The hard-line newspaper Jomhuri Islami weighed in Sunday with a front-page editorial suggesting that any presidential candidate who opposed the development of nuclear technology was not fit to serve.

Even the reformist bloc, generally the most publicly open to seeking to improve Iran's international ties, comes down heavily on the side of developing nuclear power.

"There is no reason not to create nuclear energy and to use it in a peaceful way," Dr. Mostafa Moin, the anointed reformist candidate and a close political ally of President Mohammad Khatami, said in an interview. He noted that Iran's population has doubled, to more than 70 million, since the nation started talking about developing nuclear energy with American support before the 1979 revolution. "Why can't we exploit this energy at a time when the population has doubled and we have the scientific ability to develop it?"

----

Iran pessimistic ahead of last-ditch nuclear talks

Mon May 16, 2005 11:31 AM ET (AFP)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050516/wl_afp/irannuclear_050516153144

TEHRAN - Iran has warned that an emergency meeting next week with the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany may have little chance of resolving mounting tensions over its nuclear programme.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said Monday that the May 23 talks may prove to be the "last round of negotiations" between Iran and the so-called EU-3, insisting that Iran has already decided to resume controversial uranium activities.

"The meeting will be held on May 23" and involve the three European foreign ministers and Iran's top nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani, Kharazi told reporters.

"It will take place in a European capital. We are still in discussions on the venue."

Britain, France and Germany called a crisis meeting with Iran after Tehran announced it would resume uranium conversion work, a move that would have violated a November 2004 accord on freezing nuclear fuel work and opening long-term talks.

Iran was also warned that breaking the deal would spark its referral to the UN Security Council.

Iran has agreed to hold off from resuming uranium conversion -- a precursor to the ultra-sensitive enrichment process -- pending the emergency talks with French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

But quoted by the Iran News newspaper, a top nuclear negotiator and member of Iran's Supreme National Security Council said there was a strong chance the talks could fail.

"I confirm that a meeting at the foreign ministerial level between the EU-3 and Iran will be held in a few days time in Brussels, but I want to emphasise that the chances for success are not that high," Hossein Moussavian said in an interview with the paper.

"The Europeans haven't left much room for negotiation. They have gone back on their word and commitments made in the Paris Accord. The EU-3 have not accepted Iran's 'objective guarantees'," he added.

"If Iran's file is referred to the UN Security Council, we are ready for all contingencies," said Moussavian.

The EU has offered Iran a package of incentives in return for "objective guarantees" it will not develop weapons -- hoping to strike a deal similar to that which the United States and Britain reached with Libya.

This would involve Iran dismantling its nuclear fuel facilities in exchange for increased trade and diplomatic and security benefits.

But Iran insists its bid to master the full nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium enrichment, is merely aimed at generating electricity and a "right" for any country that has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The stand-off worsened after the EU-3 last month rejected an Iranian proposal to begin a phased resumption of enrichment. Iran complained the talks were being deliberately dragged out to keep the freeze in place.

The United States in particular believes Iran is merely using atomic energy as a convenient cover for weapons development, a charge Tehran denies.

Feeling the international pressure over Iran's nuclear programme, the Islamic republic's state television network has meanwhile embarked on giving the Iranian public a crash course in the joys of atomic power.

In a series of primetime spots entitled "Towards Tomorrow", viewers are informed how Iran mines and converts uranium.

But keeping true to Iran's assertion it only wants to light up homes, state television is drumming home the message of "nuclear electricity, sustainable development and enrichment."

Viewers are also shown male and female scientists in green or white overalls, while animated graphics and video footage helping to explain the science behind Iran's extensive nuclear drive.

"Acquiring this technology is an important and praiseworthy, and deserves to be deservedly guarded," the infomercials assert, without referring to the EU and US demands that the work be abandoned.

----

Iran Sanctions No Sure Bet In UN Security Council

By REUTERS
May 16, 2005
Filed at 6:11 p.m. ET

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-iran-un.html?pagewanted=print

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - There is no certainty the U.N. Security Council would back a U.S. or European request to punish Iran if Tehran resumed work on what Washington fears is part of a nuclear weapons program, U.N. diplomats said on Monday.

The George W. Bush administration and some European Union countries are expected to ask the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the 15-nation council for possible sanctions if it resumes sensitive nuclear activities it agreed to suspend last November.

But even with a referral of the case by the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog, it was not clear the council would adopt sanctions, council diplomats and analysts said.

Some council members including China and Russia were likely to strongly question the need for sanctions if not block them, and others would be in no hurry to act, they said.

``If Vienna refers it to New York, we would be obliged to discuss it. But imposing sanctions would be another thing,'' said council member Lauro Baja of the Philippines.

``Perhaps the United States and the European Union would be satisfied if this was discussed in the council. The mere fact of a referral to the council might be sufficient to prod Iran to restate its position. This is a possibility that we cannot discount, but it is not likely,'' Baja said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan sounded a similar cautionary note, saying in an interview published on Monday that a council deadlock could embolden North Korea and others.

SETTING A PRECEDENT

``I think were the Iran nuclear issue to be referred to the council, the members would have to be keenly aware that any decision they make will set a precedent. Their action or inaction will have a great impact on future cases and on our efforts to promote nuclear nonproliferation,'' Annan said.

``Not everything has to come to the Security Council. And we as an organization do not claim a monopoly in resolving all these questions. If they can be resolved elsewhere, we applaud it,'' Annan told USA Today.

Referring Iran to the council would be an affront, council diplomats said. They would expect any push for sanctions to be gradual, probably preceded by a proposal for a verbal condemnation of Iran to test the waters.

If there were support for sanctions, targeted penalties would be considered such as travel bans or asset freezes on individual Iranian officials, they said. Sweeping sanctions including restrictions on Iranian oil would have a scant chance of being adopted, the diplomats said.

Tehran said on Monday it would give EU negotiators a last chance to strike a deal before making good on its plan to resume work related to uranium enrichment that could help make bombs.

Iran insists its nuclear program is intended to fuel only power plants, not arms.

The EU, sharing Washington's suspicion that Iran is developing nuclear arms, has offered economic and political incentives if Tehran scraps its enrichment program.

In a deal reached with Britain, France and Germany in November, Tehran suspended all nuclear fuel-related activities while both sides tried to negotiate a long-term agreement on Iran's atomic ambitions. But Iran has become unhappy with the slow pace of talks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told the official IRNA news agency that Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani would meet the foreign ministers of France, Britain and Germany on May 23 to try to reach an 11th-hour compromise.


----

Iran to give EU last chance to save atomic deal

Mon May 16, 2005 07:58 AM ET (Reuters)

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=GD1M42HQZQCTECRBAEKSFFA?type=topNews&storyID=8501137
	
TEHRAN - Iran said on Monday it will give the European Union a last chance to salvage a nuclear deal at talks on May 23 before it resumes atomic work which Washington fears is part of a weapons program.

Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told the official IRNA news agency that Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani would meet the foreign ministers of France, Britain and Germany on May 23 to try to reach an 11th-hour compromise.

"The venue for negotiations has not been determined yet," he said, but senior Iranian nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian told the Iran News daily that the meeting would be in Brussels.

Iranian officials have been negotiating with the EU trio to try to allay fears that Tehran is seeking nuclear arms.

The Europeans last year won Iran's assurance that it would suspend its nuclear fuel cycle activities for as long as talks went on.

But Iran has become frustrated with the talks and said it would restart making nuclear fuel, an action that would marshal the Europeans behind U.S. attempts to haul Tehran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

But Iran said it would give ministerial level talks one last shot before announcing the return to making atomic fuel.

Iran has a track record of pushing talks to crisis point before clinching a deal at high-level international meetings.

Many political analysts speculate that Iran is unlikely to spark a full blown international crisis before its presidential elections next month. 

----

Emergency Iran-EU nuclear talks on May 23

TEHRAN (AFP) May 16, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050516070450.82pj7emp.html

Iran's top national security official Hassan Rowhani will meet the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany on May 23 for emergency talks over Tehran's nuclear programme, Iran's foreign minister said Monday.

Kamal Kharazi said the talks would be last chance to salvage the negotiations, aimed at easing widespread international concern that the clerical regime is working to acquire a nuclear arsenal.

"The meeting will be held on May 23, and involve the European foreign ministers and Hassan Rowhani," Kharazi told reporters. "It will take place in a European capital. We are still in discussions on the venue."

The so-called EU-3 called a crisis meeting with Iran after Tehran announced it would resume uranium coversion work, a move that would have violated their November 2004 accord.

Iran has agreed to postpone its resumption of uranium activities -- which can be direct towards military purposes -- pending the emergency talks with French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Kharazi said the meeting may be the "last round of negotiations" between Iran and the so-called EU-3, adding that the "decision has been taken" to resume conversion work at a plant near the central city of Isfahan.

Iran has been warned that such a step would spark its referral to the UN Security Council.

And quoted by the Iran News newspaper, top nuclear negotiator and member of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Hossein Moussavian said there was a strong chance the talks could fail.

"I confirm that a meeting at the foreign ministerial level between the EU3 and Iran will be held in a few days time in Brussels, but I want to emphasise that the chances for success are not that high," he said in an interview.

"The Europeans haven't left much room for negotiation. They have gone back on their word and commitments made in the Paris Accord. The EU3 have not accepted Iran's 'objective guarantees'," he added.

"If Iran's file is referred to the Un Security Council, we are ready for all contingencies," said Moussavian.



-------- korea

White House Warns North Korea Against Nuclear Testing

Monday, May 16, 2005 Reuters; A18

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/15/AR2005051501171_pf.html

The Bush administration warned North Korea yesterday that conducting a nuclear test would be a serious act of "defiance" and would force the United States and its regional partners to consider new punitive steps against Pyongyang.

"Action would have to be taken," U.S. national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley told CNN's "Late Edition."

Washington's warning, coupled with similar pressure from Japan, raised the stakes in the nuclear standoff after North Korea announced last week that it had removed fuel rods from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, a potential precursor to building more weapons or testing one.

Hadley acknowledged the difficulty of assessing whether North Korea was set to conduct a nuclear test, saying it was a "very difficult target" for U.S. intelligence agencies.

But he told "Fox News Sunday": "We've seen some evidence that says that they may be preparing for a nuclear test. We have talked to our allies about that. Obviously that would be a serious step."

On CNN, Hadley said the United States had observed some activities by North Korea that are "consistent with possible preparations for a nuclear test."

But he added, "We don't know for sure."

"If there is a nuclear test, obviously that will be a defiance by North Korea of every member of the six-party talks, including China," Hadley said. "And we think at that point we will have to have a serious conversation about other steps we can take."

Hadley offered no details about what specific steps the United States would seek against North Korea if it conducted a nuclear test. But he said the Japanese government has concluded that those steps would "need to include going to the [U.N.] Security Council, and potentially sanctions."

Three rounds of talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China aimed at dismantling the impoverished North's nuclear programs made little progress, and the process has stalled since the last meeting in June 2004.

Hadley sought to play down differences with China over how hard to press North Korea to return to the talks, insisting: "We're comfortable that we are all on the same page."

Washington has urged China, North Korea's biggest benefactor, to exert more pressure on its communist neighbor, including possibly cutting off its oil supply to the energy-starved country.

China has rebuffed the idea and publicly asserted that pressuring North Korea was the wrong tactic.

Chinese diplomats have also complained strongly to the United States that President Bush's decision last month to return to using tough talk against the North's leader hurt Beijing's chances of bringing Pyongyang back to the negotiating table.

Hadley brushed aside "some statements by lower-level" Chinese officials, and said U.S. and Chinese leaders are in agreement.

"The most important thing is that at the senior levels of the governments -- Russia, China, the United States, South Korea and Japan -- there is agreement that a nuclear North Korea is unacceptable and we need a denuclearized Korean peninsula," Hadley said.

----

US not consulted yet on S Korea's new plan to break nuclear deadlock

Mon May 16, 4:27 PM ET (AFP)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050516/pl_afp/usnkoreanuclear_050516202706

WASHINGTON - The United States has not been consulted by South Korea yet on a new proposal it planned to make to North Korea to end its nuclear weapons drive, the State Department said.

"We're not involved in any new proposal at this point," department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters, after South Korea said Monday it would make the proposal if North Korea returned to stalled talks on the nuclear crisis.

South Korea's Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo spoke about the proposal, without elaborating, at talks between the two Koreas in Kaesong, just north of the Demilitarized Zone bisecting the Korean peninsula.

In urging the North to return to the six-party talks, South Korea "expressed our wish to prepare an 'important offer' to make substantial progress in resolving the nuclear issue if the North comes back," Rhee had said.

North Korea refused to take part in a fourth round of the six-party talks in September 2004 after three inclusive rounds on ending its nuclear program, citing US hostility.

At the last round of the talks in June last year, the United States said it was prepared to give multilateral security guarantees and support energy aid to North Korea if it verifiably and irreversibly scraps its weapons program.

The six-party talks hosted by China involve the Koreas, Japan, Russia and the United States.

North Korea has raised the stakes in the nuclear standoff in recent weeks amid speculation it was planning a nuclear test after announcing in February that it possessed nuclear weapons.

Last Wednesday it claimed it had completed the unloading of spent nuclear fuel rods from its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, 90 kilometers (55 miles) north of Pyongyang.

Asked to confirm that the South Korean offer was not a joint offer with the United States, Boucher said: "I cannot say anything about a South Korean offer. They would have to talk about that themselves.

"At this point, it's up to them to decide what kind of proposals they want to float with the rest of us."

North Korean officials at the bilateral talks "were listening to our position," reports quoted Rhee as saying.

The reports also said North Korea had asked for 500,000 tonnes of urgently needed fertilizer from South Korea and Seoul promised to deliver an undisclosed quantity.

Boucher said it was "noteworthy" that South Korea used the bilateral talks centering on the question of fertilizer aid to stress the need for North Korea to return to the six-party talks and to eliminate its nuclear weapons program.



-------- russia

Russia says it's set to reduce nuke arms

By EDITH M. LEDERER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Monday, May 16, 2005 · Last updated 9:23 p.m. PT

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=763673
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Nuclear-Treaty.html?pagewanted=print

UNITED NATIONS -- Russia is prepared to reduce its strategic nuclear arsenal below 1,500 warheads, less than the level agreed to with the United States, but Moscow is concerned about nuclear threats on its border, two senior Russian officials said Monday.

Anatoly Antonov, director of the Foreign Ministry's department for security and disarmament, and Lt. Gen. Vladimir Verhovtsev, deputy director of the Defense Ministry's department of nuclear safety and security, stressed Moscow's commitment to nuclear disarmament - provided that Russia's security is assured.

The May 2002 U.S.-Russia Treaty requiring each side to cut its deployed warheads by about two-thirds, to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads by 2012, will be the focus of Moscow's efforts over the next decade, Verhovtsev said.

"We stand ready to take further constructive steps," he told a briefing on the sidelines of a U.N. conference to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, adding that Russia is "ready to reduce to 1,500 warheads or less."

But Antonov said Russia needs international peace and security and "a situation where there are no new nuclear threats on our border."

The United States and Russia are the only countries that have taken serious steps to limit their nuclear arsenals, he said.

"What about other countries that continue to work on nuclear weapons?" Antonov asked, voicing concern about missiles and weapons being developed on Russia's borders but refusing to identify any country by name. China is the main nuclear power on Russia's border, but North Korea also claims to have nuclear weapons and is suspected of preparing for a nuclear test.

At the opening of the treaty review conference earlier this month, Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on Washington and Moscow "to commit themselves - irreversibly - to further cuts in their arsenals, so that warheads number in the hundreds, not the thousands."

Under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, nations without nuclear weapons pledge not to pursue them, in exchange for a commitment by five nuclear states - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - to negotiate toward disarmament. The treaty guarantees countries that renounce nuclear weapons access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Some nuclear "have-nots" complain that the nuclear states are moving too slowly toward disarmament.

But Antonov said the environment for disarmament "depends on all of us," not just the United States and Russia. "We're telling our partners we can't close our eyes" to what's happening on Russia's borders and elsewhere in the world, he said.

Russia is against new states acquiring nuclear weapons and backs an early diplomatic solution to the North Korean threat, preferably through a resumption of six-party talks that have included Moscow, Antonov said. Russia also supports European-led talks to resolve questions about Iran's nuclear program and wants Tehran to provide clear assurances it is peaceful, he said.

The Russians presented a booklet outlining steps that Moscow has taken to cut its arsenal of nuclear warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles, to eliminate intermediate- and short-range missiles, and to reduce tactical nuclear weapons.

It gave figures for all categories except tactical nuclear weapons, which Verhovtsev said had been reduced by 75 percent, though he couldn't provide numbers because of legislative restrictions.

The Russians were asked to explain why President Vladimir Putin has announced the development of a nuclear missile system unlike any now in existence if they are serious about reducing their nuclear arsenal.

"Developing doesn't mean possessing," Verhovtsev replied.



-------- MILITARY 



-------- asia

Military In Uzbekistan Kills Up to 600 People; Bush Administration Maintains Close Ties To Uzbek Gov't

Democracy Now! Headlines, May 16, 2005

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/16/1329238

Military In Uzbekistan Kills Up to 600 People

In Uzbekistan -- up to 600 people are feared dead after soldiers opened fire on a mass gathering in one of the country's largest cities. One teenage boy told the Washington Post "They shot at us like rabbits." Even the local police begged the soldiers to stop shooting. In the end hundreds of bodies -- including those of women and children -- filled the square.

Bush Administration Maintains Close Ties To Uzbek Gov't

Uzbekistan is one of the Bush administration's closet allies in Central Asia despite the country's notorious human rights record. President Bush, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have all personally met with the Uzbek president. A year ago Rumsfeld traveled to Uzbekistan where the US runs a strategically placed military base and "I am delighted to be back in Uzbekistan." Following the mass killings on Friday, the Bush administration appeared to blame the demonstrators for what happened. White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said "We have had concerns about human rights in Uzbekistan, but we are concerned about the outbreak of violence, particularly by some members of a terrorist organization that were freed from prison." Before the shooting took place, protesters had overrun a jail freeing as many 2000 prisoners. The Uzbek government as well as the Bush administrators has portrayed the demonstrators as Islamic terrorists. But according to the BBC the protests were largely made up of people calling for an end to poverty and injustice. According to Human Rights Watch torture and police brutality are widespread in Uzbekistan. The country has no independent political parties, no free and fair elections, and no independent news media. In December President Bush decided to keep giving aid to Uzbekistan despite the country's failure to meet U.S. conditions on human rights. 

----

Uzbek ruler: a new Saddam Hussein?
Critics of the 'tyrant of Tashkent' say US ally makes Hussein look 'like a choir boy.'

May 16, 2005
By Tom Regan 
Christian Science Monitor

http://csmonitor.com/2005/0516/dailyUpdate.html

He's called the "tyrant of Tashkent" in a Monday editorial by The London Telegraph.

One of the rebel leaders in his country says that he makes Saddam Hussein look like "a choir boy." And Sunday, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said there had been a "clear abuse of human rights" in rioting in his country where the CBC reports police and troops have been accused by aid groups of killing as many as 700 people, including women and children. 

But Uzbekistan's president Islam Karimov, who denies his troops opened fire on civilians, is "seen by Washington as an important ally in its so-called war against terrorism and provides it with a key air base in central Asia," and so he is unlikely to be strongly condemned, reports the Guardian.

But Radio Free Europe reports that last week State Department spokeman Richard Boucher said the US had in fact continued to criticize Tashkent's human rights record in the annual report issued by the State Department.

The Telegraph's editorial says the main reaction by the US government to what Mr. Straw had so quickly condemned as a human right abuse was for both sides to "work out their differences peacefully." This response, the Telegraph argues, undercuts President Bush's calls for the spread of democracy in other parts of the world.

    The [US] president's implacability is partly explained by the attitude of the US State Department. The Americans sponsored opposition movements in Georgia and Ukraine, and Congress recently voted a $40 million grant for pro-democracy activists in Belarus. But when it comes to Uzbekistan, Washington is shamefully equivocal. The Administration is calling for restraint on both sides, even though there is ample evidence that the security forces have been firing into unarmed crowds.

    Uzbekistan sits oddly with the rest of George W. Bush's foreign policy. Elsewhere, his Administration has taken the view that the best way to advance American interests is by spreading freedom. Yet Karimov is indulged in an old-fashioned, Cold War sort of way ...

This is much the same way the US treated former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the 80s.

There are numerous other comparisons to Hussein's pre-Gulf War regime. The Times of London reports that there are at least 6000 religious and political prisoners in Uzbekistan, a country that is 88 percent Muslim. The average wage is $25 a month, "although the country has large oil and gas reserves and is one of the world�s ten leading gold-producers." Karimov's family controls almost all private enterprise in the country.

And Karimov, the Times continues, "maintains Soviet-style controls over religion and politics." All opposition groups have been banned and only state-sponsored Islam is allowed. The main rebel group is Hizb-ut Tahrir, an Islamic rebel group which Karimov has branded "terrorists" and thus given the US government a reason to support his war against them.

The BBC reports on the "Great Game" played by Western nations in the six former Soviet Republics "whose names all seemed to end in 'stan'," and whose gas and oil reserves "rival the Middle East."
The result, the BBC says, is "strange bedfellows and unpredictable events in the struggle for influence, as Uzbekistan is currently showing."

Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002-2004 (until he was suspended because of his criticisms of Karimov's human rights abuses), writes in a Guardian opinion piece the US is already looking for ways to "dismiss" what is happening in Uzbekistan because of its strategic importance. But, he writes, by ignoring the actions of its ally, the US is condemning many people to torture and death.

    You may think I exaggerate. Read the 2002 report by Professor Theo van Boven, the UN special rapporteur on torture, in which he denounced torture in Uzbekistan as "widespread and systemic". Human Rights Watch last year produced a book with more than 300 pages of case studies.

    One of the uses of Uzbek torture is to provide the CIA and MI6 with 'intelligence' material linking the Uzbek opposition with Islamist terrorism and Al Qaeda. The information is almost entirely bogus, and it was my efforts to stop MI6 using it that led ultimately to my effective dismissal from the Foreign Office.

Mr. Murray also told Reuters that if the US doesn't support the opposition movement in Uzbekistan in the same way it has in Georgia and other former Soviet republics, "We're actually, if you like, creating the monster we pretend we're fighting."

So why does the US continue to support Karimov? Murray writes in the Guardian that while the US base in Uzbekistan is not by itself strategic, "it has a more crucial role as the easternmost of [US Secretary of Defense] Donald Rumsfeld's 'lily pads' - air bases surrounding the 'wider Middle East,' by which the Pentagon means the belt of oil and gas fields stretching from the Middle East through the Caucasus and central Asia."

For his part, Karimov denies the charges against him and says the unrest over the weekend was the work of Islamic extremists. The Russian news agency Itar-Tass reports that a source in Karimov's press office told the news service that "everything is functioning as usual."

"There is no reason to worry," the source said.



-------- mideast

Rice: U.S. to Put More Pressure on Syria

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 16, 2005
Filed at 11:58 p.m. ET

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Rice.html?pagewanted=print

SHANNON, Ireland (AP) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday appealed to Syria's Arab neighbors to pressure Damascus to close its borders to foreign militants seeking to join the Iraqi insurgency.

She also voiced optimism about Iraq's emerging multi-ethnic government but predicted difficult negotiations as a constitutional deadline nears.

''Somebody will threaten to walk out and there will be a lot of drama around it because that tends to happen in political processes ... but they've shown remarkable ability to deliver,'' Rice said of the Iraqis as she headed home from a brief visit to that country. ''As with any political process ... in any country, there will be some 11th hour character to it,'' she added.

Speaking to reporters on her plane, Rice also said the more North Korea steps up its rhetoric about its nuclear weapons program, the more united the world community will become in response.

''Escalation on the part of the North Koreans is going to deepen their isolation a lot,'' Rice said. She also said bringing the dispute over North Korea's nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council was an option.

Returning from a one-day trip to meet Iraq's new leaders, Rice praised the expanded role given Sunni Arabs and said she was confident the Iraqi government could meet important deadlines.

At the same time, she blamed Syria for complicating the new Iraqi government's efforts to quell violence. The U.S. military contends Iraq's remote desert region near Syria is a haven for foreign combatants who cross the frontier along ancient smuggling routes and collect weapons to use in some of Iraq's deadliest attacks.

''We're going to go back and look again at what the neighbors can do to get the Syrians to stop support for these foreign terrorists who we believe are gathering on Syrian territory and coming across,'' Rice said. ''Their unwillingness to deal with the crossings of their border into Iraq is frustrating the will of the Iraqi people'' and leading to deaths of innocent Iraqis, she added.

Rice suggested she will try to capitalize on momentum from Syria's withdrawal of its troops from Lebanon this spring.

''The Syrians are under a lot of international pressure now because of Lebanon,'' Rice said. ''And the reason that the Syrians are under pressure is they are really out of step with the rest of the region.''

Beyond undermining Iraq's political progress, Syria supports opponents of a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians and is trying to keep a hand in Lebanon as that country moves toward contested elections this month, Rice said.

''So the Syrians have managed to get themselves in the situation of standing in the way of progress of people in the Middle East, and I would think that wouldn't be a very comfortable place for a Syrian regime to be.''

A working democracy in Iraq will choke off support for the homegrown insurgency over time, Rice said, adding that she was encouraged by Iraq's progress toward a national constitution and toward assuming a greater role in establishing security.

Rice said one patient at a Baghdad hospital she visited Sunday was a young Iraqi woman who was badly injured while protecting a government figure.

''She basically threw herself in front of a (bomb),'' Rice said. ''Now that's Iraqis taking responsibility for their own security.''

The constitution, due Aug. 15, is the first critical test for the government that took effect last month. It is not yet clear whether the document will emphasize secular rule or have an Islamist flavor, and how large a role the Sunni Arab minority will play in writing it. Also unknown is how much independence the document will grant Iraq's powerful Kurdish minority.

Rice acknowledged that Sunnis are underrepresented on a panel charged with drafting the document, but said all of the government leaders she met recognized the importance of an inclusive government.

''They're really struggling with some pretty difficult issues, but I thought there was a kind of willingness and even desire to try and broaden the basis of the people who would be involved in writing the constitution,'' Rice said.

On the Net:

State Department: http://www.state.gov



-------- prisoners of war

Newsweek Got Gitmo Right

by Calgacus*, May 16, 2005 Antiwar.com

http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=5959

*Calgacus has been employed as a researcher in the national security field for 20 years.


Contrary to White House spin, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo published by Newsweek on May 9, 2005, are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States. Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Koran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it. Prior to the Newsweek article, the New York Times reported a Guantanamo insider asserting that the commander of the facility was compelled by prisoner protests to address the problem and issue an apology.

One such incident (during which the Koran was allegedly thrown in a pile and stepped on) prompted a hunger strike among Guantanamo detainees in March 2002. Regarding this, the New York Times in a May 1, 2005, article interviewed a former detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp. And the Times reports: "A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans." (Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt, "Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay," New York Times, May 1, 2005.)

The hunger strike and apology story is also confirmed by another former detainee, Shafiq Rasul, interviewed by the UK Guardian in 2003 (James Meek, "The People the Law Forgot," Dec. 3, 2003). It was also confirmed by former prisoner Jamal al-Harith in an interview with the Daily Mirror (Rosa Prince and Gary Jones, "My Hell in Camp X-Ray," Daily Mirror, March 12, 2004).

The toilet incident was reported in the Washington Post in a 2003 interview with a former detainee from Afghanistan:

    "Ehsannullah, 29, said American soldiers who initially questioned him in Kandahar before shipping him to Guantanamo hit him and taunted him by dumping the Koran in a toilet. 'It was a very bad situation for us,' said Ehsannullah, who comes from the home region of the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar. 'We cried so much and shouted, "Please do not do that to the Holy Koran."' (Marc Kaufman and April Witt, "Out of Legal Limbo, Some Tell of Mistreatment," Washington Post, March 26, 2003.)

Also citing the toilet incident is testimony by Asif Iqbal, a former Guantanamo detainee who was released to British custody in March 2004 and subsequently freed without charge:

    "The behavior of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet, and generally disrespect it." (Center for Constitutional Rights [.pdf], Aug. 4, 2004.)

The claim that U.S. troops at Bagram prison in Afghanistan urinated on the Koran was made by former detainee Mohamed Mazouz, a Moroccan, as reported in the Moroccan newspaper, La Gazette du Maroc. (Abdelhak Najib, "Les Américains pissaient sur le Coran et abusaient de nous sexuellement," April 12, 2005.) An English translation is available on the Cage Prisoners site (which describes itself as a "nonsectarian Islamic human rights Web site").

Tarek Derghoul, another of the British detainees, similarly cites instances of Koran desecration in an interview with Cage Prisoners.

Desecration of the Koran was also mentioned by former Guantanamo detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and reported by the BBC in early May 2005. (Haroon Rashid, "Ex-Inmates Share Guantanamo Ordeal," May 2, 2005.)

----

US 'sent 60-70 terror suspects' to Egypt
 
16.05.05 11.20am New Zealand Herald - REUTERS 

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10125760
 
WASHINGTON - The United States has transferred as many as 70 terrorism suspects to Egypt, but none has been subjected to torture during interrogations there, Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said today.

In a flat denial of allegations aired by human rights advocates and other critics, Nazif said torture is not a widespread practice in Egypt and suggested the problem was one of police abuse rather than standard policy.

"It happens sometimes, and we've seen police abuses all over the world. But I don't think it should be taken as a standard practice," Nazif said on NBC's Meet the Press.

He said Egypt has actively sought the return of Egyptians arrested abroad, including terror suspects, and has accepted their transfer from countries including the United States.

Asked how many terror suspects have been sent to Egypt by the United States, Nazif said: "I don't know the exact number but I know that people have been sent there. The numbers vary. I have heard the number 60 or 70."

The New York-based group Human Rights Watch issued a report last week that said the US war on terrorism had made Egypt the world's main destination for detainees transferred under a practice known as rendition, which usually occurs in secret and without any legal safeguards.

A report by the organisation estimated that 150 to 200 detainees have been transferred from other countries, including the United States, to Egypt since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Human Rights Watch said torture was so widespread in Egypt, especially in national security cases, that each transfer from the United States and other countries constituted a violation of international conventions against torture.

Torture was also among human rights abuses cited by a State Department report on Egypt for 2004.

But Nazif denied the allegations.

"To say that we're bringing them back to torture them is not a very accurate statement. We shouldn't be doing that. We're not doing that," the prime minister said.

Asked to confirm that there are no torture tactics being used in interrogating suspected terrorists, Nazif responded: "No, sir." Period? "Yes, period," he replied.

The Bush administration, which has been embroiled in an abuse scandal over US treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, insists it does not engage in torture or send suspects to countries without assurances that they will not be mistreated.

"We take these assurances, we do what we can to monitor them, and obviously if we get evidence that countries are not abiding by these assurances, that we take into account in the next time we have a decision to make about a possible rendition," national security advisor Stephen Hadley told CNN's Late Edition.

The CIA took part in more than 80 transfers of detainees to other countries before Sept 11, 2001, and another 100 to 150 since then, according to officials and media reports.

A classified directive signed by Bush after the Sept 11 attacks gives the CIA broad power to transfer detainees without case-by-case approval from the White House, US officials say.



-------- russia / chechnya

Georgia Promises to Put off Sanctions Against Russian Military Bases

16.05.2005 
MosNews

http://mosnews.com/news/2005/05/16/georgiahold.shtml

Georgia said on Monday it would put on hold moves against Russian military bases as hopes emerged the two countries could settle the dispute.

Georgian Defense Minister Irakly Okruashvili quoted by AP said the republic does not want to escalate problems with Moscow. “We want to act in the most liberal way and refrain from escalating the situation so that the negotiating process would yield an agreement,” he said.

The sanctions could include declaring the bases “outside the law,” denying visas to Russian military personnel and hindering transport to the bases.

Georgian lawmakers had proposed that the sanctions be put into effect on Monday. Russian officials have said they need at least four years to complete the withdrawal, and possibly several more, while Georgian officials want the bases out by January 2008.

However, late last week Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili said Russia made interesting new suggestions that brought the sides closer to an agreement.

Zurabishvili is expected to discuss the issue with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of a Council of Europe gathering in Poland on Monday and Tuesday.



-------- us

Awol crisis hits the US forces

As the death toll of troops mounts in Iraq and Afghanistan, America's military recruiting figures have plummeted to an all-time low. Thousands of US servicemen and women are now refusing to serve their country. Andrew Buncombe reports

16 May 2005 UK Independent

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=638635

Sergeant Kevin Benderman cannot shake the images from his head. There are bombed villages and desperate people. There are dogs eating corpses thrown into a mass grave. And most unremitting of all, there is the image of a young Iraqi girl, no more than eight or nine, one arm severely burnt and blistered, and the sound of her screams.

Last January, these memories became too much for this veteran of the war in Iraq. Informed his unit was about to return, he told his commanders he wanted out and applied to be considered a conscientious objector. The Army refused and charged him with desertion. Last week, his case - which carries a penalty of up to seven years' imprisonment - started before a military judge at Fort Stewart in Georgia.

"If I am sincere in what I say and there's consequences because of my actions, I am prepared to stand up and take it," Sgt Benderman said. "If I have to go to prison because I don't want to kill anybody, so be it."

The case of Sgt Benderman and those of others like him has focused attention on the thousands of US troops who have gone Awol (Absent Without Leave) since the start of President George Bush's so-called war on terror. The most recent Pentagon figures suggest there are 5,133 troops missing from duty. Of these 2,376 are sought by the Army, 1,410 by the Navy, 1,297 by the Marines and 50 by the Air Force. Some have been missing for decades.

But campaigners say the true figure could be far higher. Staff who run a volunteer hotline to help desperate soldiers and recruits who want to get out, say the number of calls has increased by 50 per cent since 9/11. Last year alone, the GI Rights Hotline took more than 30,000 calls. At present, the hotline gets 3,000 calls a month and the volunteers say that by the time a soldier or recruit dials the help-line they have almost always made up their mind to get out by one means or another.

"People are calling us because there is a real problem," said Robert Dove, a Quaker who works in the Boston office of the American Friends Service Committee, one of several volunteer groups that have operated the hotline since 1995. "We do not profess to be lawyers or therapists but we do provide both types of support."

The people calling the hotline range from veterans such as Sgt Benderman to recruits such as Jeremiah Adler, an idealistic 18-year-old from Portland, Oregon, who joined the Army believing he could help change its culture. Within days of arriving for his basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, he realised he had made a mistake and said the Army simply wanted to turn him into a "ruthless, cold-blooded killer".

Mr Adler begged to be sent home and even pretended to be gay to be discharged. Eventually, he and another recruit fled in the night and rang the hotline, which advised him to turn himself in to avoid court-martial. He will now be given an "other than honourable discharge".

From southern Germany where he is on holiday before starting college in the autumn, Mr Adler told The Independent: "It was obviously a horrible experience but now I'm glad I went through it. I was expecting to meet a whole lot of different types of people; some had noble reasons. I also met a lot of people who [wanted] to kill Arabs." In one letter home to his family, Mr Adler wrote that when he arrived he was horrified by the things he heard other recruits talking about, things that in civilian life would result in someone being treated as an outcast. In another letter he said he could hear other recruits crying at night. "You can hear people trying to make sure no one hears them cry under their covers," he wrote.

Mr Adler now provides advice to other recruits who have decided the military is not for them. "When people contact me I tell them go Awol; it's the quickest way to get out," he said. "I was told I would be facing 20 years hard labour at Fort Leavenworth [military prison] because that is what the sergeant will tell you. I learnt that was not the case."

Jeremy Hinzman, 26, a reservist with the 82nd Airborne Division who served in Afghan-istan, decided to go Awol after his unit was ordered to Iraq. He took his wife and child and fled to Canada, hoping to be welcomed, as were the 50,000 or so young Americans who sought refuge north of the border to avoid the Vietnam war.

But in March he was refused refugee status by the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board. Mr Hinzman, who is appealing the decision, told the hearing: "We were told that we would be going to Iraq to jack up some terrorists. We were told it was a new kind of war, that these were evil people and they had to be dealt with ... We were told to consider all Arabs as potential terrorists ... to foster an attitude of hatred that gets your blood boiling."

Campaigners say recruits who decide they want to leave the military are the most vulnerable to pressure from sergeants and officers who try to force them to stay. Some are told they will go to jail, others are told they will never be able to get a job if they receive a "less than honourable discharge", they say. They also face intense peer pressure and abuse, as they try to get out and after they manage to do so.

Campaigners have also drawn attention to the often scurrilous tactics used by US military recruiters, who for three months have failed to meet their targets for recruits. After several cases where recruiters had illegally covered up recruits' criminal and medical records, threatened one prospect with jail for failing to meet an appointment and provided another with laxatives to help him lose weight and pass a physical, the Pentagon is halting all recruiting on 20 May for a day of retraining.

Senior commanders have said the present recruiting environment - with the war in Iraq having cost the lives of more than 1,600 servicemen and women and the economy able to offer other jobs - is their most difficult. Despite this, the Pentagon insists it is committed to finding recruits in a fair and transparent process. Colonel Joseph Curtin, an Army spokesman, said the retraining day would give recruiters time to "focus on how they can do a very tough mission without violating good order and discipline".

JE McNeil, who heads the Centre for Conscience and War in Washington DC, a Christian group whose members also staff the GI Rights Hotline, said many troops she spoke with had been lied to by recruiters. "I had an 18-year-old who was told he did not have to serve in Iraq. 'I was told I'd get a job where I would not be sent', he told me," said Ms McNeill, a lawyer. "He was recruited to be an military policeman. They are the people they are sending to Iraq. People all the time are told [by recruiters] 'I can get you a job where you will not have to go to war'."

Campaigners say that despite pressure on unhappy recruits exerted in the barracks and the insults they will likely face, if a recruit follows the correct legal procedure they can usually get out of the military. One of the biggest hurdles for those who want out is obtaining the correct information on how best to proceed. Usually, the advice to those on the run is to turn themselves in. After 30 days of being Awol a serviceman is considered a deserter, and a warrant is issued for his arrest. At that point, he can be returned to his unit, court-martialled or given jail time or - and this is more often than not the outcome for recruits - they will be given a non-judicial punishment and an less-than-honourable discharge. Volunteers say usually the military is more inclined to let go those who have had the least training and are the least specialised. But an experienced Air Force pilot, for instance, in whom the military has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars, could face a much more difficult time in getting out. "The most important thing we do is listen and not lie," Ms McNeil said. "Sometimes I tell people there is nothing they can do. I don't enjoy saying it but some times that is it."

Kevin Benderman is anything but a raw recruit. He joined the US Army in 1987, served in the Gulf War and received an honourable discharge in 1991. He rejoined in 2000 and served during the invasion of Iraq with the 4th Infantry Division. He says what he saw there left him morally opposed to returning to war applied to be a CO. The military says that on 10 January he failed to show up when his unit was to ship out.

Last week, at Fort Stewart, a military judge started a so-called Article 32 hearing to decide whether there is sufficient evidence for a full court-martial of Sgt Benderman. The proceedings recommence on 26 May. Sgt Benderman's wife, Monica, who had been heavily involved in organising his defence, said: "A lot of what they are saying about Kevin is not true. He never went Awol and was never a deserter. He is staying strong. I am proud of him. He has had a lot thrown at him over the past three days. If you consider what he has gone through he is doing very well. If people cannot see he is genuine, then they are not looking at him."

The Pentagon says it does not keep records of how many try to desert each year. A spokeswoman, Lieutenant Colonel Ellen Krenke, said the running rally had declined since 9/11 from 8,396 to the present total of 5,133. She added: "The vast majority of those who desert do so because they have committed some criminal act, not for political or conscientious objector purposes." 


----

Report Critical of Rumsfeld Is Pulled After DOD Protest

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 16, 2005; Page A05

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/15/AR2005051500872.html

A government commission studying overseas military bases sent Congress a report that included criticism of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's strategy, then removed the document from the commission Web site after the Pentagon complained that it divulged classified information.

The congressionally appointed panel contends that the 262-page report is based only on public sources, and several commission officials say they believe the Defense Department was annoyed because their conclusions include harsh criticism of some elements of Rumsfeld's plan for streamlining the military.

An official involved in the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Pentagon's primary complaint appeared to be that the report specified Bulgaria and Romania as countries U.S. forces would rotate through for training, rather than using a more vague regional identification such as Eastern Europe.

The Overseas Basing Commission released a partial version of the report at a news conference on May 9, but now the panel has removed that version from its Web site because of the Pentagon's complaints.

The controversy was first reported yesterday by Newsweek.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Defense Department's objections are not about the panel's views but about release of classified information. "The commission was informed and agreed to the requirement to submit their report for a security review in advance of releasing it," Whitman said. "Their failure to do so appears to have resulted in unauthorized disclosure of classified information. When the department raised concerns over its premature posting to the Internet, the commission removed the report. The department has initiated appropriate procedures for security breaches of this nature and also notified the congressional sponsors of this commission."

The commission chairman, Al Cornella, a Republican, said in an interview that he was trying to cooperate but that he had not agreed to have the Pentagon clear the report in advance. "The commission is confident that everything in our report was obtained from unclassified sources or settings," he said.

According to e-mails that an official involved in the dispute read to The Washington Post, Barry Pavel, the Defense Department's director of strategy on global posture, wrote to Cornella on May 7 to warn of "the potential need to conduct an investigation regarding violation of security classification procedures, including the IT-related aspects (eg, possibly having to clean your servers, etc)."

Commission officials said they took that as a threat to revoke their security clearances and to bring military police or information technology agents to their Arlington offices.

The officials said Pavel raised the concerns with Cornella on May 6 in an e-mail with the subject line, "Re: report." "I'll be frank," Pavel wrote, according to the e-mail read to The Post. "I found it professionally disappointing; riddled with errors of fact, misperceptions, and misunderstandings; and divulging classified information that will damage our foreign relations and national security."

The officials said that after the complaint, they removed the original report from their Web site, collected the printed copies that they could retract, removed some appendixes and had the reports rebound before the news conference.

Cornella asked Pavel to mark up a report with his objections. Another Pentagon official replied, according to the official who read the e-mail, which was casually punctuated, "Al A proper security review cannot be done on the fly."

Pavel did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment.

The commission, asked to provide recommendations on Rumsfeld's plan to return 70,000 troops from overseas and to reposition many of the remaining forces, urged that "the pace of events be slowed and re-ordered." The commission found "no evidence of an overwhelming strategic or operational imperative" to handle the redeployment with the speed the Pentagon had planned.



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


-------- homeland security / national intelligence

Air travelers stripped bare with X-ray machine

The agency in charge of the nation's air security expects later this year to begin using a controversial X-ray machine that will show airport screeners a clear picture of what's under passengers' clothes — whether weapons or just bare skin.

By Thomas Frank, USA TODAY
5/16/2005 10:10 AM

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-05-15-airport-xray-bottomstrip_x.htm

Photo: The new system makes it easy to see possibly dangerous devices. 	
Rapiscan Systems

http://images.usatoday.com/news/_photos/2005/05/16/xrays-inside.jpg

Screeners plan to test the "backscatter" machines at several U.S. airports, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) says. The refrigerator-sized machines are considered a breakthrough in scanning technology but have been labeled "a virtual strip search" by the American Civil Liberties Union. (Related story: Airports test 'futureworld' devices)

Security workers using the machines can see through clothes and peer at whatever may be hidden in undergarments, shirts or pants. The images also paint a revealing picture of a person's nude body.

The devices can potentially be used to screen hundreds of millions of air travelers each year, although TSA says more study is needed to determine how the devices may be used at U.S. airports. The agency declined to say when and where it expects to test the machines.

Backscatter technology has been waiting on the sidelines for nearly four years but seems poised now to move to the forefront of aviation security. The machines are already used by U.S. Customs agents at 12 airports to screen passengers suspected of carrying drugs. They're also getting a test run at a terminal in London Heathrow Airport, the first major airport to use them.

The ACLU says the scanners invade personal privacy. "This leads directly to a surveillance society," says Barry Steinhardt, who runs the group's technology program.

But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a Senate subcommittee last month that he wants to employ the technology and doesn't want an "endless debate" over privacy issues.

Security consultant Douglas Laird says the machines are essential to spot explosives, which aren't detected by metal detectors.

The $100,000 machines bounce low-radiation X-rays off a person's skin to produce photo-like computer images of metal, plastic and organic materials hidden under clothes, says American Science and Engineering. The TSA is testing its BodySearch machine.



-------- POLITICS


-------- propaganda wars

Report Critical of Rumsfeld Is Pulled After DOD Protest

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 16, 2005; A05

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/15/AR2005051500872_pf.html

A government commission studying overseas military bases sent Congress a report that included criticism of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's strategy, then removed the document from the commission Web site after the Pentagon complained that it divulged classified information.

The congressionally appointed panel contends that the 262-page report is based only on public sources, and several commission officials say they believe the Defense Department was annoyed because their conclusions include harsh criticism of some elements of Rumsfeld's plan for streamlining the military.

An official involved in the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Pentagon's primary complaint appeared to be that the report specified Bulgaria and Romania as countries U.S. forces would rotate through for training, rather than using a more vague regional identification such as Eastern Europe.

The Overseas Basing Commission released a partial version of the report at a news conference on May 9, but now the panel has removed that version from its Web site because of the Pentagon's complaints.

The controversy was first reported yesterday by Newsweek.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Defense Department's objections are not about the panel's views but about release of classified information. "The commission was informed and agreed to the requirement to submit their report for a security review in advance of releasing it," Whitman said. "Their failure to do so appears to have resulted in unauthorized disclosure of classified information. When the department raised concerns over its premature posting to the Internet, the commission removed the report. The department has initiated appropriate procedures for security breaches of this nature and also notified the congressional sponsors of this commission."

The commission chairman, Al Cornella, a Republican, said in an interview that he was trying to cooperate but that he had not agreed to have the Pentagon clear the report in advance. "The commission is confident that everything in our report was obtained from unclassified sources or settings," he said.

According to e-mails that an official involved in the dispute read to The Washington Post, Barry Pavel, the Defense Department's director of strategy on global posture, wrote to Cornella on May 7 to warn of "the potential need to conduct an investigation regarding violation of security classification procedures, including the IT-related aspects (eg, possibly having to clean your servers, etc)."

Commission officials said they took that as a threat to revoke their security clearances and to bring military police or information technology agents to their Arlington offices.

The officials said Pavel raised the concerns with Cornella on May 6 in an e-mail with the subject line, "Re: report." "I'll be frank," Pavel wrote, according to the e-mail read to The Post. "I found it professionally disappointing; riddled with errors of fact, misperceptions, and misunderstandings; and divulging classified information that will damage our foreign relations and national security."

The officials said that after the complaint, they removed the original report from their Web site, collected the printed copies that they could retract, removed some appendixes and had the reports rebound before the news conference.

Cornella asked Pavel to mark up a report with his objections. Another Pentagon official replied, according to the official who read the e-mail, which was casually punctuated, "Al A proper security review cannot be done on the fly."

Pavel did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment.

The commission, asked to provide recommendations on Rumsfeld's plan to return 70,000 troops from overseas and to reposition many of the remaining forces, urged that "the pace of events be slowed and re-ordered." The commission found "no evidence of an overwhelming strategic or operational imperative" to handle the redeployment with the speed the Pentagon had planned.

----

Bill Moyers Responds to CPB's Tomlinson Charges of Liberal Bias: "We Were Getting it Right, But Not Right Wing"

Monday, May 16th, 2005 Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/16/1329245

In his first public address since leaving PBS six months ago, journalist Bill Moyers responds to charges by Kenneth Tomlinson - the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - of liberal bias and revelations that Tomlinson hired a consultant to monitor the political content of Moyers' PBS show "Now." We spend the hour playing an excerpt of Moyers' closing address at the National Conference on Media Reform in St. Louis, Missouri. [includes rush transcript] Over 2,000 people converged in St. Louis Missouri this weekend for the second-ever National Conference on Media Reform. Few issues were discussed as much as the future of public broadcasting in this country.

The conference was held amid accusations that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been largely taken over by conservatives who are influencing programming and hiring decisions.

In April, the CBP board did not renew the contract of its chief executive, Kathleen Cox. Board Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson tapped Ken Ferree -- a former top aide to Michael Powell at the Federal Communications Commission - to be her temporary replacement.

Tomlinson has said he aims to achieve political balance on the public airwaves. He has denied any changes have been made for political reasons.

But Tomlinson has publicly criticized one of PBS' best known shows - NOW - the weekly show formerly hosted by Bill Moyers.

In an Op-Ed in the Washington Times, the chair of the CPB - Ken Tomlinson wrote "The image of the left-wing bias of "NOW" -- unchallenged by a balancing point of view on public broadcasting's Friday evening lineup -- was unhealthy. Indeed, it jeopardized essential support for public TV."

Tomlinson went on to write, "This was brought home to me in November 2003 by a phone call from an old friend complaining about Mr. Moyers" bias and the lack of balance on the Friday evening lineup. He explained the foundation he heads made a six-figure contribution to his local public television station for digital conversion. But he declared there would be no more contributions until something was done about the network's bias."

A month after Tomlinson received that letter, Tomlinson sent the head of PBS - Pat Mitchell -- a letter charging that "Now" "does not contain anything approaching the balance the law requires for public broadcasting."

In addition, the New York Times reported Tomlinson secretly spent $10,000 to hire a consultant to monitor the political leanings of Moyers' show.

Until now Bill Moyers had not responded publicly to Tomlinson's accusations. But yesterday he gave the closing address at the National Conference on Media Reform. It was his first major address since leaving the anchor chair.

    * Bill Moyers, speaking at the National Conference on Media Reform in St. Louis, Missouri, May 15, 2005. The conference was organized by Free Press. 

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

BILL MOYERS: The story I’ve come to share with you goes to the core of our belief that the quality of democracy and the quality of journalism are deeply entwined. I can tell this story because I’ve been living it. As Dr. Wilson said, it’s been in the news this week, including more tax on a single journalist, yours truly, by the right wing media and their friends at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. As you know, CPB was established almost forty years ago to set broad policy for public broadcasting and to be a firewall between political influence and program content. What some on its board are now doing today, led by its chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, is too important, too disturbing, and yes, even dangerous for a gathering like this not to address it. We’re seeing unfold a contemporary example of the age old ambition of power and ideology to squelch -- to punish the journalist who tell the stories that make princes and priests uncomfortable.

First, let me assure you that I take in stride attacks by the radical right wingers who have not given up demonizing me although I retired over six months ago. They’ve been after me for years now, and I suspect they will be stomping on my grave to make sure I don’t come back from the dead. I should point out to them that one of our boys pulled it off some two thousand years ago after the Pharisees, the Sadducees and Caesar surrogates thought they had shut him up for good. I won’t be expecting that kind of miracle, but I should put my detractors on notice, they might just compel me out of the rocking chair and back into the anchor chair.

Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control using the government to threaten and intimidate; I mean the people who are hollowing out middle class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq’s oil; I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into Karl Rove’s slush fund; who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets; I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy. That’s who I mean. And if that’s editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it’s okay to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence.

One reason I’m in hot water is because my colleagues and I at “NOW” didn’t play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism. Those rules divide the world into democrats and republicans, liberals and conservatives and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if, instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news.

Jonathan Mermin writes about this in a recent essay in World Policy Journal. You’ll also want to read his book Debating War and Peace: Media Coverage of US Intervention in the Post-Vietnam Era. Mermin quotes David Ignatius of The Washington Post on why the deep interests of the American public are so poorly served by Beltway journalism. “The rules of the game,” says Ignatius, “make it hard for us to tee up on an issue without a news peg.” He offers a case in point: the debacle of America’s occupation of Iraq. “If Senator So-and-so hasn’t criticized postwar planning for Iraq,” says Ignatius, “it’s hard for a reporter to write a story about that.”

Mermin also quotes public television’s Jim Lehrer, whom I greatly respect, acknowledging that unless an official says something is so, it isn’t news. Why were journalists not discussing the occupation of Iraq? “Because,” says Jim Lehrer, “the word ‘occupation’ was never mentioned in the run up to the war. Washington talked about the war as a war of liberation, not a war of occupation. So as a consequence, those of us in journalism,” says Lehrer, “never even looked at the issue of occupation.” “In other words,” says Jonathan Mermin, “if the government isn’t talking about it, we don’t report it.” He concludes, “Lehrer’s somewhat jarring declaration, one of many recent admissions by journalists that their reporting failed to prepare the public for the calamitous occupation that has followed the liberation of Iraq, reveals just how far the actual practice of American journalism has deviated from the First Amendment idea of a press that is independent of government.”

Take the example, also cited by Mermin, of Charles Hanley. Hanley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Associated Press whose 2003 story of the torture of Iraqis in American prisons before a U.S. Army report and photographs documenting the abuse surfaced, was ignored by major American newspapers. Hanley attributes this lack of interest to the fact, (quote), “it was not an officially-sanctioned story that begins with a handout from an official source. Furthermore, Iraqis recounting their own personal experience of Abu Ghraib simply did not have the credibility with Beltway journalists of American officials denying that such things happened.”

Judith Miller of The New York Times, among others, relied on that credibility, relied on that credibility of official but unnamed sources when she served essentially as the government stenographer for claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. So the rules of the game permit Washington officials to set the agenda for journalism, leaving the press all too simply to recount what officials say instead of subjecting their words and deeds to critical scrutiny. Instead of acting as filters for readers and viewers sifting the truth from the propaganda, reporters and anchors attentively transcribe both sides of the spin invariably failing to provide context, background or any sense of which claims hold up and which are misleading.

I decided long ago that this wasn’t healthy for democracy. I came to see that news is what people want to keep hidden, and everything else is publicity. In my documentaries, whether on the Watergate scandal thirty years ago, or the Iran-Contra conspiracy twenty years ago, or Bill Clinton’s fundraising scandals ten years ago, or five years ago the chemical industry’s long and despicable cover up of its cynical and unspeakable withholding of critical data about its toxic products, I realized that investigative journalism could not be a collaboration between the journalist and the subject. Objectivity was not satisfied by two opposing people offering competing opinions, leaving the viewer to split the difference. I came to believe that objective journalism means describing the object being reported on, including the little fibs and fantasies, as well as the big lie of people in power.

In no way – in no way does this permit journalists to make accusations and allegations. It means, instead, making sure that your reporting and your conclusions can be nailed to the post with confirming evidence.

This is always hard to do, but it’s never been harder. Without a trace of irony, the powers that be have appropriated the Newspeak vernacular of George Orwell’s 1984. They give us a program vowing no child will be left behind, while cutting funds for educating disadvantaged children; they give us legislation cheerily calling for clear skies and healthy forests that give us neither, while turning over our public lands to the energy industry. In Orwell’s 1984 the character Syme, one of the writers of that totalitarian society’s dictionary, explains to the protagonist, Winston, “Don’t you see? Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050 at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we’re having right now. The whole climate of thought,” he said, “will be different. In fact, there will be no thought as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking, not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

Hear me: an unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too.

[break]

I grew up in the South, where the truth about slavery, race and segregation had been driven from the pulpits, driven from the classrooms and driven from the news rooms. It took a bloody Civil War to bring the truth home, and then it took another hundred years for the truth to make us free. Then I served in the Johnson administration. Imbued with Cold War orthodoxy and confident that might makes right, we circled the wagons, listened only to each other and pursued policies the evidence couldn’t carry. The results were devastating for Vietnamese and Americans.

I brought all of this to the task when PBS asked me after 9/11 to start a new weekly broadcast. They wanted us to make it different from anything else on the air, commercial or public broadcasting. They asked us to tell stories no one else was reporting and to offer a venue to people who might not otherwise be heard. That wasn’t a hard sell. I had been deeply impressed by studies published in two leading peer-reviewed scholarly journals by a team of researchers led by Vassar College’s William Hoynes, who was here at this conference until this morning when he had to leave early. Their extensive research on the content of public television over a decade found that political discussions on our public affairs programs generally included a limited set of voices that offer a narrow range of perspectives on current issues and events. Instead of far-ranging discussions and debates, the kind that might engage viewers as citizens and not simply as audiences, this research found that public affairs programs on PBS stations were populated by the standard set of elite news sources, where the government officials and Washington journalists talking about political strategy or corporate sources talking about stock prices or the economy from the investors’ viewpoint.

Public television unfortunately all too often was offering the same kind of discussions and a similar brand of insider discourse that is featured regularly on commercial television. They just weren’t so noisy. Who didn’t appear was also revealing. In contrast to the conservative mantra that public television routinely featured the voices of antiestablishment critics, the studies found that alternative perspectives were rare on public television and were effectively drowned out by the stream of government and corporate views that represented the vast majority of sources on our broadcasts. The so-called experts who got most of the face time came primarily from mainstream news organizations and Washington think tanks rather than diverse interests. Economic news, for example, was almost entirely refracted through the views of business people, investors and business journalists. Voices outside the corporate Wall Street universe, nonprofessional workers, labor representatives, consumer advocates and the general public were rarely heard.

In sum, these two studies concluded, the economic coverage was so narrow that the views and the activities of most citizens became irrelevant. All of this went against the Broadcasting Act of 1967 that created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I know. I was there. As a young policy assistant to President Johnson, I attended in 1964 my first meeting to discuss the future of public broadcasting in the office of the Commissioner of Education. I know firsthand that the Public Broadcasting Act was meant to provide an alternative to commercial television and to reflect the diversity of the American people.

[break]

We knew that the success of NOW’s journalism was creating a backlash in Washington. The more compelling our journalism, the angrier became the radical right of the Republican Party. That’s because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth.

This is the point of my story. Ideologues don’t want you to go beyond the typical labels of left and right because people may start believing you. They embrace a world view that cannot be proven wrong because they will admit no evidence to the contrary. They want your reporting to validate their belief system and when it doesn’t, God forbid. Never mind that their own stars were getting a fair shake on “NOW,” Gigot, Viguerie, David Keen of the American Conservative Union, Steven Moore of the Club for Growth. Our reporting – our reporting was giving the radical right fits because it wasn’t the party line. It wasn’t that we were getting it wrong, either. Only three times in three years did we err factually, and in each case we corrected those errors as soon as we confirmed their inaccuracy. I believe our broadcast was the best researched on public broadcasting.

And the problem was that we were telling stories that partisans in power didn’t want told, and we were getting it right, not rightwing. Let me tell you something – and we can argue about this at some other time – I’ve always thought the American eagle needed a left wing and a right wing. The right wing would see to it that economic interests had their legitimate concerns addressed. The left wing would see to it that ordinary people were included in the bargain. And both would keep the great bird on course. But with two right wings or two left wings, it’s no longer an eagle, and it’s going to crash.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you that my occasional -- and I didn’t do them that often -- my occasional commentaries got to them, as well. Although apparently he never watched the broadcast -- I guess he couldn’t take the diversity -- Senator Trent Lott came out squealing like a stuck pig when, after the mid-term elections in 2002, I described what was likely to happen now that all three branches of government were about to be controlled by one party dominated by the religious, corporate and political right. Instead of congratulating the winners for their election victory as some network broadcasters did or celebrating their victory as Fox, The Washington Times, The Weekly Standard, Talk Radio and other partisan Republican journalists did, I provided a little independent analysis of what the victory meant. And I did it the old-fashioned way. I looked at the record, took the winners at their word and drew the logical conclusions that they would use power as they had said for twenty-five years they would. And then, of course, I set it forth in my usual modest Texas way.

Events since then have confirmed the accuracy of what I said. I had our research team, and I worked very much with them, put together with mainstream news clippings to support every sentence in that particular post-election analysis. But then strange things began to happen. Friends in Washington called to say that they had heard of muttered threats that the PBS reauthorization would be held up unless Moyers is dealt with. The Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Tomlinson, was said to be quite agitated. I didn’t know it at the time, but within two months after taking over, three months after taking over, he wrote a letter to PBS complaining about the unbalanced “NOW.”

Apparently there was apoplexy in the right wing area, particularly when I closed the broadcast one Friday night by putting a flag in my lapel and said – well, here’s exactly what I said. Here’s a copy of what I said: “I wore my flag tonight, first time. Until now I haven’t thought it necessary to display a little metallic icon of patriotism for everyone to see. It was enough to vote, pay my taxes, perform my civic duties, speak my mind and do my best to raise our kids to be good Americans. Sometimes I would offer a small prayer of gratitude that I had been born in a country whose institutions sustain me, whose armed forces protected me and whose ideals inspired me. I offered my heart’s affection in return. It no more occurred to me to flaunt the flag on my chest than it did to pin my mother’s picture on my lapel to prove her son’s love. Mother knew where I stood. So does my country. I even tuck a valentine in my tax returns on April 15th. So what’s this doing here? I put it on to take it back. The flag’s been hijacked and turned into a logo, the trademark – the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism. On most Sunday morning talk shows, official chests appear adorned with the flag as if it’s the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. During the State of the Union, did you notice Bush and Cheney wearing the flag? How come? No administration’s patriotism is ever in doubt, only its policies. And the flag bestows no immunity from error. When I see flags sprouting on official labels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao’s Little Red Book of orthodoxy on every official’s desk, omnipresent and unread.

”But more galling than anything are all those moralistic ideologues in Washington sporting the flag in their lapel while writing books and running web sites and publishing magazines attacking dissenters as un-American. They are people whose ardor for war grows disproportionately to their distance from the fighting. They’re in the same league as those swarms of corporate lobbyists wearing flags and prowling Capitol Hill for tax breaks, even as they call for spending more on war.

”So I put this on as a modest repose to men with flags in their lapels who shoot missiles from the safety of Washington think tanks. or argue that sacrifice is good as long as they don’t have to make it, or approve of bribing governments to join the ‘Coalition of the Willing.’ I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us. The flag belongs to the country, not to the government, and it reminds me that it’s not un-American to think that war, except in self defense, is a failure of moral imagination, political nerve and diplomacy. Come to think of it, standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.”

That did it. That did it. You should have heard Ann Coulter at the next conservative convention. I think that’s where she got the title for her book, her book about Democrats and treason. That did it. And our continued reporting on overpricing at Halliburton, chicanery on K Street and the heavy, if divinely-guided hand, of Tom DeLay.

When Senator Lott protested that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has not seemed willing to deal with Bill Moyers, a new member of the board, a Republican fundraiser named Cheryl Halpern, who had been appointed by President Bush, agreed that CPB needed more power to do just that sort of thing. She left no doubt about the kind of penalty she would like to see imposed on the malefactors.

Now, hear me again: as rumors circulated about all this, I asked to meet with the entire CBS board – I wanted to – CPB Board, thank you. I wanted to hear for myself what they were saying. I thought it would be helpful for someone like me who had been present at the creation and part of the system for almost forty years, to talk about how CPB had been intended to be a heat shield to protect public broadcasters from exactly this kind of intimidation. After all, I’d been there at the time of Richard Nixon’s attempted coup. In those days, public television had been really feisty and independent and often targeted for attacks. A Woody Allen special that poked fun at Henry Kissinger in the Nixon administration had actually been cancelled. Jon Stewart wouldn’t have stood a chance if he had started his career on PBS. The White House had been so outraged over a documentary called “The Banks and the Poor” about discrimination, about rich financial institutions against the poor, that PBS was driven to adopt new guidelines. That didn’t satisfy Nixon, and when public television hired two NBC reporters, the radicals Robert McNeil and Sander Vanocur to co-anchor some new broadcast, it was, for Nixon, the last straw. According to White House memos at the time, he was determined, (quote), “to get the left wing commentators who are cutting us up off public television at once; indeed, yesterday, if possible.” Sound familiar?

Nixon vetoed the authorization for CPB with a message written in part by his sidekick and soul mate, Pat Buchanan, who castigated Vanocur, McNeil, “Washington Week in Review,” “Black Journal” and Bill Moyers as, (quote), “unbalanced against the administration.” It is familiar. I always knew Nixon would be back, again and again. I just didn’t know that this time he would ask to be Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

[break]

Buchanan and Nixon succeeded in cutting CPB funding for all public affairs programming, except for “Black Journal.” They knocked out most of your funding for the National Public Affairs Center for Television, otherwise known as NPACT. And they voted to take away from the PBS staff the ultimate responsibility for the production of programming.

But in those days – and this is what I wanted to share with Kenneth Tomlinson, who I have never met, and his colleagues on the CPB board -- in those days there were still Republicans in America who did not march in ideological lockstep and who stood on principle against politicizing public television. The chairman of the public station in Dallas was an industrialist named Ralph Rogers, a Republican but no party hack, who saw the White House intimidation as an assault on freedom of the press and led a nationwide effort to stop it. The chairman at the time of the CPB was a former Republican Congressman, Thomas Curtis, from here in St. Louis – from here in Missouri, who was also a principled man. He resigned, claiming White House interference. Within a few months, the crisis was over. CPB maintained its independence, PBS grew in strength, and Richard Nixon would face impeachment and resign for violating the public trust and not just public broadcasting. Paradoxically, the very -- talk about justice. In fact, I once asked a wise – a friend of mine, a wise old man in Washington, what he had learned from life, could he reduce it to one sentence? And he said, “Yes. There ain’t no justice in the world. Now, get on with it.”

But here was cosmic justice. The very Public Affairs Center for Television that Nixon had tried to kill, NPACT, put PBS on the map by re-broadcasting in prime time each day’s Watergate hearings, drawing huge ratings night after night and establishing PBS as an ally of democracy. We should still be doing that sort of thing. C-SPAN, bless its heart, shouldn’t be the only channel that lets us see how democracy works.

That was thirty-three years ago and I thought the current CPB board would like to hear and talk about the importance of standing up to political interference. I was wrong. They wouldn’t meet with me. I tried three times and failed three times, and it was all downhill after that. I was naive, I guess. I simply never imagined that any CPB chairman, Democrat or Republican, would cross the line from resisting White House pressure to carrying out for the White House. But that’s what Kenneth Tomlinson has been doing. On Fox News this week he denied he’s carrying out a White House mandate or that he’s ever had any conversation with any Bush administration official about PBS. But The New York Times reports that he enlisted Karl Rove to help kill a proposal that would have put on the CPB board people with experience in local radio and television.

It was also reported that on the recommendation of administration officials, he hired a White House flack -- I know the genre -- named Mary Catherine Andrews, as a senior staff member at CPB. While she was still reporting to Karl Rove at the White House, she set up CPB’s new ombudsman office and had a hand in hiring the two people who will fill it, one of them who once worked for Tomlinson, the other a very respected journalist. But this is an anomaly. A political organization can’t have an ombudsman. CPB is not a journalistic or newsgathering organization. PBS can have one. WGBH can have one. WNET can have one. But for a political organization to have two ombudsmen or one ombudsman or a dozen? I would like to give Mr. Tomlinson the benefit of the doubt, but I can’t.

According to a book written about the Reader’s Digest when he was with – when he was its Editor-in-Chief, he surrounded himself with other right wingers, a pattern he’s now following for the staff at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I’ve already mentioned Miss Andrews. Well, for Acting President he hired Ken Ferree from the FCC who was Michael Powell’s enforcer when Powell was deciding how to go about allowing the big media companies to get even bigger. One of Ferree’s jobs, as Jeff Chester will say in his book coming out in the next several months, was to engage in tactics designed to dismiss any serious objection to more media monopolies. And according to Eric Alterman, Ferree was even more contemptuous than Michael Powell of public participation in the process of determining media ownership. It was Ferree who decided to issue a protective order designed to keep secret the market research on which the Republican majority on the commission based their vote to permit greater media consolidation.

Now, let me say, it is not likely that with a guy like that as the chief operating officer of the CPB you’re going to find any public television producer say, “Hey, let’s do something on how big media is affecting democracy.” Because what this leads to is preventive capitulation.

As everyone knows, Mr. Tomlinson has put up a considerable sum of money, allegedly over five million dollars, your money, for the new weekly broadcast featuring Paul Gigot and the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. Now, Gigot is a smart journalist, a sharp editor and a fine fellow. I had him on “NOW” several times, and I even proposed to PBS that he become a regular contributor on our show, the conversation of democracy, remember? All stripes. But I confess to some puzzlement that The Wall Street Journal, which in the past editorialized to cut PBS off the public tap, is now being subsidized by American taxpayers when its parent company, Dow Jones, had revenues in the first quarter of this year, of four hundred million dollars. I thought public television was supposed to be an alternative to commercial media, not a funder of it.

But in this weird deal, you get a glimpse of the kind of programming Mr. Tomlinson apparently seems to prefer. Alone of the big major newspapers, The Wall Street Journal, has no op-ed page where different opinions can compete with its right wing editorials. The Journal’s PBS broadcast is just as homogenous: right wingers talking to each other. I think, Bob McChesney, you ought to demand equal time for Katrina vanden Heuvel and the editors of The Nation, or for Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!, now there’s an idea for you. You want public broadcasting to be balanced against all these elite establishment voices that get heard? Get Amy on public television.

We didn’t know this a year ago. We just learned it from The New York Times two weeks ago that last year Mr. Tomlinson had spend ten thousand dollars to hire a contractor who would watch my show and report on political bias. That’s right. He spent ten thousand dollars of your money to hire a guy to watch “NOW” to find out who my guests were and what my stories were. Ten thousand dollars. Gee, Ken, for two dollars and fifty cents a week, you could pick up a copy of TV Guide on the newsstand. A subscription is even cheaper, and I would have sent you a coupon that can save you up to sixty-two percent. Or, for that matter, Ken, all you had to do was watch the show. You could have made it easier with a double Jim Beam, your favorite. Or you could -- mine, too. We have some things in common. Or you could go online, where the listings are posted. Hell, Ken, you could have called me collect, and I would have told you who we were having on the show.

[break]

The public paid for that study, but Ken Tomlinson acts as if he owns it. Let’s see it. You can watch my bias. You can watch my mistakes. You can watch everything I do right there on the air. We have the funders listed, everything is there, it’s all listed. But he won’t do it. In a May 10th op-ed piece in Reverend Moon’s conservative Washington Times, Ken Tomlinson maintained he had not released the findings because public broadcasting is such a delicate institution he did not want to, (quote), “damage public broadcasting’s image with controversy.” Where I come from in Texas, we shovel that kind of stuff every day.

As we learned this week, that’s not the only news Mr. Tomlinson tried to keep to himself. As Dr. Wilson indicated, and as reported by Jeff Chester’s Center for Digital Democracy, which the Human Center for Media and Democracy also support, there were two public opinion surveys commissioned by CPB, but not released to the media, not even to PBS and NPR. According to a source who talked to Salon.com, the first results were too good and Tomlinson didn’t believe them. After the Iraq war, the board commissioned another round of polling, and they thought they’d get worse results, but they didn’t.

This is the man, by the way, who was running the Voice of America back in 1984 when a fanatic named Charlie Wick was politicizing the United States Information Agency of which Voice of America was a part. It turned out there was a blacklist of people who had been removed from the list of prominent Americans sent abroad to lecture on behalf of America and the USIA. What’s more, it was discovered that evidence as to how those people were chosen to be on the blacklist, more than seven hundred documents, had been shredded. Among those on the blacklist of journalists, writers, scholars and politicians were dangerous left wing subversives like Walter Cronkite, James Baldwin, Gary Hart, Ralph Nader, Ben Bradley, Coretta Scott King and David Brinkley.

The person who took the fall for the blacklist was another right winger. He resigned. Shortly thereafter, so did Kenneth Tomlinson, who was one of six people in the agency with the authority to see the list of potential speakers and allowed to strike people’s names. Let me be clear: I don’t know, and there’s no record of what position Kenneth Tomlinson took, whether he supported the blacklist or opposed it or what he thinks of it now. I actually hoped Bill O’Reilly would have asked him about it when he appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor” this week. He didn’t. Instead, Tomlinson went on attacking me with O’Reilly egging him on, and went on denying he was carrying out a partisan mandate. The only time you could be sure he was telling the truth was at the end of the broadcast when he said to O’Reilly, “We love your show.” We? We love your show? He’s entitled to his opinion. He’s entitled to his politics. He’s entitled to contribute exclusively, as he does to conservative candidates for public office. That’s all fine. Our political system encourages it and tolerates it. But he is not entitled to stand in judgment on other people’s bias.

On Friday I wrote Kenneth Tomlinson. I asked him to sit down with me for an hour on PBS and talk about all this. I said, “You can choose the moderator, although I don’t see that we need one, two civilized human beings sitting and talking about these important issues affecting the future of a medium we both profess to love.” I said, “You can choose the guidelines.” But there’s one thing in particular – and I’m about to close. There’s one thing in particular I would like to ask him about. In that op-ed essay this week in The Washington Times, Ken Tomlinson talks of a phone call from an old friend complaining about Bill Moyers’s bias. The friend explained that the foundation he heads made a six figure contribution to his local public television station for digital conversion. But he declared, and I’m quoting Tomlinson, “There would be no more contributions until something was done about the network’s bias.”

Apparently, that’s Kenneth Tomlinson’s method of governance. Money talks and buys the influence it wants. But I’d like to ask him to listen to a different voice. This letter came to me last year, five pages of handwriting. It said, in essence, and I’m going to do some direct quoting: “After the worst sneak attack in our history, there has not been a moment to reflect, a moment to let the horror resonate, to feel the pain and regroup as humans. No, since I lost my husband on 9/11, not only our family’s world but the whole world seems to have gotten even worse than that tragic day. On 9/11, my husband was not on duty. He was home with me having coffee. Our own family story on that day is long and complicated. My daughter and grandson, living only five blocks from the tower, had to be evacuated with marks, terror all around. My other daughter, near the Brooklyn Bridge, my son in high school. But my Charlie took off like a lightning bolt to be with his men from the special operations command. ‘Bring my gear to the plaza,’ he told his aid immediately after the first plane struck the north tower. In comparison to using semantic technicalities, passing the responsibility or not having all the facts, he took action based on the responsibility he felt for his job and his men and for those towers he loved. In the Fire Department of New York chain of command, rules extend to every captain of every firehouse in the city. If anything happens in the firehouse at any time, even if the captain isn’t on duty and is on vacation, that captain is responsible for everything that goes on there twenty-four/seven. Why then,” she asks, “are the people in Washington responsible for nothing? Why do they pass the blame for what happened that day, for the failure of the system, for the torture at Abu Ghraib, for sending young soldiers into an immoral war, under-equipped, under-trained and under-protected? Why is there no leadership? We need more programs like ‘NOW’ to wake us up,” she said. “More programs like ‘NOW’ and your series with Joseph Campbell, which my husband and I so enjoyed watching together. Such programs must continue amidst the sea of false images and name calling that divide America now. Such programs give us hope that search will continue to get this imperfect human condition on to a higher plain. So thank you and all of those who work with you at Channel 13, my flagship station, and PBS. Without public broadcasting, all we would call news would be very carefully controlled propaganda.”

Framed above my desk at my office is the check she made out to Channel 13, “NOW,” for five hundred dollars. When I go discouraged or need to remind myself that public media truly matter, I look at that check and think of the woman who wrote it and the husband who did his duty, and their belief in us. And I will take, over the big check that Ken Tomlinson could have gotten from a demanding right winger, I would take the widow’s mite any day. 



-------- ENERGY 


-------- alternative energy

Big California Wind Farm Wrestles with Bird Deaths

Story by Leonard Anderson
REUTERS USA: May 16, 2005

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30802/story.htm

SAN FRANCISCO - California's push to add more renewable electricity to the state's power grid is pressuring wind power developers to reduce the number of birds killed each year at one of the biggest wind farms in the United States.

Wind companies like FPL Energy, wildlife groups and the US Fish and Wildlife Service are trying to agree on ways to lower the risk for birds flying into big spinning turbine blades at the 584-megawatt Altamont Pass wind center in rolling hills about 50 miles east of San Francisco.

Altamont Pass, which produces wind power for sale to Pacific Gas & Electric Co., a unit of PG&E Corp. is along a migratory path for raptors and near a nesting area for golden eagles.

One megawatt of wind energy can power about 250 to 300 homes with no emissions.

A study last year by the California Energy Commission estimated that up to 4,720 birds from 40 different species are killed each year at the wind farm, including as many as 1,300 protected raptors.

The yearly death toll includes more than 100 golden eagles plus red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls, kestrels, and meadowlarks, according to the Audubon Society.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California energy officials are pushing for more "clean" electricity supplies from wind, solar, biomass and other sources, aiming to produce 20 percent of the state's electricity from renewable sources by 2010.

HEARING ON PERMITS

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors will hold a hearing June 2 on renewal of operating permits for Altamont Pass developers.

Wildlife and environmental groups like the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club are challenging the permits and want an environmental review of Altamont Pass and the wind industry to take steps to reduce the bird kills.

FPL Energy, which produces about half the power at Altamont Pass, proposes measures to achieve a 35 percent reduction in kills in three years by removing and relocating older high-risk turbines and upgrading power poles to prevent bird electrocutions, among other steps.

For the longer term, "repowering" the site with new turbines that may operate at heights above flight paths of many birds could prevent kills, said Diane Fellman, FPL Energy's regulatory affairs director in California.

Altamont Pass also could shut down half its turbines during a four-month winter season when electricity demand is lower and reduce the population of gophers, rabbits and other prey, developers said.

Wildlife advocates, however, are pressing for a larger reduction in bird deaths by removing the deadliest turbines and closing all wind generation for the four winter months, said Arthur Feinstein, Audubon Society conservation director.

"No one is proposing to shut down the wind industry at Altamont Pass," Feinstein said.

The California Energy Commission study said Altamont Pass may be able to cut bird kills by up to 50 percent for some species by moving turbines and installing structures to divert birds to fly around turbines.

----

Bush urges development of alternate fuels

Updated 5/16/2005 2:32 PM USA Today
	
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-16-bush-fuel_x.htm

WEST POINT, Va. (AP) — With gasoline prices soaring, President Bush urged Congress on Monday to encourage development of alternate fuels like biodiesel and ethanol to make the United States less dependent on foreign oil.
		President Bush receives a tour Monday of an alternate fuel refinery in Virginia. 	
Paul J. Richards, AFP/Getty Images

"Our dependence on foreign oil is like a foreign tax on the American dream, and that tax is growing every year," Bush said at the Virginia BioDiesel Refinery about 140 miles south of Washington.

Bush flew here, about 30 miles from Richmond, to visit a production facility for biodiesel, an alternative fuel made from soybeans that is cleaner-burning and American-made, but carries a higher price tag that regular diesel fuel. It is often blended with conventional transportation fuels as an extender.

Before his speech, the president got a demonstration of how biodiesel is made — and how cleanly it burns in an engine. Bush was given a white handkerchief that had been held on an exhaust pipe of a revved-up 18-wheeler, and deemed it clean enough to hold up to his nose.

"Biodiesel is one of our nation's most promising alternative fuel sources and by developing biodiesel you're making this country less dependent on foreign sources of oil," he said.

"Americans are concerned about high prices at the pump and they're really concerned as they start making their travel plans, and I understand that," the president said. "I wish I could just wave a magic wand and lower the price at the pump. I'd do that. But that's not how it works."

He said the high prices confronting consumers have been decades in the making.

Bush urged Congress to enact energy legislation that he says addresses both supply and conservation issues in a bid to make the United States less dependent on foreign nations, particularly those in the volatile Middle East, for its energy needs.

Bush has attempted to set an August deadline for Congress to get a bill to his desk. The House has approved a plan with many elements that Bush wants, though he opposes the billions in tax breaks and subsidies to energy companies that it contains. The Senate has yet to act on alternative legislation.

Bush's plan would open an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling as part of its attempt to address supply problems.

His focus Monday, though, was on the part of the plan that boosts support for conservation and fossil fuel alternatives — such as hydrogen, biodiesel and clean coal technology. Separately, Bush has also offered proposals to speed construction of nuclear power plants and oil refineries.

Monday's appearance was one of three this week, in Washington and around the country, that are designed to turn Bush's focus back to his chief domestic priorities after a foreign trip. Later in the week, Bush was pushing his free-trade agenda, particularly a pact with Central American and Caribbean nations, and his proposals to remake and strengthen Social Security.



-------- OTHER


-------- environment

Toxic releases decline, but worst soups persist

By Brad Knickerbocker, The 5/16/2005 Christian Science Monitor

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-05-16-csm-toxins_x.htm

The good news about toxic pollutants in the air, soil, and water is that overall levels are coming down. But according to the Environmental Protection Agency some of the most toxic substances — mercury, dioxin, lead, and PCBs — remain an increasing problem.

The recent announcement of another round of military base closures could put more focus on the problem of toxic waste and how to solve it.

The EPA notes significant pollution problems at some 100 military bases, and 34 already-shuttered bases are among the most toxic "Superfund" sites, according to an Associated Press survey. Problems persist with such hard-to-remove contaminants as cleaning solvents, asbestos, radioactive materials, unexploded ordnance, and lead paint. The Pentagon already has spent $8.3 billion cleaning up recently closed military sites, and the total bill could top $12 billion.

All of this makes it difficult for the Pentagon to convert such facilities to state or privately owned properties, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported recently. In most cases, it takes years, if not decades, to finish the cleanup. In some places, for example, poisonous chemicals have seeped into groundwater flowing off-base.

According to the GAO, which looked at the previous four rounds of base closures going back to 1988, 28% of the total acreage has yet to be transferred "due primarily to the need for environmental cleanup."

While new base closures announced last week will add to that problem, total amounts of toxic pollution in the US environment have edged down.

In its latest annual Toxics Release Inventory, which covers more than 23,000 facilities and about 650 chemicals, the EPA reports that 4.4 billion pounds of toxic chemicals were released in 2003 (the latest available figures), about 6% less than the previous year. Most of the decrease was in metal mining and chemical manufacturing. Since 1998, before which fewer chemicals and fewer facilities were reported, toxic releases have gone down 42%.

At the same time, EPA officials and environmentalists note the worrisome release of persistent bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals (PBTs), which increased by 50 million pounds or 11% in the latest reporting year. These include dioxins, mercury, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

"PBT chemicals are of particular concern," reports the EPA, "not only because they are toxic, but also because they remain in the environment for long periods of time and are not readily destroyed (they persist) and build up or accumulate in body tissues (they bioaccumulate)."

In 2003, for example, mercury and mercury-compound releases jumped 41%. Mercury is a highly toxic substance that can poison wildlife and cause brain and nervous-system damage in children and fetuses. Unlike most other pollutants, mercury tends to concentrate in dangerous "hot spots."

"Although it is good news that overall releases are back on track, it is a major concern that some of the most hazardous chemicals have increased so dramatically," says Meghan Purvis, an environmental health specialist with U.S. Public Interest Research Group in Washington.

Meanwhile, according to the watchdog group Environmental Integrity Project, the 50 dirtiest among the nation's 359 largest power plants generate as little as 14% of the electric power but account for a disproportionately large share of pollution emissions: up to 50% of sulfur dioxide emissions, 42% of mercury, 40% of nitrogen oxides, and 35% of carbon dioxide.

"A huge share of these emissions comes from a handful of unnecessarily dirty power plants that have not yet installed modern pollution controls, or which operate inefficiently," says Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project and the EPA's former chief of regulatory enforcement.

Others take a longer view of pollution in the United States.

"In reality, the data is very clear," says Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council in Washington, which lobbies on behalf of power plants and utilities around the country. "Power-plant emissions, along with other indicators of air quality in the United States, continue to improve as part of a trend dating back several decades."

"With a decade of compiled research ... we've found that it is nearly impossible to paint a grim, doom-and-gloom picture anymore," says Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute, a free-market think tank in San Francisco that copublishes the "Index of Leading Environmental Indicators" with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "The facts speak for themselves, and the facts are hugely encouraging."

Other more recent facts may be less encouraging, however. For example, the Sierra Club reported last month that leaky underground storage tanks "are a growing threat to public health."

In all, there are some 130,000 leaking tanks around the country, including 17,544 needing cleanup in Florida, 15,049 in California, 9,039 in Michigan, and 1,221 in Tennessee.

"More than 100 million people drink groundwater in states where thousands of underground storage tanks are leaking and need cleanups," says Grant Cope, a toxics specialist with the Sierra Club. "These sites include toxics like benzene, toluene, and heavy metals that can quickly pollute groundwater, threaten public health, burden taxpayers with cleanup costs, and hurt real estate values.... A pin-prick sized hole in one fuel tank can leak 400 gallons of contamination a day, and one gallon of gasoline can pollute one million gallons of groundwater."



-------- health

Experimental drug stuns cancer doctors

5/16/2005 9:56 AM (AP)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-05-16-cancer-surprise_x.htm

ORLANDO — No one could have been more surprised than the doctors themselves.

They were just hoping to relieve the symptoms of a deadly blood disorder — and ended up treating the disease itself. In nearly half of the people who took the experimental drug, the cancer became undetectable.

Specialists said Revlimid now looks like a breakthrough and the first effective treatment for many people with myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS, which is even more common than leukemia.

"It may be, if not eradicating the disease, putting it into what I would call deep remission," said Dr. David Johnson, a cancer specialist at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center who is familiar with but had no role in the research.

Revlimid "is not yet on the market but almost certainly will be" because of these findings, he said.

MDS refers to a group of disorders caused by the bone marrow not making enough healthy, mature blood cells. About 15,000 to 20,000 new cases are diagnosed each year in the United States, and as many as 50,000 Americans have it now. They usually suffer anemia and fatigue and need blood transfusions about every eight weeks to stay alive.

"It's a serious problem, it tends to occur in older people, and it's fatal for most," said Dr. Herman Kattlove, a blood disorder specialist at the American Cancer Society.

Revlimid is similar to thalidomide, a drug notorious for the birth defects it caused decades ago but that in recent years has proved effective against another blood cancer, multiple myeloma. Researchers don't really know how it works other than that it boosts the immune system in a number of ways.

In small studies, Revlimid also showed promise and with far fewer side effects. In a new study, doctors tested it on 115 people with MDS who have the most common chromosome abnormality that causes the disease.

After about six months on the drug, 66% no longer needed blood transfusions, said the study's leader, Dr. Alan List of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa A year later, three-fourths of them still don't need transfusions.

But the big surprise was that signs of the genetic mutation fueling the disease diminished in 81 patients and vanished in 51.

"The chromosome abnormality completely disappeared, something we've never seen before" from a drug aimed just at boosting red blood cells, List said.

Dr. Bruce Johnson of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston compared it with what doctors saw in early tests of the drug Gleevec on people with chronic myelogenous leukemia several years ago.

"If you extrapolate what they saw, it's one of the signs for long remission," he said of the abnormality's disappearance.

Dr. Jasmine Zain, a blood specialist from the City of Hope Cancer Center in New York, said the results warrant further testing on the drug.

"Nowhere do you see 60 to 70% responses," she said.

About one-third of people on the drug had temporary drops in other blood cells and clotting components, fixed by briefly interrupting treatment or lowering the dose.

The study was sponsored by Celgene Corp., which makes Revlimid. List is a consultant for the company and reported results Sunday at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Orlando.

In other news at the conference:

• A five-year study of cancer care in America concluded that most people get good care but that quality differs from region to region.

The oncology society commissioned the study by Harvard University and the RAND Corporation after a 2000 Institute of Medicine report said that not all Americans were getting good cancer care and that this seemed to be a substantial problem.

Researchers measured more than 100 factors affecting breast and colon cancer care, such as whether women were appropriately prescribed tamoxifen and whether radiation doses were correct. They concluded that 86% of people with breast cancer and 78% with colon cancer got good care, higher than what other studies have found for other diseases.

However, "these numbers range all over the place" for the five cities studied — Atlanta, Cleveland, Houston, Kansas City and Los Angeles — said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a National Institutes of Health physician who headed the study. (Individual measures for each city were not released).

• Another study found that surgery and follow-up tests for stomach cancer are inadequate in most U.S. hospitals. Three out of four patients don't have enough lymph nodes removed to check for cancer, and this made a big impact on survival rates, said Dr. Natalie Coburn of Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto who used a federal cancer database for her study.

Five-year survival was more than twice as high in Hawaii than in Utah, where surgery was poorest.

"I'm not suggesting you fly from Utah to Hawaii to have your surgery done," but patients need to know the qualifications of their surgeon, said Dr. David Johnson, who is president of the oncology society.

"If that's true for gastric cancer, we know it's true for other cancers like lung surgery, breast surgery and the like," he added.

Nearly 22,000 new cases of stomach cancer and 11,550 deaths are expected in the United States this year. 



-------- ACTIVISTS

Statement on Behalf of Mordechai Vanunu by Daniel Ellsberg

Monday, May 16, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0516-22.htm
 
Nineteen years ago, Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the secret nuclear weapons production facility at Dimona in Israel, did something that he was right to do, something that others with his knowledge of Israel's nuclear activities and their implications for Israeli security and democracy and for world order should have done earlier, or later. He revealed to his fellow citizens and to the world truths about these activities that had long been wrongly concealed and denied by his government.

What he revealed was not merely that Israel was a nuclear weapons state; that had been known for more than a decade on the basis of widely-publicized leaks in the U.S. about official American intelligence estimates to this effect. Vanunu's photographs and interviews with the London Sunday Times revealed that Americans and all others had substantially underestimated the pace and scale of the Israel's secret and un-inspected production of nuclear materials and warheads, especially since the early '70's. New estimates on the basis of his revelations put the Israeli arsenal in 1986 at some 200 warheads (rather than 20), making it the third or possibly fourth largest nuclear power, ahead of Britain and probably ahead of France. After nineteen more years of production, that ranking remains valid, with Israeli probably possessing closer to 400 weapons.

Did not Israelis, citizens of a democracy, and other nations of the world deserve to know this? Was not his example of truth-telling, at great personal risk, to be thanked and emulated? For a generation, the nuclear scientist Joseph Rotblat, a founder of the Pugwash Movement for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, has argued that the confidence required in the inspection and enforcement agreements on nuclear disarmament could and must rest in part on "societal verification": the courage and conscience of scientists, technicians and officials who could reveal to inspectors activities violating those agreements. Unhappily, the last 35 years since the NPT went into effect have not seen many examples of such initiative, other than that of Mordechai Vanunu. Yet the potential value of such revelations, by someone willing, like Vanunu, to risk the heaviest personal costs, is ever more clear.

Imagine, for example, if an Indian citizen aware of India's secret preparations for nuclear testing and of the disastrous impact this would foreseeably have on regional and world security had made this knowledge unequivocally public in time for world opinion to come to bear to avert that tragic error and the Pakistani testing it was sure to provoke. The result for that person could well have been a long prison sentence, as it was for Vanunu; yet surely such an act would deserve a Nobel Peace Prize, for which Rotblat-using his prerogative as a Nobel Laureate-has nominated Mordechai Vanunu repeatedly.

Now, a year after serving his full sentence of eighteen years-nearly twelve of them spent in solitary confinement in a two-by-three meter cell-Vanunu is under indictment and faces a return to prison for violating restrictions on his freedom of speech that clearly violate his fundamental human rights. He has and will continue to speak out in favor of a nuclear-free-zone in the Middle East and the global abolition of nuclear weapons, telling whatever he knows that supports these objectives. It is absurd to maintain, as the head of Israel's security system does, that revelation of any further details he learned from his access in Dimona nineteen years ago could undermine Israeli national security, when no one has been able to identify any damage whatever to Israeli security in the years since his revelations in 1986. Rather, the prohibitions against his speaking to foreigners and to foreign journalists on any matters, or to his fellow citizens on nuclear matters, are clearly intended to extend his punishment in prison for unauthorized truth-telling for an indefinite period.

The deterrent message to other potential Vanunus-either in Israel or elsewhere-could not be more clear. In a world where more Vanunus are desperately needed -above all, in my own country, the United States, and other nuclear weapons states violating their Article VI obligations-is this a message that the rest of the world should tolerate to be sent unchallenged? In the interest of vital transparency and future societal verification, there should be international protest of Vanunu's new indictment and of the restrictions on his speech and travel.

It is time for the rest of the world to join Mordechai Vanunu in demanding that Israel acknowledge its status as a nuclear weapons state with a large and growing arsenal, and in demanding that ALL the nuclear weapons states--including Israel, India and Pakistan, but above all the U.S. and Russia--negotiate concrete steps on a definite time-table toward the global, inspected abolition of nuclear weapons.

I feel compelled to add a personal note. In the early 1960's, as a consultant to the Pentagon on nuclear command and control and nuclear war plans, I was aware that the recent characterization [in the latest issue of Foreign Policy] by Robert S. McNamara of our current nuclear policies was just as valid then: "Immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary and dreadfully dangerous." That was demonstrated in classified documents I was reading, and in some I was writing.

I regret profoundly that I did not reveal those documents to my fellow Americans and the world at that time, though I would have gone to prison for it, like Mordechai Vanunu. But I did not have his example of courageous truth-telling then to awaken me to that responsibility. It is my hope that people and governments will press the government of Israel now to free Vanunu to speak throughout the world as a prophet of nuclear abolition.

To register protest over Vanunu's indictment or support for him, coordinate through: Frederick Heffermehl, fredpax@online.no (Norway)

Daniel Ellsberg, the U.S. Department of Defense official who in 1971 leaked classified documents subsequently known as the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, has recently published his memoirs: Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.

----

Protesters form human chain around U.S. military base in Okinawa

Monday, May 16, 2005 
Kyodo News

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=337317

NAHA — Protesters formed a human chain Sunday around the U.S. Marine Corps' Futemma Air Station in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, demanding the immediate closure of the facility.

Organizers said some 24,000 people, both from Okinawa and elsewhere in Japan, took part in the event to mark the 33rd anniversary Sunday of the U.S. reversion of the prefecture to Japan in 1972.

----

Letters needed now on base closures!

From: Sheila Baker <shebikes4@sbcglobal.net>
Date: Mon May 16, 2005 7:17pm

Lois Capps
Sam Farr
Loretta Sanchez
George Miller
Nancy Pelosi
Barbara Lee
etc.
U.S. House of Representatives/U.S. Senate
Washington D.C.

Dear Representative/Senator,

Please consider the economic gain through closing bases rather than retaining military bases. Success stories such as former Mare Island Naval Base in Vallejo which is becoming a thriving and beautiful marine community, are becoming more and more common.

One challenge, however, with all base conversions, is facing the terrible pollution left behind by these military ranges and bases. Radioactive waste, trichlorethylene, hydrazine by-products, perchlorate, arsenic from chemical testing, asbestos, unexploded ordnances, lead and beryllium all pose challenges as our military becomes overly aggressive and offensive rather than defensive. Sadly, California has become a state, and the United States a country, which values its military operations and economy far above its peace economy, that is, schools, libraries, environmentally and economically sustainable businesses, ag and open space refuges, afordable homes for all, and affordable healthcare for all.

Peaceful conversion of military bases can happen with all military bases. We can become a nation that values the above economic paradigm rather than warring as if we wish to become King of the Hill. The latter problem creates a poorer society, not a richer one.

Please consider not lobbying and voting for base retention as you did with your signature on Governor Schwarzenneger's letter to President Bush and Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld.  Please become a Peace Leader, not a military leader.

http://www.governor.ca.gov/govsite/pdf/press_release/Rumsfeld_BRAC_letter.pdf

Sincerely,

You,
500 Native Plant Society Way
Peaceful Valley, U.S.A

Letters needed badly and needed now!  BRAC process is moving quickly-Sheila


VAFB would gain jobs under plan

By Janene Scully/Associate Editor
5/13/05 Lompoc Record

http://www.lompocrecord.com/articles/2005/05/13/news/news11.txt

A proposal to close Onizuka Air Force Station in Sunnyvale will help bring dozens of jobs to the Central Coast under the Defense Department plan to re-shape its bases, according to congressional sources.

Vandenberg Air Force Base would gain about 145 new jobs under the proposed Base Realignment and Closure list released by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld this morning.
 

"It's obviously exciting we're going to be getting new missions at Vandenberg Air Force Base," said Denny Anderson, president and chief executive officer of the Lompoc Valley Chamber of Commerce. He also is on the board for Friends of Vandenberg Air Force Base, formed to lobby for the base.

"It will be great addition for the economy of the Central Coast. We'll look forward to working with new folks coming in," he added.

Shortly after the list's release early this morning, aides to area members of Congress - Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, and Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley - were scrambling to assess the gains and losses for Central California.

Tom Pfeifer, an aide to Gallegly, said that Vandenberg's gains come from the closure of Onizuka Air Force Station, with Vandenberg gaining the Air Force Satellite Control Network mission and equipment.

The activities would join a similar mission now operating at Vandenberg Tracking Station, informally called Big Sky Ranch. That facility is known to most as the huge antenna collection that sits on a hill between Highway 1 and Lompoc-Casmalia Road.

Some of the other additions for Vandenberg would come from closing the Portland International Air Guard Station in Oregon, Pfeifer said.

While that facility's KC-135 refueling tanker mission will move to Oklahoma, the addition of positions to Vandenberg would manpower, reportedly to help with the increasing number of deployments to support military activities around the world.

Lawmakers welcomed the news that Vandenberg's role would be enhanced under the BRAC proposal.

"The base is critical to our national security mission and also is vital to our local economy, especially in spurring the development of the local commercial space industry," Capps said. "I will continue to work to ensure that the importance of the missions and the bases are strongly considered during the rest of this process."

Because of Vandenberg's unique role launching satellites and testing missiles, defense officials previously have removed it from closure consideration at the start of BRAC reviews. The recent addition of missile-defense interceptors only adds to the base's importance and belief it wouldn't land on the closure list this time around.

While Vandenberg will grow, news wasn't as good for Ventura County Naval Base, according to a BRAC summary.

It will lose 244 military and 2,149 civilian positions, while gaining back 854 civilian jobs. That means a loss of roughly 1,500 positions.

Surprisingly absent on the BRAC list is Los Angeles Air Force Base, home to the Space and Missile Systems Center, which buys and designs satellites.

"It is a little bit of a surprise because there was so much discussion about that throughout the whole process," Anderson said. "That was always the one that came up from all the different areas."

Associate Editor Janene Scully can be reached at 739-2214 or by e-mail at janscully@pulitzer.net. 

Print this story

http://www.santamariatimes.com/articles/2005/05/14/news/local/news03.txt

----

Gaza Withdrawal Protests Paralyze Israel

By REUTERS
May 16, 2005
Filed at 2:19 p.m. ET

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-protests.html?pagewanted=print

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Thousands of Jewish ultranationalists, some setting tyres ablaze, some lying in front of cars, paralyzed Israel's rush hour traffic on Monday in the biggest such protest against abandoning settlements in Gaza.

Settlers and their supporters have vowed to bring Israel to a halt in the run-up to the withdrawals planned for August, the first from settlements on land that they see as a biblical birthright and Palestinians want for a state.

Police arrested 292 protesters who blocked roads and scuffled with police at road junctions as Israelis headed home from work, angering motorists caught in traffic jams.

Girls, some not yet in their teens, darted into the traffic and lay down in front of cars. Protesters linked arms to block roads before police pulled them away.

Police estimated that some 3,000 demonstrators took part in the protests across the country.

``This is our struggle against fascism,'' shouted protesters on the main road from Jerusalem, where hundreds gathered.

``Jews do not expel other Jews,'' chanted others.

Six officers were hurt and one demonstrator was injured by a burning tyre, a police spokeswoman said.

Polls show most Israelis support Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to dismantle all 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the northern West Bank -- evacuating around 9,000 settlers -- as a way to ``disengage'' from conflict with the Palestinians.

The plan is backed by Western countries as a step to revive Middle East peacemaking. Palestinians welcome the withdrawal, though fear it may be a ruse to keep much bigger settlements in the West Bank. Israel captured the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war.

After more than a year of battling far-right opponents who were once his allies, Sharon has cleared all legislative obstacles to carrying out the withdrawals.

But the settlers have vowed to do all they can peacefully to prevent evacuations.

Demonstrators have previously blocked roads with burning tyres, but they have generally been moved on by the police before causing too much disruption.

Authorities released without charge five Jews they had suspected of planning to fire an anti-tank missile at a Muslim holy place in Jerusalem, the Justice Ministry said on Monday.

The men, described by police as extremists without the means to acquire a missile or the expertise to fire one, had hoped an attack on al-Haram el-Sharif, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, would spark violence and stop the planned pullout, police said.

A Justice Ministry official said prosecutors had weighed charging the group with conspiracy to commit a crime but decided such a case would not hold up in court.

The men were released more than a month ago due to lack of evidence, officials said. Their lawyer said the group fell victim to a sting operation by a security agent.

----

Greenpeace protesters climb onto roof of Dutch nuclear power plant

Wed May 18, 1:12 PM ET Agence France Presse

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050518/sc_afp/netherlandsenvironment_050518171243&printer=1

Photo: http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/afp/20050518/capt.sge.qmw99.180505170813.photo00.photo.default-384x256.jpg?x=380&y=253&sig=im_jBaTchHpZzGfloeHsWw--

Greenpeace activists climbed onto the reactor dome of a Dutch nuclear power plant and painted a crack on it to underline the dangers of nuclear power.

"About 30 people disguised as radioactive waste containers entered the plant. Four or five of them climbed the dome of the plant and painted a crack on it," said Esther Boot, a police spokeswoman in the region of the Borssele plant in the southwest of the country.

The activists who succeeded in climbing the plant will be charged with destroying property, Boot said, adding that the other members of the group had already left the plant.

Greenpeace said in a statement that nuclear plants "produce waste that threaten life, and are a target for possible terrorist acts."

The Borssele plant is due to close down in 2013, but Greenpeace claims the government plans to keep it open because closing it would be more costly than to keep it running.

"The government must invest more in reliable energy sources such as solar, wind and biomass, that do not change the climate," the environmentalist group said.