NucNews - May 17, 2005



-------- NUCLEAR 

        

-------- canada

Canadian Forces Retool for WMD, Terrorism Threats

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire May 17, 2005

http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_5_17.html#2A1910E8

WASHINGTON — Canada is beginning a major effort to bolster its domestic defenses against weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, two top Canadian defense officials said here yesterday (see GSN, April 1).

Ottawa is sharpening its focus on domestic security generally and on nuclear, biological and chemical threats specifically, the directors general of policy planning and strategic planning in the National Defense Department said at a Heritage Foundation briefing.

“For the first time, we are going to treat Canada as a theater of operations,” said Director General of Policy Planning Vincent Rigby.

When the government last month released its first International Policy Statement in more than a decade, it used the defense policy component of the statement to preview a major retooling of the armed forces. The document lays out plans for a new “Canada Command,” similar to the U.S. Northern Command, and details Canada’s approach to “21st century threats,” which involves a new focus on special-operations, rapid-reaction and mission-tailored forces.

The changes follow closely Canada’s establishment of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada, which is analogous to the U.S. Homeland Security Department, and its creation of the post of national security adviser.

An expansion of the 3-year-old Joint Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense Company is a “major plank” in the new policy, according to Rigby.

The department says in the statement that expansion of the company, which is one of several planned special operations “transformation initiatives,” is intended “to better protect Canadians at home, as well as Canadian Forces units deployed on domestic and international operations.” According to the policy statement, the armed forces will seek to improve the company’s abilities “to support civilian first responders in reacting quickly to a major incident in Canada” and to undertake “overseas operations, including as part of NATO missions.”

Canada set up the anti-WMD unit shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on the United States. The 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Toronto also intensified Canada’s focus on chemical and biological threats, Director General of Strategic Planning Doug Dempster said at yesterday’s briefing.

Prime Minister Paul Martin has called for a vote of confidence Thursday on his minority government. Rigby acknowledged “the government could fall” but said the outcome of the vote would not affect prospects for the defense changes, which he said have strong cross-party support.

Policy Director Plays Down Missile Defense, Iraq “Glitches”

Rigby played down U.S.-Canadian differences over the Iraq invasion and the U.S. missile defense program (see GSN, April 25).

“They’re bumps along the road. They’re little glitches,” he said.

Canada announced in February that it would not directly participate in the U.S. missile defense system (see GSN, Feb. 24). In August of last year, however, Ottawa agreed to amend the North American Aerospace Defense Command agreement to allow the U.S. missile defense program to draw on NORAD’s 30-year-old missile warning system.

Asked by an audience member whether a periodic renewal next year of the overall NORAD agreement could affect last year’s amendment, Rigby indicated the new missile warning provision would not be a matter for debate.

“We’re fully committed,” he said. “The NORAD amendment is the NORAD amendment, and we stand by it.”



-------- china 

Jilin in running for nuclear plant

www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-17 08:10:23

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-05/17/content_2964334.htm

    BEIJING, May 17 -- Northeast China's Jilin Province could win the race to develop China's first nuclear power plant in a non-coastal region.

    A new nuclear power plant has already been given the go-ahead by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), according to Li Jinxiu, deputy director of Jilin Province's economic and trade commission.

    "Preparatory work has been taking place," said Li in a recent interview with China Daily.

    The plant, with a 5 million kilowatt capacity, will be based in Baishan, a city 370 kilometres from Changchun, the provincial capital.

    Power generated by the plant will not only supply the local market in Jilin, but also be sent to the regional grid for use by other provinces, said Li.

    "From a long-term point of view, China will rely more on energy sources like nuclear power," said Xu Kuangdi, president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

    He said that China would develop dozens of nuclear plants over the coming 15 years.

    The plan demonstrates the country's determination to develop more nuclear power to help cope with energy demands.

    Other areas that could also become home to China's new nuclear power plants include provinces in central and western China, said Zhou Dadi, director of the NDRC's Energy Research Institute.

    He cited Hunan Province in Central China and Sichuan Province in the Southwest.

    China's power supply is still dominated by coal, which accounts for about 65 per cent of total energy consumption, while nuclear power is still marginal, accounting for less than 2 per cent of the total.

    China has nine working nuclear power plants, four of which are in Guangdong Province and five in Qinshan of Zhejiang Province for a total generation capacity of 7 million kilowatts.

    China is currently constructing a nuclear power plant in the city of Lianyungang of East China's Jiangsu Province.

    The plant, with a capacity of 2 million kilowatts, is expected to come on line in 2006, according to Ye Qizhen, chief designer of Nuclear Power Qinshan Joint Venture Co Ltd.

    Meanwhile, Paris-based Areva, the world's biggest reactor builder, Britain's Westinghouse Electric Company and Russia's AtomStroyExport are competing to win a US$8-billion contract to build four reactors, two of which are set for Zhejiang Province and the others for Guangdong Province.

    Ye said related authorities were examining the bids and would decide the winner by the end of the year.Enditem

(Source: China Daily) 



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

-------- depleted uranium

McDermott Leads Congressional Call to Study Effects of Depleted Uranium

For Immediate Release - May 17, 2005

http://www.house.gov/mcdermott/pr050517.shtml

(Washington, DC) Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA), a medical doctor, today introduced legislation with 21 original co-sponsors in the House of Representatives that calls for medical and scientific studies on the health and environmental impacts from the U.S. Military's use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions in combat zones, including Iraq. The McDermott bill also calls for cleanup and mitigation of sites in the U.S. contaminated by DU.

"The need is urgent and imperative for full, fair and impartial studies," McDermott said. "We may be endangering the health and lives of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. All we've gotten so far from the Pentagon are assurances. We need facts backed by science. We don't have that today."

Because of its density, the military uses DU as a protective shield around tanks, and in munitions like armor piercing bullets and tank shells. DU tends to spontaneously ignite upon impact, disintegrating into a micro fine residue that hangs suspended in the air where it can be inhaled and falls to the ground to leach into the soil.

DU is a by-product of the uranium enrichment process; it is chemically toxic and DU has low-level radioactivity. About 300 metric tons of DU munitions were fired during the first Gulf War, and about half that amount has been used to date in the Iraq War.

"I've been concerned about DU since veterans of the first Gulf War began to experience unexplained illnesses, commonly called 'Gulf War Syndrome' that remain mysterious," McDermott said.

McDermott added that there are reports from Iraqi doctors and others today of seemingly unexplained serious illnesses including higher rates of cancer and leukemia, and even birth defects.

"We pretended there was no problem with Agent Orange after Vietnam and later the Pentagon recanted, after untold suffering by veterans. I want to know scientifically if DU poses serious dangers to our soldiers and Iraqi civilians."

The Depleted Uranium Munitions Study Act of 2005 has 21 original co-sponsors, all Democrats, including: Reps. Charles Rangel, Pete Stark, Sherrod Brown, Peter DeFazio, Maurice Hinchey, Raul Grijalva, Jan Schakowsky, Robert Wexler, Sam Farr, Tammy Baldwin, Robert Andrews, Bob Filner, Jay Inslee, Jose Serrano, Lynn Woolsey, Earl Blumenauer, Bart Stupak, Mike Honda, Tom Udall, Barney Frank and Ed Markey.

See McDermott's House Floor speech announing the introduction of the Depleted Uranium Munitions Study Act of 2005, "If Depleted Uranium is Safe, Let Them Prove It." 

---

H.R.2 410

Bill Summary & Status for the 109th Congress 

Title: To require certain studies regarding the health effects of exposure to depleted uranium munitions, to require the cleanup and mitigation of depleted uranium contamination at sites of depleted uranium munition use and production in the United States, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Rep McDermott, Jim [WA-7] (introduced 5/17/2005)      Cosponsors (21)

Latest Major Action: 5/17/2005 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committee on Armed Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d109:8:./temp/~bdptDj::

The text of H.R.2410 has not yet been received from GPO
Bills are generally sent to the Library of Congress from the Government Printing Office a day or two after they are introduced on the floor of the House or Senate. Delays can occur when there are a large number of bills to prepare or when a very large bill has to be printed.



-------- europe

Belgian, German Leaders Question U.S. Nuclear Weapons 
in Europe

May 17, 2005 Arms Control Today
by Oliver Meier <mailto:act@armscontrol.org>

http://www.armscontrol.org/aca/midmonth/2005/may/NukesEurope.asp

With this month’s nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference as a spur, German and Belgian politicians are calling on NATO to work toward the withdrawal of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.

On May 2, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a Green Party member, called proposals to remove these weapons from Europe a “reasonable initiative.” Gert Weisskirchen, the foreign affairs spokesperson for Germany’s Social Democrat Party’s parliamentary caucus, said such a move would “send a signal toward Russia and get the disarmament process moving again.” The Social Democrats and the Green Party form Germany’s coalition government.

German officials said they hope to place the subject on the agenda of a NATO meeting scheduled for next month. At this month’s review conference, many non-nuclear-weapon states have criticized the United States and the other four nuclear-weapon states for not doing enough to meet their NPT commitment to make good-faith efforts toward disarmament.

NATO Arrangements

Under NATO nuclear-sharing arrangements, an estimated 480 tactical nuclear weapons remain deployed in five NATO non-nuclear-weapon states ( Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey) and in the United Kingdom, which also possesses an independent nuclear arsenal. Canada and Greece have ended their participation in nuclear sharing.

The arrangements were developed during the Cold War to increase the other countries’ involvement in nuclear decision-making. Following the end of the Cold War, the United States has reduced its more than 4,000 tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Europe by about 90 percent, mainly to implement the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs) announced in 1991 by then-Presidents George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev. The nuclear weapons remain under U.S. custody during peacetime but an estimated 180 such weapons can be released to U.S. allies for delivery in times of war.

Experts estimate that Russia still holds about 4,000 tactical nuclear weapons, although many of these may not be in usable condition. The United States says that Russia has been implementing its obligations under the PNIs “for the most part” but still has questions particularly with regard to Moscow’s land-based tactical nuclear arsenal. (See ACT, November 2004.) <http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_11/Tactical_Nukes.asp>

On April 14, Germany’s Free Democratic Party introduced a resolution in the Bundestag calling on the German government to work toward the withdrawal of U.S. weapons there.

According to a February study by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), 150 U.S. weapons are housed in Germany, more than any other European country, with 60 of those permitted to fall under German command during a conflict.

A week later, the Belgian parliament unanimously passed a similar resolution. According to NRDC, 20 B-61 gravity bombs—the only type of U.S. weapons still deployed in Europe—are stored at the Kleine Brogel air force base and could be delivered by Belgian pilots to their targets.

NATO and the Department of Defense do not publicly release information on the deployments.

Taking the Debate to a New Level

The parliamentary initiatives on NATO nuclear weapons in Belgium and Germany were both taken in the context of resolutions on the NPT Review Conference but they differ somewhat in their origins and dimensions.

Patrik Vankrunkelsven of Belgium’s Liberal and Democratic Citizens Party (VDP) told Arms Control Today May 9 that he had worked for more than two years to get the support of all of Belgium’s parties for the parliament’s resolution. He said the resolution was intended to trigger discussions in NATO on nuclear sharing, rather than seek simply a withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Belgium. “People are afraid to go it alone, both in the Senate and in the government,” Vankrunkelsven said. “On the other hand, in NATO everybody is waiting for everybody else” to take the initiative on the question of NATO nuclear sharing.

The resolution, therefore, is careful to frame possible changes in NATO nuclear sharing within a multilateral context. It asks the Belgian government to propose initiatives in NATO calling for the review of strategic nuclear doctrines; the gradual withdrawal of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to help fulfill NPT disarmament commitments; and the initiation of negotiations between NATO and Russia on tactical nuclear weapons. These talks, perhaps within the formal mechanism of the NATO-Russia Council, would be intended to establish a framework for reducing and destroying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, safeguarding and destroying Russian tactical nuclear weapons, and strengthening confidence-building and transparency measures regarding tactical nuclear weapons.

The German Free Democrats’ resolution was more pointed than its Belgian counterpart calling on the government to “urge the American allies to withdraw tactical weapons deployed in Germany.” The resolution said it was necessary “in order to strengthen the credibility of the non-proliferation regime and as a sign that the disarmament obligations of the nuclear weapon states are being taken seriously as integral parts of the NPT and are being pursued rigorously.”

The political success of the resolution may have come as a surprise. Perhaps intended to split the ruling Social Democrat-Green Party coalition on NATO nuclear policy, it triggered an avalanche of approving statements from almost all parties. Only the conservative Christian Democrats openly supported the continued deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in Germany. Ruprecht Polenz, the Christian Democrats parliamentary leader on disarmament matters, questioned in an April 14 debate whether the real motive behind the resolution was the intention of ending the U.S. nuclear umbrella entirely and contended that it should be Washington’s prerogative to decide how to protect its troops deployed in Europe.

The Green Party’s defense spokesperson in the Bundestag, Winfried Nachtwei, countered in a press release on April 29 that “a quick renunciation of nuclear sharing and a complete withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe could give nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation efforts a new and important impulse.”

What Next?

In Belgium, it is not clear if the resolution will press the Belgian government into action, Vankrunkelsven said the initial reaction has been sceptical. He and the Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht are both members of the Flemish VLD, the government has stressed the need to work together with NATO allies on this issue and tied progress in NATO to the dismantlement of Russian tactical nuclear weapons.

In Germany, the Liberal Party resolution was referred to the Bundestag’s subcommittee on disarmament, arms control, and non-proliferation where it is likely to be debated in June.

More crucially, senior German officials said they intended to press the issue within NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group June 9-10. The NPG is charged with taking decisions on NATO’s nuclear policies but in recent years its meetings have become largely a routine exercise and take place only once a year.

German Defense Minister Peter Struck said during a visit to the U.S. base at Ramstein May 6: “I agree with Foreign Minister Fischer that we will bring up this issue within NATO.” Struck went on: “We will have to clarify this in consultation with the other European allies who also have nuclear weapons deployed on their territory.” Rolf Mützenich, the Social Democrat spokesperson for disarmament, told Arms Control Today on May 10 that he, too, is certain that this time “the debate about NATO nuclear sharing will not go away.”

Apart from Germany, no NATO member state has officially taken a position on the future of NATO nuclear sharing in the context of the recent debate. One American official, however, told The New York Times May 3 that NATO nuclear weapons “will be maintained at a minimum level to preserve peace and stability.” The Times also quoted a NATO official as saying that the number of NATO nuclear weapons deployed in Germany “is a bilateral issue between Germany and the United States, and not with NATO.”

Regardless of the outcome of the political debate, Germany’s nuclear role in NATO is set to expire within the next 10 years. The German Air Force currently only has one type of aircraft that is certified to deliver nuclear weapons, the PA-200 Tornado, which be replaced over the next 10 years by the Eurofighter. The German Defense Ministry, in a statement to the Bundestag on July 12 noted that “it is currently not planned and no preparations are being made to enable the weapons system Eurofighter for a nuclear-weapon deployment.” If the government sticks to this line, Germany will have no nuclear-capable aircraft by 2015 at the latest. 



-------- india 

India offers "broadest possible" cooperation on nuclear non-proliferation

NEW DELHI (AFP) May 17, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050517132926.yqydstjn.html

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh offered Tuesday New Delhi's "broadest-possible" cooperation with international nuclear non-proliferation efforts.

Singh's statement followed passage last week by India's parliament of legislation banning the proliferation of nuclear technology, seven years after the South Asian giant shocked the world with a series of nuclear tests.

"The strict regulation of external transfers and tight control to prevent internal leakages should give confidence to the international suppliers of high technology items that their supplies will remain fully secure with us," Singh said, according to the Press Trust of India.

"We see no reason for non-proliferation concerns to be a barrier to high technology trade and commerce with our country," Singh said.

The Weapons of Mass Destruction and Their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of Unlawful Activities) Bill, outlaws the transfer of biological and chemical weapons and their delivery systems.

Singh's remarks come amid assurances sought by the United States and Russia on tight controls on export of sensitive technologies to clear hurdles in the way for transfer of advanced nuclear technology for peaceful uses.



-------- iran

Iran sees little hope for deal in nuclear meeting

TEHRAN (AFP) May 17, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050517105916.73urfucn.html

Iran said Tuesday it had little hope of reaching an agreement in emergency nuclear talks with Britain, France and Germany, saying the Europeans were hostage to the hardline US position.

"There is not a very big chance for an agreement," nuclear negotiator Cyrus Nasseri told AFP.

"The Europeans are not capable of acting independently from the extremists in the American administration. We don't have a problem with the Europeans themselves, but when it comes to making a decision they want to coordinate with the Americans," he added.

The three European powers called a crisis meeting 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, which could impose sanctions.

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.

Talks between the two sides are scheduled to be held in a European capital on May 23, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said Monday.

The EU has offered Iran a package of incentives in return for "objective guarantees" it will not develop weapons. 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).

Nasseri repeated that Iran's decision to resume fuel work was "definitive", but added that "if we reach an agreement on the plan proposed by Iran, it is possible we delay the timing of this resumption".

The Iranian proposal involves a phased resumption of enrichment activities while at the same time demanding EU trade and technology incentives, something totally at odds with the US and European position.

"It is extremely difficult, because the two sides have their own positions and showing flexibility is hard for both sides," said another top negotiator, Iran's national security official Hossein Moussavian.

"The Europeans have to satisfy others and are not alone in dealing with the issue. They have to consult with the permanent members of the Security Council, also the United States, which is hindering the process," he told state television.

"The Europeans ... cannot unilaterally reach an agreement with Iran. We understand that their job is more difficult."

The United States is still pushing for Iran to be referred to the Security Council over what it sees as a "cynical" strategy by Iran to exploit the NPT and develop the technology to make nuclear weapons.

"One of the options is definitely to go to the Security Council," US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Monday. "That's something that, I'll remind you, we've supported all along and we haven't changed our position."

"We think it's time for the Iranians to demonstrate to the world that they're not going to develop nuclear weapons and to do so with objective guarantees, as the Europeans say," he said.

----

U.S. Reiterates Threat to Bring Iran Nuclear Issue Before UN

May 17, 2005 (Bloomberg) 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=a1QG0.AmZHkc

The U.S. government reiterated its threat to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council over its nuclear program, after the Iranian parliament voted to allow the resumption of the country's uranium enrichment program.

Iran, which temporarily suspended uranium enrichment in November, has said it plans to resume the program after failing to reach an agreement with European officials. Iranian government officials are meeting European officials this week to discuss the issue, in what foreign ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Assefi called a ``last chance,'' the state run Iranian News Agency reported on May 15.

``One of the options is definitely to go to the Security Council'' if Iran restarts the enrichment process, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday in Washington at a press briefing. ``That's something that I'll remind you we have supported all along and we haven't changed our position.''

Iran's parliament urged the government to use nuclear technology to produce about 20,000 megawatts of electricity to meet the country's needs, IRNA reported on May 15. Britain, France and Germany have been seeking to end Iran's program through diplomacy.

Iranian legislators who voted for the bill criticized Europeans for having ``no goodwill'' and ignoring Iran's proposals, which have allowed UN inspectors to visit the country's nuclear sites, IRNA said.

Doubling Capacity

Iran, which has world's second-largest oil and gas reserves, expects its electricity consumption to double to 60,000 megawatts in the next two decades. In the southern city of Bushehr, the nation paid Russia as much as $1 billion to build a reactor capable of generating about 1,000 megawatts of electricity.

Another plant in Arak in the western part of the nation has raised more concerns. That facility is able to produce heavy- water used to control nuclear reactors and pure enough to use in weapons projects.

The Arak plant will have made enough enriched plutonium to build a nuclear weapon by 2007, Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the National Council for Resistance in Iran's foreign affairs committee, said in Paris on March 31. Mohaddessin belongs to an exiled resistance group.

By the end of this year, the Arak facility will be able to produce 16 tons of heavy water with 99.8 percent density, Mohaddessin said. The plant is currently able to make eight tons of heavy water with a 15 percent density, which isn't enough to produce weapons-grade fuel, he said.

U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair said on May 12 Iran must live up to its pledges to give details about its nuclear program or face condemnation from the United Nations Security Council.

``We certainly will support referral to the UN Security Council if Iran breaches its obligations,'' Blair told a monthly press conference in London. ``Those international rules are there for a reason and they've got to be adhered to.''

Getting All-Clear

The Bushehr plant won the all-clear from the United Nations' nuclear watchdog on April 22. The International Atomic Energy Authority then said Iran is ``aggressively enforcing'' quality control over the reactor in Bushehr and that the installation meets international safety standards.

The IAEA said it is working with Russia and the Islamic republic to ensure safety of the construction. Atomstroyexport, overseen by Russia's atomic energy ministry, is supplying technology and personnel to build the Bushehr plant.

Russia took over the Bushehr contract after Ukraine pulled out of an agreement to supply turbines for the plant in 1998 because of pressure from the U.S. and Israel.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo at  asheldrick@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 17, 2005 02:02 EDT

----

Europeans Agree to Meeting With Iran on Nuclear Program

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 17, 2005; A14

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051601368_pf.html

The foreign ministers of France, Britain and Germany agreed yesterday to meet with a senior Iranian official next week in an effort to pull Tehran back from threats to resume its nuclear program, diplomats representing all four countries said.

Iranian officials characterized the meeting as a last chance at avoiding crisis and said it will be held May 23 in Brussels. European officials said it probably will take place one day later and might be moved to Paris or Geneva to accommodate travel schedules.

European officials, who agreed to discuss strategy for the meeting on the condition of anonymity, said the European ministers are hoping to persuade Hassan Rouhani, chief of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, to maintain a freeze on the country's nuclear program at least until after presidential elections there scheduled for June 17. Iranian officials have said publicly that they are under pressure ahead of the elections to show positive results from their negotiations with the Europeans, and that if nothing is forthcoming, they will be forced to resume the program.

The Bush administration has said publicly it wants the European negotiations with Iran to succeed, and has backed European offers for Iranian entry into the World Trade Organization. But privately, the administration has been preparing for the possibility of failure since Iran began making threats last week to resume work at a uranium conversion facility.

If Iran is not dissuaded from resuming the nuclear work, U.S. and European officials said its program will become the subject of discussion inside the U.N. Security Council, which can impose sanctions. Two U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive diplomacy, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to discuss the possibility of a Security Council referral when she meets with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in Washington today.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday that "we've had discussions about Iran with members of the Security Council." But he would not characterize the level of support the United States would anticipate there. China and Russia have said they want the issue resolved by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been investigating Iran's program, not the Security Council. Other Security Council members are leery of making any moves that could be perceived as hostile or that might be used to justify later military action against Iran.

The diplomatic crisis over Iran's nuclear program was sparked by a difficult round of negotiations last month in London between Iranians and Europeans aimed at resolving suspicions about the nuclear program Iran developed in secret over 18 years. Iran says it intended the program for nuclear energy, not weapons, but has allowed IAEA to conduct inspections there for the last two years. Although unanswered questions about the program remain, inspectors have not found proof that Iran is using it as a cover for bomb making. The Bush administration has not accepted those findings.

The negotiations with Europe offered Iran the possibility of lucrative trade deals if it provides guarantees that its program won't be diverted for weapons work.



-------- korea

South Korea Says It Doubts That the North Plans an A-Test

By NORIMITSU ONISHI
May 17, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/international/asia/17korea.html?pagewanted=print

SEOUL, South Korea, May 16 - A day after the Bush administration warned North Korea against conducting a nuclear test, South Korea said Monday that it saw no clear evidence that the North was preparing to explode a weapon.

Officials in South Korea, which resumed bilateral talks with North Korea on Monday, said they had not changed their position toward the North, rejecting for now harsher punitive actions sought by Washington. On Sunday, Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush's national security adviser, said the United States had seen "some evidence" that the North Koreans were preparing for a nuclear test and warned of penalties.

"Our government has made it clear there is not any evidence that North Korea would make a test in the future," said Lee Kyu Hyung, the spokesman for the South Korean Foreign Ministry.

Song Min Soon, the deputy foreign minister and South Korea's lead negotiator on the North Korea nuclear issue, said in an interview with a South Korean news agency, Yonhap News, that the possibility of a nuclear test "can range from one-tenth of 1 percent to 99 percent, and it looks as if Hadley's remark was made taking into consideration the most extreme circumstance."

As Washington tries to unite participants in the six-party talks over the North's nuclear program - stalled since last June - fundamental differences have hardened. While the United States and Japan favor tougher measures, South Korea and China do not. Russia tends to share the South Korean and Chinese views.

After North Korea declared last week that it had extracted weapons-grade fuel from a nuclear reactor, South Korea and China dismissed punitive options like economic sanctions.

On Monday, in the first bilateral talks involving the two Koreas since summer, the South said it was prepared to offer a new proposal if the North returned to the six-party talks. But South Korea did not provide details.

The offer underscored the fact that South Korea, though an ally of the United States, shares China's softer approach toward North Korea. In recent years the South has increased political, cultural and economic exchanges with the North to prevent a total collapse of the Communist government and nudge it toward Chinese-style reforms.

For Seoul, managing its growing ties with the North and its alliance with an American administration hawkish on North Korea has become increasingly delicate. South Korean officials tend not to criticize Washington openly, as the Chinese do, but privately express some of the same frustrations over American tactics.

In an interview here, Christopher Hill, Washington's negotiator on North Korea, played down the differences among members of the six-party talks.

"We're in pretty good contact with all these governments," said Mr. Hill, who met South Korean officials during a weekend visit here. "We're working pretty well and we don't want to see a situation where this very tough problem causes difficulties in these relations."

Seoul's divergence with Washington has disclosed some of the strains.

In two recent speeches, President Roh Moo Hyun talked openly about a new role for South Korea, one far less dependent on America. South Korea, he said, would play a "balancing role" in the region. "The power equation in northeast Asia will change depending on the choices we make."

The implication was that support for its traditional allies, the United States and Japan, might not be automatic.

Mr. Hill, looking annoyed at the mention of Mr. Roh's "balancing role," said he believed that South Korea would stick to its alliance.

"I would think if I were a South Korean," Mr. Hill said, "there is logic to saying that we're in a neighborhood that in the past - in the past, maybe not now - has certainly qualified as a high-crime neighborhood. You know, a lot of invasions, a lot of battles, even, at times through the centuries, wars of annihilation - serious stuff, especially on the peninsula.

"If I were a South Korean looking into the future, I would be saying to myself, 'I want a special relationship with a distant power.' "

----

North Korea asks China to arrange visit by US's Rice: report

TOKYO (AFP) May 17, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050517101637.2gq766rs.html

North Korea has asked China to arrange a visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Pyongyang in a bid to reach a breakthrough on the nuclear crisis, a Japanese daily said Tuesday.

North Korea is reluctant to return to six-nation talks on its nuclear program but told China, its main ally, that it wanted the high-level visit to find a way out of the growing standoff, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.

"Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing conveyed the North's request to Rice when the two spoke over the phone last Friday," the business daily said, citing multiple diplomatic sources.

But the report doubted the United States would seriously consider the request by the North unless Pyongyang makes "significant concessions" on the nuclear issue.

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Tuesday that Tokyo contacted Washington to check the report and the US State Department denied it.

"They told us there was no such fact," Hosoda, Japan's government spokesman, told a news conference.

"Japan believes the United States and North Korea should hold discussions within the framework of the six-way talks," he said.

China also denied the story.

"This report is full of imagination but groundless in terms of fact," foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan told a regular briefing.

The business daily, however, said the North's request was "an indication that the increasingly beleaguered nation wants to find peaceful resolutions to the current diplomatic impasse."

In February, North Korea said it had nuclear weapons to defend itself and last week announced it had unloaded 8,000 spent fuel rods in a step to building more nuclear weapons amid reports it was preparing to conduct a nuclear test.

Six-way talks among the the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States have seen little progress since the crisis erupted in October 2002 with dialogue suspended altogether for nearly a year.

In 2000, then US secretary of state Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang toward the end of Bill Clinton's presidency, a trip that was lambasted by the conservatives in George W. Bush's administration which took office in 2001.

The Bush administration believes North Korea has reneged on promises made to the Clinton administration to give up its nuclear program. 

----

China says five-nation talks on Korean nuclear standoff not a good idea

BEIJING (AFP) May 17, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050517095440.c6sf7d0w.html

China said Tuesday it was oppposed to a Japanese proposal for five-nation talks on the Korean nuclear issue, without the participation of North Korea.

"I don't think it's a good idea, because facts have proved that six-party talks are a realistic and effective way to peacefully resolve the nuclear issue," foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan told a regular briefing.

"Recently both the United States and North Korea made some positive signals. We hope both sides can make further positive signals to create favorable conditions for resuming talks," he said.

Japan said Friday the UN Security Council or the five nations involved in the stalled dialogue with North Korea should meet to pressure Pyongyang if the communist state remained defiant on its nuclear program.

North Korea last week said it had unloaded 8,000 spent fuel rods in a step to building more nuclear weapons amid reports it was preparing to conduct a nuclear test.

North Korea has warned that taking it to the Security Council for possible sanctions would be considered an act of war. The UN step has been suggested by the United States but is opposed by Pyongyang's main ally China.

The two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States have held three inconclusive rounds of talks on ending Pyongyang's nuclear program.

The last talks with North Korea were in June 2004, with Pyongyang boycotting another round in September citing US hostility.

----

Papers show N. Korea sought nuclear weapons in 1960s

By William C. Mann, The Associated Press,  5/17/2005 9:35 AM

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-05-17-north-korea-nukes_x.htm

WASHINGTON — North Korea began nagging its communist allies as early as the 1960s to obtain a nuclear reactor with the intent of launching a hidden weapons program, according to former Soviet bloc documents released Tuesday.

Over the next two decades, responses generally were negative, sometimes to the point of hostility.

Having largely failed during the Cold War, North Korea in the years since then as put together a nuclear program that the Bush administration considers the equal of Iran's as a potential problem for the United States.

Just this week, the United States said a North Korean nuclear test, which some U.S. analysts say may be a prospect, would be considered an act of defiance and would be punished.

The newly released documents, mined from the archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Hungarian government, lay out a sequence of appeals, rejections and threats involving the North Koreans.

A memorandum from the Hungarian Foreign Ministry dated Feb. 16, 1976, quoted O Song Gwon, a third secretary of the North Korean Embassy in Budapest, and Yi Un gi, that embassy's deputy military attache.

"In their opinion," the memo said, "Korea cannot be unified in a peaceful way. They are prepared for war. If a war comes in Korea, it will be waged by nuclear weapons, rather than by conventional ones."

Then, it goes on: "By now the DPRK also has nuclear warheads and carrier missiles, which are targeted on the big cities of South Korea and Japan, such as Seoul, Tokyo and Nagasaki, as well as on the local military bases, such as Okinawa."

The official name of North Korea is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The memorandum, signed by Istvan Garajszki, goes on to say: "When I asked whether the Korean People's Army had received the nuclear warheads from China, they replied that they had developed them unaided through experimentation, and they manufactured them by themselves."

"It was an idle boast. It's just curious," Kathryn Weathersby, senior associate at the Wilson International Center for Scholars, said Monday. "My reading of it is first of all, it shows how eager they were to be able to claim that. That claim was untrue, but they wanted it to be true."

In the early 1960s, most of the world was trying to rebottle the nuclear genie released over Japan to end World War II. The United States and the Soviet Union established a teletype "hot line" between Washington and Moscow in 1963 to prevent accidental nuclear war. That same year, the first test-ban treaty was signed to outlaw nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater. The signature Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was agreed in 1968.

However, in 1963, the North Koreans not only suggested that the Russians give them nuclear missiles, but also sought the green light to obtain nuclear weapons technology abroad, according to documents citing conversations the Soviet ambassador to North Korea, Vasily Moskovsky, had with his fellow ambassadors from Czechoslovakia and East Germany regarding their dealings with the North Koreans.

Through it all, the North Koreans kept petitioning their allies for nuclear reactors.

Hungarian Ambassador Ferenc Szabo filed a report from Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, to the foreign ministry in Budapest in 1979 that gave a rundown on capitalist South Korea's nuclear successes.

It said North Korea had been urging Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, China and others for years "to provide it with equipment for nuclear power plants or even to build a nuclear power plant.

"She tries to make up for her lag behind South Korea in this way, with the hidden intention that later she may become capable of producing an atomic bomb," Szabo said.

The documents are being released by the Korea Initiative of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center's Cold War International History Project.



-------- russia

Russia Ready to Reduce Nuclear Arms Below Levels Agreed With U.S. — Officials

Created: 17.05.2005 11:59 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 12:38 MSK
MosNews

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/05/17/nonucleararms.shtml

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

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, were speaking Monday at a United Nations conference.

According to an Associated Press report, in May 2002 the United Staes and Russia signed a treaty requiring each side to cut its deployed warheads by about two-thirds, to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads by 2012. And Verhovtsev said the fulfillment of engagements will be the focus of Moscow’s efforts over the next decade. Tactical nuclear weapons, he reported, have already been reduced by 75 percent.

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

Antonov stressed that 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, but missiles and weapons are being developed on Russia’s borders, he said. However, he refused to identify any country by name.

China is reportedly 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, UN 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 concluded.


 
-------- space

War beyond Earth is not inevitable. But only the rule of law can prevent it

BY JOHN POLANYI
TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2005
UPDATED AT 11:13 PM EDT
SPECIAL TO GLOBE AND MAIL UPDATE
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENT

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050517.wcomment0518/BNStory/National/

Canada's major political parties are united in opposing the weaponization of space. It was principally the strength of this feeling that caused Canada to decline its closest ally's invitation to participate in continental missile defence, seen by many as opening the way to weapons in space. The popular support for missile defence in Canada was lacking.

This was not the first time Canada said no to missile defence. Fifteen years earlier, a Conservative government rejected Ronald Reagan's Star Wars. The technology on that occasion was impressive, the political pressures great, and the commercial advantages apparent.

Why does Canada make such seemingly perverse decisions? One answer is that we are a nation of many cultures, directing attention outward.

Such a nation is less likely to seek its security behind the walls of borders, or missile defence. The other part of the story is Canada's commitment to a different sort of bulwark: international law. This is the key to Canadian attitudes on both missile defence and the weaponization of space. One should not claim this as pure virtue; it's to be expected that the weak will favour law. It was not King John but the nobles who insisted on the Magna Carta (the nobles were right).

Today's transformation of the world scene is as important as that of King John's day.

It stems from the fundamental question where current trends in weapons development are likely to extrapolate. To what secure outcome could they possibly lead? To each new weapon, there will always be a counter, and to each fear that gave rise to that weapon, a sequel. The most obvious sequel will be the spread of the weapon into the hands of our opponents. Technological dominance cannot endure. Prevention of the spread of weapons is regarded as an essential adjunct to their possession. But power alone will not prevent that spread. One also needs persuasion. And there lies the problem. How does one persuade others to behave differently from oneself? Only the example of restraint can foster restraint; one can only have recourse to the restraint called law, if one acknowledges the supremacy of law. It is this realization that is slowly transforming the world. But too slowly.

In their respect for law, nations, like individuals, will always be deficient. But they cannot afford to be as deficient as today.

It would be difficult to envisage a better arena for restraint than space. It is a medium all share, since all border on it. Its worth can be judged from the global investment that has literally rocketed in a lifetime from zero to the order of a trillion dollars.

Hugely valuable, it is equally vulnerable. Nonetheless, it remains for the present protected only by custom and law. These are the instruments we must strengthen.

How far have we come? Before Donald Rumsfeld became Secretary of Defence, he headed a bipartisan commission that warned that war in space was "a virtual certainty." In its 2001 report, it argued, "We know from history that every medium - air, land and sea - has seen conflict. Reality indicates that space will be no different." In a nuclear-armed world, this sort of argument from history is a counsel of despair, telling us that whatever can happen will.

The proponents of the argument do not despair; they offer the illusory hope of single-nation dominance. They urge the United States to claim the strategic high ground of space. But a large constituency is aware that a few per cent of the world's population cannot forever dominate.

With that in mind, the United States joined with other major powers, as long ago as 1967, through the Outer Space Treaty, in embracing the obligation to use outer space "for the benefit ..... of all countries ..... [and as] the province of all mankind." The impetus toward that agreement can be traced back still further to Dwight Eisenhower's visionary 1958 proposal for banning weapons from space.

The norm against hostile acts against satellites was established more explicitly by the U.S.-Russian Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which for decades banned interference with another nation's eyes or ears in space. The spirit of that agreement has been re-enforced by repeated resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly in support of the "Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space" (PAROS).

We have an opportunity today to move further in the direction of a regime of law in space, which would prohibit the testing and deployment of weapons, with all possible provisions for verification. There will be problems, but they are comparable with those we have addressed in preventing mayhem on our streets and piracy at sea. It is hard to believe that these problems will be more demanding than those we'll face if we allow outer space to degenerate into a jungle.

Sixty years into the atomic age, we have not yet committed ourselves to restraint.

Where outer space is concerned, the opportunity will not come again. Carpe diem.

Nobel laureate John Polanyi is a professor of chemistry at the University of Toronto.

This article is adapted from a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington at a conference on Full Spectrum Dominance, part of the U.S. Defence Department's vision statement.



-------- treaties

Nuclear Regime in Peril
Without full US engagement, the talks to limit nuclear weapons will collapse

Joseph Cirincione
YaleGlobal, 17 May 2005

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5728

The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has proven to be among the most successful security pacts in history. For 35 years, it has forestalled the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and with only one defector: North Korea. Yet as the world meets to review the treaty at the United Nations this month, discord among members is hindering the development of an effective plan. Of key importance are nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, as well as the threat of poorly guarded Cold War era warheads falling into terrorist hands. Nonproliferation expert Joseph Cirincione writes that the general US disdain for multilateral initiatives is fundamentally undermining any attempt to build the consensus necessarily for constructive action. Indeed, the current meeting may be a lost cause: "A return to moderation, however, may come too late to salvage the NPT conference," writes Cirincione. In order for any success after the conference's end, he concludes, Washington must be willing to follow the lead of the EU. – YaleGlobal
	

NEW YORK: The fate of the most successful international security pacts in history hangs in the balance, as envoys from around the world meet to review the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at a United Nations conference. But US leadership is nowhere to be found. It is the latest sign that the Bush administration's counter-proliferation strategy has failed.

The NPT has united the world against the spread of nuclear weapons for 35 years and has permitted only one defector: North Korea. Today, this important security system is mired in such discord that it is in danger of crumbling. North Korea is ratcheting up the pressure, unloading yet another batch of plutonium-rich fuel from its reactor. Iran, meanwhile, threatens to end its suspension of uranium enrichment, a process that can make fuel for nuclear reactors and also for bombs.

These two nations get the daily headlines, but there are other dangers. There are still 27,000 nuclear weapons in the world held by eight nations (and possibly North Korea). Fifteen years after the Cold War, the United States and Russia account for over 26,000 of these warheads, with thousands still on hair-trigger alert, ready to launch in 15 minutes. There are also hundreds of tons of bomb material – highly enriched uranium and plutonium, much of it poorly guarded – in the stockpiles of the former Soviet republics and in civilian research reactors in some 40 nations. Al-Qaida is known to have an interest in acquiring these materials or weapons, yet programs to secure and eliminate them crawl along at a snail's pace.

There is no shortage of good, solid ideas for how to address these threats. The Carnegie Endowment report, Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security, has over one hundred practical recommendations, including twenty in a high-priority "action plan." Other reports from a special high-level panel to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and an expert panel of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) detail similar suggestions. President George W. Bush had several innovative proposals in his speech of February 11, 2004. IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei made over a dozen urgent recommendations in his speech to the conference on opening day.
	
The problem is lack of consensus. It took ten days of the month-long conference to even reach agreement on the agenda. Now, few expect that the conference will be able to write a consensus document by the end of the month. It is a major setback for US non-proliferation efforts and one that has been largely self-inflicted. Here, the shadow of Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton looms large: His strategy set the American approach – all but guaranteeing a deadlock.

Despite repeated calls by President Bush and Bolton himself for "action" to fix flaws in the treaty and build consensus among nations, little has been done over the past year, either to prepare for the conference or to advance new approaches. One former senior Bush official told the reporters, "Everyone knew the conference was coming and that it would be contentious. But Bolton stopped all diplomacy on this six months ago." 1

This was obvious in discussions I held with officials over the past six months. One senior UN official told me over lunch at the delegates' dining room, "Look around. The conference is just six weeks away. Normally, you would see Americans buttonholing delegates, lining them up in support. There is nothing." Officials in Europe told me that they did not hear a peep from the Americans until just a few weeks before the conference.

The flawed strategy goes deeper than one man's career distraction; it reflects a deep disdain for the international agreements and institutions. Many neo-conservatives in Washington believe these multilateral meetings are worthless. Worse, they see them as a trap where global Lilliputians can tie down the American Gulliver. To move beyond these "outmoded" instruments, President Bush pulled out of some treaties, ignored others, and gutted still others.
	
At the conference, the plan is to focus on denouncing Iran and North Korea for failing to comply with their treaty obligations. Many nations share that concern, but couple it with demands that the United States and the other nuclear-weapon states fulfill their obligations to not only reduce their nuclear arsenals but actually eliminate them. They are not persuaded by US arguments that its stockpile has halved over the past ten years; the United States will still have 5,000 nuclear weapons next decade, plans to retain that number indefinitely, and may soon begin building new generations of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines.

Had the administration's strategy worked, these demands could have been rebuffed or ignored. The idea was to replace these international forums with US-centric initiatives, and to shift the focus from treaties to direct action that would eliminate certain regimes that had weapons. The war with Iraq was step one, intended to send a message to Iran and North Korea that they had better abandon their programs or face the consequences.

The result: Iran and North Korean nuclear capabilities have rapidly advanced in the past three years. They sped up their efforts to get the weapons needed to deter American attacks. The brutal war in Iraq has bogged down US forces and greatly weakened US credibility. It is difficult to imagine any new coalition willing to rally around new US calls for military actions.
	
The pendulum is now swinging back from the extreme policies of the neo-conservative idealists. The cost has been too great, the results too meager. There is a growing recognition that the United States cannot defeat the nuclear threat alone, or even with small coalitions of the willing. It needs sustained cooperation from dozens of diverse nations – including China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and leading states that have forsworn nuclear weapons, such as Brazil, Germany, and Japan – in order to broaden, toughen, and stringently enforce nonproliferation rules. In exchange, the nuclear states must show that tougher nonproliferation rules not only benefit the powerful but constrain them as well. Nonproliferation is a set of bargains whose fairness must be self-evident if the majority of countries is to support their enforcement.

Success will depend on the United States' ability to marshal legitimate authority that motivates others to follow. As Francis Fukuyama notes, "Other people will follow the American lead if they believe it is legitimate; if they do not, they will resist, complain, obstruct, or actively oppose what we do. In this respect, it matters not what we believe to be legitimate, but rather what other people believe is legitimate."

A return to moderation, however, may come too late to salvage the NPT conference. The best chance would be for the United States to embrace the common EU position: a consensus synthesizing the views of the two European nuclear powers, France and the United Kingdom, with the goals of the 23 EU non-nuclear-weapon states. The document is a balance of obligations. It reaffirms the goal of nuclear disarmament, while also endorsing tougher inspection and new mechanisms to deter and punish states that withdraw from the treaty to build nuclear bombs.

Time is short. The treaty is in trouble. The United States is floundering. The Europeans may yet ride to the rescue. Let's hope the Americans are prepared to listen.

Joseph Cirincione is director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is co-author of Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security and the forthcoming Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats. He publishes a leading proliferation web site at www.ProliferationNews.org.

1 Michael Hirsh and Eve Conant, "A Nuclear Blunder?", Newsweek, May 11, 2005, web version available at: http://msnbc.msn.com.

----

Recovering From Nuclear Lies

The Christian Science Monitor's View, Tue May 17, 4:00 AM ET

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/csm/20050517/cm_csm/enukes_1

The world is at a delicate stage in the struggle to contain the spread of nuclear weapons. The US gave North Korea a stern warning on Sunday not to test a bomb - as it appears it might do soon. On the same day,

Iran's parliament thumbed its nose at a European offer of economic benefits to prevent Iran from restarting production of bomb-grade nuclear material.

Such defiance by Iran, meanwhile, has pushed Congress closer to passing a bill to impose economic sanctions against Iran. What's more, these twin crises appear to be coming to a head just as global talks have opened this month to bolster the creaky Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The talks so far are faltering.

Will 2005 be the tipping-point for making the world safer from nuclear weapons? Or will a current mix of negotiations and economic threats fail to keep Iran and North Korea from going nuclear, thus possibly forcing their neighbors in the Middle East and East Asia to also obtain atomic weapons in defense?

The answer partly lies in overcoming some big lies.

Both nations were caught covering up their nuclear programs in recent years, breaking international agreements. That makes the prospect of a negotiated deal all the more difficult to achieve, let alone enforce.

And that's why the Bush administration has relied on nations with more economic leverage - China in the case of North Korea, and Britain, Germany, and France in the case of Iran - to take the lead in persuading the two recalcitrants to back down.

US impatience over these situations, which is driven by its post-9/11 fear of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, has yet to be transformed into preemptive military action - although the US Navy is on the ready to inspect ships leaving North Korea that might be exporting nuclear materials.

Yet military action seems out of the question, for any number of reasons. It also seems unlikely that each nation's leaders will be persuaded to give up their strong nationalist urges to achieve nuclear capability.

The best choices for the US and others seem to be in making good on economic threats or simply accepting that Iran, North Korea, and many of their neighbors will go nuclear.

A third alternative - total global nuclear disarmament - was envisioned by the NPT in the 1960s but hasn't gone anywhere.

Catching Iran and North Korea in their lies has at least helped bring them to the negotiating table. Their still-small sensitivities to the pressures of other nations and their need for economic progress might still provide a breakthrough for keeping the nuclear age in check.



-------- u.s. nuc weapons

The 50-Year Shadow

By JOSEPH ROTBLAT
May 17, 2005 NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/opinion/17Rotblat.html?pagewanted=print

London

FIFTY years ago, I joined Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell and eight others in signing a manifesto warning of the dire consequences of nuclear war. This statement, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, was Einstein's final public act. He died shortly after signing it. Now, in my 97th year, I am the only remaining signatory. Because of this, I feel it is my duty to carry Einstein's message forward, into this 60th year since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which evoked almost universal opposition to any further use of nuclear weapons.

I was the only scientist to resign on moral grounds from the United States nuclear weapons program known as the Manhattan Project. On Aug. 6, 1945, I switched on my radio and heard that we had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. I knew that a new era had dawned in which nuclear weapons would be used, and I grew worried about the future of mankind.

Several years later, I met Bertrand Russell on the set of the BBC Television program "Panorama," where we discussed the new hydrogen bomb. I had become an authority on the biological effects of radiation after examining the fallout from the American hydrogen bomb test in Bikini Atoll in 1954. Russell, who was increasingly agitated about the developments, started to come to me for information. Russell decided to persuade a number of eminent scientists from around the world to join him in issuing a statement outlining the dangers of thermonuclear war and calling on the scientific community to convene a conference on averting that danger.

The most eminent scientist alive at that time was Albert Einstein, who responded immediately and enthusiastically to Russell's entreaty. And so the man who symbolized the height of human intellect adopted what became his last message - this manifesto, which implored governments and the public not to allow our civilization to be destroyed by human folly. The manifesto also highlighted the perils of scientific progress in a world rent by the titanic struggle over communism. I was the youngest of the 11 signatories, but Russell asked me to lead the press conference in London to present the manifesto to the public.

The year was 1955, and cold war fears and hostilities were at their height. We took action then because we felt that the world situation was entering a dangerous phase, in which extraordinary efforts were required to prevent a catastrophe.

Now, two generations later, as the representatives of nearly 190 nations meet in New York to discuss how to advance the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, we face the same perils and new ones as well. Today we confront the possibilities of nuclear terrorism and of the development of yet more new nuclear warheads in the United States. The two former superpowers still hold enormous nuclear arsenals. North Korea and Iran are advancing their capability to build nuclear weapons. Other nations are increasingly likely to acquire nuclear arsenals on the excuse that they are needed for their security. The result could be a new nuclear arms race.

Fifty years ago we wrote: "We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties?" That question is as relevant today as it was in 1955. So is the manifesto's admonition: "Remember your humanity, and forget the rest."

Joseph Rotblat, a physicist and emeritus president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.

----

Gen. Andrew Goodpaster, Presidential Adviser, Dies

By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 17, 2005; B06

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051601348_pf.html

Army Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster, 90, the self-effacing presidential adviser and commander of NATO who was summoned from retirement to lead the scandal-tainted U.S. Military Academy at West Point, died May 16 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He had prostate cancer.

Gen. Goodpaster spent more than four decades as a soldier and statesman, in which time he saw combat in World War II, was deputy commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam and served four presidents. Having retired as commander of NATO forces in 1974, he returned to active service three years later to become the 51st commandant of West Point, his alma mater.

The school had been pummeled by a cheating scandal in which 152 cadets were dismissed, and it also had admitted its first class of women to some controversy.

With his avuncular looks and measured manner, he was said to have helped rebuild the academy's reputation by his mere presence after the cheating episode. He also eased the women's transition to the school, telling staff members he would "escort them to the door with a handshake" should they fail to make the women feel welcome.

He stepped down in 1981 and three years later received the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Andrew Jackson Goodpaster Jr. was born Feb. 12, 1915, in Granite City, Ill., where his father worked for the railroad. Hoping to pursue a career as a math teacher, he enrolled at McKendree College in Lebanon, Ill., but he withdrew during the Depression when money was scant. To continue his education, he sought a West Point appointment and entered the Class of 1939.

During World War II, he led an engineering battalion over a minefield and under hostile fire, actions for which he received the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest military award for valor after the Medal of Honor. His other decorations included the Silver Star, two awards of the Legion of Merit and two awards of the Purple Heart.

After doing war planning for the general staff in Washington, he entered Princeton University, where he received a master's degree in engineering as well as a master's degree and a doctorate in international relations.

His battlefield and academic credentials -- along with a regard for anonymity -- impressed a number of ranking officials. He became special assistant to the chief of staff of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe from 1950 to 1954 and a favorite of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the NATO commander for part of that time. He assisted Eisenhower in forming political and military guidelines for the new treaty organization and was Eisenhower's liaison among such diplomats and politicians as W. Averell Harriman of the United States, Jean Monnet of France and Hugh Gaitskell of the United Kingdom.

Later, President Eisenhower asked Gen. Goodpaster to serve as staff secretary in the White House. He became known as the president's alter ego for his ability to carry out orders in his wide-ranging national security portfolio with minimal need for instruction. His mandate included work on the so-called Solarium Conference to plan for the American role in a post-Stalin Soviet Union.

Some called him "the man with the briefcase" for his silent but essential backstage role in practically all military matters. Gen. Goodpaster, wrote one reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, "looks like a business executive and hides his White House importance behind a quiet facade that lends itself neither to anecdotes nor stuffiness."

In later years, Gen. Goodpaster related a rare scene of White House tensions. He told an interviewer that Eisenhower had trouble understanding why the Americans could not reduce their forces in Europe, as he had stated publicly and on which he now wanted action. The general said the matter depended on "the ability of the Europeans to fill the gap that's there, the gap we created."

Eisenhower got madder, and Gen. Goodpaster decided he needed Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to confirm his analysis, to which the president replied, "Foster, I've lost my last friend."

On reflection, Gen. Goodpaster added: "But I think we both knew that that was our duty, and the president knew it perfectly well. He just was sounding off, and that was part of our role in life, to let him relieve some of the pressure but to make sure that he didn't make that kind of a mistake."

He remained a key adviser through the Suez crisis, the launching of Sputnik and the 1960 Soviet downing of the U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers.

Gen. Goodpaster advanced through a series of sensitive positions in the 1960s on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. President Lyndon B. Johnson used him as an intermediary with Eisenhower for military suggestions in the escalating Vietnam War. "President Johnson asked the question: Can we win in Vietnam and what do we have to do?" Gen. Goodpaster told U.S. News & World Report decades later. "That question came to me."

He advocated a stronger military role to win the war and became frustrated that the political will never materialized. He served as military adviser to the six-man U.S. team involved in the Paris peace talks with the North Vietnamese in summer 1968 and spent the rest of the year as deputy to Gen. Creighton W. Abrams Jr., commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam.

From 1969 to 1974, he was NATO supreme allied commander and was said to have been greatly displeased when Gen. Alexander M. Haig Jr., the Nixon White House chief of staff, was tapped to replace him. He retired quietly and did not show up for Haig's ceremony, a rare public snub.

In later years, Gen. Goodpaster took special assignments from presidents and held a variety of academic and research center appointments, among them at the Eisenhower Institute in Washington, the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria and St. Mary's College of Maryland. Otherwise, he allowed himself the luxury of salmon fishing in Labrador with his wife.

She had been the prize of one of his bravest military maneuvers, having courted her at a time when her father was West Point's No. 2 official and he a mere cadet.

Survivors include his wife of 65 years, Dorothy Anderson Goodpaster of Washington; two daughters, Susan Sullivan of Alexandria and Anne Batte of Salisbury, N.C.; seven grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

----

Letter to the Editor
Washington Post

From:  Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>
To:    OPED@washpost.com

I was really disappointed that the Washington Post didn't mention the most important of General Goodpaster's achievements:  His recognition, in 1996, that he must do something courageous toward global nuclear disarmament.

On December 4, 2005, he was convenor of a press conference at the National Press Club.  Here are his opening remarks, which can be found at http://prop1.org/2000/gengbio.htm:

Opening Remarks by General General Andrew J. Goodpaster, 
U.S. Army (Ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR)(1969-74)

December 4, 1996
National Press Club

    I welcome the opportunity to talk with you about the reduction of the world's nuclear weapons arsenals. It is an issue that ranks in the highest order of importance for American security (and that of others) in the coming century.

    To do what needs to be done means giving high priority to the issue and sustained commitment to the efforts amidst a vast number of other demands. This will not be easy. Nor can it be taken for granted, whatever the merits of the case, in a security process where the more urgent is in constant battle with the more important (and quite regularly wins). It will take firm top-level decision and determined follow-up leadership over many years to move the needed nuclear policies and action forward.

    But it can and must be done. Two considerations fundamental to security interests and possibilities should now shape the nuclear future;

    First, as so often emphasized by President Eisenhower (who had a talent for getting to the heart of such questions), nuclear weapons are the only thing that can destroy the United State of America.

    Second, the Cold War is over and unlikely to return, hard as it may be to comprehend this historic fact in all its dimensions, and to seize the opportunities that are now available to re-orient our policies accordingly.

    Nowhere is this more salient than in reducing the world's arsenals of nuclear weapons.

**

General Goodpaster then introduced a written Statement signed by himself and Goodpaster and Butler, General Lee Butler, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief, United States Strategic Air Command (1992-94); former Commander-in-Chief, United States Strategic Command (1992-94)

Joint Statement on Reduction of Nuclear Weapons Arsenals:
Declining Utility, Continuing Risks

December 4, 1996
National Press Club

http://prop1.org//2000/gengood.htm

    As senior military officers, we have given close attention over many years to the role of nuclear weapons as well as the risks they involve. With the end of the Cold War, these weapons are of sharply reduced utility, and there is much now to be gained by substantially reducing their numbers and lowering their alert status, meanwhile exploring the feasibility of their ultimate complete elimination.

    The roles of nuclear weapons for purposes of security have been sharply narrowed in terms of the security of the United States. Now and in the future they basically provide an option to respond in kind to a nuclear threat or nuclear attack by others. In the world environment now foreseen, they are not needed against non-nuclear opponents. Conventional capabilities can provide a sufficient deterrent and defense against conventional forces and in combination with defensive measures, against the threat of chemical or biological weapons. As symbols of prestige and international standing, nuclear weapons are of markedly reduced importance.

    At the same time, the dangers inherent in nuclear weapons have continued and in some ways increased. They include the risks of accidents and unauthorized launches -- risks which, while small, nevertheless still exist. Seizures or thefts of weapons or weapons materials and threats or actual use by terrorists or domestic rebels, are of additional concern. Moreover, despite the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, nuclear weapons could spread to additional nations, with risk of their use in crisis or war. And if they should spread, the risks of accidents and of unauthorized, inadvertent, or deliberate use will spread as well.

    We believe the nations that possess these weapons should take the necessary steps to align their nuclear weapons policies and programs to match the diminished role and utility of these weapons, and the continuing risks they involve, joining in reducing their nuclear arsenals step by step to the lowest verifiable levels consistent with stable security, as rapidly as world conditions permit. Taking the lead, U. S. and Russian reductions can open the door for the negotiation of multilateral reductions capping all arsenals at very low levels. Added safety and an enhanced climate for negotiations would be achieved by removing nuclear weapons from alert status and placing the warheads in controlled storage. These arrangements should be applied to all nuclear weapons, discarding the distinction between tactical and strategic weapons, limiting nuclear warheads rather than launchers, and subjecting all weapons to inspection and verification measures.

    The ultimate objective of phased reductions should be the complete elimination of nuclear weapons from all nations. No one can say today whether or when this final goal will prove feasible, but because the phased withdrawal and destruction of nuclear weapons from all countries' arsenals would take many years, probably decades, to accomplish, time will be available -- for work on technical problems, for political progress in ameliorating the conflicts and political struggles that encourage countries to maintain or to acquire nuclear weapons, and for building confidence in the system of safeguards and verification measures established to support the elimination regime.

    We believe the time for action is now, for the alternative of inaction could well carry a high price. For the task that lies ahead, there is need for initiatives by all who share our conviction as to the importance of this goal. Steady pursuit of a policy of cooperative, phased reductions with serious commitments to seek the elimination of all nuclear weapons is a path to a world free of nuclear dangers.

    Signed,

    General Andrew J. Goodpaster, U.S. Army (Ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR)(1969-74)

    General Lee Butler, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief, United States Strategic Air Command (1992-94); former Commander-in-Chief, United States Strategic Command (1992-94)

**

Statement by US General Butler 12/4/96

http://prop1.org/2000/genbut.htm

NATIONAL PRESS CLUB REMARKS
General Lee Butler, USAF (Retired)
Wednesday, December 4, 1996
Washington, D. C.

    Thank you, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Let me say first that I am both professionally honored and intellectually comforted to share this rostrum with General Andrew Goodpaster. He has long set the standard among senior military officers for rigorous thinking and wise counsel on national security matters. He has been a role model for generations of younger officers, and most certainly was for me. His views on the risks inherent in nuclear weapons and the consequences of their use have long been a matter of public record. I found them very compelling as I made the long and arduous intellectual journey from staunch advocate of nuclear deterrence to public proponent of nuclear abolition.

    This latter role is not one that I ever imagined nor one that I relish. Far from it. I have too much regard for the thousands of men who served under my command, and the hundreds of colleagues with whom I labored in the policy arena, to take lightly the risk that my views might in any way be construed as diminishing their service or sacrifice. Quite to the contrary, I continue to marvel and will always be immensely gratified by their intense devotion and commitment to the highest standards of professional discipline.

    I would simply ask them to understand that I am compelled to speak, by concerns I cannot still, with respect to the abiding influence of nuclear weapons long after the Cold War has ended. I am here today because I feel the weight of a special obligation in these matters, a responsibility born of unique experience and responsibilities. Over the last 27 years of my military career, I was embroiled in every aspect of American nuclear policy making and force structuring, from the highest councils of government to nuclear command centers; from the arms control arena to cramped bomber cockpits and the confines of ballistic missile silos and submarines. I have spent years studying nuclear weapons effects; inspected dozens of operational units; certified hundreds of crews for their nuclear mission; and approved thousands of targets for nuclear destruction. I have investigated a distressing array of accidents and incidents involving strategic weapons and forces. I have had a library of books and intelligence reports on the Soviet Union and what were believed to be its capabilities and intentions...and seen an army of experts confounded. As an advisor to the President on the employment of nuclear weapons, I have anguished over the imponderable complexities, the profound moral dilemmas, and the mind-numbing compression of decision-making under the threat of nuclear attack.

    I came away from that experience deeply troubled by what I see as the burden of building and maintaining nuclear arsenals: the increasingly tangled web of policy and strategy as the number of weapons and delivery systems multiply the staggering costs; the relentless pressure of advancing technology; the grotesquely destructive war plans; the daily operational risks; and the constant prospect of a crisis that would hold the fate of entire societies at risk.

    Seen from this perspective, it should not be surprising that no one could have been more relieved than was I by the dramatic end of the Cold.War and the promise of reprieve from its acute tensions and threats. The democratization of Russia, the reshaping of Central Europe ... I never imagined that in my lifetime, much less during my military service, Such extraordinary events might transpire. Even more gratifying was the opportunity, as the commander of US strategic nuclear forces, to be intimately involved in recasting our force posture, shrinking our arsenals, drawing down the target list, and scaling back huge impending Cold War driven expenditures.

    Most importantly, I could see for the first time the prospect of restoring a world free of the apocalyptic threat of nuclear war.

    Over time, that shimmering wave was, to a judgment which has now become a deeply held conviction that a world free of the threat or nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons. Permit me, if you will, to elaborate briefly an the concerns which compel this conviction.

    First, a growing alarm that despite all of the evidence, we have yet to fully grasp the monstrous effects of these weapons, that the consequences of their use defy reason, transcending time and space, poisoning the earth and deforming its inhabitants. Second, a deepening dismay at the prolongation of Cold War policies and practices in a world where our security interests have ben utterly transformed. Third, that foremost among these policies, deterrence reigns unchallenged, with its embedded assumption of hostility and associated preference for forms on high states of alert. Fourth, an acute unease over renewed assertions of the utility of nuclear weapons, especially as regards response to chemical or biological attack. Fifth, grave doubt that the present highly discriminatory regime of nuclear and non-nuclear states can long endure absent an credible commitment by the nuclear powers to eliminate their arsenals. And finally, the horrific prospect of a world seething with enmities, armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, end hostage to maniacal leaders strongly disposed toward their use.

    That being said. let me hasten to add that I am keenly aware of the opposing arguments. Many strategists hold to the belief that the Cold War world was well served by nuclear weapons, and that the fractious world emerging in its aftermath dictates that they will be retained ... either as fearsome weapons of last resort or simply because their elimination is still a Utopian dream. I offer in reply that for me the Utopian dream was ending the Cold War. Standing down nuclear arsenals requires only a fraction of the ingenuity and resources as were devoted to their creation. As to those who believe nuclear weapons desirable or inevitable, I would say these devices exact a terrible price even if never used. Accepting nuclear weapons as the ultimate arbiter of conflict condemns the world to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety. Worse, it codifies mankind's most murderous instincts as an acceptable resort when other options for resolving conflict fail.

    Others argue that nuclear weapons are still the essential trappings of superpower status; that they are a vital hedge against a resurgence of virulent, Soviet communism; that they will defer attack by weapons of mass destruction; or that they are the most appropriate choice far response to such attack.

    To them I reply that proliferation cannot be contained in a world where a handful of self-appointed nations both arrogate to themselves the privilege of owning nuclear weapon; and extol the ultimate security assurances they assert such weapons convey. That overt hedging against born-again, Soviet- style hardliners is as likely to engender as to discourage their resurrection.

    That elegant theories of deterrence wilt in the crucible of impending nuclear war. And, finally, that the political and human consequences of the employment of a nuclear weapon by the United States in the post-Cold War world, no matter the provocation, would irretrievably diminish our stature. We simply cannot resort to the very type of act we rightly abhor.

    Is it possible to forge a global consensus on the propositions that nuclear weapons have no defensible role; that the broader consequences of their employment transcend any asserted military utility; and that as the weapons of mass destruction, the case for their elimination is a thousand-fold stronger and more urgent than for deadly chemicals and viruses already widely declared immoral, illegitimate, subject to destruction and prohibited from any future production?

    I am persuaded that such a consensus is not only possible, it is imperative. Notwithstanding the uncertainties of transition in Russia, bitter enmities in the Middle East, or the delicate balance of power in South and East Asia, I believe that a swelling global refrain will eventually bring the broader interests of mankind to bear on the decisions of governments to retain nuclear weapons. The terror-induced anesthesia which suspended rational thought, made nuclear war thinkable and grossly excessive arsenals possible during the Cold War is gradually wearing off. A renewed appreciation for the obscene power of a single nuclear weapon is coming back into focus as we confront to dismal prospect of nuclear terror at the micro level.

    Clearly the world has begun to recoil from the nuclear abyss, Bombers are off alert, missiles are being destroyed and warheads dismantled, former Soviet republics have renounced nuclear status. The Non-Proliferation Treaty has been indefinitely extended, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is now a de facto prohibition, and START II may yet survive a deeply suspicious Duma But, there is a much larger issue which now Confronts the nuclear powers and engages the vital interest of every nation whether the world is better served by a prolonged era of cautious nuclear weapons reductions toward some indeterminate endpoint; or by an unequivocal commitment on the part of the nuclear powers to move with much greater urgency toward the goal of eliminating these arsenals in their entirety.

    I chose this forum to make my most direct public Case for elimination as the goal, to be pursued with all deliberate speed. I firmly believe that practical and realistic steps, such as those set forth by the Stimson Center study, or by the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, can really be taken toward that end. But I would underscore that the real issue here is not the path - it is the willingness to undertake the journey. In my view, there are three crucial conditions which must be satisfied for that journey to begin, conditions which go to the heart of strongly held beliefs and deep seated fears about nuclear weapons and the circumstances in which they might be used.

    First and foremost, is for the declared nuclear weapon states to accept that the Cold War is in fact over, to break free of the norms, attitudes and habits that perpetuate enormous inventories, forces standing alert and targeting plans encompassing thousands of aimpoints.

    Second, for the undeclared states to embrace the harsh lessons of the Cold War: that nuclear weapons are inherently dangerous, hugely expensive, and militarily inefficient; that implacable hostility and alienation will almost certainly over time lead to a nuclear crisis; that the failure Of nuclear deterrence would imperil not just the survival of the antagonists, but of every society; and that nuclear war is a raging insatiable beast whose instincts and appetites we pretend to understand but cannot possibly control.

    Third, given its crucial leadership role, it is essential for the United States to undertake as a first order of business a sweeping review of its nuclear policies and strategies. The Clinton administration's 1993 Nuclear Posture Review was an essential but far from sufficient step toward rethinking the role of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War world. While clearing the agenda of some pressing force structure questions, the NPR purposefully avoided the larger policy issues.

    Moreover, to the point of Cold War attitudes, the Review's justification for maintaining robust nuclear forces as a hedge against the resurgence of a hostile Russia should now be seen as regrettable from several aspects. It sends an overt message of distrust in an era when building a positive security relationship with Russia is arguably the United States' most important foreign policy interest. It codifies force levels and postures completely out of keeping with the historic passage we have witnessed in world affairs. And, it perpetuates attitudes which inhibit a willingness to proceed immediately toward negotiation of greatly reduced levels of arms, notwithstanding the state of ratification of the START II Agreement.

    There you have, in very abbreviated form, the core of the concerns which led me to abandon the blessed anonymity of private life, to join my voice with respected colleagues such as General Goodpaster, to urge publicly that the United States make unequivocal its commitment to the elimination of nuclear arsenals, and take the lead in setting an agenda for moving forthrightly toward that objective.

    I left active duty with great confidence that the imperative for this commitment, and the will to pursue it were fully in place. I entered private life with a sense of profound satisfaction that the astonishing turn of events which brought a wondrous closure to my three and one half decades of military service, and far more importantly to four decades of perilous idealogical confrontation, presented historic opportunities to advance the human condition.

    But now time, and human nature, are wearing away the sense af wonder and closing the window of opportunity. Options are being lost as urgent questions are unasked, or unanswered; as outmoded routines perpetuate Cold War patterns and thinking; and as a new generation of nuclear actors and aspirants lurch backward toward a chilling world where the principal antagonists could find no better solution to their entangled security fear than Mutual Assured Destruction.

    Such a world was and is intolerable. We are not condemned to repeat the lessons of forty years at the nuclear brink. We can do better than condone a world in whieh nuclear weapons are accepted as commonplace. The prlce already paid is too dear, the risks are too great. The task is daunting but we cannot shrink from it. The opportunity may not come again.

    GENERAL LEE BUTLER, USAF (Ret.)

    General Butler retired from 33 years of military service on February 28, 1994. He remained in Nebraska and joined Peter Kiewit Sons, Inc., a privately held corporation headquartered in Omaha.

    From 1961-1994 Butler was an officer in the United States Air Force, attaining the rank of General in 1991. In the latter capacity he was the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Air Command and subsequently Commander-in-Chief of the United States Strategic Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. In this capacity, he had the responsibility for all U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy strategic nuclear forces which support the national security objective of strategic deterrence.

    Butler is a 1961 graduate ofthe U.S. Air Force Academy. He attended the University of Paris, France, as an Olmsted scholar where he attained a master's degree in international affairs.

    He and his wife Dorene have two children, both married. They have two grandchildren.

    Butler's military career included a wide range of flying and staff positions. He served in numerous policy positions in the Pentagon, the last being the Director for Strategic Plans and Policy, Joint Chiefs of Staff.

    Butler currently serves as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations as well as the Committee on International Security and Arms Control for the National Academy of Sciences and the Canberra Commission. He serves on numerous boards of Omaha civic orgazations.

**

Statement by 60 International Generals

file:///W:/www/2000/genint.htm

STATEMENT ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS
BY INTERNATIONAL GENERALS AND ADMIRALS

Thursday, December 5, 1996

    We, military professionals, who have devoted our lives to the national security of our countries and our peoples, are convinced that the continuing existence of nuclear weapons in the armories of nuclear powers, and the ever present threat of acquisition of these weapons by others, constitutes a peril to global peace and security and to the safety and survival of the people we are dedicated to protect.

    Through our variety of responsibilities and experiences with weapons and wars in the armed forces of many nations, we have acquired an intimate and perhaps unique knowledge of the present security and insecurity of our countries and peoples.

    We know that nuclear weapons, though never used since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, represent a clear and present danger to the very existence of humanity. There was an immense risk of a superpower holocaust during the Cold War. At least once, civilization was on the very brink of catastrophic tragedy. That threat has now receded, but not forever -- unless nuclear weapons are eliminated.

    The end of the Cold War created conditions favorable to nuclear disarmament. Termination of military confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States made it possible to reduce strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, and to eliminate intermediate range missiles. It was a significant milestone on the path to nuclear disarmament when Belarus, Kazakhastan, and Ukraine relinquished their nuclear weapons.

    Indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995 and approval of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by the UN General Assembly in 1996 are also important steps towards a nuclear-free world. We commend the work that has been done to achieve these results.

    Unfortunately, in spite of these positive steps, true nuclear disarmament has not been achieved. Treaties provide that only delivery systems, not nuclear warheads, will be destroyed. This permits the United States and Russia to keep their warheads in reserve storage, thus creating a "reversible nuclear potential." However, in the post-Cold War security environment, the most commonly postulated nuclear threats are not susceptible to deterrence or are simply not credible. We believe, therefore, that business as usual is not an acceptable way for the world to proceed in nuclear matters.

    It is our deep conviction that the following is urgently needed and must be undertaken now:

    First, present and planned stockpiles of nuclear weapons are exceedingly large and should now be greatly cut back;

    Second, remaining nuclear weapons should be gradually and transparently taken off alert, and their readiness substantially reduced both in nuclear weapon states and in de facto nuclear weapon states;

    Third, long-term international nuclear policy must be based on the declared principle of continuous, complete and irrevocable elimination of nuclear weapons.

    The United States and Russia should -- without any reduction in their military security -- carry forward the reduction process already launched by START: they should cut down to 1000 to 1500 warheads each and possibly lower. The Other three nuclear states and the three threshold states should be drawn into the reduction process as still deeper reductions are negotiated down to the level of hundreds. There is nothing incompatible between defense by individual countries of their territorial integrity and progress toward nuclear abolition.

    The exact circumstances and conditions that will make it possible to proceed, finally, to abolition cannot now be foreseen or prescribed. One obvious prerequisite would be a worldwide program of surveillance and inspection, including measures to account for and control inventories of nuclear weapon materials. This will ensure that no rogues or terrorists could undertake a surreptitious effort to acquire nuclear capacities without detection at an early stage An agreed procedure for forcible international intervention and interruption of covert efforts in a certain and timely fashion is essential.

    The creation of nuclear-free zones in different parts of the world, confidence-building and transparency measures in the general field of defense, strict implementation of all treaties in the area of disarmament and arms control, and mutual assistance in the process of disarmament are also important in helping to bring about a nuclear-free world. The development of regional systems of collective security, including practical measures for cooperation, partnership, interaction and communication are essential for local stability and security.

    The extent to which the existence of nuclear weapons and fear of their use may have deterred war -- in a world that in this year alone has seen 30 military conflicts raging -- cannot be determined. It is clear, however, that nations now possessing nuclear weapons will not relinquish them until they are convinced that more reliable and less dangerous means of providing for their security are in place. It is also clear, as a consequence, that the nuclear powers will not now agree to a fixed timetable for the achievement of abolition.

    It is similarly clear that, among the nations not now possessing nuclear weapons, there are some that will not forever forswear their acquisition and deployment unless they, too, are provided means of security. Nor will they forgo acquisition if the present nuclear powers seek to retain everlastingly their nuclear monopoly.

    Movement toward abolition must be a responsibility shared primarily by the declared nuclear weapons states -- China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States; by the de facto nuclear states, India, Israel and Pakistan; and by major non-nuclear powers such as Germany and Japan. All nations should move in concert toward the same goal.

    We have been presented with a challenge of the highest possible historic importance: the creation of a nuclear weapons-free world. The end of the Cold War makes it possible.

    The dangers of proliferation, terrorism, and a new nuclear arms race render it necessary. We must not fail to seize our opportunity. There is no alternative.

    Signed,

    INTERNATIONAL GENERALS AND ADMIRALS
    WHO HAVE SIGNED STATEMENT ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS

    CANADA
    Johnson, Major General Leonard V.. (Ret.) Commandant, National Defense College

    DENMARK
    Kristensen, Lt. General Gunnar (Ret.) former Chief of Defense Staff

    FRANCE
    Sanguinetti, Admiral Antoine (Ret.) former Chief of Staff, French Fleet

    GHANA
    Erskine, General Emmanuel (Ret.) former Commander in Chief and former Chief of Staff UNTSO (Middle East), Commander UMFII (Lebanon)

    GREECE
    Capellos, Lt. General Richard (Ret.) former Corps Commander
    Konstantinides, Major General Kostas (Ret.), former Chief of Staff, Army Signals
    Koumanakos, Lt. General Georgios (Ret.) former Chief of Operations

    INDlA
    Rikhye, Major General Indar Jit (Ret.), former military advisor to UN Secretary General Dag Akmmerskjold and U Thant
    Surt, Air Marshall N. C. (Ret.)

    JAPAN
    Sakonjo, Vice Admiral Naotoshi (Ret.) Sr. Advisor, Research Institute for Peace and Security
    Shikata Lt. General Toshiyuki (Ret.) Sr. Advisor, Research Institute for Peace and Security

    JORDAN
    Ajeilat, Major General Shafiq (Ret.) Vice President Military Affairs Muta University
    Shiyyab, Major General Mohammed K. (Ret.) former Deputy Commander, Royal Jordanian Air Force

    NETHERLANDS
    van der Graaf, Henry J. (Ret.) Brigadier General RNA Director Centre Arms Control & Verification, Member, United National Advisory Board for Disarmament Matters

    NORWAY
    Breivik, Roy, Vice Admiral Roy (Ret.) former Representative to NATO, Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic

    PAKISTAN
    Malik Major General Ihsun ul Haq (Ret.) Commandant, Joint Services Committee

    PORTUGAL
    Gomes, Marshal Francisco da Costa (Ret.) former Commander in Chief, Army; former President of Portugal

    RUSSIA
    Belous, General Vladimir (Ret.) Department Chief, Dzerzhmsky Military Academy
    Gareev, Army General Makhmut (Ret.) former Deputy Chief, USSR Armed Forces General Staff
    Gromov, General Boris, (Ret.) Vice Chair, Duma intemational Affairs Comminee; former Commander of 40m Soviet Arms in Afghanistan: former Deputy Minister, Foreign Ministry, Russia
    Koltounov, Major General Victor (Ret.) former Deputy Chief, Department of General Staff, USSR Armed Forces
    Larionov, Major General Valentin (Ret.) Professor, General Staff Academy
    Lebed, Major General Alexander (Ret.) former Secretary of the Security Council
    Lebedev, Major General Youri V. (Ret.) former Deputy Chief, Department of General Staff, USSR Armed Forces
    Makarevsky, Major General Vadim (Ret.) Deputy Chief, Kouibyshev Military Engineering Academy
    Medvedev, Lt. General Vladamir (Ret.) Chief. Center of Nuclear Threat Reduction
    Mikhailov, Colonel General George. (Ret.) former Deputy Chief, Department of General Staff, USSR Armed Forces
    Nozhin Major General Eugenq (Ret.) former Deputy Chief Department of General Staff, USSR Armed Forces
    Rokhlin Lt. General Lev (Ret.) Chair, Duma Defense Committee; former Commander, Russian 4th Army Corps
    Sleport, Lt. General Ivan (Ret.) former Chief, Department of General Staff, USSR Armed Forces
    Simonyan, Major General Rair (Ret.) Head of Chair, General Staff Academy
    Surikov, General Boris T., (Ret.) former Chief Specialist, Defense Ministry
    Tehervov, Colonel General Nikolay (Ret.) former Chief, Department of General Staff USSR Armed Forces
    Vinogradov, Lt. General Michael S. (Ret.) former Deputy Chief, Operational Strategic Center, USSR General Staff
    Zoubkov, Rear Admiral Radiy (Ret.) Chief, Navigation, USSR Navy

    SRI LANKA
    Karunaratne, Major General Upali A. (Ret.) (Sri Lanka)
    Silva, Major General C.A.M.N., (Ret.) USF, U.S.A. WC (Sri Lanka)

    TANZANlA
    Lupogo, Major General H. C. (Ret.) former Chief Inspector General, Tanzania Armed Forces

    UNITED KINGDOM
    Beach, General Sir Hugh (Ret.) Member, U. K. Security Commission
    Carver, Field Marshal Lord Michael (Ret.) Commander in Chief for East British Army (1967-1969), Chief of General Staff (1971-73) Chief of Defence Staff (1973-76)
    Harbottle, Brigadier Michael (Ret.) former Chief of Staff, UN Peacekeeping Force, Cyprus
    Mackie, Air Commodore Alistair (Ret.) former Director Air Staff Briefing

    UNITED STATES
    Becton, Lt. General Julius (USA) (Ret.)
    Bums, Maj. General William F. (USA) (Ret.) JCS Representative, INF Negotiations (1981-88) Special Envoy to Russia for Nuclear Weapon Dismantlement (1992-93)
    Carroll, Jr., Rear Admiral Eugene J. (USN) (Ret.) Deputy Director, Center for Defense Information
    Cushman, Lt. General John H. (USA) (Ret.) Commander, I. Corps (ROK/US) Group (Korea) 1976-78)
    Galvin, General John R., Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (1987-92)
    Gavler, Admiral Noel (USN) (Ret.) former Commander, Pacific
    Homer, General Charles A. (USAF) (Ret.) Commander, Coalition Air Forces, Desert Storm (1991); former Commander U. S. Space Command
    James, Rear Admiral Robert G. (USNR) (Ret.)
    Kingston, General Robert C. (USA) (Ret.)former Commander. U.S. Central Command
    Lee, Vice Admiral John M. (USN) (Ret.)
    Odom, Gen. William E. (USA)(Ret.) Director, National Security Studies, Hudson Institute; Deputy Assistant and Assistant Chief of Staff for intelligence (1981-85); Director, National Security Agency (1985-88)
    O'Meara, General Andrew (USA) (Ret.) former Commander U.S. Army, Europe
    Pursley, Lt. General Robert E., USAF (Ret.)
    Read, Vice Admiral William L. (USN) (Ret.), former Commander, U.S. Navy Surface Force, Atlantic Command
    Rogers, General Bemard W. (USA) (Ret.), former Chief of Staff, U.S, Army, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander(1979-87)
    Seignious, II, Lt. General George M. (USA) (Ret.), former Director Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (1978-1980)
    Shanahan, Vice Admiral John J. (USN) (Ret.) Director, Center for Defense information
    Smith, General William Y., (USAF) (Ret.) former Deputy Commander, U.S. Command Europe
    Wilson, Vice Admiral James B (CSN) (Ret.), former Polaris Submarine Captain



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

UC picks Anastasio for lab fight
Livermore director is last major piece in university's attempt to fend off challenges

By Ian Hoffman, Inside Bay Area STAFF WRITER
05/17/2005 04:01:04 AM

http://www.insidebayarea.com/trivalleyherald/localnews/ci_2739331

In a chess game for control of U.S. nuclear weapons design, the University of California has tapped the director of Lawrence Livermore weapons lab to fight for continued university management of Los Alamos lab in New Mexico.

Physicist and bomb designer Michael Anastasio becomes the last major piece in the university's attempt to fend off challenges from two huge defense contractors and persuade the U.S. Department of Energy that it should keep running the nation's largest weapons laboratory as it has for 62 years.

If successful, Anastasio would become director of Los Alamos and, paradoxically, a competitor with Livermore for weapons design work. If not, he would stay as Livermore's chief — and begin a new fight for university management of that lab as well.

In short, faced with battles over two bomb labs, the University of California has turned to a partnership with Bechtel Corp. and the only scientist in its own stable with experience designing bombs and running a national-security lab.

"It's really in the best interest of the country if there aretwo strong physics laboratories," Anastasio said in an interview Monday. "I think they can really work for the interest of the country if they are managed by the same contractor."

It's a smart, if risky move, according to officials familiar with the nation's weapons labs." When you play that game, you must win," one source said.

Anastasio's experience in lab management and weapons design was considered essential for UC to go up against the nation's largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, which has tapped veteran weapons lab director C. Paul Robinson to lead its bid for Los Alamos.

Robinson is a tall, courtly fixture in the U.S. nuclear-weapons complex, with stints as a weapons manager at Los Alamos, an arms-control negotiator and until recently director for 12 years of Sandia National Laboratories, which engineers the non-nuclear components of U.S. nuclear weapons.

Anastasio, 56, sports a goatee and drives a slick, black Audi sports coupe. He is known for a laid-back managerial style that puts a premium on listening and consensus.

"I try to be very open, professional, informal, approachable with high integrity," he said.

"He is very personable, he is very easy to talk to," said Bruce Goodwin, a physicist who leads Livermore's weapons program and has worked closely with Anastasio for 21 years.

"He listens very, very well and he hears what people are saying, but he makes a decision and he expects it to be done," Goodwin said. "If you let him down, he'll let you know it."

Beneath Anastasio's mild-mannered demeanor is a passion for national-security science, for long-range thinking and for winning, Goodwin said. In the early and mid-1990s, Anastasio briefed senior government officials on the pros and cons of maintaining a ban on nuclear testing, then worked with the Energy Department's top weapons official in designing a program to maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal without explosive testing.

"He's civil, he's polite, he's a nice guy, he's charming. That doesn't mean he's not assertive and driven and competitive," Goodwin said. "You don't get to a position like that unless you drive yourself and are driven."

With Robinson leading the Lockheed team and Anastasio leading the UC-Bechtel team, officials familiar with the weapons labs say the sales pitches become clear: Lockheed and another team led by defense giant Northrop Grumman will stress managerial competence, notably at Sandia, and UC will stress scientific accomplishment and 62 years of weapons design experience.

"That's the clear choice, and your lab directors reflect that choice," said Bill Madia, vice president of lab management at Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit operating several Energy Department labs.

"What you'll hear from the university is, 'We are the organization that has run the nuclear-weapons design program for 60-plus years and that's   different from Sandia as the weapons-engineering lab.'"

Lockheed and another team led by Northrop Grumman will attack UC's management record, and UC will attack the scientific and weapons design credentials of the other two teams.

Anastasio started making that pitch even before Monday's announcement of his selection. The university's strengths in science and innovation have kept its labs on the technical edge during the Cold War and prepared with homeland-security technologies before the Sept. 11 attacks, he said.

"To accomplish those aims requires these kinds of innovations in which we have a history," Anastasio said.

The "we" rhetoric marks a change from the Cold War, when Livermore and Los Alamos competed for weapons designs and often were quick to belittle the other — Los Alamos as conservative and overly academic, Livermore as too slick and overreaching.

This week, as Los Alamosans see defense contractors   circling, there's a willingness to take help from its sister lab in California.

"I know who Paul Robinson is and at least around here, people respect him greatly," said Los Alamos astrophysicist and lab fellow Jack Hills, "but they'd much rather have UC than Lockheed. No question about it."

Mark Dunham, who works on Defense Department programs at Los Alamos, said the days of Los Alamos-Livermore rivalry appear over.

"I don't know of anyone who has much animosity toward Livermore any more," he said. "We're much closer to siblings than ever before." 

----

Energy Chief Foresees Nuclear Power Plant

By JOHN HEILPRIN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 17, 2005; 7:53 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701215_pf.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-5013118,00.html

WASHINGTON -- Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Tuesday the first new nuclear power plant in more than two decades could be completed by 2014 under administration proposals to reduce construction risks and speed licensing.

Bodman said the Energy Department will ask Congress to establish a $3 billion insurance pool to help investors cover interest, operating, maintenance and newly acquired construction costs stemming from regulatory delays. Premiums would be waived for utilities that place firm orders before 2009 for new power plants.

Each new reactor would be insured for up to $500 million.

Bodman said the administration also plans to ask Congress to make it harder to stop a new reactor from operating once it is built. He said fewer appeals to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would give "more certainty in the licensing process."

"If all goes well, we could see new plants online by 2014," he told the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group.

The insurance would apply to the first two plants built from a new Westinghouse design, and the first two built from a new General Electric design. Companies would be asked to pay an insurance premium of about 10 percent of their total coverage, possibly over a period of years, Bodman said.

The insurance would cover half the costs of interest, operations and maintenance, and "newly acquired construction costs accumulated during the second, third and fourth years of a serious regulatory delay," Bodman said.

"I believe that this is the appropriate level of assistance that the government should provide to encourage new plants," said Bodman, while dismissing the need for other incentives.

"Looking for upfront incentives now sends the message that nuclear power cannot stand on its own without special government assistance. I don't think this is the right message to send to the American people, and I don't think it's true," he said.

President Bush said last month that more than 35 nuclear power plants in the United States have been stopped "because of bureaucratic obstacles." The last application for a new reactor was submitted in 1973. Nuclear power provides about 20 percent of U.S. electricity production.

Bodman said he has no specific criteria for raising the bar for an appeal to the NRC, other than requiring "clear evidence that there is a failure to comply with that which was undertaken when the construction began."

"That's really what the standard, in my judgment, should be," he said.

For more than a decade, NRC spokesman Eliot Brenner said, the NRC has offered a simpler application process for the building and operating phases. He said it already had set "a very high threshold to get to a second public hearing" after a new plant is built.

On the Net:

Energy Department: http://www.doe.gov

----

'No Nukes,' No More

By JOHN TIERNEY
May 17, 2005 NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/opinion/17tierny.html?pagewanted=print

The great taboo against nuclear power seems to be over in Washington. This is a mixed blessing.

The subject had been off limits to environmentally correct politicians since the spring of 1979, when the Three Mile Island accident inspired the Woodstock of the antinuke movement. More than 65,000 protesters marched on the Capitol to hear energy experts like Jackson Browne and Benjamin Spock - and, of course, Jane Fonda, an authority because of her role in the "The China Syndrome."

Celebrities and politicians, warning of meltdowns and cancer epidemics, demanded the shutdown of all nuclear plants. Protesters dressed as mushrooms chanted, "Two, four, six, eight, we don't want to radiate." I went to the rally sympathetic to the movement but left unsure of which was scarier, nuclear power or its enemies.

Now some prominent environmentalists are having second thoughts, as Felicity Barringer reported in Sunday's Times. Given the threat of global warming, they say, encouraging new nuclear power plants may be necessary. And Congress is about to take up proposals to reinvigorate the industry.

On the one hand, this risk-benefit analysis is a refreshing improvement over the doomsday speeches and the chanting mushrooms. But by looking to Congress to chart a grand new energy policy, environmentalists are making the same mistake they made when they helped create the nuclear industry.

Environmentalists originally supported nuclear power because of its obvious benefits: no dirty air from smokestacks, no need to strip the ground for coal or dig for oil. Economic benefits, however, were not so obvious to investors, who were leery of the plants' costs and new problems, like accidents and waste disposal.

But Washington decided that nuclear power was so good for the environment and national security - how would America cope with the crisis when fossil fuels ran out? - that it should be subsidized. The federal government exempted the industry from full liability for accidents and took responsibility for waste disposal.

If Washington hadn't acted, nuclear power plants wouldn't have been built so fast, maybe not at all. But if the industry had been forced to deal with the costs and the risks on its own, it might have developed cheaper, simpler, more reliable plants.

Instead, it built unwieldy plants that were prone to problems, making them costly to operate and also inciting public fears. Even though the fears about the American industry were overblown, they led to tighter regulations and more expense.

Some proponents of nuclear power argue that the U.S. industry was killed by too much regulation; others say it simply lost out to the fossil fuels we were supposed to be running out of. Whatever the reason, investors looking for a profit lost interest long ago in building nuclear plants in America.

But now, just as in the 1950's, some environmentalists and politicians are seeing something that investors don't. They think that uranium could once again be the fuel of the future - with their guidance. Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman are working on a plan in which conservatives would support limits on fossil fuel emissions if liberals agreed to subsidies for corporations working on new nuclear technologies.

The rationale is the new environmental crisis, global warming, which may turn out to be more real than the 1950's crisis of vanishing fossil fuels. But even if environmentalists and politicians are right this time about the problem, there's little reason to trust them to figure out which form of energy will be the solution.

Starting with nuclear power, they've backed one loser after another for the past half-century. They promised that their subsidies would move us beyond fossil fuels and produce electricity from vast solar arrays, solar towers, geothermal heat, ocean waves, sugar beets, corn, manure and something called biogas (you don't want to know). But when the subsidies ran out, the electricity stopped.

If politicians are determined to combat global warming, their best bet is to try something they understand: imposing taxes. A tax on carbon emissions would make investors take into account the risks of global warming. I don't know if it would make them want to build new nuclear power plants, but I trust them to figure it out better than anyone in Washington who claims to see the energy future. And at least they don't dress up as mushrooms.

E-mail: tierney@nytimes.com



-------- nevada

Nevada Senate urges dumping Yucca

Tuesday, May 17, 2005
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/May-17-Tue-2005/news/26534814.html

CARSON CITY -- The Nevada Senate unanimously passed a measure Monday that urges federal lawmakers to oppose controversial plans for storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Assembly Joint Resolution 4, approved earlier by the Assembly, asks federal decision-makers to give up on Yucca Mountain because it is "an ill-advised project based on bad science, bad law and bad public policy, a choice that ignores better, less expensive and safer alternatives, a choice which hinders, not helps, national security."

Despite delays and spending cuts, Energy Department officials have said recently that the Yucca Mountain plan is alive and well, and that support from the Bush administration remains strong. But opponents have declared the project dead.

Recent problems with the government's plans for the dump include criminal investigations to determine whether workers on the project falsified data.

Also, a court decision has forced a rewrite of radiation safety standards for the site -- and the DOE has scrapped a planned 2010 completion date.



-------- new mexico

Anxiously, Los Alamos Awaits a New Contract, and a New Era

By WILLIAM J. BROAD
May 17, 2005 NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/science/17alam.html?pagewanted=print

Two of the world's largest military contractors are challenging the nation's largest university system for the job of running Los Alamos, the government's pre-eminent nuclear arms laboratory. The winner will preside over a program valued as high as $44 billion over two decades.

The issue is whether the University of California, the lab's longtime manager, should be awarded a new federal contract after presiding over years of safety problems, security lapses, financial irregularities and embarrassing scandals, culminating May 6 in the resignation of the director, Dr. G. Peter Nanos.

On a deeper level, the struggle is over Los Alamos's mission - whether it should turn away from its traditional role as a center of scientific excellence toward a narrower one focused on weapons design and production, in essence a bomb factory.

The university's history of automatic contract renewals ends in September; the Department of Energy says it will start receiving new proposals this week. Already, the lab is experiencing a wave of jitters, with retirements up sharply and officials expressing fears of a mass exodus.

The military contractors, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, are pursuing the contract separately. Their ambitions appear to align with those of the Bush administration, which wants Los Alamos to make atomic triggers for hydrogen bombs and a new generation of reliable, long-lived warheads.

The companies say they could revitalize Los Alamos as well. Dr. C. Paul Robinson, who recently resigned as director of the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque to lead Lockheed Martin's bid for Los Alamos, said his company knew how to excel at industrial production without endangering its scientific mission.

"We don't want to devalue the role of science and technology," he said in an interview. "That's what drives the innovations."

But officials and experts both inside and outside Los Alamos say they worry that putting the lab in industrial hands may accelerate an exodus of vital personnel, diminish its ability to do world-class science and leave it poorly equipped to carry out the Bush administration's plans as well as its traditional responsibilities.

"I'm not sure that turning Los Alamos into a lackluster lab more focused on manufacturing is a good thing for the country," said Dr. Hugh Gusterson, an analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the nation's nuclear arms laboratories. "If you're trying to recruit a young Ph.D. from Princeton, and you tell them you're working for the University of California and not a bomb shop, it really matters."

Dr. Gusterson, who visited Los Alamos last month, said he had never seen morale so low. "People were just stricken," he said. "They're worried that Los Alamos will increasingly become a manufacturing facility. A lot of people were talking about early retirement."

A main worry of lab employees is that new management will never match the university's benefits, including its generous pension plan. Kevin Roark, a spokesman for Los Alamos, said worries over such matters had contributed to a recent increase in retirement inquiries.

"These are core people," he said, adding that most of them were not support staff but experts involved centrally in work on nuclear arms or on halting their spread.

Isolated in the mountains of New Mexico, the Los Alamos National Laboratory employs 14,000 people on an annual budget of $2.2 billion. Nuclear weapons research is only one of its missions; it is ranked as one of the world's top laboratories in terms of the number and quality of its unclassified scientific papers, as measured by how often subsequent papers cite them. Los Alamos has long maintained that the high quality of its science lifts its other endeavors.

The University of California's role goes back to 1943, when J. Robert Oppenheimer, then a top physicist there, founded the lab and brought along his employer. Historians say the university took on the management job reluctantly, mainly as a wartime public service.

The academic tie helped recruit the geniuses who built the first atom bomb but also brought a conundrum that endures today: the best civilian brains are capable of distinctly nonmilitary behavior. At wartime Los Alamos, Richard Feynman, later a Nobel laureate, spent a fair amount of time irritating the military authorities by cracking their safes.

Admirers say the climate of academic freedom lets dissenters speak out and gives the best and brightest minds a chance to clash; in science, sharp criticism is the backbone of rigor. But critics say the university's hands-off management style - especially after the cold war, when the central focus of the labors shifted from innovating to caretaking - resulted in a run of awkward and sometimes dangerous lapses.

"They lent their name and credentials for recruiting but were not in the day-to-day operations," said a senior Los Alamos official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he feared reprisal. Part of the problem, he said, was that the university got only $8 million a year for its work. In the new contract, he said, the figure is to climb to around $100 million, the higher pay coinciding with tougher management duties.

The biggest upset on the university's watch involved Dr. Wen Ho Lee, a Los Alamos scientist arrested in 1999 on 59 counts of mishandling secret data. All but one of the charges were dropped after a judge found significant problems with the government's case.

Apprehension about security increased in 2000 when two computer hard drives containing secret data vanished from a safe and were found weeks later behind a copying machine.

In 2002, the Energy Department said such jolts reflected a "systematic management failure," and in April 2003 it announced plans to end automatic contract renewals and open the pact to competition.

Now, two years later, the department says it will lay out the new contract's terms and expectations in a final request for proposals this week. Competitors will have 60 days to submit their bids. The management fee will be the same no matter who wins.

A career civil servant at the Energy Department, as yet unnamed, is to make the choice; the idea is to remove the risk of pressure that a political appointee may face.

"The future of the lab is up in the air right now," said Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a private arms-control organization in Albuquerque that monitors weapons laboratories. "The question is how hard core Los Alamos is going to be, how much science and how much production."

On Wednesday, Bechtel, the world's largest construction and engineering company, said it would join the University of California's bid. Before that announcement, S. Robert Foley, a retired admiral who oversees the university's weapons lab management, said in an interview that adding a large industrial partner would "back up the capabilities on the business side to match what we have on the science side."

He acknowledged a history of management errors and weakness at the university, the lab and the government. "They played musical chairs," he said. "They didn't hold people accountable. So there is plenty of blame to go around."

If Lockheed Martin wins the bidding, Dr. Robinson, formerly of Sandia, will become the new Los Alamos director. The company is also talking to the University of Texas - the nation's second biggest university system - to see if it will join as an academic partner.

Northrop Grumman says its strong suit is its expertise in developing advanced technology and managing large-scale military programs. "Northrop Grumman's strength lies in its people - scientists and engineers much like those at Los Alamos - who apply their energy and creativity to solve the nation's most challenging problems," the company's president, Dr. Ronald D. Sugar, said in a statement.

But Dr. Gusterson of M.I.T. said the government needed to move carefully lest it cripple what has been a giant of national security.

"I'm sure it's attractive to have a tightly run ship," he said. "But you'll get worse science."



-------- south carolina

Oconee Nuclear security officers spot possible break-in

Associated Press
Posted on Tue, May. 17, 2005

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/local/11670224.htm

SENECA, S.C. - Security officers on perimeter patrol at the Oconee Nuclear Station apparently spotted an attempted break-in at a maintenance and warehouse facility across from the nuclear plant, officials said.

Two people were trying to get through a fence, spokeswoman Dayle Stewart said. They realized they had been seen and fled, Stewart said.

Duke Power, which operates the nuclear station, parks utility trucks and has an equipment warehouse within the fence at an operations center.

But the area is completely unrelated to the nuclear operation, Stewart said. Wire and other equipment also is stored there, she said.

Security from the nuclear station and the local sheriff's office responded Sunday, but there was no indication anything had been stolen.



-------- vermont

Dry cask vendor revises design

May 17, 2005
By Susan Smallheer, Rutland Herald Staff

http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050517/NEWS/505170367/1003

The vendor for the concrete and steel storage containers Entergy Nuclear wants to use in its proposed high-level nuclear waste facility submitted a new design to federal regulators Monday for a below-ground system it says is more secure and emits less radiation.

Joy Russell, a spokeswoman for Hol-Tec International, said the company's third design, submitted earlier this year to the NRC, had been withdrawn for more safety revisions.

Russell said the new underground design is an improvement over its original 1999-2000 design, which Entergy Nuclear plans on using at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

"It's more safe and efficient," she said.

But Russell said the company's formal amendment to its original design would take about a year for federal regulators to review and approve.

"From Vermont Yankee's perspective, their safe bet is to go with the licensed system if timing is an issue," Russell said.

Russell said the underground design is safer because it sticks up only 2 feet out of the ground, instead of 18 feet for its original design, which Entergy plans to use.

Meanwhile, Hol-Tec's second-generation design will be the subject of a meeting at NRC headquarters outside Washington today over safety issues raised by the New England Coalition, a Brattleboro-based anti-nuclear group.

The coalition's senior technical advisor, Raymond Shadis, submitted questions about Hol-Tec's second design earlier this month and raised questions serious enough that they made federal regulators abruptly reverse course.

The NRC cancelled its expected approval of the second Hol-Tec design and scheduled a more detailed review, starting with today's meeting. "Our concerns primarily are that the assumptions fed into Hol-Tec's cask calculations were not justified and it does not appear that the NRC staff challenged them on their assumptions," Shadis said.

"Additionally, it appears some of the safety margins were extremely narrow, down to a fraction of a percent. It appears that on every parameter there is a negative trend — less safety, less temperature margins, more punishment of the materials in the cask, more radiation," he said.

Hol-Tec did not submit and nor did the NRC ask for a cost-benefit analysis to go with this, he said.

"Vermonters are very concerned about the durability of the casks and that they can resist flooding and acts of terror," Shadis said.

"Either Entergy's offering an unimproved cask or an unapproved cask," Shadis said.

He said Hol-Tec is a relative newcomer to the dry cask storage field.

Maine Yankee, Yankee Rowe and Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plants, which are shut down, have their fuel in dry storage casks made by Nuclear Assurance Corp.

Russell downplayed Shadis' concerns, but declined any specific comments about Tuesday's meeting.

Russell said the NRC's lack of approval for the second design meant two of Hol-Tec's nuclear power plant customers were in disposal limbo and unable to move old nuclear fuel into the casks as scheduled. She refused to identify the clients.

Entergy Nuclear spokesman Robert Williams said the company planned on using Hol-Tec's original design.

"This doesn't affect us. They have a licensed cask design that's available to us," he said.

Entergy Nuclear wants to build a high-level nuclear waste facility on the grounds of the Vernon reactor because it is running out of space in its deep-water storage pool. It also has plans to accelerate the production of fuel, which would mean more high-level waste.

However, according to a quirk in state law, Entergy Nuclear must get the approval of the Vermont Legislature.

So far, the issue is still in the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee. At issue is whether the state taxes the special facility: Entergy has claimed it can't pay any more in taxes and has threatened to shut the plant down.

Entergy Nuclear also has to get approval from the Public Service Board, but it cannot apply to state regulators until after the Legislature acts.

Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.



-------- MILITARY 



-------- asia

Refugees put Uzbek dead in thousands

17/05/2005
Telegraph (UK)
By Deirdre Tynan in Kara Suu, Kyrgyzstan

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=CNWIAVAYETUMLQFIQMFCM5OAVCBQYJVC?xml=/news/2005/05/17/wuzbek17.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/17/ixnewstop.html

Refugees who fled from the massacre committed by Uzbek security forces agreed on one thing yesterday: the number of dead is not 500 - the most common reported figure - but could be in the thousands.

As reports continued to come in of clashes spreading outside the town of Andizhan, a sergeant in charge of the bridge at the border village of Kara Suu said he believed that 2,000 had been massacred during three days.
 	
Kyrgz border guards check papers of Uzbek refugees at Kara-Suu

There is no way to confirm numbers offered by refugees, but it seemed likely that when the truth emerges, the massacre in Uzbekistan, an American ally in the fight against terrorism, could become the deadliest assault on civilians since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

The Uzbek-Kyrgyz border at Kara-Suu was open periodically yesterday under the watchful eye of Kyrgyz soldiers armed with machineguns.

Kara-Suu, which is divided between the two former Soviet republics, was tense as traders hurried goods between the two sides of town, divided by a fast flowing river straddled by a makeshift metal bridge.

A few refugees from Andizhan remained in the town staying close to their Kyrgyz relatives and homes. Apart from the 500 believed dead in Andizhan on Friday, there were reports of further deaths in nearby areas.

Saidjahon Zaynabitdinov, the head of the local Appeal human rights group, said yesterday that government troops had killed about 200 demonstrators on Saturday in Pakhtabad, about 18 miles northeast of Andizhan.

Suvahuan, a mother of four in her 40s who fled the town on Saturday with her children, gave a harrowing account of the scene in Andizhan.

"They had snipers everywhere and they didn't care who they shot down. I saw hundreds of people dead in the street. I saw them shoot boys, women and children," she said "They shot at the crowd like animals. They were firing at us from helicopters. People got confused running everywhere, trying to hide in buildings or behind cars.''

Rakhmat, a trader who crossed the hastily rebuilt Kara-Suu river bridge, said he saw desperate refugees drown in the river swollen by spring rains. "President Islam Karimov took that bridge down in 1999 because he didn't want us trading in Kyrgyzstan, that's half the reason why there were protests in Andizhan, it was poverty not politics that drove people on to the streets.

"It was chaotic. I saw several people drown as they tried to cross the bridge. Anyone who says the protest was the work of militant Islamists is lying. It was the people, tired, poor, hungry people, not extremists, who took to the street. Anything else is Karimov's propaganda," he added.

The Kyrgyz department of defence last night hurried lorry loads of troops to the border area 15 miles west of Osh in the south of the country.

More than 2,000 Uzbek convicts, many of whom were imprisoned on charges of Islamic extremism, are still unaccounted for and are believed to be hiding in the Andizhan area 25 miles from the Kyrgyz border. The arsenal at Andizhan prison was looted of rifles and grenades, according to witnesses.

Kyrgyzstan has officially camped 560 Uzbek refugees in Jalal-Abad province, but many more are being housed by extended families and friends.

Gunfire was again reported in Andizhan last night prompting fears that Uzbek forces were flushing armed militants from their boltholes around the town for a final assault.

• Alec Russell, in Washington, writes: The Bush administration yesterday toughened its stance towards President Karimov, calling on him to ease his repressive control over the country. In the strongest language to date, the State Department said yesterday it was "deeply disturbed" by reports that soldiers in Uzbekistan fired on unarmed civilians.

----

Uzbeks Say Troops Shot Recklessly at Civilians

May 17, 2005
New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS and ETHAN WILENSKY-LANFORD

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/international/asia/17uzbek.html?ex=1116907200&en=25d175c993fbfab6&ei=5070

MOSCOW, May 16 - Even as Uzbekistan's government maintained that it had acted cautiously and minimized the use of force in putting down a prison break and demonstration late last week, survivors said Monday that government security forces had fired indiscriminately at unarmed civilians and struck women and children.

In interviews at the Suzak regional hospital in Kyrgyzstan, just over the Uzbek border from where some of the shooting took place, survivors with gunshot wounds excoriated the government of President Islam A. Karimov. They said the authorities had turned weapons on civilians in the public square in Andijon, a regional capital in the Fergana Valley, with little warning.

They described scenes of one-sided violence and chaos. Some said that after fleeing they had come under fire again near a border crossing.

The crackdown began Friday after armed Uzbeks and demonstrators protesting what they regard as the unjust prosecution of 23 Uzbek businessmen stormed a local prison, releasing the businessmen and about 2,000 other prisoners.

Survivors of the crackdown said that after the prison break, when news circulated that Mr. Karimov would be going to Andijon, many civilians gathered in the square hoping to see him and to complain of their problems with joblessness, intermittent utility service and poverty.

Instead of meeting Mr. Karimov, they said, they were met by troops.

"Tanks came, with soldiers," said Makhammed Mavlanov, a trader and Kyrgyz citizen with a gunshot wound in his left arm. "Shooting started. There was no fight. It was just mass death."

Details of the crackdown and the violence that has intermittently occurred in its aftermath have been sketchy and contradictory, and movement through the areas where the most intense violence occurred has largely been restricted. Telephone and Internet service have been inconsistent or not operating.

The Uzbek government has blamed those who stormed the prison for the violence, and described the heavy response as necessary. But unverified accounts have said hundreds have been killed in several outbreaks of violence, mostly instigated by government action. The government has said 10 soldiers and "many more rebels" were killed.

In Tashkent, an employee of the information office of Uzbekistan's Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the reports of extensive civilian casualties, referring only to Mr. Karimov's public statements on Saturday that troops had fired after having been fired on first.

Mr. Karimov placed blame for the unrest on Islamic extremist groups, a label that he has used to describe political opponents in recent years and that his critics say is used as a pretext for maintaining a repressive state.

Most of Uzbekistan was reported to be calm on Monday, although there were reports of skirmishes in or near Andijon and of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of refugees making their way to Kyrgyzstan.

There were indications that the Uzbek government, which normally maintains strict order, did not have full control of a portion of the valley.

A reporter working for The New York Times entered the country at an abandoned border point at Karasu, passed a destroyed customs office, traveled more than 20 miles across the countryside and saw few government troops.

On returning to Kyrgyzstan at another border crossing near the Kyrgyz city of Jalal-Abad, this one maintained by listless Uzbek troops who were not checking documents, the reporter met nine people with bullet wounds in the Suzak regional hospital. Two of the victims were children.

Most of the wounded people declined to give their names, as is common for Uzbek citizens who are afraid of Mr. Karimov's government and security forces.

Members of the group described waiting for Mr. Karimov at the square in Andijon, and being turned away by gunfire. "We did not want to attack him," said an Uzbek woman, 35, who declined to give her name. "We wanted the president to say himself that he would improve things."

"And then," she said, "there was shooting."

There was also at least one rare sign of public dissent in the country outside the Fergana Valley. About two dozen people gathered at a monument in Tashkent and held a brief memorial for the dead.

Aksam Turgunov, a member of Erk, a small opposition party, vented his disgust at Mr. Karimov. "He lied brazenly to his people," Mr. Turgunov said. "He will go down in history as a bloodthirsty tyrant."

He added: "It's clear now, he shot at civilians. So the police are out to defend his actions. They are looking for criminals, but the worst criminal sits undisturbed."

C. J. Chivers reported from Moscow for this article, and Ethan Wilensky-Lanford from Kyrgyzstan and eastern Uzbekistan. Yola Monakhov contributed reporting from Tashkent.


-------- china

A Clampdown in China

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
May 17, 2005
BEIJING

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/opinion/17kristoff.html?pagewanted=print

The most important person in the world right now may be Hu Jintao, and we're beginning to get a better sense of what kind of a leader he is: disappointing.

More than anyone else, President Hu will determine whether China can continue to surge and whether its rise will be stable and peaceful. Ever since he vaulted into the top ranks of the Communist Party in 1992, there have been vigorous debates about whether he is a closet reformer or a closet hard-liner, but now that he has been the Communist leader for two and a half years, we can form a tentative conclusion: the second camp seems to have been right.

Mr. Hu appears to be an intuitive authoritarian who believes in augmenting the tools of repression, not easing them. Most distressing, Mr. Hu has tugged China backward politically. He has presided over a steady crackdown on dissent, the news media, religion, Internet commentary and think tanks. China now imprisons far more journalists than any other country.

At The New York Times, we've seen this crackdown firsthand. Zhao Yan, a colleague who works for the Times bureau in Beijing, was seized last September and tossed into prison. Why? We don't know for sure, because Mr. Zhao has never been tried and neither his lawyer nor his family members have even been allowed to see him.

Likewise, the bravest and boldest Chinese newspaper used to be Nanfang Dushi Bao. But then the paper reported that the police had beaten a university student to death because he wasn't carrying his ID. Two staff members were sent to prison last year for long terms, and China's newspapers are now more docile.

Mr. Hu also has a knack for using old-style propaganda phrases that make him sound like a time capsule from a more Communist past. And Chinese intellectuals were horrified when Mr. Hu issued an internal statement saying that while North Korea had made economic mistakes, it had the right ideas politically.

Still, Mr. Hu's clampdown has had only a limited effect, because China is now too porous and complex for anybody to control very successfully. Ordinary people are hiring lawyers to enforce their rights, and the rule of law is steadily painting the party leaders into a corner.

"They can't control everything any more," said a Chinese with long connections to the country's leaders. "They're like a fire brigade, rushing around to put out the fires that burn hottest, and leaving the others alone."

In any case, while Mr. Hu is a big disappointment in his political vision, he is turning out to be more solid in other areas, like foreign policy. Mr. Hu has done a good job managing foreign relations with other countries, aside from Japan and Sudan, and he has engaged North Korea more meaningfully on the nuclear issue than his predecessors did. Mr. Hu has at least managed to work out a coherent policy toward North Korea, which the Bush administration has yet to do.

Mr. Hu's economic instincts run to central planning, but he is also pragmatic. And he has a personal stake in a capitalist future: his only daughter, Hu Haiqing, has experience in the high-tech business world and is married to a Stanford-educated Internet tycoon, Daniel Mao.

Perhaps Mr. Hu's most important step has been to begin to address rural poverty and environmental problems, rather than focusing solely on economic growth and new market reforms to achieve it. This shift to more balanced growth is smart and long overdue.

At the same time, the pace of economic reform has also stalled, and the giddy expectation that major new reforms are on the way has gone. If this pause is a chance for China to catch its breath, that would be fine - but it looks like more than that.

Mr. Hu's basic problem is that he is trying to achieve stability by keeping the lid sealed tight on the pressure cooker. But the lesson of Taiwan and South Korea is the need to expand freedoms to provide outlets for those pressures. Otherwise, as Ukraine and Indonesia showed, pressure cookers can explode.

So Mr. Hu's emphasis on short-term stability may ultimately be increasing the risks of major instability in China down the road. And in that sense, the victims of Mr. Hu's crackdown are not just the individuals sitting in jail, but the entire Chinese people.

E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com



-------- prisoners of war

'Will somebody notice us?'

May 17, 2005 Washington Times

http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050516-091554-4601r.htm

"Please, will somebody notice us?" That is the plea of the 408 Moroccan prisoners of war currently held by the Polisario Front in the Western Sahara. With many having been incarcerated for over two decades, they are currently the longest-serving POWs in the world. Six recently released POWs who met with The Washington Times Editorial Board yesterday told their tragic tales of torture, mutilation and starvation at the hands of their captors. All had been prisoners for more than 20 years. "We have lost everything," said one. Today, they will meet with Sen. John McCain -- himself a Vietnam POW -- for a press conference on Capitol Hill to bring notice to the flagrant human rights violations being committed in a long-forgotten corner of the world.

    The conflict between Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario Front goes back to the 1970s. The Polisario Front represents the Saharawi tribe, who claim sovereignty of the region today known as Western Sahara, and includes portions of southwestern Morocco and western Algeria, where they are based at the city of Tindouf. Beginning in 1975, Morocco and the Polisario fought a bloody guerrilla war over the disputed region. In 1991, both sides agreed to a U.N.-brokered cease-fire under which they agreed to release their thousands of POWs as required by the Geneva Conventions. Instead, the Polisario Front has used Moroccan POWs as political leverage to elicit aid and funds from non-governmental organizations.

    According to accounts of the six recently released Moroccan POWs, which are corroborated by Amnesty International, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Fondation France Libertes, conditions in the refugee camps are beyond horrid. "The POWs had to sleep inside containers, or in trenches they had to dig," according to a 2003 report from France Libertes. The report found cases in which POWs were burned alive, electrocuted, castrated and beaten to death. One inmate, Finidi Omar, who was captured at the age of 19 in 1987, refused to do forced labor. As punishment, he was locked in a 1 meter by 1 meter "tin trunk from which he could only get out one hour a day," according to the report. He was eventually executed.

    International efforts to release the POWs finally has been gaining momentum. In 2000, the ICRC managed to negotiate with Polisario officials for one day of rest for the POWs, but forced labor continues. Last month, the U.N. Security Council passed its fourth resolution "urging the Polisario Front to release without delay all remaining prisoners of war in compliance with international humanitarian law." The State Department has also called for the prisoners' immediate release and Mr. McCain yesterday sent a letter to Polisario Front Secretary-General Mohamed Abdelaziz.

    The same rationale governing terrorist organizations must apply to the Polisario Front. As long as it continues to hold human beings in bondage, it must be regarded as an enemy of civilization. 


-------- prisoners of war

Harman gets six months in Abu Ghraib scandal

5/17/2005
Associated Press

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-05-17-harman-convicted_x.htm

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) — An Army reservist who appears in several of the most infamous abuse photos taken by guards at Abu Ghraib prison was sentenced Tuesday to six months in prison for her role in the scandal that rocked the U.S. military's image at home and abroad.

The sentence for Spc. Sabrina Harman came a day after she was convicted on six of the seven counts she faced for mistreating detainees at the Baghdad-area lockup in late 2003. She faced a maximum of five years, though prosecutors asked the jury to give her three years.

With credit for time served, Harman's actual sentence is just more than four months. She will be reduced in rank to a private and receive a bad conduct discharge after she finishes the sentence.

Defense lawyer Frank Spinner said his client was offered the chance to plead guilty last year with a two-year sentencing cap, but Harman turned down the proposal.

"I felt very strongly in Sabrina Harman," said Spinner. "I feel she's a very naive, very innocent person. ... She didn't know how to react to that experience (at Abu Ghraib)."

Prosecutors said in a written statement that they were pleased to bring Harman's case to its conclusion "as we strive to air all the facts regarding Abu Ghraib."

Harman, 27, of Lorton, Va., was the second low-level soldier from the Maryland-based 372nd Military Police Company to go to trial on Abu Ghraib charges. Pvt. Charles Graner Jr. was found guilty in January and is serving a 10-year sentence.

Four other soldiers from the 372nd made plea deals with prosecutors, as did two soldiers from a military intelligence unit operating at Abu Ghraib.

Pfc. Lynndie England, the best-known defendant in the abuse case, could face trial after her effort at a plea deal fell through earlier this month.

During Tuesday's sentencing hearing, Harman tearfully apologized for mistreating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

"As a soldier and military police officer, I failed my duties and failed my mission to protect and defend," Harman said, her voice cracking. "I not only let down the people in Iraq, but I let down every single soldier that serves today.

"My actions potentially caused an increased hatred and insurgency towards the United States, putting soldiers and civilians at greater risk," she continued. "I take full responsibility for my actions. ... The decisions I made were mine and mine alone."

Among other things, Harman was found guilty of taking part in a photographed incident in which a hooded Iraqi was threatened with electrocution while standing on a box with electrical wires in his hands.

Earlier Tuesday, witnesses testified that the former pizza shop manager was kindhearted and helpful while serving in an Iraqi city.

Much of the defense testimony during sentencing focused on her behavior while at the Iraqi city of Hillah, where the 372nd Military Police Company was based for several months before moving to Abu Ghraib.

When other U.S. soldiers just wanted to sit in the shade after a long workday, Harman ran around in the hot sun, playing games with Iraqi children, witnesses said.

Master Sgt. Brian Lipinski, who served with Harman's unit, said she was widely known by her first name and her kind deeds among those living in Hillah.

"She presented a very positive image, a very caring image," Lipinski testified. "They were a country very much in need and she filled some of the gaps."

Two Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, whose testimony was read into the record, said Harman's gentle treatment was unique among the guards in the part of the prison reserved mostly for detainees believed to have intelligence value.

"She has no cruelty in her," said Amjad Ismail Khalil al-Taie through an interpreter. "Even though she is an American woman, she was just like a sister."



-------- us

Pentagon Questioned On Base Closings
Panel Asks About Recruitment Impact

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 17, 2005; A02

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051600893_pf.html

The nine-member independent Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) quizzed top defense officials yesterday on the potential damage of base shutdowns on the recruitment and retention of National Guard and reserve forces sorely needed by a U.S. military at war.

In their first opportunity to challenge the Pentagon list, some commissioners voiced concern that the closure and downsizing of National Guard and reserve facilities would force personnel to travel greater distances to drill, thereby harming enlistment.

"I am concerned . . . about the impact on recruitment and retention," the commission chairman, Anthony J. Principi, said in an interview. "We need to look at that very, very carefully, especially as we are a nation at war and we are relying very heavily on reserve and Guard personnel."

More broadly, Principi said the review will focus on the 62 major bases the Pentagon has slotted for scaling back or closing, including a Navy submarine base in New London, Conn., the Portsmouth shipyard in Maine, Air Force bases in the Dakotas and Walter Reed Army Medical Center here.

"We are not a rubber stamp for the Defense Department," he said. "We are an independent check on the Defense Department, and at the end of the day we will make our recommendations to the president."

On the Guard and reserve base realignments, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that no recruiting difficulties were "anticipated" by the BRAC process. But he added that "no doubt there will be some inconveniences, where somebody that was used to drilling a couple of miles away may have to drive further for that training."

Myers said many changes to the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, in particular, were driven by the Pentagon's desire to consolidate aircraft units in order to better carry out missions. Centralizing aircraft will leave behind personnel who will be offered new combat support missions, such as providing command and control over unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), he said. But he and other officials indicated that some Air Force adjutant generals are unhappy about the mission shift. "There is a little bit more argument and consternation," within the Air Force over the change, said Michael W. Wynne, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.

Commissioners also questioned Myers and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on whether the base-closure plan was premature because the Pentagon has not completed a major review of strategy, the Quadrennial Defense Review, or an important study of military transportation capabilities.

"Is BRAC the cart before the horse?" Principi asked Rumsfeld.

In past rounds about 15 percent of the list has been altered, and the 2005 commission has until September to submit changes to President Bush. Rumsfeld said the BRAC proposals would close or downsize about 9 percent of major bases and save "up to" $48.8 billion over 20 years -- a shift from his statement last week that the cuts "should result in" that amount of savings.

Another commissioner, Philip Coyle, questioned whether the BRAC list had accounted for the return of 70,000 U.S. service members from overseas -- saying it included only 15,000 troops -- as well as the anticipated growth of the Army by 30,000 soldiers. "Let's not make our mistakes in a hurry," he said, quoting Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Rumsfeld said the closure list "is being informed by the Quadrennial Defense Review as it's going along." He said that although the timing of the overseas troop movements would depend partly on negotiations with host countries, BRAC decisions were made with "a high degree of confidence" on "what very likely will ultimately come back."

Rumsfeld also criticized as "notably unhelpful" a report released earlier this month by the Overseas Basing Commission that examined a Pentagon plan to realign U.S. military forces abroad. The report warned of national security risks if the Pentagon did not slow its shift of forces. But Rumsfeld said it contained incorrect information and classified information that revealed the U.S. negotiating position on bases with foreign countries.

Al Cornella, chairman of the Overseas Basing Commission, said the report's information comes from unclassified sources and that the Pentagon has not specified what information it considers classified. Cornella said the panel has asked for weeks to brief Rumsfeld on its report, but no meeting has taken place.

Several volumes of the BRAC report are being withheld as the Pentagon checks for classified information.

----

U.S. Army Sees No Major Setbacks In Defense Review

By REUTERS
May 17, 2005
Filed at 3:59 p.m. ET

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-army-qdr.html?pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Army programs should not suffer major setbacks as a result of a review of Pentagon weapons given that the country remains at war, a top Army official said on Tuesday.

But Timothy Muchmore, deputy director of the Army's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) Office, stressed the review was run by the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, not individual military services and all programs were potentially subject to change or revisions.

``I'm not expecting a shoe to drop on this one,'' Muchmore said in an interview with Reuters. But he added: ``Nothing is off the table in the QDR.''

Congress first mandated the once-every-four-years review in 1997 to address a perceived mismatch between the Pentagon's defense strategy and the resources available to implement it, according to former Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim.

The review now under way is widely expected to confirm the basic direction set by the 2001 QDR, which Rumsfeld used to outline his vision of transforming the military.

This year's review focuses on four areas -- countering terrorism, defending the homeland, restraining China and preventing proliferation -- that will ``orient deliberations away from conventional warfare,'' says Loren Thompson of the Virginia-based Lexington Institute.

The review will also underscore the importance of ``irregular'' or ``catastrophic'' threats, Muchmore said.

He expected the Pentagon to make initial decisions on some programs and force structure by early summer, with additional decisions in the autumn.

The Pentagon must present a complete QDR report to Congress in February, along with the president's 2007 budget proposal.

Muchmore said the size of the Army would be a key issue, noting the Pentagon had already taken steps to expand the Army as its continues to fight in Iraq.

In a lecture to the Heritage Foundation, Zakheim, now a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, said the QDR should also assess the mix of reserve and active duty forces.

Muchmore said missile defense was among the programs that would be assessed.

Asked about programs, such as Future Combat Systems and the Joint Tactical Radio System, both headed by Chicago-based Boeing Co., Muchmore said the 2006 Pentagon budget strongly supported programs aimed at modernizing the Army.

Nick Fothergill, an analyst for Banc of America Securities in London, wrote in a note that the Army was likely to remain well-funded, although companies with exposure to less transformational programs could be at risk.

Thompson agreed the Army was unlikely to lose major programs, but said it would face problems in a year or two, when the Pentagon stops funding the war in Iraq and Afghanistan through supplemental appropriations.

``The loss of funding will eviscerate its weapons account, dooming modernization plans,'' Thompson wrote in a recent article.

Beyond some purchases to replace aging helicopters, Thompson forecast most Army spending would be ``in the repair shop'' rather than for new weapons systems.



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


-------- human rights

U.S. Long Had Memo on Handling of Koran

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 17, 2005; A03

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051601320_pf.html

More than two years ago, the Pentagon issued detailed rules for handling the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, requiring U.S. personnel to ensure that the holy book is not placed in "offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet, or dirty/wet areas."

The three-page memorandum, dated Jan. 19, 2003, says that only Muslim chaplains and Muslim interpreters can handle the holy book, and only after putting on clean gloves in full view of detainees.

The detailed rules require U.S. Muslim personnel to use both hands when touching the Koran to signal "respect and reverence," and specify that the right hand be the primary one used to manipulate any part of the book "due to cultural associations with the left hand." The Koran should be treated like a "fragile piece of delicate art," it says.

The memo, written a year after the first detainees were brought to Guantanamo from Afghanistan, reflects what U.S. officials said was a specific policy on handling the Koran, one of the most sensitive issues to Muslims. The Pentagon does not have a similar policy regarding any other major religious book and takes "extra precautions" on the Muslim holy book, officials said.

"They're not supposed to in any way disrespect or desecrate the Koran, and there are a very specific set of rules the military has on handling the Koran," State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher said yesterday. "We made it clear that our practices and our policies are completely different" from allegations in a Newsweek article that the magazine formally retracted yesterday. The Newsweek report said that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that a U.S. interrogator at Guantanamo had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet.

The Pentagon memo, among other directives, barred military police from touching the Koran. If a copy of the book was to be moved from a cell, the memo said, it must be placed on a "clean, dry detainee towel" and then wrapped without turning it over at any time. Muslim chaplains must then ensure that it is not placed in any offensive area while transported.

In an effort at damage control, the State Department transmitted the Newsweek retraction to all U.S. embassies in Islamic countries yesterday along with statements by top Bush administration officials about U.S. respect for the Koran.

----

Women in Kuwait win vote after 40 years

May 17, 2005
TimesOnline (UK)
By Michael Binyon

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1615474,00.html

AFTER a battle lasting almost 40 years, women in Kuwait finally won the vote yesterday when parliament approved a Bill granting them the right to vote and stand in elections.

The hard-fought decision came after repeated blocking by Islamic conservatives and only after the Gulf state’s rulers had put strong pressure on members of parliament. They insisted, however, on directing that any woman politician or voter would have to abide by Islamic law. It was unclear how that condition might affect female suffrage.

The decision is of huge symbolic importance in advancing women’s political rights in the conservative heartlands of the Arab world. It comes a few months after the first local elections in Saudi Arabia, in which women were not allowed to vote, and will increase pressure in the kingdom to enfranchise women next time round.

Kuwait was the first Gulf state to propose votes for women, but the measure was repeatedly rejected by parliament. The 1962 election law limits voting to Kuwaiti male citizens, apart from police and military, over the age of 21 — who comprise only 15 per cent of the population. Government-sponsored women’s suffrage was repeatedly blocked by the conservatives, who denounced it as un-Islamic, ignoring the exhortations of the ruling family.

In the meantime, all other Gulf countries once regarded as less democratic have since overtaken Kuwait, except Saudi Arabia. Oman, Qatar and Bahrain have allowed women to vote in recent elections.

The Bill was passed by 37 MPs, with 21 voting against it and one abstaining. More than a dozen Islamists and tribal leaders denounced what they called the creeping influence of the West. Women in the public gallery burst into loud applause when the Speaker announced the result. Sheikh Sabah al- Ahmad al-Sabah, the Prime Minister, expressed immediate congratulations to Kuwaiti women. He had promised to name a female Cabinet minister once women won the vote.

The measure came too late to allow women to vote in municipal elections next month. But the Government was anxious to change the law before Sheikh al-Sabah visits Washington next month.

POLL POSITION
# The first country to allow women to vote was New Zealand in 1893

# British women voted in 1918, American women followed in 1920

# In 1921 Azerbaijan became the first country with a Muslim majority to adopt female suffrage

# The first Arab women to vote were in Palestine in 1946

# Women are still denied the vote in Saudi Arabia



-------- prisons / prisoners

Court to hear case of disabled inmate

May 17, 2005
ASSOCIATED PRESS

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050516-103326-6849r.htm

    The Supreme Court said yesterday that it will decide whether states and counties can be sued for not accommodating disabled prisoners, setting up another legal showdown over the power of Congress to tell states what to do.

    The high court ruled seven years ago that a landmark federal civil rights law protects inmates in state prisons.

    Since then, however, lower court judges have disagreed over whether states can be sued for damages by prisoners under the Americans With Disabilities Act, a law meant to ensure equal treatment for the disabled in many areas of life. 

Supporters of the law contend that the threat of damages is needed to force states to comply.

    The Bush administration filed an appeal on behalf of a paraplegic Georgia prisoner -- in a case with major implications for states because of the costs of retrofitting old prisons to accommodate people with disabilities.

    Justices will consider the case of Tony Goodman, an inmate who says he has been held for more than 23 hours a day in a cell so narrow that he cannot turn his wheelchair.

    Goodman, who sustained his injuries in a car accident, is serving time for aggravated assault and a cocaine conviction. He says that because the prison in Reidsville, Ga., is not equipped for people in wheelchairs, he cannot go to the bathroom or bathe without help and does not have access to counseling, classes and religious services. He has been forced to sit in his own waste, according to Goodman's lawsuit.

    Paul Clement, the president's lead Supreme Court lawyer, told justices in a filing that ADA's protections address 'the inhumane, degrading, and health-endangering conditions of daily living for inmates.'

    About 1.3 million people are in state prisons and more than 700,000 are in local jails, but it's not clear how many are disabled.

    Lawyers for the state of Georgia had urged the court to refuse to hear the case so that other courts will have more time to sort out a recent Supreme Court ruling in another case involving the disabilities law.

    States have repeatedly clashed with the federal government over their liability under the 1990 law, seeking immunity from lawsuits because the Constitution says a state government cannot be sued in federal court without its consent.

    Justices have sharply disagreed on when states are immune.
	
    Last May, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that states can be sued over inaccessible courthouses. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who has championed states' rights, disagreed with the courthouse decision last year.

    Yesterday, the court also:
	
    •Refused to hear an appeal from five persons arrested for burning an effigy of a Cleveland Indians logo that critics view as racist.

    •Agreed to use the appeal of a New Orleans waitress to clarify how courts determine whether employers are large enough to face penalties under federal civil rights laws.

    •Declined to consider permitting a class-action lawsuit by relatives of American skiers killed in an alpine cable car fire in Austria in 2000. 



-------- POLITICS



-------- propaganda wars

Ira Chernus on Wielding the Nuclear Option

Tomgram: posted May 17, 2005 at 8:49 pm

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2531

The "nuclear option" has entered our vocabulary -- with, even in headlines, those little quote marks encircling it like a radioactive halo of disbelief. They seem to ask: Can we really be here? Can this be the image of choice for politics in the U.S. Senate? And yet on Wednesday, Bill Frist, Senate majority leader, will reportedly bring the names of state Supreme Court justices Priscilla R. Owen of Texas and Janice Rogers Brown of California up for confirmation to the federal appeals court; and so, barring a surprise, we will be launched on the "nuclear option" -- the attempt to blow the filibuster, that political weapon of any minority party, out of the political waters for all time.

A little list of recent headlines gives the flavor of the moment: "Bargaining continues as senators seek to avoid nuclear option" (Ohio News Network); "Lott's role eyed in 'nuclear option' battle" (Knoxville News Sentinel); "Frist says he's ready to pull trigger on 'nuclear option'" (Scripps Howard News Service); "Ready to Blow" (Newsweek); or how about a good old combo headline from the McClatchy Press, "Senate Could See ‘Nuclear Option' Explode This Week" for a piece that begins with the line, "In the political war over President Bush's judicial nominees, the Senate is at DEFCON 1..." (DEFCON 1 is the highest state of nuclear alert, "maximum force readiness"); or perhaps a Newsday article which flips the imagery switch from atomic war to atomic peace (of the Three Mile Island sort): "Senate on verge of meltdown." That story, in fact, begins with the kind of line that might normally lead off a piece on the North Korean or Iranian nuclear crisis: "By the end of the week, the Senate could go nuclear -- unless a handful of moderates find a way to reach what has so far been an unreachable compromise."

As a matter of fact, our papers are now filled with headlines and articles whose catchwords and phrases seemed to come directly out of the Cold War era of nuclear confrontation: not just the usual "showdowns" galore, but in the case of a Washington Post piece, for instance, that classic word of the Cold War (and Vietnam) years, "escalation" (In the Senate, the Escalation of Rhetoric). Or how about, from columnist Morton Kondracke, "Senators must reach nuclear 'stand-down'"? And with nuclear war as the image of choice, "fallout" -- well salted into many articles -- could hardly be far behind.

To extend the metaphor a bit, it seems that we Americans are all about to become "downwinders." (People who were downwind of the aboveground nuclear tests of the 1950s and early 60s received an extra dose of fallout.) For the nuclear option and its attendant imagery is, as Ira Chernus explains below, a more than apt metaphor for the moment -- not least because of the nature of the Senate grab for power by so-called conservatives. (By the way, isn't there some sort of expiration date on the use of the term "conservative," especially when what's being considered is radical indeed -- getting rid of a traditional political instrument whose history extends back to the early 1800s?) The wiping out of the filibuster could, in fact, represent the sort of great leap downhill (no slippery slide here) in the direction of a one-party state that many fear. After all, the accruing of unprecedented power to a majority party in the Senate will in reasonably short order lead to unprecedented control over the nation's judiciary. Just remind me, what's actually left after that?

And here's the charming thing, while the nuclear option proceeds along its way in the Senate, blurring the line between what's left of conventional politics and its total-control cousin, the same kind of blurring has been underway in the actual military world -- or so we were just informed by military analyst William Arkin in this weekend's Washington Post Outlook section. In a piece entitled, Not Just a Last Resort, Arkin begins:

    "Early last summer, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved a top secret 'Interim Global Strike Alert Order' directing the military to assume and maintain readiness to attack hostile countries that are developing weapons of mass destruction, specifically Iran and North Korea… In the secret world of military planning, global strike has become the term of art to describe a specific preemptive attack. When military officials refer to global strike, they stress its conventional elements. Surprisingly, however, global strike also includes a nuclear option, which runs counter to traditional U.S. notions about the defensive role of nuclear weapons."

In other words, in both the political and military arenas, the Bush administration is working hard to blur the line between the conventional and the nuclear, so that in each the "nuclear option" can be wielded not just in some imagined future, but in the immediate moment for immediate ends. On the eve of the nuclear-option moment, we have every reason to consider the nature of the metaphor itself, as Ira Chernus does in the piece that follows. Tom

    If You Can't Beat 'Em, Nuke 'Em
    Wielding the Nuclear Option
    By Ira Chernus

    Trent Lott and George Lakoff live in very different worlds. But they both understand the power of a good metaphor.

    Lott, the canny politician, knows that the public likes complicated policies best when they are reduced to snappy soundbites. The more complex and controversial the policy, the more compelling the word picture has to be. So when the Republicans set out to foist a complex, controversial policy on the American people -- getting Senate confirmation for every federal judge George W. Bush nominates by denying the Democrats the right to filibuster -- Lott came up with snappiest, most vivid soundbite he could find: "the nuclear option."

    In recent weeks, Republicans have tried to quash that metaphor. They now realize it's an embarrassing mistake that does their cause more harm than good. But it's too late.

    As Lakoff has taught us, every metaphor has a life of its own. A good metaphor is not just a random, meaningless turn of phrase. It's a lens that can show us deeper truths. Once people see the truth, they won't let the metaphor that revealed it go away. Though Republican PR firms are now spending millions to get us to dub the attack on the filibuster "the constitutional option," their money is wasted. Everyone will still call it "the nuclear option."

    And with good reason. No other term captures so perfectly the magnitude of the destruction GOP senators plan to wreak on our governmental system of checks and balances. For two centuries, the right to filibuster has protected the minority from majority efforts to run roughshod over the Senate. If the Republicans get their way, the majority would, for the first time, be able to stop debate and force a vote as soon as they know they have enough votes to win. The minority would lose their only real bargaining chip for forcing compromise.

    Trent Lott knew how much was at stake when he named it "the nuclear option." The public knows how much is at stake, too. That's one reason the metaphor won't go away.

    But there is another. Metaphors show us new truths by bringing pieces of our experience together in unexpected ways, provoking or uncovering previously unsuspected connections. In this case, it's no coincidence when we hear Republicans talking about a "nuclear option." The literal nuclear option that the Pentagon still keeps at the ready and the metaphorical one being prepared in the Senate have a lot more in common than just words.

    Are Judges a More Serious Threat than Al Qaeda?

    The people who want to nuke their political opponents are the same ones who gave us Ronald Reagan's huge nuclear buildup, two decades of massive funding for a Star Wars anti-missile shield, two wars in Iraq, and so many other excesses of militarism. On America's political right wing, politics and life itself are acts of war. It's go-for-the-jugular, take-no-prisoners, winner-take-all. Nuclear weapons have always been a consummate symbol of the conservatives' insistence on absolute victory and absolute control.

    Of course, the name of the enemy changes from time to time. For most of the nuclear age, it was the "international communist conspiracy." Though the nuclear option was created on the Democrats' watch in the post-Hiroshima world of the 1940s, it was conservative icons like General Douglas MacArthur and Strategic Air Command head Curtis LeMay who were most eager to reach for it. Even the "moderate" Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower secretly claimed that he would use atomic bombs to end the Korean War if the communists didn't settle on his terms. Yet Senator Joseph McCarthy and his followers focused more on "reds" in Washington and Hollywood than in Moscow and Beijing.

    A half-century later, the world seen from the far right looks much the same. For many, "the terrorists" have replaced "the communists" as the great global peril. Yet for a sizeable faction of social and religious conservatives, the real danger lurks not in far-away terrorist camps, but right here at home -- in our courtrooms. "Federal judges are a more serious threat to America than Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 terrorists," the Rev. Pat Robertson said recently. With all their well-known decisions supporting "secular humanism" over traditional religious values, he claimed, judges "are destroying the fabric that holds our nation together." Even moderately conservative judges can look like part of a vast conspiracy to undermine all the "family values," which seem (though this is surely illusion) to give life stability.

    For Robertson and his followers, we're in a crisis of apocalyptic proportions. According to Christian right guru Donald Wildmon, for instance, if the Senate does not abolish the filibuster, judges will go on "forcing their liberal agenda on every American." Then "we can forget democracy." It's "a critical moment in the history of our nation," warned Focus on the Family's James Dobson -- which makes a weapon of apocalyptic magnitude an appropriate way to go, metaphorically speaking.

    Rick Scarborough, chair of the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration, summed up the social conservatives' attack on the filibuster this way: ''It's about a temporal versus eternal value system." Not surprisingly, such right-wingers want the law interpreted solely in light of their own eternal value system. And they're perfectly ready to use any means necessary -- even "the nuclear option -- to make it so. Precisely because absolute values are at stake, they have no hesitation about invoking the absolute weapon. They are in no mood to compromise, any more than they would compromise with communists or with the devil. People who disagree with them are not merely wrong, they are evil; and the only way they can imagine dealing with evil is to annihilate it, to nuke it.

    Of course, they feel pretty much the same about "terrorists," even though they give judges a somewhat higher targeting priority. The war on terror and the war on secular humanism are, for them, merely two different fronts in an even larger war in which the enemy is any kind of social change that challenges the absolute rule of their traditional moral certainties.

    The Neoconservative Option

    In war, you take your allies where you can find them. In the current Republican coalition of the willing, the predominantly Protestant Christian right shares a political bed with the Roman Catholic right and a small but powerful group of Republicans, many of whom have deep Jewish roots: the neoconservatives.

    Neocons share with the religious right a fear of changing social values. With today's neocons so focused on global affairs, it's easy to forget that their movement began as a reaction against the radical domestic trends of the 1960s. It embraced anticommunism (and the literal nuclear option) largely as a way to move the U.S. back toward traditional values on the home front.

    "Everything is now permitted," the neocons' godfather, Irving Kristol, once lamented. "The inference is that one has a right to satisfy one's appetites without delay." And that, he warned, was "a prescription for moral anarchy, which is exactly what we are now experiencing." Robertson, Dobson, and Wildmon could hardly have said it more clearly, or agreed more heartily on the nature of America's most essential problem.

    They would agree just as heartily with the neocons on another point -- that the solution is moral fortitude. What the country needs is a will strong enough to resist the temptation of temporal values and ready to make the necessary sacrifices to live by the eternal verities. In the right-wing world, where absolute good vies constantly with absolute evil and every human will is part of the battlefield, only a total subjugation of evil can create an orderly, virtuous life. That, in turn, requires us to follow the moral dictates of a higher authority, rather than our own personal desires. This is what Lakoff has taught us to call the Stern Father model. It's the Stern Father who threatens to unleash the nuclear option.

    But how can Americans summon up the strength to live by the moral absolutes of our stern fathers? That's where the partners in the GOP coalition part ways. For the religious right, such strength can come only from the Bible and (most would say) a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. For the neocons, faith is optional. They generally applaud religion as one rich source of traditional moral authority, but they don't consider it the only one. Tradition (as long as it's the tradition of "western civilization") can serve just as well. "Our Father, who art in heaven," is sufficient, but not necessary.

    However, the neocons still need a stern father. Since they can't insist that we find him in heaven, they would have us look for him in the city where the literal nuclear option has its home: Washington, DC -- or, to be exact, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as well as across the Potomac at the Pentagon. That makes the neocons even more demanding, if possible, than the Christian right. They're not content to insist on absolute righteousness in American social behavior. They want absolute American control over the whole world. That's the only way they can imagine making the planet strong enough to resist the uncertainties of changing temporal values (and changing political rulers).

    In the name of their fantasy version of moral stability, the neocons brandish the nuclear option on the international stage, just as they did in the era of Ronald Reagan. They consider nukes the ultimate weapon of intimidation, and they know that intimidation won't work if you aren't perfectly willing to carry out your threats. The obliteration of (evil) people is their chosen metaphor for the obliteration of moral evil. It's how a neocon shows that he (or, very occasionally, she) is strong.

    The Coalition of the Frightened

    The "nuclear option," then, is the perfect metaphor for a GOP dominated by a coalition of the religious right and the neocons, urged on by and funded by the military-industrial complex. The same Senate Republicans who would pander to the religious right by nuking the filibuster also want to rebuild and expand the nation's arsenal of nuclear weapons, gear up for a new round of nuclear testing, and free the U.S. from all restrictions on nuclear armament. The "nuclear option" metaphor makes the connections easy to see.

    It's just as easy to see why the Bush administration has been so eager to send John Bolton to the U.N. Bolton is an ardent advocate of arms control -- for other nations. He wants to control, or preferably just stop, the development of nukes in other lands, so that the U.S. can more easily use its nuclear preeminence to control the world. The administration hoped to have Bolton in place at the U.N. in time for the conference reviewing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that opened in New York at the beginning of May. Though it hasn't worked out that way, the U.S. delegation is still doing everything it can to impose restrictions on others, while removing the Treaty's faint hint of a restriction on the U.S. nuclear option.

    Although it's only coincidence that the "nuclear option" showdown in the Senate is coming in the same month as the NPT review, there's poetic justice in it. It throws a bright spotlight on the links between Republican domestic and foreign policies. The GOP is caught in a fateful web woven from the religious, neocon, and military-corporate right. That web gets its tensile strength from its millions of supporters, who yearn for absolute certainties in an age when they no longer seem possible.

    We can go on forever bemoaning the power of these millions and debating whether it is on the rise or the wane. Eventually, though, we have to confront the deep fear that drives them to embrace the nuclear option. They are genuinely frightened by a world that feels like its spinning out of control. Unable to cope with dizzying changes they can't fully grasp, but which leave so many feeling cheated of a better life, they simply want to annihilate the forces of change. It's fear of an unpredictable, uncontrollable future that breeds the violence. If you can't beat 'em, they say, then nuke 'em.

    The fear won't go away any time soon; nor will the people who express it through all sorts of apocalyptic metaphors, including "the nuclear option." Somehow, those of us who believe in choosing our own moral values have to learn to talk to and live with our compatriots who need universal, absolute values in order to survive. Figuring out that "somehow" may be the great American challenge of the 21st century.

    Meanwhile, though, we do have to remove the nuclear option, in all its forms, from those frightened right-wing hands.

    Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the author of American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea, and is currently working on Monsters to Destroy, a book about religion and the war on terror in the Bush administration. He can be reached at chernus@colorado.edu.

----

Newsweek Retracts Guantanamo Story
Item on Koran Sparked Deadly Protests

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 17, 2005; Page A03

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051601262.html

Newsweek issued a formal retraction yesterday of the flawed story that sparked deadly riots in Afghanistan and other countries, after the magazine came under increasingly sharp criticism from White House, State Department and Pentagon officials.

The magazine's statement retracted its charge that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that an American interrogator at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker said he thought the magazine had already "retracted what we think we may have gotten wrong" in an editor's note published Sunday and in media interviews. "We've called it an error," he said. "We've called it a mistake."

But, he said, "it became clear people weren't quite hearing that and were getting hung up" on the semantics.

The May 1 item triggered violent protests last week in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia and other countries, in which at least 16 people were killed.

The damage-control efforts by Newsweek followed criticism by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who called it "puzzling" that Newsweek, in his view, had "stopped short of a retraction."

"That story has damaged the image of the United States abroad and damaged the credibility of the media at home," McClellan said in an interview. He said that Americans, including President Bush, "share in the outrage that this report was published in the first place."

Whitaker said in the interview that Newsweek is "still trying to ascertain" whether there is any evidence that such a Koran incident took place, as some detainees have alleged. Last year, four former British detainees charged in a lawsuit that Guantanamo guards not only beat and stripped them but also threw prisoners' Korans into a toilet.

Newsweek, however, had alleged that the U.S. Southern Command had confirmed that an interrogator defiled the sacred Muslim text.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the story has "done a lot of harm" to U.S. efforts to reach out to the Muslim world. She told journalists that "it's appalling that this story got out there. . . . The sad thing was that there was a lot of anger that got stirred by a story that was not very well founded."

Rice said she hopes "that everybody will step back and take a look at how they handled this -- everybody."

Pentagon officials said they investigate all specific and credible allegations, but not always on the media's timetable. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that military investigators had reviewed 25,000 pages of documents and found that more than one detainee stopped up a toilet with pages from the Koran as a protest -- but discovered no evidence that U.S. interrogators had done such a thing.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld noted that it takes time to review 25,000 pages, adding: "People need to be very careful about what they say, just as they need to be very careful about what they do."

Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post Co., said Sunday that its brief item was based on an unnamed senior U.S. official who now says he can "no longer be sure" of the information provided to reporter Michael Isikoff.

McClellan said the story "appears to be very shaky from the get-go" and rests on "a single anonymous source who cannot substantiate the allegation that was made." Isikoff said Sunday that "there was absolutely no lapse in journalistic standards," noting that the Pentagon declined an opportunity to challenge the story before it was published.

On sensitive stories, Whitaker said, journalists often have to rely on whether officials "deny them or how vehemently they deny them." But McClellan said it would be "troubling if that's the standard they used."

Bob Zelnick, a former ABC News correspondent who covered the Pentagon and now chairs Boston University's journalism department, said he often based stories on information from unnamed officials. "I don't see how a reporter can function in a sensitive beat without relying on anonymous sources -- even one anonymous source if the reporter has confidence in him," he said.

But Zelnick said that even if the Koran incident was true, he would have had "reservations" about running it because "the potential to inflame is greater than the value of the piece itself."

Asked whether anyone at Newsweek would be disciplined or fired, Whitaker, who was out of town when the item was published, said: "So far as we can tell, everybody in the reporting process conducted themselves professionally. Isikoff was dealing with a known source. . . . We went by the book."

Still, Whitaker said, the magazine will examine who approved the story for publication and will review its standards for dealing with unnamed sources.



-------- ENERGY 


-------- alternative energy

Bush Urges Development of Alternate Fuels

By JENNIFER LOVEN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 17, 2005; 7:46 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051700335_pf.html

WEST POINT, Va. -- 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.

"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.

----

President Tours Plant Making Alternative Fuel

By DAVID E. SANGER
May 17, 2005 NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/politics/17bush.html?pagewanted=print

ELTHAM, Va., May 16 - Making the case that his energy bill is about more than drilling in Alaska and building refineries, President Bush on Monday visited a small plant that turns soybeans into a clean-burning form of diesel fuel.

Mr. Bush urged Congress to pass the bill before beginning its summer recess, though acknowledging that nothing in the legislation would immediately lower gasoline prices.

"I wish I could just wave a magic wand and lower the price at the pump," he said. "I'd do that."

But he cast himself as deeply interested in backing new, environmentally friendly technologies that would eventually increase energy supplies, like development of hydrogen-fueled cars, creating fuel from cast-off cooking grease and soy oils, and promoting ethanol - the last a subject rarely discussed by presidents except before the quadrennial primaries in Iowa.

Mr. Bush toured the Virginia BioDiesel Facility here east of Richmond to see how pure soy is poured into gleaming stainless steel vats and emerges as a low-polluting form of diesel fuel. Examining a beaker of it, he turned to reporters and asked, "Anyone want a sip?" To laughter, they invited him to go first.

"I imagine 30 years ago a politician saying, 'Vote for me and I'll see to it that your car can run on soybean oil' wouldn't get very far," the president said. "Here we are, standing in front of a refinery that makes it."

The plant produces about a million gallons of biodiesel fuel a year, said Kelly Takaya King, an executive of Pacific Biodiesel, which built it.

Ms. King readily acknowledged that it would be a long time before alternative fuels put a dent in America's demand for petroleum products.

"It's going to be a while before we can talk in barrels," she said. "But we used to measure in liters."

Mr. Bush argued that biodiesel was part of a broader approach long overdue, one including the manufacture of lighter car parts, gradual improvement in the mileage performance of S.U.V.'s, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and building new nuclear power plants.

----

Global Wind Map Shows Best Wind Farm Locations

STANFORD, California, May 17, 2005 (ENS)

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2005/2005-05-17-09.asp#anchor6

North America was found to have the greatest wind power potential according to a new global wind power map that may help planners place turbines in locations that can maximize power from the winds and provide widely available low-cost energy.

After analyzing more than 8,000 wind speed measurements in an effort to identify the world's wind power potential for the first time, Cristina Archer and Mark Jacobson of Stanford University suggest that wind captured at specific locations, if even partially harnessed, can generate more than enough power to satisfy the world's energy demands.

Their research, supported by NASA and by Stanford University's Global Climate and Energy Project, is published in May issue of the "Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres," a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

The researchers collected wind speed measurements from approximately 7,500 surface stations and another 500 balloon-launch stations to determine global wind speeds at 80 meters [300 feet] above the ground surface, which is the hub height of modern wind turbines.

Using a new interpolation technique to estimate the wind speed at that elevation, the authors report that nearly 13 percent of the stations they reviewed experience winds with an average annual speed strong enough for power generation.

They note that, based on their expectations of other global areas, an even greater percentage of locations would likely reach the 6.9 meters per second [15 miles per hour] wind speed considered strong enough to be economically feasible.

Such wind speeds at 80 meters, referred to as wind power Class 3, were found in every region of the world. In North America, the most consistent winds were found in the Great Lakes region and from ocean breezes along the eastern, western and southern coasts.

The researchers also found that some of the strongest winds were observed in Northern Europe, along the North Sea, while the southern tip of South America and the Australian island of Tasmania also recorded significant and sustained strong winds at the turbine blade height.

Overall, the researchers calculated winds at 80 meters [300 feet] traveled over the ocean at approximately 8.6 meters per second and at nearly 4.5 meters per second over land [20 and 10 miles per hour, respectively].

"The main implication of this study is that wind, for low-cost wind energy, is more widely available than was previously recognized," Archer said. "The methodology in the paper can be utilized for several applications, such as determining elevated wind speeds in remote areas or to evaluate the benefits of distributed wind power." Converting as little as 20 percent of potential wind energy to electricity could satisfy the entirety of the world's energy demands, but the researchers caution that there are considerable practical barriers to reaping the wind's potential energy.

Chief among those barriers is creating and maintaining a dense array of modern turbines that would be needed to harness the wind power. Some sources have suggested that millions of turbines would be needed to produce an acceptable level of energy and that alternative energy sources would still be necessary to produce power when the wind speeds fall below a certain threshold. Creating a large field of turbines could also be hazardous to birds and may produce unacceptable noise levels.

Current research indicates that several of those limitations can be overcome with better placement of wind turbines. "It is our hope that this study will foster more research in areas that were not covered by our data, or economic analyses of the barriers to the implementation of a wind-based global energy scenario," said Archer. 



-------- energy

Senators Begin Plowing Through Energy Bill

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 17, 2005
Filed at 6:19 p.m. ET

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Energy-Bill.html?pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senators began plowing through an energy bill Tuesday that would include stronger conservation measures than already approved by the House and sidestep matters that could derail the measure -- such as drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge.

A string of provisions, from giving consumers rebates on energy efficient appliances to expanding the size of the government's emergency petroleum reserve, were to be taken up by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee this week, beginning with Tuesday's session.

Most of these issues already have been worked out in discussions in recent weeks between GOP and Democratic committee members and were expected to be part of the legislation without significant changes, according to committee staffers.

The panel in a two-hour meeting Tuesday focused on Indian energy issues, including actions that were aimed at making it easier for tribes to develop their energy resources.

More contentious matters were expected to be taken up next week or put off until floor action this summer: sites for liquefied natural gas terminals, subsidies for the nuclear power industry, whether to allow states to petition the federal government to allow energy development in off-limits coastal waters, and whether to require all utilities to use a certain amount of renewable fuels to produce electricity.

President Bush has called on Congress to produce a comprehensive energy bill by August. The House passed a bill last month, but its prospects in the Senate -- where energy legislation died two years ago -- remain uncertain.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., the energy panel's chairman, and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., its ranking Democrat, agreed to leave out of the Senate bill any mention of oil development in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or protection for the makers of the gasoline additive MTBE from liability lawsuits. Both are part of a House-passed bill, but were viewed as likely to jeopardize Senate passage if including in the legislation.

Domenici and Bingaman said they were hoping to advance legislation that can be widely supported by both Republicans and Democrats.

Domenici, noting that Congress has tried for five years to enact energy legislation and failed, said he would like to see increases in automobile fuel economy or measures to curtail carbon emissions linked to climate change, but said the votes ''do not appear to be there ... especially in the House.''

A need to address climate change as part of energy legislation is certain to surface once the bill reaches the Senate floor, however. ''We can't afford an energy policy that does not take into account environmental and climate impact,'' said Bingaman.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Monday that Democrats will push for more tax breaks than GOP lawmakers have suggested, especially for renewable energy sources and technologies that reduce energy use. He called for $16 billion in energy-related tax incentives.

The House-passed bill would provided about half that much, almost all toward traditional energy industries, and the White House has called even that amount too expensive. The Senate draft bill would have about $11 billion in tax incentives, according to GOP aides, although the Finance Committee, which is working on an energy tax package, has not yet provided details.

Domenici said he expects the non-tax provisions to be forwarded by his panel to the full Senate before the Memorial Day congressional recess.

Senators are considering incentives for biodiesel, which can be made from various sources like soybeans and discarded vegetable oil, as well as a requirement for refineries to use more corn-based ethanol in gasoline.

Other provisions in the draft bill that have solid bipartisan support would:

--Require that the president implement measures that would reduce the nation's demand for oil by 1 million barrels below currently expected 2015 levels. The House rejected such a proposal.

--Expand the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to 1 billion barrels, from the current 700 million barrels. The House passed an identical requirement.

--Authorize a rebate program, costing as much as $50 million over five years, for the purchase of energy efficient appliances and direct new efficiency standards for more than a dozen products from home ceiling fans to commercial refrigerator.

--Impose mandatory reliability standards on operators of electricity grids, replacing the industry's self-regulation.



-------- OTHER



-------- health

Drug's Effect on Cancer Stuns Doctors

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 17, 2005
Filed at 9:32 p.m. ET

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Cancer-Surprise.html?pagewanted=print

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- 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 percent no longer needed blood transfusions, said the study's leader, Dr. Alan List of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla. 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 percent 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 percent of people with breast cancer and 78 percent 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.

On the Net:

Cancer meeting: http:www.PLWC.org, http:www.asco.org

----

Study of Breast Cancer Patients Finds Benefit in Low-Fat Diets

By GINA KOLATA
and LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
May 17, 2005 NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/health/17cancer.html?pagewanted=print

Breast cancer patients who follow diets low in fat may reduce the chance that their tumors will return, scientists reported yesterday. It was, they said, the first time that a large, rigorous study showed that diet could have any impact on any cancer.

Women in the study who were assigned to follow a low-fat diet had more than a 20 percent reduction in their rate of recurrence over five years, the investigators found. Of 975 women assigned to a low-fat diet, 96, or 9.8 percent, had recurrences. But 181 of 1,462 women, or 12.4 percent, who were assigned to maintain their usual diet had their cancer return.

The study's principal investigator, Dr. Rowan T. Chlebowski of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute in Torrance, Calif., described the data yesterday at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Orlando, Fla.

In a telephone interview, Dr. Chlebowski explained that the women already had had the standard medical treatment - lumpectomy or mastectomy followed by radiation and then hormonal therapy or chemotherapy when appropriate. Although the treatments varied, the two groups were equivalent because the women were assigned at random to follow a low-fat diet. The additional benefit from diet, Dr. Chlebowski said, was equivalent to adding a new drug to their regimen.

"This is the first randomized clinical trial showing that diet may have an impact on breast cancer outcome, or any cancer outcome, for that matter," Dr. Chlebowski said.

But he and independent experts at the meeting and elsewhere said the study's findings, which were only marginally statistically significant, must be confirmed before recommending that women with breast cancer follow such a diet.

"This is potentially very good news," said Dr. David Hunter, a professor of cancer prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health. "Anything that could be done about reducing breast cancer recurrence would be enormously valuable."

Dr. Larry Norton, a breast cancer expert at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, one of the centers participating in the study, said the results made him change his advice to women.

"Before this I was saying there's no reason not to eat a low-fat diet," he said. He replaced the statement with a more affirmative one. "Now I am saying there is a reason to eat a low-fat diet."

Dr. Norton said that since he knew of no drawback to a low-fat diet, "I don't see why you have to do a corroborating study."

The findings follow a report last week that women under 50 with an early stage of breast cancer who have chemotherapy and hormone treatment can halve their risk of death from breast cancer for at least 15 years.

The low-fat diet in the latest study was not easy, said one of the participants, Mary Ann Napier of Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. Ms. Napier, 57, was diagnosed with breast cancer five and a half years ago and joined the study about a year later, and was assigned to the low-fat diet.

She had always loved bacon, Ms. Napier said, "and I slathered my sandwiches with mayonnaise." No more. She also stopped eating the hazelnut bread that is her husband's favorite and now eats only baguettes, which are fat-free. She makes her own salad dressing - a teaspoon of oil in a cruet of dressing - and takes it along when she goes out to eat. She loves cheese, but now she shaves just a few slivers onto her sandwiches to get the flavor.

"In the beginning, there were times I felt a little resentful," Ms. Napier said. "But I got over it." And, she adds, she lost 10 pounds and her cancer has not returned.

"I am still on the diet," she said.

But Dr. Hunter and other scientists tempered their enthusiasm over the study's results with questions about the findings and what they meant.

It is not clear, they said, what made the difference. It could be the small amount of fat the women ate or it could be that they lost weight. Other studies have found that breast cancer is less likely to recur in women who lose weight after their initial treatment. Or the effect could be due to some other dietary change that occurred when the women found foods to substitute for fats.

"That's the issue with diet studies in general," said Dr. Barnett Kramer, the associate director of the office of disease prevention at the National Institutes of Health. "No matter what you think is the culprit in the diet, dietary change can be very complex."

Researchers also asked whether the effects were valid.

The problem, said Dr. Hunter and statisticians who also had no involvement with the study, was that the reduction in risk, while statistically significant, was only marginally so.

"It's suggestive but definitely not a slam dunk in terms of statistical certainty," said Dr. Steven Goodman, a professor of oncology and biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. Donald Berry, chairman of the department of biostatistics at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said that had the study involved a drug, he would question whether the evidence was strong enough for it to be used. But a diet, he said, is different; patients have little to lose with low-fat diets. "If I were a cancer patient, I would certainly take it seriously," Dr. Berry said.

And Dr. Hunter cautions that even if diet can lower the risk that a cancer will return, the study does not mean that a low-fat diet prevents breast cancer.

"The factors that cause recurrence and death are often very different from the factors that cause disease," he said. For example, with breast cancer, age at menarche, age at first birth, and the number of children a woman bears affect her risk of getting breast cancer but not her chance of surviving it.

The national study had a long and thorny path. There had been hints that women on low-fat diets might have better survival rates. Japanese women, for example, not only have a lower risk of getting breast cancer but also have better survival rates than Americans have. But other studies that followed women after their diagnoses found no effect of diet on cancer recurrence.

And it was not clear why fat in the diet should matter, Dr. Chlebowski said, adding that there is no theory to explain why the fat a woman eats would lead to the recurrence of cancer in her breast.

The best way to find out whether fat in the diet makes a difference would be to randomly assign thousands of cancer patients to follow, or not follow, a low-fat diet. But many investigators questioned whether it would even be possible to do such a study. Would women really adhere to their assigned diet for years on end and, in particular, would they stay with a diet so low in fat?

Starting in 1983, the cancer institute began pilot studies asking whether a diet study was even feasible. They found that women would adhere to a low-fat diet and the formal randomized study began in 1994.

It enrolled 2,437 postmenopausal women with early stage breast cancer. Of them, 975 were assigned to a diet so low in fat that, Dr. Chlebowski said, it was about as low as possible without being a vegetarian diet. They consumed on average 33.3 grams of fat a day. The 1,462 women in the control group, who were instructed to follow their usual diet, consumed 51.3 grams of fat a day.

Not only was there a reduction in recurrence rates with the low-fat diet but also, to their surprise, the investigators noticed that women whose tumors were not fueled by estrogen appeared to have a better response to the diet than those whose tumors were fueled by estrogen. But statisticians questioned whether the difference between the two groups was not significant.

Nonetheless, said Dr. Kramer, the result was "biologically important" because it indicated that diet could make a difference in cancer recurrence and that if it did, it affected both groups of women about the same. That meant its effect, if real, had nothing to do with estrogen, raising questions of why it occurred.



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

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions

Tuesday, May 17th, 2005 Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/17/1420232

We play an interview with, John Perkins - author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" - who says he says he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then taking over their economies. [includes rush transcript] The protests this week in Bolivia come as Latin America is seeing significant success among popular progressive movements. From Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Lula da Silva of Brazil to the changes of government in Uruguay and now Ecuador, there is a continent-wide trend that has Washington concerned. The US has long exploited countries throughout Central and Latin America for the natural resources, labor and land. Over the decades, this exploitation has been backed up by force and through devastating policies dictated to puppet regimes. Our next guest says he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries in Latin America and around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then taking over their economies. From 1971 to 1981, John Perkins worked for the international consulting firm of Chas T. Main. He described himself as an "economic hit man." He"s written a memoir called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. When he joined us in our fire house studio, we asked him to begin with how he came to be recruited first by the National Security Agency - far larger than the C.I.A. - and then this so-called international consulting firm of Chas T. Main.

    * John Perkins, author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man."

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Our next guest says he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries in Latin America and around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then taking over their economies. From 1971 to 1981 John Perkins worked for the international consulting firm, Chas Main. He described himself an “economic hitman.” He has written a memoir called Confessions of an Economic Hitman. When he joined us in our firehouse studio, I asked him to begin with how he came to be recruited first by the National Security Agency, far larger than the C.I.A., and then this so-called international consulting firm of Chas T. Main.

      JOHN PERKINS: It was in the late 1960s, 1968. I was a student at business school and was recruited by the National Security Agency. They ran me through a series of tests - personality tests, lie detector tests -- very sensitive barrage of testing. And during that process, they discovered that I would be a great candidate for an economic hit man. I was in business school at the time. And also they discovered a number of weaknesses in my character. I think, I have weaknesses that are pretty typical of our culture, the three big drugs of our culture: money, power and sex. And they discovered these weaknesses in me. There's a lot in my book about my personal background that gets into that. Then they encouraged me to go into the Peace Corps. I lived in Ecuador for three years as a Peace Corps volunteer with indigenous people there, who today are at war with the oil companies. We were starting that process then, so I got some very good on-the-job training, so to speak. While I was still in Ecuador in the Peace Corps, a vice president from this private consulting firm in Boston that worked closely with the National Security Agency and the other intelligence communities came to Ecuador and continued my recruitment. When I got out of the Peace Corps, he recruited me. I went to work for his company in Boston, Charles T. Main and went through an extensive training program there with a remarkable woman, who is described in detail in the book, Claudine was her name. And she was extremely intelligent, extremely sharp, extremely seductive, and she hooked me. She knew exactly how to hook me. She benefited from all the tests that I'd gone through, knew my weaknesses. And she made it -- she, first of all, hooked me into becoming an economic hit man and at the same time, warned me that this is a very dirty business and you must be completely committed to it or you shouldn't take your first assignment in Indonesia.

      AMY GOODMAN: Now, already people are going to be wondering, What is he talking about, economic hit man? Explain.

      JOHN PERKINS: Well, really, over the past 30 to 40 years, we economic hit men have created the largest global empire in the history of the world. And we do this, typically -- well, there are many ways to do it, but a typical one is that we identify a third-world country that has resources, which we covet. And often these days that's oil, or might be the canal in the case of Panama. In any case, we go to that third-world country and we arrange a huge loan from the international lending community; usually the World Bank leads that process. So, let's say we give this third-world country a loan of $1 billion. One of the conditions of that loan is that the majority of it, roughly 90%, comes back to the United States to one of our big corporations, the ones we've all heard of recently, the Bechtels, the Halliburtons. And those corporations build in this third-world country large power plants, highways, ports, or industrial parks -- big infrastructure projects that basically serve the very rich in those countries. The poor people in those countries and the middle class suffer; they don't benefit from these loans, they don't benefit from the projects. In fact, often their social services have to be severely curtailed in the process of paying off the debt. Now what also happens is that this third-world country then is saddled with a huge debt that it can't possibly repay. For example, today, Ecuador. Ecuador's foreign debt, as a result of the economic hit man, is equal to roughly 50% of its national budget. It cannot possibly repay this debt, as is the case with so many third-world countries. So, now we go back to those countries and say, look, you borrowed all this money from us, and you owe us this money, you can't repay your debts, so give our oil companies your oil at very cheap costs. And in the case of many of these countries, Ecuador is a good example here, that means destroying their rain forests and destroying their indigenous cultures. That's what we're doing today around the world, and we've been doing it -- it began shortly after the end of World War II. It has been building up over time until today where it's really reached mammoth proportions where we control most of the resources of the world.

      AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins, talk about your experience in Panama. You had the opportunity to meet the Head of Panama before he was killed, Omar Torrijos. How did you end up there?

      JOHN PERKINS: Well, Panama was one of these pivotal countries at the time and Omar Torrijos, who was the President of Panama. He followed a long line of oligarchy dictators that basically were puppets of the U.S. government that we had installed 50 years prior when we took over the country. Omar Torrijos was the first one to break that cycle, and he was a very, very popular president. He was popular throughout much of the world. Many people believed he should have won the Nobel Peace Prize and might have had he not died or been killed. He protected the downtrodden everywhere. And the United States was at the time, President Carter was negotiating a new Canal treaty with Torrijos and ultimately that Canal treaty went through. But it caused a tremendous amount of turmoil in our own country. In fact, it was passed in Congress by only one vote, that won the ratification of the Canal. So, we economic hit men were really looking beyond that process, or how we could win Panama over regardless of what happened to the Canal Treaty. I was there before the treaty was signed in 1972 and I was trying to bring Torrijos around. I was trying to catch him. I was trying to get him. I was trying to hook him the way we hooked everybody else. He arranged for me to meet with him in this private bungalow one day, and this is described in detail, the conversation, in the book. But basically what he said to me is, Look, I know the game you guys are playing. I know what you're trying to do here. You're trying to saddle us with huge debts. You're trying to make us totally dependent upon you, and you're trying to corrupt me. I know what this game is and I'm not playing. I don't need the money. I'm not looking to get personally wealthy out of this. I want to help my poor people. I want you to build the projects that you're supposed to build, that you build in other countries, but I want you to build them for our poor people, not for our rich people. And he said, if you do that, I'll see to it that you and your company get a lot more work in this country. Good work that will help our people. Well, I was really conflicted at this because, as an economic hit man, I was supposed to get him under our control. I was supposed to hook him. But as a partner in this company and as the chief economist for this firm, I also wanted to get the work for the firm, and in this case it was very obvious that the economic hit men weren't going to get through to Torrijos, so I went along with him. But at the time, I was deeply concerned because I knew that this system is built on the assumption that leaders like Torrijos are corruptible and they are all over the world for the most part. When one stands up to the system as Torrijos was doing, it's not only a threat in his country, like Panama, that we're not going to get our way there, but it also may be seen as setting a very bad example for the rest of the world that once one leader stands up -- and at that time there was another leader standing up, too, who was the President of Ecuador, Jaime Roldos. They were both standing up to the U.S. government. They were both standing up to the oil companies and the economic hit men, and it was a very big concern to me. I knew in my heart that if this continued, something was going to give. Of course, it did. Both of these men were assassinated by what we call the jackals, C.I.A.-sanctioned assassins.

      AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. The conversation you had with Omar Torrijos as he goes through history, your conversation in the early 1970s. But talking about what happened in Guatemala, the overthrow of the democratically elected leader Arbenz by United Fruit and the C.I.A-backed coup there in 1954, and you reconstruct this conversation about George Bush's company Zapata Oil eventually taking over United Brands, which was United Fruit, and then he talks about giving your company the business, Omar Torrijos, saying that he believed the Japanese would finance the canal that would be built, though turning to your company. And he says "They provide the money, they will do the construction." And you write, "It struck me, Bechtel will be out in the cold." The biggest construction job in recent history. Omar Torrijos paused. Bechtel's President is George Schultz, Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury. You can imagine the clout he's got and the notorious temper. Bechtel is loaded with Nixon, Ford, and Bush cronies. I've been told that the Bechtel family pulls the strings of the Republican Party. You talk about the corporatocracy, the bringing together of government and corporate power.

      JOHN PERKINS: Yes. Well, it got worse, of course. At that time, George Schultz was President of Bechtel. Casper Weinberger was their Chief Counsel, a senior officer in the corporation. They were opposed to Torrijos, not only on the U.S. turning the Canal over to Panama, but even more importantly perhaps because Torrijos was actively negotiating with the Japanese to build a new sea level canal. As you know, the current canal is based on locks and the larger ships in the world can't go through it. So, the idea was to build a sea level canal where every ship could go through, and the Japanese were offering to finance this. But if they financed it, it would be their construction companies, their engineering companies that would build it. Bechtel was incensed over this. They absolutely could not tolerate the idea of this happening. We knew this very strongly, we had to win Torrijos over. Now, then --

      AMY GOODMAN: And then, as you said, Schultz becomes Secretary of State under Reagan, Casper Weinberger becomes Secretary of Defense under Reagan. They're the, you know, the heads of Bechtel Corporation.

      JOHN PERKINS: Yeah. Yes. Carter negotiated the treaty and then lost the election, partly because of this treaty, partly because of what happened in Iran, which is another story that I was involved in. And then when Reagan became President, Schultz went from President of Bechtel to Secretary of State and Weinberger went from Chief Counsel of Bechtel to Secretary of Defense. They went back to Panama and said, Okay, Omar, now let's talk. We want the canal back, we want the military bases back in the canal zone and more than anything, we want you to stop talking to the Japanese. And Torrijos said, No, I'm a sovereign country. I am not opposing the United States. I'm not a socialist, I'm not a communist, I'm not siding with Cuba or Russia or China, I'm simply standing up for the rights of my people. We have the right to negotiate with whoever can build us the best canal. I have the right to negotiate with the Japanese. He took a very strong stand and within a few months, his plane crashed into a mountain, blew up and crashed into a mountain, and it was very strong evidence that it had been blown up by a tape recorder which was handed to him at the end that was full of explosives. There is no question in my mind and in the mind of much of the world that this was the jackals, the C.I.A.-sanctioned assassins. I've seen them work in many places. Just a couple of months before that, they had done the same thing to Jaime Roldos, President of Ecuador, the first democratically elected president of Ecuador in decades, had replaced a military junta, democratically elected, and he stood up to the U.S. oil companies. We economic hit men couldn't get through to him and his helicopter blew up then and there.

      AMY GOODMAN: Why was he standing up to U.S. oil companies?

      JOHN PERKINS: Because once again, he ran in the first democratic elections in Ecuador in many decades. He ran on a platform of sovereignty for his country. And if there is oil in Ecuador then, he said, the Ecuadorans should benefit from it. And once he became president, he began to introduce this. He set up a Hydrocarbons Act, he called it, which was basically a petroleum act that would ensure that if oil came out of Ecuador, the majority of the funds from that oil would go to his people. The oil companies would get a reasonable payment. But the majority would go to his people. He was setting a precedent that the oil companies couldn't stand, because throughout the world, they were exploiting all these countries, as they still are. And Roldos said, I'm not going to let that happen to my country. The oil companies couldn't bear to see that, not just because of Ecuador but, again, because of the precedent this would establish. And Roldos and Torrijos were really partners in a way. At the same time, they were supporting each other, and they both had to go. And they both went.

      AMY GOODMAN: And what were your thoughts at the time? I mean, you continued doing this work.

      JOHN PERKINS: It was a very pivotal point for me that -- throughout my work, as I describe in the book, my conscience was torn. And to me this is one of most interesting parts of my own personal story. I think of myself as a pretty good person. I grew up 300 years a yankee Calvinist in Vermont and New Hampshire. I come from a very patriotic background. I grew up in a very strictly Republican family, very conservative. I have very strong values. I'm very loyal to my country. And --

      AMY GOODMAN: Descendant of Tom Paine and Ethan Allen?

      JOHN PERKINS: That's right. They're distant relatives. And my parents steeped me in American history and in the values of our founding fathers of our country. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people, all over the world. I believed very strongly in this. And yet at the same time, I was very seduceable to money, power, sex. All these things came my way, and I was doing things that I was patted on the back for by the president of the World Bank, Robert MacNamara. And I was Chief Economist of a big consulting firm in Boston. I had 50 people working for me, PhDs, MBAs. I was doing work that macroeconomics in college had taught me was good work to do. It's all a scam.

      AMY GOODMAN: Why have very few people heard of this company, Main?

      JOHN PERKINS: We were a very quiet company. We had about 2,000 professional employees, which is not small. We were a closely held company, that means we were owned like a partnership, about 5% of us owned the company so we didn't have to disclose our books to the S.E.C. or anybody. We were a very private, very quiet company and we were serving the interests of empire. The company no longer exists. In the early 1980s, the partners sold out to a larger engineering construction firm, and so the company essentially went out of existence at that point. I think it was getting a little too hot for us at this point. But it was intentional. We were very strictly forbidden from talking to the press. I broke that rule at one point. I wrote an op-ed piece on the Panama Canal for the Boston Globe and was severely chastised within the company. So, it was intentional that we were very quiet.

AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman. 



-------- ACTIVISTS

College ad to protest Bush visit

May 17, 2005
By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050516-103313-9190r.htm

One-third of the professors at an evangelical Christian college in Grand Rapids, Mich., are taking out a large ad in a local newspaper Saturday to protest President Bush's commencement speech.

    "As Christians, we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort," the ad will say. "We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq."

    The 130 signatories, which include 20 staff members, work at Calvin College. Founded in 1876 as a school for pastors of the Christian Reformed Church, it now is one of the nation's flagship schools for a Christian liberal-arts education.

    "No single political position should be identified with God's will," says the ad, which also chastises the president for "actions that favor the wealthy of our society and burden the poor."

    Christians are to be characterized by love and gentleness, it adds, but "we believe that your administration has fostered intolerance and divisiveness and has often failed to listen to those with whom it disagrees."

    Moreover, says the letter, set to run in the Grand Rapids Press, the Bush administration's environmental policies "have harmed creation," and it asks the president "to re-examine your policies in light of our God-given duty to pursue justice with mercy."

    Although Calvin College President Gaylen Byker called the Bush visit "an extraordinary opportunity," the Chimes, the college newspaper, urged the 900 graduates to wear armbands protesting the visit. The publication pointed out that the president had been looking for a speech venue in Michigan, a state he failed to carry in 2000 and 2004.

    After U.S. Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers, a Republican whose district includes Grand Rapids, got an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove, the college sidelined its previously scheduled commencement speaker, Yale University professor Nick Wolterstorff, in favor of the chief executive.

    "Some think we should be honored to have the president here," religion professor David Crump said. "We're excited by the opportunity to show people that evangelical Christianity is represented by a much broader spectrum of opinion than is depicted by the religious right and the media."

    In a 2001 poll, 25 percent of Calvin's faculty described themselves as politically liberal, according to the college. Forty-five percent considered themselves centrist, and 28 percent said they were political conservatives.

    In 2003, the evangelical weekly World ran an expose on Calvin, scolding it for having ?drifted away from Scripture" on "theology-rooted issues such as origins, feminist theology and homosexuality."

    Calvin officials contested the characterization, saying the college is trying to set an example for its 4,186 students.

    "We are a serious theological and intellectual school, and we try to have our students informed by thoughtful reflection about the concerns," said history professor Randall Jelks, who is rounding up signatures for the ad.

    "We are not Lynchburg," he said, referring to the more conservative Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell. "We are not right wing; we're not left wing. We think our faith trumps political ideology." 


----

Dr. Marc Lappé, 1943-2005, A man of deep integrity 

Tue, 17 May 2005 18:33:07 -0500 GNN TV
By Anthony Lappé

http://www.gnn.tv/articles/1394/Dr_Marc_Lapp_1943_2005

GNN's editor remembers his father - a scientist who stood up for the planet's most vulnerable

“Three interrelated issues mark our times: We have altered the planet with our chemicals; we are transforming agriculture with bioengineering; and we are contemplating the recreation of humankind through genetic technologies. All three compel us to reexamine how we use scientific knowledge: will our new technologies be greeted with ‘hurrahs’ or a whisper of despair from the species that we have decimated, crops that are gene-contaminated and people who, though yet to be created, may yet curse us for our technological prowess?” – Marc Lappé

My father, Dr. Marc Lappé, an author, educator and prominent toxicologist and medical ethicist, died Saturday. He was 62. Marc was a lifelong teacher, known for instilling in his students a love of learning and an appreciation for ethics. Everyone who met him was struck by his warm spirit, unforgettable stories, and limitless generosity.

Marc was a leading figure in the movement to integrate ethics and public policy, especially as it related to toxics and genetics. He authored or edited fourteen books, many of which predicted public health and environmental problems long before their appearance. Germs That Won’t Die: Medical Consequences of the Misuse of Antibiotics (Anchor/Doubleday, 1982) warned of the public health threat of antibiotic resistance. Against the Grain: Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food (Common Courage, 1998) accurately predicted that many claims by manufacturers of genetically modified foods would prove false. He held a PhD in experimental pathology from the University of Pennsylvania and was a frequent source for the news media, appearing on 60 Minutes, The Today Show, and Dateline NBC. He was a key expert witness in numerous high-profile lawsuits, including Anderson et al v. W. R. Grace & Co., popularized in the bestselling book and Hollywood film A Civil Action. Between 1984 and 1998, he worked extensively as a consultant on the high stakes litigation that had erupted over silicone gel breast implants. Most recently, he was the director of the Gualala, California-based non-profit Center for Ethics and Toxics (CETOS), a national leader in environmental public policy, which offers advice to California municipalities with concerns about contaminants in their water supplies.

His career was marked by a commitment to standing up to powerful corporate interests and a concern for populations most vulnerable to toxic contamination of their ground, water and air. He was a natural teacher, gifted in explaining complicated ethical and scientific concepts to lay audiences. In late 1960s, he began teaching as a volunteer professor in the politically-charged “free university” movement in Philadelphia and Berkeley while in his early 20s. He later held posts at UC Berkeley, Sarah Lawrence College, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Medicine (where he was a tenured professor), and the College of Marin. In 1999, he co-founded an experimental charter grammar, middle and high school on the redwood coast of California’s Mendocino County.

Early years

Marc Alan Lappé was born in Irvington, New Jersey on Jan. 14, 1943. His father Paul, the son of a Jewish Russian émigré, entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at age sixteen. His mother Jeanette taught in the Newark public schools. As an undergraduate at Wesleyan University, Marc did cancer research at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. At age 25, he was granted the first PhD in experimental pathology awarded to a candidate without a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

While working on his PhD, Marc met my mother Frances Moore. She was a social worker in West Philadelphia, he was teaching a class called “Biology for Poets” at the free university. They married in 1967. In 1971, I was born, and my mother published the classic Diet for a Small Planet, which Marc helped with the nutrition science.

My sister Anna, a bestselling author and co-founder of the Small Planet Institute, was born in 1973.

Marc was one of the founding fellows of the Hastings Center, the nation’s top bioethics think tank, where he began examining the ethical implications of the looming genetic revolution long before they reached the popular consciousness.

My father’s ethics were shaped by his longtime interest in Eastern philosophy, particularly Zen Buddhism. He was a proponent of the precautionary principle, the ethical theory that if consequences of an action, especially concerning technology, are uncertain but are known to have a high risk, it is best to not carry out the action.

In 1976, he published Of All Things Most Yielding (Friends of the Earth/McGraw Hill) with his friend, Sierra Club founder David Brower, which combined photographs of Glen Canyon, now flooded, and classic Chinese poetry selected by my father.

Taking a stand

In 1978, he was named by California Governor Jerry Brown as chief of the state’s Office of Health, Law, and Values, and then as head of the state’s Hazard Evaluation System, where he devised the state’s original health risk assessment of their aerial pesticide spraying program. When California’s citrus crops were plagued by an outbreak of the Medfly, Marc refused to sign onto the spraying of Malathion, an insecticide with known toxicity to humans. He leaked a copy of a memo he wrote about the dangers of Malathion to environmental groups, becoming a hero for the anti-spraying movement. Shortly after, the state began spraying large areas of Southern California from helicopters, and my father resigned in protest.

“Choosing to use any toxic substance for economic gain that can adversely affect someone else raises powerful ethical issues,” he said in an interview several years ago.

Beginning in the 1980s, he began working independently with plaintiff lawyers on high-profile legal battles over environmental contamination, controversial drugs and faulty medical devices. Cases he consulted on included the infamous Love Canal, New York toxic waste disaster; Agent Orange; pesticide exposure among farm workers and neurological problems associated with the malaria drug Lariam. He played a pivotal role in the contentious silicone gel breast implant litigation, which pitted tens of thousands of women who claimed to have been sickened by their implants against Dow Corning Corp. and other makers of the devices. He discovered Dow Corning had covered up their own early studies that found silicone was not the inert substance they later claimed when the implants began leaking and rupturing. Dow Corning sent a private detective to the small northern California town of Gualala where my father lived to investigate his non-profit organization in an effort to discredit his testimony. The cases often were marked by dramatic courtroom showdowns, including an incident in a Louisiana court right out of a John Grisham novel. The defense attorneys wheeled scores of boxes into the courtroom claiming they contained studies showing silicone implants were safe. During a break, my father inspected the boxes, finding them to be filled with blank paper.

In all, he worked on 30 silicone implant cases, each one the defendant either settled or paid out a jury award – in a case against Bristol-Myers Squib the jury awarded $5 million in actual damages and $20 million in punitive damages. In 1998, Dow Corning settled a class action suit for $3.2 billion. The company was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In a bit of dark irony, last month, a Food and Drug Administration panel voted to allow a limited number of silicone gel implants back on the market.

Marc’s work on breast implant litigation earned him a spot on the Food and Drug Administration’s panel on medical devices and plastic surgery. He also was asked to testify in front of numerous congressional panels on genetics, ethics and biotechnology.

In 1988, he became a tenured professor of Health Policy and Ethics at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Medicine.

He was on the board of the March of Dimes, where he was a strong advocate for acknowledging the connection between the environment, toxics and birth defects. He also served on the March of Dimes National Foundation’s Bioethics Committee since its inception in 1975.

Ahead of his time

Many of his theories about environmental pollution – initially controversial – later became accepted by the wider scientific community. As early as the 1970s, he promoted the importance of an eco-system level approach to setting limits for toxins in the environment. He argued that minimum allowed concentrations of toxic substances needed to account for their reactions with other substances in the real world. He was an early proponent of the importance of the immune system in fighting cancer and other diseases. He also argued that long-term exposure to low levels of carcinogenic compounds may be more dangerous than a single high dosage – today an increasingly accepted tenet of environmental science.

In 1977, he married Nichol Lovera. They had three children, Matthew, who holds a MS from Stanford University; Martine, a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of California, San Francisco; and Gina, a junior in high school who is a champion horseback rider.

Nichol died in 1996.

In 1992, Marc founded the Center for Ethics and Toxics (CETOS) in the small redwood coast town of Gualala, California. CETOS is dedicated helping communities fight toxic contamination of their environment. Since its inception the center has developed guidelines and strategies to reduce toxic exposures in numerous areas, including a 1996-7 campaign to prevent roadside spraying with herbicides in Mendocino County, Ca. and a testing regiment to monitor pesticides in the drinking water of the small town of Fort Bragg, California. The organization also played in an active role in the ongoing battles over logging on the Pacific coast. CETOS worked as a consultant to the Forest Stewardship Council which regulates the conditions for ecologically sound and sustainable logging practices. In 2004, CETOS played a leading role in the passage of Measure H, which banned raising genetically altered crops and animals in Mendocino County, the first such ban in the nation. The organization continues to educate the public about toxic chemicals and environmental health and to research environmental contamination.

In 1998, Marc and his partner Britt Bailey authored Against the Grain, which examined the implications of the rapid transformation of the food supply to include genetically modified organisms. In particular, they questioned the toxicological concerns around Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, used with Roundup Ready GM seeds. Monsanto, the largest supplier of genetically modified seeds, threatened to sue if the book was published. Their first publisher pulled out of their contract. My father persisted, finding a publisher, Common Courage Press, with the guts to go forward. Against the Grain was released in 1998. Monsanto has since failed to take any legal action. A documentary by the same name is available from the Video Project.

“Given that foods derived from agricultural biotechnology contain novel proteins and genetic vectors, many citizens rightly believe they are unwittingly members of a global experiment,” he wrote in a 2000 editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle. “We would do well to heed the admonition of William Beaumont, a 19th-century ethicist who argued that any novel project should be halted if subjects are distressed, unsatisfied or have not given voluntary consent.”

Building a community

In 1997, Marc married lifelong friend Jacqueline Durbin, an intensive care nurse and yoga instructor.

In 1998, Marc and Jacqueline founded the Pacific Community Charter School with other parents in Point Arena, California to provide an alternative educational environment for local students. Despite his heavy workload, Marc devoted time to teach science at the charter high school. He was known as a life-transforming teacher who instilled in his students a love of learning and an appreciation for the importance of ethical thinking.

Marc was also an award-winning poet who wrote emotionally intense poems that explored family, science, philosophy and nature.

More recently, my father helped my co-author Stephen Marshall and me with our book, True Lies. He provided invaluable insight on our investigations into depleted uranium, the anthrax vaccine and the military’s use of Lariam.

He died at his home in his sleep. The cause was cancer.

The planet will miss him deeply.

He is survived by his father Paul, brother cardiologist Don of Salt Lake City and wife Jacqueline, and children Anthony, 33; Anna, 31; Matt, 25; Martine, 22; Gina, 17; and step-children, Danielle Spoor, 16; and Sasha Spoor, 29.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Center for Ethics and Toxics through cetos.org.