NucNews - July 20, 2005



-------- NUCLEAR 


-------- accidents and safety

Nuclear plant's warning sirens deactivated for hours

Wednesday, July 20, 2005; Posted: 10:11 a.m. EDT (14:11 GMT)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/20/nuclear.plant.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

WHITE PLAINS, New York (AP) -- Sirens meant to warn thousands of people of any emergency at a nuclear plant complex north of New York City stood useless for nearly six hours Tuesday when power was lost to a signal transmitter and the failure went undiscovered.

There was no emergency, and the 156 sirens were not needed during the outage. But "the bottom line is it's inexcusable," said Larry Gottlieb, a spokesman for Indian Point owner Entergy Nuclear Northeast. "That system should never be down for any time."

Gottlieb said the cause of the outage was not known but there was "no evidence of sabotage."

Entergy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were investigating the failure.

Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano, who has been demanding a backup power system for the sirens, said he would ask the Federal Emergency Management Agency to investigate as well.

The sirens, in suburban Westchester, Putnam, Rockland and Orange counties, are meant to alert residents within 10 miles of the complex to tune in broadcasts about any emergency.

"The public was never in danger," Gottlieb said. He said that if an emergency had occurred the failure of the sirens would have been noticed and a battery would have been brought in to activate them.



-------- australia

ASIAN LIVES: Ex-POW turned Aussie politician who learned to hate the A-bomb

SYDNEY (AFP) Jul 20, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050720044803.65j43xkb.html

Australian political icon Tom Uren, renowned as one of the most articulate activists of his generation, still struggles for words to describe the scene he saw 60 years ago when Nagasaki was vaporised by an atomic bomb.

"The sky was red everywhere. I didn't see a mushroom cloud, just crimson wherever you looked, it was so vivid," he tells AFP inside his Sydney home, spreading his arms to convey the enormity of the vision.

"I won't forget until the day I die the colour of the sky that day."

At the time the Nagasaki nuclear bomb went off on August 9, 1945, Uren was a 24-year-old prisoner of war (POW) who had experienced the brutality of the Thai-Burma railway before being sent to Japan as a slave labourer.

Uren, now 84, was working in a copper factory smelting down looted Chinese bronzes for the Japanese war effort at Imuta, about 80 kilometres (50 miles), from Nagasaki, when the A-bomb went off.

He says the impact of the blast on his captors was almost immediate.

"The Japanese guards came out and said 'big boom' then started bringing out Red Cross parcels they'd held back," says Uren. "The war was over."

The nuclear explosion and his earlier experiences in the jungle death camps working on the notorious Hellfire Pass were defining experiences for Uren, who before the war had been a heavyweight boxing contender and narrowly lost a bout for the Australian national title.

He became a committed pacifist, who after the war campaigned for social justice and embarked on a political career that saw him appointed a top-level minister in the reformist Gough Whitlam's government of the 1970s and Bob Hawke's Labor administration a decade later.

Born to a working class family in Sydney, Uren excelled at sport from an early age, particularly swimming and rugby union. But it was boxing that became his main sporting love, with the fight game offering a heavyset, six foot two (1.9 metres) youth of limited education and modest means the opportunity to make money at the tail-end of the Great Depression.

As with so many of his generation, the war intervened and Uren signed up in September 1939 as a member of the Royal Australian Artillery.

"I wasn't full of patriotism but I wanted to be able to say at the end of the war that I was a returned soldier," he says.

-- 'We had no idea of the hell ahead of us' --

It was in 1940 as a 19-year-old soldier in Sydney that Uren fought for the Australian heavyweight championship against a veteran pug named Billy Britt, losing on a technical knockout in the seventh round.

He was posted to Darwin in northern Australia and in December 1941 landed at Kupang, on the island of Timor.

The Japanese landed on Timor in February 1942 and after a series of savage battles over three days Uren's heavily outnumbered battalion, originally numbering 1,000 soldiers, was captured after sustaining a casualty rate of 40 percent, including 150 dead.

"We were apprehensive but in a way we were relieved that the fighting was over," he recalls.

"We had no idea of the hell ahead of us."

Uren was initially held for nine months in a camp in Kupang, where he said the Japanese guards, former front-line soldiers, treated the Australians reasonably out of respect for the fight they had put up.

From there he was shipped to the Indonesian capital Batavia, now Jakarta, where he worked on the docks for three months before being sent to the Southeast Asian mainland, where he would experience privations that would change his life forever.

After being held at the Salarang barracks in Singapore for a fortnight, Uren and his comrades were shipped in goods trucks to the Tarsau camp in Thailand.

He said conditions during the week-long journey were inhumane, with temperatures in the unventilated plate-steel goods carts reaching inferno level during the day and plunging to freezing during the night. Most of the 18 months Uren spent working on the Thai-Burma railway were spent at Hintok mountain camp.

Uren, because of his physical size, was assigned as part of a two-man "hammer and tap" crew. It meant the hammer man, Uren, had to bang a sledgehammer into a one-inch (2.5 centimetre) diameter metal rod, held by the tap man, until it drove a hole a metre (3.3 feet) deep in the sandstone, which was then filled with dynamite and blown up to create a railway cutting.

Uren says the crews were initially expected to drive home a single metre-long rod into the rock every day, but as the war wore on they were forced to sink three rods, working 18 hours a day with no breaks.

While the work was back-breaking, Uren says it was his physically smaller comrades who had to transport the dynamited rubble in baskets to create rail sidings who had the hardest job, scrabbling with fully-laden baskets over razor-sharp rock, with feet often protected only by thin cloth swaddling.

Uren says he was beaten on a number of occasions because he stood up to the guards on behalf of colleagues who simply could not go on any more.

-- 'I don't hate the Japanese, I hate militarism and fascism' --

Australian authorities say dozens of POWs were beaten to death during the construction of Hellfire Pass.

"We were subjected to physical and psychological stress which was barely creditable -- malnutrition, multiple infection, inadequate shelter, prolonged marches, work to the point of total exhaustion, capricious violence and humiliation," says Uren.

Only about a third of the 22,000 Australian POWs captured by the Japanese returned home after the war, but Uren says it was the unnecessary losses he saw among other nationalities that helped shape his political philosophy.

He said 400 British POWS arrived at Hintok a few months after the Australians. Instead of giving the most needy the best accommodation, the British allocated officers the most comfortable camp sites, followed by non-commissioned officers, with the lower ranks in the worst spots.

Uren says only 25 of the British group survived cholera and dysentery epidemics during the wet season, while the Australians' survival rate was much higher because under the command of camp leader and physician Edward "Weary" Dunlop they went out of their way to look after their weakest comrades.

"Only a creek separated our two camps, but on one side the law of the jungle prevailed and on the other the principles of socialism," he says.

The prisoners suffered a range of ailments, including malaria, beri beri, pellagra, festering tropical ulcers and, worst of all, cholera.

"You would go out to your workplace and come back that night to find that people with this disease had aged 50 years in a day," he says. "Their bodies would dehydrate, their eyes would sink into their heads, their temples would become deeply sunken and they would turn a grey-green colour.

"It was miraculous that many were saved through doctors like Weary Dunlop. Many died a horrible death."

One of Uren's inspirations during his days in Changi was a letter from his mother containing the simple message: "Don't worry love, look for the silver lining".

It was advice Uren took to heart and he refused to allow bitterness towards his former captors to consume his post-war life, instead attempting to translate the lessons learned in the death camps into Australian political life.

"There's no progress in that type of hate," he says. "I don't hate the Japanese, I hate militarism and fascism," adding that during his incarceration and in the years immediately after the war he would have gladly seen the nation wiped off the face of the earth.

-- 'The dropping of those bombs was a crime against humanity' --

After the war, Uren attempted to revive his boxing career but his malaria-wracked body could not sustain the punishment and he retired after fighting a number of bouts in Britain.

Returning to Australia, he married and worked for a number of years as a grocery store manager before being elected as a Labor member of parliament in 1958. At the time, Labor was going through a long period of opposition and it was not until 1972 that he became a minister in the reformist government of Gough Whitlam, which withdrew Australian troops from Vietnam.

He was one of the world's first environment ministers, at a time when green issues were viewed as a fringe issue, and remained socially active in the peace and civil liberties movements.

After leaving parliament in 1987, Uren was voted onto Australia's inaugural list of National Living Treasures in 1997 for his public service but, well into his ninth decade, bridles at the suggestion he has eased into well-deserved retirement.

He remains an active supporter of East Timor's cause as the fledgling nation comes to terms with independence from Indonesia and campaigns for the rights of war veterans, as well as regularly visiting schools to spread his message of peace to a new generation.

Uren says his view on the use of nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki had changed since 1945, when he was elated they had ended the war and allowed him to finally return home.

"As I've grown to understand the outcome of nuclear arms and nuclear war and the nuclear industry, I believe that the dropping of those bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was a crime against humanity," he says.

Despite the hardships he has endured and the horrors he witnessed, Uren remains upbeat about both human nature and his experience in life.

"I really can't complain," he says. "Life has been very generous to me."


-------- india 

Nuclear power crucial to fuel India's booming economy: eperts

NEW DELHI (AFP) Jul 20, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050720082154.8wzxwb3y.html

The Bush administration's decision to reopen civilian nuclear sales to India will go a long way towards solving the critical energy needs of one of Asia's fastest growing economies, experts said Wednesday.

"The race in Asia is that of energy," said Rahul Bedi of Jane's Defence Weekly.

"China is far ahead of us. If we can get (nuclear energy) and if we can pay for it, it will be good for the economy."

Both China and India need to secure as many energy resources as possible to maintain their momemtum as the world's two fastest growing economies.

But Beijing is way ahead in the race, adding 5,000 to 10,000 megawatts of nuclear power almost every year -- against India's total of 3,000 MWs of operating capacity and another 4,000 MWs under construction.

Experts said the the situation has arisen largely because India was denied access to large nuclear reactors and fuel by the international community through sanctions imposed after it conducted nuclear tests in 1974 and later in 1998.

But with US President George W. Bush announcing on Monday that he would ask Congress as well as allied nations to lift sanctions preventing Indian access to civil nuclear technology, the picture will change rapidly, say experts.

Under the agreement, if approved by the US Congress, India would be allowed to buy nuclear fuel and reactor components from the United States and other countries.

Only three percent of India's energy needs are currently met by nuclear power.

Energy expert Rajendra Srivastav, who is also country director of the French power major Electricite de France, said that for a country which clocked seven percent growth rate in 2004, securing nuclear power is "very important".

"Not just economically but also symbolically," he said. "Since the nuclear tests, India has been treated like a pariah by the international community. This will now change."

Srivastav said India would be looking at importing six to eight 1,000 MW nuclear reactors if Bush's plan passes all the hurdles.

"If these reactors are brought in, it will be very good for a growing economy like India," he said.

"It will give us independence in energy security and also reduce the cost of importing oil and gas. Ideally, nuclear energy should form 15-20 percent of our installed capacity. Today it forms less than three percent of the capacity."

He added that even if India gets the nuclear technology, the question of "beating China at this does not arise.

"China is aiming at 40,000 MWs by 2020 and they are adding 5,000 to 10,000 MWs each year. If we get nuclear power, it would be a gain for us but it will not affect China in any way," Srivastav said.

India is currently in talks with several nations to set up a costly network of pipelines to import gas, including from Iran through Pakistan.

India's energy demand is expected to grow at five percent per annum, according to the Tata Energy Research Institute, a private think tank.

The country's incremental energy demand for the next decade is projected to be among the highest in the world spurred by sustained economic growth, rising income levels and increased availability of goods and services.

Currently India has six up and running nuclear power plants while four are under construction.

One of the six reactors -- the Tarapore Atomic Power Station -- is running at only 58 percent capacity due to a shortage of enriched urnanium fuel which only the United States can supply.

More than 60 percent of Indian households still depend on traditional sources of energy like wood, cow dung and crop residues for their energy requirements.

----

Nuclear power crucial to fuel India's booming economy: experts

Wed Jul 20, 6:21 AM ET (AFP)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050720/wl_sthasia_afp/indiausnuclearenergy_050720102116

NEW DELHI - The Bush administration's decision to reopen civilian nuclear sales to India will go a long way towards solving the critical energy needs of one of Asia's fastest growing economies, experts said.

"The race in Asia is that of energy," said Rahul Bedi of Jane's Defence Weekly.

"China is far ahead of us. If we can get (nuclear energy) and if we can pay for it, it will be good for the economy."

Both China and India need to secure as many energy resources as possible to maintain their momemtum as the world's two fastest growing economies.

But Beijing is way ahead in the race, adding 5,000 to 10,000 megawatts of nuclear power almost every year -- against India's total of 3,000 MWs of operating capacity and another 4,000 MWs under construction.

Experts said the the situation has arisen largely because India was denied access to large nuclear reactors and fuel by the international community through sanctions imposed after it conducted nuclear tests in 1974 and later in 1998.

But with US President George W. Bush announcing on Monday that he would ask Congress as well as allied nations to lift sanctions preventing Indian access to civil nuclear technology, the picture will change rapidly, say experts.

Under the agreement, if approved by the US Congress, India would be allowed to buy nuclear fuel and reactor components from the United States and other countries.

Only three percent of India's energy needs are currently met by nuclear power.

Energy expert Rajendra Srivastav, who is also country director of the French power major Electricite de France, said that for a country which clocked seven percent growth rate in 2004, securing nuclear power is "very important".

"Not just economically but also symbolically," he said. "Since the nuclear tests, India has been treated like a pariah by the international community. This will now change."

Srivastav said India would be looking at importing six to eight 1,000 MW nuclear reactors if Bush's plan passes all the hurdles.

"If these reactors are brought in, it will be very good for a growing economy like India," he said.

"It will give us independence in energy security and also reduce the cost of importing oil and gas. Ideally, nuclear energy should form 15-20 percent of our installed capacity. Today it forms less than three percent of the capacity."

He added that even if India gets the nuclear technology, the question of "beating China at this does not arise.

"China is aiming at 40,000 MWs by 2020 and they are adding 5,000 to 10,000 MWs each year. If we get nuclear power, it would be a gain for us but it will not affect China in any way," Srivastav said.

India is currently in talks with several nations to set up a costly network of pipelines to import gas, including from Iran through Pakistan.

India's energy demand is expected to grow at five percent per annum, according to the Tata Energy Research Institute, a private think tank.

The country's incremental energy demand for the next decade is projected to be among the highest in the world spurred by sustained economic growth, rising income levels and increased availability of goods and services.

Currently India has six up and running nuclear power plants while four are under construction.

One of the six reactors -- the Tarapore Atomic Power Station -- is running at only 58 percent capacity due to a shortage of enriched urnanium fuel which only the United States can supply.

More than 60 percent of Indian households still depend on traditional sources of energy like wood, cow dung and crop residues for their energy requirements.

----

Leader calls India, US 'natural partners'

By Jim Abrams, Associated Press  |  July 20, 2005

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2005/07/20/leader_calls_india_us_natural_partners/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+World+News

WASHINGTON -- India is a resolute US partner in the war on terrorism and a responsible nuclear power, India's prime minister told Congress yesterday as he promoted new nuclear cooperation between the two countries.

Manmohan Singh, in an address to a joint meeting of Congress, spoke broadly of how the world's oldest and largest democracies, once estranged by Cold War politics, were ''natural partners."

There is ''a convergence in our perceptions of a rapidly transforming global environment, bringing us much closer together now than at any time in the past," Singh said, mentioning collaboration ranging from developing high-tech industries to helping tsunami victims.

But his remarks on nuclear energy cooperation drew the most attention, occurring a day after President Bush, at a White House meeting with Singh, offered US help in India's civilian nuclear program. ''India's track record in nuclear nonproliferation is impeccable," Singh said.

----

‘US-India pact not against China’

Press Trust of India
Posted online: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 at 1118 hours IST

http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=51038

Washington, July 20: The United States has said the new partnership with India is a reflection of its "growing role, power and influence" in the world and is not directed at any third country, including China.

The agreement with India "stands on its own" and is not intended to be a counterweight to China, under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said adding "this is a significant point of departure for our foreign policy, not just in South Asia but worldwide".

Asked about Pakistan, Burns said Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has telephoned Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to apprise him about the agreements with India.

Maintaining that both South Asian countries are important to the US, burns said, "These are issues where US policy intersects, and there are issues where we can have individual relations with both countries".

Acting State Department Spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters that the agreements on a broad range of issues are a recognition of India's important role and growing influence in the world and a further strengthening of a very close and growing strategic importance.

Asked whether these agreements are intended as a counterweight to China in the region, he said, "I really think that's missing the major point. The major point here is that you have a country which is the world's largest democracy, which is growing and becoming an increasingly influential player in the world scene in all aspects. And that there are opportunities for engagement and there are opportunities to help marry India's ambitions and India's capabilities with the United States and mutual interests."

"And that is what this agreement does. And it's based on the reality that is India. It's not based on, you know, other countries acting as push factors for something that really, for a dynamic that exists sui generis, independent of these other considerations," Ereli said.

He said the agreements have been signed keeping in mind "the growing influence of India, the growing power of India and the opportunity for working closely in developing a strategic partnership in ways that benefit both countries and frankly the international community as a whole."

Pointing out that the Secretary of State is fully on board on these agreements, he said, "This is something that the Secretary has been very, very actively involved in and represents an important step forward not only in our bilateral relationship, but I think in our strategic relationship in the region."

"The announcement yesterday by the President and the Prime Minister of India, I think point to, frankly, a transformed relationship. One that the Secretary in her remarks called a global partner and what we agreed to yesterday, I think, is testimony to that enhanced role that India plays in the region and how the United States sees India as a partner, both economically, politically and strategically," he added.

Ereli said though attention has been focused on the nuclear side of the agreements, there are a number of things on which the two countries are cooperating including launching a CEOs forum to enhance private sector energy and deepen the bilateral economic relationship.

"It talks about modernization of India's infrastructure. It talks about a US-India knowledge initiative on agriculture. There's also a democracy development side to the agreement where we had a global democracy initiative. We talk about disaster relief initiatives, an US-India defense relationship. And we also look forward to signing a science and technology framework agreement for joint research in space and civil space cooperation agreement."

As far as the specific issue on nuclear cooperation goes, he said it was a significant achievement in that it addresses India's important energy security needs for the future.

"It also strengthens our mutual nonproliferation efforts. Specifically, the United States agrees to work toward full civil nuclear energy cooperation with India, including cooperation and trade in the whole, throughout the whole aspect of the peaceful nuclear energy sector. But India also agrees reciprocally to take a number of steps that are important to meeting control and nonproliferation concerns. And that obviously are common to all countries that aspire to the same thing that India aspires to.”

"Specifically, these include identifying and separating civilian and military nuclear facilities, filing a declaration regarding its civilian facilities with the IAEA, voluntarily placing its civilian nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards, signing and adhering to an additional protocol," he said. 

----

Nuclear power crucial to fuel India's booming economy: experts

NEW DELHI (AFP) Jul 20, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050720082721.psk2ylzv.html

The Bush administration's decision to reopen civilian nuclear sales to India will go a long way towards solving the critical energy needs of one of Asia's fastest growing economies, experts said Wednesday.

"The race in Asia is that of energy," said Rahul Bedi of Jane's Defence Weekly.

"China is far ahead of us. If we can get (nuclear energy) and if we can pay for it, it will be good for the economy."

Both China and India need to secure as many energy resources as possible to maintain their momemtum as the world's two fastest growing economies.

But Beijing is way ahead in the race, adding 5,000 to 10,000 megawatts of nuclear power almost every year -- against India's total of 3,000 MWs of operating capacity and another 4,000 MWs under construction.

Experts said the the situation has arisen largely because India was denied access to large nuclear reactors and fuel by the international community through sanctions imposed after it conducted nuclear tests in 1974 and later in 1998.

But with US President George W. Bush announcing on Monday that he would ask Congress as well as allied nations to lift sanctions preventing Indian access to civil nuclear technology, the picture will change rapidly, say experts.

Under the agreement, if approved by the US Congress, India would be allowed to buy nuclear fuel and reactor components from the United States and other countries.

Only three percent of India's energy needs are currently met by nuclear power.

Energy expert Rajendra Srivastav, who is also country director of the French power major Electricite de France, said that for a country which clocked seven percent growth rate in 2004, securing nuclear power is "very important".

"Not just economically but also symbolically," he said. "Since the nuclear tests, India has been treated like a pariah by the international community. This will now change."

Srivastav said India would be looking at importing six to eight 1,000 MW nuclear reactors if Bush's plan passes all the hurdles.

"If these reactors are brought in, it will be very good for a growing economy like India," he said.

"It will give us independence in energy security and also reduce the cost of importing oil and gas. Ideally, nuclear energy should form 15-20 percent of our installed capacity. Today it forms less than three percent of the capacity."

He added that even if India gets the nuclear technology, the question of "beating China at this does not arise.

"China is aiming at 40,000 MWs by 2020 and they are adding 5,000 to 10,000 MWs each year. If we get nuclear power, it would be a gain for us but it will not affect China in any way," Srivastav said.

India is currently in talks with several nations to set up a costly network of pipelines to import gas, including from Iran through Pakistan.

India's energy demand is expected to grow at five percent per annum, according to the Tata Energy Research Institute, a private think tank.

The country's incremental energy demand for the next decade is projected to be among the highest in the world spurred by sustained economic growth, rising income levels and increased availability of goods and services.

Currently India has six up and running nuclear power plants while four are under construction.

One of the six reactors -- the Tarapore Atomic Power Station -- is running at only 58 percent capacity due to a shortage of enriched urnanium fuel which only the United States can supply.

More than 60 percent of Indian households still depend on traditional sources of energy like wood, cow dung and crop residues for their energy requirements.

----

India pledges not to spread nuclear technology

The New York Times, The Associated Press
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 2005

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/07/19/news/india.php

WASHINGTON Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, seeking U.S. support for his country's civilian nuclear program a day after he and President George W. Bush reached an agreement aimed at removing a ban on the sale of such technology to India, assured Congress on Tuesday that India would not spread sensitive technologies.
 
Singh addressed a joint meeting of Congress, an honor bestowed only on the closest of U.S. allies, after Bush said Monday that he would push for a reversal of policy so that the United States could help India's nuclear power program.
 
Any such change in policy would require approval by Congress.
 
"The field of civil nuclear energy is a vital area for cooperation between our two countries," Singh said, describing India's record on nuclear nonproliferation as "impeccable."
 
He said India had "adhered scrupulously to every rule and canon" even though "we have witnessed unchecked nuclear proliferation in our own neighborhood which has directly affected our security interests," a reference to Pakistan.
 
"We have never been, and will never be, a source of proliferation of sensitive technologies," he said.
 
Singh told the lawmakers that the objective of his three-day Washington trip was "to lay the basis for transformed ties between our two great countries."
 
Relations between the two largest democracies in the world have often been shadowed by suspicion but have improved markedly in recent years. When he spoke, Singh stood before Vice President Dick Cheney and the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert.
 
Singh said the two countries had common interests in such areas as the fight against terrorism, joint work to combat AIDS and efforts to promote democracy, as well as cooperation in developing new energy resources.
 
He noted one area where the two countries did not agree: U.S. resistance to India gaining a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
 
The agreement between Bush and Singh was greeted by Indian analysts on Tuesday as a gesture of respect for India's rising power, but not as an especially practicable plan.
 
The agreement would remove a ban on the sale of civilian nuclear technology to India, which has been in place since the 1970s. In doing so, it would end an old source of antagonism between the two countries.
 
Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, said, "Both sides have undertaken commitments that are pretty profound but difficult to deliver."
 
Under the agreement, India would be allowed to buy nuclear fuel and reactor components from companies in the United States and other countries.
 
In return, India would allow international inspections and safeguards on its civilian nuclear program, and refrain from further weapons tests and from transferring arms technology to other countries.
 
India, the fastest-growing major economy after China, faces dire power shortages, with its electricity supply falling 11 percent short of demand and world oil prices putting power out of reach for much of its population of more than a billion people. A revived nuclear energy program is seen by many as a solution to India's energy difficulties.
 
But beyond that, the agreement would bring a significant boost in India's international status, from that of pariah, since it first tested a nuclear weapon in 1974 and refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to something close to formal recognition as a nuclear-armed state.
 
Indian officials traveling with Singh greeted the agreement as a significant move, but Chellaney and other observers in India were quick to point out that the agreement was subject to approval by the U.S. Congress and probably by other nuclear-armed countries, including Britain, France, China and Russia.
 
All of those negotiations could prove contentious, given fears that rewarding India's nuclear program would seem to give clearance for other countries to follow suit.
 
A.N. Ram, a retired diplomat who spent 36 years in India's foreign service, said: "The direction is right, but I don't think, as two mature countries, we expected anything dramatic to happen, and I don't think anything dramatic has happened. A lot of work has to be done to translate the good intentions into actual cooperation."
 
Some analysts went a step further, arguing that the agreement, while favorable to India's energy needs, also played into a U.S. strategy of opening new markets for American nuclear reactors, including the AP-1000 reactor made by Westinghouse. The Bush administration had previously sought to promote the reactor's sale to China and tried to help things along by backing it with the largest-ever loan by the U.S. Export-Import Bank.
 
Rahul Bedi, who writes for Jane's Defense Weekly in New Delhi, said: "The Indians are going to be thumping their chests saying, 'We've now been acknowledged as a nuclear state.' But the fact of the matter is that they're going to have to pay a huge price for it."
 
There was no immediate reaction from Pakistan, which is considered certain to demand similar concessions.
 
For the Bush administration, the agreement would be a major step in what has been a campaign since 2001 to improve ties with India, in part to create a counterweight to China. That effort was disrupted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which prompted Washington to provide military aid to Pakistan.
 
Shyam Saran, the Indian foreign secretary, said in an interview: "We are looking at complete removal of the restrictive technology regimes that India has been subjected to for decades. What this agreement says is that we are willing to assume the same responsibilities and practices - no more and no less - as other nuclear states."
 
A senior U.S. State Department official said that the Bush administration still hoped India would give up its nuclear weapons and that the administration had rebuffed an Indian request to be recognized as a nuclear weapons state under the treaty.
 
"We didn't feel we could somehow formally recognize India as a nuclear state," the official said. He added that the United States hoped that India ultimately would sign the treaty.

----

Bush move to share nuclear technology with India comes under fire

WASHINGTON (AFP) Jul 20, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050720011608.buw0l2ge.html

US President George W. Bush has set a dangerous precedent by moving to lift a ban on civilian nuclear technology sale to nuclear armed India, which has not signed up to global non-proliferation rules, some analysts and lawmakers said Tuesday

The warning came as a bipartisan energy panel of the US House of Representatives adopted a resolution Tuesday preventing export of nuclear technology to India and other countries not party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and which have detonated a nuclear device.

"We are playing with fire by picking and choosing when to pay attention to the existing non-proliferation treaties," panel member Democratic Representative Ed Markey said even before the ink could dry on a joint statement by Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh released Monday.

Bush said in the statement that he would ask Congress and allied nations to lift sanctions preventing Indian access to civil nuclear technology as part of a new bilateral partnership forged with Singh.

Under the agreement, India would be allowed to buy nuclear fuel and reactor components from the United States and other countries for nuclear power aimed at driving rapid economic growth in the world's second most populous nation.

India, in return, would allow international inspections and safeguards on its civilian nuclear program -- but not its nuclear-weapons arsenal -- and refrain from further weapons tests.

The United States had placed sanctions on India after its second round of nuclear tests in May 1998, but agreed after the September 11, 2001, attacks to waive those and other sanctions in return for support in the war on terrorism.

US law bars export of technology that could aid a nuclear program of any country that has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

"It is an extremely dangerous and unwarranted decision to try and cooperate on civil nuclear technology with India at this point," said Jon Wolfsthal, an expert on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction with Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a private non-profit group.

He said Bush's action "does nothing" to cap or slow down or otherwise alter India's nuclear weapons advancement and would greatly weaken the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which had kept some 180 signatory countries such as Japan and Germany from acquiring nuclear weapons themselves.

"Now they would look at the decision by the US and say: when India can have nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors too, then why not us," Wolfsthal said.

India, which has arch nuclear rival Pakistan as its neighbour, is "actively producing new nuclear weapons and long range ballistic missiles, he said.

While India's relationship with Pakistan is stable for the moment, he said, it was unclear how the nuclear question would develop in South Asia in the future.

Nicholas Burns, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, underlined India's strict adherence to non-proliferation procedures and protection of sensitive technology as a basis for the US decision.

He said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei to brief him on the US decision and that he seemed "supportive of what we have done."

The IAEA is the global nuclear watchdog.

US officials have also explained to counterparts in France, Germany, Britain and Pakistan about the US move to share civilian nuclear technology with India.

Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a non-profit institution specializing in security, said the Bush administration move to judge nations based on "whether they are good or bad and not their nuclear weapons" reflected "a very, very significant shift in the philosophy behind US non proliferation and disarmament policy."

He acknowledged that India was an important partner for the United States "but if we change the rules of proliferation, we can't change them only with respect to our friends."

"Iran, North Korea, Syria, Pakistan, Brazil, Argentina -- there are many countries who will say why not us too?

"And there will be other nuclear suppliers who will be ready to oblige and the US ability to have other suppliers exercise restraint will be weakened because we don't wish to be restrained," Krepon said. "This spells trouble for proliferation."

----

Bush Nuclear Deal with India Meets Congressional Disapproval

WASHINGTON, DC, July 20, 2005 (ENS)

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2005/2005-07-20-03.asp

President George W. Bush signed an agreement Monday with the Prime Minister of India to help the nuclear armed country develop its civilian nuclear power capability. But a measure passed by members of the House of Representatives Tuesday disapproves that arrangement for India, which is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

During their meeting at the White House on Monday, President Bush told India's Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, that as a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology, India should acquire the same benefits and advantages as other such states. The two leaders signed a joint statement to lift a ban on sale of U.S. civilian nuclear technology to India.

President George W. Bush stands with India's Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh during the playing of the national anthems on the South Lawn of the White House. July 18, 2005. (Photo by Carolyn Drake courtesy The White House)
Recognizing India's continued unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing, President Bush expressed his appreciation to the Prime Minister over India's "strong commitment" to preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and said he will "work to achieve full civil nuclear energy cooperation with India" as it realizes its goals of promoting nuclear power and achieving energy security."

Under the agreement, India would be allowed to buy nuclear fuel and reactor components from the United States and other countries. In exchange India would allow international inspections and safeguards on its civilian nuclear program, but not its nuclear-weapons arsenal, and not detonate any more weapons tests.

In May 1998, the United States placed sanctions on India, the world's most populous democracy, after its second round of nuclear tests, but waived them after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in return for support in the war on terrorism.

U.S. law bans export of technology that could support a nuclear program of any country that has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and India has not signed it.

On Tuesday, the same day that Prime Minister Singh addressed a joint session of the House and Senate, a bipartisan energy panel of the U.S. House of Representatives adopted a measure forbidding export of nuclear technology to India and other countries not party to the nonproliferation treaty and which have detonated a nuclear device.

The amendment's author, Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said, “Selling nuclear materials to India is a dangerous proposition and bad nonproliferation policy."

“Why should the United States sell controlled nuclear goods to India? asked Markey. "We cannot play favorites, breaking the rules of the non-proliferation treaty, to favor one nation at the risk of undermining critical international treaties on nuclear weapons.”

U.S. Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts (Photo credit unknown)
“Now that Russia and China have agreed to adhere to the Nuclear Supplier Groups requirements, the United States is going to ignore the rules?" Markey asked. "What will Russia say when they want to supply more nuclear materials or technology to Iran? You can be sure that Pakistan will demand equal treatment. Will the Bush administration soon be announcing nuclear cooperation with them?"

The House Members of the Energy Conference Committee approved Markey's measure. Although the measure received broad support from both Republican and Democratic Members House Energy Bill Conference Committee, the measure was rejected by Senate Conference Conferees during a voice vote.

“Unlike our friends on the Senate side, we don’t have any ability to advise and consent on treaties,” Congressman Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who chairs the Conference Committee. “This is a way for the House to send a signal on this particular treaty.”

The House Members vowed to continue press for action to address their concerns over the exportation of nuclear materials to non-nuclear states.

President Bush told the Indian leader that he will seek agreement from Congress to adjust U.S. laws and policies to allow the export of nuclear technology to India.

In addition, Bush promised, the United States will work with friends and allies to adjust international regimes to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India, including but not limited to expeditious consideration of fuel supplies for safeguarded nuclear reactors at Tarapur.

Tarapur, near Mumbai, is the location of India's first nuclear power plant, two boiling water power reactors connected to the grid in 1969.

India's other power reactors are pressurised heavy water type reactors which use natural uranium as fuel and heavy water as moderator.

India's Tarapur nuclear reactors near Mumbai, or Bombay. (Photo courtesy India Department of Atomic Energy)
Now India is building pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs) at Tarapur. Construction work is in progress, and the two units are scheduled for completion by year 2006-2007. Fuel for these reactors is among the items that President Bush said he will assist India to acquire.

At the White House, the two leaders discussed India's plans to develop its civilian nuclear energy program as a way to that India can meet "growing global energy demands in a cleaner and more efficient manner." They see nuclear power as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuel power generation, although India's nuclear waste storage problem has not been resolved.

At the National Press Club today, Prime Minister Singh said, "Our current dependence on hydrocarbons will have to be diversified in favour of a broader energy mix." An expanded nuclear power program is a key part of that mix.

A nuclear power nation since the late 1960s, India now has 21 nuclear power reactors in nine locations with three more under construction.

The three stage strategy adopted by the Indian nuclear power program is to use the country's modest uranium and vast thorium resources. All reactors now in operation are fueled with uranium, and produce electricity and plutonium.

This first stage is being followed by a second stage with plutonium fueled fast breeder reactors, producing electricity and more plutonium and uranium 233 from thorium. Ground has been broken on the first fast breeder reactor, which is scheduled for completion in 2011.

The third stage of reactors will be based on thorium cycle producing electricity and more uranium 233.

At his meeting with President Bush Tuesday, Prime Minister Singh expressed interest in the international nuclear fusion project ITER and a willingness to contribute. This project, newly sited in France, would fuse atomic nucleii under enormous temperature and pressure to produce the same type of energy that powers the Sun and stars.

President Bush and Prime Minister Singh raise their glasses in a toast at the official dinner in the White House State Dining Room. July 18, 2005 (Photo by Carolyn Drake courtesy The White House)
The President promised to consult with the U.S.'s ITER partners - the European Union, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan - about considering India's participation.

Bush also promised to consult with the other participants in the Generation IV International Forum with a view toward India's inclusion. Ten countries are working together in the Forum to lay the groundwork for a fourth generation nuclear reactor that could be deployed by 2030. Six technologies are under consideration at: http://gif.inel.gov/roadmap/

In January 2004, the United States and India agreed to expand cooperation in three areas - civilian nuclear activities, civilian space programs, and high-technology trade. In addition, the two countries agreed to expand their dialogue on missile defense.

These areas of cooperation are designed to progress through a series of reciprocal steps that build on each other in an agreement known as the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) initiative.

The State Department says these efforts have enabled the United States to make modifications to U.S. export licensing policies that will foster cooperation in commercial space programs and permit certain exports to power plants at safeguarded nuclear facilities.

Building on what he called "the strengthened nonproliferation commitments" undertaken under the NSSP initiative, Bush promised to remove several Indian organizations from the Department of Commerce's Entity List. Shipments of commodities from the United States to those entities on the list are forbidden without the issuance of a validated license from the Commerce Department.

Prime Minister Singh said that India would reciprocally agree that it would be ready to assume the same responsibilities and practices and acquire the same benefits and advantages as other leading countries with advanced nuclear technology, such as the United States.

These responsibilities and practices consist of identifying and separating civilian and military nuclear facilities and programs in a phased manner and filing a declaration regarding its civilian facilities with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The Prime Minister agreed to refrain from transfer of uranium enrichment and reprocessing technologies to countries that do not have them and to support international efforts to limit their spread.

Singh said he would secure nuclear materials and technology through comprehensive export control legislation and through harmonization and adherence to Missile Technology Control Regime and Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines.

The two leaders agreed to establish a working group to undertake on a phased basis in the months ahead the necessary actions mentioned above to fulfill these commitments. They agreed to review this progress when the President visits India in 2006.

President Bush and Prime Minister Singh reiterated their commitment that their countries would play a leading role in international efforts to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical, biological and radiological weapons.


-------- japan

Hiroshima - A thriving city ... then only ashes

Sixty years ago, on August 6 1945, the first nuclear bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. One of the first western journalists on the scene, John Hersey recorded the experiences of six survivors whose lives were shattered in an instant. His account, published in a special issue of the New Yorker, shook the world. Here we republish an edited version

Wednesday July 20, 2005
Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5243127-111784,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5243187-111784,00.html

At exactly 8.15am, on August 6 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.

At that same moment, Dr Masakazu Fujii was settling down cross-legged to read as newspaper on the porch of his private hospital, overhanging one of the seven deltaic rivers which divide Hiroshima. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor's widow, stood by the window of her kitchen, watching a neighbor tearing down his house because it lay in the path of an air-raid-defence fire lane. Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a German priest of the Society of Jesus, reclined in his underwear on a cot on the top floor of his order's three-story mission house, reading a Jesuit magazine. Dr Terufumi Sasaki, a young member of the surgical staff of the city's large, modern Red Cross Hospital (no relation to Miss Sasaki), walked along one of the hospital corridors with a blood specimen in his hand. And the Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church, paused at the door of a rich man's house in Koi, the city's western suburb, and prepared to unload a handcart full of things he had evacuated from town in fear of the massive B-29 raid which everyone expected Hiroshima to suffer.

A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. Later, they wondered why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counted many small items of chance or volition - a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of the next - that spared him. And afterwards each knew that, in the act of survival, he had lived a dozen lives and had seen more death than he ever thought he would see.

At the time, none of them knew anything. Then a tremendous flash of light cut across the sky. Reverend Tanimoto has a distinct recollection that it travelled from east to west, from the city toward the hills. It seemed a sheet of sun. Both he and his friend Mr Matsuo reacted in terror - they had time to react for they were 3,500 yards, or two miles, from the centre of the explosion. Matsuo dashed up the front steps into the house and dived among the bedrolls and buried himself there. Reverend Tanimoto took four or five steps and threw himself between two big rocks in the garden. He bellied up hard against one of them. As his face was against the stone, he did not see what happened. He felt a sudden pressure, and then splinters and pieces of board and fragments of tile fell on him. He heard no roar. (Almost no one in Hiroshima recalls hearing any noise of the bomb.)

When he dared, Reverend Tanimoto raised his head and saw that the rich man's house had collapsed. He thought a bomb had fallen directly on it. Such clouds of dust had risen that there was a sort of twilight around. In panic, not thinking for the moment of Matsuo under the ruins, he dashed out into the street. In the street, the first thing he saw was a squad of soldiers who had been burrowing into the hillside opposite, making one of the thousands of dugouts in which the Japanese apparently intended to resist invasion, hill by hill, life for life. The soldiers were coming out of the hole, where they should have been safe, and blood was running from their heads, chests, and backs. They were silent and dazed. Under what seemed to be a local dust cloud, the day grew darker and darker.

Hatsuyo Nakamura had not had an easy time. Her husband, Isawa, had gone into the army just after the youngest of her three children, Myeko, was born, and she had heard nothing from or of him for a long time, until, on March 5 1942, she received a seven-word telegram: "Isawa died an honorable death at Singapore." Isawa had been a not particularly prosperous tailor, and his only capital was a Sankoku sewing machine. After his death, Nakamura got out the machine and began to take in piecework herself, and since then had supported the children, but poorly, by sewing.

As Nakamura stood in her kitchen watching her neighbour, everything flashed whiter than any white she had ever seen. She did not notice what happened to the man next door; the reflex of a mother set her in motion toward her children. She had taken a single step (the house was 1,350 yards, or three-quarters of a mile, from the centre of the explosion) when something picked her up and she seemed to fly into the next room over the raised sleeping platform, pursued by parts of her house.

Timbers fell around her as she landed, and a shower of tiles pommelled her; everything became dark, for she was buried. The debris did not cover her deeply. She rose up and freed herself. She heard a child cry, "Mother, help me!" and saw Myeko, the five-year-old, buried up to her breast and unable to move. As Nakamura started frantically to claw her way toward the child, she could see or hear nothing of her other children.

Dr Fujii sat down cross-legged in his underwear on the spotless matting of the porch, put on his glasses, and started reading the Osaka Asahi. He liked to read the Osaka news because his wife was there. He saw the flash. To him - faced away from the centre and looking at his paper - it seemed a brilliant yellow. Startled, he began to rise to his feet. In that moment (he was 1,550 yards from the centre), the hospital leaned behind his rising and, with a terrible ripping noise, toppled into the river. The doctor, still in the act of getting to his feet, was thrown forward and around and over; he was buffeted and gripped; he lost track of everything, because things were so speeded up; he felt the water.

Dr Fujii hardly had time to think that he was dying before he realized that he was alive, squeezed tightly by two long timbers in a V across his chest, like a morsel suspended between two huge chopsticks - held upright, so that he could not move, with his head miraculously above water and his torso and legs in it. The remains of his hospital were all around him in a mad assortment of splintered lumber and materials for the relief of pain. His left shoulder hurt terribly. His glasses were gone.

Father Kleinsorge breakfasted with the other Fathers on substitute coffee and ration bread. The Fathers sat and talked awhile, until, at eight, they heard the all-clear from an earlier air-raid alarm.

They went then to various parts of the building. Father Schiffer retired to his room to do some writing. Father Cieslik sat in his room in a straight chair with a pillow over his stomach to ease his [diarrhoea] pain, and read. Father Superior LaSalle stood at the window of his room, thinking. Father Kleinsorge went up to a room on the third floor, took off his clothes except his underwear, and stretched out on a cot and began reading his Stimmen der Zeit.

After the terrible flash - which, Father Kleinsorge later realised, reminded him of something he had read as a boy about a large meteor colliding with the earth - he had time (since he was 1,400 yards from the centre) for one thought: a bomb has fallen directly on us. Then, for a few seconds or minutes, he went out of his mind.

Father Kleinsorge never knew how he got out of the house. The next things he was conscious of were that he was wandering around the mission's vegetable garden in his underwear, bleeding slightly from small cuts along his left flank; that all the buildings round about had fallen down except the Jesuits' mission house, which had long before been double braced against earthquakes; that the day had turned dark; and that Murata-san, the house keeper, was nearby, crying over and over," Shu Jesusu, awaremi tamai! Our Lord Jesus, have pity on us!"

Dr Sasaki caught a streetcar at once on his way to work that morning. (He later calculated that if he had taken his customary train that morning, and if he had had to wait a few minutes for the streetcar, as often happened, he would have been close to the centre at the time of the explosion and would surely have perished.) He arrived at the hospital at 7.40 and reported to the chief surgeon. A few minutes later, he went to a room on the first floor and drew blood from the arm of a man in order to perform a Wassermann test. The laboratory containing the incubators for the test was on the third floor. With the blood specimen in his left hand, he started along the main corridor on his way toward the stairs. He was one step beyond an open window when the light of the bomb was reflected, like a gigantic photographic flash, in the corridor. He ducked down on one knee and said to himself, as only a Japanese person would, " Sasaki, gambare! Be brave!" Just then (the building was 1,650 yards from the centre), the blast ripped through the hospital. The glasses he was wearing flew off his face; the bottle of blood crashed against one wall; his Japanese slippers zipped out from under his feet - but otherwise, thanks to where he stood, he was untouched.

Dr Sasaki shouted the name of the chief surgeon and rushed around to the man's office and found him terribly cut by glass. The hospital was in horrible confusion: heavy partitions and ceilings had fallen on patients, beds had overturned, windows had blown in and cut people, blood was spattered on the walls and floors, instruments were everywhere, many of the patients were running about screaming, many more lay dead.

Dr Sasaki believed that the enemy had hit the building. He got bandages and began to bind the wounds of those inside the hospital. Outside, all over Hiroshima, maimed and dying citizens turned their unsteady steps toward the Red Cross Hospital to begin an invasion that was to make Dr Sasaki forget his private nightmare for a long, long time.

Toshiko Sasaki went back to her office and sat down at her desk. Behind her were a couple of tall bookcases containing all the books of the factory library, which the personnel department had organised. She settled herself at her desk, put some things in a drawer, and shifted papers. She thought that before she began to make entries in her lists of new employees, discharges and departures for the army, she would chat for a moment with the girl at her right. Just as she turned her head away from the windows, the room was filled with a blinding light. She was paralysed by fear, fixed still in her chair for a long moment (the plant was 1,600 yards from the centre).

Everything fell, and Sasaki lost consciousness. The ceiling dropped suddenly and the wooden floor above collapsed in splinters and the people up there came down and the roof above them gave way; but principally, the bookcases right behind her swooped forward and the contents threw her down, with her left leg horribly twisted and breaking underneath her. There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.

Immediately after the explosion, the Reverend Tanimoto, having run wildly out of the Matsui estate and having looked in wonderment at the bloody soldiers at the mouth of the dugout they had been digging, attached himself sympathetically to an old lady who was walking along in a daze, holding her head with her left hand, supporting a small boy of three or four on her back with her right, and crying, "I'm hurt! I'm hurt! I'm hurt!" Tanimoto transferred the child to his own back and led the woman by the hand down the street, which was darkened by what seemed to be a local column of dust. He took the woman to a grammar school not far away that had previously been designated for use as a temporary hospital in case of emergency. By this solicitous behaviour, Reverend Tanimoto at once got rid of his terror.

At the school, he was much surprised to see glass all over the floor and 50 or 60 injured people already waiting to be treated. He reflected that, although the all-clear had sounded and he had heard no planes, several bombs must have been dropped. He thought of a hillock in the rich man's garden from which he could get a view of the whole of Koi - of the whole of Hiroshima, for that matter - and he ran back up to the estate.

From the mound, Reverend Tanimoto saw an astonishing panorama. Not just a patch of Koi, as he had expected, but as much of Hiroshima as he could see through the clouded air was giving off a thick, dreadful miasma. Clumps of smoke, near and far, had begun to push up through the general dust. He wondered how such extensive damage could have been dealt out of a silent sky; even a few planes far up would have been audible.

Houses nearby were burning, and when huge drops of water the size of marbles began to fall, he half-thought that they must be coming from the hoses of firemen fighting the blazes. (They were actually drops of condensed moisture falling from the turbulent tower of dust, heat and fission fragments that had already risen miles into the sky above Hiroshima.) Reverend Tanimoto thought of his wife and baby, his church, his home, his parishioners, all of them down in that awful murk. Once more he began to run in fear - toward the city.

Hatsuyo Nakamura, the tailor's widow, having struggled up from under the ruins of her house after the explosion, and seeing Myeko, the youngest of her three children, buried breast-deep and unable to move, crawled across the debris, hauled at timbers and flung tiles aside, in a hurried effort to free the child. Then, from what seemed to be caverns far below, she heard two small voices crying, "Tasukete! Tasukete! Help! Help!"

She called the names of her 10-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter: "Toshio! Yaeko!" The voices from below answered.

Nakamura abandoned Myeko, who at least could breathe, and in a frenzy made the wreckage fly above the crying voices. The children had been sleeping nearly 10 feet apart, but now their voices seemed to come from the same place. Toshio, the boy, apparently had some freedom to move, because she could feel him undermining the pile of wood and tiles as she worked from above. At last she saw his head, and she hastily pulled him out by it. A mosquito net was wound intricately, as if it had been carefully wrapped, around his feet. He said he had been blown right across the room and had been on top of his sister Yaeko under the wreckage. She now said, from underneath, that she could not move, because there was something on her legs. With a bit more digging, Nakamura cleared a hole above the child and began to pull her arm. " Itai! It hurts!" Yaeko cried. Nakamura shouted, "There's no time now to say whether it hurts or not," and yanked her whimpering daughter up. Then she freed Myeko. The children were filthy and bruised, but none of them had a single cut or scratch.

Nakamura took the children out into the street. They had nothing on but underpants, and, although the day was very hot, she worried rather confusedly about their being cold, so she went back into the wreckage and burrowed underneath and found a bundle of clothes she had packed for an emergency, and she dressed them in pants, blouses, shoes, padded cotton air-raid helmets called bokuzuki, and even, irrationally, overcoats. The children were silent, except for the five-year-old, Myeko, who kept asking questions: "Why is it night already? Why did our house fall down? What happened?" Nakamura, who did not know what had happened, looked around and saw through the darkness that all the houses in her neighborhood had collapsed. The house next door, which its owner had been tearing down to make way for a fire lane, was now very thoroughly, if crudely, torn down; its owner, who had been sacrificing his home for the community's safety, lay dead.

A nervous neighbor, Mrs Hataya, called to Nakamura to run away with her to the woods in Asano Park - an estate, by the Kyo River not far off, belonging to the wealthy Asano family. So Nakamura started out for Asano Park with her children and Mrs Hataya, and she carried her rucksack of emergency clothing, a blanket, an umbrella, and a suitcase of things she had cached in her air-raid shelter.

Under many ruins, as they hurried along, they heard muffled screams for help. The only building they saw standing on their way to Asano Park was the Jesuit mission house, alongside the Catholic kindergarten to which Nakamura had sent Myeko for a time. As they passed it, she saw Father Kleinsorge, in bloody underwear, running out of the house with a small suitcase in his hand.

Right after the explosion, while Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge was wandering around in his underwear in the vegetable garden, Father Superior LaSalle came around the corner of the building in the darkness. His body, especially his back, was bloody; the flash had made him twist away from his window, and tiny pieces of glass had flown at him. Father Kleinsorge, still bewildered, managed to ask, "Where are the rest?" Just then, the two other priests living in the mission house appeared - Father Cieslik, unhurt, supporting Father Schiffer, who was covered with blood that spurted from a cut above his left ear and who was very pale. Father LaSalle told Father Cieslik to take Father Schiffer to a doctor before he bled to death, and suggested either Dr Kanda, who lived on the next corner, or Dr Fujii, a few streets away. The two men went out of the compound and up the street.

A public bath next door to the mission house had caught fire, but since the wind was southerly, the priests thought their house would be spared. Nevertheless, as a precaution, Father Kleinsorge went inside to fetch some things he wanted to save. He found his room in a state of weird and illogical confusion. A first-aid kit was hanging undisturbed on a hook on the wall, but his clothes, which had been on other hooks nearby, were nowhere to be seen. His desk was in splinters all over the room, but a mere papier-mché suitcase, which he had hidden under the desk, stood handle-side up, without a scratch on it, in the doorway of the room, where he could not miss it. Father Kleinsorge later came to regard this as a bit of providential interference, inasmuch as the suitcase contained his breviary, the account books for the whole diocese, and a considerable amount of paper money belonging to the mission, for which he was responsible. He ran out of the house and deposited the suitcase in the mission air-raid shelter.

At about this time, Father Cieslik and Father Schiffer, who was still spurting blood, came back and said that Dr Kanda's house was ruined and that fire blocked them from getting out of what they supposed to be the local circle of destruction to Dr Fujii's private hospital, on the bank of the Kyo River.

Dr Masakazu Fujii's hospital was no longer on the bank of the Kyo River; it was in the river. Dr Fujii was so stupefied and so tightly squeezed by the beam gripping his chest that he was unable to move at first, and he hung there about 20 minutes in the darkened morning. Then a thought which came to him - that soon the tide would be running in through the estuaries and his head would be submerged - inspired him to fearful activity; he wriggled and turned and exerted what strength he could (though his left arm, because of the pain in his shoulder, was useless), and before long he had freed himself from the vice. After a few moments' rest, he climbed onto the pile of timbers and, finding a long one that slanted up to the riverbank, he painfully shinnied up it.

Dr Fujii, who was in his underwear, was now soaking and dirty. His undershirt was torn, and blood ran down it from bad cuts on his chin and back. In this disarray, he walked out onto Kyo Bridge, beside which his hospital had stood. The bridge had not collapsed. He could see only fuzzily without his glasses, but he could see enough to be amazed at the number of houses that were down all around. On the bridge, he encountered a friend, a doctor named Machii, and asked in bewilderment, "What do you think it was?"

There had been no breeze earlier in the morning when Dr Fujii had walked to the railway station to see his friend off, but now brisk winds were blowing every which way; here on the bridge the wind was easterly. New fires were leaping up, and they spread quickly, and in a very short time terrible blasts of hot air and showers of cinders made it impossible to stand on the bridge any more. Dr Machii ran to the far side of the river and along a still unkindled street. Dr Fujii went down into the water under the bridge, where a score of people had already taken refuge, among them his servants, who had extricated themselves from the wreckage. From there, Dr Fujii saw a nurse hanging in the timbers of his hospital by her legs, and then another painfully pinned across the breast. He enlisted the help of some of the others under the bridge and freed both of them. He thought he heard the voice of his niece for a moment, but he could not find her; he never saw her again. Four of his nurses and the two patients in the hospital died, too. Dr Fujii went back into the water of the river and waited for the fire to subside.

The sole uninjured doctor on the Red Cross Hospital staff was Dr Sasaki. After the explosion, he hurried to a storeroom to fetch bandages. This room, like everything he had seen as he ran through the hospital, was chaotic - bottles of medicines thrown off shelves and broken, salves spattered on the walls, instruments strewn everywhere. He grabbed up some bandages and an unbroken bottle of Mercurochrome, hurried back to the chief surgeon and bandaged his cuts. Then he went out into the corridor and began patching up the wounded patients and the doctors and nurses there. He blundered so without his glasses that he took a pair off the face of a wounded nurse, and although they only approximately compensated for the errors of his vision, they were better than nothing.

Dr Sasaki worked without method, taking those who were nearest him first, and he noticed soon that the corridor seemed to be getting more and more crowded. Mixed in with the abrasions and lacerations which most people in the hospital had suffered, he began to find dreadful burns. He realized then that casualties were pouring in from outdoors. There were so many that he began to pass up the lightly wounded; he decided that all he could hope to do was to stop people from bleeding to death. Before long, patients lay and crouched on the floors of the wards and the laboratories and all the other rooms, and in the corridors, and on the stairs, and in the front hall, and on the stone front steps, and in the driveway and courtyard, and in the streets outside.

In a city of 245,000, nearly 100,000 people had been killed or doomed at one blow; 100,000 more were hurt. At least 10,000 of the wounded made their way to the best hospital in town, which was altogether unequal to such a trampling, since it had only 600 beds, and they had all been occupied. The people in the suffocating crowd inside the hospital wept and cried " Sensei! Doctor!" Many people were vomiting. Tugged here and there, bewildered by the numbers, staggered by so much raw flesh, Dr Sasaki lost all sense of profession and stopped working as a skilful surgeon and a sympathetic man; he became an automaton, mechanically wiping, daubing, winding, wiping, daubing, winding.

In what had been the personnel office of the East Asia Tin Works, Toshiko Sasaki lay doubled over, unconscious, under the tremendous pile of books and plaster and wood and corrugated iron. She was wholly unconscious (she later estimated) for about three hours. Her first sensation was of dreadful pain in her left leg. It was so black under the books and debris that the borderline between awareness and unconsciousness was fine; the pain seemed to come and go. At the moments when it was sharpest, she felt that her leg had been cut off somewhere below the knee. Later, she heard someone walking on top of the wreckage above her, and anguished voices spoke up, evidently from within the mess around her: "Please help! Get us out!"

Much later, several men came and dragged Sasaki out. Her left leg was not severed, but it was badly broken and cut and it hung askew below the knee. They took her out into a courtyard. It was raining. She sat on the ground in the rain. When the downpour increased, someone directed all the wounded people to take cover in the factory's air-raid shelters. "Come along," a torn-up woman said to her. "You can hop." But Sasaki could not move, and she just waited in the rain. Then a man propped up a large sheet of corrugated iron as a kind of lean-to, and took her in his arms and carried her to it. She was grateful until he brought two horribly wounded people - a woman with a whole breast sheared off and a man whose face was all raw from a burn - to share the simple shed with her. No one came back. The rain cleared and the cloudy afternoon was hot; before nightfall the three grotesques under the slanting piece of twisted iron began to smell quite bad.

Reverend Tanimoto, fearful for his family and church, was the only person making his way into the city; he met hundreds and hundreds who were fleeing, and every one of them seemed to be hurt in some way. The eyebrows of some were burned off and skin hung from their faces and hands. Others, because of pain, held their arms up as if carrying something in both hands. Some were vomiting as they walked. Many were naked or in shreds of clothing. On some undressed bodies, the burns had made patterns - of undershirt straps and suspenders and, on the skin of some women (since white repelled the heat from the bomb and dark clothes absorbed it and conducted it to the skin) the shapes of flowers they had had on their kimonos. Almost all had their heads bowed, looked straight ahead, were silent, and showed no expression whatever.

After crossing Koi Bridge and Kannon Bridge, having run the whole way, Reverend Tanimoto saw, as he approached the centre, that all the houses had been crushed and many were afire. So impressed was he by this time by the extent of the damage that he ran north two miles to Gion, a suburb in the foothills. At Gion, he bore toward the right bank of the main river, the Ota, and ran down it until he reached fire again. Near a large Shinto shrine, he came to more fire, and as he turned left to get around it, he met, by incredible luck, his wife. She was carrying their infant daughter. Reverend Tanimoto was now so emotionally worn out that nothing could surprise him. He did not embrace his wife; he simply said, "Oh, you are safe." She told him that she had been buried under the parsonage with the baby in her arms. The wreckage had pressed down on her, and the baby had cried. She saw a chink of light and, by reaching up with a hand, she worked the hole bigger, bit by bit. After about half an hour, she heard the crackling noise of wood burning. At last, the opening was big enough for her to push the baby out, and afterward she crawled out herself. She said she was now going out to Ushida. Tanimoto said he wanted to see his church and take care of the people of his neighbourhood association. They parted as casually - as bewildered - as they had met.

All day, people poured into Asano Park. Hatsuyo Nakamura and her children were among the first to arrive, and they settled in the bamboo grove near the river. They all felt terribly thirsty, and they drank from the river. At once they were nauseated and began vomiting, and they retched the whole day. Others were also nauseated; they all thought (probably because of the strong odour of ionisation, an "electric smell" given off by the bomb's fission) that they were sick from a gas the Americans had dropped. When Father Kleinsorge and the other priests came into the park, the Nakamuras were all sick and prostrate. A woman named Iwasaki, who lived in the neighborhood of the mission and who was sitting near the Nakamuras, got up and asked the priests if she should stay where she was or go with them. Father Kleinsorge said, "I hardly know where the safest place is." She stayed there, and later in the day, though she had no visible wounds or burns, she died.

When Reverend Tanimoto, with his basin still in his hand, reached the park, it was very crowded, and to distinguish the living from the dead was not easy, for most of the people lay still, with their eyes open. To Father Kleinsorge, the silence in the grove by the river, where hundreds of gruesomely wounded suffered together, was one of the most dreadful phenomena of his whole experience. No one wept, much less screamed in pain; no one complained; not even the children cried; very few people even spoke. And when Father Kleinsorge gave water to some whose faces had been almost blotted out by flash burns, they took their share and then raised themselves a little and bowed to him in thanks.

Early in the afternoon, the fire swept into the woods of Asano Park. The first Reverend Tanimoto knew of it was when he saw that a great number of people had moved toward the riverside. When he saw the fire, he shouted, "All the young men who are not badly hurt come with me!" Father Kleinsorge moved Father Schiffer and Father LaSalle close to the edge of the river and asked people there to get them across if the fire came too near, and then joined Reverend Tanimoto's volunteers. He sent some to look for buckets and basins and told others to beat the burning underbrush with their clothes; when utensils were at hand, he formed a bucket chain from one of the pools in the rock gardens. The team fought the fire for more than two hours, and gradually defeated the flames.

Just before dark, Reverend Tanimoto came across a 20-year-old girl, Mrs Kamai, the Tanimotos' next door neighbour. She was crouching on the ground with the body of her infant daughter in her arms. The baby had evidently been dead all day. She jumped up when she saw Tanimoto and said, "Would you please try to locate my husband?"

Reverend Tanimoto knew that her husband had been inducted into the army just the day before. He knew he hadn't a chance of finding Mrs Kamai's husband, but he wanted to humour her. "I'll try," he said.

"You've got to find him," she said. "He loved our baby so much. I want him to see her once more."

Dr Fujii lay in dreadful pain throughout the night on the floor of his family's roofless house on the edge the city. By the light of a lantern, he had examined himself and found his left clavicle fractured; multiple abrasions and lacerations of face and body including deep cuts on the chin, back, and legs; extensive contusions on chest and trunk; a couple of ribs possibly fractured. Had he not been so badly hurt, he might have been at Asano Park, assisting the wounded.

By nightfall, 10,000 victims of the explosion had invaded the Red Cross Hospital, and Dr Sasaki, worn out, was moving aimlessly and dully up and down the stinking corridors with wads of bandage and bottles of mercurochrome, still wearing the glasses he had taken from the wounded nurse, binding up the worst cuts as he came to them. Other doctors were putting compresses of saline solution on the worst burns. That was all they could do. After dark, they worked by the light of the city's fires and by candles the 10 remaining nurses held for them.

Dr Sasaki had not looked outside the hospital all day; the scene inside was so terrible and so compelling that it had not occurred to him to ask any questions about what had happened beyond the windows and doors. Patients were dying by the hundreds, but there was nobody to carry away the corpses. Some of the hospital staff distributed biscuits and rice balls, but the charnelhouse smell was so strong that few were hungry.

By three o'clock the next morning, after 19 straight hours of his gruesome work, Dr Sasaki was incapable of dressing another wound. He and some other survivors of the hospital staff got straw mats and hurried around behind the hospital and lay down in hiding to snatch some sleep. But within an hour wounded people had found them. A complaining circle formed around them: "Doctors! Help us! How can you sleep?" Dr Sasaki got up again and went back to work.

Word went around among the staff that there must have been something peculiar about the great bomb, because on the second day the vice-chief of the hospital went down in the basement to the vault where the X-ray plates were stored and found the whole stock exposed as they lay.

About a week after the bomb dropped, a vague, incomprehensible rumour reached Hiroshima that the city had been destroyed by the energy released when atoms were somehow split in two. No one understood the idea or put much credence in it. Already, though, Japanese physicists had entered the city with Lauritsen electroscopes and Neher electrometers; they understood the idea all too well.

In mid-August, not many days after President Truman's disclosure of the type of bomb that had been dropped, the scientists started to make investigations. The first thing they did was roughly to determine a centre by observing the side on which telephone poles all around the heart of the town were scorched. The scientists noticed that the flash of the bomb had discoloured concrete to a light reddish tint, had scaled off the surface of granite, and had scorched certain other types of building material, and that consequently the bomb had, in some places, left prints of the shadows that had been cast by its light. (A few vague human silhouettes were found.) After examining other significant ashes and melted bits, they concluded that the bomb's heat on the ground at the centre must have been 6,000C.

On August 18, 12 days after the bomb burst, Father Kleinsorge set out on foot for Hiroshima from the Novitiate with his papier-mâché suitcase in his hand. He had begun to think that this bag, in which he had kept his valuables, had a talismanic quality. The whole way, Father Kleinsorge was oppressed by the thought that all the damage he saw had been done in one instant by one bomb. By the time he reached the centre of town, the day had become very hot. The magical suitcase, though now empty, suddenly seemed terribly heavy. He felt excruciatingly tired. The next morning the rector, who had examined Father Kleinsorge's apparently negligible but unhealed cuts daily, asked in surprise, "What have you done to your wounds?" They had suddenly opened wider and were swollen and inflamed.

As she dressed on the morning of August 20, in the home of her sister-in-law in Kabe, not far from Nagatsuka, Nakamura, who had suffered no cuts or burns at all, though she had been rather nauseated, began fixing her hair and noticed, after one stroke, that her comb carried with it a whole handful of hair; the second time, the same thing happened, so she stopped combing at once. But in the next three or four days, her hair kept falling out of its own accord, until she was quite bald. She began living indoors, practically in hiding. On August 26, both she and her younger daughter, Myeko, woke up feeling extremely weak and tired, and they stayed on their bedrolls. Her son and other daughter, who had shared every experience with her during and after the bombing, felt fine. At about the same time, Tanimoto fell suddenly ill with a general malaise, weariness, and feverishness. These four did not realise it, but they were coming down with the strange, capricious disease which came to be known as radiation sickness.

Dr Sasaki and his colleagues at the Red Cross Hospital watched the unprecedented disease unfold and at last evolved a theory about its nature. It had, they decided, three stages. The first stage had been all over before the doctors even knew they were dealing with a new sickness; it was the direct reaction to the bombardment of the body, at the moment when the bomb went off, by neutrons, beta particles, and gamma rays. The apparently uninjured people who had died so mysteriously in the first few hours or days had succumbed in this first stage. It killed 95% of the people within a half mile of the centre. The rays simply destroyed body cells - caused their nuclei to degenerate and broke their walls.

The second stage set in 10 or 15 days after the bombing. Its first symptom was loss of hair. Diarrhoea and fever, which in some cases went as high as 106C, came next. Twenty-five to 30 days after the explosion, blood disorders appeared: gums bled, the white-blood-cell count dropped sharply, and petechiae (bleeding from broken blood vessels) appeared on the skin.

The two key symptoms, on which the doctors came to base their prognosis, were fever and the lowered white corpuscle count. If fever remained steady and high, the patient's chances for survival were poor. The white count almost always dropped below 4,000; a patient whose count fell below 1,000 had little hope of living. Toward the end of the second stage, if the patient survived, anaemia, or a drop in the red blood count, also set in. The third stage was the reaction that came when the body struggled to compensate for its ills - when, for instance, the white count not only returned to normal but increased to much higher than normal levels. In this stage, many patients died of complications, such as infections in the chest cavity.

Most burns healed with deep layers of pink, rubbery scar tissue, known as keloid tumours. The duration of the disease varied, depending on the patient's constitution and the amount of radiation he had received. Some victims recovered in a week; with others the disease dragged on for months. As the symptoms revealed themselves, it became clear that many of them resembled the effects of overdoses of X-ray, and the doctors based their therapy on that likeness. They gave victims liver extract, blood transfusions, and vitamins, especially B1.

Yet the disease had some baffling quirks. Not all the patients exhibited all the main symptoms. People who suffered flash burns were protected, to a considerable extent, from radiation sickness. Those who had lain quietly for days or even hours after the bombing were much less liable to get sick than those who had been active. Gray hair seldom fell out. And as if nature were protecting man against his own ingenuity, the reproductive processes were affected for a time; men became sterile, women had miscarriages, menstruation stopped.

A year after the bomb was dropped, Toshiko Sasaki was a cripple; Hatsuyou Nakamura was destitute; Father Kleinsorge was back in hospital; Dr Sasaki was incapable of the work he once could do; Dr Fujii had lost the 30-room hospital it took him many years to acquire, and had no prospects of rebuilding it. Reverend Tanimoto's church had been ruined and he no longer had his exceptional vitality. The lives of these six people, who were among the luckiest in Hiroshima, would never be the same.

A surprising number of the people of Hiroshima remained more or less indifferent about the ethics of using the bomb. Possibly they were too terrified by it to want to think about it at all. Not many of them even bothered to find out much about what it was like. Hatsuyou Nakamura's conception of it - and awe of it - was typical. "The atom bomb," she would say when asked about it, "is the size of a matchbox. The heat of it is six thousand times that of the sun. It exploded in the air. There is some radium in it. I don't know just how it works, but when the radium is put together, it explodes." As for the use of the bomb, she would say, "It was war and we had to expect it." And then she would add, "Shikata ga nai," a Japanese expression as common as, and corresponding to, the Russian word "nichevo": "It can't be helped. Oh, well. Too bad." Dr Fujii said approximately the same thing about the use of the bomb to Father Kleinsorge one evening, in German: "Da ist nichts zu machen. There's nothing to be done about it."

Many citizens of Hiroshima, however, continued to feel a hatred for the Americans which nothing could possibly erase. "I see," Dr Sasaki once said, "that they are holding a trial for was criminals in Tokyo just now. I think they ought to try the men who decided to use the bomb and they should hang them all."

Father Kleinsorge and the other German Jesuit priests, who, as foreigners, could be expected to take a relatively detached view, often discussed the ethics of using the bomb. One of them, Father Siemes, who was out at Nagatsuka at the time of the attack, wrote in a report to the Holy See in Rome: "Some of us consider the bomb in the same category as poison gas and were against its use on a civilian population. Others were of the opinion that in total war, as carried on in Japan, there was no difference between civilians and soldiers, and that the bomb itself was an effective force tending to end the bloodshed, warning Japan to surrender and thus to avoid total destruction. It seems logical that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of war against civilians. The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceeds whatever good might result? When will our moralists give us a clear answer to this question?"

It would be impossible to say what horrors were embedded in the minds of the children who lived through the day of the bombing in Hiroshima. On the surface, their recollections, months after the disaster, were of an exhilarating adventure. Toshio Nakamura, who was 10 at the time of the bombing, was soon able to talk freely, even gaily, about the experience, and a few weeks before the anniversary he wrote the following matter-of-fact essay for his teacher at Noboricho primary school: "The day before the bomb, I went for a swim. In the morning, I was eating peanuts. I saw a light. I was knocked to little sister's sleeping place. When we were saved, I could only see as far as the tram. My mother and I started to pack our things. The neighbours were walking around burned and bleeding. Hetaya-san told me to run away with her. I said I wanted to wait for my mother. We went to the park. A whirlwind came. At night a gas tank burned and I saw the reflection in the river. We stayed in the park on night. Next day I went to Taiko bridge and met my girl friends Kikuki and Murakami. They were looking for their mothers. But Kikuki's mother was wounded and Murakami's mother, alas was dead."

John Hersey

John Hersey was born in China in 1914, the son of American missionaries who moved back to the US when he was 10. After graduating from Yale University, he became a journalist and worked as a far east correspondent for Time magazine.

During the second world war, he worked as a war reporter for Time, Life and the New Yorker. His experiences following the US campaign in Sicily and Italy fed into a novel, A Bell for Adano, which became a bestseller and won the Pulitzer prize in 1945.

By 1944 Hersey was covering the war in the Pacific. Among his many articles was an account of the heroism of a young commander whose motor torpedo boat was sunk near the Solomon Islands; the lieutenant's name was John F Kennedy.

Hersey was one of the first western journalists to arrive in Hiroshima after it was razed by the atom bomb. He went back in May 1946 with a commission from New Yorker editor William Shawn to write a piece about the human impact of the city's destruction. "Hiroshima" turned out not only to be Hersey's best-known work, but arguably, as the New Yorker suggested in its obituary of the writer, "the most famous magazine article ever published".

In the 1950s, Hersey became a speechwriter for Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, and later a professor at Yale. In 1985 he revisited Hiroshima for the New Yorker; that article is now included as a postscript to the book. Hersey retired to Key West, Florida, where he died in 1993. He was survived by his wife, Barbara, and their five children.

· Hiroshima, by John Hersey, is published by Penguin £7.99.



-------- korea

North Korea has nuclear bomb, would-be defector claims: report

Wed Jul 20, 1:26 PM ET (AFP)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050720/wl_afp/nkoreaskoreadefect_050720172646

SEOUL - A defector claiming to have been in the North Korean parliament said the communist state has produced a nuclear bomb and attempted to sell missiles to Taiwan, a South Korean magazine reported.

South Korean intelligence authorities declined to comment on the report in the Monthly Chosun, which said that the defector, a man believed to be in his 70s using the alias Kim Il-Do, defected to the South in May.

"North Korea has built a one-tonne nuclear bomb by using four kilogrammes of plutonium," he was quoted as telling the National Intelligence Service (NIS), South Korea's spy agency.

The North was now seeking to miniaturize the bomb to make it more reliable as a weapon, he reportedly said. The man claimed he had been in the North's parliament and had worked for the Marine Industrial Institute.

"We interview escapees from the North to verify their IDs and check their motives but we don't comment on any other specifics about them," an NIS spokesman said.

But a spokesman for North Korea's foreign ministry dismissed the report, according to Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

"The fiction is a sheer fabrication as there is no such institution in the north as the marine industrial institute to which he allegedly belonged. The statement allegedly made by him was full of lies," the spokesman said.

The United States says North Korea may possess one or two crude nuclear bombs and may have reprocessed enough plutonium for half-a-dozen more, from spent fuel rods at its Yongbyon nuclear complex.

More than 4,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since 1953. The number has shot up in the past four years, with more than 1,000 having reached South Korea last year.

Many defectors have arrived in South Korea, mostly via China, to escape famine caused by natural disasters and failed economic policies in their Stalinist homeland.

Professor Kim Young-Soo of Sogang University, an expert on defectors from the North, said he could not confirm the existence of the defector.

"However, the allegation that North Korea has produced a one-tonne nuclear bomb sounds plausible," he said.

A new round of six-nation talks aimed at bringing about the dismantling of North Korea's nuclear programs is due to be held in Beijing next week.

----

N. Korea expects little progress at nuclear talks

7/20/2005 11:44 AM (AP)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-07-20-korea-nukes_x.htm

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Wednesday it expected little progress at revived nuclear disarmament talks next week, criticizing efforts to raise the issues of Pyongyang's abductions of Japanese citizens and alleged human rights abuses.

But the U.S. ambassador to Japan said the six-party talks starting Tuesday in Beijing should focus on the nuclear question, adding that Pyongyang must agree to give up its weapons programs before other disputes can be addressed.

"If that issue is not resolved, then it seems that nothing else is achievable," Ambassador Thomas Schieffer told reporters at the Japan Press Club. "Nuclear weapons is not the end of the process, but it certainly is the beginning."

The comments came a day after a Washington conference funded by the U.S. Congress focused on human rights abuses in the communist North and after Japanese officials said they wanted to discuss the abductions on the sidelines of the talks.

"Such disturbing actions as slandering ... a dialogue partner cannot help the talks progress into a positive direction and will only bring conflict and a breakdown in the end," the North's official Korean Central News Agency said in a commentary.

The U.S. and Japanese actions "make it hard for us and other related countries to be optimistic about substantial progress" at the talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear ambitions, KCNA said.

The Bush administration has maintained a low profile toward the Washington conference, not wanting to give Pyongyang any excuse to cancel its participation in the nuclear talks set to resume Tuesday after a 13-month hiatus.

South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said negotiating partners — the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia — should focus on resolving the international standoff over the North's nuclear program and refrain from raising other issues at the table.

The goal of the negotiations is "denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and dismantling the North's nuclear weapons program," Chung said in an interview in Wednesday's Hankyoreh newspaper. "Issues of North Korea's human rights and Japanese abductions ... should not be on the agenda."

The North's KCNA said in a separate commentary Wednesday that Pyongyang would refuse to deal with Tokyo at the nuclear talks.

"Japan has so far stood in the way" of the disarmament negotiations, it said. "Japan has busied itself to divert the orientation and atmosphere for the six-party talks into those serving its mean interests."

North Korea has admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s and let five of them return to Japan, saying the other eight died. Japan, however, is demanding proof of the deaths and information on other cases of missing Japanese.

"There's no point in just having (the nuclear talks) drag on. I want this meeting to be held aggressively in order to achieve some results," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said later Wednesday.

Schieffer said the United States supported Japan's demands for a resolution of the abductions. Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution urging the American government to add the status of Japanese and South Koreans kidnapped by North Korea to the agenda.

The North Korean nuclear crisis erupted in late 2002, when U.S. officials accused the North of running a secret uranium enrichment program. In February, the North claimed it had nuclear weapons and has since taken steps to harvest more weapons-grade plutonium.

That claim has not been verified, but U.S. intelligence and other estimates say the North has as many as six atomic bombs.

South Korea has pressed for the revived nuclear talks' format to be expanded, allowing an open-ended meeting that could go on for weeks, with breaks, until a resolution is reached. South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday five countries — with the exception of North Korea — had reached a broad consensus on a possible change to the format to be discussed further before the talks convene. 



-------- mideast

Maged George: Egypt free of nuclear waste

Egypt, Local, 7/20/2005

http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/050720/2005072027.html

Minister of State for Environment Affairs Maged George confirmed that Egypt is free of nuclear waste, noting that no nuclear or radioactive waste has been buried in the Egyptian soil.

He added that his ministry has issued a group of instructions on how to deal safely with all the dangerous materials whether in storing or in the different usages. He clarified that his ministry has a tight censorship on the various outlets for banning the entry of the perilous materials to the Egyptian territories.




-------- missile defense

Canada Requested NORAD "Missile Defense" Role

Contrary to popular mythology, including in the Canadian peace movement, the Liberal government and Canadian state are already deeply involved in continental missile defence.

Canada Requested "Missile Defense" Role in NORAD

By Richard Sanders 20.07.2005 11:32
Editor, Press for Conversion! and coordinator, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade -  http://coat.ncf.ca

http://ottawa.indymedia.ca/en/2005/07/1253.shtml

On August 5, 2004, the Canadian government initiated a change to the NORAD agreement in order to add a crucial "missile defense" task to the Canada-U.S. military alliance. The U.S. promptly agreed to Canada's kind offer to share in the important "aerospace warning" function that is required for the tracking and targeting functions of America's "missile defense" weapons systems.

The process by which Canada attained its new "missile defense" job within NORAD, was facilitated by an exchange of bureaucratic letters between Canada's Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Kergin, and the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell.1 Kergin's letter reminded Powell of a previous round of official notes, dated January 15, 2004, between Canadian Defence Minister, David Pratt, and U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

Pratt's letter to Rumsfeld, which had been sent one short month after Paul Martin became Prime Minister, presented the Canadian government's frank proposal on how it could get more deeply ensconced in "missile defense" work by creating an "overall framework for co-operation."

Here is part of Pratt's up-front letter to the Powell:

"A key focus of our co-operation in missile defence should be through NORAD.... NORAD's long-standing global threat warning and attack assessment role can make an important contribution to the execution of the missile defence mission. We believe that our two nations should move on an expedited basis to amend the NORAD agreement to take into account NORAD's contribution to the missile defence mission.

It is our intent to negotiate in the coming months a Missile Defence Framework Memorandum of Understanding with the United States with the objective of including Canada as a participant in the current U.S. missile defence program and expanding and enhancing information exchange. We believe this should provide a mutually beneficial framework to ensure the closest possible involvement and insight for Canada, both government and industry, in the U.S. missile defence program. Such an MOU could also help pave the way for increased government-to-government and industry-to-industry co-operation on missile defence that we should seek to foster between our countries.

I propose that our staffs work together over the coming months to identify opportunities and mechanisms for such consultations and Canada's contributions....

We should continue to explore appropriate technical, political and financial arrangements related to the potential defence of Canada and the United States against missile attack, within the framework of our laws. Our staffs should discuss ways in which Canada could contribute to this effort."2 (Emphasis added)

It is important to highlight the Canadian government's position that NORAD should be "a key focus" of Canada's "co-operation in missile defence." In particular, Canada wanted NORAD's "long-standing global threat warning and attack assessment role" to be used in "the execution of the missile defence mission." This, it turns out, is exactly what Canada's government achieved seven months later, in August 2004, upon successfully amending the NORAD treaty.

Pratt's letter also reveals that Canadian government yearnings for increased "missile defense" responsibilities were not limited to a military-to-military role within NORAD. Although this alliance of the two countries' institutions of war is a logical structure within which this important Canada-U.S. partnership is growing, Pratt also said that Canada wanted "the closest possible involvement and insight for Canada, both government and industry, in the U.S. missile defence program." He then mentioned Canada's desire for "increased government-to-government and industry-to-industry co-operation on missile defence."

This sense that Canada's intent was to enlarge upon already-existing avenues of bilateral cooperation on "missile defense," besides those conducted by their militaries, is also conveyed when Pratt says that Canada wanted to "continue to explore appropriate technical, political and financial arrangements" to assist the highly-contentious U.S.-led weapons development program.

In his very brief, officious reply, Rumsfeld said: "I agree that we should seek to expand our cooperation in the area of missile defense."3 (Emphasis added) Rumsfeld's letter was deliberately worded to denote the obvious reality, also conveyed in Pratt's letter, that the two countries were already cooperating on "missile defense."

Some seven months after the Pratt-Rumsfeld exchange, a considerable amount of heated public debate on "missile defense" had passed under the bridge in Canada. Despite strong, widespread public opposition to "missile defense," Canada's Ambassador Kergin requested in writing that the U.S. agree to the addition of "missile defense" warning functions to NORAD. This letter was, however, much cagier about the extent to which Canada and the U.S. were already partnered on "missile defense." Kergin phraseology tried to maintain the Liberal government's carefully-honed, public deceit that the process being initiated would merely mark the beginning of Canadian membership in the notorious U.S. weapons program. Kergin even tried his hand at rewriting history by pretending to quote from Pratt's letter to Rumsfeld in January. Kergin said:

"I also make reference to the exchange of letters between...Pratt and...Rumsfeld on January 15, 2004, in which they stated that... our two Governments should explore extending our partnership to include cooperation in missile defence."4 (Emphasis added)

In fact, as seen in quotations above, the January 15 letters clearly spoke of "increased...co-operation on missile defence" (Pratt) and "expand our cooperation in the area of missile defense" (Powell).

Kergin then said, in typically-obscurantist bureaucratese, that:

"our two governments agree that NORAD's aerospace warning mission for North America also shall include aerospace warning, as defined in NORAD's Terms of Reference, in support of the designated commands responsible for missile defence of North America."5

This legalistic statement, when translated into plain English, expresses Canada's agreement to partake in "missile defense" by expanding NORAD's crucial "aerospace warning" function. Then, in the very next sentence, Canada's ambassador to the U.S. writes an extremely abstruse line: "This decision is independent of any discussion on possible cooperation on missile defence."6

What? How are we to interpret such a barefaced, self-contradiction as this? Here we have a formal letter specifically designed to modify a major bilateral military treaty by adding "missile defense" functions to their joint efforts. And yet, although the entire purpose of Kergin's letter is therefore clearly intended to state Canada's commitment to participate in "missile defense," it simultaneously makes a totally incongruous assertion. At first glance, this sentence seems to be a caveat to convey the following meaning:

"This does not mean that Canada has yet decided to cooperate with the U.S. on missile defense."

Kergin's equivocal line was probably crafted for the sole purpose of confusing and deceiving Canadian opponents of the "missile defense" weapons program. It certainly helped. During the seven months since Pratt had crafted his relatively-forthright letter to Rumsfeld back in the early days of Martin's rule, the political climate had clearly changed. By the time Kergin was finalising the Canadian government's commitment to "missile defense" through NORAD, the Liberal's had clearly decided that they should work harder to conceal the extent of their commitment to America's divisive "missile defense" program.

However, if one reads Kergin's enigmatic line very carefully, using the corporate mindset of a government lawyer, it can be seen to be equivocal. It can easily carry another sense altogether. The addition of a few words makes its more-plausible meaning clear:

"This decision is independent of any discussion on other possible areas of cooperation on missile defence."

By this, Kergin was likely referring to the "increased government-to-government and industry-to-industry co-operation on missile defence that we should seek," that had been referred to in Pratt's earlier letter.

However, regardless of Kergin's apparent attempt at obfuscation, at least Colin Powell knew exactly what the Liberal government was after. Powell responded immediately and affirmatively to Canada's offer to extend the NORAD agreement to include the crucial "aerospace warning" aspect of "missile de-fense." Powell replied by saying "the United States of America concurs with the provisions set out in your Note."7 By doing so, Kergin's amendment was incorporated into the NORAD treaty and "missile defense" responsibilities were immediately added to Canada's workload at NORAD.


They Got What They Wanted

Back in 1999, the Ottawa Citizen's "defence reporter," David Pugliese wrote:

"The Canadian military wants to take part in a controversial U.S. plan to build a North American ballistic missile defence shield by contributing more than $600 million in space hardware [through the Joint Space Project]. Canadian Forces officials have been pushing for a role in the American national missile defence system since 1997, according to Access to Information documents obtained by the Citizen. Under the Canadian military plan its participation in the system would be deemed an 'asymmetrical' role, where Canada would not directly fund the American missile defence shield but provide a variety of space and ground equipment for surveillance and other jobs to support the North American Aerospace Defence Command."12 (Emphasis added)

So, as it turned out, Canadian "missile defense" enthusiasts at DND eventually got almost everything they wanted. But, more importantly, their U.S. counterparts got what they wanted from Canada too. As noted by Dr. John Clearwater, a Canadian military historian and expert on Canada-U.S. relations with regards to nuclear weapons:

"The clear and simple fact is that Paul Martin and the Liberals have already given the United States exactly what it sought to begin with - full co-operation by NORAD in missile-defence work.... NORAD was already... an integral part of the missile-defence structure.

Since Canada already provides manpower for NORAD early-warning and battle-command posts at our expense, and as these are free gifts to operate the missile-defence program, there is no reason to think that Canada is getting a free ride. In fact, Washington gets the extra staffing without paying the bill."13

When President George W. Bush visited Canada in December 2004, he used three public fora to urge Canada to join America's expansive, weapons development program. This had the effect of driving home the illusion that Canada was not already on board. It also gave Martin the welcome opportunity to please voters by pretending to stand up to Bush.

This is an age-old game. The American administration knows all-to-well that their allies sometimes have to feign opposition to U.S. policies in order to gain or retain domestic political support. Such oppositional play-acting does not, therefore, undermine U.S. goals. On the contrary, because duplicitous trickery of this variety can strengthen the domestic standing of one's closest friends, such fakery is tolerated and even encouraged. (See "The Pretense of Opposition.")


McKenna's Bombshell: Canada Already Said "Yes"

As Regehr has noted, because Canada had "already made the decision to cooperate with the U.S. on BMD"14 it was not clear what Bush was really asking for. Or, as Michael O'Hanlon, an analyst with America's conservative Brookings Institute expressed it, in early February 2005, it is "hard to see what more Bush wants."15

A few weeks later, on February 22, this recognition that Canada had already said "yes" was expressed once again, this time by Frank McKenna, Canada's newly appointed ambassador to the U.S. "We're part of it now," he said during a Parliamentary committee meeting on foreign affairs, "and the question is, what more do we need?"16

McKenna also commented that he could not fathom why, during Bush's recent visit to Canada, the president had repeatedly asked Martin to sign on to the "missile defense" program. When grilled by reporters on whether Canada really was already taking part in "missile defense," McKenna's near-sacrilegious statements seemed to astound the fourth estate.

Journalists were flabbergasted. For years they had dutifully parroted the standard, government line that Canada was not sharing the "missile defense" burden. Now, they badgered McKenna to explain what he could possibly mean. McKenna tried to enlighten them by pointing to NORAD:

"There's no doubt, in looking back, that the NORAD amendment [of August 5, 2004] has given, has created, part - in fact a great deal - of what the United States means in terms of being able to get the input for defensive weaponry."

This latest NORAD amendment, he said:

"allows our American partners in security in North America to obtain the threat assessments and the information they need to make decisions to deploy missiles or other forms of defence."17

McKenna was also quoted as saying:

"I believe that we've given in large measure what the Americans want, which is the ability to use NORAD and their intercept information in order to be able to target weaponry."18

With regards to Bush demanding that Canada "sign on" to "missile defense," McKenna asked reporters: "What does 'sign on' mean?... You couldn't put it more bluntly than that."19

By focusing entirely on Canada's connection to "missile defense" through its NORAD obligations, McKenna's admissions actually served to cover up the many other ways in which Canada performs as a major, team player on "missile defense." However, McKenna was at least admitting one significant Canadian contribution to the project, and that is one more contribution than was generally being acknowledged by the media. In the context of almost complete and total denial that Canada was engaged in any way whatsoever, McKenna's innocent comments were like a profound admission of guilt, and they caused a media frenzy.

The next day, McKenna's observations made front-page headlines and were the subject of lead stories on radio and TV broadcasts across the country. They triggered what the media repeatedly called an "uproar." The government must have been livid. McKenna's honesty was blowing their cover. His statements threatened to undermine the Liberals' ruse that they had not yet decided whether or not to take Canada down the road towards "missile defense."

In response to the media swirl around McKenna's frank observations, the public, which is generally unsympathetic to Canadian involvement in multi-billion-dollar U.S. wars and weapons schemes, was truly shocked. After being bombarded with such a constant barrage of misstatements, disinform-ation and lies emanating from government officials intent on covering up Canada's hypocritical support for "missile defense" weapons programs, McKenna's admission seemed astounding.

The day after McKenna had wondered aloud about what more the U.S. could want from Canada on "missile defense," Conservative Party MP, Rick Casson (Lethbridge, AB), like many Canadians, seemed genuinely surprised that this country was in any way engaged in this enterprise. Referring to the NORAD treaty as a "backdoor deal on missile defence," he raised McKenna's comments in the House of Commons and criticised the Liberals, saying they had "secretly agreed to take part in the missile defence system."20

In reality, the change to the NORAD-treaty had not been much of a a secret at all, although the media had been hoodwinked by Kergin's misleading caveat and therefore played down Canada's new "missile defense" duties. Nevertheless, Canada's NORAD-connection to "missile defense" was far enough out in the open that the McKenna story should not have caused the eruption of such a firestorm. Canada was, and clearly still is, in denial about its role in "missile defense."

Perhaps the most dull-witted response to McKenna's blundering admission of reality, came from Stephen Harper. As leader of Canada's official opposition, the Conservative Party, which strongly supports the "missile defense" weapons program, Harper must have understood the significance of Canada's amendment to the NORAD treaty. However, he still indignantly cried out in Parliament:

"How could this prime minister secretly make this decision, clearly breaking every commitment he's made to this House and to Canadians?"21

The shocked reactions to McKenna's statements exemplify what psychologists refer to as "cognitive dissonance." This is the phenomenon of mental discomfort that is experienced when there is a

"discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation. It therefore occurs when there is a need to accommodate new ideas."22

The discomfiting new idea that needed accommodating was that Canada was already implicated in so called "missile defense." However, the Liberal government clearly did not want this dissonant "uproar" to facilitate a transition into any such new public understanding. They needed a way to put McKenna's cat back into the bag.

Within a few hours of Mc-Kenna's words hitting the news, there was a "leak" to the media. "It is a firm 'no,'" said one anonymous federal government official, but "I am not sure it is an indefinite 'no.''"23 The word thus seeped out that in a couple of days Martin would finally announce Canada's ultimate decision regarding involvement in "missile defense." These rumours had it that the government would say "no," and indeed it officially did, on February 24. His widely-publicised "no" was clearly timed as a means of damage control to deal with McKenna's blundering assertion about what should have been a simple and obvious truth. In effect, Martin's "no" was dealt out in order to trump McKenna's "yes."


Liberal "No": A Toothless, Symbolic, Political Gesture

Martin's purported "no" to "missile defense" was a symbolic gesture undertaken to garner public support for the Liberal's minority government. It was a token action; an example of the kind of unaccountable puff in political rhetoric that Canadian courts have ruled is completely non-binding. In assessing the significance of this "no," the following should be considered.

Martin's public explanation of the government's alleged opposition to "missile defense" was brief, nondescript and contained no substantive details. There was no explanation of what this so-called "no" actually meant:

* The Liberal government's "no" was not linked to any diplomatic exchange of notes with the U.S.

* No Memoranda of Understanding governing Canada's ongoing participation in "missile defense" were changed or created.

* No alterations were made to any Canada-U.S. agreements, such as the NORAD treaty, through which Canada is firmly embedded in "missile defense" efforts.

* Neither was there a parliamentary committee meeting or any Act of Parliament to iron out the details.

* No government edicts or decrees were issued to modify, in any way whatsoever, the progress of Canadian business deals that cement the two countries' efforts in the field of "missile defense" collaboration.

* There does not even seem to have been a government media release issued to explain what the Liberal's illusory "no" really meant.

So, although Martin's lips did mouth a verbal "no," his statement had absolutely no teeth. As far as Canadian corporations, government scientists and military personnel are concerned it is still business as usual with regards to the Canada-U.S. partnership on "missile defense." It is difficult to determine what, if anything, Martin's "no" actually did to tangibly affect bilateral relations on this matter. The government's symbolic "no" was not linked to any authentic, government effort to slow or halt, let alone reverse, Canada's existing commitments to "missile defense."

It was Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew who formally declared, in the House of Commons, that Canada had say "no" to any Canada-U.S. alliance on "missile-defense" efforts. He said:

"After careful consideration of the issue, we have decided that Canada will not participate in the U.S. ballistic missile defence system."24

And, apparently, it was Petti-grew who had first told the American government how Canada was going to handle the "missile defense" hot potato. Pettigrew is said to have spoken with Secretary of State Condolezza Rice two days earlier.25 Their encounter in Brussels took place, on February 22. That was the same day that Frank McKenna was telling the media that Canada had already said "yes" to "missile defense." Talk about mixed messages. While Pettigrew was purportedly having a quiet, private encounter with Rice and supposedly passing along the message that Canada would say "no" to "missile defense," whatever that means, McKenna was publicly relaying a more-reassuring message to assuage "missile defense" advocates, both north and south of the Canada-U.S. border.


Deflection from Huge, DND-Spending Increases

February 23 was a busy day for the Liberal government. After many years of apparent "dithering," it finally proclaimed that Canada would unequivocally say "no" to "missile defense." That same day, the government revealed the details of their federal budget. The 2005 budget, which just barely squeaked through Parliament during a non-confidence vote on May 19, contained what the Liberal's described, in February, as "the largest increase in defence spending in 20 years - more than $12.8 billion over the next five years."26 However, all this extra money was just icing on the cake of the DND budget which now stands over $13 billion per year.

Even before this new surge in military spending, the Canadian government was already among the "top 10 percent of military spenders" in the world. In recent years, this has placed Canada's military "close to the top of the world's 190-plus countries."27 However, thanks to this latest influx of riches into Canada's budget for war, the country will edge its way up even further into the prestigious club of the world's most generous military spenders.

On budget day, Conservative MP Rick Casson, referring to the McKenna debacle, asked in parliament whether Canada's Minister of National Defence, Bill Graham, would resign over what Casson called the Liberal "flip-flop" on "missile defense." He said the government was "misleading Canadians" on its real "commitment" to the program by using a "deliberate sleight of hand" trick. Graham deflected this assault saying that the Conservatives

"would not want me to resign before the budget this afternoon. I am looking forward to that far too much. I know all honourable members will rejoice with me in knowing that today is going to be a great day for national defence in Canada, a great day for the security of Canada for Canadians and a great day for the Liberal government."28

Graham was probably quite right, at least about the Conservative Party's support for the Liberal's display of over-the-top munificence towards the military. Only a year earlier, Conservative leadership hopefuls were falling all over themselves, at their Toronto convention, trying to outdo one another in their promises of generosity to the military. For instance, front-runner Stephen Harper said that under his rule, the Canadian government would spend an extra $1.2 billion per year on the military. For her part, high-profile billionaire Belinda Stronach, heir to Magna Corp., a Canadian export industry that used to sell small arms and still profits from lucrative military-vehicle contracts, vowed to give almost as much. She said Canada's military deserved an "extra $10 billion over the next 10 years."29

Stronach later astounded Canadians on May 17, just two days before the 2005 budget was expected to be defeated in a non-confidence vote. She abandoned the party that she had wanted to lead, and joining the Liberals. Her move changed the balance of power, allowed the budget to pass and got Stronach an immediate Cabinet post overseeing human resources and the government's "democratic renewal" process.30

The Liberal government's actual military-budget increases more than doubled the best offers mustered a year earlier by Stronach and Harper. Such overzealous Liberal-government military spending may lead some to wonder: Who needs Conservatives, when we have Liberals like these?

However, despite such pro-military extravagance, the budget was met with very little criticism, even though Canadians generally place military spending far down their list of priorities, after health, education and the environment. Even the NDP and the peace/anti-war movement seemed to mute their criticism of the military's boost in fortunes. Why?

Answering this question immediately brings us face-to-face once again with the gripping misconception that Canada is a "global peacekeeper." In particular, Canadians who dare speak out against military-spending increases always encounter the fervent and widespread belief that our troops are astoundingly underequipped.

However, besides this perennial misperception, there was the matter of the budget's timing. Twinning the budget, with Martin's ostensible "no" to "missile defense," was an exceptionally well-crafted, public-relations coup. Even adversaries of the government have to feel a certain admiration for the Liberal's scientific skill at manipulating public opinion. Even outspoken opponents of "missile defense," within the NDP and the peace/anti-war movement, were so engaged in reacting to Martin's much-hyped "no" that attention was deflected away from the military's huge windfall.

However, in practical terms, the Liberal's 13-billion dollar gift to the military had far more real significance than Martin's statement of opposition to "missile defense." And, ironically, the sizeable influx of new cash into Canada's military coffers will actually benefit various "missile defense"-related projects that DND has been harbouring in its books.


Duplicity and Hypocrisy, as Usual

A few days after the budget was announced, and Martin had issued his historic "no" to "missile defense," Minister Pettigrew stepped onto the stage once again, this time to inject some much-needed clarity into the nebulous meaning of Canada's professed opposition to "missile defense." On February 26, he was interviewed on the CBC-One radio program, "The House." His message must have been highly reassuring to all those Canadians who identify with, are supportive of, involved in, employed by or profiting from "missile defense"-related work in Canada. (See below, "Pettigrew Says Canada Open for 'Missile Defence' Business.")

One could not imagine a statement that better epitomises the extreme hypocrisy and duplicity on peace issues that is regularly dished out by the Liberal government. Although "missile defense" undermines Canada's supposed support for disarmament at the UN, Pettigrew said Canada did not oppose America's pursuit of "missile defense." Canada, he said, is open for business on "missile defense." He even seemed insulted that the government might be expected to restrict the profit-seeking rights of Canadian firms.

Through Pettigrew, the government talked from both sides of its mouth. To appeal to millions of voters opposed to so-called "missile defense," the Liberal solution was to create the outward appearance of taking a stance against this U.S.-led weapons program. Martin and company had long-pretended to "dither" on whether to "join." Then, Martin played his best hand by making a much-ballyhooed gesture designed to create the impression that the government had said "no" to U.S. pressure on "missile defense."

Meanwhile, the Liberals had already given the go-ahead to "missile defense" and they were actually deepening their involvement through a variety of means including direct military-to-military links within NORAD, and through openness and support for all manner of corporate contracts.


The Trap that some Call a Victory

Although most Canadians are deeply suspicious of the U.S. plan to build what the media so-often calls a "missile defense shield," most are still unaware that, even setting aside Canada's commitment to "missile defense" through NORAD, their government, corporations, scientists and military forces have had a long-standing role in this massive, U.S.-led program to develop and improve advanced weapons systems.

The first mistake was to accept the validity of the central question posed again and again by the corporate media: ""Should Canada get involved in missile defense?" By uncritically accepting this phony question, many in the peace movement abdicated their ability to expose the reality of Canada's existing involvement. Many activists worked so hard to spread the word to the media, politicians and the general public that Canada should not get involved in "missile defense," that the Canadian public became even more deeply entranced in the pleasant, but delusory, myth of this country's non-involvement.

So, when Martin trumpeted the claim that Canada was "saying no" to the controversial weapons program, a sigh of relief was heard across the country. Not realising that Martin's "no" was a symbolic one with no bearing on Canada's already deeply-ingrained commitment to the missile scheme, Canadians largely embraced Martin's "no" at face value and gave it much more practical significance than it really deserved.

This trusting response was equally true of many peace activists. For several years, Canada's peace/anti-war movement had focused tremendous efforts on opposing the "missile defense" weapons program. Realising all-too-well that such work often goes unappreciated, it is with great reluctance that I offer even well-intentioned, constructive criticism. However, if our movement is to grow in effectiveness, we must be willing to debate our successes and our failures. With this hope, and with the greatest respect for friends and colleagues throughout our movement, I feel compelled to draw attention to a trap into which we have fallen.

Tens of thousands of concerned Canadians wrote letters to newspaper editors and politicians, to sign petitions, to hold educational events and to march in protests opposing "missile defense." Many of these commendable actions were, however, marred because they overtly stated their goal in terms of trying to prevent Canada from becoming an accessory to the massive, U.S. weapons program known as "missile defense." This, of course, belied the commonly-held assumption that Canada was not already involved.

Like most Canadians, peace activists have yet to appreciate that their country is playing several essential parts in so-called "missile defense." As a result, as soon as Martin uttered his famous "no," many activists sprang into action, circulating thousands of congratulatory emails, posting "We Win!" messages on their websites, holding celebratory parties, telling the media that they were drinking champagne and then soliciting funds from supporters for their supposedly, "well-informed" campaigns that had so successfully stopped the government from joining "missile defense."

The negative effects of accepting the Liberal government's propaganda at face value have been manifold. Not only did the peace movement's response serve to concretise the already-widespread public misperception that Canada was "missile defense"-free, it also lent the peace movement's good name and credibility to the Liberal government, which has been the main promoter and financier of so many Canadian-led "missile defense" programs. Although the Liberals have expressed no intention whatsoever of dismantling any of the mulitfarious "missile defense" support systems that they have so-carefully constructed over the years, many in the peace movement were put in the extremely compromising position of supporting the government for its deceptive stance on "missile defense."

Unfortunately, this response to the government's trickery actually sabotaged the ongoing need for a prolonged struggle to withdraw Canada from its already-sizable participation in "missile defense" programs. The mistaken impression that the "battle" to prevent Canada from joining "missile defense," is now over because we have "won," stopped the growing momentum of opposition that had been built up by the Canadian peace movement over many years. That momentum has now ground to a halt.

It was an absolutely brilliant trap set by the Liberal government. Now that Canadians had been handed a symbolic "no," and the peace movement had celebrated its Pyrrhic victory, where does that leave those of us who wish to struggle against Canada's very real and long-standing role in "missile defense?" This struggle to withdraw Canada from its entanglement in the "missile defense" web of deceit is still very important. Although Canada is more deeply involved in "missile defense" than ever before, its role is now more effectively cloaked and hidden. Because of the unskeptical willingness to believe the Liberal government's subterfuge and eagerness to claim a success, activist's efforts to stop Canada's ongoing role in "missile defense" must now begin virtually from scratch.

Why would the public now join a campaign to end Canada's complicity in "missile defense"? People have been successfully duped into believing the lie that Canada was never involved. What's more, with Martin's "no," the government is now seen as committed to stopping any future involvement.

To make matters worse, the mistaken impression left on the public by the media, and even some naïve elements within the peace movement, is that Martin said "no" because he is so responsive to "well-informed public opinion." This blind faith in the Liberal government's democratic nature, conveys the wildly-mistaken belief that Martin and his party can be trusted to follow the thoughtful lead of the peace movement, rather than the priorities of their real allies in the corporate world.

Such false hopes for the Liberal Party have often dragged down the peace movement's ambitions. In reality, both the Liberal and Conservative Parties are inextricably linked in a thousand ways to the corporate world.

Both parties will use whatever Machiavellian contrivances they can muster to serve their real masters. Hypocrisy, duplicity and the doling out of pseudo-victories are standard devices in the toolkit of such political hucksters.

If we as a peace movement give credibility to the erroneous belief that the powerful leadership controlling the Liberal Party is our ally, and that it will work with us to forge a new Canada that stands against profiting from war, then we are hopelessly naïve and co-opted. The Liberals and Conservatives draw their leaders from the same corporate pool. They divide between them the lion's share of support from Canada's powerful business elite, including those that benefit from war. So, regardless of which party gains electoral power, this same elite always wins.

By unreservedly praising wily government public-relations gestures, like the clever pretence of opposing "missile defense," we ignore that this contrivance was cynically undertaken to win voters' support and confidence. By doing so, we also ignore the many back-room deals that continue to draw Canada deeper and deeper into a morass of weapons programs that deplete our public treasury in order to enrich the coffers of war privateers. Such innocent acceptance of the government's deliberate ploys to deceive will only help to prolong Canada's position as one of the world's top military spenders and exporters. And, it will only serve to continue Canada's position as a prominent team-player in the euphemistically-labelled program to build a "missile defense shield."


References

1. Letter from Canadian Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Kergin, to U.S. Sec. of State, Colin Powell, August 5.

www.fac-aec.gc.ca/department/note_0095-en.asp

2. Letter from Minister Pratt to Secretary Rumsfeld, January 15, 2004.

www.forces.gc.ca/site/Focus/Canada-us/letter_e.asp

3. Reply from Secretary Rumsfeld to Minister Pratt. www.forces.gc.ca/site/Focus/Canada-us/letter_e.asp

4. Letter from Kergin to Powell, op. cit.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Letter from Colin Powell to Michael Kergin, to August 5 (JLAB-0095)

www.fac-aec.gc.ca/department/note_0095-en.asp

8. Ernie Regehr, "BMD, NORAD and Canada-U.S. Security Relations," Ploughshares Monitor, Spring 2004.

www.ploughshares.ca/content/BRIEFINGS/brf044.html

9. Canada - U.S. Defence Relations

www.forces.gc.ca/admpol/eng/defence/ca_us_relation_e.htm

10. "Exchange of Notes between Canada and the U.S. to Extend the NORAD Agreement for a further five-year period," Canado-American Treaties. 
www.lexum.umontreal.ca/ca_us/en/cts.1996.36.en.html

11. Ernie Regehr, op. cit.

12. David Pugliese, "Canadian Military seeks Star Wars role," Ottawa Citizen, February 3, 1999.

13. John Clearwater, "Little Lost Canadians," Winnipeg Free Press, Mar. 3 2005.

www.winnipegfreepress.com/west view/story/2610444p-3026697c.html

14. Ernie Regehr, op. cit.

15. O. Ward, "Bush call on missiles 'political posturing,'" Toronto Star, February 2, 2005. Cited by Ernie Regehr, "Reviewing BMD Options and Implications for Canada," February 2005.

www.ploughshares.ca/CONTENT/BRIEFINGS/brf051.pdf

16. Beth Duff-Brown, "Envoy missile defense remarks spark uproar," Associated Press, February 22, 2005.

17. "Ottawa embarrassed over anti-missile shield comment," Agence France-Press, February 22, 2005.

canada.news.designerz.com/ottawa-embarrassed-over-anti-missile-shield-comment.html?d20050222


18. "Martin will reject missile defence: report," Ballistic Missile Defence, CBC News Online, Feb. 24, 2005.

www.cbc.ca/news/background/us_missiledefence

19. "Canada already onboard U.S. missile defence: McKenna," Canadian Press, February 22, 2005.

20. House of Commons Debate, Hansard, February 23, 2005.

www.parl.gc.ca/38/1/parlbus/chambus/house/debates/063_2005-02-23/han063_1440-E.htm

21. David Ljunggren, "Canada Will Not Join U.S. Missile Defense System," Reuters, February 23, 2005. www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0223-07.htm

22. Cognitive Dissonance

www.learningandteaching.info/learning/dissonance.htm

23. "Martin will reject missile defence: report," CBC News, February 23, 2005.

24. Oliver Moore, "Canada refuses further role in missile defence," Globe and Mail, February 24, 2005.

peaceandjustice.org/article.php? story=20050224112706426&mode

25. Ibid.

26. Meeting our Global Responsibilities, Budget 2005, Dep't of Finance Canada.

www.fin.gc.ca/budget05/pamph/parespe.htm

27. Ernie Regehr, "Canada's military spending higher than in WWII, but humanitarian aid has dropped," Catholic New Times, July 4, 2004.

www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MKY/is_12_28/ai_n6102271

28. House of Commons Debate, op. cit.

29. Murray Brewster, "Stronach would spend billions more on military," Canadian Press, March 16, 2004.

www.canada.com/national/features/conservativeconvention 2004/story.html?id=91c3f468-248d-4081-af00-4b3537846f8c

30. "Belinda Stronach stuns political observers by defecting to Liberals," Cdn Press, May 17, 2005.

www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id= 6686e4e5-ba7f-47b6-a42e-5cfe68139918

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How you can Help


The above article is from the latest issue of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade's magasine Press for Conversion! It contains a wealth of data elucidating this subject and is a unique, new asset in the Myth Busters' toolkit. Please use this resource however you can to expose the fact that Canada's "no" was a meaningless, symbolic gesture designed to deceive.


Here are some ideas on how you can HELP, including a poster and leaflet for distribution.

 http://coat.ncf.ca/flyer_poster.pdf


If you would like to order a hard copy of this issue, subscribe or donate, click here:

 http://coat.ncf.ca/support_us/support_us.htm


MORE INFORMATION

For a complete version of the above article ("Canada Requested 'Missile Defense' Role in NORAD") click here:

 http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/56/Articles/56_10-21.pdf


The above pdf file includes the following sidebars that are associated with this article on Canada's "missile defense" role in NORAD:

* From Flip-Flop Flashbacks to False Facades

* U.S. helped Pearson bring down Dief's Minority Government to get U.S. Nukes into Canada

* NORAD's "Warning" and "Control" Functions

* The Pretense of Opposition

* Pettigrew says Canada Open for 'Missile Defence' Business

* What does Pettigrew know and when did he know it?


For more information on Canada's complicity in the U.S.-led "missile defense" weapons program, click here:

http://coat.ncf.ca/missiledefense

Contact:

Richard Sanders, coordinator, COAT and editor, Press for Conversion!
Email:  overcoat@rogers.com
Telephone: 613-231-3076
Website:  http://coat.ncf.ca
e-mail:: overcoat@rogers.com
Homepage:: http://coat.ncf.ca


-------- security

U.N. monitors nuclear sites via satellite

Jul. 20, 2005 at 2:15PM Washington Times

http://www.washtimes.com/upi/20050720-125952-8565r.htm

The International Atomic Energy Agency is switching to satellite feeds to monitor sensitive materials at nuclear sites.

The first trial of the new system, which transmits images and other data to IAEA's computers in Vienna, Austria, began in April at a nuclear power plant in Slovakia, the agency reported Wednesday.

"The idea is to create secure global communication networks between IAEA headquarters, remote nuclear facilities and regional offices," said Massimo Aparo of IAEA Safeguards Technical Support.

Previously, IAEA inspectors had to travel regularly to nuclear facilities to inspect data from its surveillance systems and determine if the sites are operating as planned. IAEA officials hope the use of satellites will prove more efficient and cost-effective than on-site visits or transmitting data via telephone lines or the Internet, which has proven unreliable, particularly in less developed countries, IAEA officials said.

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U.S. to Review Nuclear Plant Security

GSN Wednesday, July 20, 2005

http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_7_20.html#7F213E40

Following the recent terrorist attacks in London, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to review every nuclear reactor pool in the United States to improve antiterrorism security and response plans at the sites, The Day reported today (see GSN, June 21).

The review of the 103 reactor pools is expected to begin in September. Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan said the London attacks showed the need for changes in reactor security, according to The Day.

The National Academy of Sciences recommended a spent fuel pool safety measure review in April. The organization said the review could identify steps needed to prevent radioactive release and fires if coolant falls to critical levels during an attack.

The pools store and cool radioactive fuel rods that had been used to generate electricity.

Sheehan said the review was not a response to the academy’s report. “It’s in response to a lot of information we’ve gathered,” he said.

The review is expected to identify commonalities and differences in the country’s reactors and could lead to required steps owners would have to take to improve security, The Day reported.

In advance of the study, the commission asked reactor owners to review emergency preparedness procedures, including how long it takes to notify the commission of an incident. Sheehan said depending on responses, the required notification time frame could be lowered from an hour (Patricia Daddona, The Day, July 20).

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Radiation cargo-scanning devices installed at ports of Long Beach, Los Angeles

JEREMIAH MARQUEZ
Wed, Jul. 20, 2005
Associated Press

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/12182530.htm

LOS ANGELES - The head of U.S Border Patrol on Wednesday unveiled radiation detectors to scan incoming ocean cargo for nuclear weapons and dirty bombs, a measure he says will not choke the flow of trade at the nation's busiest port complex.

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert C. Bonner said the 20-foot-high devices would substantially boost security at the Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor complex without causing major delays.

"We have to save American lives, but we also have to do it in a way ... that preserves American livelihoods," Bonner said during a visit to the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.

The dual ports handle more than 40 percent of all cargo shipped into this country, and 80 percent of the imports from Asian manufacturing countries such as China and India.

The federal government has installed about 14 of the monitors, with plans to install a total of 90 by year's end.

Trucks carrying cargo unloaded from ships will pass through the systems, a process that takes a matter of seconds.

If the machines find signs of radiation, the container will get another scan and possibly inspection by hand-held devices to help identify how much and what kind of radiation is present. That secondary inspection can last 10 minutes or longer.

Should authorities still have trouble identifying the container's contents, data will be sent to a federal research center in Virginia to determine whether the cargo is harmless or contains plutonium and highly enriched uranium, which are used to produce nuclear weapons.

In the meantime, the container could be isolated instead of closing the terminal.

"We're serious about doing everything we reasonably can to secure this port, "Bonner said.

Nearly 540 radiation portal monitors, which cost approximately $250,000 each and are federally funded, are being used at seaports and border crossings nationwide, officials said.

About one out of every 100 to 150 containers bears cargo that sets off the scanner, prompting a secondary inspection, officials said. The error rate is about one in 10,000.

Still, terminal operators and shipping companies aren't overly concerned about delays, said Tupper Hull, spokesman for the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, which represents the ocean carriers and terminals.

"Right now there's a fair amount of confidence that these things work and work well," he said.



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


-------- new jersey

Oyster Creek evacuation drill unreasonable, officials say

July 20, 2005
By NICOLETTA KOTSIANAS For The Atlantic City Press, (609) 978-2013

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/ocean/072005OYSTERCREEK.cfm

Officials in New Jersey and Vermont say no dry run of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant's evacuation plan will be held, and none was ever held for a plant in Vermont.

Critics of AmerGen's plan to renew the operating license for the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant called on emergency management officials recently to conduct such a dry run. AmerGen operates the plant and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Exelon. Exelon, a Chicago-based company, is merging with Newark-based PSEG, owner of the Hope Creek nuclear reactor and two other reactors at the Salem Nuclear Generating Station.

A hearing on the evacuation plan for the Salem County nuclear plants is scheduled for today.

During a hearing on the Oyster Creek evacuation plan earlier this month, leaders of concerned-citizens groups cited a dry run evacuation that they claimed was done in the area surrounding the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in May. A review by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, said the exercise was deficient in key areas.

Officials in New Jersey and Vermont have since said that describing the Vermont exercise as a "dry run" is misleading. The exercise in Vermont mentioned at the hearing was a simulation, that FEMA says must be carried out near all nuclear facilities every two years.

FEMA officials said no members of the public were actually alerted or ordered to evacuate their homes during the Vermont exercise.

Barabara Sondag, assistant town manager of Brattleboro, Vt., said the deficiencies noted in the May drill were that those responsible for telling people to leave the area missed alerting one new development and gave another area more time to evacuate than they should.

Emergency managers in New Jersey this week said the calls for a practice evacuation drill in Ocean County, or anywhere an emergency was not actually occurring, were unreasonable.

Lt. Tim Keenan is head of the state Radiological Emergency Response Planning and Technology Unit. He was present at the hearing and said that most of the people who spoke focused on their disbelief that the state's evacuation plans would work.

He said that their proposed dry run drill would unnecessarily put people in harm's way. He also said that convincing people to participate would be difficult.

When imagining evacuation conditions, people think of the area's Fourth of July standstill traffic, he said. But they forget that the plan would make all lanes of Routes 195 and 72 flow in the direction of evacuating traffic during the emergency, Keenan said. That would give them the capacity to handle the traffic of towns within the emergency planning zone, or EPZ, he said.

"What happened at Three Mile Island and what we do today are worlds apart." Keenan said, referring to the 1979 accident at the nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pa.

Emergency management plans include pubic notification, commands and control structures and provisions for continually updated assessments of the dangers.

The-Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have led to a re-evaluation of emergency management that is "very significant and impressive," Keenan said.

The full-time team that State Police have dedicated to researching and updating their task, illustrates how the emergency management plan is an always evolving "living plan," he said.

Keenan said he wished that at public hearings about the effectiveness of plans there was more time dedicated to explaining the plans that are in place and frequently tested for effectiveness.

"For critics to say there is no full-scale exercise in place, or practice run, that's inaccurate," he said.

In October, another FEMA-graded exercise at Oyster Creek will take place. The exercise will test both the communication capability of the plant and the response ability of local and county officials in the area, FEMA officials said.

The results will bring revisions to the plan to offer FEMA's passing grade of "reasonable assurance" that these plans can and will protect, Keenan said.

Some of the skeptics who called for the dry run said reasonable assurance is not enough.

Both Keenan and FEMA acknowledge that residents outside of the area ordered to evacuate would likely flee once word hit that an accident had occurred. This event is called "shadow evacuations" or evacuations not instructed or deemed necessary by emergency managers.

FEMA has looked at the issue and determined that it would not undermine the effectiveness of a plant's emergency plans, according to FEMA officials and managers in New Jersey.

Neil Sheehan of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, the agency which would relicense Oyster Creek, explained that after Sept. 11, 2001, the NRC decided to take a look at how the public responds when asked to evacuate.

Instead of relying on anecdotal information, the agency wanted an assessment of 230 actual instances of relocations between 1990-2003, he said.

The results were published in January and found that emergency evacuations of at least 100 people take place more than once a week in this country, and major evacuations of more than 1,000 people occur more than three times per month.

Cases studied included large-scale evacuations due to such things as wild fires and hurricanes; in many instances thousands of people were ordered to evacuate.

All of the cases studied safely evacuated people from the area, saved lives and reduced the potential number of injuries from the disaster, the study said.

Sheehan said that based on the latest population figures, the 10-mile-radius emergency planning zone for Oyster Creek is about 160,000 people. He added that it's important to realize that it is extremely unlikely there would ever be a need to evacuate the entire zone.

The more likely scenario is that only the area in a two-mile radius along with several miles in the area downwind would be evacuated, he said. Areas beyond two miles in other directions likely would not have to be evacuated.

"That's because a severe accident would result in a radioactive plume that would travel with the wind, dispersing, or breaking down, the farther it traveled from the plant."

He reported more people asking about emergency management plans and wished that more public outreach could be done.

He said he tells anyone who calls with questions that he also lives within a 10-mile radius of Oyster Creek and understands citizen concern.

"I'm comfortable with living here; I've chosen to live here. I know exactly what kind of normal traffic people drive in every day that causes their concern." Keenan said. "But I also know the full-time job we do."

To e-mail Nicoletta Kotsianas at The Press:

NKotsianas@pressofac.com

----

2 rivals want scientists to gauge reactor safety

Published in the Asbury Park Press 07/20/05
BY NICHOLAS CLUNN
STAFF WRITER Asbury Park Press

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050720/NEWS/507200352

WARETOWN — Using the iconic stack of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant as a backdrop, Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Forrester Tuesday supported federal legislation requiring an independent review of the reactor and criticized his opponent for changing his posture on its future.

Though his opponent in November, U.S. Sen. Jon S. Corzine, D-N.J., also supports an independent review by the National Academy of Sciences, Forrester said Corzine only took this position after facing criticism from those concerned about a plan that would allow the reactor in neighboring Lacey to generate power for another 20 years under a renewed license.

Plant owner AmerGen is expected to submit its renewal application to federal regulators before the end of the month. Without a renewal, the plant likely would close in 2009.

Berkeley resident Thomas Thorpe, 65, said he considered an independent review a "very good idea." Thorpe said the plant's age and the possibility of a terrorist flying a small aircraft into the reactor have turned him against license renewal.

"I'm sure if they are concerned about safety and vulnerability, they will come to the conclusion that it should be closed," said Thorpe, referring to academy assessors.

The independent review measure proposed by both candidates would serve as a second opinion on whether Oyster Creek could operate safely under a renewed license.

As it stands now, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the sole authority for determining whether the nation's commercial reactors are fit to operate 20 years beyond the expiration of their initial 40-year licenses.

Other factors weighed

Critics like the idea of an independent review because the academy would consider factors not looked at by the NRC during its evaluation. These would include evacuation plans and the reactor's vulnerability to a terrorist attack, according to the legislation.

Federal regulators have said those two issues and others are evaluated on a regular basis and should not be part of the license renewal process.

Corzine last week submitted a bill calling for an independent review, but Forrester on Tuesday criticized the senator for simply putting his name on legislation that nearly mirrored a bill proposed by Rep. H. James Saxton, R-N.J., in September 2004.

During his news conference Tuesday, Forrester called Corzine "bashful" and said the senator's bill represented a "flip-flop."

Forrester said Corzine changed his mind and introduced the bill after an Asbury Park Press editorial criticized the senator.

"This is not the kind of leadership that is suitable for New Jersey," Forrester said.

But the Corzine campaign on Tuesday said the senator has been monitoring decisions regarding Oyster Creek's safety. In March 2002, he asked the NRC to hold a public hearing on a proposal to allow the plant to store spent nuclear fuel in above-ground dry casks, which it now does.

"Ensuring the safety and reliability of our state's nuclear power plants is a grave responsibility that Jon Corzine takes seriously," said Ivette Mendez, his campaign spokeswoman.

AmerGen seeks support

AmerGen has stepped up its public relations campaign aimed at gaining relicensing to include a 60-second radio commercial, which now runs on four stations whose signals reach listeners in Monmouth and Ocean counties, said plant spokeswoman Gina G. Scala.

The advertisement, which will run into September, features a plant employee who talks about how the plant benefits nearby communities.

Scala said the radio ad is part a larger campaign — billboards, newspaper ads and community presentations also have been used — to educate the public about the plant's charitable donations and how its employees volunteer in the communities where they live.

"Oyster Creek isn't just a nuclear power plant," she said. "We are as much a part of the community as anyone else is."

Nicholas Clunn: (609) 978-4597 or nclunn@app.com



-------- new mexico

Watchdog: Elevate science, dismantle nukes
Anti-nuke groups submit LANL bid

By DIANA HEIL The Santa Fe New Mexican
Jul 20, 2005

http://www.enewmexican.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:LowLevelEntityToPrint_SANTAFE&Type=text/html&Locale=english-skin-custom&Path=NMx/2005/07/20&ID=Ar00401

    Dismantling all nuclear weapons is at the forefront of a proposal written by two anti-nuke groups in the competition to run Los Alamos National Laboratory.

    In a 24-page joint proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy, Santa Fe’s Nuclear Watch of New Mexico and California’s Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment submitted dramatic changes for the birthplace of the bomb.

    “Our fundamental position is that all nuclear-weapons activities should be conducted in a purely custodial role while all nuclear arsenals await irreversible dismantlement. In the year 2000, the United States and the other nuclear-weapons signatories to the Nonproliferation Treaty made a binding pledge to implement 13 concrete steps toward nuclear disarmament,” they wrote in a proposal submitted Tuesday. “It is in our highest national-security interests to fulfill those pledges because a failure to do so can have deep negative impact on discouraging the proliferation of nuclear weapons.”

    Under their vision, the future for the lab would involve environmental restoration and a heavy bent toward civilian sciences; that is, renewable energy, green manufacturing techniques and resolutions to the threat of global warming. “We believe that U.S. national security is seriously impaired by our lack of energy independence,” the proposal says.

    The anti-nuke groups would sidestep the government’s push for nuclearweapons research and development as well as heightened production for plutonium triggers for weapons.

    “We believe that so-called ‘great science’ at the lab is all too intertwined with nuclear-weapons science, a science that is arguably already overly mature, if not internationally provocative and dangerous in encouraging nuclear-weapons proliferation by example,” the proposal says.

    Accountability to the public would be a priority for the watchdog groups. Protections for whistle-blowers at the lab would be increased. Community-access programs would be developed. Grossreceipts taxes would be paid to New Mexico — up to $80 million a year. And they would not seek indemnification from penalties for occupational safety, nuclear safety, security, fiscal management and environmental violations, as allowed in the bidding process.

    “For too long Los Alamos County has been a privileged enclave with only limited benefits for New Mexico,” the proposal says. “It’s time to change that, to better spread both the economic wealth and the lab’s intellectual resources for the greater benefit of all in meeting important regional and national needs for long-term security.”

On the Web

    http://www.nukewatch.org 

----

Watchdog Groups Submit Bid for LANL Contract Today 	

From: marylia@earthlink.net
Date: Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:17am

for more information, contact
Jay Coghlan, Director, Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, 505.989.7342
Marylia Kelley, Executive Director, Tri-Valley CAREs,
925.443.7148

for immediate release, July 19, 2005

Watchdog Groups Submit Bid for LANL Contract;
Propose Radical Mgt. Changes to Reflect New National Security Priorities

Santa Fe, NM. -- Today, two non-profit organizations well-known as advocates for Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) worker health and safety, the environment and nuclear non-proliferation formally submitted a jointly-prepared bid to manage the troubled New Mexico nuclear weapons laboratory by moving it in a new direction, toward cleanup and civilian science missions.

Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) submitted their management proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Two other parties are also expected to submit bids by today's 2 PM mountain time deadline.

One of the anticipated bidders, LANL's existing manager, the University of California (UC), has partnered with Bechtel, one of the world's largest construction corporations. That team has named Michael Anatasio, current Director of the Lawrence Livermore Lab (also managed by UC), as its designated director of Los Alamos.

The other is Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defense contractor, which has partnered with the University Texas. That team has named Paul Robinson, ex-head of the Sandia National Laboratories, as its LANL Director. Lockheed already manages Sandia and co-manages the British Nuclear Weapons Establishment. Both Robinson and Anatasio have risen through the ranks of the nuclear weapons programs at their respective labs, effectively offering no real alternative to LANL's future missions.

The nature of the UC/Bechtel and Lockheed Martin/UT bids to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) may never be known. The Nuclear Watch New Mexico (NWNM) and Tri-Valley CAREs (TVC) team is making its bid public in order to help facilitate Los Alamos' recovery from its various scandals, direct the Lab toward meeting long-range national security needs, and to challenge our competitors. Rather than naming individuals to specific positions, NWNM/TVC propose to radically revamp the LANL management structure. The change in direction we would institute for LANL's programs flows directly from the revamped structure.

Starting at the top, we propose to keep an overall Lab Directorship. Attached to the Director's Office we would add a Chief Officer for Whistleblower Protection. Currently eight Associate Directorships serve under the Director. We would transform Threat Reduction into Nuclear Nonproliferation, responsible for encouraging and verifying compliance with the NonProliferation Treaty at home and abroad. Under that new Associate Directorship we would subordinate Nuclear Weapons Programs, Weapons Physics, and Weapons Remanufacturing. This aligns with our proposed program of maintaining (but not advancing) nuclear weapons while they await dismantlement. We would also create a new Associate Directorship for Dismantlements.

We propose to elevate both Environmental Restoration and Science to new Associate Directorships. The former would expedite comprehensive cleanup at LANL, in close cooperation with the New Mexico Environment Department. The latter would help restore "great science" at the Lab, with emphases on resolving pressing national and international security needs such as sustainable energy independence and addressing global climate change.

Jay Coghlan, NWNM Executive Director, admitted, "In some cases we'll probably not see eye-to-eye with the NNSA, particularly on nuclear weapons programs. Nevertheless, we are hopeful that the agency will see the soundness of our basic approach of truly discouraging by concrete example the grave threat of nuclear weapons proliferation. Combined with the cost savings, diligence and integrity that we will bring to Lab management, we are confident that the NNSA and the nation will be pleased with our management sometime in the future."

According to Marylia Kelley, Executive Director of the Livermore, California-based Tri-Valley CAREs, "One of our overarching goals is to illuminate the options that are available to all who are bidding for the LANL management contract. For example, our management proposal protects and values whistleblowers, and we challenge our competitors to do the same. Our proposal boosts the profile and footprint of the civilian sciences at LANL, and we call on our competitors to demonstrate how they, if chosen, would attract world-class science and scientists. Further, our bid emphasizes community participation and cleanup of the Cold War legacy of radioactive and toxic pollution at LANL. We fear that both our competitors will propose 'business as usual,' and we submit our bid to assert that LANL workers and the public deserve better."

Although they too are nonprofit organizations, the NWNM/TVC team would voluntarily pay an estimated $80 million annually in New Mexico gross receipts taxes, nearly half of which goes to public education. UC has never paid taxes to New Mexico. In order to promote real management accountability, the NWNM/TVC team has declined indemnification from occupational and nuclear safety, fiscal management and environmental violations. Moreover, our team will not accept reimbursement of legal costs for whistleblower cases decided against us (contractors have had a virtually unlimited war chest to fight against whistleblowers). If our competitors truly want to embrace public service, they should pledge to do the same.

The NWNM/TVC bid and current and proposed LANL management organizational charts are available at http:// www.nukewatch.org and http:// www.trivalleycares.org.

Marylia Kelley
Executive Director
Tri-Valley CAREs
(Communities Against a Radioactive Environment)
2582 Old First Street
Livermore, CA USA 94551

http://www.trivalleycares.org - is our web site address.
Please visit us there!

(925) 443-7148 - is our phone
(925) 443-0177 - is our fax

----

UT Touts Sizable Alliance As Bid to Run LANL Starts

By Adam Rankin
Albuquerque Journal
Wednesday, July 20, 2005

http://www.utwatch.org/oldnews/albj_utbid_7_20_05.html

The first-ever competition to run Los Alamos National Laboratory formally began Tuesday, with one of the bidding teams making a last-minute announcement it had formed an alliance with more than 30 universities.

The team headed by Lockheed Martin and the University of Texas said the alliance would improve the team's strength in science and technology research.

It is going up against the University of California the only manager the lab has ever had and Bechtel National in a federal Department of Energy competition to capture the $2.2 billion-a-year LANL contract.

The winner will run the nation's first nuclear weapons research lab for a seven-year term, with a chance to extend the contract to a total of 20 years.

Both teams refused to disclose how much they proposed to charge the government for running LANL. The government has put a ceiling of $79 million on the fee, nearly 10 times the fee DOE now pays the University of California to run the lab.

UC has managed LANL for the government since 1943 and Lockheed has run DOE's Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque since 1993 and also runs Britain's Atomic Weapons Establishment.

"If you have a national laboratory, you need a national community of scientists and engineers to support it," said Mark Yudof, chancellor of the University of Texas System, in announcing the alliance during a telephone news conference on Tuesday, the deadline for submitting bids.

"It is very important that this national laboratory not be insular," he said.

Winner by November

DOE is expected to name the winner in late November. Whoever is selected is expected to begin managing LANL by Dec. 1 and assume full operational control by June 1.

Also included in the competition is a longtime LANL watchdog, Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, which submitted a joint bid to run the lab with California's Tri-Valley CARES, or Communities Against a Radioactive Environment.

"We carried through with our threat to submit a bid," said Nuclear Watch executive director Jay Coghlan.

In their proposal, the watchdog groups propose to elevate basic science research and environmental remediation, while subordinating nuclear weapons work under a proposed nuclear non-proliferation directorate.

The University of California's management of LANL has faced criticism in recent years after a series of security and fiscal problems, prompting DOE to put the contract out to bid for the first time.

The competition for the lab has worried lab employees and others in the Los Alamos community, and there are fears of a major departure of lab personnel if UC with a lucrative pension plan and other benefits doesn't hold onto the contract.

The University of California's team submitted its bid, contained in 22 cartons, to DOE a day early on Monday afternoon, just to be sure it was in on time, said Michael Anastasio, the team's leader and proposed director of LANL.

Anastasio said the UC-Bechtel limited liability corporation, which includes Washington Group International and BWX Technologies, will be called Los Alamos National Security.

'Best of the best'

"A great team, a great proposal," Anastasio said, but he wouldn't divulge details on the team's bid, citing the highly competitive environment.

"Members of the team are already working at six of eight (DOE) sites that we manage," he said. "All of the issues that we have to face are ones that we are already facing."

C. Paul Robinson, former head of Sandia, said the Lockheed-UT team, which also includes Fluor Corp. and CH2M Hill, will be a fully integrated limited liability corporation called the Los Alamos Alliance.

Of his team's members, Robinson said: "They were chosen for their strengths and, as they proved to us during the proposal, they really are the best of the best."

Robinson will be director of LANL if the Lockheed-UT team wins.

The University of Texas and Lockheed's proposed university alliance, called the Network for Science and Technology Education and Research, will be a limited liability corporation, independent of LANL oversight and run by the University of Texas System.

UT's Yudof said the goal of the network will be to provide LANL with a broad base of scientific skills for research collaboration, peer review and recruiting sources for future lab scientists and engineers.

The network of universities which includes the University of Colorado, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, the universities of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona, the Colorado School of Mines, Johns Hopkins and Arizona State University have more than 51,000 faculty and 58,000 graduate students in science, engineering and health and oversee more than $7 billion in research.

New Mexico's three universities University of New Mexico, New Mexico Tech and New Mexico State University were invited to join the network, but had already signed an exclusive agreement with UC, Yudof said.

Still, he said, the New Mexico schools will be included if the University of Texas team is successful in winning the contract.

"We made a determination in the range of what was the best value we thought we brought to the table," said Lockheed's Robinson. 


-------- new york

Indian Point alarm system failure probed

By GREG CLARY
gclary@thejournalnews.com
THE NY JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: July 20, 2005)

http://www.nyjournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050720/NEWS02/507200319/1017

BUCHANAN — The four-county emergency siren system at the Indian Point nuclear plant went down for about six hours early yesterday, and employees didn't know the 156 sirens wouldn't work if needed until the problem was discovered when a later shift began.

"We are looking into the event to find out why the tower became disabled and why it took so long for plant personnel to recognize that power to the tower was not in service," Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, stated in an e-mail to The Journal News.

Sheehan said it appeared from initial reports that a 300-foot tower used to monitor weather conditions in the plant's vicinity lost power about 8:30 p.m., knocking out the signals' activation system. He said a diesel-fuel backup generator started as it should have, but operated until only 11:15 p.m., when it ran out of fuel.

A battery backup to the generator, designed to work for a couple of hours as a bridge source of power until generators can take over, lasted until about 2 a.m., before it, too, died.

"When the battery had drained down, the tower was no longer powered and therefore would not have been able to be used in a timely manner to activate the sirens," Sheehan said. "The tower outage was identified by plant personnel at about 6:50 a.m. today, and a temporary battery was hooked up, and the power restored at about 7:45 a.m."

Officials from Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the plant's owner, said there was no other impact at the nuclear plant from the power outage, the cause of which was still being investigated yesterday afternoon.

Local officials said the system failure offered a relatively cheap lesson about the potential hazards of relying on a notification system that is more than a quarter-century old.

Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency met with county officials from the plant's 10-mile emergency evacuation area less than two weeks ago to review concerns about the sirens. At the time, FEMA officials noted that the siren system was older than the national average and that they were looking at whether upgrades should be required.

Yesterday, emergency preparedness experts from all four counties within the evacuation zone — Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Orange — joined a 10 a.m. conference call with officials from Entergy and the State Emergency Management Office. Some participants said yesterday's event showed the weakness of a system that could be knocked out at a single point.

Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef described himself as almost speechless as details of the outage emerged.

"It's simply unacceptable," Vanderhoef said. "Entergy needs to take the bull by the horns and modernize the siren system. To be out of communication with your system for nearly five hours and not even know it, that's mortifying."

Vanderhoef said FEMA and the NRC should require Entergy to modernize the system if the company won't do it on its own.

Larry Gottlieb, director of communications for the company's White Plains office, said Entergy officials had already started a full review of the failure and would be helping the NRC in its investigation.

"It's inexcusable," Gottlieb said. "That's not the way we do business."

Anthony Sutton, Westchester's commissioner of emergency services, said local officials asked regulators to forward a detailed report of the notification system failure to FEMA officials working on the review of the siren system.

"I think it's just one more indication that the siren system is in desperate need of replacement," Sutton said.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, said she hoped Entergy would make changes to the system on its own rather than waiting to be forced to by legislation she introduced in May that was included yesterday in a Senate energy bill.

"People living around Indian Point deserve to know that the plant's emergency notification system will work when it is needed most," Clinton said in a prepared statement. "Yesterday's power failure to the transmitter component of that system underscores the need to have effective backup power in place, as my legislation would require."

Gottlieb said Entergy has been looking to modernize the equipment and invested $4 million a few years ago to improve the system, but found that hitting the right mark was difficult because of the changing anti-terrorism landscape.

"We're conducting a national search now for the best model," Gottlieb said. "In a broader sense, many companies are struggling with meeting criteria in a post-9/11 atmosphere. It's not clearly defined. We need more guidance from government, from Homeland Security, to tell us what those new-world requirements are."

----

Indian Point Siren System Deactivated For 6 Hours After Power Loss

POSTED: 9:03 am EDT July 20, 2005 Associated Press

http://www.wnbc.com/news/4746129/detail.html

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- The sirens that are meant to warn thousands of people of an emergency at the Indian Point nuclear power plants stood useless for nearly six hours Tuesday morning when power was lost to a signal transmitter and the failure went undiscovered.

There was no emergency, and the 156 sirens were not needed during the outage, which lasted from 2 a.m. to 7:45 a.m.

But "the bottom line is it's inexcusable," said Larry Gottlieb, a spokesman for Indian Point owner Entergy Nuclear Northeast. "That system should never be down for any time."

He said the cause of the outage was not known but there was "no evidence of sabotage."

Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano, an Entergy critic who has been demanding a backup power system for the sirens, said, "This is almost like the Keystone Kops. They're handling a nuclear plant and this is how they deal with sirens?"

Entergy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were investigating the failure, and Spano said he was asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to investigate, too.

"We've told Entergy a number of times we want the sirens replaced or upgraded to a point where they are reliable," Spano said. "How much can we push these guys? Maybe they'll listen now."

State Assemblyman Ryan Karben, of Rockland County, concurred, saying the siren system needs to be replaced.

"Residents don't feel very safe and secure without this vital warning system," he said.

The 156 sirens, in Westchester, Putnam, Rockland and Orange counties, are meant to alert residents within 10 miles of the plants to tune in broadcasts about an emergency. The sirens are part of an emergency plan that anti-Indian Point activists deride as woefully inadequate for the populous New York City suburbs.

Gottlieb said, "The public was never in danger," claiming that if a plant emergency had occurred the failure of the sirens to sound would have been noticed and a 12-hour battery would have been brought in to activate them. In addition, the plan calls for trucks with loudspeakers to notify residents of an emergency if the sirens don't.

Gottlieb said that at about 11:15 p.m. Monday, power went out to a 300-foot tower on the Indian Point grounds in Buchanan that holds weather recording equipment and the transmitter that sends the signal to activate the sirens.

There were two backups for the transmitter power: A diesel generator kicked in and supplied power until its fuel ran out, and then a one-hour battery switched on. But the battery ran out at about 2 a.m. Tuesday.

That final loss of power generated no alarm and was not noticed by any patrol on the grounds, Gottlieb said. At 5:30 a.m., operators at the Indian Point 2 plant became aware of the problem, and a mobile 12-hour battery was brought in. It took until 7:45 a.m. to switch it on, and then the main power was restored an hour later, Gottlieb said.

NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the commission would investigate why there was a lag between when power was lost and when the loss was discovered.

"Why did they not become aware that the backup was activated?" he asked.

Gottlieb said Entergy is open to upgrading the siren system and has spent $4 million on improvements.

"We want to find out which siren system is the model for the country or build our own model system if that's what it takes," he said. "But it might not mean scrapping what we already have."



-------- north carolina

Campus reactor leads the way in 'nuclear renaissance'

Posted: 07.20.2005
Ian Jester, North Carolina State University Technician Online

http://technicianonline.com/story.php?id=011905

Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon in Spring semester, Dayne Murray skated on his Gravity longboard towards what he described as the "home of his future."

He was one of 45 nuclear engineering students to attend this second-year class inside Burlington Laboratories. The sophomore said skating to class saved him 20 minutes of traveling, which he put towards sleep.

But there is an object that captured his attention before walking into each class.

"There's a Progress Energy plaque that I look at on the wall next to our classroom," Murray said. "It's nothing fancy, but it lets me know there's an employer out there that wants me to come to class and succeed."

The plaque symbolizes the University's appreciation for the $385,000 renovation grant presented by the Progress Energy Foundation to former Chancellor Marye Anne Fox in 2000.

Headquartered in Downtown Raleigh, Progress Energy is one of the strongest supporters of the College of Engineering, according to COE Executive Director of Development Ben Hughes.

"Progress Energy needs engineers and we train engineers," Hughes said. "We are a source of recruitment for major companies like Progress, and their generous financial support is just an insight to our long-term relationship. It's a relationship that dates back to before I was at N.C. State."

The partnership began in 1977 -- when Progress Energy was known as Carolina Power & Light -- it has benefited both parties.

"In the 80 plus years of the company, we've worked with the faculty and students at N.C. State to ensure their research in nuclear energy is adequately funded," Merrilee Jacobson, a corporate communications specialist for Progress Energy, said. "We want people to be aware that Progress Energy is committed to the University and to the Raleigh community for years to come."

Progress Energy donated a total of $232,500 to the College of Engineering in the 2004 fiscal year, and is planning to increase that amount by more than $30,000 for 2005.

Jacobson is part of a research team for the Progress Energy Foundation that decides which non-profit organizations are most deserving for the company's education, environmental and economic development grants.

"It's a very interactive process," Jacobson said. "Everyone is interested in finding the right mix of funding that satisfies both parties. I sit down with Ben once or twice a month to find out the needs of the engineering college and how we can appropriate our corporate profitability funds."

Hughes says Duke Energy, the North Carolina-based diversified energy company, is another huge supporter of the University.

Based out of Charlotte, Duke Energy provided the College of Engineering with $174,500 in the 2004 fiscal year, according to Duke Energy Senior Vice President E. O. Ferrell III.

"Duke Energy is a company founded in engineering with seven nuclear reactors under our control," Ferrell, a 1966 alumnus in electrical engineering, said. "And since N.C. State has one of the few operating nuclear reactors for research in the nation, we want to fund N.C. State to make sure the nuclear program stays robust."

That nuclear reactor is housed at Burlington, on the other side of Murray's nuclear engineering class in the Progress Energy Lecture Hall. Ferrell, who is also on the board of directors for the NCSU Engineering Foundation, remembers the first time he was introduced to nuclear energy.

"I remember watching the utility trucks pass by my house in Durham. That was the first time I knew of Duke Power," Ferrell said. "While I was at State, Duke Energy was building a hydroelectric station north of Charlotte, and they invited engineers to come see the facility as part of future recruitment. The potential of fission and nuclear power really started to pick up."

Stemming from the ideas of Clifford Beck and former Dean of Engineering Harold Lampe, the present 1-megawatt PULSTAR nuclear reactor was built in 1950, establishing the nation's first university nuclear reactor and research curriculum.

Currently, the PULSTAR reactor is one of three university nuclear reactors located in the Southeast -- and one of 27 in the nation.

NCSU is a member of the Multi-University Southeast INIE Consortium, or MUSIC, which conducts research based on grants from the U.S. Department of Energy. The department head of nuclear engineering Paul Turinsky points out that U.S. Department of Energy has funded the NCSU program in several ways, including a $12 million research grant applicable over six years.

"For the longer term, the U.S. Department of Energy is developing six new reactor designs, dramatically different from current plant designs, to deploy two or three decades from now," Turinsky said. "Our program will be a key player in that development, through our membership in the Battelle Energy Alliance, which recently received a $5 billion contract to operate at the Idaho National Laboratory for the next 10 years."

Hughes said the nuclear industry took a major hit in confidence following the melting of nuclear fuel from a full-scale commercial reactor at Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pa. in 1979. The loss that halted a nuclear dream of unlimited potential for some time.

"Lots of nuclear programs closed down, and now whether it's because of political controversy or the threat of nuclear terrorist attacks, there's a reluctance to rebuild that confidence in general," Hughes said.

According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission there was a decline in orders for nuclear plants following the meltdown, and the demand for new employees dropped. But as many universities discontinued their nuclear funding and programs after Three Mile Island, NCSU remained committed throughout the questionable period in the nuclear industry, a move Mohamed Bourham, a professor in nuclear engineering, praised.

"We are now in the nuclear renaissance," Bourham said. "Nuclear engineering programs have increased nationwide and the numbers are incredible compared to five years ago."

As more programs are created across the country, NCSU's program grows.

"There were only 25-30 undergraduates in nuclear engineering three or four years ago," Hughes said. "Now there are about 120 graduates this year."

Spring graduate Josh Nowak said researching the history of nuclear engineering in high school didn't scare him from enrolling in the program.

"The scholarship from Duke Energy means the world," Nowak said "Because I'm an out-of-state student I wouldn't have been able to get my degree without that."

Nowak's scholarship is one of four areas of financial support given by the nuclear companies' foundations. The second area is directed toward programmatic support, which includes anything from improving the operation of the PULSTAR to renovating teaching facilities and labs. The renovations have not gone unnoticed by one nuclear engineering student, who receives scholarship support from Progress Energy.

"I know that I just got out of a nuclear lab without new equipment, and the radiation counters were so worn out," Jason Kopp, a senior in nuclear engineering, said. "Through the funding of Progress Energy we've gotten a world of help in our experiments."

The other two areas reflect corporate funding in the areas of event sponsorships and unrestricted support. Both energy companies sponsor dinners for Ben Franklin scholars -- students earning a bachelor's degree in both engineering and humanities -- as well as providing a "piggy bank" fund for the dean to use at his will.

"The dean will use the unrestricted support funds to benefit highly-qualified out-of-state students that are considering a closer alternative for education," Hughes said. "It's a strong way to compete against Georgia Tech, Virgina Tech, Purdue and other technical schools for the brightest students."

By bringing in this vast potential for future employees of the nuclear industry, Ferrell said both North Carolina-based companies will benefit from a market period that is demanding to hire more graduates.

"Over the past several years, the main goal for utility companies was to operate extremely efficient," Ferrell said. "Now many of the senior employees that we hired in the 1970s are looking at retirement -- they've already benefited the company with all they had left. Now we've reached a period where hiring a greater number of college graduates is becoming the main goal."

Jacobson echoed Ferrell's statements, when she also added the market for hiring at Progress Energy is improving following the recent purchase of Florida Energy.

"You don't normally absorb a company the same size as yourself," Jacobson said. "We had to borrow a lot of money from the market, but this made us more flexible as an employer. Now we'll hire roughly 1,000 entry-level graduates by December to fill those positions vacated by our retiring senior employees."

It's a change in the market Ferrell anticipated, but said he knows one of the two North Carolina nuclear giants needs to build the next-generation reactor to fulfill that promise.

"The need for engineers was static after Three Mile," Ferrell said. "The normal cycle that increased the number of nuclear power plants stopped. It left the country in the position where adding more base-load generating plants will support the need for engineering talent, the talent that will replace the seniors of the 1970s."

Jacobson and Ferrell both agreed the importance of nuclear power in the nation's future will be witnessed by its environmental safety compared to other energy sources.

And by way of their long-term relationship with the University, both companies have NCSU graduates believing in the same prosperous future.

"It's going to start booming here when we start running out of fossil fuels," Kopp said. "I think my future is going to be a promising one for the nuclear industry."



-------- ohio

D-B workers set for anti-discrimination training

By DAN DEARTH
Staff writer
Wednesday, July 20, 2005

http://www.portclintonnewsherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050720/NEWS01/507200344/1002

OAK HARBOR -- Workers at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant will undergo a form of anti-discrimination training stemming from an incident at the plant in 2002, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced Monday.

NRC investigators found last year AVI Food Systems Inc., a food vendor based in Warren, Ohio, that services Davis-Besse, threatened to fire three AVI employees in 2002 after they reported safety concerns working with a colleague who was taking prescription medication. The workers claimed the prescription-drug use affected the individual's performance.

NRC guidelines prohibit discrimination against employees who raise safety issues at nuclear facilities, NRC spokesman Jan Strasma said. Those concerns include questions regarding the fitness for duty of employees, such as the questions posed by the AVI workers.

"The training makes sure they understand what the regulations are against discrimination of workers for raising safety issues," Strasma said.

The mandate for training is effective immediately, Strasma said. It must be completed no later than Aug. 31.

NRC officials also announced that AVI Food Systems has agreed to the training as well.

Richard G. Wilkins, Davis-Besse spokesman, said the plant has conducted the training for the past two or three years. Davis-Besse has agreed to extend the training to AVI workers and other contracted employees.

The training, he said, informs workers they can raise safety issues without fear of retaliation from management.

Originally published July 20, 2005


-------- MILITARY 


-------- africa

Kenyan police beat protesters; one dead

7/20/2005 8:50 PM (AP)
	
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-07-20-kenya-protests_x.htm

NAIROBI, Kenya — Riot police beat demonstrators with truncheons and fired tear gas canisters as protests on Wednesday in the Kenyan capital persisted over proposed constitutional amendments that critics say leave the president with too much power.

Police shot dead a man suspected of looting a cell phone store, Nairobi's police chief King'ori Mwangi said. He said that looters were using unrest to rob business that closed early in central Nairobi. (Related video: Police clash with protestors)

Wednesday's confrontations — the second day of three planned days of protests — began as skirmishes but escalated into violent clashes.

Police used truncheons and tear gas to keep protesters away from the National Assembly building in downtown Nairobi. In another part of the capital, they fired tear gas at stone-throwing students.

An Associated Press photographer saw one demonstrator beaten by police and left unconscious on the street before passers-by took him to the hospital. The photographer saw police detain five protesters.

Police spokesman Jaspher Ombati said 20 demonstrators were arrested.

"The scores of people were participating in an illegal procession as they had not notified the police as required by the law," Ombati said.

"The demonstrators turned riotous and started looting and destroying property. This forced the police to move in to disperse them with a view to restore normalcy." He said.

The demonstrators, taking part in the second of three days of planned protests, are opposed to plans spearheaded by allies of President Mwai Kibaki to change the draft constitution in an effort to retain the president's powers and weaken those of a proposed prime minister.

Lawmakers on Wednesday began debating the changes and other parts of the constitution, before a constitutional referendum tentatively scheduled before year's end.

Wednesday's newspapers reported that similar protests took place in two other major towns Tuesday and dozens of people were injured in skirmishes with the police.


-------- biological weapons

Japanese court rejects germ war claim

By Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo
Published: 20 July 2005 UK Independent

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article300321.ece

A Japanese high court has rejected appeals by 180 Chinese who were demanding compensation for damage caused by Japan's Second World War germ warfare programme.

Separately, however, the government announced it would take responsibility for cleaning up decaying chemical weapons found in southern China last month that injured three people.

Upholding a lower court verdict, the Tokyo High Court acknowledged damage was caused by Japan's germ warfare in China but ruled that the Japanese government was not responsible for compensating Chinese victims.

The plaintiffs, all Chinese citizens, filed the case in 1997, demanding an apology and 10 million yen (£45,000) each from the Japanese government.

The plaintiffs claim that at least 2,100 Chinese died in outbreaks of cholera, dysentery, anthrax and typhoid from bacteria that were allegedly mass-produced by the Imperial Army's notorious Unit 731 based in the north-eastern Chinese city of Harbin.

In an August 2002 ruling, Tokyo District Court acknowledged Japan used biological weapons before and during the Second World War in violation of international conventions.

But the courts rejected the plaintiffs' demands, saying foreign citizens cannot seek compensation directly from the Japanese government under international law. It also said that Japan had already settled compensation issues under post-war peace treaties.


-------- iraq

Mortuaries swamped as toll estimate hits 25,000

By James Hider in Baghdad and Michael Evans in London
July 20, 2005 UK Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1700874,00.html

FROM the street outside Baghdad’s main mortuary, it looks more like a bus station: dozens of minibuses line up as crowds of men stream in with empty wooden coffins, then out again bearing loaded ones on their shoulders, chanting prayers as they go.

The line of about 50 male relatives in the courtyard never seems to diminish, and the yard itself is full of empty coffins awaiting their grisly load. Murder is booming in Baghdad, and some mortuary staff say that their workload has doubled in the past month.

The latest prominent targets to be shot yesterday in Baghdad were Sheikh Mijbil al-Sheikh Issa and Dhamin Ileywi, two Sunni members of the committee that is writing the constitution. They were killed with a third Sunni, a committee adviser, as they left a restaurant after lunch.

Yesterday in London figures were published estimating that more than 25,000 civilians have been killed and 42,000 wounded in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003. A report by Iraq Body Count, an activist group, and Oxford Research Group, claimed the death toll for the 12 months to the end of March was 11,351, almost double the toll for the previous year.

About 20 per cent of the victims were women and children, according to the report, which is based on media reports, mortuary and medical witness statements, and official Iraqi ministry statements. American-led forces were blamed for 37 per cent of the deaths, “criminals” for 36 per cent and anti-occupation forces for 9 per cent. The balance could not be attributed to any single group.

Most of the killings slip by virtually unnoticed, almost routine in a country where death is so commonplace. Of the 23 people killed yesterday in scattered shootings, 13 died in an attack on a bus carrying Iraqi workers to an American army base northeast of the city. Most of the dead are brought to one of Baghdad’s main hospitals for a post-mortem examination, then taken by families for burial, mainly in the giant Shi a cemetery in Najaf to the south.

At the central mortuary, camphor is thrown into coffins to disguise the stench of death. But at Yarmouk hospital, where the aged refrigerators frequently break down, the marsh-gas reek makes even veteran mortuary workers hold their noses as they hose down the yard after bodies are collected by relatives.

Muhammed Fahmi al-Samarrai, a Sunni businessman, came to the central mortuary to pick up his younger brother Zakariah, a captain in the police who until the day before had guarded the building maintained by the United Nations in Baghdad. The young officer phoned his wife when he left work the day before, accompanied by three cousins, also police officers, acting as bodyguards because they did not trust their fellow officers. Fifteen minutes later when his wife called his mobile phone, there was no answer.

When a person vanishes in Baghdad, relatives desperately check the hospitals. If that fails, they trawl the mortuaries. Mr al-Samarrai found his brother’s body there, a bullet hole in the head and one in his chest, and scars where somebody had tortured him with an electric drill before he was put to death. He blamed police officers acting on orders of the Shia-dominated Government, hoping to purge the police of Sunni officers. But he said he does not blame the Shia, and will not seek revenge. Instead, he accuses the Government of being in thrall to Iran — where many of the Shia parties spent decades in exile and where some built powerful militias — and Syria, which allows foreign jihadists to cross into Iraq.

Near by, Hisham Ali al- Hashimi, a Shia football player, was collecting the body of his own brother, Hussein. He had been shot 30 times in the street. His only crime, according to his brother, was to pray publicly at a Shia mosque in an area of Baghdad where sectarian revenge killings are rife.

Sectarian strife is still a taboo subject in a country where everyone knows the consequences of a full-blown civil war would be too dire to countenance. 

----

Iraq conflict claims 34 civilian lives each day as 'anarchy' beckons

By Terry Kirby and Elizabeth Davies
Published: 20 July 2005 UK Independent

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article300368.ece

Almost 25,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed during the two years of war and insurgency that began with the US-led invasion in March 2003. More than a third have died as a result of action by allied forces.

The first detailed and authoritative study of non-combatant casualties claims that an average of 34 Iraqi civilians have died each day since the conflict began, a total of 24,865 deaths.

The authors of the report, published yesterday by a group called Iraq Body Count, said the figures showed the country was descending into "anarchy" under the US occupation and called upon Britain and America to establish urgently a method of officially recording civilian casualties - something they have so far refused to do.

Professor John Sloboda, one of the report's authors, said: "The failure of Western governments to recognise the lack of respect in not counting the civilian casualties must be a contributing factor to Muslim disaffection and anger.''

The report shows the anti- occupation or insurgency forces were solely responsible for the deaths of only 9 per cent, or 2,353 of the civilian total, despite the almost daily suicide bombings, that have accounted for more than 200 deaths this month alone.

American forces were responsible for 98.5 per cent of the 9,270 civilians assessed to have been killed by allied forces, or 37 per cent of the total who have died. Out of the remaining 1.5 per cent of the total killed by allied forces, British soldiers were responsible for the highest total, with 86 people.

The number of deaths suffered by military forces are small - there have been 93 British service personnel killed and 1,769 Americans. No figure has been put on Iraqi military casualties.

Indicating the level to which Iraq has become a far more lawless environment since Saddam Hussein was deposed, 8,935 of the killings, or 35.9 per cent, were of people involved in - or targeted by - conventional criminal activity although the report says the boundaries between criminal killings and those attributed to the insurgency were often blurred.

A Dossier of Civilian Casualties, 2003-2005 was compiled by Iraq Body Count (IBC) and Oxford Research Group, an alliance of academics and peace campaigners. The analysis is based on media reports as well as official figures from the Iraqi ministry of health and mortuaries.

The only previous attempt to assess the level of civilian casualties was published in The Lancet medical journal last October and put the figure at 100,000, based on a survey of Iraqi households. Although it was seized upon by opponents of the war as justifying their worst fears, its methodology was subsequently criticised.

The IBC report says the highest concentration of civilian deaths was during the so-called "invasion phase" of the conflict in March and April 2003, when 30 per cent of the civilian deaths occurred. In the two years since the end of the "combat" phase, the number of civilians killed was almost twice as high in year two (11,351) as in year one (6,215).

Detailed examination of the figures show that women and children accounted for almost 20 per cent of all civilian deaths, with one in every 200 being a child under the age of two. Almost half of all deaths occurred in Baghdad.

Most of the civilian deaths (53 per cent) involved explosive devices, most of which came from air strikes during the early stage of the conflict and which caused a disproportionately high level of casualties among children. The report says it shows that, while such weapons are an advantage to the military, they have a very high potential to kill indiscriminately.

Out of the deaths caused by insurgents, 4.3 per cent of the total were killed by suicide bombers. Police accounted for the largest single occupational category among the dead, with 977 reported deaths.

Speaking at the launch of the report in London, Professor Sloboda added: " The ever-mounting Iraqi death toll is the forgotten cost of the decision to go to war in Iraq. It remains a matter of the gravest concern that, nearly two and a half years on, neither the US nor the UK governments have begun to systematically measure the impact of their actions in terms of human lives destroyed."

Another of the report's authors, Toby Dodge, a Middle East expert and lecturer in politics at Queen Mary, University of London, said: "Iraq is descending into anarchy and the US presence is not helping. It has shown its incapacity to create a peaceful state. Never again will intervening states so greatly underestimate what is involved in invading and rebuilding a country.''

Victims' stories

YASSER SALIHEE

The Iraqi journalist, a former doctor who was covering the conflict for Knight Ridder news agency, was shot dead by a US sniper as he drove to get petrol for his car to take his family to the swimming pool on 24 June. It is not known why he was killed. The US military is investigating his death.

SAYED ABDUL MAJID AL-KHOEI

The leading Shia cleric, who had liberal political views, was murdered in April 2003 by a mob at the shrine at Najaf, days after he returned from exile in the UK. His killers were believed to be associated with the rival Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. His father, Ayatollah Abul-Qassim al-Khoei, was the Shia leader at the time of the 1991 Shia uprising against Saddam and died while under house arrest.

MOHAMMED ALI NSAEF AL-SHIMERI

The businessman, a father of three children, was living in Baghdad. One day in 2004 he was driving back to his office in west Baghdad after lunch at home. Car thieves stopped him. One killed him to prevent him giving evidence.

LAMIA ABED KHADOURI AL-SAKRI

The 50-year-old member of the party of outgoing prime minister Iyad Allawi, was shot nine times in the head and chest by a man armed with a pistol as she answered the door of her brother's house on 27 April, becoming the first member of parliament to be killed. Having lived in exile in London for 10 years, she returned to Baghdad after the fall of Saddam and had responded to a call for women to enter politics despite death threats from insurgents.

REVEALED: IRAQ'S CIVILIAN DEATH TOLL

24,865 civilians, mostly Iraqis, were reported killed in Iraq between 20 March 2003 and 19 March 2005 - almost 0.1% of the population * Nearly 10% of the dead were under 18 - equivalent to more than 2,400 children and teenagers * Nearly 10% of the adult dead were female - equivalent to 2,155 women * Allied forces were the sole killers of 9,270 of the victims (of whom 86 were killed by the British); anti-occupation forces were the sole killers of 2,353 of the victims; criminals killed 8,935 * 70% of these deaths occurred after President Bush declared that major combat operations were over on 1 May 2003 * The victims include at least 977 policemen, 100 transport workers, 47 health workers and 39 students * A further 42,500 civilians were reported wounded, of whom 6% - about 2,550 - were children and babies

----

Women to Lose Rights in 'New' Iraq

Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 Democracy Now! Headlines

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/20/1415232

Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that a draft of Iraq's new constitution would greatly curtail women's rights, imposing the Sharia or Koranic law in personal matters like marriage, divorce and inheritance. It also would limit their representation in parliament. The draft would guarantee legal rights for women, as long as they do not "violate Sharia," meaning that Shiite women could not marry without their family's permission and that husbands could divorce them simply by saying so out loud three times. The draft would also drop or phase out a measure included in the interim constitution requiring that women make up at least 25 percent of the parliament. The constitution is set to be finalized by mid-August.



-------- nato

NATO to add to Afghanistan troops

By Judy Dempsey International Herald Tribune
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 2005

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/07/19/news/nato.php

BERLIN The U.S.-led NATO military alliance is sending more than 2,000 extra troops to Afghanistan to provide additional security during the run-up to parliamentary elections in September, a senior NATO official said Tuesday.
 
"An additional 2,000 troops are being sent to build up support for the elections," said Lieutenant Colonel Karen Tissot van Patot, a spokeswoman for the NATO mission in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
 
Van Patot said the troops are being provided by the Netherlands, Romania, Italy, Austria and the United States. They will be based in Kabul, as well in the north and west of the country.
 
Once the new troops are deployed, NATO will have 11,400 soldiers in Afghanistan, with Germany, Turkey, Canada, Spain and Italy providing the biggest contributions.
 
Senior NATO and U.S. officials said they expected violence to increase before the elections - similar to what happened during campaigning last year for presidential elections.
 
In recent weeks, there has been an upsurge of attacks by insurgents, but NATO officials, including van Patot, played down the attacks, saying the insurgents lack the ability to coordinate their actions.
 
In addition to providing more security for the elections, NATO, which took over the command of the multinational International Security Assistance Force nearly two years ago, will expand Provincial Reconstruction Teams into the south of the country.
 
These small units are usually made up of between 100 and 300 soldiers. They provide security and stability for the reconstruction work and humanitarian aid organizations as well as help extend the authority of President Hamid Karzai's government to other parts of the country.
 
Lithuania, Spain and the United States recently set up such teams in the western provinces of Chaghcharan, Qal'eh Now and Farah, bringing the total number of Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan to nine in addition to two support bases for logistics, supplies and emergencies.
 
Van Patot said the three new Provincial Reconstruction Teams would be based in the southern provinces of Nimroz, Hilmand and Kandahar.
 
"The final details are being worked out by NATO, but Canada is interested in setting one up, and Britain and the Netherlands are intending to be very involved," said van Patot in a telephone interview.

She added that the new teams could be in place by mid-2006, completing stage three of NATO's expansion in Afghanistan. Britain has 500 troops in NATO's Afghan mission, and is heavily involved in the separate U.S-led Operation Enduring Freedom.
 
Britain is intending to send between 1,000 and 2,000 troops to the south to boost security in the region; the troops could initially operate within the U.S. coalition forces before gradually moving over to the NATO operation.

Provincial Reconstruction Teams are not engaged in combat operations and are separate from Operation Enduring Freedom, whose main task is to quash any resistance from Al Qaeda and remnants of the Taliban.
 
Over time, depending on the security situation, there are plans to merge the International Security Assistance Force and Operation Enduring Freedom operation, which includes 18,000 U.S. troops.


-------- us

Army says mental health among soldiers in Iraq has improved

7/20/2005 1:20 PM (AP)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-07-20-soldier-mental-health_x.htm

WASHINGTON — The overall mental health of U.S. soldiers in Iraq has improved from the early months of the insurgency, with a significant drop in suicides, but a majority still say morale is low, the Army said Wednesday.

An assessment by the Army surgeon general found that among soldiers interviewed last fall in Iraq and Kuwait, depression, anxiety or acute stress was more prevalent among National Guard and Reserve soldiers, as well as regular Army soldiers in transportation units, than among soldiers in combat units.

The report, dated January 2005 and covering the period from late August to mid-October of 2004, was a follow-up on a similar assessment done a year earlier, when the insurgency was taking hold. The earlier assessment found that mental health services were not adequately available to soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait and that a significant number of soldiers said they had little or no training in how to handle combat stress.

The follow-up report said mental health services have improved, with a higher ratio of behavioral health personnel to soldiers than in 2003. The number of suicides for the full year 2004 had declined to nine from 24 in 2003. Three possible suicides from 2004 are still being investigated.

In the most recent assessment, the percentage of soldiers reporting low or very low unit morale in the most recent assessment was 54, with nine percent reporting high or very high morale and the remainder describing it as medium. A year earlier, 72% of soldiers in Iraq told Army interviewers that unit morale was low or very low. 



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


-------- courts / tribunals

Bush Taps Conservative Appeals Court Judge John Roberts For Supreme Court

Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/20/1415238

President Bush has chosen appeals court judge John Roberts as his first nominee to the Supreme Court. Roberts is 50 years old and a solidly conservative Republican who has served in the administrations of George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan. For years, he worked as a top corporate attorney before being appointed in 2003 to serve on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, which is widely considered the nation's second-highest court. We host a roundtable discussion with Nancy Northup, President of the Center for Reproductive Rights, Gary Marx of the Judicial Confirmation Network, Ralph Neas of People for the American Way, Jamin Raskin, author of "Overruling Democracy" and Art Eisenberg of the New York Civil Liberties Union. [includes rush transcript] President Bush has chosen appeals court judge John Roberts as his first nominee to the Supreme Court. Roberts is 50 years old and a solidly conservative Republican who has served in the administrations of George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan. For years, he worked as a top corporate attorney before being appointed in 2003 to serve on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, which is widely considered the nation's second-highest court.

The Los Angeles Times describes Roberts as "a young, conservative judge with a spotless personal record and a minimal paper trail."

Justices are lifetime appointees and if confirmed to the Supreme Court, Roberts could affect major national issues ranging from abortion to property rights for decades to come. President Bush made the announcement with Roberts at his side Tuesday night in a primetime broadcast from the White House.

    * President Bush, speaking at the White House, July 19, 2005.

Bush chose Roberts despite pressure from Republicans and even from his own wife, Laura Bush, that he should name a woman to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. O'Connor was considered a swing vote on the closely divided court. Her retirement earlier this month created the court's first vacancy in 11 years. After Bush made the announcement, Roberts stepped to the microphone to accept his nomination.

    * Judge John Roberts, Supreme Court Justice nominee, July 19, 2005.

Roberts is a long-time Bush supporter who donated $1,000 dollars to Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. In the Reagan administration, Roberts was special assistant to the attorney general and associate counsel to the president. Between 1989 and 1993, he was principal deputy solicitor general, the government's second highest lawyer, under Kenneth Starr. He has argued more than three dozen cases before the Supreme Court.

Roberts wrote the government's brief in a 1991 case in which the Supreme Court held that government could prohibit doctors and clinics who receive federal funds from discussing abortion with their patients. In his brief, Roberts wrote: "We continue to believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled." He also stated that the 1973 Court decision finds "no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution."

Roberts also co-authored a brief in the Supreme Court on behalf of the government in support of the anti-choice group Operation Rescue and six individuals who had obstructed access to reproductive health care clinics.

Pressed during his 2003 confirmation hearing for his own views on abortion, Roberts said: "Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land. ... There's nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent."

According to the Boston Globe, Roberts' wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, is a lawyer involved with the anti-abortion group Feminists for Life.

In other cases, Roberts argued that the Supreme Court should invalidate a federal affirmative action program; that the Constitution permits religious ceremonies at public high school graduations; and that environmental groups lacked the right to sue under the Endangered Species Act.

During his time at the Washington law firm Hogan & Harston, Roberts practiced telecommunications, energy and other business law. The Wall Street Journal reports that business leaders who recently began reviewing records of the White House finalist list placed Roberts at the top of their candidate list.

Roberts may also have played a key role in the disputed 2000 presidential election. While his name did not appear on any of the briefs during the Florida recount, three unidentified sources told the Washington Post Roberts gave Gov. Jeb Bush critical advice on how the Florida legislature could name George W. Bush the winner at time when Republicans feared the courts might force a different choice.

Roberts has only served as an appeals court judge for the past two years. George HW Bush first nominated Roberts to the D.C. Circuit in 1992, but his nomination died when Bill Clinton was elected president. The current president nominated Roberts again in 2001, but he didn't get a floor vote in the Senate until 2003.

Roberts was part of a three-judge panel that handed Bush an important victory last week when it ruled that the military tribunals of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could proceed. The decision also found that Bush could deny terrorism captives prisoner-of-war status as outlined by the Geneva Conventions.

Roberts will now undergo a background investigation then his nomination will be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Committee chairman, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, has said he wants to schedule hearings by late August or September. The court is due to open its next session in October.

Today we spend the hour looking at the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court:

    * Jamin Raskin, American University Law professor and author of "Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court vs. the American People."
    * Gary Marx, executive director of the Judicial Confirmation Network. He also worked as a coalitions organizer for the Bush-Cheney 2004 national campaign and served as Development Director and lobbyist for The Family Foundation of Virginia.
    * Art Eisenberg, legal director at the New York Civil Liberties Union. Argued the case Burdek v. Takushi before the Supreme Court.
    * Nancy Northup, President of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
    * Ralph Neas, president of the People for the American Way foundation. He joins us on the phone from his Washington, D.C. headquarters.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush made the announcements with Roberts at his side Tuesday night in a primetime broadcast from the White House.

      PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: One of the most consequential decisions a president makes is his appointment of a justice to the Supreme Court. When a president chooses a justice, he’s placing in human hands the authority and majesty of the law.

      The decisions of the Supreme Court affect the life of every American. And so a nominee to that court must be a person of superb credentials and the highest integrity, a person who will faithfully apply the Constitution and keep our founding promise of equal justice under law.

      I have found such a person in Judge John Roberts. And tonight I’m honored to announce that I am nominating him to serve as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. John Roberts currently serves on one of the most influential courts in the nation, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

      Before he was a respected judge, he was known as one of the most distinguished and talented attorneys in America. John Roberts has devoted his entire professional life to the cause of justice and is widely admired for his intellect, his sound judgment and personal decency.

      Judge Roberts was born in Buffalo and grew up in Indiana. In high school he captained his football team, and he worked summers in a steel mill to help pay his way through college. He’s an honors graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

      In his career he has served as a law clerk to Justice William Rehnquist, as an associate counsel to President Ronald Reagan and as the Principal Deputy Solicitor General in the Department of Justice. In public service and in private practice he has argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court and earned a reputation as one of the best legal minds of his generation. 

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush, speaking Tuesday evening from the White House. Bush chose Roberts despite pressure from Republicans and his own wife, Laura Bush, that he should name a woman to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, O'Connor considered a swing vote on the closely divided court. Her retirement earlier this month created the court's first vacancy in 11 years. After Bush made the announcement, Judge Roberts stepped to the microphone to accept his nomination.

      JUDGE JOHN ROBERTS: It is both an honor and very humbling to be nominated to serve on the Supreme Court.

      Before I became a judge my law practice consisted largely of arguing cases before the court. That experience left me with a profound appreciation for the role of the court in our constitutional democracy, and a deep regard for the court as an institution. I always got a lump in my throat whenever I walked up those marble steps to argue a case before the court. And I don’t think it was just from the nerves.

      I am very grateful for the confidence the President has shown in nominating me. And I look forward to the next step in the process before the United States Senate.

      It’s also appropriate for me to acknowledge that I would not be standing here today if it were not for the sacrifice and help of my parents, Jack and Rosemary Roberts, my three sisters, Cathy, Peggy and Barbara, and, of course, my wife, Jane. And I also want to acknowledge my children, my daughter, Josie, my son, Jack, who remind me every day why it’s so important for us to work to preserve the institutions of our democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: John Roberts, President Bush's first Supreme Court nominee, addressing the nation last night. Roberts is a longtime Bush supporter who donated $1,000 to Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. In the Reagan administration, Roberts was special assistant to the Attorney General and associate counsel to the President. Between 1989 and 1993, he was Principal Deputy Solicitor General, the government's second highest lawyer. He's argued more than three dozen cases before the Supreme Court.

Roberts wrote the government's brief in 1991 -- a 1991 case in which the Supreme Court held that the government could prohibit doctors and clinics that received federal funds from discussing abortion with their patients. In his brief, Roberts wrote, quote, "We continue to believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled." He also stated that the 1973 Court decision finds, quote, "no support in the text, structure or history of the Constitution."

Roberts also co-authorized a brief in the Supreme Court on behalf of the government in support of the anti-choice group, Operation Rescue, and six individuals who had obstructed access to reproductive health care clinics. Pressed during his 2003 confirmation hearing for his own views on abortion, Roberts said, quote, “Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land; there's nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent," he said. According to the Boston Globe, Roberts’s wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, is a lawyer involved with the anti-choice group Feminists for Life.

In other cases, Roberts argued the Supreme Court should invalidate a federal affirmative action program, that the Constitution permits religious ceremonies at public high school graduations, and that environmental groups lack the right to sue under the Endangered Species Act.

Roberts has only served as an appeals court judge for the past two years. George H.W. Bush first nominated Roberts to the D.C. Circuit in 1992, but his nomination died when Bill Clinton was elected President. The current president nominated Roberts again in 2001, but he didn't get a floor vote in the Senate until 2003. Roberts was part of a three-judge panel that handed Bush an important victory last week when it ruled military tribunals of detainees at Guantanamo could proceed. The decision also found Bush could deny terrorism captives prisoners of war status outlined by the Geneva Conventions.

Roberts will now undergo a background investigation. Then his nomination will be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Committee Chair, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, has said he wants to schedule hearings by late August or September. The court is due to open its next session in October.

Today we'll spend the rest of the hour looking at the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. We'll go to break, and then we'll be joined by our guests. Among them, representative of the New York Civil Liberties Union and Nancy Northup, President of the Center for Reproductive Rights. We will go to her first to get her response to his position on abortion. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to President Bush's nomination of his first Supreme Court Justice, John Roberts. We're joined by a number of guests in our New York studio. Nancy Northup is here, President of the Center for Reproductive Rights. On the telephone we're joined by Jamin Raskin, an American University law professor and author of Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court vs. The American People. Art Eisenberg joins us, Legal Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. He argued the case Burdek v. Takushi before the Supreme Court. Gary Marx is Executive Director of the Judicial Confirmation Network. He also worked as a coalition organizer for the Bush-Cheney national campaign in 2004 and served as Development Director and lobbyist for the Family Foundation of Virginia. And Ralph Neas is with us, President of People for the American Way Foundation, joining us from Washington, D.C. Let's begin with Nancy Northup. Your response to the nomination of Judge Roberts to be the next Supreme Court Justice.

NANCY NORTHUP: Well, Americans who care about women's reproductive health and decision-making should be concerned about Judge Roberts's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. As you talked about before, he has in his legal career advocated for the reversal of Roe v. Wade, and it's not just a matter that he was a government attorney who was on a brief. He was a Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. It's a high ranking position, and it was a centerpiece of the Bush I administration, as it had been of the Reagan administration, to ask the court again and again to reverse Roe v. Wade. It was the policy of the department. He was a high ranking policy official in that department, and we should have very close questioning of Judge Roberts when he is before the Senate confirmation process, because what people do is critical, and we need to find out if these are, in fact, his beliefs.

AMY GOODMAN: Jamin Raskin, what about the comment that you really don't know what Judge Roberts thinks, even though he wrote the brief that said Roe v. Wade should be overturned, because he was just doing the bidding of his client?

JAMIN RASKIN: Well, he certainly was representing the Solicitor General's office and the administration, and that had been the policy of both Bush Sr. and also Reagan. Under Solicitor General Charles Fried, they had been advocating for an overruling of Roe v. Wade. And in that case, Rust v. Sullivan, they were pushing the idea that there was nothing unconstitutional about prohibiting abortion counseling in federally funded clinics, and they won before the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision there.

So, you know, I think that for the opponents of the nomination, I think trying to tease out some serious answers about his views of Roe v. Wade and Casey and privacy is the most promising avenue of attack, but personally I feel like the nomination is a reflection of the weakness of Bush politically at this point. He, you know, clearly would have preferred to go with more of a movement right wing conservative, somebody like Edith Jones or Michael Luttig, but didn't do that, I think, because he didn't think that he could withstand the kind of bloodshed that there might be in the Senate. So this is a much safer appointment for him. It’s a much shrewder appointment, and I think it's going to be, you know, it's going to be very tough to take this guy on.

AMY GOODMAN: Gary Marx of the Judicial Confirmation Network, your response.

GARY MARX: Well, I think Judge Roberts is an absolute home run. He follows through on what the President promised to the American people, who is going to be a nominee who is going to interpret the Constitution as it's clearly written and not, you know, be an activist from the bench and not legislate from the bench. You know, he's the first nominee of the 21st century and I think America's future is in safe hands with this guy.

You know, regarding the Roe v. Wade question, I don't think it's really a debate for this nomination. Clearly, Roe v. Wade is a 6-3 decision as the court stands now. And even if John Roberts is, you know, in support of correcting that decision and sending it back to the states and back to the people, even if that was the case, it would only be 5-4.

The real question on Roe v. Wade is abortion restrictions, issues like partial-birth abortion, parent notifications, which overwhelmingly the American people support, and those are the issues that will immediately come before him when he's confirmed in October. He'll have a case from New Hampshire on parent notification that he'll have to, you know, address then. He's a home run of a nominee, and I think he's going to pass, but I do think Democrats are going to be split right down the middle on this one as they were on his previous nomination when he was passed in committee 14-3 and then passed overwhelmingly by voice vote in the U.S. Senate.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Neas of People for the American Way?

RALPH NEAS: Amy, we were extremely disappointed that the President didn't name someone in the mode of Sandra Day O'Connor, a mainstream conservative who had been approved unanimously in 1981. Rather, as Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Counsel said last night, President Bush promised to nominate someone along the lines of Scalia and Thomas, and that’s exactly what he has done. If that's true, this nomination of John Roberts, if confirmed, could be a Constitutional catastrophe. Sandra Day O'Connor, 17-18 times in just the last five or six years has been the fifth and deciding vote preserving privacy, preserving environmental protections, equal opportunity laws, preserving a woman's right to choose, and many other fundamental Constitutional issues.

We did a report called “Courting Disaster,” which looked at every dissent and concurring opinion of Thomas and Scalia going back to 1991 and 1986, respectively. With one or two like-minded justices, more than 100 Supreme Court precedents would be overturned. This is going to be a very serious confirmation process, as always. With all due respect to the advocacy organizations on all sides, the hearings will be the absolutely key phase of the confirmation process. I expect tough questions from Democrats and Republicans.

I think that the nominee who has got a sparse record has the burden of proving to the Senate and to the United States of America, to all of our citizens, that he has the commitment to equal justice under the law, that he has a commitment to protecting the rights of all ordinary Americans across this country. That's a burden he has to meet. If there's any doubt as to where his judicial philosophy is, the doubt should be resolved on behalf of the Constitution and the American people. If he doesn't have a commitment to the bipartisan consensus that's existed in this country the last 70 years, he should be rejected.

GARY MARX: Ralph, does that mean you will not oppose this nominee until the hearing?

RALPH NEAS: We are carefully studying the record as it is, both his record at the Circuit Court, and we've got problems with his ruling on the Endangered Species Act, we've got problems on a number of areas, and certainly we have problems with things that he advocated when he was with the Bush I administration. We are going to continue to look at it. I'm not sure what our timetable is going to be, but we're going to continue to exhaustively examine his record and, of course, I'm sure that he will produce information regarding his positions at the Department of Justice and what he has been doing during his career to give more light to the committee as to where he is on his judicial philosophy. It certainly matters to us, of course, that every right wing and religious right leader has endorsed John Roberts and said he is excellent, he is exactly in the mode of Thomas and Scalia. So I think he's going to have to show us, is he in the mode of a Clarence Thomas, a Scalia, or is he a mainstream conservative who will protect the legal and social justice achievements of the last 70 years? That's the question.

GARY MARX: Well, we also appreciate the kind words he’s received from Joe Lieberman and Laurence Tribe and David Boies and many other liberals who understand that, you know, he's going to be confirmed, he's the mainstream nominee and much, you know, like the Republican majority treated Ginsburg and Breyer under Clinton, we expect to see that same kind of fair treatment from the Senate this time around.

RALPH NEAS: Well, Senator Lieberman clarified his remarks last night, and he wants to see what's going to happen during the hearings. And, of course, unlike President Clinton going to Senator Hatch regarding Breyer and Ginsburg and getting his approval of them both before nominating them, we just went through a charade of a bipartisan consultation process. John Roberts was probably the choice from the very beginning. There was an appearance of consultation, but it was no consultation that led to a bipartisan unity candidate. I'm afraid this is going to turn out to be much more controversial than most people think.

AMY GOODMAN: It's interesting you say he was the choice from the beginning, because some reports today saying that yesterday people in the White House were calling reporters and sort of suggesting it might be others like Edith Clements, although, of course, John Roberts was already the one who was chosen and was announced last night. I wanted to bring Art Eisenberg into the discussion, the Legal Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union who has argued before the Supreme Court and get your overall response to the choice of Judge Roberts to be the next U.S. Supreme Court Justice, but also to his decision just last Friday as part of the three-judge panel that handed the Bush administration a critical victory, by ruling that military tribunals could proceed at Guantanamo. Art Eisenberg.

ART EISENBERG: Before speaking to the merits or deficiencies of Mr. Roberts, I think it's important to step back and talk about the confirmation process for a moment, because I think the Constitutional process of advise and consent is different for judicial appointments than it is when the President appoints officials to the Executive Branch of government. The President is entitled to great deference when he appoints within the Executive Branch, but when the President and the Senate jointly appoint to the Judiciary a co-equal independent branch of government, I think the President is not entitled to that same degree of deference. Indeed the President is entitled to considerably less deference, and I think it is important as this process continues to bear that in mind.

I also think it's important to think about the educative function of the confirmation process in terms of judicial philosophy and explaining to the American people how judges reach decisions. We hear a lot about this concept of judicial activism. In fact, we heard Gary Marx just before speak about liberal judges being activists and how Judge Roberts is not an activist. This is a, I think, a hollow and sort of rhetorical exercise. There was a piece in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago by Paul Gewirtz, a Yale Law professor, who said essentially, “Well, you can define judicial activism in a variety of ways, but perhaps one of the best ways to measure judicial activism is to look at the question about how often a judge is inclined to overturn the legislative choices of the democratically-elected branch of government, Congress.” And by that measure Gewirtz demonstrated that Justice Thomas is the most activist judge on the court and Justices Breyer and Stevens and Ginsberg are the least activist judges on the court.

So to throw around terms like “judicial activism” or “using the judicial process to legislate,” I think are ultimately hollow and impoverished claims, but it requires, I think, the American people to understand what the judicial process is about, how judges go about making judgments from text, from history, from principle, and I think there will be an opportunity to explore all of those matters during the confirmation process.

AMY GOODMAN: And the Guantanamo tribunal decision that Judge Roberts participated in last Friday?

ART EISENBERG: Well, I think that's a very disturbing outcome. The process that the government is affording detainees in Guantanamo, the labeling -- unilateral labeling of individuals as “enemy combatants,” and the refusal of this administration to even accord these combatants prisoner of war status, I think, violates international norms, it violates human rights principles, it violates due process, and is ultimately also an impoverished policy.

AMY GOODMAN: On that issue of violating due process, what exactly do these tribunals do? I mean, among the concerns that the -- those that are brought before these tribunals cannot see the evidence against them?

ART EISENBERG: I think there are problems. I'm not sufficiently familiar with the specifics of the deficiencies, but there are problems both with the independence of the tribunals and the inadequacy of the process, including the process of confronting evidence against one.

AMY GOODMAN: Jamin Raskin, you wrote the book Overruling Democracy. Right now this is the first of President Bush's selections for the Supreme Court, but there -- it looks like there is at least another one, Judge Roberts also was Rehnquist's clerk. What does that mean?

JAMIN RASKIN: Well, I think it means that he might -- that they've positioned him slightly more moderately, more to the center than a number of the other names that were floated, which were truly horrific, people like Edith Jones or Judge Luttig from the Fourth Circuit. I mean, these are serious right wing activists, and I'm talking about political activists, not just judicial activists.

AMY GOODMAN: In what way, because we're not just talking about Judge Roberts now, since there is going to be, most likely, another selection by President Bush.

JAMIN RASKIN: Let's take Edith Jones from the Fifth Circuit. I mean, she has written a number of opinions which just put her anti-abortion, pro-life agenda right there on paper. And she has – there is one opinion I was looking at from Edith Jones where – in a labor case where she just threw out very clear findings of unfair labor practices and also in another labor case where she, despite the fact there were a lot of unfair labor practices in this case, the union won the election, and she found a very trumped up reason to throw the election result out, basically that the list of employees was flawed, but it was flawed because the management had provided a flawed list, and then when the management challenged the union's victory, she was able to, you know, to use that as a reason to discard the case.

So I mean, there are some really extreme polemical, ideological right wing judges out there, and, you know, Roberts is cut from a somewhat different mode. I mean, he's much more of an establishment conservative. He's a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, President of the Harvard Law Review, Hogan & Hartson, D.C. Circuit for a couple of years, so he's a safer pick from them and, you know, I think, you know, Ralph Neas is, of course, right, which is there's got to be a very serious grilling and meticulous examination of his Constitutional views because he's only been on the court for a couple of years. I mean, there's a very thin paper trail here, but I think that if you look at the full sweep of judicial confirmation history, a candidate like this is a very tough one to stop.

But I do think that there can be important jurisprudential markers put down during this process that will allow us to have a very serious fight about the next person, because I think that's when Bush is going to go for broke and try to get on, not a Rehnquist style judge, but a Scalia-Thomas style judge, and, you know, Ralph may be perfectly right that Judge Roberts is going to be like them, but there's really no way to tell, and he's going to be on his best and most demure behavior during the confirmation process.

AMY GOODMAN: Gary Marx, you are an organizer, were an organizer for the Bush-Cheney 2004 National Campaign. You're Executive Director of Judicial Confirmation Network. How do you organize now? Where do you proceed from here?

GARY MARX: Well, I think it's no mystery that a lot of our focus is going to be spent in those states that President Bush did very well in, that to have, you know, blue senators, those red states with blue senators, where the vast majority of those citizens in places like Nebraska and North Dakota and, you know, Indiana. You know, they support the President and they support his nominee, especially a place like Indiana where this nominee hails from. Senator Biden is going to have a difficult decision to make and Senator Kent Conrad in North Dakota is up for re-election in 2006.

We have a mainstream nominee who is one of the most qualified you'll ever find, argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court, tremendous experience, tremendous personal integrity and humbleness, and I think it's going to be very difficult for a lot of democrat senators in the middle like Mary Landrieu to somehow oppose this nominee and at minimum at least give him a fair up or down vote and not allow a filibuster to go forward on this nomination. I think filibuster is completely off the table now, and he's going to -- he will get a fair up or down vote and he'll be confirmed but we're going to spend a lot of our time talking with those particular -- talking to those particular senators and letting them know that we have a positive, positive candidate who is one of the best that the President could possibly have, you know, hoped for to send to them and, you know, we're going to have -- we're going to try to get out a positive message, despite what we expect to be a, you know, a spirited smear campaign coming from, you know, Ralph Neas and groups like him. Yeah, they've been doing this for 20 years and, you know, we have a -- we've learned a lot from, you know, their example and a lot of how to, you know, get out a positive message in the face of that.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we're going to get Ralph Neas’s response in a minute. We have to go to break. I also want to ask about Judge Roberts writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, that it was Constitutional for police to arrest, handcuff and briefly jail a 12-year-old girl for, quote, "eating a single French fry in a Washington subway station," also joined the unanimous panel that allowed prosecution based on evidence taken from a stopped car's trunk, even though the court found the police officer had no probable cause to search the trunk. We'll talk about civil liberties. Our guests Jamin Raskin, American University; Gary Marx, Judicial Confirmation Network; Art Eisenberg of the New York Civil Liberties Union; Nancy Northup, President of the Center for Reproductive Rights; and Ralph Neas, head of People for the American Way. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We look at the nomination of Judge Roberts to be the next Supreme Court Justice. President Bush made the announcement last night in a White House primetime address. We're joined by a roundtable of people responding to this selection, may well just be the first that president Bush makes. Again, looking at this decision that Judge Roberts wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel, that it was Constitutional for police to arrest, to handcuff, to briefly jail a 12-year-old girl for eating a single French fry, upholding the police in this. This was at a Washington subway station. Art Eisenberg of the New York Civil Liberties Union, your response.

ART EISENBERG: Well, I mean, it surely shows an insensitivity to concerns about police abuse. Without having sort of read the briefs and fully digested the opinion, I'm not sure what else one could say about it. My understanding of the case was that it was an analysis of an equal protection claim where juveniles were treated actually more harshly than adults and that Judge Roberts upheld that unequal treatment on the ground that the state has an interest in promoting the behavior of children, which is also suggestive of an attitude about the role of the state, which I think should be of some concern to conservatives. But at the level of tolerating police abuse, there seemed to be some insensitivity in the way that the opinion was constructed.

AMY GOODMAN: And this second point, as a civil liberties attorney yourself who appeared before the Supreme Court, joining this unanimous panel that allowed prosecution based on evidence taken from a trunk of a car, even though the court found a police officer had no probable cause to search the trunk.

ART EISENBERG: Well, I don't know what that says about Judge Roberts's view of the exclusionary rule. That has always been a subject of debate and controversy.

AMY GOODMAN: The exclusionary rule being?

ART EISENBERG: The exclusionary rule being that evidence that is illegally seized without probable cause or individualized suspicion, depending upon the circumstances, is excluded from evidence in a case. The Supreme Court adopted that approach as a prophylactic rule to protect Constitutional rights, and it has long been the subject of criticism by conservatives and folks who are advocating for a greater degree of law and order, and efforts to overturn the exclusionary rule, however, went before the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court reaffirmed the vitality of the exclusionary rule, I think in an opinion by Chief Justice Rehnquist, if I'm remembering that correctly. And I think -- so I don't know what this says about Judge Roberts's view of the exclusionary rule, but that should surely be the subject of further inquiry during the confirmation process.

AMY GOODMAN: Nancy Northup, President for the Center for Reproductive Rights, Roberts, again, as Deputy Solicitor General filed a friend of the court brief for the United States, supporting Operation Rescue and six other individuals who routinely blocked access to reproductive health care clinics, arguing protesters' behavior didn't amount to discrimination against women, even though only women could exercise the right to seek an abortion. Can you talk about this case?

NANCY NORTHUP: That's right, and again, what's important to remember here is he was Principal Deputy Solicitor General, the highest ranking political position, other than the Solicitor General.

AMY GOODMAN: And the Solicitor General was Kenneth Starr.

NANCY NORTHUP: Yes. And it was the decision to intervene in this case. The United States was an amicus in this case. They didn't have to file a brief in this case. They chose to, and they did it not just in this case but in a lot of cases around the country in which they came in on the side of protesters against clinics and women, and if we go back and think about what was happening in the late 1980s and early 1990s, violence at clinics, scary things were happening, and enormous blockades by Operation Rescue that were preventing women from getting their reproductive health care. And it was the decision of John Roberts that he would come in on the side of the protesters and not on the side of women, so again, when we look at this case, when we look at the position that he took in Rust v. Sullivan, and overall, to have been part of a Department of Justice whose policy was to get the Supreme Court over and over again to overturn Roe v. Wade, those are serious questions he needs to answer in this confirmation process.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain Rust v. Sullivan.

NANCY NORTHUP: Well, Rust v. Sullivan was a law that said that family planning programs that get government money, not that they are going to use that money to perform abortions -- that's been prohibited -- but that they could not even speak about it, a doctor could not even speak to his patient or her patient who says, ‘Well, I think I would like to terminate this pregnancy, can you let me know if that's possible?’ couldn't even talk about it. And the position in that case was that that wasn't a First Amendment violation.

Now ultimately, unfortunately and regrettably, the Supreme Court agreed, but what's significant about John Roberts's role and the Solicitor General's position was they asked the court to overturn Roe v. Wade. Wasn't at issue in the case. They could just argue, as the Supreme Court eventually found, it wasn't a First Amendment violation, but they went so far as to say we ought to overturn Roe v. Wade. That is a very aggressive position, and to suggest now that this isn't the position of John Roberts is hard to take.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, when pressed in 2003 for his own opinion, he said there's nothing in his personal views that would prevent him from fully applying Roe v. Wade.

NANCY NORTHUP: Well, one would assume that answer was about how is he going to act as a circuit court judge, who has to follow Supreme Court law. He must be asked in this confirmation process what are his views of Roe v. Wade, of Planned Parenthood vs. Casey. What's his view of the most recent Supreme Court case which was 5-4, which said that the -- as we've said since the beginning about Roe, that women's health is the most important, is paramount and must be first. Where does he stand on behalf of women's reproductive health?

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it's fair to raise the role of his wife, also a lawyer, Jane Sullivan Roberts, in Feminists for Life, which is a group that's dedicated to overturning Roe v. Wade?

NANCY NORTHUP: Well, I don't think you can ever, you know, pin a wife or husband's view on each other, but what I think it probably indicates, and probably indicates why there's so much excitement in the anti-choice movement about the appointment of John Roberts, is that it may indicate that they have some insight into what his personal views are.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking about the selection of John Roberts to be the next US Supreme Court Justice, the nomination by President Bush last night may just be his first nomination of a Supreme Court Justice. I wanted to turn back to Ralph Neas to give you a chance to respond to Gary Marx -- Ralph Neas, President of People for the American Way -- and also ask about how you are organizing. I mean, the estimates are up to $100 million will be spent by different groups on different sides of the confirmation process, $100 million. Where are you going to go from here?

RALPH NEAS: First, let me, Amy, respond to a couple of Gary's Ad Hominem attacks. Factually, I've been working on Supreme Court nominations since Justice Stevens in 1975. I was a chief Republican counsel to Republican Senators Edward W. Brook and David Durenberger. Senator Brook has certainly taught me that there was a very different standard, of course, as Nancy was just explaining with respect to the appellate courts and the Supreme Court. For example, Bork was approved unanimously for the Circuit Court of Appeals and then, of course, was rejected by a 58-42 vote by the Senate in 1987.

A lot of people don't realize that more than 20% of all Supreme Court nominees have been rejected by the Senate, and 60% of those never got an up-and-down vote. In fact, there have been three filibusters in the last 35 years at the Supreme Court level. There were 51 senators who were for Abe Fortas, at least 51, but he was filibustered by the Republicans successfully. Then there were two unsuccessful filibusters against Justice Rehnquist, Chief Justice Rehnquist, in 1972 and 1986.

And we have to remember that whoever gets on there is -- if it's John Roberts, that person could be on for 25 to 30 years, seven or eight presidential terms. We've got to remember that this is probably the most important domestic issue now facing the country, the future of the Supreme Court, and what happens with this nomination and maybe two or three more -- President Bush in September of 2004 said he would get four nominations -- so this is going to determine what the law of the land is going to be for maybe three or four decades.

I think we're going to be finding out that John Roberts is Antonin Scalia in sheep’s clothing. And if that’s true, there could be scores of precedents that preserve our Constitutional rights, freedoms and liberties overturned in a relatively short amount of time.

We're definitely going to be doing a massive national education campaign with our 750,000 members and supporters. We'll be working with our 100 national partners across the country to make sure the people are engaged in this process, but with all due respect once again to the advocacy organizations, we hope that there will be a set of hearings like there was in 1987, a 2 1/2 week seminar on the Robert Bork hearings that truly taught the American people maybe more than they've ever heard about Constitutional law and Constitutional history.

The Senate's advice and consent responsibility, the Senate hearings definitely are the critical element of any confirmation process. Whether it’s a Judicial nominee or an Executive Branch nominee, the Senate hearings always determine who is going to be confirmed, who is not going to be confirmed. The burden of proof will be on John Roberts. He has got to demonstrate for this lifetime position that could last 30 years, that he's got the requisite commitment to equal justice under the law and to protecting the ordinary -- the rights of ordinary Americans across this country.

JAMIN RASKIN: Amy, could I add something?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, go ahead, Jamin Raskin of American University.

JAMIN RASKIN: I'm involved in a project called the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, where a number of law schools are sending law students into public high schools to teach the Constitution. And I agree with Ralph that we need to have a national seminar about the meaning of the Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court, and I think that we can't leave out young people. The case that you were referring to with the girl who was stopped and arrested for eating French fries, that actually happened to students who were part of our program, and on--

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, that happened to kids that were part of your program?

JAMIN RASKIN: Well, in other words, we're teaching it in Wilson High School, and that’s -- Wilson High School and Deale Junior High School were the places where they were stopping kids in the subway for French fries and, you know, the wrong objects and so on, and so we were involved in that process of trying to defend the rights of the kids there.

But the point I'm making is that on Constitution Day this year, which is September 16th, there's a new federal law that was championed by Senator Byrd which requires every public and private school in the country to get federal funds to examine the Constitution, to talk about the Constitution. And Mary Beth Tinker, who won her case in the Supreme Court in 1969 wearing a black arm band is working with us to try to make Constitution Day Black Arm Band Day and to try to get students across the country to wear black arm bands, to talk about their rights, about student rights which are under attack and also about civil liberties generally, so that's just to support the call for a kind of popular conversation about the meaning of the Constitution and the importance of our rights.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Jamin Raskin, in your book Overruling Democracy, you have a chapter on democracy and the corporation. The Wall Street Journal notes today, “Business leaders who recently began reviewing the records of the White House finalist list placed Judge Roberts at the top of their candidate list. After leaving the first Bush administration in 1993, Judge Roberts practiced telecommunications, energy, and other business law in private practice.” Your response.

JAMIN RASKIN: Yeah. Well, unfortunately, any of the names that were being floated by the Bush administration have had a lot more experience representing big businesses and corporations than labor unions. I mean, in the current political environment, it's almost unthinkable that you would get a union side labor lawyer or a consumer lawyer or someone who had worked for Ralph Nader nominated to the Supreme Court. I mean, it just shows you how far to the right the political spectrum has shifted, if you compare it, say, to, you know, the kinds of people that Franklin Roosevelt was putting on the court, the New Dealers and people who were interested in the administrative state and regulation and so on.

It's not -- you know, it's not like that now, and there's no doubt that Roberts is a corporate -- a distinguished corporate lawyer, a corporate side lawyer who pushes a business point of view. But again, it's very hard to try to make that stick in a way that creates real political damage, and I think that it is the cluster of issues around reproductive privacy where liberals will have the most traction in terms of trying to tease out this nominee.

AMY GOODMAN: Among the things The Wall Street Journal talks about in his practice at Hogan and Hartson, Judge Roberts as an attorney defended Toyota Motor Corporation in a worker’s disability case.

JAMIN RASKIN: Yeah, well, you're going to be able to find a lot of those, but there you will have people across the political spectrum, like, you know, Laurence Tribe, saying, ‘Well, you know, this is a lawyer just doing his job’ and, you know, there's just no doubt that the lawyers at the big firms like Hogan and Hartson, which is a leading corporate law firm, those lawyers spend their time representing the interests of big businesses and not, you know, students who are being suspended or workers who are trying to organize, and so on.

AMY GOODMAN: Nancy Northup, President of the Center for Reproductive Rights, how hard are you going to fight this?

NANCY NORTHUP: Well, we are going to make sure that Americans realize that this is a very critical moment for people who care about reproductive health and rights of women, and we are going to be working with our allies to make sure that during the Senate confirmation hearings, as Ralph Neas has talked about, we need to have a full exploration of his Constitutional views, we need to engage on that, we need to not have the kind of statements we heard this morning, that it's definitely going to be confirmed. The process is only beginning, and it's very important that we find out what his views are, because the record of what he's been willing to advocate for a lawyer, for the government, which is not for a private firm, but for the government in a policy position are very disturbing.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us, Nancy Northup, Gary Marx, Jamin Raskin, Art Eisenberg and Ralph Neas, and end up with a Washington Post final paragraph in one of their pieces today: “In the aftermath of the disputed 2000 presidential election, Roberts played a key, if quiet, role in the Florida recount. Although his name did not appear on the briefs, three sources who were personally aware of Roberts's role said he gave Republican Governor Jeb Bush critical advice on how the Florida legislature could Constitutionally name George W. Bush the winner at a time when Republicans feared that if the recount were to continue, the courts might force a different choice." 



-------- POLITICS


-------- propaganda wars

George W. Strangelove and the Triumph of Nuclear Faith

by Norman Solomon July 20, 2005

http://www.antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=6703

The silver-spooned cowboy in the Oval Office just presented a fine new saddle to the nuclear horseman of the apocalypse.

It was a gift worthy of hell. "President Bush agreed yesterday to share civilian nuclear technology with India, reversing decades of U.S. policies designed to discourage countries from developing nuclear weapons," the Washington Post reported Tuesday. The lead was more understated in the New York Times: "President Bush, bringing India a step closer to acceptance in the club of nuclear-weapons states, reached an agreement on Monday with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to let India secure international help for its civilian nuclear reactors while retaining its nuclear arms."

No matter how the story was spun, it could only be read in the world's capitals as further proof that U.S. nuclear policies are grimly laughable – thanks to policymakers in Washington who simultaneously decry and promote nuclear proliferation. And nowhere will the hypocrisy-laced ironies be more appreciated than in Tehran.

More than 50 years after the U.S. government launched its "atoms for peace" program, faith in the peaceful atom is alive and well – in Iran. While a large proportion of the American public distrusts nuclear power, Iranians routinely echo the positive themes that the industry and its supporters have labored to promote ever since President Dwight Eisenhower pledged "to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma" by showing that "the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life."

Touting the use of nuclear fission to generate electricity, American presidents have strived to make sharp rhetorical distinctions between atomic power and nuclear weapons technologies, despite their extensive overlap. Such reassuring distinctions now have wide credibility in Iran, as I found last month during conversations with Iranian political campaigners, clerics, bazaar merchants, shoppers, teachers, and students. Almost all gave notably similar responses when asked whether their country should acquire nuclear energy.

The replies – often tinged with indignation that the atomic prerogative would even be questioned – reflected why nuclear development was a non-issue in Iran's latest presidential campaign. The Iranian public appears to believe what nuclear-power boosters loudly proclaimed to the world for several decades – that nuclear energy can be safe and distinct from the capacity to build nuclear weapons.

If nuclear power plants are good enough for the United States, the prevailing logic goes, then Iran is certainly good enough for nuclear power plants. Present-day Iran, with its eagerness to use nuclear reactors to generate electricity, is a success story for generations of pro-nuclear politicians in Washington.

A civil atomic pact, signed in 1957, initiated nuclear assistance from the United States to Iran. In 1972, President Richard Nixon urged the Shah to build nuclear power plants. The Shah fell in 1979, but after many delays the Islamic Republic resumed work on the nuclear plant near Bushehr, a project that is currently being denounced in Washington.

In Tehran, no one I talked with seemed to have any doubt that such projects should continue. At the city's bazaar – where I could not find any expression of support for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons – there appeared to be something close to a consensus for building nuclear power plants.

"It should be done," said a 26-year-old owner of a carpet shop who gave his name as Nahdi. "If it's going to be dangerous, it's dangerous for everyone in the world, not just for the Iranian people. How come they all have access to that kind of energy and just talking about Iran and Iranians?" In a baby supply shop, the man behind the counter said: "It is Iran's right, like other countries."

Cleric Hassan Khomeini – the most prominent grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founding leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran – responded to my question in much the same way. He pointed back at the country now pointing the finger at Iran: "The same thing happened in the United States. You've got access to lots of oil and gas resources, and what happened? The United States is producing nuclear energy."

In a mid-June interview, shortly before the first round of the presidential elections, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told me that nuclear weapons are antithetical to Islamic law and that Iran should never try to acquire any. Yet, like every one of his opponents, Rafsanjani (then seen as the frontrunner) expressed strong support for nuclear power in Iran.

Given its vast untapped reserves of oil and natural gas, Iran's claim of needing nuclear-generated electricity might seem farfetched. But arguments about whether Iran really "needs" nuclear power may be beside the point. For the Iranian government, the issue is a matter of national sovereignty and basic prerogatives. In a region where Israel, Pakistan, and India have atomic bombs (made possible by nuclear technology exported from the West), Iran appears to want to keep its nuclear options open.

Unwilling to forsake the myth of the peaceful atom, the United States continues to proselytize for nuclear power while practicing what it preaches. As long as that continues, Washington is in no position to convincingly question the merits of nuclear fundamentalism in Iran or anywhere else.


-------- ENERGY 


-------- alternative energy

UK Ministry Lifts South Scotland Wind Farm Ban

REUTERS UK: July 20, 2005

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/31724/story.htm

LONDON - Britain's ministry of defense has lifted a ban on several wind farm projects in southern Scotland after allaying fears that they could interfere with a seismic station monitoring a ban on nuclear tests.

The ministry of defense (MOD) had blocked all wind farms planned within 80 km (50 miles) of the Eskdalemuir seismic array site which monitors the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

It agreed to lift the ban after a study by the University of Keele showed if turbines were built at least 17.5 km from the array, they would not interfere with its functions.

The government is relying on an expansion of wind farms, especially in Scotland, to meet its target of supplying 10 percent of the country's electricity from green sources by 2010.

Elsewhere, the MOD continues to block a number of wind power projects as it fears their turbines could interfere with radar equipment.

The British Wind Energy Association said flight trials have begun to test technology which would resolve fears that the rapidly rotating turbines could create false images on a radar screen as they can mimic an aircraft.

"This is the first step toward developing a technology that can tackle the interaction of wind turbines and radar which currently leads to the sterilization of a significant number of potential wind farm sites," said Chris Tomlinson, head of onshore wind at the BWEA.


----

Portugal Pins Energy Hopes on Wind Farm Licenses

Story by Henrique Simoes de Almeida
REUTERS PORTUGAL: July 20, 2005

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/31725/story.htm

LISBON - Portugal's Socialist government said on Monday it would grant licenses within six months to build massive stretches of wind farms, as part of a 2.5 billion-euro ($3-billion) investment plan in renewable energy.

A Economy Ministry spokesman said the licenses, to be awarded to business consortiums, would allow for the generation of 1,700 Megawatts (MW) of energy.

That's more than the capacity of a new nuclear power plant proposed by private investors last month, and immediately rejected by the government.

Officials did not say when the wind plants would be ready or how much government spending would be needed for the project.

But the ministry saw direct investment of 900 million euros ($1.09 billion), with most of the funds coming directly from the companies, and a portion from public coffers.

"If there is an area that is of utmost importance for our future, that area is renewable energy," said Prime Minister Jose Socrates, calling for private-sector investment.

The government approved last month a 25 billion-euro plan for infrastructure investment, including 2.5 billion euros in spending for renewable energy.

The plan was part of the Socialist campaign platform ahead of February elections in which the party ousted a center-right coalition.

The rise in oil prices to record levels of around $60 a barrel has put the spotlight on alternative sources of energy. Portugal's state-owned electricity generator EDP is a heavy user of fuel oil for power generation.

Last month investors headed by tycoon Patrick Monteiro de Barros said they would seek to build a nuclear power plant with a capacity of 1,600 megawatts -- without public funds.

But the government ruled out nuclear power projects.

EDP, Portugal's biggest industrial group, called the wind farm project "ambitious."

"EDP has always been interested," said CEO Joao Talone, who attended the press conference in Lisbon.

Analysts believe other companies will also be interested in the wind farm project, including Spanish firms Endesa, Iberdrola and Gamesa .

Portugal's budget deficit this year is estimated at 6.2 percent of gross domestic product, just over twice the euro currency zone limit.


-------- ACTIVISTS

Protesters in China get angrier and bolder

By Howard W. French The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 2005

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/07/19/news/china.php

XINCHANG, China After three nights of increasingly heavy rioting, the police were taking no chances, deploying dozens of busloads of officers and blocking every road leading to the factory.
 
The police began deploying in large numbers before dusk Monday, but the angry villagers had already made their moves. They had learned their lessons after studying reports of riots that had swept rural China in recent months. Sneaking over mountain paths and wading through rice paddies, they made their way to a pharmaceuticals plant, they said, for a showdown over the environmental threat they say it poses.
 
As many as 15,000 people massed here on Sunday night and fought with the authorities, overturning police cars and throwing stones, undeterred by thick clouds of tear gas.
 
Fewer people turned out on Monday evening under rainy skies, but residents of this factory town in China's wealthy Zhejiang Province vow they will keep demonstrating until they have forced the 10-year-old plant to relocate.
 
"This is the only way to solve problems like ours," said one protester, 22, whose house sits near the smashed gates of the factory, where the police were massed. "If you go to see the mayor or some city official, they just take your money and do nothing."
 
The riots in Xinchang are part of a rising tide of discontent in China, with the number of mass protests like these reaching 74,000 last year from about 10,000 a decade earlier, according to government figures. The details have varied from incident to incident, but the recent wave of protests shares a foundation of accumulated anger over the failure of China's political system to respond to legitimate grievances and defiance of the local authorities, who are often seen as corrupt.
 
A sign of the leadership's concern over the turbulence can be seen in a proliferation of high-level statements.
 
In a nationally televised news conference this month, Li Jingtian, deputy director of the Communist Party's organization bureau, complained that "with regard to our grass-roots cadres, some of them are probably less competent, and they are not able to dissipate these conflicts or problems."
 
In another widely remarked statement, Chen Xiwen, an economics vice minister who oversees agricultural affairs, saluted the Internet's role in allowing the central government to learn of unrest more quickly and praised demonstrating farmers for "knowing how to protect their rights."
 
The people of Xinchang were reluctant to speak openly about the uprising because they would be subject to immediate arrest if identified. But from conversations with numerous residents, many of whom took part in the demonstrations, it was possible to put together a detailed picture of the events.
 
In Xinchang, as with many of the recent protests, the spark involved claims of environmental degradation. An explosion at Jinxing Pharmaceutical this month in a vessel containing deadly chemicals reportedly killed one worker and contaminated a lot of the water downstream. Villagers say they appointed a group of representatives to present demands for compensation, including free health examinations and medical care for people who live near the plants, which produces a strain of antibiotics called quinolones.
 
When they sent a group on July 4 to demand an audience with factory officials, they say, security guards beat the representatives. The next day, the villagers returned in larger numbers and managed to grab a security officer, whom they acknowledged beating. As word spread of the beating of the village representatives and of the worker's death in the explosion, villagers demanded the closing of the factory.
 
"Our fields won't produce grain anymore," said a 46-year-old woman who lives near the plant. "We don't dare to eat food grown from anywhere near here."
 
Her husband, a former machine operator, said he had to quit working recently because of weakness and nausea. When local officials posted a notice saying they would reopen the plant a few days after the fatal explosion, he had been one of the first demonstrators to arrive on the scene, charging the gates and bursting into the factory with a small crowd of fellow protesters.
 
"They are making poisonous chemicals for foreigners that the foreigners don't dare produce in their own countries," the man said.
 
Explaining why he had been willing to rush into the plant, despite signs warning of toxic chemicals all about, he said, "It is better to die now, forcing them out, than to die of a slow suicide."
 
Xinchang officials bought some time in the conflict by temporarily suspending operations at the plant, sending teams door to door in many of the neighborhoods to urge residents not to harbor troublemakers and promising to consider the villagers' grievances carefully.
 
Tensions spiked again, though, last Thursday, when the city posted a notice saying that production would resume at the plant the next day. The notice warned that an explosion could take place inside the factory unless the chemical processes already begun were allowed to run for another week.
 
Sensing a ruse, the villagers refused, demanding a guarantee in the form of a security deposit of more than $2 million to allow the plant to start up again temporarily. "We don't trust them," said a man who lives near the plant. "They have told us lies many times before and have never addressed our problems."
 
The next day and each day since, the villagers have massed by the thousands outside the factory's gates, smashing the company's sign, wrecking a guard post and smashing windows with stones. The factory, meanwhile, has remained closed.
 
In many of China's other recent riots, word has spread fast among organizers and protesters by way of cellphone messages, allowing crowds to mass quickly and helping demonstrators coordinate tactics and slogans.
 
In Xinchang, however, residents say new technology, like the cellphone, has played little part. Instead, many residents say they were moved to action after years of unhappiness about industrial pollution by copies of newspaper headlines from Dongyang. That city, a mere 80 kilometers, or 50 miles, away, was the scene this spring of one of China's biggest riots, in which more than 10,000 residents routed the police in a riot over pollution from a pesticide factory.
 
Despite tight controls on news coverage of the incident, the riot in Dongyang, where the chemical factory remains closed months later, has entered Chinese folklore as proof that determined citizens acting en masse can force the authorities to reverse course and address their needs.
 
"As for the Dongyang riot, everyone knows about it," a man in his 20s said. "Six policemen were killed, and the chief had the tendons in his arms and legs severed. Perhaps they went too far, but we must be treated as human beings."