NucNews - August 21, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- britain Green waste worry Aug 21 2005 By Phil Doherty, Sunday UK Sun http://icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk/sundaysun/news/tm_objectid=15880908%26method=full%26siteid=50081%26headline=green%2dwaste%2dworry-name_page.html An environmental group has warned that four nuclear dumps will have to be found in the UK because a site in the North will eventually become unsafe. According to Greenpeace, the Drigg nuclear waste facility, in Cumbria, run by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), is the only one in the country accepting low-level waste. Greenpeace is warning that proposals to re-categorise medium-level nuclear waste as low-level could mean up to four new dumps will be needed to replace Drigg. Jean McSorley, Greenpeace nuclear campaign coordinator, said: "The Environment Agency has said there are real problems with the Drigg site and that BNFL's safety plans are inadequate for future disposals. "If the current nuclear industry assumptions about Drigg are wrong, then it puts a huge question mark over what to do in the future with low-level waste. "The nuclear authorities have been talking about re-categorising medium-level waste into low-level waste and that Drigg could take it all. That assumption is now clearly wrong and we could end up needing up to four new dumps to replace the Cumbrian site." Drigg is six miles from Sellafield and takes material from nuclear power stations around Britain, including contaminated equipment and uniforms. According to the Environment Agency, radiation at the site could exceed acceptable levels in the long-term and pose a risk to the public. The agency is reviewing BNFL's authorisation to operate the site. Jean said: "The industry is burying its head in the sand and is simply passing on problems for future generations to have to deal with." A spokesman for BNFL said: "There is no threat to the site for at least hundreds of years. We are aware of concerns raised as part of the consultation process surrounding the re-authorisation and will obviously act upon requirements in the revised authorisation once it is issued." -------- india World Bank vows $9bn for India infrastructure 21 August 2005 Gulf Daily News (Bahrain) http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=120009&Sn=BUSI&IssueID=28154 NEW DELHI: World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz yesterday pledged loans of $9 billion over the next three years to India, which has one of the world's highest economic growth rates but still is home to a quarter of the world's poor. "India's success is important to the whole world. India inspires success in other parts of the world," Wolfowitz told a news conference at the end of a four-day visit. "Though it's making rapid strides, India has an unfinished agenda," Wolfowitz said. "It is still home to a quarter of the world's poor people, most of whom reside in rural areas. Infrastructure constraints are an impediment to growth." The bank's new lending of $3bn each year for three years will help pay for roads, drinking water and irrigation facilities in tens of thousands of villages, the statement said. Nearly 70 per cent of India's more than one billion people live in more than 500,000 villages. Nuclear energy is one of the tools that India is seeking to propel faster economic growth. In July, the US and India signed an agreement under which Washington is to share civilian nuclear technology and supply nuclear fuel. However, Wolfowitz said the bank had not made up its mind on lending for such projects worldwide. "If you are looking at reducing carbon emissions, then probably nuclear is the way to go, and I think it needs to be looked at, but nuclear brings its own environmental problems and I don't know whether we are ready to take that one on yet," he said. Wolfowitz said India's booming economy - growing at about 7pc, one of the highest rates in the world - was likely to do even better if the country continues its 15-year-old economic reforms. "I have an intuition ... that says it is actually possible to do (a) couple of percentage points better," Wolfowitz said. "It's also possible that if you don't continue with sound fiscal policy and sound monetary policy ... it's going to take some effort to sustain the high six or seven per cent (growth rate) that you are achieving so far." -------- iran Ahmadinejad Criticizes European Nations Sunday August 21, 2005 10:31 AM By NASSER KARIMI Associated Press Writer http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5223953,00.html TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's hard-line president on Sunday criticized nations that have economic ties with Tehran but oppose its nuclear program, in an apparent reference to European countries pressuring Iran to freeze parts of its atomic program. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments, made in Iran's parliament, came before lawmakers began a debate expected to last until Thursday on the new president's nominees to fill his first Cabinet. The nominees include avid proponents of broadening Iran's nuclear program - a step bound to ensure continued friction with the United States. Iran's parliament is dominated by Ahmadinejad's supporters and is expected to approve his candidates. Ahmadinejad didn't name the trade partners opposing Iran's nuclear program, but was apparently referring Britain, France and Germany, which referred Tehran to the United Nations' nuclear watchdog after it resumed various uranium processing activities last week. The three countries are Iran's main European trading partners and have been leading U.S.-backed European Union efforts to persuade Iran to permanently freeze parts of its nuclear program, including uranium enrichment. ``They expect to intervene in Iran's domestic affairs and make Iran silent about important regional and international issues,'' the Iranian president said in a speech broadcast live on state-run TV. ``They want Iran to follow international order and norm while they accuse Iran in international bodies.'' ``What kind of balance is this? This is cruel and unfair. Our nation will not tolerate such behavior on the international scene,'' he added. Ahmadinejad said foreign states should be ``thankful'' Tehran imports their products, but instead they ``apply hostile policies against Iran and do not recognize our legitimate rights,'' a reference to Iran's rights under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The president said his new government wanted friendly ties with the international community, but added that economic links were inseparable from political relations, including support for the nuclear program. His remarks follow Iran's rejection this month of a European offer to permanently suspend uranium enrichment activities in return for a package of incentives, including supplying Iran with nuclear fuel. Iran's snub was followed by a resolution by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency urging Tehran to halt the conversion of uranium into gas at its atomic plant in the central Iranian city of Isfahan. Conversion is a step before enrichment, which produces material usable for both energy-producing reactor fuel and atomic bombs. Iran also rejected the IAEA resolution, which diplomats familiar with the proceedings said gives Tehran until Sept. 3 to halt uranium conversion or risk being referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. The United States accuses Iran of trying to build atomic weapons and has been backing the EU negotiations with Tehran. Iran has denied the U.S. claims and says it is pursuing a peaceful nuclear program designed to generate electricity. President Bush has said ``all options are on the table'' in dealing with Iran in an implicit threat of possible military action if Tehran doesn't rein in its nuclear program. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, however, has stressed the need to solve the standoff diplomatically, saying military action would be a ``high-grade danger.'' The prime minister of Kuwait also urged calm, adding in remarks published Sunday that he was confident that Ahmadinejad will deal with Iran's nuclear file ``wisely.'' Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah said the international community wanted to avoid added tensions in the region, already marred by the Iraq war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Islamic militancy. Iran voluntarily suspended enrichment in 2003 and expanded the suspension last November to include uranium reprocessing activities and building centrifuges used to enrich uranium. The moves had been made to avoid U.N. Security Council referral for possible sanctions and build trust in EU talks. But following dissatisfaction with the EU offers, Iran resumed uranium reprocessing activities at its Uranium Conversion Facility in Isfahan. Associated Press writer Diana Elias contributed to this report from Kuwait City. ---- Iran nuke innocence supported U.N. says uranium tainted centrifuge Danica Kirka Associated Press Aug. 21, 2005 12:00 AM http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0821iran21.html VIENNA - U.N. nuclear agency tests have concluded that traces of highly enriched uranium on centrifuge parts were from imported equipment, rather than from any enrichment activities by Iran, a senior Western diplomat said Saturday. The findings support Iran's claims that the material entered the country together with centrifuge parts provided by Pakistan. The diplomat who confirmed the results spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. "The source of contamination was not related to Iran," Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said. "We are sure the source is not internal." The United States has alleged the material was produced by Tehran and the particles were evidence that Iran was experimenting with producing highly enriched uranium, which is only used in nuclear weapons. The traces were found on centrifuges in the city of Natanz in 2003 and raised concerns about the motives behind Iran's nuclear activities. Iran has insisted it is only interested in processing low-enriched uranium to generate electricity. The International Atomic Energy Agency has been testing centrifuge parts provided by Pakistan as well as uranium found on centrifuges bought by Iran on the nuclear black market. Pakistan provided the components earlier this year to compare the traces and assess Iran's claims of innocence. Both the agency and the White House declined to comment on the findings. -------- korea N. Korea restarts Yongbyon nuclear reactor-report Sun Aug 21, 1:24 AM ET (Reuters) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050821/ts_nm/korea_north_reactor_dc_1 TOKYO - A U.S. satellite has detected signs that North Korea recently restarted a reactor that could be used for the extraction of material to make nuclear warheads, a Japanese newspaper said on Sunday. The surveillance satellite detected steam coming out of a boiler connected to a building housing the five-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon, Asahi Shimbun said, quoting unnamed sources related to six-way nuclear crisis talks, including a senior U.S. official. The sources said the steam had been detected before the resumption of the six-way talks in late July that aimed to entice the North to give up its nuclear weapons and bomb-making programmes in exchange for economic aid and security guarantees. "It is hard to think that the boiler would operate by itself while the nuclear reactor is stopped. It can only be concluded that North Korea has put in new nuclear fuel rods and has restarted the nuclear reactor," Asahi quoted a U.S. government source as saying. South Korea said in April the reactor's operations had been suspended and the following month, North Korea said it had completed extracting 8,000 fuel rods from the 5 megawatt reactor. Rods from old-style graphite reactors can be processed to extract plutonium, a key component in nuclear bombs. Restarting the reactor could mean the North aims to extract more plutonium from the new rods. North Korea said in February that it possessed nuclear weapons. North Korea has also spread gravel over a road near a separate unfinished 50-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon. Construction was halted in the 1990s under a previous, and now defunct, nuclear agreement with the United States. Repairing the road could be a sign the North is preparing to resume building work, Asahi said. The Yongbyon complex, around 100 km (60 miles) north of North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, is the center of the communist state's nuclear programmes. "North Korea has been suggesting that it is ready to scrap such nuclear reactors, but it is steadily expanding the scope of its nuclear development behind the scenes," the senior U.S. official said. Six-way talks between North and South Korea, the United States, Russia, Japan and China are to resume in the week of August 29 after 13 days of talks in Beijing from late July to early August failed to reach an accord. ---- US satellite confirms NKorea reactivated nuclear reactor last month: report TOKYO (AFP) Aug 21, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050821051754.0b3f4joi.html A US spy satellite has found that North Korea reactivated its nuclear reactor last month after it spotted vapor coming out of the reactor's boiler, a Japanese daily said Sunday. The reactivation of the Yongbyon nuclear complex came just before six-nation talks aimed at halting the North's nuclear drive began in Beijing in late July, the Asahi Shimbun daily said, quoting unnamed diplomatic sources. The topic of the reactivated reactor had been discussed during the talks -- which involved the two Koreas, Russia, Japan, China and the United States -- the daily said without giving further details. The Asahi said vapor had not been seen at the Yongbyon reactor since early April, and the report quoted a US source as saying that the release of vapor indicated renewed activity. "It is hard to think that the boiler alone can operate without the active nuclear reactor," a US government source was quoted by the daily as saying. In April, North Korea said it had shut down the reactor, 90 kilometersmiles) north of Pyongyang, while it was preparing to reprocess more spent fuel, a move that could result in the production of enough plutonium to double its nuclear arsenal. "North Korea has indicated it will give up on the nuclear reactor, but at the same time it is steadily expanding the level of its nuclear development," a senior US official was quoted by the Asahi as saying. The latest round of six-nation talks resumed in Beijing last month after a 13-month stalemate, following North Korea's declaration in February that it already had nuclear bombs. After nearly two weeks of sometimes heated and late-night negotiations, the key sticking point was whether North Korea should be allowed to run nuclear programs for peaceful, energy use. The United States has ruled out North Korea being allowed to operate light-water nuclear reactors, but South Korea has said the North should have the right to maintain a civilian nuclear program. The six-party talks broke off on August 7 for three weeks without any sign of agreement on how to get the Stalinist state to abandon atomic weapons. The talks are scheduled to resume in the final week of August. -------- pakistan Pakistan to meet with UN nuclear agency on Iranian uranium contamination VIENNA (AFP) Aug 21, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050821025622.89bstzv3.html The UN nuclear watchdog meets this week with Pakistani officials to check its conclusions that highly enriched uranium particles found in Iran were from smuggled Pakistani centrifuge parts rather than enrichment work by Iran, diplomats said. Pakistan had in May sent centrifuge parts to the Vienna headquarters of the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to enable it to compare microscopic traces of uranium on them with that found on equipment in Iran. The IAEA has concluded that "the highly enriched uranium appears to emanate from Pakistan," from the imported equipment and not from Iranian enrichment work, a Western diplomat close to the IAEA told AFP. Enriched uranium, made by passing a uranium gas through a series, or cascade, of centrifuge machines, can be fuel for civilian nuclear power reactors or, in highly refined form, the raw material for atom bombs. The diplomat said Saturday that a "Pakistani delegation is coming to Vienna to begin talks Monday with IAEA safeguards officials to review the IAEA findings." The IAEA's ruling out that Iran was doing work that could have produced weapons-grade uranium "will be seen by those in favor of Iran as another checkmark in their column" to back up Tehran's rebuttals of US charges that it is secretly developing nuclear weapons, the diplomat said. The father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has admitted to running an international nuclear black market ring that supplied Iran with atomic technology and parts. The IAEA has since February 2003 been investigating US charges that the Islamic Republic, which says its nuclear program is a peaceful effort to generate electricity, has a covert weapons program. The enriched uranium contamination issue was a main sticking point in the investigation, although others still remain. The diplomat said the talks with the Pakistanis were part of a review of the IAEA findings that will later in the month also involve independent experts. Pakistan in May insisted that the centrifuge parts it sent to the IAEA remained technically under its control and would be brought back home by Pakistani experts, a second diplomat said. The diplomat said the Pakistanis did not want anyone outside the IAEA to have access to information that could reveal Pakistani nuclear secrets. "The deal was the IAEA would get the results and then go over them with the Pakistanis," the diplomat said. IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozedecky refused to comment on details but said: "The corroboration process continues and we hope to report on the contamination issue in the September report" to the IAEA board of governors. The September 3 report will be on Iran's compliance with international nuclear safeguards as well as an IAEA resolution urging it to re-suspend nuclear fuel work in order to continue talks with the European Union on guaranteeing that its atomic program is peaceful. If Iran does not comply, the EU has threatened to ask the IAEA to bring Iran before the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. The first diplomat said the results of tests comparing the Pakistani equipment with that in Iran for traces of low enriched uranium (LEU), which is below weapons-grade, were "murky." The diplomat said the "LEU issue will probably never be solved." LEU is uranium that is enriched to below 20 percent of the key isotope uranium 235 and which is not considered weapons-grade. But LEU can relatively easily be enriched up to high levels. Another diplomat said the inability to resolve the LEU question meant that the investigation's results "don't prove Iran's story is true. They prove it is plausible." IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said on August 11 that while "all declared (nuclear) material in Iran is under verification... we still are not in a position to say that there is no undeclared materials or activities in Iran." "The jury is still out," ElBaradei said, speaking after an emergency meeting of the IAEA which called on Iran to suspend all fuel-cycle work and ordered the September 3 report. -------- security Russia’s Nuclear Chief Sets Up Development Priorities 21.08.2005 MosNews http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/08/21/nuclearanniversary.shtml The creation of more powerful nuclear reactors and hydrogen-based energy are the main priorities for Russia’s atomic scientists, Aleksandr Rumyantsev, the head of Federal Agency for Atomic Energy Rosatom said in a message congratulating nuclear sector workers on the 60th anniversary of the founding of their branch of science. “Of course military matters still occupy an important place, as by handling these the security of the state is guaranteed, but atomic scientists are also promoting civilian conversion technologies, which today have already made it into space and exploit the world’s oceans,” Rumyantsev noted. “We are making sure progress towards finding solutions to problems, which just yesterday were believed to be tasks for the distant future,” he stressed. He singled out “the move, on one hand, to 1,500 MW reactors and, on the other hand, to low capacity reactors, including floating reactors,” as being priorities in the energy sector. Among the innovatory projects named by Rumyantsev were heavy coolant reactors and also hydrogen power. “Currently a state programme for the development of hydrogen power is being drawn up. The possibilities it offers, being environmentally safe, are immense,” he concluded. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- maryland An energy boom in Calvert Southern Maryland could benefit from energy bill provisions that make expansion of its liquid natural gas terminal attractive to investors and a new nuclear reactor a possibility. By Tom Pelton, Baltimore Sun Staff August 21, 2005 http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.calvert21aug21,1,5646802,print.story?coll=bal-local-headlines http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.calvert21aug21,1,5518991.story?coll=bal-local-headlines COVE POINT - Michael Frederick pedals a bicycle down a mine-shaft-like tunnel that runs deep underneath the Chesapeake Bay. On either side of the artery loom stainless steel pipes coursing with liquid natural gas chilled to 260 degrees below zero, so cold it could crack iron. At the end of the mile-long passageway, he hops an elevator up into blinding sunlight, where a tanker ship the length of three football fields is moored. Workers in blaze orange jumpsuits guide robotic arms sucking 2.7 billion cubic feet of supercooled Egyptian gas out of the ship's gut - enough to heat 9.2 million homes for a day. This futuristic scene at the Dominion Cove Point liquid natural gas terminal, where Frederick is manager, is just one example of how the nation's changing energy needs are altering the face of Southern Maryland. As the price of oil and gas surges to record highs, the economy of this once-sleepy landscape of tobacco farms is booming as a center for alternative fuel and focal point of the Bush administration's energy policies. Cove Point is already the nation's largest liquid natural gas terminal, and the energy bill recently signed by the president contains regulatory changes to make a proposed $850 million expansion attractive to investors. Just down the shore, the owners of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant - Maryland's largest power generator, cranking out 20 percent of the state's electricity - are vying to start building the nation's first new reactor since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. The addition of a third reactor at Calvert Cliffs, using millions of dollars in federal subsidies from the energy bill, would nearly double the plant's output of electricity. The southern tip of Calvert County is becoming Maryland's energy coast. Both plants have helped to transform rural Calvert County into the state's fastest-growing jurisdiction, with a population that has almost quadrupled, to about 85,000, since they opened in the 1970s. Major expansions at Calvert Cliffs and Cove Point - the county's No. 1 and No. 2 taxpayers - could spark an even more intense rate of growth. Together, the two proposed construction projects dangle the prospect of more than $3 billion in new investment for the county, creating more than 3,000 construction jobs, 425 permanent positions and $21 million a year in additional local tax revenues - a more than doubling from these plants. The county needs the money for its strained roads and schools, local officials say. More importantly, Calvert could become a magnet for high-paying jobs if nuclear power and liquid gas become growth industries, as they were during the energy crisis of the 1970s. "When there is an energy crisis, it's good for Calvert County," says Linda S. Vassallo, the county's economic development director. But each project carries thorny side issues. For the nuclear plant, it's the disposal of radioactive waste. For the gas terminal, it's the digging of a 48-mile pipeline across the private property of about 350 landowners in three counties. And for both, it's the specter of terrorism or a terrible accident. "It's a quandary: prosperity, jobs or safety," said Teresa Powell, 44, a mother of four whose subdivision lies across the street from the entrance to Calvert Cliffs. "The nuclear plant truly scares me to death. And I think having it and the liquid natural gas plant so close to each other should be an absolute no-no with the world the way it is right now," Powell said. "We're collateral damage, just toast, if anything bad happens." Robert Fenwick, director of emergency management for Calvert County, said the county's unusual geography - a peninsula with one major road - creates challenges in planning for evacuations should disaster strike. But he said the county's 800 emergency responders are well drilled and as prepared as they can be. "It's fortunate that there's a lot of open space surrounding the plants, with not a lot of people right nearby," Fenwick said. "There is much insanity out there that we can't control." Squat, beige temples Calvert Cliffs' two quarter-century-old nuclear reactors rise amid lush forest beside the Chesapeake Bay, looking like a pair of squat, beige, windowless cement temples crowned with domes. A swirl of waves leading away from shore is evidence of underwater pipes shooting 2.4 million gallons of warm water per minute into the bay from the plant's steam turbines. Behind the reactors, a dozen sets of power lines - crackling with 1,700 megawatts of electricity - feed into an electrical grid supplying the Mid-Atlantic region with power. In a wooded area a few hundred yards north, Constellation Energy Group and its business partners are proposing to build a third reactor at a cost of $2.5 billion to $3 billion, said Michael Wallace, executive vice president of Constellation. The number of jobs at the plant would rise from about 900 to at least 1,300. "The new reactor would be right there in front of us, where the trees are," said Mark Geckle, technical assistant to Wallace. "The benefits of this site are that it's on about 2,000 acres, so that there's certainly enough room, and it's got plenty of water nearby," Geckle said, nodding toward the bay. To reduce the impact on the bay, the reactor could have a 200-foot-tall tower to release steam into the air instead of warm water into the Chesapeake, company officials said. As many as 100,000 small fish, such as anchovy and spot, are killed each year after being trapped on the screens that filter the water being sucked into the plant, according to state officials. The project would require at least nine years to license and build, Wallace said. This additional 1,600 megawatts would provide a vital boost for Maryland and Pennsylvania, coming at a time when they are facing a shortage of generation capacity, he said. Constellation is joined in the proposal by a consortium of energy companies called NuStart. The group plans to decide by October which two of six possible sites - Calvert Cliffs and locations in upstate New York, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Louisiana - should be the location of new reactors. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission would then have to approve permits. To help encourage the construction of reactors nationally, the federal government is offering a total of up to $1.8 billion in federal "delay insurance," which would protect investors against costs from lawsuits or other challenges. The energy bill signed by President Bush would also dish out tax credits worth as much as $6 billion over eight years for the first six reactors built, said Steven Kerekes, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group. The project would be helped by a streamlined federal licensing process, approved by the government in 1992 to limit the opportunities for legal intervention from protesters. Bush promoted the government's efforts to resurrect nuclear power during a visit to Calvert Cliffs on June 22. "There is a growing consensus that more nuclear power will lead to a cleaner, safer nation," Bush told an approving audience of plant workers. The federal subsidies to encourage the construction of reactors have been criticized by anti-nuclear groups, who say the government shouldn't prop up an industry that private investors won't support. "This is a mature industry that has existed for years but that the market has rejected for economic reasons, and now the taxpayers are going to have to bail them out," said Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an advocacy organization. Another problem is waste disposal. The plant's steam-powered turbines burn through about 44 tons of enriched uranium a year, meaning the workers must discard about 17,000 spent fuel rods annually, each about 12 feet long, thick as a cigarette and highly radioactive. For the plant's first two decades of operation, the spent rods were all stored in a 40-foot-deep, steel-lined cement pool of water between the reactors, where they cooled, said Bob Beall, a spent-fuel manager at the plant. But in the mid-1980s, the pool began to fill up, so the plant built additional racks inside it to allow more storage, Beall said. When the reservoir couldn't take any more, in 1993 the plant began storing the waste in cement vaults in the woods, several hundred yards from the reactors. The cryptlike casks stand in rows about 20 feet tall, 100 feet long, behind barbed-wire fences watched by cameras. This dry storage method was meant as a temporary solution, until the federal government opened a secure underground depository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for waste from all 103 reactors across the nation, Beall said. But the Yucca Mountain project has been stalled by legal challenges led by Nevada officials since Congress picked the location in 1987. Constellation officials say they could keep uranium waste in Calvert County indefinitely if Yucca Mountain never opens as a waste dump. "We've got a lot of property here," said Rob Gould, a company spokesman, referring to the land surrounding the plant. "We could go even further and store more [spent fuel rods] here," he said. The Calvert County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously last month to support a symbolic resolution in favor of construction of a third reactor. But the possibility of a growing, permanent nuclear waste dump in Calvert County makes some board members uneasy. "I'd love to see them move [the rods] from Calvert County to an underground storage facility," said David Hale, chairman of the county board. "It just removes the risk of any contamination or theft, or any other event from happening to the fuel rods while in Calvert County." Constellation officials talk proudly of the safety history at Calvert Cliffs. But it hasn't been perfect, records show. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission fined the plant $281,000 from 1996 to 1998 for a "serious breakdown in controls" that enabled a contractor diving into the spent fuel pool for repairs to be exposed to radiation, among other problems, records show. Both reactors were shut down from May 1989 to April 1990 after the plant was put on a federal "watch list." Inspectors found cracks, and a worker drowned in a tank of water and nitrogen gas. "If the NRC issued a civil penalty, it was a significant issue," Jim Trapp, chief of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's regional branch, said of Calvert Cliffs. "But their performance recently has been very good, and the industry in general has really improved over the last decade. ... We are not finding the kinds of egregious issues we used to find. " 'No visitors' About three miles southeast, along a shoreline of eroding cliffs peppered with dinosaur fossils, is the Dominion Cove Point liquid natural gas terminal. The complex has five enormous gray storage tanks - the largest, 260 feet in diameter - surrounded by about 1,000 acres of woods. The tanks are linked to a pier sitting out in the Chesapeake Bay by pipes running through the underground tunnel where Frederick uses his bicycle. At the end of the tunnel, a sign is attached to the pier. It reads: "Warning, dangerous cargo. No visitors. No smoking. No open lights." About 80 tanker ships a year tie up to the pier. The ships carry natural gas from foreign countries such as Trinidad, Algeria and Egypt cooled so that it can be transported more efficiently. The process shrinks 600 cubic feet of gas to 1 cubic foot of clear, odorless fluid, said Karl Neddenien, spokesman for Dominion Energy of Richmond. After being unloaded at Cove Point, the liquid is warmed until it boils back into a gas. It is then piped like any other natural gas to power plants that generate electricity, and to homes to fuel furnaces and water heaters, among other uses. The demand for natural gas has soared over the past decade in part because burning it creates less air pollution than burning coal or oil. Supplies in the West are running dry, and so American companies have increasingly sought to import the fuel in this condensed form, according to the Natural Gas Supply Association, a trade group. Some environmentalists offer cautious support for the growth of the liquid natural gas industry as a way to avoid increased drilling in pristine national forest land in the West. "It can reduce some of the worst gas extraction in the Rocky Mountains and elsewhere," said Brad Heavner, director of the Maryland Public Interest Research Group. "Shipping it over the ocean in tankers isn't ideal, but it's the best option out there." Others complain that increased gas imports will make America only more dependent on foreign countries, such as Egypt and Algeria. "We are dealing with a finite resource and are scouring every last place on the planet for the next supply of gas, with absolutely zero emphasis on fuel efficiency or conservation, which is just mind-boggling," said Gwen Lachelt, director of the Oil & Gas Accountability Project, an environmental group. The amount of liquid natural gas shipped into the country has increased 36-fold over the past decade and now accounts for almost 3 percent of the nation's consumption of natural gas, according to the industry. The Cove Point terminal opened in 1978, during an earlier energy crisis. The pier received 90 tanker ships of gas from Algeria and other countries before closing in 1980 because of lower gas prices and other business issues. This relatively brief period was marked by an explosion and fire in 1979 that blew the roof off a building, killing one worker and badly burning another. The terminal opened again in 2003, with gas prices again high. And Dominion is proposing an $850 million expansion that would include two more tanks, as well as more vaporizers, turbines and pumps, and 48 miles of pipeline cutting across Calvert, Charles and Prince George's counties to connect to the distribution system. If approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the project would boost the plant's capacity to pump gas by 80 percent by 2008, from 1 billion cubic feet a day to 1.8 billion cubic feet, Frederick said. That would increase the plant's employment from 75 to 100, more than double the ship traffic and contribute $5 million more a year to the county's taxes, he said. "By adding more liquid natural gas to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast energy mix, Cove Point is helping to strengthen the energy supply and stabilize price spikes," Frederick said. The Bush administration succeeded in getting regulatory changes in the energy bill to encourage the construction of more terminals like Cove Point to feed the country's ravenous appetite for gas. The changes allow companies to set a price for the gas without public bidding, a move that makes the plants more profitable and thus attractive to investors. There are five liquid gas plants in the United States today, including the one in Maryland. Seven to 10 more terminals - each costing about $600 million - could be built over the next decade, said Bill Cooper, spokesman for the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, a trade group. This would drive up the percentage of American gas consumption from foreign sources from 3 percent to 25 percent. On a recent afternoon, Frederick rode a bicycle down the tunnel from the plant to the pier. He said this means of transportation proved more reliable and safe than motorized carts. "We've had some employees lose a lot of weight riding these bikes. One guy lost 30 pounds," Frederick said as he pedaled, wearing a helmet and goggles. "Don't make any wrong turns," he warned, offering a little Cove Point humor. (There are no turns.) Along the pier, the ship Granatina, a black-and-white tanker out of Singapore, is guarded by a Coast Guard patrol boat and a phalanx of security officers. As workers prepare to connect the ship's pipes to vacuumlike tubes for unloading, a hissing sound signals the injection of nitrogen gas to force out any oxygen that might ignite. At the crew's feet, a waterfall pours over the edge of the ship. This is to prevent any spills from cracking the ship's hull, Frederick says. Liquid natural gas is so cold that a few drops can fracture carbon steel or iron. But if it dribbles onto water, it will evaporate, he said. "If you hear the evacuation alarm, that's when you get into the escape pod," Frederick said. He gestured toward a bright orange submarinelike craft beside the pier. Some residents have worried that someone could hijack one of the gas tankers and ram it into the nuclear power plant, igniting a catastrophic explosion. This could never happen, Frederick said, because the bay is so shallow around the nuclear plant that a ship with a keel typically 36 feet below the waterline would run aground long before it reached shore. "In our eyes, it's not a big terrorism threat, although we take security very seriously," Frederick said, mentioning dozens of security guards, barbed-wire fences and multiple identification check points. "If this ship caught fire, it would be a significant problem for the ship and crew. But it wouldn't explode, and it wouldn't affect the shore." A study prepared by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in July 2001 concluded that a massive spill of liquid natural gas would quickly evaporate, and might ignite, creating a huge, flaming cloud that could drift about a half-mile. The nearest homes are about a half-mile south of the tanks, off Cove Point Road. "In a worst-case scenario, where there is an instantaneous spillage of an entire LNG cargo tank, potentially flammable vapors could be dispersed to isolated residential areas along the shoreline," the report said. This is not reassuring to the dozens of residents who live south of the plant, some in waterfront homes near the Cove Point Lighthouse. As waves lapped on her beach, Sandy Dougan, 48, a bookkeeper, weeded her flower garden and talked about how she dreaded the possibility of leviathan tankers bellowing past more often. "The traffic is already horrendous," Dougan said. "And safety is even more of a concern. ... It's a concern for everyone down here." -------- MILITARY -------- iraq Call It a Day We've Done All We Can Do in Iraq By Andrew J. Bacevich Sunday, August 21, 2005; B01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/20/AR2005082000114_pf.html The banner decorating the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, when President Bush announced an end to "major combat operations" in Iraq, turns out to have been accurate after all. If only the president himself had taken to heart the banner's proclamation of "Mission Accomplished." For by that date, having deposed Saddam Hussein, the United States had achieved in Iraq just about all that it has the capacity to achieve. The time has come for Bush to dig the banner out of the closet, drape it across the front of the White House and make it the basis for policy instead of continuing under the inglorious banner of "Mission Impossible." Ironically, ever since the presidential victory lap of two years ago, the Bush administration has been in the forefront of those insisting that the U.S. mission in Iraq is not accomplished -- that there is ever so much more that the United States can and must do on behalf of the Iraqi people. Hence the grandiose U.S. promises of reconstruction, economic and political reform, and nation-building. The chief effect of efforts to fulfill these promises has been to convert a short, economical and purportedly glorious war into a long, costly and debilitating one. Moreover, senior U.S. military leaders have increasingly concluded that the long war is an unwinnable one. "[T]his insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations," Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, acknowledged earlier this summer. "It's going to be settled in the political process." However self-serving it may be -- the military's eagerness to offload responsibility for the course of events in Iraq has become palpable of late -- Alston's analysis is correct. Alas, the Bush administration adamantly insists that any such political process can only proceed with constant American coaching and oversight. Underlying this insistence is the assumption, seldom voiced openly, that the Iraqi people are incapable of managing their own affairs. They need us. Do they? In fact, apart from consuming $300 billion and many thousands of lives (including more than 1,850 U.S. soldiers), the attempt to tutor Iraqis on their journey to American-style freedom has yielded results quite opposite from those intended: Rather than producing security, our continued massive military presence has helped fuel continuing violence. Rather than producing liberal democracy, our meddling in Iraqi politics has exacerbated political dysfunction. And by signaling the importance that it attributes to satisfying the core interests of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds alike, Washington has encouraged all three factions to increase their demands. Convinced that the Americans will never permit a cataclysmic collision, each faction is committed to playing a high-stakes game of chicken. If Iraq in August 2005 qualifies as the political equivalent of a clapped-out, self-abusing dependent, then the Bush administration ought to be recognized as being an enabler. Wisdom requires that the Bush administration call an end to its misbegotten crusade. While avoiding the appearance of an ignominious dash for the exits, but with all due speed, the United States needs to liquidate its presence in Iraq, placing the onus on Iraqis to decide their fate and creating the space for other regional powers to assist in brokering a political settlement. We've done all that we can do. Getting out now makes sense not just to avoid further running up our bill, but because doing so holds out the prospect of a more favorable result. Granted, constructing a positive case for withdrawal requires a redefinition of purpose. From the outset, the Bush administration has focused on the wrong political objective. Rather than attempting to democratize Iraq as a first step toward "transforming" the Middle East, our proper aim should be to stabilize the country so that we can concentrate our energies on containing and eventually reducing the threat posed by violent Islamic radicals. Stability -- defined as preserving a unified Iraq and reducing the insurgency -- cannot be imposed. It can only be negotiated by the various factions constituting the Iraqi polity. The issues dividing those factions are by no means trivial. But their common interest in maintaining the integrity of the state is also great. Announcing the U.S. departure will concentrate the minds of Iraqi leaders of all stripes. It will clear away any misconceptions regarding the consequences of secession. In addition to assuming that Iraqis require American supervision, the Bush administration's insistence on staying the course also implicitly assumes that a U.S. withdrawal would leave a dangerous political vacuum in the region. But this assumption too is suspect. More likely, the American departure would foster a political dynamic in which Iraq's neighbors would exert themselves to keep Iraq from spinning out of control -- not out of any concern for the well-being of the Iraqi peoplebut out of sheer self-interest. Among the autocrats holding sway in the Persian Gulf, Saddam Hussein was the last remaining quasi-revolutionary. The regimes that control Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and even Iran are not maneuvering to overturn the political order in the region. This is not to say that they are benign. But they do share one overriding interest, namely preserving their own hold on power -- an objective not at all served by allowing Iraq to wallow in perpetual turmoil. Iraq's neighbors have a compelling interest in facilitating a political process that just might bring a semblance of order to that country. For religious, cultural and historical reasons, they are also far better positioned than the United States to offer assistance that might actually prove helpful. Will a U.S. withdrawal guarantee a happy outcome for the people of Iraq? Of course not. In sowing the seeds of chaos through his ill-advised invasion, Bush made any such guarantee impossible. If one or more of the Iraqi factions chooses civil war, they will have it. Should the Kurds opt for independence, then modern Iraq will cease to exist. No outside power can prevent such an outcome from occurring anymore than an outside power could have denied Americans their own civil war in 1861. Dismemberment is by no means to be desired and would surely visit even more suffering on the much-abused people of Iraq. But in the long run, the world would likely find ways to adjust to this seemingly unthinkable prospect just as it learned to accommodate the collapse of the Soviet Union, the division of Czechoslovakia and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. What will pulling out of Iraq mean for the United States? It will certainly not mean losing access to Iraqi oil, which will inevitably find its way to the market. To be sure, bringing the troops home will preclude the Pentagon from establishing permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq -- but the Bush administration has said all along that we don't covet such bases anyway. In addition, withdrawal will put an end to extravagant expectations of using Iraq as a springboard for democratizing the Islamic world -- but that notion never qualified as more than a pipe dream anyway. For Bush personally, the consequences of leaving Iraq might be the most painful. The prospect of looking antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan in the eye to explain exactly what her son died for will become even more daunting. But as it is, the president can't dodge that question indefinitely. Postponing the issue simply swells the ranks of those with similar questions to ask. Author's email : bacevich@bu.edu Andrew Bacevich, a Vietnam veteran and professor of international relations at Boston University, is the author of "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War" (Oxford). ---- US backs down on Islamic law in Iraq By Luke Baker and Michael Georgy In Baghdad 21 August 2005 UK Herald http://www.sundayherald.com/51378 THE careful negotiations over the Iraqi constitution appeared last night to be leaning further towards making Islamic law the main source of law for the country rather than a source after US diplomats apparently gave way to the concerns of Iraqi officials. Sunni Arab negotiator Saleh al-Mutlak said a deal was struck which would mean parliament could pass no legislation that “contradicted Islamic principles”. Yesterday Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish negotiators, meeting with Iraqi president Jalal Talabani and US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, all said there was accord on a bigger role for Islamic law than Iraq had before. One secular Kurdish politician said: “We understand the Americans have sided with the Shi’ites. It’s shocking. It doesn’t fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state. I can’t believe that’s what the Americans really want or what the American people want.” He said Kurds opposed subjecting all legislation to a religious test. US diplomats, who have insisted that the constitution must enshrine ideals of equal rights and democracy, declined to comment on the progress of negotiations. Al-Mutlaq added that negotiations had effectively stalled last night after “deep differences” emerged between the parties, who are frantically trying to reach an agreement on the constitution. Al-Mutlaq said Shi’ites were demanding that the new charter explicitly states that the decrees of the Marjiyah – their religious leadership – were sacred, something both the Sunnis and Kurds oppose. “The Americans agreed, but on one condition: that the principles of democracy should be respected,” Mutlak said. He said Kurdish negotiators are demanding that provincial governments should have control over both “discovered and undiscovered resources”, which would give their self-governing region a significant slice of Iraq’s oil wealth. US diplomats have long insisted the constitution must enshrine ideals of equal rights and democracy – the US still has some 140,000 troops in Iraq, and the White House has insisted that in the “new Iraq”, Iraqis are free to govern themselves. President George Bush, however, has described the kind of clerical rule seen in Shi’ite Iran as “evil” and has made it clear that the US will not approve of such a construct for the constitution. In a further sign of the growing unease over legal issues in Iraq, the UN representative to the country pleaded yesterday for the public executions of three men planned for next week to be cancelled. A decree authorising the execution was signed last week by Iraqi vice-president Adel Abdel Mehdi after president Jalal Talabani refused on moral grounds. The death penalty has recently been reintroduced in Iraq, some say because of the upcoming trial of Saddam Hussein. Yesterday Ashraf Qazi, the UN envoy to Iraq, said he “deeply regretted” the reintroduction of the death penalty and asked that the three prisoners due to be hanged in the central city of Kut should be spared. “One should look at consolidating the right to life instead of imposing the death penalty, which has a very poor recognised effect in deterring crimes,” he said in a statement. The three prisoners, a Kurd and two Sunni Arabs, would be the first prisoners to be executed since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The men are reported to be suspected members of the Al-Qaeda-linked group Ansar al-Sunna, and were sentenced to death in May, a verdict that was later approved by the highest judicial authority in Iraq. British officials said that they will continue to lobby for the abolition of the death penalty in Iraq. Qazi pointed out in his statement, released by the New York office of the UN Mission for Iraq, that the Human Rights Commission in Geneva had “condemned the application of the death penalty” in April 2005. Diplomats, clerics and officials working to finish the constitution are “frantic” to come up with a working framework or risk having to hold new elections in the coming weeks to resolve the legality of the new government. The Iraqi parliament averted its own dissolution on Monday last week by giving constitution drafters a further seven days to resolve crucial differences over regional autonomy, the role of religion, the status of women and the division of oil revenues in Iraq. US ambassador Khalilzad, who has previously said there will be “no compromise” on equal rights for women and minorities, helped draft a constitution in his native Afghanistan that declared it an “Islamic Republic” in which no law could contradict Islam. It also, however, contained language establishing equal rights for women and protecting religious minorities. Ethnic tensions in the northern oil city of Kirkuk spilled on to the streets yesterday in protest at the constitution negotiations with hundreds demonstrating against federalism – code for Kurdish ambitions to annex Kirkuk. Gunmen damaged the office of a Kurdish political party for the second time in a month, wounding three guards. In Baghdad, a US soldier was killed when his vehicle hit a road-side bomb, and four Iraqi soldiers were killed and three wounded when an insurgent hurled a hand-grenade at a passing Iraqi army patrol in Falluja, west of Baghdad, according to reports. -------- spies Israel protests at MI6 mission to halt Hamas suicide bombings By Con Coughlin (Filed: 21/08/2005) UK Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/21/wmid121.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/21/ixnewstop.html British Intelligence officers have been sent to the Gaza Strip on the orders of Tony Blair on a secret mission to persuade Palestinian terrorists to call a halt to their suicide bomb attacks against Israel, The Sunday Telegraph can exclusively reveal. MI6 is attempting to persuade Hamas to renounce violence and enter negotiations with Israel after last week's withdrawal of 9,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip. But the contacts between MI6 and Hamas have provoked fierce criticism from the Israeli government, which is opposed to British Intelligence dealing with an organisation that Israel has denounced as a terror group. Israeli officials confirmed last week that a formal protest had been made to Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who has overall responsibility for MI6. "We have made our feelings about this known to Mr Straw in the strongest possible terms," said a senior official at Israel's foreign ministry. "But although he gave us an assurance that the operation would be scaled down, it is still going on." -------- un Bush's 'bruiser' squares up to UN in row over Palestinian propaganda By Toby Harnden (Filed: 21/08/2005) UK Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/21/wmid221.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/21/ixnewstop.html John Bolton, the controversial new American ambassador to the United Nations, has lodged a protest about its "inappropriate and unacceptable" funding of a Palestinian propaganda campaign to accompany the Gaza withdrawal. His public complaint is a clear signal that Mr Bolton, who was appointed by President George W Bush over the heads of the United Nations Senate, is not going to try to appease his critics. Jewish groups reacted with fury to banners, mugs, bumper stickers and T-shirts bearing the slogan "Today Gaza, Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem" which bore the UN Development Programme logo. Israelis view the slogan, and particularly the reference to Jerusalem, as an aspiration to destroy the Jewish state. The dispute became more acrimonious when the UNDP appeared to state that, while it was improper to use the logo, there was nothing wrong with its money being used to produce what has been denounced as incitement. Kemal Dervis, a UNDP official, responded to a complaint from the American Jewish Congress by saying that the UNDP "cannot be involved in political messaging" and it was "not at all acceptable" that its logo was used. Yet Timothy Rothermel, head of the organisation's Palestinian programme, was quoted on Fox News, the American cable channel, as saying that the slogan was "consistent with the relevant UN resolutions and Security Council resolutions about the status of Palestine". UNDP officials argue that the Palestinian Authority has the freedom to use the UN money without each element being reviewed by the world body. Mr Bolton, whose arrival at the UN was delayed after Democratic leaders blocked a crucial senate vote on his appointment, told the New York Sun that the UNDP's response was not adequate. "Funding this kind of activity is inappropriate and unacceptable," he said. "We plan to raise the issue with UNDP and with others". Abraham Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that it was "inappropriate for the UNDP, as an impartial global development organisation, to fund such a political and provocative message". Democratic senators and some Republicans opposed Mr Bolton's appointment as ambassador to the UN because of his association with the neo-conservative strand of the Bush administration, and his reputation for being bombastic and ideological. A "floor vote" of all 100 senators was blocked by Democrats because it was apparent that Mr Bolton's nomination would be approved by a majority. Mr Bush lost patience and made a "recess appointment" while senators were on holiday, declaring that Mr Bolton was the man to reform the UN. The US Republican Party is bitterly critical of the UN. One senator said recently: "The UN is a smorgasbord for tyrants, terrorism-sponsoring states, socialists and people who hate America." -------- us Cheney's 'Spoon-Benders' Pushing Nuclear Armageddon By Jeffrey Steinberg Executive Intelligence Review 8-21-5 http://www.rense.com/general67/spoon.htm Sometime in late 1980, then-Col. Paul E. Vallely, the Commander of the 7th Psychological Operations Group, United States Army Reserve, Presidio of San Francisco, Ca., co-authored a discussion paper, which received wide and controversial attention within the U.S. military, particularly within the Special Operations community. The paper was titled "From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory," and it presented a Nietzschean scheme for waging perpetual psychological warfare against friend and enemy populations alike, and even against the American people. The "MindWar" paper was provoked by an article by Lt. Col. John Alexander, which appeared in the December 1980 edition of Military Review, advocating the introduction of ESP (extra-sensory perception), "tele-pathetic behavior modification," para-psychology, psychokinesis ("mind over matter"), remote viewing, out of body experiences, and other New Age and occult practices into U.S. military intelligence. Alexander's paper was titled "The New Mental Battlefield: Beam Me Up, Spock." But the subsequent paper co-authored by Vallely went way beyond ESP and the other paranormal techniques advocated by Alexander: "Strategic MindWar must begin the moment war is considered to be inevitable," the document stated. "It must seek out the attention of the enemy nation through every available medium, and it must strike at the nation's potential soldiers before they put on their uniforms. It is in their homes and their communities that they are most vulnerable to MindWar.... "To this end," Vallely and co-author continued, "MindWar must be strategic in emphasis, with tactical applications playing a reinforcing, supplementary role. In its strategic context, MindWar must reach out to friends, enemies, and neutrals alike across the globe-neither through primitive 'battlefield' leaflets and loudspeakers of PSYOP nor through the weak, imprecise, and narrow effort of psychotronics-but through the media possessed by the United States which have the capabilities to reach virtually all people on the face of the Earth. These media are, of course the electronic media-television and radio. State of the art developments in satellite communication, video recording techniques, and laser and optical transmission of broadcasts make possible a penetration of the minds of the world such as would have been inconceivable just a few years ago. Like the sword Excalibur [King Arthur's magical sword-ed.], we have but to reach out and seize this tool; and it can transform the world for us if we have the courage and the integrity to enhance civilization with it. If we do not accept Excalibur, then we relinquish our ability to inspire foreign cultures with our morality. If they can then desire moralities unsatisfactory to us, we have no choice but to fight them on a more brutish level. "MindWar must target all participants to be effective. It must not only weaken the enemy; it must strengthen the United States. It strengthens the United States by denying enemy propaganda access to our people, and by explaining and emphasizing to our people the rationale for our national interest in a specific war." Leaving nothing to the imagination, the document concluded by emphasizing that MindWar should employ subliminal brainwashing technologies, and weapons that directly attack the targetted population's central nervous system and brain functioning: "There are some purely natural conditions under which minds may become more or less receptive to ideas, and MindWar should take full advantage of such phenomena as atmospheric electromagnetic activity, air ionization, and extremely low frequency waves," the paper concluded. The "MindWar" paper was disturbing, for reasons beyond its fascistic and occultist content. For one thing, Colonel Vallely's co-author was a PSYOP Research & Analysis Team Leader named Maj. Michael A. Aquino. Five years before the circulation of the MindWar paper, Special Forces Reserve officer Aquino had founded the Temple of Set, a Satanic organization which was the successor to Anton Szandor LeVay's Church of Satan. Aquino would soon be grabbing headlines, which persisted throughout the 1980s, as a leading suspect in a nationwide Satanic pedophile ring, that particularly targetted daycare centers on such military bases as Fort Bragg and the Presidio (see article, p. 21). Furthermore, Vallely and Aquino's MindWar scheme is remarkably similar to the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program launched by the Donald Rumsfeld Pentagon, under the direction of Irangate figure Adm. John Poindexter. Ostensibly, the Total Information Awareness global propaganda and mega-data-mining plan was scrapped after a series of negative news stories, but Pentagon sources have reported that the program was merely "taken into a black box." Indeed, on Aug. 16, 2005, The New York Times' Philip Shenon revealed that a super-secret Pentagon "special action program" called Able Danger had tracked Mohammed Atta and three of the other Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers a year prior to the attacks; but Pentagon lawyers with the Special Operations Command refused to allow the information to be shared with the FBI, for fear of exposing the data-mining program to any public scrutiny. The Times learned of Able Danger from Lt. Col. Anthony Schaffer, who was the program's liaison to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time. 'Nuke Iran!' Colonel Vallely's association with Aquino did little to stall the former's military career advancement. A West Point graduate, Vallely retired in 1991 as deputy commanding general of the U.S. Army of the Pacific. From 1982-86, he headed the 351st Civil Affairs Command, placing him in charge of all Special Forces, Psychological Warfare, and Civil Affairs Military units in the Western United States and Hawaii. Today, he is practicing what he and Satanist Aquino preached in the MindWar paper, and is one of the leading propaganda assets in Vice President Dick Cheney's push for military confrontation with Iran-one that could see the United States carry out the first pre-emptive nuclear attack in history. General Vallely, now retired from the military, is a senior military commentator for Rupert Murdoch's shrill Fox TV News; is a "client" of Benador Associates, the premier public relations firm for the neo-conservative cabal in Washington; is the Military Committee chairman for Frank Gaffney's neo-conned Center for Strategic Policy; and is the co-founder, along with Gen. Thomas McInerney (USAF-ret.), another Benador client, of the Iran Policy Committee. IPC is yet another neo-con front group that: 1) promotes the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), a group on the State Department's list of International Terrorist Organizations (for assassinating a number of U.S. military officers in Iran); and 2) demands U.S. military action to impose "regime change" 1n Tehran, through such measures as a massive bombing campaign against Iran's purported secret nuclear weapons labs, and a U.S. Naval blockade of the Straits of Hormuz. Recently General Vallely co-authored a book with General McInerney, titled Endgame-Blueprint for Victory for Winning the War on Terror, which borrows, philosophically, from his and Aquino's original MindWar rant (see interview with Vallely on p. 13). The 'Jedi Warriors' General Vallely, Colonel Alexander, and Lt. Colonel Aquino (ret.) are but three leading figures within the Special Operations community, who have promoted the application of New Age and outright Satanic practices to the art of war, conducting experimental programs aimed at creating a Nietzschean "Übermensch warrior." In preparation for this article, EIR has interviewed a number of senior retired military and intelligence officers, who have identified, from their own personal experiences, a number of other leading military officers who promoted these efforts and funnelled massive amounts of Pentagon money into "black programs," testing the military applications of a whole range of bizarre "non-lethal" techniques and technologies. Some of the top-secret programs funded by taxpayer dollars over the past 25 years betray a significant degree of outright "spoon-bending" lunacy. Others lead directly to the doorsteps of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib military detention centers, where prisoners have been turned into human guinea pigs for experimental torture techniques, drawn from the same New Age bag of tricks. And The New Yorker magazine investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in a Jan. 24-31, 2005 article on "The Coming Wars," mooted that the Special Forces "black programs" may now have ventured into the field of "pseudo-gang warfare," in which counterinsurgency methods blur with insurgency. Quoting from a September 2003 San Francisco Chronicle article by Naval Postgraduate School defense analyst and Pentagon counterinsurgency advisor John Arquilla, Hersh hinted that U.S. Special Forces units were being unleashed to create their own terrorist "pseudo gangs" to more easily infiltrate terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. Arquilla wrote: "When conventional military operations and bombing failed to defeat the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the 1950s, the British formed teams of friendly Kikuyu tribesmen who went about pretending to be terrorists. These 'pseudo gangs,' as they were called, swiftly threw the Mau Mau on the defensive, either by befriending and then ambushing bands of fighters or by guiding bombers to the terrorists' camps. What worked in Kenya a half-century ago has a wonderful chance of undermining trust and recruitment among today's terror networks. Forming new pseudo gangs should not be difficult." Arquilla added, for good measure: "If a confused young man from Marin County can join up with al-Qaeda [a reference to John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Talibani-ed.], think what professional operatives might do." The 'Gang of Four' Four of the names most often cited as promoters of programs like the "Goat Lab," the "Jedi Warriors," "Grill Flame," "Task Force Delta," and the "First Earth Battalion," have held top posts within the military intelligence and Special Operations commands: Gen. Albert Stubblebine III was the head of U.S. Army Intelligence, INSCOM (Intelligence and Security Command), from 1981-84, during which time he launched a series of secret projects at Fort Meade, Md., involving remote viewing and other occult practices. General Stubblebine was, perhaps, the U.S. Army's most senior and loudest advocate of the full gamut of New Age warfare. Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the current U.S. Army Chief of Staff, was Commanding General of the Joint Special Operations Command (1994-96), Commander of the United States Army Special Operations Command (1996-97), and Commander in Chief of the United States Special Operations Command (1997-2000). According to a well-researched book exposing the New Age penetration of the U.S. military, The Men Who Stare at Goats, by Jon Ronson (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2004), General Schoomaker has created a think-tank, under the sponsorship of the SOC office, to expand the application of these bizarre occult and para-normal operations throughout the U.S. Army, as his contribution to President George W. Bush's Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Gen. Wayne Downing also was the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command, and earlier directed all special operations during the December 1989 invasion of Panama, when some of the MindWar techniques were used, during the siege of the Vatican compound where Gen. Manuel Noriega had taken refuge. Following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Downing was named National Director and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combatting Terrorism in the Bush-Cheney White House, a post he held until June 2002. According to military sources, General Downing left the White House as the result of a conflict with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, over plans for the invasion of Iraq. Downing had argued that Saddam Hussein could be overthrown by a massive "shock and awe" bombing campaign, followed by an invasion by a force of no more than 25,000 Special Forces troops. The "Downing Plan" was rejected by the Chiefs as "sheer madness," according to one senior military source familiar with the events. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin was the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (Airborne) at Fort Bragg, N.C., from 1998-2000. Prior to that, he was the Commander of the elite counter-terror unit, Delta Force, from 1992-95. He was, in that capacity, in charge of the Special Forces units in Mogadishu, Somalia, during the famous 1993 "Black Hawk Down" incident, in which a number of Special Forces soldiers were beaten to death by warlords, and dragged through the streets of the city. Here, some of Lt. Col. John Alexander's non-lethal systems, including "Sticky Foam," were directly put to the combat test-and failed. From March 2000 until June 2003, General Boykin headed the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center. He was then named Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, a post he still holds. According to The New Yorker piece by Hersh, Boykin and his immediate boss, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, are directly in charge of the Special Operations search-and-kill squads touted by John Arquilla in his pseudo-gang promo. Shortly after his appointment to the Deputy Undersecretary position, General Boykin drew fire, for remarks he delivered-in uniform-at a fundamentalist Christian church, in which he smeared Islam as a "Satanic" religion, and characterized the U.S. invasion of Iraq as a religious "crusade." He also said that "God had placed George W. Bush" into the Presidency, provoking serious debates about his own sanity and a Pentagon Inspector General's Office probe. First Earth Battalion-Where It All Began According to author Jon Ronson, in 1977, Lt. Col. Jim Channon, a Vietnam War combat veteran, wrote a letter to Lt. Gen. Walter Kerwin, then the U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Staff, proposing a fact-finding mission to unearth ways for the U.S. military to become more "cunning." Channon was given an open-ended assignment, a small Pentagon budget, and spent the next two years, by his own accounts, exploring the depths of the New Age movement, seeking military applications. Channon visited over 150 New Age facilities during his travels, with such countercultural names as: Gentle Wind, Integral Chuan Institute, Dayspring, Inc., The Center of Release and Integration, Postural Integration Reichian Rebirthing, the New Age Awareness Fair, Beyond Jogging, Aikido with Ki, the Biofeedback Center of Berkeley, and the Esalen Institute. Channon particularly spent a good deal of time training under Michael Murphy, the co-founder of Esalen, which was the leading West Coast New Age psychological experimentation center, testing a wide array of mind-control methods, many involving the use of psychotropic drugs. Cultist mass murderer Charles Manson spent Aug. 5, 1969 at Esalen, just four days before he unleashed the "Helter Skelter" murder spree, for which he is still serving a lifetime jail sentence. Manson had been tracked, from his years in state prison, by military psychologists, who were studying behavioral patterns of what they dubbed the "pathologically violent five percent." In 1979, Lt. Colonel Channon presented his findings to the Army brass in a 125-page document, complete with slides, called "The First Earth Battalion." While the document was laced with New Age vocabulary ("The First Earth is not mission oriented, it is potential oriented. That means we shall continue to look everywhere to find non-destructive methods of control."), Channon did propose an array of non-lethal techniques that would be soon adopted by the military, including the use of atonal noises as a form of combat psychological warfare, oriental martial arts and spiritualist instruction, and widespread experimentation with psychoelectronics and other means of debilitating enemy forces. Channon's First Earth Battalion slide show was brought to General Stubblebine, the head of INSCOM, by Colonel Alexander, the author of the Military Review article on "The New Mental Battlefield," and, by 1981, Stubblebine established a secret "psychic spies unit" at Fort Meade, to test out such dubious techniques as remote viewing. Two years later, General Stubblebine traveled to Fort Bragg, to pitch the Channon/Alexander program to the top leadership of the Special Operations community. By now, Stubblebine was convinced that, with the application of the right "mind over matter" techniques, he could personally walk through walls. As of this writing, he has not yet apparently succeeded. The Fort Bragg session, as he would later recount it to author Ronson, was a fiasco, and no action was taken to implement his program-or so Stubblebine thought. In reality, Fort Bragg, by 1978, was already a hotbed of mind-war experimentation. Among the programs carried out at remote corners of the sprawling special operations base: the Goat Lab, where a team of New Age-trained Special Forces soldiers attempted to burst the hearts of goats, in an adjacent holding pen, through the power of psychic concentration. Veterinarians working on the base were horrified that Special Forces planes were airlifting goats up from Central America, without going through the normal Customs inspections. The goats were used in the training of combat medics. The goats would be shot, their limbs would be amputated, and, on some occasions, they were "de-bleated" by having their tongues cut out or their throats slashed. Then, they were subjected to the Goat Lab psychic warfare tests. Keying off of Channon's blueprint, a Special Operations experimental team, dubbed "Jedi Warriors," after the Star Wars craze, were trained in a wide array of Eastern oriental martial arts and meditation techniques, combined with super-strenuous physical training programs. Outside "experts" like Dr. Jim Hardt, were brought in to train the "Jedi Warriors" to heighten their mental telepathy skills through Zen. Following Jim Channon's First Earth Battalion recipe, Stuart Heller, a New Age psychologist, who gave classes in stress control to corporate executives and officials at NASA, was brought in to provide similar schooling to the commandos. Channon had been introduced to Heller by Marilyn Ferguson, the author of the 1980 book The Aquarian Conspiracy, which peddled a New Age version of H.G. Wells' original Open Conspiracy concept of mass social control and cultural paradigm-shifts. Not all the instructors of the "Jedi Warriors" were counterculture psychologists. Michael Echanis, a Green Beret who was badly wounded in Vietnam, but later developed advanced martial art skills, was brought in to train the "Jedi" in Hwa Rang Do, a combat technique that emphasized "invisibility." Echanis would be killed in 1978 in Nicaragua, while working as a mercenary for the regime of Anastasio Somoza. He had been the martial arts editor of Soldier of Fortune magazine, a well-known hiring hall for ex-soldiers and wanna-be's, seeking their fortunes as mercenaries. By 1983, between the INSCOM program and the black box efforts at Fort Bragg, a fairly extensive network of military "spoon-benders" had been assembled, to the point that Task Force Delta was created, to stage quarterly meetings of as many as 300 military occult practitioners, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Col. Frank Burns launched Meta Network, one of the first "chat rooms" run through DARPA's (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) computer networking system, that would ultimately evolve into the internet. The scheme to create a breed of Nietzschean "super soldiers" employed some very far-out characters, like the Israeli "spoon-bender" Uri Geller, a one-time stage magician, who was brought into the U.S. intelligence community under the original patronage of Dr. Andrija Puharich, a doctor who had been conducting work on parapsychology and telepathy for the U.S. Army's Psychological Warfare Division, since the 1950s. Dr. Puharich ran the Round Table Foundation of Electrobiology, which experimented with the manipulation of brain waves. He worked closely with Warren S. McCulloch, one of the founders of Cybernetics, and with the British intelligence counterculture guru, Aldous Huxley. Wolfowitz Peddles Non-Lethal Warfare According to author Ronson, in an October 2001 interview in London, Uri Geller confided to him that he had been "called back" to work for the U.S. government, immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. It seems that the Bush Administration decided that the "psychic spies" could play a productive role in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and in efforts to prevent a replay of the terror attacks on New York and Washington. In fact, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz had been a big advocate of some of Alexander and Channon's ideas, while serving as the chief policy advisor to then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in the George Herbert Walker Bush Pentagon. On March 10, 1991, Wolfowitz wrote a memo to Cheney, "Do We Need a Non-Lethal Defense Initiative?" in which he wrote, "A U.S. lead in non-lethal technologies will increase our options and reinforce our position in the post-Cold War world." While Wolfowitz apparently made no mention of the more bizarre practices promoted by Colonel Alexander, the guru of the non-lethal weaponry campaign, at the time of Wolfowitz's memo, Alexander had retired from active duty, and had been named head of the Non-Lethal Weapons Program at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 1990, Colonel Alexander had also come out with a book, The Warrior's Edge, in which he promoted a variety of unconventional methods to promote "human excellence and optimum performance" among soldiers, based on a course he taught in 1983 called Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Among the students in that course were then-Senator and later Vice President Albert Gore, Gen. Max Thurman, and General Stubblebine. By his own accounts, Alexander and Gore became close friends in 1983, and remain so today. Colonel Alexander wrote that the goal of The Warrior's Edge was to "unlock the door to the extraordinary human potentials inherent in each of us. To do this, we, like governments around the world, must take a fresh look at non-traditional methods of affecting reality. We must raise human consciousness of the potential power of the individual body/mind system-the power to manipulate reality. We must be willing to retake control of our past, present, and ultimately, our future." Uri Geller was not the only "psychic warrior" called back to government service after 9/11. Jim Channon, the original First Earth Battalion New Age super-soldier, according to author Ronson, began holding a series of meetings in early 2004 with the new Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Pete Schoomaker. Schoomaker had been commander of Special Forces at Fort Bragg when the "Goat Lab" and "Jedi Warrior" programs were under way. Ronson wrote that "The rumor was that General Schoomaker was considering bringing Jim back from retirement to create, or contribute to, a new and secret think-tank, designed to encourage the army to take their minds further and further outside the mainstream." Ronson described it as a revival of Task Force Delta. Ronson soon received an e-mail from Channon, confirming the rumor, and explaining that the think-tank idea had been floated "because Rumsfeld has now openly asked for creative input on the war on terrorism ... mmmm." Channon elaborated: "The Army has requested my services to teach the most highly selected Majors. The First Earth Battalion is the teaching exemplar of choice. I have done that in the presence of General Pete Schoomaker.... I am in contact with players who are or have recently been in Afghanistan and Iraq. I have sent in exit strategy plans based on Earth Battalion ideas. I talk weekly with a member of a stress control battalion in Iraq who carries the manual and uses it to inform his teammates of their potential service contributions...." Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib ... and al-Qa-im The International Committee of the Red Cross has published a series of studies and sponsored several international conventions, to evaluate just how "non-lethal" the non-lethal technologies are that have been promoted by Alexander, Channon, and their ilk. According to a 1998 ICRC presentation before the European Parliament, non-lethal weapons are simply defined as weapons with a less-than 25% fatality rate. Such now widely used non-lethal weapons as lasers, extremely low frequency (ELF) weapons, and various chemical, biological, and audio stun weapons, can cause permanent damage, such as blindness, deafness, and destruction of gastrointestinal systems, which, the ICRC insists, require serious study and a new set of international treaties and conventions. Indeed, according to both Ronson and The New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, many of the torture techniques employed at Guantanamo Bay, at Abu Ghraib, and at such less-well-known locales as al-Qa-im near the Syrian border in Iraq, are based on Channon and Alexander's non-lethal schemes, but with lethal consequences in some cases. Ronson confirmed that a facility at al-Qa-im was conducting "interrogations" of captured Iraqi insurgents, after playing, non-stop, for days at a time, the theme song from Barney the Purple Dinosaur, "I Love You." Ronson is convinced that the music was a cover for subliminal frequencies, very high- or very low-frequency sounds that affect brain functioning, to break prisoners' resistance. The prisoners were kept in metal shipping containers in the scorching sun, blindfolded and in crouching positions, surrounded by barbed wire, with the music (and subliminals) blaring. In an article published in the July 11-18, 2005 issue of The New Yorker, Mayer revealed that Special Forces psychologists from the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program at the JFK Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg had been brought to Guantanamo Bay, to oversee interrogation strategies. The SERE psychologists formed a core of the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCT, or "Biscuits") that "reverse engineered" the techniques that were used on Special Forces soldiers, to train them to survive enemy torture/interrogations, as part of the advanced special warfare program at Fort Bragg. Jim Channon confirmed, in another e-mail exchange with author Ronson, that many of the ideas adopted by the Army Intelligence interrogators at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and al-Qa-im came right out of his First Earth Battalion blueprint. 'Living Embodiment' of First Earth Battalion At one point in his probe of the military's spoon-benders, author Jon Ronson asked Stuart Heller, the friend of Marilyn Ferguson and Jim Channon, if he could name one soldier who was "the living embodiment" of the First Earth Battalion. Without a second thought, Heller replied: "Bert Rodriguez." "Bert's one of the most spiritual guys I've ever met," Heller told Ronson. "No. Spiritual is the wrong word. He's occultic. He's like a walking embodiment of death. He can stop you at a distance. He can influence physical events just with his mind. If he catches your attention he can stop you without touching you." As Jon Ronson reported, "In April 2001, Bert Rodriguez took on a new student. His name was Ziad Jarrah. Ziad just turned up at the US 1 Fitness Center one day and said he had heard that Bert was good. Why Ziad chose Bert, of all the martial arts instructors scattered around the Florida shoreline, is a matter of speculation. Maybe Bert's uniquely occultic reputation preceded him, or perhaps it was Bert's military connections. Plus, Bert had once taught the head of security for a Saudi prince. Maybe that was it." Ziad Jarrah presented himself as a Lebanese businessman, who traveled a great deal and wanted to protect himself. "I liked Ziad a lot," Rodriguez later told Ronson. "He was very humble, very quiet. He was in good shape. Very diligent." Rodriguez taught Jarrah "the choke hold and the kamikaze spirit. You need a code you'd die for, a do-or-die desire." Rodriguez added, "Ziad was like Luke Skywalker. You know when Luke walks the invisible path? You have to believe it's there. And if you do believe it it is there. Yeah, Ziad believed it. He was like Luke Skywalker." Rodriguez trained Ziad Jarrah for six months, and gave him copies of several knife-fighting books he had written. Jarrah shared them with a friend, Marwan al-Shehhi, who boarded with him at the Panther Motel and Apartments in Deerfield Beach, Fla. On Sept. 11, 2001, Ziad Jarrah took control of United Airlines flight 93, and crashed it in a field in Pennsylvania. Marwan al-Shehhi commandeered United Airlines flight 175 and crashed it into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- prisoners Computer Breaking Exposed Prison Staff, Inmates to Toxics WASHINGTON, DC, August 26, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2005/2005-08-26-09.asp#anchor2 The Federal Bureau of Prisons has conceded that several of its staff and inmate workers in its computer recycling enterprises were exposed to harmful heavy metals above allowable safety limits, according to a report made public Wednesday. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBP) Office of Internal Affairs conduced an investigation and prepared the report in response to a whistleblower disclosure filed last year with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel by Leroy Smith, safety manager at California’s Atwater Federal Prison, where the problems were first reported. Smith alleged that inmates were releasing dust containing lead, cadmium, barium and beryllium when breaking apart computer monitors for recycling as part of a prison industry operation. One component of the recycling process involves dismantling cathode ray tubes (CRTs) by manually breaking the glass CRTs in a specially designed glass breaking booth. The investigators concluded that violations of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) limits for exposure to these heavy metals "did occur at the USP Atwater FPI CRT recycling factory during the initial months of its activation beginning in April 2002. Production stopped after the first series of test results indicated exposures," the report states. "Additional exposures occurred on some subsequent occasions from July 2002 tthrough February 2003 during a period of reengineering, intermittant operation resumption and testing. One additional exposure occurred in February 2004 as a result of an unauthorized system modification by an inmate worker." "The evidence also indicates," the Internal Affairs report states, "that local and national FPI and safety staff actively engaged in corrective action efforts after becoming aware, as a result of Mr. Smith's initiation of testing in June 2002, of problems in this regard. Unfortunately, staff responsible for making and monitoring various corrective actions, including Mr. Smith himself, did not always do so with a level of caution or strict adherence to applicable BOP police and OSHA regulations which was, at least in hindsight, clearly in order." The Office of Internal Affairs also found “it is reasonable to conclude” that contamination occurred at two other prisons, Elkton, Ohio, and Texarkana, Texas, but said "there is insufficent evidence to establish this." The investigators concluded that all appropriate steps to contain the contamination from breaking old computers for recycle had been taken. But the report admits that prison officials repeatedly re-started recycling operations over Smith's objections. The Office of Internal Affairs said no one retaliated against Smith for making the allegations of contamination, but the report promises to institute disciplinary action against unnamed prison managers for "unrelated unprofessional behavior." “Leroy Smith deserves a medal for risking his career to bring these problems to light but instead he is blackballed from going back to work,” said San Francisco attorney Mary Dryovage, who is representing Smith in a whistleblower action that seeks transfer out of Atwater and restoration of a lost promotion. “While it is a good sign that the Federal Bureau of Prisons claims that it will discipline responsible officials, a slap on the wrist will not restore the health or the peace of mind of scores of affected employees and inmates," Dryovage said. “In this report, the Federal Bureau of Prisons insists that the problems it initially had vehemently denied now have been magically resolved by the same managers who created them in the first place,” said attorney Jeff Ruch, who heads Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the organization that released the Office of Internal Affairs' report. “Tellingly," Ruch says, "the Bureau admits that there are probably similar safety problems at the other prison computer recycling plants but has decided not to investigate further.” Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Harley Lappin signed the report, dated June 13, 2005, and submitted it to Special Counsel Scott Bloch, but Bloch’s office held the report for more than two months before transmitting it to the whistleblower. Smith is allowed to comment on the report before the Special Counsel decides whether the agency response is adequate or requires additional work. Read the Federal Bureau of Prisons report to the Office of Special Counsel here. -------- terrorism British Police foil gas attack on Commons David Leppard and Robert Winnett August 21, 2005 UK Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1744424,00.html SCOTLAND YARD believes it has thwarted an Al-Qaeda gas attack aimed at ministers and MPs in parliament. The plot, hatched last year, is understood to have been discovered in coded e-mails on computers seized from terror suspects in Britain and Pakistan. Police and MI5 then identified an Al-Qaeda cell that had carried out extensive research and video-recorded reconnaissance missions in preparation for the attack. The encrypted e-mails are said to have been decoded with the help of an Al-Qaeda “supergrass”. By revealing the terrorists’ code he was also able to help MI5 and GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre at Cheltenham, to crack several more plots. The discovery of the suspected Commons nerve gas plot was behind the decision to increase security around parliament this summer. A senior officer said that the scheme had led to the intervention of Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of MI5, to assess parliament’s security. The operation to deter the sarin gas attack is referred to in an internal police document obtained by The Sunday Times. It is a minute of a meeting of senior police officers held last month at Specialist Operations 17 (SO17), the unit responsible for protecting parliament, and reveals that the team were waiting to be briefed on the plot. This weekend a senior officer disclosed that the thwarted plot mentioned in the document involved a gas or chemical “dirty bomb” attack against parliament. “The House of Commons was one of their targets as well as the Tube,” he said. “They were planning to use chemicals, a dirty bomb and sarin gas. They looked at all sorts of ways of delivering it.” But despite the successful police operation and upgraded security measures, senior officers are worried that security at the houses of parliament remains “unacceptable”. The police security memo, drawn up after the July 7 attacks, reveals high-level fears that suicide terrorists could use a black cab or a visit to an exhibition to mark the 400th anniversary of the gunpowder plot. It discloses that a military unit — said to have been special forces — recently carried out a secret examination of security at the House of Commons. It is believed that the exercise highlighted the ease with which terrorists could kill dozens of MPs in the debating chamber. “[It was] felt all SO17 contingency plans should be reviewed against the new threat — a plan for a Kratos [suicide bomber] incident was required,” the minutes record. A senior officer said that he “felt particular attention should be paid to cabs entering the [parliamentary] estate”. The memo records: “[A senior official] expressed grave concern at the shortage of security officers. He was worried that commitments such as the forthcoming exhibition on the gunpowder plot just could not be covered. He felt that an unacceptable number of posts were being closed down.” -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars TV station refuses to air anti-war ad days before Bush visit 8/21/2005 2:55 AM (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-08-20-bush-ad_x.htm SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah television station is refusing to air an anti-war ad featuring Cindy Sheehan, whose son's death in Iraq prompted a vigil outside President Bush's Texas ranch. The ad began airing on other area stations Saturday, two days before Bush was scheduled to speak in Salt Lake City to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. However, a national sales representative for KTVX, a local ABC affiliate, rejected the ad in an e-mail to media buyers, writing that it was an "inappropriate commercial advertisement for Salt Lake City." In the ad, Sheehan pleads with Bush for a meeting and accuses him of lying to the American people about Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction and its connection to al-Qaeda. "I love my country. But how many more of our loved ones need to die in this senseless war?" a weary-looking Sheehan asks in the ad. "I know you can't bring Casey back. But it's time to admit mistakes and bring our troops home now." Salt Lake City affiliates of NBC, CBS and Fox began running the ad Saturday. The ads were bought by Gold Star Families for Peace. Washington, D.C.-based Fenton Communications, a public relations firm working for the group, provided a copy of the e-mail received from station sales representative Jemina Keller to The Associated Press. In a statement Saturday evening explaining its decision, KTVX said that after viewing the ad, local managers found the content "could very well be offensive to our community in Utah, which has contributed more than its fair share of fighting soldiers and suffered significant loss of life in this Iraq war." Station General Manager David D'Antuono said the decision was not influenced by the station's owner, Clear Channel Communications Inc. Celeste Zappala, who with Sheehan co-founded Gold Star Families for Peace, said she was puzzled by the decision. "What stunned me was that it was inappropriate to hear this message," she said. "How is it that Salt Lake City should hear no questions about the war?" The e-mail read: "The viewpoints reflected in the spot are incompatible with our marketplace and will not be well received by our viewers." It added that the spot didn't qualify as an issue advertisement. For the ad to have been considered an "issue" advertisement a ballot measure would have had to be at stake, D'Antuono said. Mark Wiest, vice president of sales for NBC-affiliated KSL television, said that in the interest of freedom of speech, his station didn't hesitate to run the ad. KSL is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "The bigger picture is, by suppressing the message are we doing what is right under the First Amendment and in an open democratic society?" Wiest said. Bush received nearly 70% of the vote last fall in Utah, one of the most conservative states north of the Bible Belt. -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars Army Tries to Recruit Soldiers By Winning Over Parents Ads Aim to Show Moms and Dads How Army Can Build Character, Offer Opportunities Aug. 26, 2005 ABC News http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=1071578 Army advertising has always targeted potential soldiers by promising adrenaline and adventure and calling upon a sense of patriotism and duty. But the military's newest ads take a different tack — pitching parents, who are often considered a major obstacle to recruiting. Instead of high-tech, hectic imagery, the ads rely on heart-to-heart talks. "You're a changed man," a father says to a son in the commercial. "You shook my hand, and you looked me square in the eye." The ads aim to show parents how the Army can build their children's characters and their careers. "I get training in just about any field that I want. And besides, it's time for me to be the man," the actor portraying the son says. "What we are communicating — that the Army will enable your son or daughter to be successful in anything that they choose to do in life," said Col. Tom Nickerson, who is in charge of the Army's recruiting outreach program. "The commercial is cool," said one parent interviewed by ABC News. "I mean, it's geared toward education, it's geared toward him being a man, so I can respect that. Still, I don't want my son going to war." Ads Don't Mention Iraq War Any mention of war, violence or Iraq is missing from the new advertisements. "The media is reporting every day what is going on," Nickerson said. "What we're doing quite frankly with our advertising is help tell the other side of the story." Some military leaders privately argue the recruiting challenge is too big for the Army to fix on its own. They have privately asked President Bush to help. The president did make one appeal in a prime-time address in June. "There is no higher calling than service in our armed forces," Bush said. Since then, however — to the discontent of many in the military — the president has left it to the Army to do the convincing. ABC News' Dan Harris filed this report for "World News Tonight." -------- ENERGY Burr in midst of uranium issue Senator's addition to Energy Act pits medical treatment against national security Burr's work eased uranium exports to Canada. By ROB CHRISTENSEN, Staff Writer Aug 21, 2005 6:38 AM Raleigh News Observer http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/2741720p-9179011c.html When President Bush signed the Energy Act of 2005 into law this month, it had the fingerprints of North Carolina freshman Sen. Richard Burr on it. But Burr's contribution had little to do with national energy policy. Instead, Burr's role has put him in the middle of a heated debate about the trade-offs between medical treatment and national security. At issue is a provision -- known on Capitol Hill as the Burr amendment -- inserted in the 1,274-page energy act that makes it easier to export bomb-level uranium to Canada and several European countries. Burr says the provision was driven by the need of doctors and hospitals for a steady supply of medical isotopes that are used in the diagnosis and treatment of numerous forms of cancer, as well as heart disease, Graves' disease, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, epilepsy, renal failure and bone infections. The isotopes are used in imaging for brain and bone scans. They are also used to kill cancerous cells. One in three patients admitted to a hospital gets a nuclear medical procedure. "It's important to the health of the people of this country," said Dr. William McCartney, director of nuclear medicine at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill. "We don't have any substitutes." Burr's role in the energy bill reinforces the image he earned during his 10-year career as a member of the U.S. House before he moved over to the Senate this year. He is widely viewed as a savvy insider who knows how to get things done, is able to master complicated legislation and who has close ties to powerful business and medical interests. Burr's critics say that it was the influence of special interests -- not medical science -- that prompted Burr's efforts. And they argue that another result of the provision will be to increase the risk of bomb-grade uranium falling into the hands of terrorists. "We are relaxing the U.S. nuclear nonproliferation law and making it easier for other countries to get highly enriched uranium at a time of rising terrorism as a favor to one Canadian company," said Edwin Lyman, senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Cambridge, Mass.-based organization involved in issues such as global warning and nuclear proliferation. That company is MDS Nordion, based in Ottawa. It takes highly enriched uranium and converts it in its commercial nuclear reactor to radioactive isotopes used for medical treatment. It is the largest supplier of isotopes to the United States. Controls on exports For years, the United States had been the primary supplier of highly enriched uranium to companies and governments around the world, including Canada. But more recently, the federal government has been trying to restrict the export of uranium because of concerns that it could be diverted into building nuclear weapons by terrorists or by rogue governments. In 1992, Congress imposed export controls on highly enriched uranium. The law allows the export of highly enriched uranium only on an interim basis to facilities that plan to convert it to low-enriched uranium, which is unsuitable for Hiroshima-type bombs. But the Canadian company has sought an exemption. It argues that conversion is expensive, the technology is not fully developed, it creates a much larger volume of nuclear waste and has not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. MDS Nordion sought to change the law, hiring the Alpine Group, a mid-size lobbying firm whose clients include Duke Energy and AT&T. The firm recruited doctors and medical organizations to lobby for a change in the law and orchestrated campaign contributions to key committee members. The two main lawmakers to take up the cause were Burr, who then represented North Carolina's 5th House District, and Sen. Christopher Bond, a Missouri Republican. St. Louis-based Mallinckrodt Inc. is a major producer of isotopes. Burr and Bond introduced amendments exempting highly enriched uranium exports to Canada and four European countries. Opponents of the legislation have portrayed the effort as special-interest legislation pushed by one Canadian company seeking to save money at the expense of U.S. national security. They say there is no evidence that any patient has been denied medical treatment as a result of existing restrictions on uranium exports. During a House Energy and Commerce Committee meeting in July, Rep. Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, blasted the amendment and the lobbyists who were pushing it. "This is outrageous," he said. "To save one Canadian company some money, we're willing to blow a hole in our nonproliferation policies." The Union of Concerned Scientists notes that two Alpine lobbyists, Richard White and James Massey, contributed a total of nearly $5,000 to Burr's political fund in the past two years. They also note that Burr received contributions from other supporters of the change, including $19,000 from the Radiology Advocacy Alliance. Burr says actions right But Burr says his involvement in the issue began four years ago, when he was approached by national medical groups -- not by lobbyists for the Canadian firm. He said he became convinced that the future supply of medical isotopes could be jeopardized unless the law was changed and that it would not lead to further nuclear proliferation. "None of that matters to me," Burr said of the allegations that he was helping the Canadian company. "The question is: Did I do the right policy? I answered that years ago, and the answer is yes." Burr has developed a close relationship with the medical community and the pharmaceutical industry, often championing their issues and, in turn, being supported financially during his political campaigns. During last year's Senate race, Burr received nearly $1 million from the health-care industry, including at least $369,000 from health-care professionals, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a national campaign finance watchdog group. At least three physician groups ran campaigns on Burr's behalf. Besides physicians, a number of companies with North Carolina connections have lobbied for the change -- although Burr said they were not a major reason for his support. They include Mallinckrodt, which has a facility in Raleigh; GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical giant in Research Triangle Park and Cardinal Health, with a facility in Morrisville. In 2003, Burr, then vice chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, inserted a provision into an energy bill to loosen the restrictions on uranium exports. But the energy bill didn't pass. During last year's Senate race, Democrat Erskine Bowles ran a TV ad accusing Burr of endangering national security by pushing the uranium measure. Supporters, led by Burr, tried again this year and managed to bring the amendment up in June for a Senate debate and vote. "I believe that the health of the American public should be at the forefront of our consideration," Burr told his colleagues. He said there was no danger from the uranium exports, because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has "a very stringent licensing program." Among those opposing the amendment was Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, who said the amendment "would drastically undercut efforts to encourage reductions in the circulation of weapons-grade uranium and to defend against the specter of nuclear terrorism." The amendment was rejected by a vote of 52-46. Doctors tout benefits But Burr didn't quit. When the energy bill went to House-Senate conference committee, he pushed to revive the uranium measure, which had been approved in the House version of the bill. Burr, a member of the conference committee, said he was "a loud voice" to have the law changed. "I've been able to assure," Burr said, "that radiopharmaceuticals [isotopes] are going to continue to be available for the treatment of disease without interruption and without a concern about national security." Physicians say any minimal increase in security risk is far outweighed by medical benefits. "Most of us don't believe exporting from one agency of the U.S. government to another agency of the Canadian government is a major risk," said Dr. Henry Royall, of St. Louis, past president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine. "If we can't do that safely, we have huge problems." (Researcher David Raynor contributed to this article.) Staff writer Rob Christensen can be reached at 829-4532 or robc@newsobserver.com. ---- Back-to-basics strategy gives utility stocks new energy By Andrew Leckey, Chicago Tribune staff reporter Posted August 21, 2005 http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/yourmoney/sns-yourmoney-0821utilities,1,6360943.story?coll=chi-business-utl&ctrack=1&cset=true Forget about new paradigms, those futuristic structural changes that produced the tech bubble and that artful dodger, Enron Corp. Old paradigms are alive and kicking. Electric utilities, refocused on their time-tested businesses, have seen their stocks double since their lows of October 2002. During their biggest rally since World War II, these utilities have been exiting their foreign investments, complex power trading operations and other ventures once considered their destiny. Instead, they're upgrading power transmission, dealing with environmental issues and seeking regulatory approval of new plants. Their stocks, up 15 percent this year and outperformed only by energy stocks, also benefit from industrywide merger speculation. "We're now in the third year of a back-to-basics strategy," said Michael Worms, electric utility analyst with Harris Nesbitt in New York. "In 2003, electric utilities restored their balance sheets that were heavy with debt from their past follies, and in 2004 they returned cash to shareholders through accelerated dividend growth or the resumption of dividend growth." The underlying investor question is whether these stocks can continue their impressive run, or if good news is fully reflected in current prices. Paul Fremont, an analyst with Jefferies & Co. in New York, is concerned that if optimism for the broader market grows by year's end, investors will yank money out of utilities and put it in stock sectors with greater potential. Others disagree. "Electric utility stocks have had a good run and, while they'll have pullbacks, our view is that their positive movement could continue long-term," said Robert Becker, senior vice president and co-portfolio manager of funds that include Cohen & Steers Select Utility Fund Inc., up 15 percent this year. "A general low-return environment that could continue for years to come makes companies with predictable earnings and cash flow growth attractive, and that's utilities," Becker added. Tax law changes in 2003 that gave investors a tax break on dividends helped energize the industry. Electric utilities, with average yield of 3.6 percent, trail only real estate investment trusts in dividend yield. Low bond yields have helped utilities in their competition for conservative, income-oriented investors. "Electric utilities have gotten the signal that investors want dividends, so we've seen increased payouts," said Charles Fischman, an analyst with A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. in St. Louis, noting that rising earnings permit this shift. "While yields on long-term bonds remain low, utility stocks could provide exceptional total returns [price appreciation and dividends] of up to 10 percent over the next 12 months." Some of the price appreciation is based on the new Energy Policy Act of 2005, which ends longtime geographic constraints that limited energy utilities to local markets and also permits ownership by non-utility companies. Mergers have begun. It also gives incentives for new investment in transmission, distribution and environmental equipment. "These stocks have a high level of predictability and high yield, yet are trading at a discount to the broader market," said Fremont. "Electric utilities had an annual earnings growth rate of 2 [percent] or 3 percent over the past 15 years, but in the next three years the rate will be 7 percent." Exelon Corp., the largest U.S. utility owner by market value, is Becker's top holding and is recommended by Fremont and Worms. The company's management has a track record of balancing shareholder and customer interests, they say, and will produce above-average dividend growth. Exelon also is in the process of buying Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. of New Jersey. While nuclear power remains controversial on potential for accidents or acts of terrorism--a new nuclear plant hasn't been commissioned in 30 years--the Energy Policy Act provides incentives for nuclear power. A.G. Edwards' Fischman believes the two biggest players in nuclear energy, Exelon and Entergy Corp., would benefit if its low cost and ability to reduce greenhouse gasses gain public acceptance. He expects two or three nuclear plants will be built in the U.S. in the next decade, likely as units at existing plants. Dominion Resources Inc. is recommended by Fischman and Worms in part because it has oil and gas as well as electrical businesses. Edison International, whose shares are owned by Becker and recommended by Fremont, should benefit from Southern California's need to expand its transmission grid and build more power plants. Meanwhile, Fischman favors Florida Power & Light holding company FPL Group Inc. as an industry blue chip and solid core holding. Among other top Becker holdings, Duke Energy Corp. has capable new management helping it recover from previous poor investment in unregulated businesses, experts said. Let the mergers begin: Possible takeover candidates, Fischman said, could be Allegheny Energy Inc., Constellation Energy Group Inc., DPL Inc., Energy East Corp., FirstEnergy Corp., Northeast Utilities, NSTAR, PPL Corp., SCANA Corp. and Teco Energy Inc. "But predicting mergers is difficult due to the human factors involved," Fischman cautioned. "The deals aren't always motivated by purely strategic reasons." Andrew Leckey is a Tribune Media Services columnist. -------- alternative energy -------- -------- energy -------- -------- OTHER -------- environment -------- -------- genetics -------- -------- health -------- -------- imf / world bank / wto (economics) -------- poverty -------- ACTIVISTS -------- --------