NucNews - August 25, 2005



-------- NUCLEAR 


-------- accidents and safety

Workers Evacuated at U.S. Nuclear Site after Leak

August 25, 2005 — By Reuters

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=8612

SEATTLE — Some workers at the largest nuclear waste dump in the United States were evacuated Wednesday after a container filled with radioactive material was breached as it was being removed from storage, the U.S. Department of Energy said.

No radioactive or toxic contamination was found after technicians determined that the inner drum of the container had not been breached. The two workers who were evacuated were also found to be safe from contamination.

The 586-square-mile nuclear waste facility is located in south-central Washington state, about 150 miles southwest of Spokane, the state's second-largest city.

Donna Somers, operations manager at Hanford's Joint Information Center, said that the contaminants were contained and that normal operations had resumed.

"As it turned out there wasn't anything serious about it," Somers said, "We have standard (safety) procedures that we take that are conservative."

Hanford was started in 1943 to produce plutonium for the Manhattan Project and the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The clean-up of its radioactive wastes and toxic chemicals has become a contentious issue between environmental groups and the government. 



-------- china 

US power giant could get China nuclear contract during Hu visit: report

Thu Aug 25, 2005 9:34 AM ET (AFP)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050825/ts_alt_afp/chinaushunuclear_050825133404

BEIJING - US-based Westinghouse Electric Co reportedly could be awarded a multi-billion dollar contract for a set of nuclear reactors during the upcoming visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to Washington.

Westinghouse is the US nuclear arm of British Nuclear Fuels PLC, and has been vying with companies from France and Russia for contracts to build four pressurized water reactors in China.

The Wall Street Journal said a Chinese official at China National Nuclear suggested a deal could be in the works, but Westinghouse executives said they hadn't heard about their bid.

Hu will meet with his counterpart George W. Bush in Washington on September 7 and is expected to visit the US companies of Boeing and Microsoft in Seattle, Washington.

Although the full details of his schedule have not been announced, Hu will also address the UN General Assembly in mid-September before making an appearance in the western Canadian city of Vancouver on September 17, press reports said.

"Various trade and economic deals will be signed between China and the US that have been put together by different government departments and companies," He Ning, director-general of the America and Oceania Affairs Department of China's Ministry of Commerce, was quoted by the journal as saying.

The paper said He declined to provide further details.

Chinese officials are also in negotiations with the US for an expected order for at least several single-aisle 737s, the paper said, citing people familiar with the talks.

Another agreement involving Chinese quarantine and inspection procedures for US exports to China is on the table, the paper said, citing Chinese quarantine officials.

They declined to provide details.



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

-------- depleted uranium

Radioactive Wounds of War
Tests on returning troops suggest serious health consequences of depleted uranium use in Iraq

By Dave Lindorff
August 25, 2005 In These Times

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2298/

Gerard Matthew thought he was lucky. He returned from his Iraq tour a year and a half ago alive and in one piece. But after the New York State National Guardsman got home, he learned that a bunkmate, Sgt. Ray Ramos, and a group of N.Y. Guard members from another unit had accepted an offer by the New York Daily News and reporter Juan Gonzalez to be tested for depleted uranium (DU) contamination, and had tested positive.

Matthew, 31, decided that since he’d spent much of his time in Iraq lugging around DU-damaged equipment, he’d better get tested too. It turned out he was the most contaminated of them all.

Matthew immediately urged his wife to get an ultrasound check of their unborn baby. They discovered the fetus had a condition common to those with radioactive exposure: atypical syndactyly. The right hand had only two digits.

So far Victoria Claudette, now 13 months old, shows no other genetic disorders and is healthy, but Matthew feels guilty for causing her deformity and angry at a government that never warned him about DU’s dangers.

U.S. forces first used DU in the 1991 Gulf War, when some 300 tons of depleted uranium—the waste product of nuclear power plants and weapons facilities—were used in tank shells and shells fired by A-10 jets. A lesser amount was deployed by U.S. and NATO forces during the Balkans conflict. But in the current wars in Afghanistan and, especially, Iraq, DU has become the weapon of choice, with more than 1,000 tons used in Afghanistan and more than 3,000 tons used in Iraq. And while DU was fired mostly in the desert during the Gulf War, in the current war in Iraq, most of DU munitions are exploding in populated urban areas.

The Pentagon has expanded DU beyond tank and A-10 shells, for use in bunker-busting bombs, which can spew out more than half a ton of DU in one explosion, in anti-personnel bomblets, and even in M-16 and pistol shells. The military loves DU for its unique penetration capability—it cuts through steel or concrete like they’re butter.

The problem is that when DU hits its target, it burns at a high temperature, throwing off clouds of microscopic particles that poison a wide area and remain radioactive for billions of years. If inhaled, these particles can lodge in lungs, other organs or bones, irradiating tissue and causing cancers.

Worse yet, uranium is also a highly toxic heavy metal. Indeed, while there is some debate over the risk posed by the element’s radioactive emissions, there is no debate regarding its chemical toxicity. According to Mt. Sinai pathologist Thomas Fasey, who participated in the New York Guard unit testing, the element has an affinity for bonding with DNA, where even trace amounts can cause cancers and fetal abnormalities.

Dr. Doug Rokke, a health physicist at the University of Illinois who headed up a Pentagon study of depleted uranium weapons in the mid ’90s after concerns were raised during the Gulf War, concluded there was no safe way to use the weapons. Rokke says the Pentagon responded by denouncing him, after earlier commending his work.

No one knows how many U.S. soldiers have been contaminated by DU residue. Despite regulations authorizing tests for any military personnel who suspects exposure, the U.S. military is avoiding doing those tests—or delaying them until they are meaningless.

“When we asked to be tested at Ft. Dix, they wrongly told us we didn’t have to worry unless we had DU fragments in our body,” says Matthew. His buddy, Sgt. Ramos, who exhibits symptoms resembling radiation sickness and heavy metal poisoning, adds that at Walter Reed Medical Center he was grilled for hours about why he wanted to be tested and was then branded a troublemaker by his own unit. Matthew says Walter Reed “lost” his sample.

At the war’s start, the United States refused to allow U.N. or other environmental inspectors to test DU levels within Iraq. Now the United Nations won’t even go near Iraq because of security concerns.

“It doesn’t seem right that we are poisoning the places we are supposed to be liberating,” Ramos says.

The Pentagon continues to insist, on the basis of no field evidence, that DU is safe. To date, only some 270 returned troops have been tested for DU contamination by the military and Veterans Affairs. But even those tests, mostly urine samples, are useless 30 days after exposure, because by that time most of the DU has left the body or migrated into bones or organs.

Gonzalez and the Daily News paid for costlier tests for nine Guardsmen—tests that could pinpoint uranium inside the body and identify the special isotope signature of man-made DU. Four of the nine tested positive for DU; all had symptoms of uranium poisoning.

Even harder evidence may soon arrive. Connecticut State Representative Pat Dillon (D-New Haven), a Yale-trained epidemiologist, has crafted state-level legislation that Connecticut and Louisiana have unanimously passed, authorizing returned National Guard troops to request and receive specialized DU contamination tests at the Pentagon’s expense. This approach bypasses the Pentagon’s feet-dragging because National Guard troops fall under state, rather than federal, jurisdiction.

“This was not a Democratic or a Republican issue,” Dillon says. “These are our kids and someone needs to protect them.” She says that since passage of her bill, which takes effect this October, military groups and family organizations, state legislators, and even National Guard unit commanders have contacted her for copies of her bill to promote in their states. Bob Smith, a veteran in Louisiana who got hold of Dillon’s bill and spearheaded a successful effort to pass similar legislation in Louisiana, claims that 14 to 20 other states are considering similar measures.

If enough Guard troops avail themselves of the testing—and start testing positive for contamination—it seems likely that reservists and active duty troops and veterans will demand similar access to rigorous tests, which can cost upwards of $1000 per person.

One way or another, the Pentagon will pay a price. “DU is a war crime. It’s that simple,” Rokke says. “Once you’ve scattered all this stuff around, and then refuse to clean it up, you’ve committed a war crime.” 



-------- europe

Nuclear waste row leaves bad smell in Lithuania

Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Thursday August 25, 2005
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1555657,00.html

A bizarre diplomatic skirmish has broken out after Belarus retaliated against Lithuania's decision to build a radioactive waste dump close to their shared border by announcing plans to put two giant pig farms in sniffing distance of its neighbour.

The spat on the fringe of the European Union started when officials in Vilnius confirmed it would build the storage facility about 700 metres from the Belarussian border.

Minsk complained that it had not been consulted and the facility would threaten its nearby Braslavsky lakes national park.

Now it has retaliated with a project of its own: two farm complexes for a total of 216,000 pigs close to Lithuania's southern border, one beside a river that runs straight into the Baltic country.

The plans were leaked to newspapers by the Belarussian agriculture ministry.

The Lithuanian prime minister, Algirdas Brazauskas, condemned the plans in a radio interview this week, saying: "Construction of a pig complex in the Neman river basin would be a barbarous act."

Waste could flow down the river to a popular spa resort at Druskininkai in south-west Lithuania, officials in Vilnius believe.

The foreign minister, Antanas Valionis, said that the "significant increase in pollution of Lithuanian rivers" could prompt sanctions against Belarus.

Officially, Minsk denies the pig farms plan is linked to its displeasure over the dry storage facility, to be used for material from Lithuania's Ignalina nuclear power station, which is to be decommissioned by 2009.

But Ivan Kasyanenko, head of Belarus's Braslavsky lakes national park, a tourist attraction and a haven for rare birds such as bittern and osprey, said the plans were mooted to satisfy popular anger.

Natalya Golovko, of the ministry of natural resources and environmental protection in Minsk, said the plans for a 100,000 cubic metre radioactive storage facility threatened to have an "ecological, social and psychological" impact on Belarus, still traumatised by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

The accident at the nuclear plant took place in Ukraine, but the brunt of the fallout was taken by Belarus and incidence of thyroid cancer remains high.

Lithuania denies the plant will be dangerous. Mr Brazauskas stressed that the radioactive storage facility would be a "dry" one for discarded materials, not nuclear fuel.

Mrs Golovko said Belarus had sent several letters to its neighbour requesting details about the plans but received insufficient information.

The Belarussian president, Alexander Lukashenko, often dubbed Europe's last dictator, has reportedly condemned the Ignalina nuclear waste project as "inadmissible".

A spokesman for the Lithuanian foreign ministry confirmed that Vilnius was seeking clarification from Minsk about the pig farm plans. Pollution of the Neman river "could damage international river tourism projects."



-------- india 

India unveils 'world's safest nuclear reactor'

Thursday, 25 August , 2005, 15:32

http://sify.com/news/othernews/fullstory.php?id=13925120

India on Thursday unveiled before the international commuity its revolutionary design of 'A Thorium Breeder Reactor' (ATBR) that can produce 600 MW of electricity for two years 'with no refuelling and practically no control manoeuvres.'

Designed by scientists of the Mumbai-based Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the ATBR is claimed to be far more economical and safer than any power reactor in the world.

Most significantly for India, the ATBR does not require natural or enriched uranium, which the country is finding difficult to import. It uses thorium -- which India has in plenty -- and only requires plutonium as 'seed' to ignite the reactor core initially.

Eventually, the ATBR can run entirely with thorium and fissile uranium-233 bred inside the reactor (or obtained externally by converting fertile thorium into fissile Uranium-233 by neutron bombardment).

BARC scientists V Jagannathan and Usha Pal revealed the ATBR design in their paper presented at the week-long 'international conference on emerging nuclear energy systems' in Brussels. The design has been in the making for over seven years.

According to the scientists, the ATBR while annually consuming 880 kg of plutonium for energy production from 'seed' rods, converts 1,100 kg of thorium into fissionable uranium-233. This diffrential gain in fissile formation makes the ATBR a kind of thorium breeder.

The uniqueness of the ATBR design is that there is almost a perfect 'balance' between fissile depletion and production that allows in-bred U-233 to take part in energy generation thereby extending the core life to two years.

This does not happen in the present day power reactors because fissile depletion takes place much faster than production of new fissile ones.

BARC scientists say that "the ATBR with plutonium feed can be regarded as plutonium incinerator and it produces the intrinsically proliferation resistant U-233 for sustenance of the future reactor programme."

They say that long fuel cycle length of two years with no external absorber management or control manoeuvres "does not exist in any operating reactor".

The ATBR annually requires 2.2 tonnes of plutonium as 'seed'. Althouth India has facilities to recover plutonium by reprocessing spent fuel, it requires plutonium for its Fast Breeder Reactor programme as well.

Nuclear analysts say that it may be possible for India to obtain plutonium from friendly countries wanting to dismantle their weapons or dispose of their stockpiled plutonium.



-------- iran

US and EU to refrain from early move over Iranian nuclear programme

Thu Aug 25, 2005 4:18 PM ET (AFP)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050825/pl_afp/irannuclearuniaeaus_050825201855

VIENNA - The United States and the EU have agreed not to seek an emergency meeting of the UN nuclear agency even if Iran fails to meet a September 3 UN deadline to suspend atomic fuel work that could be used to make nuclear weapons, diplomats said.

An emergency meeting on September 6, which the United States had reportedly been seeking, is "not going to take place," a senior EU diplomat told AFP in Vienna, where the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency is based.

The diplomat, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the IAEA would review Iran's compliance with a request to stop fuel work at a regular meeting of its 35-nation board of governors on September 19.

The United States had been lobbying hard this week at IAEA headquarters for Iran to be referred quickly to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions if it failed to meet the September 3 deadline, diplomats said.

The IAEA board, which is to receive a report on Iran on September 3 from agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, has called on Tehran to reinstate a suspension of nuclear fuel work. It resumed such work in early August after a hiatus since November 2004.

The suspension paved the way for talks that began last December in which the EU sought guarantees from Iran that it does not intend to make nuclear weapons, despite Washington claiming that the country plans to do just that.

Russia told European negotiators Britain, France and Germany that it opposed a special IAEA board meeting ahead of a summit at UN headquarters in New York from September 14-16, which Iranian hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Russian President Vladimir Putin are to attend, several diplomats said.

Russia "wanted to give room for what could happen in New York and not to miss an opportunity" for diplomacy, the EU diplomat said.

The United States had been "concerned momentum would be lost" in keeping up pressure on Iran but had to give in, the diplomat said.



-------- missile defense

BMD Still On Track, Says Obering

by Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Washington (UPI) Aug 25, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/news/abm-05g.html

Congress-mandated budget cuts and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's wide-ranging closures and restructuring of military bases haven't derailed the development of anti-ballistic missile defenses, the program's boss says.

Gen. Henry "Trey" Obering, head of the Missile Defense Agency remains upbeat the pace of technological progress in the programs he overseas, even though many of his staff are being forced to move their operations because of the Rumsfeld restructuring.

Speaking at the eighth annual Space and Missile Defense Conference and a follow-up press briefing in Huntsville, Ala. on Aug. 17, Gen. Obering said the agency was reorganizing to address the effects of the Base Realignment Commission's recommendations.

If the recommendations are accepted as proposed, several of the agency's locations in the Washington area will be affected and MDA will consolidate many of its functions in the Huntsville area. "More than 2,000 people would relocate to Huntsville," Obering said according to a report carried by the Government Computer Network.

The MDA recently completed at-sea testing of its new, 27-story, sea-based X-band radar in the Gulf of Mexico. In October, the radar will be deployed to Alaska, Obering said.

"Put it in the Chesapeake Bay and you can identify a softball-sized object over San Francisco," he said, describing the radar's capabilities.

The agency also is modifying radar installations in Britain and Iceland, the general said.

"We believe this architecture will take care of North Korean and Iranian threats," he said, but added that the question of where threats will arise a decade or more into the future points to the need for mobile technology," he said.

"A Chinese general said a couple of weeks ago that [in the future] there will not be such a thing as a limited regional war," Obering said. "We have to move away from reliance on fixed-site interceptors and sensors.

"I think we're going to need space-based interceptors" beyond 2015, the general said, "but there's a lot of religious feelings about that. We need to start the debate."



-------- pakistan

Musharraf says scientist gave centrifuges to North Korea

Thursday August 25, 12:30 AM  (AFP)

http://au.news.yahoo.com/050824/19/vn9c.html

ISLAMABAD - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has confirmed that the country's disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan provided North Korea with centrifuges for uranium enrichment, his spokesman said.

But military ruler Musharraf, who made the statement to Japan's Kyodo news agency, insisted that the equipment handed over by Khan did not in itself give the Stalinist state a nuclear weapons capability.

"Yes, he passed centrifuges -- parts and complete. I do not exactly remember the number," Musharraf said on Wednesday when asked about reports that Islamabad had told Tokyo that Khan provided North Korea with about 20 centrifuges.

Musharraf's chief spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan, confirmed the president had made the comments.

In February 2004 Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, admitted selling atomic secrets to North Korea, Libya and Iran. He said he acted without government or military support.

Khan is already known to have supplied Tehran and Tripoli with centrifuge parts. Centrifuges are used for producing enriched uranium, which can be fuel for civilian nuclear power reactors or the raw material for nuclear bombs.

North Korea is locked in a stand-off with the international community over its atomic programme and it declared in June that it has a stockpile of nuclear weapons and is producing more.

Musharraf said Khan's help would not have been decisive for North Korea's efforts to become a nuclear power, because he was not involved in other crucial areas of technology.

"So if North Korea has made a bomb... Dr. A.Q. Khan's part is only enriching the uranium to weapons grade," Musharraf told Kyodo. "He does not know about making the bomb, he does not know about the trigger mechanism, he does not know about the delivery system."

To obtain those things, the North Koreans "must have got it themselves or somewhere else -- not from Pakistan," he added.

Pakistan has consistently refused to let international investigators question Khan. The scientist has been officially pardoned by Musharraf but he has remained under virtual house arrest since late 2003.

However Musharraf's spokesman said Pakistan had already informed the UN nuclear agency and other "affected" countries about the centrifuges, and he too played down the importance of the equipment.

"Saying that someone made a bomb because Khan passed on a couple of centrifuges to them, maybe a dozen of them, this does not mean they can make a bomb," he told AFP.

"There are so many other things involved in making a bomb. Whether they have got a bomb yet we don't know."

Six-party nuclear talks on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, also involving the United States, South Korea, Russia, China and Japan, are due to resume in the week of August 29.

On Monday the International Atomic Energy Agency said that enriched uranium particles found in Iran were from smuggled Pakistani centrifuges, backing Iran's claims that it is not involved in enrichment work.

The United States says such activity would show that Tehran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Musharraf says on his personal website (www.presidentofpakistan.gov.pk) that the discovery of Khan's nuclear black market was the most embarrassing point of his career.



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

JFK Tape Reveals Nuclear Defense for India

By GLEN JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer Thu Aug 25, 2005 10:35 AM ET

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050825/ap_on_re_us/kennedy_tape_3

BOSTON - Top advisers to President John F. Kennedy warned him in 1963 that if he pledged to defend India against any attack by China, the United States would likely have to use nuclear weapons to enforce the commitment, according to a newly declassified tape recording.

George Ball, undersecretary of state in the Democratic administration, also warned in what today would be considered insensitive language that a nuclear response could subject the United States to charges of racism following the two atomic bombings of Japan that ended World War II.

"If there is a general appearance of a shift in strategy to the dependence on a nuclear defense against the Chinese in the Far East, we are going to inject into this whole world opinion the old bugaboo of being willing to use nuclear weapons against Asians when we are talking about a different kind of strategy in Europe," Ball told the president during a May 9, 1963, national security meeting in the White House. "This is going to create great problems with the Japanese — with all the yellow people."

A six-page summary of the top secret meeting was released in 1996, but a tape of the conversation was made available only after it was subjected to a national security review based on updated federal guidelines.

The recording is the latest to be released by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the official repository for Kennedy administration documents.

At the time of the 1963 tape, India was a fledgling democracy emerging from British colonial rule. China, bordering in part on northern India, was a firmly entrenched Communist country under the rule of Mao Zedong.

In one exchange on the tape, Army Gen. Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is heard telling Kennedy: "Mr. President, I had hoped before we get too deeply in the India question, we take a broader look at where we are coming, the attitude we're going to maintain versus Red China... This is just one spectacular aspect of the overall problem of how to cope with Red China politically and militarily in the next decade... I would hate to think that we would fight this on the ground in a non-nuclear way."

Later, when Kennedy begins discussing the idea of guaranteeing India's security, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara steers the conversation back to China.

"Mr. President," McNamara is heard saying, "I think General Taylor is implying that before any substantial commitment to defend India against China is given, we should recognize that in order to carry out that commitment against any substantial Chinese attack, we would have to use nuclear weapons... Any large Chinese Communist attack on any part of that area would require the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S., and this is to be preferred over the introduction of large numbers of U.S. soldiers."

The British government, then headed by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, was reluctant to offer a similar security guarantee for India, which it granted independence in 1947. That vexed Kennedy, according to the tape, who asked Secretary of State Dean Rusk why it was important that the United States seek validation from its ally.

Rusk said: "I think we would be hard pressed to tell our own people why we are doing this with India when even the British won't do it or the Australians won't do it and the Canadians won't do it. We need to have those other flags flying on these joint enterprises."

Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, before he could issue such a guarantee.

On the Net:

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum: http://www.jfklibrary.org



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


-------- connecticut

Panel bucks Pentagon on some military base closings

By Steven Komarow, USA TODAY 8/25/2005 9:44 AM

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-08-24-base-closings-review_x.htm

WASHINGTON — A federal commission rejected on Wednesday the Pentagon's plan to shut down two historic Navy bases in New England that would have eliminated the jobs of 12,000 workers and threaten hundreds of businesses. (Video: Shipyard, sub base saved)

The Base Realignment and Closure Commission spared Naval Submarine Base New London in Connecticut and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, after an intense lobbying campaign from politicians, economists and former Defense officials. (Related: State-by-state list of Pentagon's proposed base closings | Recommended changes to Pentagon list)

The vote to keep open the 137-year-old sub base and the shipyard, established in 1800, was among the most significant departures from a Pentagon plan to save $48.8 billion by closing hundreds of facilities it says are not needed.

The nine-member panel voted to close Army bases in Michigan and Georgia and shutter nearly 400 Army Reserve and National Guard facilities in many states.

People in communities around the preserved bases were ecstatic. "Yee-ha! That's what we've been waiting for," shouted Steve Walsh of Berwick, Maine, a worker at the Portsmouth shipyard.

"Everybody has been sweating this," said Army veteran Kestermount Anck-Su-Namun in Groton, Conn. She was sitting in her car at an intersection as other cars streamed by with horns honking. (Related story: Connecticut town rejoices)

The commission's final recommendations will be sent to President Bush for approval. Bush has said he does not intend on overruling them. Congress then must vote. Lawmakers can accept or reject the list but can't change it.

The New London sub base has 8,400 military and civilian workers; the Portsmouth yard employs 4,500. The Pentagon plan was to move New London's 16 subs to other bases, such as one in Virginia. Economists provided testimony that shutdowns would harm 31,000 private-sector jobs that rely on the bases for part of their work. Connecticut lawmakers said the shutdown would have left New England without a major Navy base, a bad move at a time of war.

The commission saw "much more than dollars at stake," Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell said. "They saw a modern submarine base and the best well-trained submarine force in the world."

Closing the base "would be a tragic mistake," said Anthony Principi, chairman of the commission. He also called Portsmouth the "gold standard" for shipyards.

Also spared: the Red River Army Depot in Texas; Navy facilities in Corona, Calif., and New Orleans; and smaller bases. The commission added the naval air station in Brunswick, Maine, to the closings list.

Later this week the commission will consider controversial plans to remove airplanes from two dozen Air National Guard bases, in some cases replacing them with unmanned drones such as the Predator. (Related stories: Minn. fort workers moves north | Kansas City base to close)

Contributing: Kathy Kiely, wire reports



-------- new york

NY Nuclear plant told to repair or shut down

The Associated Press Thu, Aug. 25, 2005

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/local/12469797.htm

SENECA - Oconee Nuclear Station must fix an unknown problem with one of its backup sources of electricity or the plant could be shut down, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

During a test at the Keowee hydroelectric station, one of its two units locked out Saturday, which means a protective feature was enacted that prevents the unit from generating electricity, spokeswoman Dayle Stewart said. The two Keowee hydro units are primary backup sources of electricity, Stewart said.

If the problem isn't fixed, all three nuclear units could be shut down, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Roger Hannah said.

Duke Power, which owns and operates Oconee, has asked for an extension until Saturday to fix the problem. Shannon said it's unlikely the nuclear station would shut down if experts can't find the problem by Saturday. He said the commission would likely continue tos work with the company to locate the problem.

If the plant has to shut down, Duke can still meet customer demand, Stewart said.



-------- MILITARY 


-------- arms 

US approves full new warhead production

25.08.05 1.20pm New Zealand Herald - REUTERS

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10342403

WASHINGTON - The United States has approved full-rate production of a new Hellfire missile variant, touted by President George W Bush for its ability to kill guerrillas in urban settings, the missile's manufacturer said.

US commanders in Iraq have asked for more of the rounds, said Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Curry, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, who added that early versions had already been used there in "limited numbers." More than 1870 Americans have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

The "thermobaric" Hellfire AGM-114N warhead creates an intense, sustained pressure wave that can strike around corners in "caves, bunkers and hardened multi-room complexes," the manufacturer, Lockheed Martin Corp, said.

The Bush administration and Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon's No 1 supplier, have described the 12.4kg warhead as highly lethal in enclosed structures while causing only minimal damage nearby.

"In the coming years, there are going to be some awfully surprised terrorists when the thermobaric Hellfire comes knocking," Bush said in a May 27 commencement address at the US Naval Academy.

Lockheed is supplying the Army with 900 AGM-114N warheads under a US$90 million pre-production contract awarded in December. The contract also included 180 AGM-114K missiles, the high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) round and conversion of 100 HEAT rounds to the thermobaric configuration.

The AGM-114N is one of four variants of the Hellfire 2 family of missiles that has been used in Iraq, with more than 1000 missiles fired to date, said Lockheed Martin's Orlando, Florida-based Missiles and Fire Control business unit.

Unlike conventional warheads, which unleash a sharp pressure spike that decays quickly, the thermobaric round includes a highly flammable, fluorinated aluminum powder to make its explosion push harder and last longer.

Designed, developed and built at Naval Air Systems Command in China Lake, California, the thermobaric round was put on a fast track to full production, said Jennifer Allen, a Lockheed spokeswoman.



-------- iraq

American Detachment: It's Time to Make the Iraq War Personal

The war in Iraq needs to be more personal for a detached American public.

by Ralph Nader via Counterpunch Thursday, Aug. 25, 2005 at 10:49 AM

http://sf.indymedia.org/mail.php?id=1718752

President Bush has successfully avoided making the war in Iraq personal. Americans are denied photos of the returning caskets, the injured enter Walter Reed Medical Center in the dark of night so no one can see, the president attends no funerals but only appears in front of select audiences who are chosen to cheer him on. This summer that began to change with Cindy Sheehan ­ her encampment during the president's vacation began to personalize the impact of the war. Now, joined by other mothers and fathers ­ more faces come before Americans of families affected by the war. In the article below, Ralph Nader suggests another way to keep the 'Texas heat' on the president when he returns to work after his greater than one-month vacation ­ churches and other religious institutions should chime a bell each day for each of the fallen soldiers and add one for the Iraqi casualties. This will result in Americans realizing that every day there is death because of the U.S. occupation. The President avoided meeting with Cindy Sheehan ­ so far ­ but with the tolling of bells a growing chorus throughout the nation will begin to ask: "What is the noble cause for which all of these people are dying?" We know it is not weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. We know it is not any threat of a 'mushroom cloud' over the United States. Is it an Islamic Republic that puts religion ahead of the rights of women, free speech and an independent media? Is it the division of Iraq into three regions ­ with the Sunni region so impoverished that is becomes a source for destabilization of the Middle East and world? Please Mr. President ­ tell us the truth about your war.

While George W. Bush keeps saying that the United States is at war, for most of the United States, apart from the soldiers and military families, the people seem detached from the daily devastation in Iraq. Reporters and anti-war activists have made this observation repeatedly over the past months.

To be sure, the polls are showing a growing majority opposed to the war believe it was a costly mistake to invade Iraq, and 61% disapprove of how Bush is handling "the situation in Iraq." Yet most people find their daily lives at work and play untouched by any unusual sacrifices or inconveniences that go with being at war.

There is no draft to roil through the population those anxieties that tie more people to the feeling of war. No products are being rationed or restricted because of the conflict. The grown children of the corporate oligarchs and the political rulers are not sweating it out in the Sunni Triangle, thereby lending more media notice and gravity to the fightingn in Iraq.

No extra taxes are being imposed to pay nearly $2 billion a week that the war is costing Americans. Rather, the reverse is the case. Mr. Bush, unlike all previous "wartime" Presidents, has cut the taxes on the wealthy twice, including himself, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and is financing the war on the backs of children who will have to pay off this huge debt later.

Granted, there are economic impacts, such as reductions in funding for many health, safety and economic necessities of those Americans in dire need, but they are not attributed to the war. Cuts in housing assistance are not accompanied by the message to poor tenants saying - "sorry, nation at war."

Still the times may be changing on this score. The galvanizing effect of the fallen Casey Sheehan's mother Cindy down in Crawford, Texas has been a rallying point which is spreading around the country. Cindy Sheehan has made her grief a personal appeal to see the President, thus sweeping aside his flacks, handlers and PR buffers and leaving him exposed to judgments of his character day after day.

Mother Cindy has personalized this automated war and its scripted Presidential promoter who lowballs U.S. casualties and prevents families and reporters from going to Dover, Delaware, where the deceased are returned from Iraq.

It is the nature of civic movements that sparks tend to make what is simmering erupt. For the civil rights drive, it was Rosa Parks' refusal to go to the rear of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Cindy Sheehan is performing this role of arousing people, if not to act, at least to start conversing and arguing about the war-occupation - its purpose, its impact on our country and how to end it.

We need additional sparks so that, in the words of one military mother, "the architects of this war, who have no children at risk, start listening to those families who do."

There are hundreds of pastors who are opposed to this violent quagmire in which our country has been plunged. Every morning their churches could toll their bells for each U.S. soldier lost the previous day ­ one bell for each ultimate sacrifice. And one long bell for the Iraqis who lost their lives that day.

On Sunday, the bells could be rung at the same time everywhere in the memory of the weeks' total casualties. The National Council of Churches, outspoken before the war with compassionate prescience, can lead this effort with rapid effectiveness.

These bells of sorrow and reminder will get millions of Americans thinking and talking with one another where it counts - in communities North, South, East and West.

People would transcend the bromides and slogans that the Bush people trumpet daily over the television and radio and give themselves a daily opportunity to ask and contemplate the fundamental question - for whom does the bell toll?

Asking this question puts our society on the road to finding the answers, as if people matter here and in Iraq first and foremost.

Ralph Nader is a former presidential candidate. You can comment on this by visiting his blog on http://www.DemocracyRising.US.



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Book Review: The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War

Reviewed by Mark Biskeborn
Posted August 25, 2005, Intervention Magaziner

http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1118&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War
By Andrew J. Bacevich
Oxford University Press, 272 pp., April 2004

A new American militarism is seducing Americans into wasting their chidlren's lives and squandering hundreds of billions, what can be done to reverse this hideous trend?

Although this book arrived on the market over a year ago, surprisingly few reviews appeared and they do so more as opinion essays based on Bacevich’s work, which only testifies to its influence. His book traces the last few decades of American history focusing on changes in public attitudes and government doctrines regarding the use of military might. Bacevich states his position clearly in the introduction of this seminal work.

“To state the matter bluntly, Americans in our own time have fallen prey to militarism, manifesting itself in a romanticized view of soldiers, a tendency to see military power as the truest measure of national greatness, and outsized expectations regarding the efficacy of force. To a degree without precedent in U.S. history, Americans have come to define the nation’s strength and well-being in terms of military preparedness, military actions, and the fostering of, or nostalgia for, military ideals.”

Judging by his track record, Bacevich might appear as a true-blue conservative, a West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, and soldier for 23 years. He currently teaches at Boston University and has contributed to conservative magazines such as the Weekly Standard and the National Review. He was a former Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Nevertheless, his analysis of evolving military doctrines shows no bias for any party.

Evolution to Militarism

For the author, the current militarism represents a natural culmination of various unrelated groups “intent on undoing the purportedly nefarious effects of the 1960’s. Military officers intent on rehabilitating their profession; intellectuals fearing that the loss of confidence at home was paving the way for the triumph of totalitarianism abroad; religious leaders dismayed by the collapse of traditional moral standards; …politicians on the make; purveyors of pop culture looking to make a buck;…”

Bacevich discusses a few events that direct certain groups of Americans toward what he considers an unusually aggressive militaristic attitude in the general culture as well as in foreign policies. First, the Vietnam War turned into a quagmire destroying the military’s credibility and honor. This key event prompted military leaders to rebuild the military’s reputation and abilities as well as to develop doctrines to protect these refurbished institutions from the type of civilian officials who were responsible for the Vietnam fiasco. Then, the fall of the Soviet Union imposed upon the United States the enormous burden of being the world’s imperial police force.

“Briefly told, the story that follows goes like this: The new American militarism made its appearance in reaction to the 1960’s and especially to Vietnam. It evolved over a period of decades, rather than being spontaneously induced by a particular event such as the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001.”

Indeed, to point the finger at the G.W. Bush administration would give too much credit to the wanna-be Texas rancher. The evolution to the current extreme militarism grew from intellectual efforts of a long line of policy makers both in the military and in government, beginning, for example, with Woodrow Wilson. He was “possessed of a deep-seated aversion to armaments, militarism, and killing, only the certainty that he was acting as a divine agent…could justify…his decision…to intervene.” Wilson dreaded armament and needed to justify military involvement through religious notion of duty. A vague school of thought and of policy arose out of Wilson’s post-WWI accomplishments.

Wilsonian Ideology

A Wilsonian ideology arose from a seemingly simple vision for world peace made possible by remaking the world according to America’s own brand of democracy and free-wheeling capitalism. This ideology moved and morphed among the succeeding Presidents like a mutating virus. It adapted to world events until it finally took the form of G. W. Bush’s current Machiavellian and unembarrassed manipulation of patriotic and religious symbols in order to sugar-coat the more crass geopolitical ambitions to secure economic expansion. In its current G. W. Bush mutation, Wilsonian ideology serves to justify the invasion and occupation of the oil soaked lands of Babylon.

G. W. Bush inherited a mutated Wilsonian strain of ideology and adapted it for his own use that made a “marriage of a militaristic cast of mind with utopian ends.” The author describes how Bush followed popular American ideals and concocted his own fundamentalist mixture of free-enterprise capitalism, militarism, and Christianity. “For his part, President Bush himself ought to be seen as a player reciting his lines rather than as a playwright drafting an entirely new script.”

Bacevich shows how the Bush administration took America’s penchant for military force to an unprecedented height. He describes in detail how Bush’s cabinet members, such as Rumsfeld, threw out Abrams’ and Powell’s cautious and wise doctrines – guidelines for when and how to deploy military force at a minimum of risk. “So Rumsfeld overruled [General Tommy] Franks…the outcome…proved to be disastrous.”

The So-called Weinberger Doctrine

General Creighton Abrams, the U.S. commander in the Vietnam War from 1968 to 1972, represents one of several stakeholders who wanted to rebuild the honor and dignity of the military after the Vietnam quagmire. “In short, Vietnam had demonstrated that when it came to deciding when to go to war and how to fight, civilians were not to be trusted. According to Westmoreland, …Southeast Asia had shown definitively that war had become too complex to be entrusted to appointed officials who lack military experience…” Many men experienced in battle and military operations, Generals such as Scales, Westmoreland, and Abrams “resolved to prevent this [Vietnam disaster] from ever happening again.” They evolved a military doctrine in the aftermath of Vietnam, three decades of rebuilding the reputation of armed services, “the long journey ‘from disillusionment and anguish in Vietnam to confidence and certain victory in Desert Storm.”

Casper Weinberger enjoyed the credit for conceiving this doctrine, but he “was in fact merely the medium for its delivery. The message itself – establishing specific criteria to govern decisions regarding the use of force – was the uniformed military’s.” This doctrine made Desert Storm an overwhelming success, but, as Bacevich shows, ironically to the chagrin of the Generals, also encouraged the “chicken hawk” civilian officials such as VP Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to revert to Nixon’s Vietnam era use of military force as a political toy and to permit G. W. Bush to make statements such as “bring it on” or “an open-ended conflict on a global scale.”

The so-called Weinberger doctrine consisted of four requirements for effective, successful military force:
• Restrict the use of force to matters of vital national interest
• Specify concrete and achievable objectives, both political and military
• Secure assurance of popular and congressional support
• Fight to win (as opposed to using deployment as a political toy)
• Use force only as a last resort

Through the successions of Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Powell became a passionate advocate of the “Weinberger Doctrine” and he added two more preconditions to the use of military power:
• An exit strategy – clear idea about how to extract U.S. force even before the intervention
• Use of ‘overwhelming force’ to assure a rapid end to fighting

Chickenhawks Play High-tech Military Games

Desert Storm proved that the use of high technology in military operations gave the U.S. a monopoly in military dominance which the Bush Administration translated directly into political domination. This new born-again military aesthetic regained “a grand pageant, performance art…a diversion from the ennui and boring routine of everyday life.” Appointed civilian officials became enthralled in the high-tech ability to master the battlefield and this prompted them to run their policies on the question: “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about, if we cant’ use it?”

Bacevich reminds us that G.W. Bush and his cabinet members -- except for Colin Powell whom Condoleezza Rice graciously replaced after the reelection --are all armchair generals, chickenhawks, who “lack military experience, a knowledge of military history.” Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, might be a self-professed war buff, but he leaves the soldiering itself to the plebs. Likewise, President Bush may have joined the Texas reserve air force as a member of the country club clique, “the champagne squadron,” but he did so in order to avoid any real service, despite his unprecedented “president as warlord” bravado.

These chickenhawk officials deployed their new, imperial, high-tech military, overwhelming the sanction-beaten Iraq – a country the size of Texas – but they ignored one of Powell’s requirements, the exit strategy. Their shock and awe invasion provoked four times the level of terrorism than previously existed. Terrorism represents the only possible response to an overwhelming high-tech power.

Apocalypse Now Redux

It took two decades to rebuild the U.S. military back to a strong position that made Desert Storm possible. But once the civilian politicians saw the potential in this capability, they burned the Weinberger Doctrine and relegated military advisors such as General Powell to mere messengers of new and dizzy presidential ambitions. The lessons learned from Vietnam were thrown away. Operation Iraqi Freedom initially appeared as another quick Desert Storm type victory, but soon echoed the blind blunders of the Nam disaster. History repeated itself yet again, even to the point of reliving the My Lai scandal at the POW camps of Guantanamo. The parallels between Vietnam and Operation Iraqi Freedom continue to rise in number every day to the point where they now mirror each other both in terms of who devised the strategy and how it was botched.

The scope of this book review can only glean some of the insights of Bacevich’s remarkable work. Hopefully, this suffices to convince anyone how Bacevich’s seminal book reveals the evolution to the current American Zeitgeist. The author goes on to show how this new American militarism takes the nation off its original purpose of a free, peace-loving land of opportunity for all and onto a track of elite cabal members who use their Christian fundamentalism as an ideological platform for their lucrative politics among the status quo.

Mark Biskeborn was born in Oregon and has over 15 years experience in the enterprise software industry. Mark has a M.B.A. and M.A. in comparative literature and teaches literature. You can email him mbiskeborn@hotmail.com



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Democrats Seeking Release of Withheld Roberts Documents
Iran-Contra Among Topics of Reagan-Era Papers

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 25, 2005; A03

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/24/AR2005082402016_pf.html

After the release of about 60,000 documents detailing the work of Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr., Democratic senators are setting their sights on what was not in the huge cache of papers: more than 2,100 memos and letters that have been withheld by government archivists working in concert with the Bush White House.

The subjects of the Reagan-era documents have been released, but their contents for now have been withheld. Those topics are, Democrats say, at a minimum intriguing: Roberts commenting on presidential pardons, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and aspects of what would become known as the Iran-contra scandal. One of the still-secret memos is from the young White House lawyer to then-Reagan aide Patrick J. Buchanan in March 1986. The topic: aid to Nicaraguans fighting the leftist Sandinista government.

With Senate hearings two weeks away, Democrats privately say the documents that have come to light about Roberts's White House work from 1981 through 1986 probably do not contain disclosures that would threaten his confirmation to the Supreme Court. But some Democratic senators -- working with liberal special-interest groups opposed to Roberts -- consider the other documents potentially relevant and are pressuring archivists and the White House to release them before the public hearings begin.

Despite Democrats' suspicions about why so many documents about such politically sensitive issues were withheld, officials at the National Archives said there is a benign explanation.

There are three reasons the papers were withheld under federal records laws, according to Archives officials. They include preliminary judgments by archivists that information in them would improperly invade a person's privacy (such as revealing a Social Security number), jeopardize law enforcement operations or potentially harm national security.

Under the ordinary course of business, archivists black out individual words or sentences before releasing a document. In this case, National Archives official Sharon Fawcett said, the rush to release a large volume of documents quickly did not allow enough time for surgical redactions -- so the entire page was pulled.

The White House involvement in this process is unclear. Fawcett said White House officials are allowed to offer input during the review process, but she would not discuss their involvement. Senior White House officials said administration lawyers typically examine the documents after the archivists complete the initial review, and they insisted they have not asked for any papers to be withheld that archivists did not first flag.

Now, Fawcett said, archivists are more carefully examining each page to see whether portions could be selectively blackened and the rest of the information released.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (Vt.), ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, is taking these explanations at face value -- but is also insisting that officials at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. -- which is run by the National Archives -- and the White House move quickly to make most of the documents public.

In a letter sent Monday night to R. Duke Blackwood, the library's executive director, Leahy said senators need "accurate and complete information" before they vote on Roberts.

In a reply, Blackwood said he would review and make public as much as possible of the 478 pages that were withheld from an initial batch of documents released early this month. Archives officials said they expect that the same treatment will be given to more 1,700 pages not released last week. Separately, Democrats continue to press for more details of a folder titled "affirmative action correspondence" that is missing from the library.

This is part of broader Democratic strategy to wrench loose more information about Roberts's political and legal views when he worked for Reagan and President George H.W. Bush -- first as special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, then in the White House counsel's office and finally as principal deputy solicitor general.

Some Democrats believe this is the only way to build a case that Roberts is too conservative on issues such as abortion and civil rights to sit on the Supreme Court, according to two senior Democratic leadership aides. It also provides Senate Democratic leaders a way to pacify the liberal special-interest groups that want Roberts defeated and fear that party leaders are not aggressively challenging his nomination.

This approach is colliding with Bush's preference, long predating this Supreme Court fight, to enhance presidential power -- often by claiming privilege for sensitive documents and conversations. The Bush team, for instance, is refusing to make public Roberts's documents for his tour as deputy solicitor general in George H.W. Bush's administration, an effort to keep confidential litigation deliberations in cases involving the federal government. The White House also has the legal right to review the 2,100-plus yet-to-be-released documents and can claim executive privilege to keep them private, according to Fawcett, the assistant archivist for presidential libraries at the National Archives.

"The administration remains committed to providing all the material that is appropriate to give to the Judiciary Committee," said Steve Schmidt, a White House spokesman. "We look forward to facilitating the release of these additional documents as they move forward through the . . . process."

Many withheld documents seem to clearly fit within the privacy exemption, including a memo from November 1984 detailing Roberts's holiday plans. In other instances, archivists are keeping documents on controversial issues of the 1980s -- or portions of those documents -- secret, for reasons that are not self-explanatory.

One file withheld, regarding the Iran- contra affair, was a draft memo from Roberts to his bosses with the heading "re: establishment of NHAO" -- referring to the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office.

The office was one of the ways the Reagan administration got around what were known as the Boland amendments, which prohibited U.S. intelligence agencies from spending money to overthrow the Sandinistas. The office was a way the administration could get funds to the contras for nonmilitary purposes, but once there the money was used for all sorts of things.

The only document authored by Roberts regarding Bob Jones University was also withheld. The Reagan administration reversed a long-standing Internal Revenue Service policy to deny tax-exempt status to the university because of its racially discriminatory policies, and Democrats want to know what Roberts had to say in the 1980s about this situation. Apparently unbeknownst to archivists, the memo was previously released to the public, but does not appear to contain information that would hurt his chance of confirmation.

Staff writers Jo Becker and R. Jeffrey Smith contributed to this report.



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From Death Row: Texas Set to Execute First African-American Woman Since Civil War

Thursday, August 25th, 2005 Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/25/1342238

The State of Texas is scheduled to execute Frances Newton on September 14. Supporters say the courts should grant her another trial based on new evidence, especially given that infamous defense attorney Ron Mock originally represented her. We hear from Frances Newton herself and speak with her attorney David Dow. [includes rush transcript] The State of Texas is scheduled to execute Frances Newton on September 14. She was convicted of the 1988 murder of her husband and two children allegedly to collect a $100,00 life insurance policy. Newton would be the first African American woman executed by the state since the Civil War. Supporters say the courts should grant Frances Newton another trial based on new evidence.

Two Dutch journalists recently interviewed the state prosecutor in charge of Newton's case. In that interview, Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson contradicted a key piece of evidence that led to Newton's conviction. While prosecutors linked one gun to Newton, it now appears that there was a second gun that was never tested in a crime lab.

Texas leads the nation in the number of executions performed since the moratorium on capital punishment was lifted in 1974. Almost half of the people on death row in Texas are African-American though only 12 percent of the population is. And in Harris County, where Frances Newton is from, the police crime lab is notorious for botching capital cases.

Another hurdle in Newton's case was her state-appointed attorney. She was originally represented by the infamous defense attorney Ron Mock, who has lost so many capital cases that he is known as "death row Mock." At least sixteen of Mock's clients have gone to death row and he has never won an acquittal in a capital case. He has been suspended from the bar twice. A colleague in Frances Newton's case says Mock told her that he had not thoroughly examined the evidence. In another high profile capital case, Mock is known to have fallen asleep while defending Shaka Sankofa, or Gary Graham, in court.

    * Frances Newton, speaking to Dutch TV earlier this year.
    * David Dow, with the University of Houston Law Center. He is one of the attorneys representing Frances Newton. 

Related Link: The Committee to Free Frances Newton. RUSH TRANSCRIPT

JUAN GONZALEZ: This is Roe Wilson.

      ROE WILSON: There’s no second gun theory. The police recovered a gun from the apartment that belonged to the husband. It was -- it had not been fired. It was not involved in the offense. It was simply a gun he had there.

AMY GOODMAN: Texas leads the nation in the number of executions performed since the moratorium on capital punishment was lifted in the 1970s. Almost half the people on death row in Texas are African American, though only 12% of the population is. In Harris County where Frances Newton is from, the police crime lab is notorious for botching capital cases.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Another hurdle in Newton's case was her state-appointed attorney. She was originally represented by the infamous defense attorney Ron Mock, who lost so many capital cases that he is known as “Death Row Mock”. At least 16 of Mock's clients have gone to death row, and he has never won an acquittal in a capital case. He has been suspended from the bar twice. A colleague in Frances Newton's case says Mock told her that he had not thoroughly examined the evidence. In another high profile case, Mock is known to have fallen asleep while defending Shaka Sankofa, or Gary Graham, in court. This report from the Committee to Free Frances Newton looks at Mock's role in that case.

      NARRATOR: Gary Graham had no money to hire a powerful lawyer, and Texas, unlike other states, has no system of public defenders. Graham's case ended up with lawyer, Ron Mock.

      INTERVIEWER: Why didn't you go and talk to those eyewitnesses?

      RON MOCK: Because I made a decision at the beginning of that trial that I was not going to use those eyewitnesses.

      INTERVIEWER: But by leaving them out, you surely left him defenseless. I mean, Gary Graham was defenseless without them.

      RON MOCK: No way. No way.

      NARRATOR: Today Mr. Mock is a well-heeled Houston lawyer. 20 years ago, however, he made a living taking a lot of death row cases. And the only way, you know, to have a lot of cases is to do very little on each one.

      INTERVIEWER: You obviously didn't believe in the man's innocence, did you?

      RON MOCK: Bull****, I did not make a determination of whether or not he was guilty. I never have done that. If I ever do that, I need to turn in my goddamn bar card.

      NARRATOR: According to this affidavit we’ve obtained, sworn by Mock’s own private investigator at the time, Mr. Mock started from the premise that his client was guilty, therefore not worth wasting time and resources on.

      AFFIDAVIT OF INVESTIGATOR: [Read] I remember that from the first, Ron Mock insinuated that Gary was guilty, because we assumed Gary was guilty from the start, we did not give his case the same attention we would routinely give a case.

      INTERVIEWER: Did Gary Graham get a defense?

      DICK BURR: No. No.

      NARRATOR: The lawyer who inherited this case in 1993 is absolute. Dick Burr points to the court record: Question after question from Ron Mock at Gary Graham's only trial, identifying Graham effectively as the killer.

      DICK BURR: He would have done better defending himself than having the lawyer who represented him represent him.

      NARRATOR: So crucial witnesses were never heard in court, or the evidence, too. And the trial itself was tainted by dubious defense. Three jurors have sworn affidavits -- we have copies of them -- saying they would not have voted to convict Gary Graham if they knew then what we have discovered now.

      JUROR 1 AFFIDAVIT: [Read] I would not have been able to convict Gary Graham on that evidence. I would have voted not guilty. I cannot speak for the other jurors, but I would have had a serious doubt about him being guilty.

      JUROR 2 AFFIDAVIT: [Read] I would be in favor of delaying the execution until a jury can hear all of the evidence at the same time. 

AMY GOODMAN: A look at the infamous defense attorney, Ron Mock. In a few minutes, we'll speak with the attorney for Frances Newton, but right now, we turn to Frances Newton herself on videotape. The following comments come from two interviews that she did with Dutch TV.

      FRANCES NEWTON: There are so many things that I don’t know and I don't have answers to, but there are some things that I do know, and that I know that if the jury knew that they would have come to a different decision. The issue with the ballistics and the gun, they would have found out that the shell casings found there didn't match the weapon that they're saying is the murder weapon. That still hasn't been brought up in any of the court hearings, you know, and that's a major -- that's something I didn't know, but that one of the attorneys working on the case now told me about, that -- and those are like fingerprints. It's something that wasn't brought up in trial, you know, and I think that the jury should be able -- should have been able to hear that.

      Mock has already said he was tired, he didn't want to take the case. So he didn't even look -- I don't even think he looked at the police report, you know. One of my neighbors said they heard gunshots at 7:30. Why weren't they brought to testify in trial? I just saw that in the clemency report, you know? I never knew that. That person should have been brought to trial to testify. That was something the defense was supposed to do and never did.

      What I know is that Sergeant Freeze told my father when he came to get me from my parents' house that there were two guns in the state's possession, and the gun that I had wasn't the murder weapon. He told my father I would be back for that reason. Ron Mock, when we first – when I was first arrested and began going to court, he told us that there were two guns in the state's evidence and the gun that I had wasn't the murder weapon. As far as the ballistics tests coming back, saying that the gun in the state's evidence is the murder weapon, I don't know. You know, it may be, but what I know is that the gun I had the night that I -- the day that I left my apartment is not the murder weapon.

      You know, I had heard Adrian and his brother talking earlier that day, and they had mentioned something about some trouble, and Adrian had told me he had -- was quit using drugs. And so I looked in the cabinet, and I was just trying to confirm that he was telling me the truth about the drugs. And so, I looked in the cabinet where he normally kept drugs, and there wasn’t any in there, but there was this gun there, and it was unfamiliar to me. And so, hearing his conversation earlier with his brother, Sterling, I took it.

      At that time I know that my husband owed money to this guy he was selling drugs for. The guy was not a figment of my imagination, you know? That was real. That was going on. You know, and it had my husband so concerned at times. Sometimes we would come home, and Alton would come out off his room, and say, “Mom, dad's sleeping under his bed.” You know, under his bed. We wouldn't see his car anywhere, but he would be under the bed asleep. So, that was something that was going on and, of course, when I find out that my husband and children were murdered, that was my first thought.

      Adrian was a very loving person, sort of easily led by his older brother. But he was a very loving person. I had my first child early, and my parents were very disappointed in me, but they said, “Okay, this happened. Don't make the mistake again,” you know, and encouraged me to continue being a teenager, because I was a teenager. But at the same time they helped me to be a good mother to my son. And Adrian’s mom and dad were very supportive, as was he.

      INTERVIEWER: It must have been tough, so young.

      FRANCES NEWTON: You know, it really wasn't, because I had my big sisters and my big brothers, and so my son had all these aunts and uncles around and grandparents. It really wasn't tough. I mean, and I don't say that to encourage teenage pregnancy. I think that I was very blessed to have the support that I did. 

AMY GOODMAN: Death row prisoner Frances Newton, speaking earlier this year. She would be the first African American woman executed by the state of Texas since the Civil War, if she is not granted a stay before her execution date of September 14. We go now to one of Frances Newton's attorneys, David Dow, of the University of Houston Law Center. Welcome to Democracy Now!

DAVID DOW: Thank you for having me.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I'd like to begin, David Dow, Frances Newton was -- she's 40 now, that would make her 23 when she was initially arrested. She has been on death row now for 17 years. What's the state of the case right now, and what are your hopes in the next few months?

DAVID DOW: The state of the case right now is that late yesterday afternoon, the state courts ruled against us on the petition that we had filed in state court. That was the first legal document where we had raised the issue that you all alluded to a moment ago, involving the acknowledgment by the prosecutor that police recovered a second gun, at least one additional gun, when they were investigating this crime. The state court didn't even address that issue at all. We currently have pending a clemency petition in front of the Board of Pardons and Paroles. And I expect that we'll be filing something in federal court sometime in the middle of next week.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the key issue that you feel needs to be raised right now for people to understand about Frances Newton?

DAVID DOW: Well, I think that there are really three key issues, and two of them are more important legally than the third, even though that's -- that's ironic, because the issue that I think people need to understand that we're certainly including in everything that we file but that is very difficult to raise at this stage of her case is simply the fact that she's innocent and the fact that there isn't any evidence that suggests that she was guilty.

Essentially, the state had three pieces of evidence at her trial. It had the motive evidence, which was the claim that she had purchased life insurance and then killed her family in order to collect that money. And it had two pieces of physical evidence; one piece of physical evidence was the presence of nitrite particles on the lower portion of the skirt that she was wearing on that night. And nitrite particles can come from gunpowder residue. And then the final piece of evidence was the gun. The state claimed that the gun that Frances Newton took out of the house, the gun that you just heard her talking about, was the murder weapon. Those are the three pieces of evidence.

When we investigated the case, the first thing when my office, Jared Tyler and I, started to investigate the case, the first thing that we realized was that if you simply built a timeline, Frances Newton didn't have time to commit the crime. We figured that even if you were the most generous to the state's version of what had happened when, she had a total of 20 minutes. Now, 20 minutes is not very long to kill three people, and entirely eliminate any physical evidence that connects you to the crime. What do I mean by that? I mean that when the police arrived at the scene, they did an atomic absorption test on her hands, and there was no gun powder on her hands. There was no evidence that she had fired a weapon. There was no gunpowder residue on her sweater, which is where, of course, you would expect to find it if somebody was holding a handgun and firing it.

The crime scene we noticed, was bloody, because there was a blood trail that went from the spot where Frances's husband, Adrian, was killed back into the room where the bodies of the two children were found. What that meant was that either the murder weapon or more likely the murderer was covered with blood. Adrian Newton was shot at point blank range. And there's an entry wound but no exit wound, and so that means that all of the -- all of the blood and brain matter came back out of that entry wound and got on the weapon and probably got on the shooter, as well. And there's a trail that leads from him back to the children.

Well, there wasn't any physical evidence at all on Frances Newton. There wasn't anything at all on her clothes. There wasn't anything at all in her car. This is somebody who by the state's theory would have had to have killed three people with perfect marksmanship and then completely clean the crime scene in such a way that investigating authorities could find no physical evidence tying her, you know, to the scene at all, in 20 minutes. And it just seemed entirely implausible to us. That was why we first began to really doubt her connection to the crime.

Well, then we decided to look into the motive. It turned out the state had made it sound like she had gone out two weeks before to buy life insurance and then waited around for a couple of weeks and then murdered her family. That isn’t what had happened at all. She had originally purchased life insurance about a year before. She stopped paying the premium because she couldn't afford it. She then went to buy automobile insurance, and the insurance agent persuaded her that she should buy life insurance, too. And it turned out that Frances was vulnerable to that sales pitch.

Insurance agents tend to be pretty good salespeople anyway, but Frances was especially vulnerable to it for a couple of reasons. The first was that her father had always taught her that life insurance was a good form of a forced savings account, and in addition to that, she had recently had a family tragedy where her aunt's house had burned down, and all of the little kids in the house had died in that fire, and the family hadn't had enough money to bury them. And the talk in the family was that if only they had life insurance, they would have been able to bury the kids. So you put together that family tragedy with the fact that her dad had had always told her that life insurance was a good thing, and then she goes and visits his insurance agent and the insurance agent says, “You know, you really ought to buy life insurance.” All of a sudden what looked like the motive for this crime turns out to have been a completely ordinary event. Now we don't have motive, but we have two pieces of physical evidence: the nitrites on the skirt and the fact that she hid the gun that was supposedly the ballistics match.

AMY GOODMAN: David Dow, you're an attorney, and I don’t know if this is a question for you, but is there something people can do at this point, from your perspective? By the way, we called the prosecutor’s office, and they didn’t get back to us.

DAVID DOW: Yes, well, I’m sure that they won’t be getting back to anybody now. They’ve said what they said on videotape, and now they’re just saying it was a mistake. I think people should write the Board of Pardons and Paroles in Texas. I think they should write the governor’s office and say that this is a woman who’s innocent.

AMY GOODMAN: David Dow, on that note, I want to thank you for being with us, of the University of Houston Law Center. Information on Frances Newton’s case is at FreeFrances.org. We’ll link to it at our website, and we’ll continue to cover this case. 



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

Hackers Attack Via Chinese Web Sites
U.S. Agencies' Networks Are Among Targets

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 25, 2005; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/24/AR2005082402318_pf.html

Web sites in China are being used heavily to target computer networks in the Defense Department and other U.S. agencies, successfully breaching hundreds of unclassified networks, according to several U.S. officials.

Classified systems have not been compromised, the officials added. But U.S. authorities remain concerned because, as one official said, even seemingly innocuous information, when pulled together from various sources, can yield useful intelligence to an adversary.

"The scope of this thing is surprisingly big," said one of four government officials who spoke separately about the incidents, which stretch back as far as two or three years and have been code-named Titan Rain by U.S. investigators. All officials insisted on anonymity, given the sensitivity of the matter.

Whether the attacks constitute a coordinated Chinese government campaign to penetrate U.S. networks and spy on government databanks has divided U.S. analysts. Some in the Pentagon are said to be convinced of official Chinese involvement; others see the electronic probing as the work of other hackers simply using Chinese networks to disguise the origins of the attacks.

"It's not just the Defense Department but a wide variety of networks that have been hit," including the departments of State, Energy and Homeland Security as well as defense contractors, the official said. "This is an ongoing, organized attempt to siphon off information from our unclassified systems."

Another official, however, cautioned against exaggerating the severity of the intrusions. He said the attacks, while constituting "a large volume," were "not the biggest thing going on out there."

Apart from acknowledging the existence of Titan Rain and providing a sketchy account of its scope, the officials who were interviewed declined to offer further details, citing legal and political considerations and a desire to avoid giving any advantage to the hackers. One official said the FBI has opened an investigation into the incidents. The FBI declined to comment.

One official familiar with the investigation said it has not provided definitive evidence of who is behind the attacks. "Is this an orchestrated campaign by PRC or just a bunch of disconnected hackers? We just can't say at this point," the official said, referring to the People's Republic of China.

With the threat of computer intrusions on the rise generally among Internet users, U.S. government officials have made no secret that their systems, like commercial and household ones, are subject to attack. Because the Pentagon has more computers than any other agency -- about 5 million worldwide -- it is the most exposed to foreign as well as domestic hackers, the officials said.

Over the past few years, the Defense Department has taken steps to better organize what had been a rather disjointed approach to cyber security by individual branches of the armed forces. Last year, responsibility for managing the Pentagon's computer networks was assigned to the new Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations under the U.S. Strategic Command.

"Like everybody connected to the Internet, we're seeing a huge spike" in outside scanning of Pentagon systems, said Lt. Col. Mike VanPutte, vice director of operations at the task force. "That's really for two reasons. One is, the tools are much simpler today. Anyone can download an attack tool and target any block on the Internet. The second is, the intrusion detection systems in place today," which are more sophisticated and can identify more attacks.

Pentagon figures show that more attempts to scan Defense Department systems come from China, which has 119 million Internet users, than from any other country. VanPutte said this does not mean that China is where all the probes start, only that it is "the last hop" before they reach their targets.

He noted that China is a convenient "steppingstone" for hackers because of the large number of computers there that can be compromised. Also, tracing hackers who use Chinese networks is complicated by the lack of cyber investigation agreements between China and the United States, another task force official said.

The number of attempted intrusions from all sources identified by the Pentagon last year totaled about 79,000, defense officials said, up from about 54,000 in 2003. Of those, hackers succeeded in gaining access to a Defense Department computer in about 1,300 cases. The vast majority of these instances involved what VanPutte called "low risk" computers.

Concern about computer attacks from China comes amid heightened U.S. worry generally about Chinese military activities. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned in June that China's military spending threatened the security balance in Asia, and the Pentagon's latest annual report on Chinese military power, released last month, described the ongoing modernization of Beijing's armed forces.

The report contained a separate section on development of computer attack systems by China's military. It said the People's Liberation Army (PLA) sees computer network operations as "critical to seize the initiative" in establishing "electromagnetic dominance" early in a conflict to increase effectiveness in battle.

"The PLA has likely established information warfare units to develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks, and tactics to protect friendly computer systems and networks," the report said.

"The PLA has increased the role of CNO [computer network operations] in its military exercises," the report added. "Although initial training efforts focused on increasing the PLA's proficiency in defensive measures, recent exercises have incorporated offensive operations, primarily as first strikes against enemy networks."

The computer attacks from China have given added impetus to Pentagon moves to adopt new detection software programs and improve training of computer security specialists, several officials said.

"It's a constant game of staying one step ahead," one said.

Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.



-------- POLITICS


-------- propaganda wars

Pat Robertson Lies, Then Apologizes for Chavez Threat

Thursday, August 25th, 2005
Democracy Now! Headlines

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/25/1342217

A day after calling for the assassination of Venezuela's Democratically-elected President Hugo Chavez, rightwing Christian extremist Pat Robertson has apologized. He said "Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologize for that statement. I spoke in frustration that we should accommodate the man who thinks the U.S. is out to kill him," Robertson said. But incredibly, before Robertson issued that apology, he went on national television Wednesday and denied he had ever made the remark. Robertson issued his denial during an interview with former ambassador-at-large to Venezuela and outspoken Chavez critic Thor Halvorssen on The 700 Club:

    * The 700 Club:

      HALVORSSEN: Now, I think that it's very important to also note your comments were about assassination. The person -- I think that alternative is lowering to his level.

      ROBERTSON:

      Wait a minute, I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should "take him out," and "take him out" can be a number of things including kidnapping. There are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP, but that happens all the time.

What is interesting about that statement is the fact that it’s not true. Robertson's comments calling for Chavez' assassination were actually broadcast on his own program, the 700 Club on Tuesday.

    * The 700 Club: ROBERTSON: "You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it."

The White House has resisted calls for President Bush to repudiate Robertson, who has been a major supporter of President Bush and the Republican Party, even running as a candidate for president in 1988.


-------- ENERGY 


-------- alternative energy

Connecticut Lights the Way for Clean Energy
Clean power options are available to almost all homeowners and businesses in Connecticut, but only a few thousand households and companies have signed up. Now, there's a push to get residents to switch from using environmentally unsustainable energy

by Starre Vartan - August 25, 2005 Fairfield, CT Weekly

http://fairfieldweekly.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:123208

It's a relief when you hear that the town of Westport is installing solar panels on the roof of its sewage plant. Why? With the rising incidence of blackouts, critical functions like sewage treatment can get backed up. It always seems to take a crisis to get people to change their routines. And, we're in the middle of one. Every year, Americans use more energy to power their gadgets, run their homes and cool off as the summers get hotter. Meanwhile, the cost of producing this energy continues to rise. Though it might be tough for some of us to invest in putting solar panels on our roofs, we can participate in the burgeoning clean-energy movement to ensure that we're not held "energy hostage" by foreign oil prices, questionable safety at nuclear plants, and smoggy air.

While "green" innovations like the Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid car and the hippie-turned-hip organic food movement have taken the country by billion-dollar storm, the less-visible, but just as important, idea of clean energy is gaining acceptance. Derek Shapiro, Green Party candidate for mayor in Stamford, says, "We can both painlessly conserve energy and generate our own. After conservation, one of the best ways the average person can help is by purchasing clean energy, which will stimulate production of more clean energy and reduce ozone and other air and water pollutants that right now are necessary byproducts of electricity."

"In the minds of regular people, clean energy means a windmill in their yard and solar panels on their roofs," says Brian F. Keane, president of Hartford-based Smartpower, a nonprofit marketing campaign for clean energy. And for many, the start-up costs associated with these technologies are formidable, even though they do pay for themselves eventually.

The good news is that now you can run your ceiling fans, toasters and computers on clean energy that comes to your house just the way your power always has--except instead of electricity generated by a nuclear or coal plant it comes from a wind farm or from the burning of landfill gas. (It's a lot cleaner than it sounds!) And you can do this through your existing electricity provider, so you still get the same bill from the same company.

Signing up is easy. This past April and this coming September, bill inserts will be included in all Connecticut Light and Power (CL&P) and United Illuminating (UI) bills giving consumers the option to switch to 100 percent or 50 percent clean energy. You can also call your utility company and ask to sign up for clean energy, or go to www.ctcleanenergyoptions.com. The website and the phone operators will then refer you to the two companies that supply clean energy in Connecticut--Community Energy, whose power is a mix of 50 percent wind and 50 percent landfill gas, or Sterling Planet, whose power is 33 percent wind, 33 percent small hydro, and 34 percent landfill gas.

Clean power options are available to 98.5 percent of homeowners and businesses in Connecticut, and though just a few thousand households and businesses have signed up since April 1, movement away from environmentally unsustainable, unhealthy--not to mention increasingly expensive--oil, gas and nuclear power has begun in earnest with the newest campaign to get Connecticut residents to sign up for clean energy.

"Given the increased cost of oil, now more than ever we have got to look at reliable forms of energy use," says Diane Farrell, first selectwoman of Westport and candidate for U.S. Congress in 2006. "While it's been an environmental issue for some time, now it's also a pocketbook issue."

How Does It Work?

People are downright confused when confronted by the idea of clean power, and for good reason. How power gets to your house and where it comes from is complicated, because, thanks to deregulation, your power may come from the coal-fired plant in nearby Bridgeport Harbor, or the nuclear plant in another state.

Jason Leopold, former bureau chief at Dow Jones Newswires and the journalist who broke the Enron story, says, "The whole idea is that you can choose where you get your power from. That's what deregulation means. You'd think that a catastrophe like the 2003 blackout would prompt people to ask about new forms of electricity, but we've yet to see much of that--especially at higher levels of government."

While some deregulation is to blame for the rising incidences of blackouts, there is an upside as well. Just because there aren't yet any wind farms in Connecticut (they're mostly in Pennsylvania, with plans to put some on Long Island, as well), doesn't mean that you can't run your home on wind or other clean energy, since a giant grid supplies power to the whole mid-Atlantic region. New England Regional Director for Smartpower and Fairfield resident Bob Wall explains, "The grid is like a giant bathtub with many faucets feeding water in. These faucets are like the power plants, nuclear plants, wind farms, or solar panels, so the power flowing into the grid can be clean or dirty. We want to make the mix cleaner."

Using the bathtub analogy then, our local utilities, CL&P and UI, buy power from the overall grid, and we pay them. By choosing clean power, we are supporting more of those wind farms, solar panels or bio-fuel producers to feed power into the grid instead of coal or nuclear energy. Clean power is just as reliable because it's using the same system as the rest of the power.

Here's how it works: You pay your utility, just like you always did, for however much power you use. You can designate that 100 percent (or 50 percent if you choose) comes from clean sources. The utility then pays a clean-energy provider (like Community Energy or Sterling Power in Connecticut) to put more clean energy into the grid. Then Community Energy and Sterling Power work with their various providers to get that much energy out onto the mid-Atlantic grid, from which all of New England draws its power.

While the clean energy might come from far away, so does most power (sometimes coming from as far away as those plants in the midwest), and so does the air you're breathing right now. The reason Fairfield County has some of the country's worst air is because of the dirty smokestacks in Pennsylvania and the midwest, whose pollution drifts right up the coast and over our area before heading out to sea.

There is a small surcharge for choosing clean energy over dirty. For every 500 kilowatt (kw) hours used, it costs about $5.50 more (if 100 percent of your energy comes from clean sources). A typical family uses between 500 kw and 800 kw hours every month, though if you have a very large house it will be more. The reason it costs more: the gas, coal and nuclear industries are subsidized with billions per year in tax dollars. Clean-energy creators don't yet have as much help from the government; they don't get the tax breaks and incentives for new sites and buildings that the dirty guys do. To offset the extra charge, you could try saving energy the old-fashioned way: conservation. (See sidebar.)

Connecticut Leads The Charge

New England, and in particular Connecticut, has been a leader in the charge for clean energy. Westport was the first town in New England to sign up for clean energy under the new program (windpower and other clean-energy options have been available before, but those programs required people to leave their utility providers, which most were unwilling to do). The new Connecticut Clean Energy Communities project is two-fold: individuals and businesses can sign up for it, and special programs are available to towns as well.

In Fairfield County, the towns of Stamford, Westport, Trumbull and Fairfield have signed up for the "20% by 2010 campaign," which debuted in February 2004 when New Haven signed on. It means that 20 percent of New Haven's energy (for municipal buildings and municipal services like sewage treatment) will come from clean power sources by 2010. Long-term contracts are important, says Keane, because "that sends a signal to the clean-energy supplier that they will have a given income over a long period of time, which means they will have the capital to create more wind farms, solar arrays, or bio-fuel plants."

In addition to the 2010 campaign, as part of the Connecticut Clean Energy Communities Program, for every 100 residential or business customers who commit to buying clean energy, a 1 kw solar panel will be given to the town to put on any building it wants. Stamford wants to put its panel on its recycling center where the city already has existing solar panels.

"We wanted to do this to set an example for our residents," Farrell says of Westport's commitment to the campaign. "Hopefully, this will incentivize residents to sign up and then the town would actually receive a PV cell [a photovoltaic cell, a.k.a., solar panel] as a bonus for getting people to sign up."

The idea is to create a healthy competition among towns. Already there's a rivalry heating up between West Hartford and New Haven; each have already qualified for their first solar panel. And so has Westport. Farrell says plans are to put a panel atop the sewage plant and now they are working on their second.

Outside the county, New Haven, West Hartford, Orange, Portland, Canton, Middletown, Milford, New Britain, Cheshire, East Hartford, Hamden and Mansfield have all signed onto the campaign. Forty more towns in the state are lined up and ready to join. This puts Connecticut on the forefront of the clean-power revolution.

So far, so good.

In just four months, 4,000 people made the switch to clean power in Connecticut, but there's room for improvement. "Fairfield County, whose residents are better educated and more affluent, have disappointingly low signups," says Wall.

Stamford, with close to 50,000 households, has only about 70 signed on, and other towns are not doing much better.

Businesses like Pitney Bowes in Stamford, and schools like the Yale School of Forestry, Wesleyan in Middletown, and the Connecticut College in New London (which is getting a whopping 44 percent of the school's power for wind with a student-supported fee of $25/student) are jumping on the clean-power bandwagon, but it's not happening quickly enough.

Oil prices continue to skyrocket and the Bush administration recently passed a national energy policy that gives huge breaks and incentives to the dirtiest energy producers. Oil companies were given $974 million in subsidies to explore for new drilling sites and $406 million to expand refineries, while several billion was given to existing and future nuclear plants, and low-rate federal loan guarantees were made for 16 new coal-fired power plants. Almost no money in the latest energy policy was aimed at renewable energy or clean power, so it's up to state and local governments (and us) to promote and guarantee the future for truly renewable, clean energy.

Saving Energy the Old-Fashioned Way

Want to save up to 25 percent on your energy bill? Try these simple tips:

1. Switch your light bulbs from incandescent to compact fluorescent. They screw into your lamps and light fixtures the same way, and come in various sizes and shapes. They cost a little more up front, but last 10 to 15 times as long and use up to one-third the electricity, meaning big savings for you. Using dimmers means even more savings (and romantic light). For those sensitive to fluorescent light, you can find bulbs with different colorings or try different lamp shades to alter the light. Find them at Ikea.com or buylighting.com or your local hardware store.

2. Most home electronics today function on “standby” mode. This means they are sucking electricity all day and night, and they can use up to 10 percent of the electricity in your home. If you plug your home entertainment center into a surge protector with an on/off switch, you can press one switch when you’re done and shut off the whole setup.

3. Turn off lights, computers and TVs when you’re not using them.

4. Use a timer on your thermostat, so you’ll never forget to turn down the heat or AC when you leave the house.

5. Hot water heaters are the homes third-largest energy user (after heating and cooling). Turn yours down to 120 degrees or even a bit lower. With just two adults in my home, I didn’t notice any difference at all after lowering mine to about 110.

6. If you’re buying a new appliance, be sure it’s got a high EnergyStar rating, meaning it’s been rated by the Environmental Protection Agency as being energy efficient. Go to energystar.gov for more information. 



-------- OTHER


-------- environment

Forest Service Admits 'Serious' Mistake in Logging Rare Tree Preserve

August 25, 2005 — By Jeff Barnard, Associated Press

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=8624

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — The Forest Service admitted Wednesday to making a "serious" mistake that allowed the logging of 17 acres inside a rare tree reserve as part of the salvage harvest of timber burned by a fire in 2002.

The logging inside the 350-acre Babyfoot Lake Botanical Area, created in 1966 to protect Brewer spruce and other rare plant species in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, was discovered last week by environmentalists after the timber was harvested and a forest closure intended to bar protesters was lifted.

Forest Service personnel mismarked the border of part of the timber sale next to the botanical area, said Illinois Valley District Ranger Pam Bode. Normally trees are marked with stapled tags and paint to show the boundaries of timber sales and reserves within them.

"For us to have changed the ecology in that area through removal of these dead trees is a serious error," Bode said.

Spokeswoman Patty Burel said the Forest Service would look into the blunder.

Barbara Ullian, conservation director of the Siskiyou Project group that discovered the damage, said the mistake demonstrated the importance of allowing the public to monitor logging operations in national forests.

"This is no small little slip across the border and a few trees," Ullian said.

The Forest Service closed the area to the public in March after protesters attempted to block logging roads and sit in trees.

The Siskiyou Project counted 290 stumps inside the botanical area, including one that measured three feet in diameter that was 234 years old, Ullian said.

A lightning storm in July 2002 sparked four fires in the rugged Klamath Mountains of southwestern Oregon. The blazes combined into a single fire that threatened 17,000 people in small communities of the Illinois Valley and cost $153 million to control. 



-------- ACTIVISTS

American Legion Declares War on Peace Movement

Thursday, August 25th, 2005
Democracy Now! Headlines

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/25/1342217

The organization the American Legion has voted at its national convention to target peace activists and the antiwar movement. The group boasts nearly 3 million members. The group's national commander called for an end to all "public protests" and what he called "media events" against the war, even though they are protected by the Bill of Rights. Thomas Cadmus told the convention "The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples. The delegates voted to use whatever means necessary to "ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism."

MSNBC Journalist Calls Crawford Protesters ‘Anti-war Extremists’

As the American Legion declares war on peace activists, President Bush and his allies continue to find support among some in the media for what many see as a smear campaign against Cindy Sheehan and other antiwar military families. On Monday's edition of MSNBC's Hardball, White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell labeled anti-war demonstrators at Bush's property in Crawford "anti-war extremists." The comments came in an exchange with FBI whistleblower turned Congressional candidate Colleen Rowley:

    * MSNBC’s Hardball:

      O'DONNELL: You're a Democrat running for Congress. It was reported that Republican leaders in your state were just thrilled that you had decided to align yourself with anti-war extremists. Do you think that this could affect your race for Congress?

      ROWLEY: Well, I will quickly correct the record that they are not anti-war extremists. The majority of the people I saw down in Crawford were actually veterans groups. There were military families and --

      O'DONNELL: But, Colleen, they do oppose the war in Iraq, do they not?

      ROWLEY: Yes, they do. But that does not make, I guess the term extremists. They're really, I think, reflective of mainstream America in many ways.”

FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley responding to MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell. Thanks to MediaMatters.org for posting that clip.