NucNews - November 8, 2005
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- africa
IAEA praises Nigeria's peaceful use of nuclear power
2005-11-08 02:23:45 (Xinhuanet)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-11/08/content_3747460.htm
LAGOS, Nov. 7 -- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has commended Nigeria's commitment to deploy nuclear facilities for peaceful uses, the official News Agency of Nigeria reported on Monday.
Djermouni Belkacem, leader of an IAEA mission team to Nigeria, gave the commendation in the capital Abuja while undertaking an audit of nuclear regulatory infrastructure and accessing Nigeria'slevel of preparedness to deploy nuclear facilities in electricity generation.
Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, has indicated its willingness to establish nuclear power plants to augment its electricity generation, currently put at about 3,000 mw compared to the 6,000 mw domestic demand.
The proposed nuclear plant is expected to contribute more than 25,000 mw to the national grid on completion, according to the news agency.
Belkacem said that the weeklong audit was a fundamental function of the IAEA to ensure that radioactive sources were not misapplied in view of its harmful effect on human and other organisms.
The team is expected to undertake a facility tour of major users of radioactive sources in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja, the report said.
-------- australia
Senator dismisses fears over NT nuclear dump
Tuesday, November 8, 2005 Australian Broadcasting
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200511/s1500258.htm
CLP Senator Nigel Scullion says traditional owners in central Australia have unreasonable fears about a nuclear waste dump bordering their land.
Legislation forcing a dump on the Territory was introduced into the Senate yesterday but is unlikely to be debated until later in the year.
A delegation of traditional owners from central Australia has been in Canberra this week lobbying senators to vote against the Bill.
Senator Scullion says he will meet with the delegation but he is yet to see any evidence that a waste facility is not safe.
"People are still peddling to a fairly naive community, complete evil misinformation to make people so afraid - anybody that suggests that this is at all dangerous to anything it is entirely wrong," he said.
But delegation member William Tilmouth says traditional owners still believe nuclear waste is dangerous and their opposition to the dump is unchanged.
"They are scared of the poisoning of the land, the water areas, the animals that live within that land and bush tucker," he said.
-------- depleted uranium
U.S. Iraq vet warns DU a threat to SDF troops
The Daily Yomiuri (Nov. 8, 2005)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/world/20051108TDY04005.htm
Self-Defense Forces troops serving in southern Iraq could be at risk of exposing themselves--and their families--to illness and physical disability caused by depleted uranium (DU) contained in several types of munitions used by U.S. forces in Iraq, a U.S. veteran of the Iraq war said Monday.
Gerard Matthew, a former U.S. Army National Guard specialist, transported equipment including shot-up tanks and destroyed vehicle parts back and forth mostly in and around the southern part of Iraq, where Japanese troops are carrying out their reconstruction and humanitarian mission.
As time went on, he began suffering from severe headaches, which he initially attributed to a lack of water and the oppressive heat in Iraq. But when the headaches and other symptoms continued after he returned home, he suspected something more serious was wrong. Just over nine months later, his wife gave birth to a daughter. She was born with three fingers and most of her right hand missing. He then had his urine tested and it was found positive for DU.
"I came all the way to Japan...to convey the message because you have some soldiers out there as well and they may be susceptible to it," he said at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo.
DU is a by-product of the process used to enrich uranium for use in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Its high density, low cost and ability to penetrate vehicle armor make it an attractive choice for use in antitank weapons, but on impact DU particulate is dispersed in the air inside and outside the targeted vehicle. Exposure to uranium particulate, either inhaled or ingested, can lead to serious health problems including leukemia, cancers and neurocognitive effects, as well as birth defects in the children of those exposed, according to Sandia National Laboratories, a laboratory operated by Lockheed Martin that completed a two-year study for the U.S. Energy Department on the potential health effects associated with exposure to DU during the 1991 Gulf War.
"I'm suffering not only those same problems from before, but now I have...a tumor in my pituitary [gland], I have neuropathy in my hands and my feet, I have trouble waking up in the morning at times and I have post-traumatic stress disorder.
"[Our governments] are using cheap stuff and they are hurting us. And...we're hurting innocent civilians and we don't need to do that," said Matthew, 31.
However, the U.S. State Department says on its Web site that "accusations that depleted uranium has caused cancer in Iraqi newborns are groundless," and claims "rumors" of adverse health effects caused by DU ordinance have "proved inaccurate."
The Japanese government also denies that DU poses a risk.
Matthew said he met two Japanese troops and took pictures with them along the so-called Highway of Death in Iraq.
Matthew is part of a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Defense Department filed in January that is now in the 2nd Circuit Court in New York.
"Yes, [the military] has paid for my education, but I would give all of that up to have my daughter with five fingers on her hand and being able to do something like everybody else," Matthew said.
His wife, Janise, who has two healthy children from previous relationships, also spoke at the press conference, giving a word of warning to families of SDF members stationed in Iraq. "Don't fall asleep on your people, your Japanese soldiers, when they actually come back because they might not show exactly symptoms that they are sick. If you have any family members in the military, just watch over them, make sure that they are OK," she said.
Matthew added that he felt "a connection" with the people of Hiroshima when he visited Peace Park on Thursday because "I was exposed to radiation, just like them."
----
Depleted Uranium Is WMD
Leuren Moret
November 8, 2005
By Leuren Moret
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m17590&date=08-nov-2005_17:19_ECT
Image: Two Iraqi children with similar deformities of the face. Dr. Gunther refers to this condition as "Zyklopie".
http://www.uruknet.info/pic.php?f=420499.jpeg
My grandfather, U.S. Army Col. Edwin Joseph McAllister, was born in Battle Creek in 1895. He does not know that his first grandchild is an international expert on depleted uranium. I have worked in two U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, and in 1991 I became a whistleblower at the Livermore lab. Depleted uranium is very, very, very nasty stuff:
Depleted uranium (DU) weaponry meets the definition of weapon of mass destruction in two out of three categories under U.S. Federal Code Title 50 Chapter 40 Section 2302.
DU weaponry violates all international treaties and agreements, Hague and Geneva war conventions, the 1925 Geneva gas protocol, U.S. laws and U.S. military law.
Since 1991, the U.S. has released the radioactive atomicity equivalent of at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs into the global atmosphere. That is 10 times the amount released during atmospheric testing which was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs. The U.S. has permanently contaminated the global atmosphere with radioactive pollution having a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
The U.S. has illegally conducted four nuclear wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and twice in Iraq since 1991, calling DU "conventional" weapons when in fact they are nuclear weapons.
DU on the battlefield has three effects on living systems: it is a heavy metal "chemical" poison, a "radioactive" poison and has a "particulate" effect due to the very tiny size of the particles that are 0.1 micron and smaller.
The blueprint for DU weaponry is a 1943 Manhattan Project memo to Gen. L. Groves that recommended development of radioactive materials as poison gas weapons - dirty bombs, dirty missiles and dirty bullets.
DU weapons are very effective kinetic energy penetrators, but even more effective bioweapons since uranium has a strong chemical affinity for phosphate structures concentrated in DNA.
DU is the Trojan Horse of nuclear war - it keeps giving and keeps killing. There is no way to clean it up, and no way to turn it off because it continues to decay into other radioactive isotopes in over 20 steps.
Terry Jemison at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs stated in August 2004 that over 518,000 Gulf-era veterans (14-year period) are now on medical disability, and that 7,039 were wounded on the battlefield in that same period. Over 500,000 U.S. veterans are homeless.
In some studies of soldiers who had normal babies before the war, 67 percent of the post-war babies are born with severe birth defects - missing brains, eyes, organs, legs and arms, and blood diseases.
In southern Iraq, scientists are reporting five times higher levels of gamma radiation in the air, which increases the radioactive body burden daily of inhabitants. In fact, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan are uninhabitable.
Cancer starts with one alpha particle under the right conditions. One gram of DU is 1/20th of a cubic centimeter and releases 12,000 alpha particles per second.
Before my grandfather died, he told me that his generation had made a mess of this planet. I wonder what he would say to me now I would tell him to see "Beyond Treason" ( www.beyondtreason.com ), a new documentary about the history of treason by the U.S. government against our own troops: Atomic veterans, MK-Ultra, Agent Orange and DU. After Vietnam, Henry Kissinger said, "Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. . ." (from Chapter 5 in the "Final Days" by Woodward and Bernstein).
Leuren Moret is an international radiation specialist, with a B.S. degree in geology from University of California at Davis, a M.A. degree in Near Eastern studies from University of California at Berkeley and has done post-graduate work in the geosciences at UC-Davis. She is environmental commissioner for the City of Berkeley, Calif.
-------- iran
Iran says nuclear offer final chance
TEHRAN (AFP) Nov 08, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051108184502.hyd28s1c.html
Iran's top nuclear official warned Tuesday an offer to resume stalled atomic talks with Europe was his final attempt to salvage negotiations, insisting Tehran would never renounce its demand to enrich uranium.
Ali Larijani told the BBC his offer in a letter on Sunday to the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany to pick up the talks was "our last word to the Europeans".
European foreign ministers have said they are studying the proposal but have yet to indicate if they will accept the offer, the first since Larijani became hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's pointman on the nuclear dossier.
However Larijani's letter makes clear that Tehran has no intention of dropping its demand to enrich uranium as part of a full nuclear fuel cycle -- the key sticking point in the tortuous negotiating process with Europe.
It says Iran has a "certain and indisputable right to have access to full nuclear fuel cycle and enrichment capability for peaceful purposes such as research, medical, genetics, agricultural and similar applications."
In a first reaction to the letter Monday, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Iran must heed an International Atomic Energy Agency resolution passed in September demanding a renewed freeze on all activity related to uranium enrichment.
But in a later statement Tuesday, Larijani angrily rejected Straw's call.
"The various parts of this declaration were put together with an extremist outlook and I'm against them," the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.
"The Europeans want to harm the Iranian people's will and determination by putting psychological pressure on Iran but they are making a mistake," he said.
Larijani acknowledged that Straw's comments were not an official response to his letter, which had yet to be received, but he warned that negotiation was not the only way forward for Iran.
"From our point of view, negotiation is not the sole solution for settling the nuclear problem but it is one of the ways," he said.
"The letter we sent to the Europeans was aimed at showing that Iran was exploring all peaceful ways to guarantee the national rights of Iranians."
The Iranian request for new talks came three weeks before a November 24 meeting of the IAEA which could theoretically send Iran to the Security Council.
The European Union has been trying to persuade Iran to permanently suspend uranium enrichment, as well as its precursor conversion, as a watertight guarantee that its nuclear programme is peaceful and sees it as a condition for reopening the stalled talks.
Iran had already defied the Europeans by resuming uranium ore conversion in August, a move which brought the already stuttering talks to a grinding halt.
It is still observing a suspension on enriching uranium, but has repeatedly made clear this will not last forever.
"Our strategy is that we have to achieve nuclear technology and the resumption of... conversion is a sign that Iran is determined to master nuclear technology," Larijani told the BBC.
On enrichment, he said: "Absolutely it is part of our programme. We are not stopping short of enrichment.
"Through the language of force and threats you cannot persuade Iran to give up this right."
Enriched uranium is used as the fuel for power stations but in highly enriched form can also form the explosive core of a nuclear bomb.
Whether Larijani's approach will be enough to save Iran from being sent to the UN Security Council remains to be seen. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste Blazy said Monday such an option was still being kept open.
However Europe and the United States may have their work cut out to secure a Security Council referral with Russia expected to oppose such a move and China unconvinced.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei on Monday called for increased transparency from Iran after it had concealed the extent of its atomic programme for 18 years.
But he also acknowledged that "we are making progress," referring to additional information offered recently and access given to UN inspectors to visit key nuclear sites.
----
Agency Seeks Broad Standard for 'Dirty Bomb' Exposure
By MATTHEW L. WALD
November 8, 2005 NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/08/politics/08nuke.html?ei=5099&en=9acb077f347ab762&ex=1132117200&partner=TOPIX&pagewanted=print
WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 - The Homeland Security Department, preparing advice on responding to a "dirty bomb" attack, has concluded that cities and states should take into account the cost of abandoning or cleaning up contaminated areas when deciding how much exposure to radiation is acceptable.
The goal of writing "protective action guidelines" that do not set fixed numerical standards for acceptable radiation exposure is to "balance protection with other important factors," according to the advance text of the advice.
In contrast, the federal government has established precise standards for radiation exposure involving workers in industrial settings and people who live near hazardous waste dumps or nuclear power plants, whether operating or decommissioned.
A copy of the proposed text, which the department plans to publish in the next few weeks in The Federal Register, was first published by Inside EPA, a trade magazine. Government officials confirmed its central points on Monday.
According to the text, if terrorists detonate a nuclear bomb or simply spread radioactive material in the United States, they could overwhelm the nation's ability to clean up the contamination or shelter all of the people who would have to evacuate.
The department plans to take comments for 60 days after publication, but the guidance would go into force immediately upon publication.
One official who was involved in writing the guidance, Edward McGaffigan Jr., a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said adopting overly strict rules "only aids and abets Al Qaeda or any other terrorists."
When nuclear power plants are decommissioned, Mr. McGaffigan said, their owners must clean them up to the extent that the potential dose of radiation to a member of the public each year is equivalent to the amount of environmental radiation that the average person is exposed to in two or three weeks.
Some sites have been cleaned up to a standard of 15 millirem per year. But, Mr. McGaffigan said, people who work in some buildings made of granite, including the United States Capitol, are exposed to substantially higher doses than that. "You don't raze buildings if they have to be as hot as the Capitol is," he said, pointing out that workers there absorb 100 millirem a year.
The new guidance calls for balancing the public health risk against the value of a highway or crucial transportation structure or of a high-profile place. It also encourages state and local officials to show flexibility.
People who oppose nuclear power argue that the new guidance is part of an effort by the government to loosen health protections so the industry can more easily build new reactors and dispose of its waste.
Officials say that in the days or weeks after an attack with a dirty bomb, which is a conventional explosive with radioactive material added to it, officials at all levels of government and members of the public will discuss what standards to use.
Government officials involved in drafting the document said it filled a gap in the existing regulatory framework, which set the limits on waste dumps and power plants. The federal government already offers some guidance on acceptable exposure for emergency personnel during an attack, but not on what standards to use later, when the contamination would be cleaned up and decisions made about reopening areas that had been sealed off.
After officials simulated a dirty bomb attack in a five-day exercise in Seattle in May 2003, they concluded that one problem was a lack of planning for long-term cleanup.
Mr. McGaffigan said representatives of different federal agencies participating in the drill gave varying advice to the mayor about what had to be done before the affected area could be reoccupied.
The new federal guidance is also meant to apply to a recovery after a nuclear bomb.
----
Japan appoints head of breakthrough nuclear reactor in France
Tue Nov 8, 2005 12:32 AM ET (AFP)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051108/tc_afp/iterjapanenergynucleareufrance_051108051850%3b_ylt=A9FJqZxAf3BDYIQBLyiNOrgF%3b_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
TOKYO, Nov 8 - A Japanese engineer turned ambassador has been named to head the international project to build a multibillion-dollar experimental nuclear fusion reactor in southern France, a Japanese official said.
Japan's Ambassador to Croatia Kaname Ikeda, a nuclear engineer by training, was named director general of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) organization, slated to be launched in or after 2007.
The decision was made Monday in Vienna at a meeting of high-ranking officials from the project's participating countries, a Japanese official said.
The six ITER partners -- the European Union, the United States, Russia, Japan, South Korea and China -- agreed in June to bring the main facility to Cadarache, southern France, after Japan withdrew its bid to host the 10-billion-euro (12-billion-dollar), 30-year project.
Following years of wrangling between Japan and the EU, Japan was given the 20 percent of staff posts including the director general's job in exchange for dropping its proposal to build the reactor in northern Aomori prefecture.
Ikeda, 59, has been Japan's ambassador to Croatia since 2003 after a career in nuclear science, including heading a Japanese nuclear safety office.
ITER is a pilot project aimed at creating energy that would be cheap, clean, safe and almost infinite.
Instead of splitting the atom -- the principle behind current nuclear plants -- the project seeks to harness nuclear fusion: the power of the sun and the stars.
-------- u.n.
US and Russia back 'nuclearfuel bank'
By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Financial Times November 8 2005 02:00
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/5ac478d0-4ffd-11da-8b72-0000779e2340.html
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN nuclear monitor, said yesterday he had won commitments from the US and Russia for an initiative to create an international nuclear fuel bank.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said only such an international approach could resolve the problem of countries being able to develop a nuclear bomb through their own development of the fuel cycle.
"You can't target one country," he told a Washington conference hosted by the Carnegie think-tank, referring to international pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme.
Mr ElBaradei said he was "very close" to being able to establish an assured supply of nuclear fuel, under IAEA management, within the next year.
The US made a commitment in September to supply 17 tonnes of highly enriched uranium that would be blended down to 290 tonnes of lightly enriched fuel. Russia would also give material from dismantled weapons.
Japan's multi-billion-dollar nuclear facility, to be built at Rokkasho, could also become part of a global fuel bank system, he suggested.
Iran insists on its right under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) to develop the entire nuclear fuel cycle. In August, it renewed uranium conversion work at its Isfahan plant, ending a suspension agreement reached with the "EU3" - France, Germany and the UK.
However, Iran has not moved to the more critical stage of uranium enrichment - what the EU3 calls its "red line".The IAEA hopes Iran can be persuaded not to enrich uranium in exchange for a guaranteed supply from outside.
The US has accepted in principle the idea of Iran receiving fuel from Russia for its Bushehr nuclear power plant. The EU3 is exploring the possibility of a joint venture in Russia involving Iranian finance but not technology access.
A western diplomat said the US was broadly supportive of Mr ElBaradei's fuel bank proposal.
Mr ElBaradei said the IAEA was making "good progress" but not as fast as he would like with its inspections in Iran. The recent visit to the Parchin military complex represented access beyond that required of Iran under its safeguard agreements. He added that there was only one more site, at Lavasan, that the IAEA wanted to see.
The European Union yesterday issued a muted response to Iran's latest request to resume talks with the EU3, broken off in August. Jack Straw, UK foreign secretary, said the bloc was "studying" the request.
Additional reporting by Daniel Dombey in Brussels
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
ElBaradei's nuclear bank plans
By Jonathan Marcus
BBC Diplomatic Correspondent
Published: 2005/11/08 00:47:17 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4416482.stm
The annual non-proliferation conference of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace brings together the movers and shakers of the disarmament world.
But this year was special since the key-note address was given by Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Mr ElBaradei and his organisation were recently awarded this year's Nobel peace prize.
The award has been widely seen as bolstering not just the IAEA but the whole idea of multilateral arms control.
It is an approach that has found little favour in Mr Bush's Washington, where traditional treaty-making has been replaced by more unilateral ideas, not least the doctrines of preventive war.
NPT drawback
But things are perhaps changing. Not least because the diplomatic row over Iran's nuclear activities is posing a fundamental challenge to the existing non-proliferation machinery.
That machinery is not in very good condition. Its centre-piece - the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - has a serious draw-back.
It has traditionally been seen as allowing countries who pass international inspection and monitoring to develop the capacity to manufacture nuclear fuel.
This is what Iran is trying to do, and Tehran insists that it only has peaceful intentions.
It wants to be self-sufficient in terms of providing fuel for its nuclear reactor programme.
But mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle, as it is known, also enables a country to go a step further, potentially abandoning the NPT treaty in order to develop a bomb.
That is why in a series of on-again, off-again talks, the European Union is trying to persuade Iran to abandon its fuel cycle development.
So far the talks have made little progress, though the most recent signals from Tehran suggest that the Iranians would like to return to the negotiating table.
Washington has been watching from the wings, backing the Europeans, but seemingly having little else to do with the process.
Interesting debate
Enter Mr ElBaradei. He has championed a three-decade old but nonetheless elegant scheme that could get both the Iranians and the international community off the hook.
His idea is to establish a central bank of nuclear fuel from which a country like Iran could draw its supplies.
In an exclusive BBC interview Mr ElBaradei said that he had received "a good encouraging response from the United States".
"Washington," he said, "was ready to offer some nuclear material to be part of the fuel bank. I got the same response from Russia. So we are hard at work," he told me.
And he hopes that in the next six months or so the IAEA should be able to come up with a mechanism to enable countries to get the fuel they need and, at the same time, accept a moratorium on developing their own fuel cycle facilities.
Iran's initial reaction is likely to be negative. It will no doubt assert its right to master the whole nuclear fuel cycle. And the row could still go on for months if not years.
But there is an interesting debate here among disarmament experts about the Non-Proliferation Treaty's essential meaning.
Is it intended to allow everyone to make nuclear fuel? Or is its aim simply to share the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology?
Mr ElBaradei is implicitly moving to a more restrictive interpretation, believing that countries like Iran should at the very least forego some of their "rights" in favour of international security.
He hopes that a fuel bank might ultimately provide the means to break the diplomatic log-jam that surrounds Iran's nuclear programme.
Speaking now with the added authority derived from winning the Nobel peace prize, he argues that this is an idea whose time has finally come.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/4416482.stm
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- colorado
Mineral rights issue remains at Rocky Flats
Judith Kohler THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=68369
DENVER -- The $7 billion, 10-year closure of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant has been declared complete, but questions remain about private mineral rights that must be acquired so it can be turned into a national wildlife refuge.
The U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote this week on a defense authorization bill that includes $10 million to buy some of the mineral rights on the 6,240-acre site, where gravel mining has occurred on the edges for decades.
Surrounding communities, however, have urged the federal government to buy all the mineral rights -- even those with a low potential of development. One of the mineral rights owners questioned whether $10 million will be enough to ensure that development doesn't hinder efforts to turn the grassy plains and rolling hills northwest of Denver into a wildlife haven.
"It's a good place to start, maybe," rancher and developer Charles McKay said of the legislation. "I think they probably got through what they could get through."
McKay's family was part of a multimillion-dollar settlement in 1985 in a lawsuit started by his uncle, Marcus Church, and other landowners claiming that contamination from Rocky Flats had left their property unfit for most development. McKay said the government didn't want to buy the mineral rights then.
The McKay-Church family owns part of the 438 acres of mineral rights the government would acquire under an amendment to the defense authorization bill sponsored by Colorado Sens. Wayne Allard, a Republican, and Ken Salazar, a Democrat.
Rep. Bob Beauprez, R-Colo., introduced the measure in the House.
Acquiring the mineral rights is seen as crucial to transferring the Rocky Flats grounds from the Department of Energy to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Department of the Interior. The Interior Department has balked at the possibility of mining in a wildlife refuge.
Allard said the amendment is a bipartisan agreement supported by federal and state agencies.
The measure rules out condemning property and applies only to "essential mineral rights." Existing gravel mining could continue.
Mineral rights left out of the measure include those not seen as commercially viable, coal deposits, which couldn't be mined in a refuge, and minerals in highly contaminated spots unlikely to be developed.
Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., co-sponsor with Allard of the bill to convert Rocky Flats to a national wildlife refuge, has introduced a separate bill targeting all the mineral rights through funding or land swaps. The bill, unlike the amendment, wouldn't have a one-year time limit.
The amendment could shrink the boundaries of the refuge unless the mineral rights are bought, Udall said.
The Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments, made up of the seven counties and cities around Rocky Flats, lobbied to leave open the option of acquiring all the mineral rights. The group said in a July 25 letter to Allard that in hindsight, "we now know the federal government erred when it opted not to acquire privately held minerals when the (Rocky Flats) buffer zone was expanded in the early 1970s."
David Abelson, the group's executive director, said members support the move to acquire the mineral rights, but still have concerns.
"We've met with them and expressed our concerns. We did not prevail," Abelson said.
Plutonium triggers were made at Rocky Flats for four decades. It was closed in 1992 because of safety concerns and the end of the Cold War. Buildings were demolished and radioactive waste, including plutonium, was shipped to a waste site.
The Energy Department still has to formally accept that Rocky Flats has been cleaned up and can ask Kaiser-Hill, the private contractor in charge, to address concerns. Then the Environmental Protection Agency and state officials must verify the work meets regulatory guidelines.
-------- connecticut
Samples Taken At Nuclear Plant
NRC Measuring Contamination
By GARY LIBOW
Hartford Courant Staff Writer
November 8, 2005
http://wb20.trb.com/news/hc-nukeinspect1108.artnov08,0,6502985.story?coll=wtxx-news-3
HADDAM -- Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors Monday conducted radiological tests and obtained samples from a wall that once leaked contaminated water from the Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant's spent fuel pool.
James J. Kottan, NRC senior health physicist, estimated it would take two weeks to a month for an independent lab to identify the level of contamination in the soil, and a concrete boring from the spent fuel pool wall.
The NRC and Connecticut Yankee stress the leak is not active and there is no danger to public health and safety.
Kottan and NRC physicist Laurie Kauffman secured concrete from a boring that probed a foot into the 6-foot-thick wall, near hairline cracks discovered late last month by workers decommissioning the Haddam Neck plant.
Decommissioning is 83 percent completed at the plant, which permanently shut down in 1996 after producing 110 billion kilowatt hours of electricity over 28 years.
Connecticut Yankee reports the east side concrete wall exhibits very low concentrations of cesium, cobalt, strontium and tritium, isotopes that in high doses could cause cancer.
The nuclear plant's highly radioactive uranium pellets were housed for decades in the spent fuel pool. More than a thousand nuclear fuel rods, which contain the pellets, have been moved to an outdoor dry cask complex, allowing the pool water to be cleaned and drained.
Kottan said the NRC, which plans to remain at Connecticut Yankee for a week as part of a routine inspection, will take about a quart of tainted soil off-site for analysis. The NRC also gathered additional radiological information, he said.
"We've been out there for a couple of hours. ... We made some independent measurements," said Kottan, who is based in King of Prussia, Penn. "We didn't see any evidence of an active leak."
Kottan said that while the NRC has investigated other spent fuel pool leaks, such incidents are a "rare occurrence."
Connecticut Yankee officials Monday said contamination still appears limited to a 4- by 4-foot cube on the east side of the spent fuel pool building, which is slated for demolition in the next year.
Joe Bourassa, Connecticut Yankee's director of nuclear safety and regulatory affairs, said it appears "cups" or "a few quarts" of contaminated water breached the concrete wall at some point.
Bourassa said the pool water likely traveled through hairline cracks, rather than construction seams in the concrete, as earlier theorized by Connecticut Yankee.
"There is a crack in the concrete, that's for certain," Bourassa said.
The company, he said, is analyzing white powder residue discovered over the hairline cracks. If the powder turns out to be boron, it's an indicator that tainted water leaked through the cracks
Bourassa reported that monitoring wells around the spent fuel pool building exhibit low to moderate amounts of radiological contamination. Connecticut Yankee also is analyzing nearby bedrock samples from borings 20 to 25 deep, he said.
Jelle DeBoer, professor emeritus of earth and environmental sciences at Wesleyan University, is among town residents fearful the spent fuel pool leak may have contaminated groundwater.
-------- nevada
Yucca dump may be losing support
Latest budget cuts show some are rethinking nuke dump
By Benjamin Grove
Las Vegas Sun Washington Bureau November 08, 2005
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/nov/08/519628066.html
WASHINGTON -- The slashed Yucca Mountain budget could be the latest example of the proposed nuclear waste repository steadily losing steam and favor.
The $450 million budget is "just barely enough to keep it alive," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a Yucca supporter and member of the panel that met Monday to finalize a broader energy and water projects spending bill.
The Yucca budget was trimmed as Congress scrambles to make spending cuts in a tight budget year, and as lawmakers rethink whether permanent burial in a geologic repository is the nation's best nuclear waste strategy.
Domenici said the Yucca budget cut was not the beginning of the end for Yucca, but he hinted that there would be soul-searching in Congress over the nation's nuclear waste policy, which now focuses squarely on Yucca.
"It's a beginning of a re-evaluation of a bigger policy, which will include Yucca," he said.
The amount approved is a significant decrease from what was requested -- President Bush asked for $651 million, and the Senate approved $577 million. The program has been around $570 million in each of the last two years.
"This is pretty significant," said Michele Boyd, an analyst for Public Citizen, which opposes Yucca. "It's a pretty clear acknowledgement that the Yucca Mountain program is in deep trouble."
Yucca critics noted that the House-Senate panel earmarked $50 million to pursue the establishment of a waste reprocessing, or recycling, plant. Waste recycling ultimately could reduce the amount of radioactive material destined for an underground geologic repository such as the one proposed at Yucca.
That earmark is being seen by critics as a tacit acknowledgement by Congress that a revamped nuclear waste policy is needed.
"It really is telling," Tessa Hafen, Sen. Harry Reid's spokeswoman, said. "It's an admission that something needs to be done differently."
Critics say Yucca has lost momentum in both Congress, where lawmakers are mulling Yucca alternatives, and inside the Energy Department, which appears to be retooling its Yucca program. In addition to ongoing legal snares and an e-mail controversy that challenged whether Yucca scientific information was falsified, critics point to other evidence:
** Domenici, traditionally a leading Yucca advocate, appears to have cooled in his enthusiasm for Yucca. Last month Domenici cryptically said Yucca "must remain alive," but then added, "I didn't say what it (Yucca) should be." In September, longtime Yucca advocate Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, publicly scrapped his support for Yucca, saying the underground repository no longer made sense. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., has said other lawmakers are quietly saying the same thing this year, calling it a "dirty little secret" in Congress that Yucca is dead.
** The Energy Department appears to be looking for ways to reinvigorate the delay-plagued Yucca program. On Oct. 25 the department issued a directive that would require waste to be shipped to Yucca in a standardized container capable of storing waste above-ground. The department denied that the move was a step away from Yucca and toward storing waste at interim, above-ground sites. But Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman also has said no final decisions have been made about the potential for establishing interim sites.
** Energy industry trade publications have been speculating that Domenici and Reid, the Senate minority leader, are quietly negotiating plans for a major shift in waste policy away from Yucca, although staffers for both senators downplay the reports. Domenici told the trade publication Energy Washington Week that he believes the Bush administration is also at work on a new waste strategy.
But Energy Department officials and Yucca advocates in Congress and in the nuclear industry insist that Yucca is on track -- and as vital as ever.
"There are a lot of demands for funding in Congress this year," said Jason Bohne, spokesman for top Yucca contractor Bechtel. "To make a unilateral statement that a cut means a loss of support (for Yucca), I'm not sure that's fair."
Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens said the budget cut would "slow" the project, but he declined to say if any jobs would be cut. Stevens sharply denied charges that Yucca is losing favor in Congress, adding that the department hopes that lawmakers will "continue to look favorably" on Yucca.
"It allows us to do what we need to do," Stevens said of the $450 million. "A half a billion dollars is not chump change. It's a significant investment."
Since 1983, the nation's waste policy has been centered on constructing a repository, and nuclear power officials are not about to abandon Yucca just because it has been slowed by years of delay, budget cuts and controversy.
Yucca advocates say the dump site is important to an ambitious industry plan to construct a new generation of U.S. nuclear power plants to feed the nation's growing demand for electricity.
Nuclear industry officials strongly oppose the proposal by Nevada lawmakers that waste be left on site at power plants. That was never a workable long-term solution, industry officials say.
And they say that recycling waste is not an alternative to Yucca because the technology would not erase the need for a geologic repository.
The administration is committed to both Yucca and recycling, Bodman said in a speech Monday at the Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference in Washington.
"Solving the problem of how to store spent fuel will reap tremendous benefits for America's future and will help set the stage for an expansion of nuclear power," Bodman said in prepared remarks. "And permanent geological storage at Yucca Mountain offers the safest, most secure solution for dealing with this challenge."
He said that pursuing recycling technology "must be considered not just a worthwhile, but necessary, goal."
Benjamin Grove can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at grove@lasvegassun.com.
----
Lawmakers Cut Funding for Yucca Mountain to $450 Million in 2006
November 08, 2005 — By Erica Werner, Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=9196
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers agreed Monday to cut 2006 spending for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump well below past-year levels and President Bush's budget request, reflecting the faltering prospects for the project in the Nevada desert.
They also ditched a House plan to supplement Yucca with interim storage sites for nuclear waste, settling instead on spending $50 million to promote recycling spent nuclear fuel.
House and Senate negotiators finished work on a $30.5 billion bill to fund energy and water projects.
They agreed to spend $450 million in 2006 on Yucca Mountain, the planned underground repository for 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste.
The project's budget was $577 million in each of the past two years, and Bush asked for $650 million for the dump in his 2006 budget request.
The final figure was also less than the House and the Senate agreed to separately earlier in the year, but lawmakers and aides said delays on the project kept the number low.
"No matter what side of Yucca you're on, the truth of the matter is Yucca is ... not on the schedule that even was predicted the last time. It's behind schedule," Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee's energy and water subcommittee, told reporters.
"We think that this will keep what should be done on schedule," he said.
Two years ago, the Energy Department projected needing $1.2 billion for Yucca Mountain in 2006. That was when officials were hoping to quickly submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and open the dump by 2010.
Since then, a series of setbacks -- including a required rewrite of radiation safety standards for the dump -- have slowed the project.
Now it's not clear when the license application will be submitted, and the projected opening date has slipped to 2012, at the earliest.
"While this funding decision may force us to go at a slower pace, it will not deter us from our principles of using sound science to develop a high-quality license application and a disposal facility that is safe and reliable to operate," said Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens.
Lawmakers deleted a House proposal to spend $10 million for the Energy Department to produce a plan for temporary aboveground storage for spent reactor fuel from commercial nuclear power plants.
Instead the bill contains $50 million for spent fuel recycling, including $20 million for states or localities to compete to host a recycling facility and $30 million for research and other work.
The bill, expected to be approved later this week by the full House and Senate, also:
--Spends $220 million to build a plant at the federal Savannah River complex in South Carolina where weapons-grade plutonium would be processed into a mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel -- a less dangerous fuel for commercial power reactors. That figure is $118 million lower than Bush's request.
--Meets Bush's $337 million budget request for the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons lab in California. Domenici had sought to slash construction funding for the project, a giant laser being built to simulate the explosion of a hydrogen bomb. Already $2.8 billion has been spent on it.
--Drops funding, as expected, for a proposed "bunker-buster" nuclear warhead. Instead the administration plans to pursue a conventional weapon that can penetrate hardened underground targets.
--Gives $5.4 billion to the Corps of Engineers, $1 billion above Bush's request. That includes $8 million requested by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., for the Corps to design a plan to bring south Louisiana up to Category Five hurricane protection.
Congress has mostly dealt with spending related to Hurricane Katrina through separate spending bills.
-------- pennsylvania
Smooth refuel for TMI Unit 1
The plant removed fuel assemblies to perform maintenance on a valve
By SEAN ADKINS
Daily Record/Sunday News
Tuesday, November 8, 2005
http://ydr.com/story/business/93548/
The seemingly still waters inside Three Mile Island Unit 1's spent fuel pool gave little clue Monday to the systematic shifting of assemblies 23 feet below the surface.
A computer-controlled arm descended into the boron-laced coolant and latched onto a fuel assembly stationed in one of the storage racks positioned at the bottom of the pool.
Under the close supervision of AmerGen Energy officials, the arm retracted, revealing a bundled nuclear fuel assembly that glowed a light blue. The glow comes from an electron-level reaction, which causes the radiated rods to give off light.
A few robotic maneuvers later, which included a trip through an underwater channel built within a concrete wall, the assembly was safely back in place inside the unit's pressurized-water reactor.
Monday was Day 14 of the unit's regularly scheduled refueling outage. Held every two years, the outage is an opportunity for site workers to swap depleted fuel assemblies with new bundles and to perform routine maintenance on various plant equipment.
Last month, roughly 1,200 contractors and tradesmen reported to the site to complete more than 12,000 operational, maintenance and testing activities at the Dauphin County nuclear power plant just across the river from Goldsboro.
So far, the outage has run smoothly with no surprises, said Rusty West, TMI's site vice president.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not identified any major concerns during this refueling and maintenance outage, said Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the NRC.
Aside from refueling, workers will install two feed-water heaters and inspect about 30,000 tubes inside the plant's two steam generators. Except for damaged tubes the plant has previously plugged, a robotic probe will snake through each tube and scan for thickness and identify cracks.
Over the years, TMI Unit 1 has plugged 1,561 tubes in its first steam generator and 765 tubes in the second steam generator, said Ralph DeSantis, a spokesman for the plant. In 2009, AmerGen will replace both steam generators, DeSantis said.
Plant officials have worked around the clock in two 12-hour shifts each day to complete the outage as quickly, safely and efficiently as possible.
A typical TMI refueling outage lasts about 40 days, DeSantis said.
Plant officials filled the unit's Outage Control Center, which sported a large wall-mounted screen displaying four separate live video feeds. The frames exhibited refueling and maintenance activities.
One field of view focused on workers in yellow protective jumpsuits and hard hats stationed at the plant's spent fuel pool. As part of the current shutdown, workers shifted all 177 fuel assembly bundles within the reactor to its neighboring spent-fuel pool in an effort to perform maintenance on a valve, DeSantis said.
At 11 a.m. Monday, the plant had moved back into place 46 fuel assembly bundles — a task that will take about 58 hours, said Stuart Brantley, a shift manager at TMI.
By the end of the outage, the spent-fuel pool will be home to 1,093 depleted bundles that date back to the start of the plant in 1974, said Howard Crawford, reactor engineering manager at TMI. The 40-foot-deep pool is large enough to accommodate a steady flow of spent fuel assemblies until 2025, he said.
In 2007, the plant will install additional spent-fuel storage racks "that will carry us to 2025," Crawford said.
Reach Sean Adkins at 771-2047 or sadkins@ydr.com.
-------- south dakota
Energy Metals Acquires Additional Claims in South Dakota
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(CCNMatthews - Nov. 8, 2005)
http://www.dakotavoice.com/200511/20051109_7.html
Energy Metals Corporation (TSX VENTURE:EMC) is pleased to announce the acquisition of approximately 4,750 acres of prospective uranium holdings in South Dakota. The acquisition includes a cash purchase of 32 unpatented mining claims in Fall River County, south western South Dakota from a single vendor. The 32 claims form one claim block covering approximately 640 acres.
The Company has staked another block of 87 unpatented lode claims in adjacent Custer County. These two claim blocks are located approximately 2 miles apart. Both are considered to be a part of the Dewey Burdock area and are reported to have been extensively drill tested in the past. The claims were most recently held by International Uranium Corporation (IUC-T), successor in title to Energy Fuels Corporation through the 2000 assessment year. This acquisition brings EMC's total mineral rights to over 2400 acres within the district.
In addition, the Company has acquired, by live bid, four tracts of state lease property in southwestern South Dakota, comprised of 640 acres in Fall River County and 1,652 acres in Custer County. Three of these tracts are located approximately 6 miles to the northeast of the Company's Dewey Burdock claims. The other tract is located immediately adjacent to and covers part of the October Jynx deposit, some 6 miles to the southeast of the Dewey Burdock area. The October Jynx area was extensively explored by Union Carbide during the 1970s. A complete data search and review is underway on all of the South Dakota properties.
Energy Metals Corporation is a Canadian listed company involved in developing resources to power the 21st century. The Company has adopted a corporate strategy to focus on the acquisition and development of uranium assets in politically favorable and mining-friendly jurisdictions within the United States to take advantage of the continuing growth in the U.S. and worldwide of demand for electrical energy. This increasing consumption is occurring at a time when uranium mine supplies are dwindling and inventories are being depleted.
The Company is targeting advanced uranium prospective properties in Wyoming that are amenable to ISL (in-situ-leaching). This form of uranium mining was pioneered in Wyoming. It utilizes water wells and oxygen-fortified groundwater to mine the uranium in place. Energy Metals Corporation is also actively advancing other conventional mining and ISL opportunities for uranium properties in the States of Utah, Nevada, Oregon and Arizona.
-------- tennessee
Y-12 sick benefits group expands
Rule change will pay damages to more workers
By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com
November 8, 2005 Knoxville News
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_4220507,00.html
OAK RIDGE - A rule change will make it easier for some Oak Ridge workers or their survivors to collect money from a federal fund set up to compensate those made sick at the government's nuclear weapons facilities.
People who worked at the Y-12 plant between March 1943 and December 1947 will now be considered a "special exposure cohort," according to the latest ruling by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.
The Y-12 employees will qualify for payments up to $150,000 if they worked at the Oak Ridge plant for at least 250 days and developed one of 22 types of cancer specified in the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. Congress enacted the compensation program in 2000.
By gaining special cohort status, the early Y-12 workers won't have to go through a lengthy "dose reconstruction" process to prove their radiation exposure at Y-12 was sufficient to have caused the cancer.
The special cohort status previously had been afforded to workers at the nation's three gaseous diffusion plants, including the K-25 facility at Oak Ridge, which enriched uranium for A-bomb and nuclear reactors. The other two are at Paducah, Ky., and Portsmouth, Ohio.
According to Shirley White, who manages the federal program's resource center in Oak Ridge, 2,542 K-25 employees or their survivors have collected a total of $264,402,622 as of Nov. 2.
The rule change will help those employees who worked at Y-12 during its early days when the plant enriched uranium for the first atomic bomb. It wasn't immediately clear how many applications for compensation would be affected.
After World War II, Y-12's mission was converted from uranium enrichment to other activities, including manufacture of bomb parts.
Advocacy groups have pushed for years to get the program's special cohort status extended to include most, if not all, employees who worked at federal nuclear facilities - including Y-12 and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The newest rule affects only a limited group of Y-12 workers, but it still was welcome news.
"It's a step forward, but it's not the solution," Harry Williams of the Coalition for a Healthy Environment said Monday. "We're not going to give up until we can pretty well get everyone who worked in the nuclear industry up until 1992."
Williams said it's "ludicrous" to think that the hazards varied much from facility to facility.
NIOSH is considering another petition that would expand the group of Y-12 workers eligible for special cohort status. It would include those who worked there from 1948 to 1957.
For more information, contact the Energy Employees Resource Center in Oak Ridge at 865-481-0411 or visit the Web site at www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/owcp/eeoicp/main.htm.
Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329.
-------- virginia
Nuclear station decision delayed
By Megan Rowe / Charlottesville, Va. Daily Progress staff writer
November 8, 2005
http://www.dailyprogress.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=CDP%2FMGArticle%2FCDP_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1128768010048&path=!news
RICHMOND - The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has again postponed a decision that could affect the future of Dominion Power’s North Anna nuclear power station.
Dominion is seeking an early site permit from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that would allow it to build additional reactors at North Anna. Officials have said they have no definite plans to build more reactors but want to be prepared for future demands on electricity.
DEQ originally planned to decide by Sept. 20 if additional reactors would be consistent with federal coastal zone management but gave Dominion a 45-day extension.
Dominion has requested another extension so that officials can provide DEQ with more information about the closed-cycle cooling system a third reactor would use.
Dominion had planned to use Lake Anna water to cool a third reactor, but officials decided last month to instead use a cooling tower that would rely on a combination of water and air. Using the tower would reduce the amount of evaporation from Lake Anna that the third reactor would cause, Dominion spokesman Richard Zeurcher said.
If DEQ finds Dominion’s plans inconsistent with federal coastal zone management, then the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would work with Dominion and DEQ “until the issue is resolved,” NRC spokesman Scott Burnell said. “Whether that’s with Dominion modifying their proposal or perhaps withdrawing their proposal, that remains to be seen.”
DEQ is awaiting more information from Dominion before setting a new deadline.
Contact Megan Rowe at (434) 978-7267 or mrowe@dailyprogress.com.
-------- us nuc waste
Uranium ash headed to landfill
By By Wynne Everett
Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Pittsburgh Tribune
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/s_392234.html
East Huntingdon Township residents have nothing to fear from a load of radioactive ash that will make its way to a local landfill, according to officials who planned the disposal.
"It's almost negligible, the dose," said Bob Kossak, director of the Kiski Valley Water Pollution Control Authority, which is preparing to send 12,000 cubic meters of uranium-contaminated ash from a former water-treatment lagoon in Allegheny Township.
The ash was contaminated with uranium between 1978 and 1984 by water from the former Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. and its successor companies, Atlantic-Richfield Co. and Babcock & Wilcox.
The state Department of Environmental Protection has issued a permit for the authority to clean up the lagoon and move the ash to a municipal landfill in East Huntingdon Township.
Kossak said residents who are calling for a second review of the plan are reacting to sensational reports and misinformation about the danger posed by the waste.
To qualify to bid for the lagoon ash, landfills had to show the DEP that they will not emit more than 1 millirem of radiation when the ash is added to their facilities. "We're talking about one millirem a year," Kossak said. "You probably get more than that flying to Cleveland."
The Web site of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management states that a millirem measures the effects of radiation on the human body, much as degrees measure temperature.
A person's average exposure to radiation in the United States is about 360 millirem per year, the Web site states.
But residents, elected officials and school authorities in East Huntingdon still are concerned.
Southmoreland School District Superintendent John Halfhill said the district wants help from local elected officials and has asked Gov. Ed Rendell to intercede with DEP to stop the ash transfer.
"It's very disturbing," Halfhill said.
The district already has concerns about the Greenridge Landfill, which sits about 100 yards from a complex of three school buildings serving 1,500 students.
"My biggest concern is we already monitor how much methane is coming from there, and we know it travels underground in old mine shafts," Halfhill said. "I don't know what else can travel in those shafts."
Julie Martinosky lives nearby in the old mining community of Alverton. She is concerned by claims -- made in lawsuits, but never proven -- that more than 400 Kiski Valley residents and former workers have died or have developed illnesses caused by the nuclear-fuel processing at a plant in Apollo and the company landfill in Parks.
"I'm real concerned with this because there are obvious health issues," Martinosky said. "I don't think it should be coming here. It seems like a money issue."
Some Kiski Valley activists agree. A group of about a dozen local residents spoke out against the ash-removal plan at an August public hearing. They said the lagoon ash should be treated like other material cleaned from former NUMEC and B&W sites.
It should be sent to a low-level nuclear waste facility, not a municipal landfill, they said.
The authority plans to spend about $600,000 to remove the ash and dispose of it in the Greenridge landfill. An executive from one of the companies that disposed of nuclear waste from other Kiski Valley sites said disposing of the ash in a low-level nuclear waste facility would cost about $19 million.
Kossak would not say Monday when the ash removal would begin.
DEP issued permits for the cleanup in late October, and the authority has one year to complete the project.
East Huntingdon Township supervisors and the Southmoreland School District have sent letters to the agency asking for a second review of the plan.
DEP officials did not return calls for comment on the matter yesterday.
"I don't think the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) or the state would approve the plan unless it was safe," Kossak said.
-------- MILITARY
-------- chemical weapons
Did the US military use chemical weapons in Iraq?
An Italian state-run TV documentary says yes, a charge the US calls 'disinformation.'
November 8, 2005 at 11:00 a.m.
By Tom Regan
csmonitor.com
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1108/dailyUpdate.html?s=mesdu
RAI, the all news state-run satellite channel in Italy, aired a documentary Tuesday that accused the United States of using chemical weapons against the civilian population during a November 2004 bombardment of Fallujah. AKI, the Italian news agency, reports that the documentary, entitled "Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre" and aired on the first aniversary of the assault on insurgents in Fallujah, includes interviews with former US soldiers and with residents of Fallujah who say that during the assault on the city the US military used the chemical white phosphorus.
"I heard the order being issued to be careful because white phosphorus was being used on Fallujah. In military slang this is known as Willy Pete. Phosphorus burns bodies, melting the flesh right down to the bone," says one former US solider, interviewed by the documentary's director, Sigfrido Ranucci.
"I saw the burned bodies of women and children. The phosophorous explodes and forms a plume. Who ever is within a 150 metre radius has no hope," the former soldier adds.
RAI says the use of white phosphorus in built-up areas amounts to the illegal use of chemical weapons, although the BBC notes that such bombs are considered incendiary devices. The US military admits to using the weapon to illuminate battlefields in Iraq, and says it did so in Fallujah, but insists it did not use it in civilian areas. Washington is not a signatory of an international treaty restricting white phosphorus devices.
La Repubblica, the Italian newspaper which recently broke the story on the Italian government's involvement with the forged Niger-Iraq uranium documents, reports the documentary also broadcast what it claimed is proof of the use in Iraq of a new napalm formula called MK77. The use of the incendiary substance on civilians is forbidden by a 1980 UN treaty. The use of chemical weapons is forbidden by a treaty that the US signed in 1997.
The Independent reports that ever since the assault, "rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city." But the US denied the charges last year, saying "The fighting in Fallujah, Iraq has led to a number of widespread myths including false charges that the United States is using chemical weapons such napalm and poison gas. None of these allegations are true."
The United States categorically denies the use of chemical weapons at any time in Iraq, which includes the ongoing Fallujah operation. Furthermore, the United States does not under any circumstance support or condone the development, production, acquisition, transfer or use of chemical weapons by any country. All chemical weapons currently possessed by the United States have been declared to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and are being destroyed in the United States in accordance with our obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
The US also denied charges by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, that US forces were using "poisonous gases" during a recent battle in the Iraqi city of Tall Afar, saying "those who wish to discredit the United States find it useful to invent the false charge that the United States is using such weapons. "
The Independent reports, however, that the documentary offers video and photographs it alleges proves that the white phosphorus was used "indiscriminately" on both insurgents and the civilian population.
Photographs on the website of RaiTG24, the broadcaster's 24-hours news channel, show exactly what the former [US] soldier means. Provided by the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, dozens of high-quality, colour close-ups show bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved .... or turned the consistency of leather by the shells.
The BBC reports that the US denounced the documentary as "disinformation." It aired a day after Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, came to Italy for a five-day visit.
The documentary began with formerly classified footage of the Americans using napalm bombs during the Vietnam War. The film repeated accusations that Washington has systematically attempted to destroy filmed evidence of the alleged use of chemical weapons in the attack on Falluja last November.
Italian public opinion has been consistently against the war and the RAI documentary can only reinforce calls here for a pullout of Italian soldiers as soon as possible, our correspondent says.
Last March 3, an article in AlJazeera.com (a site different than the one for the more familiar Al Jazzera satellite TV channel) carried a report that alleged a Dr. Khalid ash Shaykhli, an Iraqi health ministry official, told a Baghdad press conference that the US military had used internationally banned chemical weapons, including nerve gas. The US information service wrote later that month that the story of Dr. Shaykhli was fabricated, and claimed the press conference never took place.
----
US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah
By Peter Popham
08 November 2005 UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article325560.ece
Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.
Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city.
On 10 November last year, the Islam Online website wrote: "US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah, a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein's alleged gassing of the Kurds in 1988."
The website quoted insurgent sources as saying: "The US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally banned chemical weapons."
In December the US government formally denied the reports, describing them as "widespread myths". "Some news accounts have claimed that US forces have used 'outlawed' phosphorus shells in Fallujah," the USinfo website said. "Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes.
"They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."
But now new information has surfaced, including hideous photographs and videos and interviews with American soldiers who took part in the Fallujah attack, which provides graphic proof that phosphorus shells were widely deployed in the city as a weapon.
In a documentary to be broadcast by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, this morning, a former American soldier who fought at Fallujah says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete.
"Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for."
Photographs on the website of RaiTG24, the broadcaster's 24-hours news channel, www.rainews24.it, show exactly what the former soldier means. Provided by the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, dozens of high-quality, colour close-ups show bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised or turned the consistency of leather by the shells.
A biologist in Fallujah, Mohamad Tareq, interviewed for the film, says: "A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact."
The documentary, entitled Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, also provides what it claims is clinching evidence that incendiary bombs known as Mark 77, a new, improved form of napalm, was used in the attack on Fallujah, in breach of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of 1980, which only allows its use against military targets.
Meanwhile, five US soldiers from the elite 75th Ranger Regiment have been charged with kicking and punching detainees in Iraq.
The news came as a suicide car bomber killed four American soldiers at a checkpoint south of Baghdad yesterday.
-------- prisoners of war
President Bush: "We Do Not Torture"
Tuesday, November 8th, 2005
Headlines Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/08/1516221
In Panama on Monday, President Bush responded to increasing criticism over the mistreatment of detainees overseas. "We are finding terrorists and bringing them to justice. We are gathering information about where the terrorists may be hiding," Bush said. "We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans. Anything we do to that end in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture."
Bush Refuses To Answer Questions on Secret CIA Jails
But President Bush refused to directly answer whether he would allow the Red Cross to have access to prisoners held by the CIA or whether he agreed with Vice President Cheney that the CIA should be exempt from legislation to ban torture.
Senate Prepares to Vote on Investigating Prisoner Abuse
On Capitol Hill, the Senate is preparing to vote as earlier as today on creating an independent commission to investigate prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
Supreme Court To Rule on Guantanamo Military Tribunals
The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it will decide whether the Bush administration can use military tribunals to try detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay. In July a three-judge federal appeals court upheld that a tribunal made up entirely of military officials could try and sentence Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemini man accused of being Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard and driver. On Monday Chief Justice John Roberts recused himself from the case since he was one of the appeals court judges who previously ruled on the case.
Canadian Teen At Guantanamo to Face Military Tribunal
The Pentagon filed war crimes charges against five more detainees at Guantanamo. Those charged include Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who has been held by the US since he was 15 years old. Khadr's attorney Muneer Ahmad protested Monday's decision saying "Through torture, abuse, and three years of illegal detention, this government has robbed Omar of his youth... The fact that this Administration has seen fit to designate a child for trial by military commission is abhorrent." The Bush administration has refused to provide assurances that they will not seek the death penalty against him. Khadr was detained in Afghanistan allegedly after throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier.
Pentagon Issues New Directive on Prisoner Interrogation
The Pentagon has issued a new directive on the interrogation of prisoners held by US soldiers. According to the New York Times the new directive prohibits 'acts of physical or mental torture." But the Times reports the Bush administration still hasn't decide whether to ban "cruel" and "humiliating" punishment. The new directive does not apply to CIA interrogators.
Five U.S. Soldiers Charged With Beating Iraqi Detainees
The military announced Monday five U.S. soldiers had been charged with punching and kicking detainees in Iraq. The beatings occurred two months ago.
-------- spies
Iran: Debris From U.S. Spy Planes Found
Tuesday, November 8th, 2005
Headlines Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/08/1516221
The Iranian government is claiming it has found the wreckage of two U.S. spy planes inside its borders. The planes reportedly crashed during the summer. Iran disclosed the find at the United Nations on Monday where it accused the United States of breaking international law and violating its sovereignty. Earlier this year Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker reported that the Pentagon has begun secretly sending forces in to Iran to identify possible future military targets.
Chalabi Heads Back to D.C.; No Investigation Yet on Iran Spy Charges
The Wall Street Journal reports 17 months have passed since the Bush administration announced a full criminal inquiry into allegations that Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi leaked U.S. intelligence secrets to Iran. The FBI hasn't even interviewed Chalabi or any U.S. official connected to the matter. Chalabi is arriving in Washington today for his first official visit in two years. He is planning on speaking at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday and will be meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary John Snow.
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Army reaches low, fills ranks
12% of recruits in Oct. had lowest acceptable scores
By Tom Bowman - Baltimore Sun reporter
Associated Press
November 8, 2005
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news5/baltsun5.htm
WASHINGTON // The number of new recruits who scored at the bottom of the Army's aptitude test tripled last month, Pentagon officials said, helping the nation's largest armed service meet its October recruiting goal but raising concerns about the quality of the force.
Former Army Secretary Thomas E. White said the service was making a mistake by lowering its standards. "I think it's disastrous. You are throwing the towel in on recruiting quality," said White, a retired general whom Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld fired in 2003 over other policy differences.
"We have clear experience from the 1970s with recruiting a sizable number of people from the lowest mental categories," said White. After the Vietnam War, the Army accepted a higher proportion of low-scoring recruits, leading to training and discipline problems, he added.
To achieve last month's recruiting targets, 12 percent of those accepted by the Army had the lowest acceptable results. They scored between 16 and 30 points out of a possible 99 on an aptitude test that quizzes potential soldiers on general science, mathematics and word knowledge.
No more than 4 percent of all recruits can come from that lowest category, according to Pentagon limits. Army officials insisted they would still meet the 4 percent goal - despite the October spike - when numbers are tallied for an entire year. October is the first month of the service's fiscal year, which will end Sept. 30, 2006.
"We're on track to meet our 4 percent annual goal," said Lt. Col. Brian Hilferty, a spokesman for Army personnel. He declined to comment on the 12 percent figure. "It's very early in the year," he said.
The National Guard's October recruit pool included 6 percent from the lowest-scoring category, though Guard officials also said they expected that figure to drop below the 4 percent ceiling by the time the recruiting year ends. Defense officials discussed the numbers on the condition of anonymity. The recruiting figures will be officially released later this week.
The number of poor-scoring recruits brought in by the Army Reserve, which officials said also achieved its monthly recruiting goal in October, could not be determined.
Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University, said he was concerned that the reduction in the quality standards for military recruiting signaled a return by the Army to the troubled personnel era of the 1970s. He said the military must come up with new ways to attract better recruits.
The Army, which has about 492,000 soldiers, hopes to attract 80,000 recruits in 2006 as part of an effort to increase the size of the force by 30,000 during the next several years. The Army National Guard has a goal of 70,000 recruits over the next year, to maintain its force of 350,000.
Officials blame the recruiting problems on the deadly war in Iraq and an improved economic climate at home, which has made it more difficult to sign up volunteers for military duty.
Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey told reporters last month that the Army would begin accepting more people who scored in the bottom third on the military's aptitude test, increasing the proportion to 4 percent from 2 percent. The Army had kept the figure at 2 percent since 1990.
But Harvey did not say that the Army already had brought in 4 percent - or roughly 2,900 of its 73,000 recruits - from the lowest category for the 2005 recruiting year, which ended Sept. 30. In 2004, the Army accepted just 440 soldiers from the lowest category, or about 0.6 percent of 70,000 recruits.
The National Guard also doubled its number of low-scoring recruits for the 2005 recruiting year, accounting for 4 percent of its 50,219 recruits.
Even with the lower standards, the Army and the National Guard fell short of their 2005 goals. When the annual recruiting cycle ended in September, the active-duty Army was about 7,000 shy of its goal and the Guard fell about 13,000 short.
In the early years of the all-volunteer Army, much larger percentages of low-scoring recruits were admitted - as high as 50 percent in some years.
Congress and successive administrations imposed stricter quality controls. In 1984, 13 percent of the Army's recruits came from the lowest-scoring category. That figure fell to single digits in the late 1980s and has been at 2 percent or below since 1990.
Federal law allows the military to take up to 20 percent annually from the lowest category, though officials insist they will not go above the Pentagon's stricter limit.
Lt. Col. Mike Jones, deputy director of recruiting for the National Guard, said the military's aptitude test was only a "predictor" of how a recruit would perform in uniform. He said the dropout rate - those who leave after basic training and before the end of their three-year enlistment - was actually lower for those scoring at the bottom than it was for those scoring at the top, according to a study of recruits over the past 10 years.
Those in the three highest-scoring segments have a dropout rate of 50.9 percent, compared with 47.4 percent for the lowest-scoring recruits, Jones said. He also said the number of disciplinary problems was roughly the same among soldiers in the two groups, pointing to the study.
But Moskos and other analysts say that with high-tech weapons systems and ever-more-sophisticated equipment, the Army needs higher-aptitude recruits.
Moskos, an Army veteran, said the recruiting problems could prompt the military to turn increasingly to recent immigrants in filling its ranks. Another option: tapping the pool of recent college graduates by offering an enlistment of 15 months, instead of the current three years, an idea Moskos said has been gaining attention among Army generals.
Moskos also said the recruiting woes might pressure Congress and senior military leaders to draw down the number of troops in Iraq.
As a lure for new recruits over the next year, the Army and other services are pushing for higher sign-up bonuses.
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U.S. Broadcast Exclusive - "Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre" on the U.S. Use of Napalm-Like White Phosphorus Bombs
Tuesday, November 8th, 2005
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/08/1516227
Democracy Now! airs an exclusive excerpt of "Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre," featuring interviews with U.S. soldiers, Iraqi doctors and international journalists on the U.S. attack on Fallujah. Produced by Italian state broadcaster RAI TV, the documentary charges U.S. warplanes illegally dropped white phosphorus incendiary bombs on civilian populations, burning the skin off Iraqi victims. One U.S. soldier charges this amounts to the U.S. using chemical weapons against the Iraqi people. [includes rush transcript] Today marks the one-year anniversary of the U.S. assault on the Sunni city of Fallujah when U.S. and Iraqi military forced out the town's residents, bombed hospitals and buildings, attacked whole neighborhoods, and denied entry to relief workers. In a North American broadcast exclusive, we bring you an excerpt from a new film that accuses the U.S. of using white phosphorus as a weapon in the Fallujah attack.
10,000 buildings were destroyed, with thousands more seriously damaged. At least 100,000 residents were permanently displaced, over 70 U.S. soldiers were killed, and the Iraqi death toll is unknown. Independent journalist Dahr Jamail was a one of the few un-embedded, independent reporters in Iraq at the time. On our program, he first reported U.S. troops were using chemical weapons in Iraq.
- Dahr Jamail, speaking on Democracy Now!, November 2004:
"I have interviewed many refugees over the last week coming out of Fallujah at different times from different locations within the city. The consistent stories that I have been getting have been refugees describing phosphorus weapons, horribly burned bodies, fires that burn on people when they touch these weapons, and they are unable to extinguish the fires even after dumping large amounts of water on the people. Many people are reporting cluster bombs, as well. And these are coming from the camps that I have been to, different people who have emerged from Fallujah anywhere from one week ago up to on through up toward near the very beginning of the siege."
Almost one year after these allegations came to light, a new documentary claims to provide fresh evidence of the use of chemical weapons in Fallujah. In the film, eyewitnesses and ex-US soldiers say white phosphorus bombs were used in Fallujah. Rai says this amounts to the illegal use of chemical weapons and says they were used indiscriminately against civilian populations.
In a North American broadcast exclusive, we bring you an excerpt from the film.
"Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre," a documentary by Sigfrido Ranucci and Maurizio Torrealta. Broadcast today on the Italian state television network RAI.
http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/video/fallujah_ING.wmv
AMY GOODMAN: This is Dahr Jamail speaking on Democracy Now! just under a year ago.
DAHR JAMAIL: I have interviewed many refugees over the last week coming out of Fallujah, different times from different locations within the city. The consistent stories that I've been getting have been refugees describing phosphorus weapons, horribly burned bodies, fires that burn on people when they touch these weapons. And they're unable to extinguish the fires even after dumping large amounts of water on the people. Many people are reporting cluster bombs, as well. And these are coming from different camps that I've been to, different people who have emerged from Fallujah, anywhere from one week ago up to -- on through up towards near the very beginning of the siege.
AMY GOODMAN: Independent journalist Dahr Jamail, appearing on Democracy Now! November 28, 2004. Almost a year after these allegations came to light a new documentary claims to provide fresh evidence of the use of chemical weapons in Fallujah. The documentary is called Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre. It premieres today on the Italian television network, RAI . In the film, eyewitnesses and ex-U.S. soldiers say white phosphorus bombs were used in Fallujah. RAI says this amounts to the illegal use of chemical weapons and says they were used indiscriminately and against civilian populations.
In a North American broadcast exclusive, today we bring you an excerpt from the film. We'll then be joined by one of the filmmakers, one of the soldiers involved in the Fallujah siege, and we'll be joined by the Pentagon in Baghdad. The Pentagon denies the allegations it used chemical weapons in Iraq. First to the documentary, Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre. It's by Sigfrido Ranucci and Maurizio Torrealta, broadcast today on RAI network.
JEFF ENGLEHART: I was personally involved with escorting a commander to Fallujah for Operation Phantom Fury. We were told going into Fallujah, into the combat area, that every single person that was walking, talking, breathing was an enemy combatant. As such, every single person that was walking down the street or in a house was a target.
REPORTER: Is it true that you had orders to shoot even children of ten years old?
JEFF ENGLEHART: This is actually very interesting. When we first got to Iraq, the army had a set standard for male combat ages. And I believe when we first got there, it was like 18 years old was the commonly perceived age of adulthood. So a male who was 18 years old to 65 was technically capable of being an insurgent. By the time Fallujah rolled around it was any male with an AK-47 or gun or whatever was a military target. And I think that is true to a degree. I mean, if – and it happened. There was many times where children as young as ten were fighting.
REPORTER: What will you tell your child about the battle of Fallujah?
JEFF ENGLEHART: It seemed like just a massive killing of Arabs. It looked like just a massive killing.
NARRATOR: We weren't able to see anything of this mass killing. Information coming out of Fallujah is dangerous. The few who tried to show it know something about that. Iraqi police arrested two journalists from al-Arabiya last March, and their videocassettes were confiscated. The freelance journalist Enzo Baldoni, who was killed in Iraq, was working on Fallujah in the last few weeks, just like the Il Manifesto journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, who was kidnapped carrying out an inquiry into the refugees of the city. A suspicion arises as to whether the story of exporting democracy to Fallujah was meant to be told or not.
REPORTER: Did you gather any particular information about Fallujah?
GIULIANA SGRENA: [translated from Italian] Not only in Fallujah. I had heard stories from the inhabitants about the use of certain weapons like napalm in Baghdad during the battle at the airport in April 2003. And then I had collected just before going to interview the city refugees testimonies from other inhabitants from Fallujah about the use of guns and white phosphorus. In particular, some women had tried to enter their homes, and they had found a certain dust spread all over the house. The Americans themselves had told them to clean the houses with detergents, because that dust was very dangerous. In fact, they had some effect on their bodies, leading some very strange things. I would have liked to interview those persons, but unfortunately my kidnappers, who were said to be part of Fallujah's resistance, had forbidden me to tell what I have known about Fallujah by kidnapping me.
This world cannot have witnessed this. It cannot have witnessed it, because it’s based on lies. The Americans have permitted only to embedded journalists to go to Fallujah. Despite that, for example, the image of the Marine that shoots the wounded and unarmed warrior inside the Fallujah mosque has gone out. But exactly because this image has gone out, we do not know how, and because it has circulated all over the world, the embassy journalist that has reported it has been immediately expelled from the embedded body.
AMY GOODMAN: Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena. Sgrena drew international headlines when she was kidnapped in Iraq only to have U.S. soldiers fire on her vehicle after she was released, injuring her and killing the Italian intelligence agent who had saved her. We are now going to go to the excerpt of the RAI documentary where Specialist Jeff Englehart speaks. We want to warn our TV viewers that some of the scenes you are about to see are extremely graphic.
REPORTER: Were any chemical weapons used in Fallujah?
JEFF ENGLEHART: From the U.S. military, yeah, absolutely. White phosphorus. Possibly napalm may or may not have been used; I do not know. I do know that white phosphorus was used, which is definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, a chemical weapon.
REPORTER: Is he sure of it?
JEFF ENGLEHART: Yes. It happened.
REPORTER: How can he be certain?
JEFF ENGLEHART: Well, it comes across radio as a general transmission. When it happens like that, you hear it on the radio through -- we have speakers in our trucks -- speakers and then the transmission goes to the speakers, so it's audible. And as they'd say, “In five [inaudible], we're going drop some Whiskey Pete.” “Roger. Commence bombing.” I mean, it just comes across the radio, and like, when you hear “Whiskey Pete,” that's the military slang.
NARRATOR: Contrary to what was said by the U.S. State Department, white phosphorus was not used in the open field to illuminate enemy troops. For this, tracer was used. A rain of fire shot from U.S. helicopters on the city of Fallujah on the night of the 8th of November. [inaudible] will show you in this exceptional documentary, which proves that a chemical agent was used in a massive and indiscriminate way in districts of Fallujah. In the days that followed, U.S. satellite images showed Fallujah burned out and razed to the ground.
JEFF ENGLEHART: The gases from the warhead of the white phosphorus will disperse in a cloud. And when it makes contact with skin, then it's absolutely irreversible damage, burning of flesh to the bone. It doesn't necessarily burn clothes, but it will burn the skin underneath clothes. And this is why protective masks do not help, because it will burn right through the mask, the rubber of the mask. It will manage to get inside your face. If you breathe it, it will blister your throat and your lungs until you suffocate, and then it will burn you from the inside. It basically reacts to skin, oxygen and water. The only way to stop the burning is with wet mud. But at that point, it's just impossible to stop.
REPORTER: Have you seen the effects of these weapons?
JEFF ENGLEHART: Yes. Burned. Burned bodies. I mean, it burned children, and it burned women. White phosphorus kills indiscriminately. It's a cloud that will within, in most cases, 150 meters of impact will disperse, and it will burn every human being or animal.
REPORTER: Some footage has shown violations inside mosques, black crosses painted on the walls and on the Koran. Do you know anything about this?
JEFF ENGLEHART: I don't doubt that American soldiers who are frustrated after being involved in combat for a year would have any problems with doing any kind of vandalism. I mean, it's very common. Indiscriminate vandalism was found – I mean, there was carvings in the walls at Babylon, an ancient structure, a historical monument. It was common for soldiers to carve, you know, “Hello, mom, I'm from Texas,” on these walls. I just think there's a certain lack of respect within the American military ranks, especially when dealing with soldiers who are frustrated. I personally did not witness any mosque vandalism. Our brigade was good about keeping that very controlled. But I did hear stories. Places such as Samarra, Baghdad, Mosul, mosques being attacked, mosques being vandalized, the Koran being damaged. I think it's very common.
REPORTER: Is it true that you waited for the results of elections, confirmation of victory for Bush, before bombing Fallujah?
JEFF ENGLEHART: I’m glad you brought this question up. That was definitely the case. Even in the ranks, in the military ranks, we knew it was going on. They told us that we were going to wait after the election, the American election, before going into Fallujah. And we had already set up the whole operation, like it was ready to go. And we were waiting for two or three days for the election to be over with. And then when the election was so close between Kerry and Bush, it was always pissing off a lot of the high command, because they wanted to hurry up and get in there and get it going. And they didn't want what happened in 2000 with Gore and Bush, the long drawn-out process that lasted almost a week to find out who won. When Kerry conceded, though, it was like within a matter of a day, it was going, it was happening. That was definitely the case. We waited until after the election. We were told directly from the Pentagon to wait until after the election before going into Fallujah, and that's exactly what we did.
NARRATOR: Alice Mahon was a Labour parliamentarian from 1987 until a few months ago, until she decided to walk out on Westminster. Mrs. Mahon had, since 2003, put forward several Parliamentary inquiries demanding information from the Defense Ministry as to whether the United States had used chemical weapons. And the ministry, after several attempts to deny any knowledge, wrote back on the 13th of June, 2005, with the following: “I regret to tell you that I am sincerely sorry that this is not the truth, and that now we must correct it. The U.S.A. destroyed their arsenal of napalm used in Vietnam in 2001, but emerging from military reports from Marines in service in 2003, it shows that MK-77 was used. The incendiary bomb MK-77 does not have the same composition as napalm, but it has the same destructive effect. The Pentagon has informed us that these devices are not generally used in areas where civilians are present.”
ALICE MAHON: I didn’t lose my seat. I deliberately stood down, because I didn't want to be part of a government that was conducting an illegal and bloody war against people who had done us no harm whatsoever. Well, I heard from the American military at the beginning of the war, at the beginning of the bombardments of Iraq, there was an admission by the American military that they had used a substance similar to napalm when they first went into Iraq. I put the question down. And as you can see, the reply was “No, they hadn't.” My government were not aware of it. Now, I'm afraid some of us do not believe everything we're told at the moment, and so I did pursue it, even when I stood down from Parliament. And months later, we did get an admission from the Ministry of Defense, from the minister himself, that a similar substance to napalm had been used in the bombardments of Iraq.
REPORTER: The U.N. convention signed by the U.S. had banned napalm. Is MK-77 very different?
ALICE MAHON: No, it isn't. It has exactly the same effect when it's fired at people. It burns them. It destroys things. It melts bodies. It’s exactly the same effect. And what, of course – what is in a name if it does this to people? I think the Americans are wrong to use it. I think my government are wrong to help in the cover up of it being used. But, of course, in this war we've seen the United Nations Charter broken and defied over and over again.
REPORTER: Why didn’t the United States ever sign the convention abolishing these weapons?
ALICE MAHON: Well, the United States, of course, do that. They go around lecturing the rest of the world on their rights and responsibilities and have taken note of what the U.N. said. Of course, they had a lot to say to the Iraqi government about obeying United Nations resolutions. They, themselves, think they are above it.
REPORTER: This war started with the intention to look for weapons of mass destruction. Is it not paradoxical that chemical weapons were in the end used by the United States?
ALICE MAHON: Absolutely. The hypocrisy is absolutely stinking. There were no weapons of mass destruction. This was a broken-back dictator who was a threat to no one. In my view, the Americans wanted to control the oil in the region. I'm afraid there is no hiding place from America and Britain in this war. The facts will come out, and Bush and my prime minister will be exposed.
AMY GOODMAN: Scenes from Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre from RAI TV in Italy, the state broadcaster. Here to discuss the chemical weapons allegations, we will be joined by the Pentagon, by the U.S. former soldier who was making the allegations of white phosphorus used in Fallujah. And we'll also be joined by the Italian television producer of the broadcast.
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A Debate: Did the U.S. Military Attack Iraqi Civilians With White Phosphorous Bombs in Violation of the Geneva Conventions?
Tuesday, November 8th, 2005
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/08/1516232
- Maurizio Torrealta, News Editor for the Italian television RAI and co-producer of the film "Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre."
- Jeff Englehart, former army Specialist in Iraq. He maintains a weblog called Fight to Survive
- Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, spokesperson for the U.S. military in Iraq.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: We have just aired the North American exclusive broadcast of the Italian state broadcaster RAI that today on this first anniversary of the siege of Fallujah broadcasts this documentary. It is called Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre. Here to discuss chemical weapons allegations, we're joined on the telephone by Maurizio Torrealta. He is news editor for the Italian state broadcaster RAI, co-producer of this documentary. He joins us from Italy. Jeff Englehart is with us. He served as an army specialist in Iraq in Fallujah, interviewed in the film. He is joining us from Colorado, maintains the weblog, "Fight to Survive." You can find it at www.FTSSoldier.blogspot.com, on the line with us from Colorado Springs. And on the phone from Baghdad is Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, spokesperson for the U.S. military in Iraq. We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let us begin with our spokesperson on the phone with us from Iraq, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan of the U.S. military. Your response to the documentary, Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre?
LT. COL. STEVE BOYLAN: Well, I did not get a chance to view it. I have heard what was played over your program. And I would say, for the most part, the elements that I heard, for the most part, are tantamount to propaganda, falsehoods and rumors. To address some of that, they're calling white phosphorus an illegal weapon. And that is an error. It's a perfectly legal weapon to use by all conventions of land warfare. The soldier that is stating that it is a chemical weapon and illegal is in error, as is his assertions that elements were waiting for elections and all other types of things about when the attacks were to happen. Again, he's completely in error, and based on his position he would not have any knowledge of the decisions that were made at the national strategic level or at the headquarters of multinational forces of Iraq. So again, he is basing his assumptions off of rumor and hearsay.
AMY GOODMAN: Lieutenant Colonel Boylan, I just wanted to read to you something from Knight Ridder. They are quoting a senior Iraqi Defense Ministry official who requested anonymity because he wasn't an authorized spokesman. This from Knight Ridder. It says, "We had to stop some operations until the U.S. elections were over. The Iraqi government requested support from the American side in the past, but the Americans were reluctant to launch military operations because they were worried about American public opinion. Now their hands are free." And this was a piece that appeared out of Knight Ridder, November 3, 2004, with the headline, "Bush Expected to Move Quickly on Iraq." This after the election.
LT. COL. STEVE BOYLAN: Again, that is an error. I am one of the individuals who sat in on many of these meetings so that we could plan all the events. Media were pre-positioned for quite a while, watching the buildup of our operations, preparing to go into Fallujah. We were trying to ensure we had perfect targeting so that we could limit the damage. There was the ability to surround the city to allow no one to escape that was considered hostile. So again, there are a lot of assertions and hearsay and innuendo that has been used with Fallujah and on many other cases propagated by people who have not the complete information and are completely wrong.
AMY GOODMAN: So are you confirming that you used white phosphorus in Fallujah, but saying that it's simply not illegal?
LT. COL. STEVE BOYLAN: White phosphorus has been used. I do not recall it was used as an offensive weapon. White phosphorus is used for marking targets for both air and ground forces. White phosphorus is used to destroy equipment and other types of things. It is used to destroy weapons caches. And it is used to produce a white smoke which can obscure the enemy's vision of what we are doing.
AMY GOODMAN: And you're using it in Iraq?
LT. COL. STEVE BOYLAN: We have used it in the past. It is a perfectly legal weapon to use.
AMY GOODMAN: Maurizio Torrealta, news editor for the Italian state broadcaster, RAI 24. Your response?
MAURIZIO TORREALTA: Well, the United States, as the UK and Italy, signed the convention about prohibition of chemical weapons. And the convention define precisely that what make forbidden an agent, a chemical agent, is not the chemical agent itself. Because as Lieutenant said, the white phosphorus can be used to light the scene of a battle. And in that case, it's acceptable. But what make a chemical agent forbidden is the use that is done with it. If you use white phosphorus to kill the people, to burn and to block them, people and animals, even animals say the convention that we all sign, Italy, United States and UK, this is a forbidden chemical agent.
And we are full of picture that show bodies of young people, of children, of women which have strange -- particular, they are dead with a big corruption of the skin and show even the bone. And the clothes are intact, untouched. And that shows there has been an aggressive agent like white phosphorus that has done that. And we have all the number of those bodies and the place where they have been buried. So any international organization that wanted to inquire about that has all the tools and information to do it. And even the witness -- the U.S. military that we interview confirmed that the use of white phosphorus was against the population. And we have even picture of the fact that has been told by the helicopter down to the city, not by the ground up in the air to light the scene. Also the images, they spoke by themselves.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Englehart, you are the Specialist -- former U.S. Specialist in the Army, a member now speaking out against the war. You are interviewed in this documentary explaining how white phosphorus was used in Fallujah. Can you tell us more?
JEFF ENGLEHART: Oh, yeah. I mean, I definitely heard it being called for. And I even talked to reconnaissance scouts after the siege, and they said they had actually called for it. The Pentagon spokesperson says that they use this for concealment, or some sources say they use it for illumination. But, I mean, I think that's ridiculous, because we would use -- just based on my training as a reconnaissance scout myself, we would use illumination separately, as it’s on exclusive ground. Since my training, we were taught that white phosphorus is used for troops out in the open or to destroy equipment and that it burns and that the only way to prevent the burning is to douse it with wet mud.
To me, it's definitely a chemical weapon in the fact that it burns, and it burns indiscriminately. In fact, the use of white phosphorus violates the Geneva protocol for the prohibition of use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases and bacterial methods of warfare. So, I mean, even if the Geneva Protocol says it's illegal, I don't see how we're able to use it and then say that it's used for our own cover or illumination, when it actually could hurt our own troops. So I just think that, from the very top, the big problem with this war is that from the very top to the lowest level soldier, everyone's being lied to. And then the news gets gentrified by the mass media to make it sound like, ‘Oh, well, white phosphorus is a good weapon that we can use to help spot targets,’ when it's actually designed to burn its victims.
AMY GOODMAN: Lieutenant Colonel Boylan in Baghdad, your response?
LT. COL. STEVE BOYLAN: Well, part of what he was saying was fading in and out, so I'm not clear on everything he said. But again, I would assert that it is a legal weapon to use. It is not considered a chemical weapon as chemical weapons are described today. And again, he is again in error. And I would stack up my 21 years of training in the military versus his and what his profession is now. All of our chemical weapons have been declared to the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons are being destroyed in the United States in accordance with our obligations under the chemical weapons convention. So he, again, is in error that it is considered a chemical weapon, as are all other individuals asserting that fact.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to read to you from the Geneva Convention on certain conventional weapons, protocol three. “Protocol and Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons. Geneva, October 10, 1980. Article I, definitions for the purpose of this protocol. One, incendiary weapon means any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat or combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target. (a) Incendiary weapons can take the form of, for example, flame throwers, fougasses, shells, rockets, grenades, mines, bombs and other containers of incendiary substances.” Lieutenant Colonel Boylan?
LT. COL. STEVE BOYLAN: I know of no cases where people were deliberately targeted by the use of white phosphorus. Again, I did not say white phosphorus was used for illumination. White phosphorus is used for obscuration, which white phosphorus produces a heavy thick smoke to shield us or them from view so that they cannot see what we are doing. It is used to destroy equipment, to destroy buildings. That is what white phosphorus shells are used for.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Englehart, you were a soldier in Fallujah. Your response?
JEFF ENGLEHART: Well, based off where I was at, I wasn't actually involved in direct combat. I was in a tactical attack center. Basically I was danger close, which means 200 meters from a lot of the explosions that were happening, and when we would hear the call for Willy Pete or Whiskey Pete, white phosphorus, huge explosions would hit targets. I just can't conceive how he could say that a white cloud would conceal our troop movement. It's obviously a toxic gas that, when it touches skin, it will burn, it will cause third-degree burns to the bone. So I just don't understand where he's coming up with this assertion. It's hypocrisy, if you ask me.
AMY GOODMAN: Lieutenant Colonel Boylan, though you've just listened to the excerpt of the documentary, you haven't seen the images. They are extremely graphic. The images of clothes that are still intact but the faces burned off, the skin, the arms, these are images of Fallujah.
LT. COL. STEVE BOYLAN: That can happen from numerous ways and not just from white phosphorus attacks. That can happen from massive explosions. If you look at the car bombs that the terrorists use today, you have the same effects from car bombs from suicide vests. I have personally witnessed these things here in Baghdad. So, you know, to say definitively that it was due to a white phosphorus attack is not supported by any one that I know of nor do you probably have any forensic evidence, nor does the producer of the show have that, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Maurizio Torrealta -- let's ask the Italian editor of the state broadcast RAI that did this documentary, Maurizio Torrealta.
MAURIZIO TORREALTA: Yeah. You can see all what I am talking about in our website, RAINews24.it, and I suggest the Lieutenant to get a look to the streaming of our transmission. You know, we started our research, because we saw that strange picture that showed people dressed and burned, but the dress was not touched by any chemical aggression. And that make impossible to have a comparison between a explosion and other kind of explosion where everything is burned, completely burned. And those pictures, those pictures were very different, very difficult to be analyzed. And that's why we started to work on those pictures, because they show clearly that it was a chemical agent that was aggressive against the skin and all the part of the skin that was connected with water. And I think the soldier that is connected in your transmission can explain that very well, as he did to us.
AMY GOODMAN: Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, the various newspapers around the world are reporting on this RAI documentary that we’ve aired an excerpt of today. Again, RAI 24, the Italian state broadcasters, 24-hour news channel, saying phosphorus burns bodies; in fact, it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone. Quoting from the documentary, "I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone with a radius of 150 meters is done for."
And what we watched through this documentary are the color close-ups of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, again, clothes remaining largely intact, but skin dissolved or caramelized or turned the consistency of leather by the shells. Also, a biologist is interviewed in this documentary, named Mohamed Tarek, who says a rain or fire fell on the city. The people struck by this multicolored substance started to burn. We found people dead with strange wounds: The bodies burned but the clothes intact.
LT. COL. STEVE BOYLAN: Well, I would still say that, one, I have not viewed the documentary so I can't comment on that. And I cannot comment on, as far as the visuals. And I cannot comment as far as when those pictures were taken. During the time of the fall attacks in Fallujah, the city was sealed off. It was a massive fight between the, for the most part, the U.S. Marines and the insurgents. They had booby trapped massive areas of the city. In fact, many of the networks have aired the footage showing how the detonations happened from the booby traps of IEDs throughout the cities.
AMY GOODMAN: Would that explain why, perhaps, white phosphorus was used in this way?
LT. COL. STEVE BOYLAN: Precision-guided munitions were used on specific targets throughout the campaign in Fallujah in order to destroy those types of targets. There were over one hundred journalists that were part of the embedded program with the Marine Expeditionary Force in Fallujah that reported daily on what was occurring. So I find it very unique that only one station out of the entire group of people or media outlets that are seeming to have this story.
AMY GOODMAN: We also interviewed a reporter who was actually un-embedded last year who reported these stories. But Maurizio Torrealta of RAI 24, your response?
MAURIZIO TORREALTA: Well, that is a serious problem for information, the fact that you got only information that are controlled when you are embedded. You might find an agreement that obliges you to accept the fact that you are not going to give out information that could jeopardize or make difficulties for the army you are embedded with. So that is a serious problem that was not coming out from one end of journalists, staying only from one side of the fight.
LT. COL. STEVE BOYLAN: That's completely in error.
AMY GOODMAN: What is it that's in error?
LT. COL. STEVE BOYLAN: The ground rules that he is describing. Those are for future plans, and they cannot divulge what our future plans are. We do not screen, censor or look at any journalist's work prior to their release. They are also not allowed to release classified information. But on their reporting, after the fact or as it happens live, there is no censorship, screening or prevention of what they cover. And I think that is fairly clear from the coverage that people have seen where there have been events that have not been too flattering of our forces have been aired.
AMY GOODMAN: Maurizio Torrealta?
MAURIZIO TORREALTA: Lieutenant, do you deny that embedded journalists sign an agreement in which they take responsibility for not jeopardizing in any way, with information that they will deliver, the life of the people they are with?
LT. COL. STEVE BOYLAN: Only as it applies to future operations. For example, we would not allow them to broadcast what time and location and routes we are taking for a morning -- for the next day's attack. That would be in consideration of not jeopardizing the soldiers' lives, as well as their own. But as far as as it happens, they have been and I think everybody has seen throughout since the operations commenced in 2003 of live coverage of what happens as it happens.
MAURIZIO TORREALTA: Do you think that the sojourner journalists were in the front line were very close to the battle during the night? When we got the shot, shot the video, of the white phosphorus agent that was thrown down on the city, do you think that sojourner journalists were over there, be able to document of that?
LT. COL. STEVE BOYLAN: There were journalists all over, as I watched many of the networks that I was able to see. I saw live footage covering many different aspects of the battlefield from the very front to the rear. And at night you could see anything like that from a great distance. So I question the validity of many of the things that I've heard.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Englehart, you are a former U.S. soldier. You were there at the battle. What is your response to the lack of coverage, since you contend that white phosphorus was used as a chemical weapon?
JEFF ENGLEHART: Well, I guess it's really my word against his. I know for a fact I heard it being called for on the radio. As far as media control, though, I know for a fact that if a journalist released a story that our task force wasn't happy with, that journalist just wasn't invited back. And you had to look at it from the point of being a freelance journalist in Iraq where you're not getting protection. Of course, you're going to come out with a story that's more accurate. But when we had reporters from CNN, mostly CNN or the Army Times, they were protected, they were concealed in armored Humvees, protected by soldiers. And it just seemed that they always told the Army's side of the story in return for that protection. So, I mean, there's definitely a media control going on in Iraq. There's just no doubt about it. And for him to say that they don't censor any stories coming out, I don't doubt that they don't censor them. I just think that if they don't like a story, they just don't invite the reporter back.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, on that note we're going to have to wrap up this discussion. I want to thank you, Jeff Englehart, for joining us, former Specialist in the U.S. Army, runs the blogspot “Fight to Survive,” that's www.FTSSoldier.blogspot.com. Also, I want to thank Lieutenant Colonel Boylan for joining us, Steve Boylan, spokesperson for the U.S. military, speaking to us from Baghdad. And Maurizio Torrealta, news editor for Italian television network, RAI 24, the Italian state broadcaster. Their documentary is airing today throughout Italy called Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre. And you can go to our website for contact information and to see the excerpts.
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Little-brained big heads of the States
11/08/2005 10:42 Pravda
http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/101/399/16426_vietnam.html
Brutal effects of America's Agent Orange in Vietnam and Nuclear Bombs in Japan's Hiroshima and Nagasaki still continue
The use of Agent Orange and the massive napalming of the forests and consequent pollution of the water supply have created problems which are still manifesting as birth defects. One of the lectures I attended was on "auricular reconstruction" which is about giving people ears when they are born without them". This is what Dr. Meredith Burgmann, the President of New South Wales Legislative Council, who returned recently from a trip to Vietnam, has written in the Daily Telegraph of 25th October 2005.
The above comments from Dr. Burgmann serve as the latest proofs of the US Crimes against humanity inflicted on the Vietnamese people by the US forces during their invasion of Vietnam. In spite of the constant flow of facts about the consequence of USA's crimes against humanity most of the heads of states seem to lack the courage to call it what it was to put an end to continuation of America's policy of aggression in the world.
Agent Orange and Napalm Bombs are America's own, purposely built WMDs.
One could imagine how loud and fierce would have been the US retaliation if it was the American babies who continue to pay decades long "price" for not fault of their own. There are no "embedded American journalists" in Vietnam to rally relief for the Vietnamese victims of the crimes committed by US. It has been politically incorrect and will be soon prohibited in Australia, to talk about US, in those terms.
Howard's new anti-terror laws which are about to be steam rolled through the Senate and the House of Representatives will give powers to ASIO to interpret an article such as this as a "threat to national security" and to arrest and detain the author indefinitely. They will dig in to peoples political beliefs to fabricate anything to convict anybody under any pretext. They have teams of spin doctors to come up with the "appropriate justification."
Some people, who have strong feelings about human rights, and state sponsored terrorism would rather be silent than "inviting themselves trouble" this is exactly what the new laws are aimed at. But many others will shed their differences to unite against the new laws. It has started to happen already. A strong public opinion is being born across the wide and deep fabric of the Australian society, including religious, political, independent media and business leaders and also ordinary Australian of various political, religious and ethnic backgrounds. Worse draconian laws introduced in other parts of the world have not been able to keep the truth away from the public.
In the meantime enormous deal of work has been carried out silently by many good hearted Australian Medical Professionals, Students and staff of the Universities and some Politicians to ease the pain of their Vietnamese neighbours suffering from US crimes against humanity. Chaired by Professor Bruce Robinson, Hoc Mai Foundation has been in the forefront in carrying out such relief work in Vietnam. This is a charity organisation for the medical exchange between the University of Sydney and the Viet Duc Hospital in Hanoi.
The Governor of New South Wales, Professor Marie Bashir is the patron of the Hoc Mai Foundation. The Asia Pacific Friendship Group, of the New South Wales Parliament has been active in fundraising and supporting the medical relief, training and exchange projects carried out in the Viet Duc Hospital.
Brutal effects of America's Agent Orange in Vietnam and Nuclear Bombs in Japan's Hiroshima and Nagasaki still continue in the form of various complications in pregnancies and babies with inborn defects. Some of these health problems can be partially cured with medical intervention whereas there are others which remain lifelong. The untold misery, pain and suffering of these victims do not find publicity in the media, as it is "politically incorrect" and "unpatriotic" to talk about these issues.
After half a century US aggression and inhuman policies still continue in Iraq. Instead of old WMDs this time US forces used depleted Uranium, Bombs, cluster bombs and other ordinance against the people of Iraq. US do not keep a record of the "enemy casualties". Only after the dust has been settled (which is not likely to happen for quite a sometime) that the world would find out the enormity of the US crimes against humanity in Iraq. According to the latest statistics, the war in Iraq, which Rumsfeld initially promised to be a "Cake Walk," has so far cost 2000 American Lives, and still keep on growing. Many Americans are taking to street to demand Bush to end this war.
It is our freedom of speech that Bush, Blair and Howard would like to restrict so that there would not be any voice against their "justification" of the unjustifiable. According to their model of democracy no one would dare write and speak the truth about their crimes against humanity, as according to Bush, Blair and Howard it will be "Alquidian," Bin Ladinian" "Jihadist" or "unpatriotic" to do so.
While John Howard is continuing to act subservient to Bush in supporting the senseless continuation of crimes against humanity in Iraq, the ordinary Australians not only oppose the war but also open their hearts to carry out humanitarian aid to ease the pain already inflicted on many hundreds of thousands of fellow human beings by the previous crimes against humanity planned and carried out by the US.
It will be these humanitarian and big-hearted ordinary Aussies, the world would honour as the real heroes and leaders of our time.
Once the power is gone and struck off from the media lime light, Bush, Blair and Howard will only be remembered as the most deceptive, "Little Brained Big Heads of States" that the world has ever known.
Dr.Gamini Mithra
Sydney
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-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
France Uses Colonial-Era Law To Impose Curfews
Tuesday, November 8th, 2005
Headlines Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/08/1516221
In France, curfews and emergency measures have been put in place in an effort to stop a two-week uprising led by immigrant and Muslim youths that began in the Paris suburbs. The civil unrest has now spread to over 300 towns and cities in France and even across the border to Brussels and Berlin. Last night Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin appeared on national television to announce that emergency powers would be invoked under a 50-year-old law. The curfew law was first used in Algeria in an unsuccessful attempt to quell an insurrection at a time when the North African country was a French colony. Suburban youths quoted in the Le Parisien newspaper claimed the emergency measures "won't change anything". One youth said "This isn't going to solve things. More repression means more destruction... more cops is just provocation." Earlier today police announced that nearly 1,200 cars were burnt overnight and 330 arrests were made.
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France allows local curfews to curb violence
11/8/2005 (AP)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-11-08-franceviolence_x.htm
PARIS — President Jacques Chirac declared a state of emergency Tuesday, paving the way for curfews to be imposed on riot-hit cities and towns in an extraordinary measure to halt France's worst civil unrest in decades after 12 nights of violence.
Police, meanwhile, said overnight unrest Monday-Tuesday, while still widespread and destructive, was not as violent as previous nights.
"The intensity of this violence is on the way down," National Police Chief Michel Gaudin said, citing fewer attacks on public buildings and fewer direct clashes between youths and police. He said rioting was reported in 226 towns across France, compared to nearly 300 the night before.
The state-of-emergency decree — invoked under a 50-year-old law — allows curfews where needed and will become effective at midnight Tuesday, with an initial 12-day limit. Police — massively reinforced as the violence has fanned out from its initial flash point in the northeastern suburbs of Paris — were expected to enforce the curfews. The army has not been called in.
The mayhem sweeping the neglected and impoverished neighborhoods with large African and Arab communities is forcing France to confront anger building for decades among residents who complain of discrimination and unemployment. Although many of the French-born children of Arab and black African immigrants are Muslim, police say the violence is not being driven by Islamic groups.
Nationwide, vandals burned 1,173 cars, compared to 1,408 vehicles Sunday-Monday, police said. A total of 330 people were arrested, down from 395 the night before
Local officials "will be able to impose curfews on the areas where this decision applies," Chirac said at a Cabinet meeting. "It is necessary to accelerate the return to calm."
The recourse to a 1955 state-of-emergency law that dates back to France's war in Algeria was a measure both of the gravity of mayhem that has spread to hundreds of French towns and cities and of the determination of Chirac's sorely tested government to quash it.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said curfew violators could be sentenced to up to two months imprisonment, adding that restoring order "will take time."
"We are facing determined individuals, structured gangs," Villepin told parliament on Tuesday. He vowed that France will "guarantee public order to all of our citizens."
Under the emergency decree, local government officials will be able to put people under house arrest and demand that weapons be handed over. Public spaces where gangs gather can be closed. Disobedience could lead to up to two months in prison, Villepin said.
The violence erupted on Oct. 27 as a localized riot in a northeast Paris suburb angry over the accidental deaths of two teenagers, of Mauritanian and Tunisian descent, who were electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation. It has grown into a nationwide insurrection by disillusioned suburban youths.
It has grown into a nationwide insurrection by disillusioned suburban youths, many French-born children of immigrants from France's former territories like Algeria. France's suburbs have long been neglected and their youth complain of a lack of jobs and widespread discrimination, some of it racial.
The violence claimed its first victim Monday, with the death of a 61-year-old man beaten into a coma last week. Foreign governments have warned tourists to be careful in France. Apparent copycat attacks have spread to Belgium and Germany, where cars were burned. France is using fast-track trials to punish rioters, worrying some human rights campaigners.
At one court in the northeastern Paris suburb of Bobigny, 60 riot-related cases were processed in one day and the court has called in three extra magistrates to deal with the overflow.
The Justice Ministry said Tuesday that 52 adults and 23 minors have been sentenced to prison or detention centers.
The resort to curfews drew immediate criticism from Chirac's political opponents. Former Socialist Prime Minister Laurent Fabius said the emergency measures must be "controlled very, very closely."
Communist Party leader Marie-George Buffet said the decree could enflame rioters. "It could be taken anew as a sort of challenge to carry out more violence," she said.
Rioters in the southern city of Toulouse ordered passengers off a bus, then set it on fire and pelted police with gasoline bombs and rocks. Youths also torched another bus in the northeastern Paris suburb of Stains, national police spokesman Patrick Hamon said.
Outside Paris in Sevran, a junior high school was set ablaze, while in the suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine youths threw gasoline bombs at a hospital, Hamon said. Nobody was injured.
Rioters also attacked a police station with gasoline bombs in Chenove, in Burgundy's Cote D'Or, Hamon said. A nursery school in Lille-Fives, in northern France, was set on fire, regional officials said.
In terms of material destruction, the unrest is France's worst since World War II. Never has rioting struck so many French cities simultaneously, said security expert Sebastian Roche, a director of research at the state-funded National Center for Scientific Research.
Chirac, in private comments more conciliatory than his warnings Sunday that rioters would be caught and punished, acknowledged in a meeting Monday with Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga that France has not integrated immigrant youths, she said.
Chirac deplored the "ghettoization of youths of African or North African origin" and recognized "the incapacity of French society to fully accept them," said Vike-Freiberga.
France "has not done everything possible for these youths, supported them so they feel understood, heard and respected," Vike-Freiberga quoted Chirac as saying.
Villepin said he wanted to speed up a $35.5 billion urban redevelopment plan, triple the number of merit scholarships for talented students and offer jobs, training or internships to disadvantaged young people.
Villepin reached out to the heavily immigrant suburbs, acknowledging that racial discrimination there is as a "daily and repeated" fact of life. He said job seekers with foreign-sounding names are sometimes not given equal consideration as those with French names, adding that fighting such prejudice "must become a priority."
"We must offer them hope and a future," he said.
In terms of material destruction, the unrest is France's worst since World War II; never has rioting struck so many French cities simultaneously, said security expert Sebastian Roche, a director of research at the state-funded National Center for Scientific Research.
Villepin said "organized criminal networks" are backing the violence, and youths are treating it as a "game." He did not rule out the possibility that Islamists are involved, saying: "That element must not be neglected."
A Socialist opposition leader, Francois Hollande, said his party would closely watch to make sure the cur