NucNews - December 27, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- britain Britons split over building of nuclear power stations (Comtex Energy)LONDON, Dec 27, 2005 (Xinhua via COMTEX) http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/-britons-split-over-building-nuclear-power-stations-/2005/dec/1241770.htm About half of Britons agree that no new nuclear power stations should be built in Britain, said an on-line poll commissioned by the Guardian newspaper on Tuesday. The poll conducted in mid-December on some 1,000 people aged above 18 years old and published by the Guardian on Tuesday finds that while ministers are considering whether to restart Britain's controversial atomic power program to meet growing energy demand as North Sea crude oil output declines coupled with rising fuel prices, 48 percent of people oppose expanding nuclear energy, whereas 45 percent support it. However, there are sharp gender differences as 57 percent of men and 33 percent of women are for new nuclear power stations, whereas 57 percent of women and 39 percent of men are against. About 19 percent of Britain's electricity is generated by its 14 nuclear power stations, but it is expected to drop to seven percent by 2020 as older reactors will be switched off. British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced last month a review of Britain's energy policies and a report is expected in the summer. Nuclear supporters say renewable energy sources cannot fill the energy gap and reactors do not produce greenhouse gases. Opponents, however, believe that nuclear power is expensive, disposal of radioactive waste remains unresolved, and that significant carbon dioxide emissions are produced in the building and mining of uranium fuel. ---- Poll says half oppose nuclear power plants Dec. 27, 2005 (UPI) http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20051227-124547-2446r LONDON -- A poll in Britain says almost half of the respondents opposed building additional nuclear power stations in the country. The ICM/Guardian newspaper poll indicated Prime Minister Tony Blair would face a challenge to convince the population about any need for more plants. The poll comes as the government considers whether to restart Britain's controversial atomic power program to meet growing energy demand, the Guardian reported. The poll said neither the pro- nor the anti-nuclear lobby can rely on a clear majority of public support as 48 percent oppose expanding nuclear energy, while 45 percent support it. About 19 percent of Britain's electricity is generated by its 14 nuclear power stations, but this is expected to drop to 7 percent by 2020 as older reactors are switched off, the report said. -------- business The Auto Industry Can Help Build New Nuclear Plants Executive Intelligence Review Posted on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 http://peakoil.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=10261 ..Were the United States to begin to take the necessary steps to electrify its railroads, build new, more advanced urban mass transit systems, move to hybrid cars, or in any way increase demands upon industry for basic materials and capital goods, there would not be sufficient electric generating or distribution capacity. In parts of the country, such as the Northeast and West, there are already threats of shortages, even under current economic depression conditions. The United States currently has 103 operating nuclear power plants, which provide approximately 20% of the nation's electricity. Before the sabotage of nuclear power projects in the late 1970s, the plan was to have a thousand plants on line by the year 2000. Even just to maintain nuclear energy's paltry 20% of U.S. electric power, close to 100 new reactors will have to come on line in the next two decades. To rebuild infrastructure and upgrade U.S. productivity, while shutting down both inefficient, aging plants and those burning precious (and increasingly expensive) natural gas, hundreds more will have to be built. ..There are constant complaints that this country is dependent upon, and can be held hostage to, foreign energy suppliers. All we need do is to electrify much of the transportation that uses liquid petroleum fuels. We must electrify the railroads; replace wasteful short-haul air travel with magnetically levitated, and high-speed rail electric transport systems; replace mind-numbing car commutes with urban mass transit; and develop the next-generation high-temperature nuclear reactor technologies that will make it economical to produce hydrogen from water. To do this, hundreds of nuclear power plants will have to be built. To do that, the mass production capabilities of the auto industry will be required. -------- india Indo-US nuke deal aimed at making world more secure: Sen Press Trust of India Washington, December 27, 2005 http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1583557,001301790000.htm Dismissing the notion that its agreement with the US on sharing civilian nuclear technology amounts to weakening of non-proliferation regime, India has said the deal is based on a "very close" understanding of security interests of the two countries and aimed at making the world more secure. "India has a unique track record. It is the first country in Asia to build a nuclear reactor on its own. You are talking about a country which has about 50 years of experience of handling nuclear assets," Indian Ambassador to the US Ronen Sen said in an interview to the Dallas Morning News. He rejected the notion that the Indo-US nuclear deal amounts to weakening of the non-proliferation regime. "Absolutely not. It is based on a very close understanding of the national security interests of both our countries and to making the world a safer and more secure place," he told the paper. Citing "with justifiable pride" India's track record on proliferation, Sen said, "Nothing has leaked from India. We put into place such tight controls on preventing anything from leaving our country. And we've had these in place much before they were codified in international treaties and norms. It's an impeccable track record. And this is recognised." He said that one reason why the agreement is so important to India in spite of the country's long know-how with nuclear technology is because of the fact that India is "uniquely disadvantaged" in terms of access to energy resources. ---- 'Even if the nuclear deal were to be deferred, US-India relations will flourish' December 27, 2005 The Rediff Interview/Nuclear proliferation expert Leonard Spector http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/dec/27inter.htm Leonard 'Sandy' Spector is one among a small group of top nuclear nonproliferation experts who have been briefing United States Congressional staffers, including those on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on the merits and demerits of the proposed US-India civilian nuclear cooperation agreement. Spector is a former Assistant Deputy Administrator for Arms Control and Nonproliferation at the US Department of Energy's National Security Administration, and currently Deputy Director of the Monterey Institute of International Studies' Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Last fortnight he convened along with other leading nonproliferation experts convened a special briefing to talk about India's alleged transfer of plutonium from the Canadian-supplied CIRUS research reactor to its nuclear weapons programme to powerful lawmakers including Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Richard Lugar of the dangers inherent in the US-India nuclear deal. Spector told rediff India Abroad Managing Editor Aziz Haniffa that in his opinion, Lugar is aware of the issues and there is increasing concern on Capitol Hill over the deal. "No one can look at the overall situation and not identify CIRUS as a question" that has to be resolved before Congress considers approving the agreement between Washington and New Delhi, Spector said. During his stint at the DOE, Spector's principal responsibilities included the development and implementation of DOE arms control and nonproliferation policy with respect to international treaties; US domestic and multilateral export controls; inspection and technical cooperation activities of the International Atomic Energy Agency; civilian nuclear activities in the US and abroad; and initiatives in regions of proliferation concern. Prior to his tenure at DOE, Spector served as senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC and director of its Nuclear Nonproliferation Project. Before joining Carnegie, Spector served as chief counsel to the US Senate Energy and Proliferation Subcommittee, where he assisted in drafting the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. He began his career in nuclear nonproliferation as a special counsel at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. You have testified before Congress on the US-India civilian nuclear agreement, and brought your years of experience and technical expertise to bear on these hearings, particularly from a historical perspective on the proliferation of nuclear weapons and how some nations have acquired the wherewithal to develop these weapons. Are you confident that Congress is adequately seized on the issues regarding India's record vis-à-vis CIRUS, and other concerns nonproliferation advocates like you may have? I don't believe CIRUS has been identified specifically as a source of concern, but it seems to be part of the range of concerns that the Hill is concentrating on. No one can look at this overall situation and not identify CIRUS as a question. It may not be the be-all and end-all in the minds of certain Congressmen and Senators, but the document that they have in front of them, when they decide how hard they are going to push on various items, one choice they will have to make is about CIRUS. Senator Lugar is considered one of the fiercest advocates of nonproliferation on Capitol Hill. Are you encouraged by the stand he has taken on the US-India civilian nuclear agreement, wherein he has called on the administration to provide credible and transparent plans of India's commitment to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities, and that this plan must be defensible from a nonproliferation standpoint? I thought he did a very appropriate thing when he said Congress has many more questions and that they want to see how the answers unfold; I believe on one hand he has encouraged India to do the right thing without getting too specific, so that there is room for negotiation. That is a very positive approach, and that's what we would all like to see — some serious negotiations on these issues. I know his staff is familiar with the (CIRUS) issue. Though the Bush administration professes its commitment to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, it did not support the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was the centrepiece of the Clinton administration's foreign policy in its second-term. Do you believe that some of the senior officials like Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nick Burns, who is the point person for driving the Indo-US nuclear deal through Congress, has sufficient depth of knowledge on these issues? And if the answer to that is no, is that a failing on the part of those who are negotiating this agreement? I believe the individuals involved in the negotiations, especially Bob Joseph (Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security) are very knowledgeable about the details; they have gotten very expert advice on the questions and they've tried to put together a position that supports the President's fundamental desire for closer ties with India, with certain restrictions. I hope they will add some new restrictions on the CIRUS issue but, as I said earlier, I believe they are focused on a more preliminary and crucially important issue, which is, will the safeguards be permanent or will they be just this kind of floating safeguards that could be eliminated at some stage in the future? So I believe they are pretty committed on this question -- that is, the overall question of restraints negotiated with India. I don't believe the CIRUS reactor is yet in the forefront of their concerns, but we will continue to bring it to their attention, as we have with those in Congress. But if people like you bringing up the issue, and Congress raising concerns over it, proves to be a deal breaker, what would your reaction be? Would you say too bad, so be it? I believe that as we've framed this issue, we've left a lot of bargaining room -- and I think you've heard some of these alternatives and options that have been discussed. But I do think this (the CIRUS controversy) really must be addressed, before this proposal can move forward. During your recent testimony before the House International Relations Committee on the US-India civilian nuclear agreement, you argued that this nuclear deal should not be the be-all and end-all of the US-India relationship, and that the strategic partnership with India can survive without this deal. Strategic experts like Ashley Tellis and former Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill, who is considered one of the architects of the agreement, have told me in interviews that this is indeed the be-all and end-all, if the US-India strategic partnership is to forge ahead. They have said that implementing this agreement is vital for the continued transformation of this relationship. At the conference you organised, however, you brought up the analogy of the extremely strong strategic partnership between US and Israel sans any cooperation on the nuclear front. As Foreign Secretary (Shyam) Saran emphasised in his December 21 address to a public forum here, nuclear cooperation is but one element of a much broader US-India relationship. That relationship encompasses defense cooperation; accelerated US licensing of Indian pharmaceuticals; and extensive collaboration in the information sector among other important dimensions. Even in the area of energy, Saran stressed, numerous US-Indian initiatives are under way, in addition to that dealing with nuclear power. This includes joint work on clean coal technologies and energy efficiency, and advanced research and development on new energy sources. Moreover, Saran stressed the increasing convergence of US and Indian interests in a host of areas. Thus, it is clear to me that even if the nuclear deal were to be deferred, US-India relations will continue to flourish -- there is simply too much bringing us together. In fact, they have already flourished, despite ongoing differences over nuclear issues. With regard to the US-Israel strategic partnership flourishing, as you know Israel, like India, has uninspected nuclear facilities that are generally thought to support a nuclear weapons programme. The United States has extremely cordial relations with Israel, considering it a non-NATO ally, even though we enforce a nuclear embargo against it and apply the same rules that now prevent US nuclear trade with India. So there is no reason why Indo-American relations cannot be just as close as those we enjoy with Israel, even if we disagree over nuclear matters. -------- iran Iran could have bomb in two years: Israeli intelligence JERUSALEM (AFP) Dec 27, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051227140039.l57ijt0w.html Iran will be able to build an atom bomb within two years, the head of Israel's Mossad overseas intelligence service, General Meir Dagan, was quoted as saying Tuesday. "One or two years from now at the latest, Iran will have the fissionable material to make a nuclear bomb. From then on, producing the bomb is just a straightforward technical process," Dagan said, according to Israeli public radio. "In the coming months, without any hindrance, Iran will be independent in terms of nuclear technological material," he added. Dagan was speaking during an annual presentation to Israel's parliamentary defence and foreign affairs committee. Israeli politicians and military commanders have recently stepped up warnings about Iran, which the Jewish state and the United States accuse of trying to develop a nuclear arsenal. Iran denies the charge. Israeli fears were heightened when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in October called for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map." Israel itself is believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, although it has never admitted to having a non-conventional arsenal. -------- japan New fast-breeder reactor to replace prototype Monju 12/27/2005 The Asahi Shimbun http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200512270137.html The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy has decided to build a new fast-breeder reactor by around 2030, a plan that will cost about 1 trillion yen. The new reactor will replace the prototype Monju fast-breeder reactor, which has been out of operation for the past decade following a sodium leak accident in 1995 and has come under criticism over safety issues and its price tag of 800 billion yen. The agency's proposal was presented Monday to a nuclear energy subcommittee of the Advisory Committee for Natural Resources and Energy. In addition to the new fast-breeder reactor, the agency will work toward the development and construction of a second spent nuclear fuel reprocessing facility, slated for completion around 2045. In its long-term plan for atomic energy approved this fall, the Cabinet pledged to maintain its nuclear fuel cycle program, which reuses plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel. A fast-breeder reactor, fueled by a combination of extracted plutonium and uranium, is central to the nuclear fuel cycle. Although the Japan Atomic Energy Agency has recently started preparing Monju with an eye toward resuming full operations, officials of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy have decided to put a shelf life of about 10 years on the facility. They said Monju had been dwarfed by recent nuclear reactors, reducing its economic viability. They added that the Monju reactor would only be used for about a decade in order to develop technology relating to the handling of sodium. If Monju operations are resumed, annual operating expenses are expected to reach about 15 billion yen. The post-Monju fast-breeder reactor would be far more technologically advanced as well as efficient, officials said. It would also be used as a model reactor for about a decade and then commercialized to replace light water reactors from about 2050. Whether a prototype new fast-breeder reactor like Monju will first be constructed has yet to be decided. The energy and natural resources agency is also laying the groundwork for a second fuel reprocessing facility. The present one in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, is slated to end operations by around 2045. The agency is also leaving open the option of replacing light water reactors with new light water reactors in case development of the fast-breeder reactor is delayed. "Unless we paint a specific course of action, development will not proceed. We have heightened flexibility and become more realistic by employing a number of different scenarios," said an official of the agency's Nuclear Energy Policy Planning Division.(IHT/Asahi: December 27,2005) -------- mideast Turkey Must Turn to Nuclear Energy to Cut Oil Needs, IEA Says Dec. 27, 2005 (Bloomberg) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10001099&sid=aySlzbziG47Y&refer=energy Turkey needs to turn to nuclear energy to reduce its dependence on oil and natural gas as fuel prices are expected to remain high, said Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency. Energy importers like Turkey need to focus on nuclear energy and renewable energy sources such as wind, Birol said at a press conference in Ankara today. Turkey's Energy Minister Hilmi Guler, speaking after Birol, said talks with potential investors in nuclear power plants are continuing and an announcement could be made in January. Turkey imports almost all of its oil and gas because it has negligible reserves of its own. Its oil import bill might reach $11.5 billion this year, Birol said in August. Guler has said he expects nuclear power to provide 5 percent of Turkey's energy needs by 2020. Turkey may spend $8 billion to build three nuclear power plants, the Dunya daily newspaper reported in October, without saying where it got the information. Guler reiterated his government's position that it prefers the private sector to make the investments. To contact the reporter on this story: Yalman Onaran in Istanbul at yonaran@bloomberg.net; Ali Berat Meric in Ankara through the Istanbul bureau Last Updated: December 27, 2005 05:27 EST -------- pakistan Pakistan bans export of nuclear products 2005-12-27 22:33:24 (Xinhuanet) http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-12/27/content_3977188.htm ISLAMABAD, Dec. 27 -- Pakistan has declared a strict ban on the export of the technologies, materials and equipment related to nuclear and biological weapons and their delivery systems, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday. "The control lists have been notified pursuant to the Export Control Act on Goods, Technologies, Materials Equipment related toNuclear and Biological Weapons and their Delivery Systems, which was adopted by the parliament in Sept. 2004," it said in a statement. The control lists adopted by Pakistan encompass the lists and scope of export controls maintained by the Nuclear Suppliers Group(NSG), the Australia Group (AG)which relates to biological agents and toxins, and the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), it added. The classification system is based on the European Union's integrated list, which constitutes and latest international standard in this regard, the statement noted. "Lists controlling the exports of Chemical Weapons related agents and their delivery system are already being maintained by Pakistan pursuant to the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Ordinance 2000," it stressed. "The notification of the control lists further highlighted Pakistan's policy to implement its national and international non-proliferation commitments as a responsible nuclear weapons state, the statement also said, adding, "the lists are being notified to all concerned, including manufacturers of such goods and technologies as well to the enforcement agencies for effective controls at the borders. Pakistan, in view of growing energy needs for development and scarcity of natural fossil fuel reserves, under its National Energy Plan, plans to generate 8800 MWs of nuclear power by the year 2025 through the setting up of additional nuclear power plants, under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, according to the statement. The statement said that all of Pakistan's existing nuclear power generation plants were under the IAEA safeguards. "Effective and robust export controls should also facilitate international cooperation in the area of civilian nuclear technology under safeguards," it added. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- ohio Labor Department rejects most claims from uranium plant staff Associated Press Tue, Dec. 27, 2005 http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/13494298.htm CINCINNATI - The U.S. Department of Labor has rejected nearly three out of four compensation claims from workers who say they were made sick by exposure to materials at a former uranium processing site. The Feed Materials Production Center at Fernald, about 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati, produced enriched uranium for the Defense Department's nuclear weapons program from the 1950s until 1989. The government has set up a compensation program that will pay up to $150,000 to a worker who contracted a radiation-caused cancer or lung disease because of exposure at the plant. The Labor Department uses medical records, badges that measured a worker's exposure to radiation and other records to determine if there is at least a 50 percent likelihood that a worker's illness came from working at the site. The department has received claims from 1,148 workers and, as of Thursday, had rejected 610 claims and approved 192. Rudy Crawford, who worked at Fernald for 35 years, says although his claim for benefits was approved, other deserving claims are being rejected. "We're getting guys turned down that were bombarded with all kinds of gases and fumes," Crawford said. "They're getting turned down because the doctors and scientists say they don't meet the 50 percent criteria." Larry Elliott, director of the Office of Compensation, Analysis and Support for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, said the determinations are as fair as possible. "I'm confident we're not seeing anyone denied that should be compensated," he said. -------- pennsylvania THREE MILE ISLAND - Piles of nuclear waste worry officials Tuesday, December 27, 2005 BY GARRY LENTON Of The Patriot-News http://www.pennlive.com/news/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1135678834324020.xml&coll=1 In a concrete building at Three Mile Island, tons of used nuclear fuel waits at the bottom of a 45-foot deep pool for shipment to a permanent storage site. The fuel, one of the most hazardous materials on earth, has been piling up here since the plant went online in September 1974. It will likely wait another decade, at least, before it can be moved. More than 50,000 tons of highly radioactive waste that could contaminate hundreds of square miles if released sits in pools or in concrete casks at 72 nuclear sites in 33 states because there is nowhere to send it. The federal government was supposed to build a permanent dump for the radioactive waste generated by commercial nuclear power plants such as TMI but has failed to do so. Each year adds 3,000 tons to the pile. The Department of Energy, which is responsible for disposing of the spent fuel, planned to open a dump site in Nevada's Yucca Mountain in 1998. But legal challenges, cost overruns and strong political opposition have slowed the project to a crawl. Some industry watchers predict that it will be decades before the site opens, if at all. Though there is no imminent health risk from storing nuclear waste at the plants, not having a national storage site poses problems for consumers, the nuclear industry and national security. "We're concerned," said Dave Allard, the director of the Radiation Control Program within the state Department of Environmental Protection's Bureau of Radiation Protection. "It's just not a desirable situation. We'd prefer if there was some permanent or temporary storage facility." The DEP is concerned about what will happen decades from now if no national dump has opened. Fuel storage systems at nuclear plants were not designed for long-term use. Most have run out of space in the pools and are storing the fuel assemblies in concrete casks above ground. Rich Janati, the chief of the DEP's Division of Nuclear Safety, wonders what will happen if a plant is decommissioned before a national site opens. The waste will have to be monitored, but how vigilant will the monitors be? "That's what the real concern will be to us," he said. An expensive problem: Within the next five years, nearly three-quarters of the 104 nuclear reactors will be storing their spent fuel in concrete casks. While that is not a safety problem, it is costly. A dry cask system costs about $20 million to $30 million to start and $5 million to $7 million a year for the casks and storage, said Adam Levin, the director of spent fuel and decommissioning strategy for Exelon Nuclear, which owns 10 nuclear plants, including TMI, Peach Bottom and Limerick in Pennsylvania. The Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, estimates that plant owners will pay $11 billion for nuclear waste storage by 2015. All or part of that cost will be passed on to customers. The payments are in addition to $750 million paid by plant owners each year to a trust fund created to pay the cost of developing Yucca Mountain, said Steven Kraft, the director of used nuclear fuel for the institute. "The government promised the country that this stuff would start moving to Yucca in 1998," he said. "Now it is not making any announcements about when they are going to move fuel." The Energy Department has been battling environmentalists, nuclear power opponents and the state of Nevada in its quest to develop the site. Still, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told members of Congress in 2004 that he was confident the site will be approved and can accept waste by 2010. Few believe that. The DEP's Janati noted that the license review for the dump required by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission could take up to 10 years. The Energy Department plans to submit the license application next year, which would push the opening date to 2016. At Exelon, planners are considering 2015 the earliest possible opening date for Yucca. A security threat: From a platform above TMI's fuel pool, Howard Crawford, a reactor engineer manager for AmerGen, the plant operator, watches as a robotic crane guides a bundle of fuel rods into a storage rack. There are 1,039 of the bundles, known as fuel assemblies, submerged in the crystalline water. Some glow a light purple, an effect caused by the radiation reacting with electrons in the water. It takes 23 feet of water to shield Crawford and his crew from the intense radiation that would otherwise make it impossible for them to work. The radiation makes the pool buildings and its contents a security threat, according to the National Academy of Sciences. In April, the NAS reported that fuel pool buildings were not as well protected from terrorist attacks as the reactor buildings, even though they store more radioactivity. Any attack that caused the water to drain from the pool could result in a meltdown or a fire that could release large amounts of radiation. The risk is greatest at boiling water reactors such as Peach Bottom, where the pools are above ground. Three Mile Island is a pressurized water reactor, and its fuel pool is at ground level. "We're talking about six-foot-thick re-inforced concrete," Levin said. "It will be very difficult for anyone to do any serious damage to them. "[Still], it's better to put all your eggs in one basket and carefully watch that basket." "Yucca Mountain would be a huge improvement in safety," said David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists. But Yucca is expected to accept only 3,000 tons of waste a year. At that rate, it would take more than 16 years just to pick up the backlog. "Had we known 20 years ago that Yucca wouldn't be available today, it is likely that the security of the spent fuel pools would be better today than it is," he said. GARRY LENTON: 255-8264 or glenton@patriot-news.com -------- us nuc waste Scientists Try to Resolve Nuclear Problem With an Old Technology Made New Again By MATTHEW L. WALD December 27, 2005 NY TIMES Correction Appended http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/science/27nuke.html?ei=5099&en=49457e487ed159be&ex=1136264400&partner=TOPIXNEWS&pagewanted=print WASHINGTON, Dec. 25 - Decades ago, scientists and engineers thought it would be easy enough to deal with the radioactive waste from nuclear power plants: sort out and save the small portion that was reusable, and put the rest in a hole in the ground. It did not work out that way. Reprocessing the waste proved to be both expensive and risky: the main material being scavenged, plutonium, is a nuclear bomb fuel. And that hole in the ground - the proposed Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada - is years behind schedule, bogged down in politics and environmental disputes. Even if it opens, it will be far too small for the amount of waste that is being generated. So last month, Congress voted $50 million for the Energy Department to explore a new kind of reprocessing, one that would reuse a much larger fraction of the waste. The idea is extremely ambitious. It would require perfecting not only a new method of reprocessing, but also a new class of reactors to burn the salvaged material. Still, proponents said it would have two great advantages: It would mean that Yucca Mountain would be big enough to accommodate the waste that could not be recycled. And it would make Yucca easier to open, because the material still to be buried would generate less heat in the centuries to come. "Reprocessing, or processing spent fuel before it's put in the repository, is a very good way to buy time," said Roger W. Gale, a former Energy Department official who is now an electricity consultant. "It's a fail-safe in case we continue to have problems with Yucca Mountain." Many experts are skeptical that the new strategy, which would involve separating the components of spent fuel and putting the salvaged material in reactors using higher-energy neutrons, will work. Another former Energy Department official, Robert Alvarez, noted that the idea of reprocessing had been around for at least 40 years, each time with a different rationale. "Once, it was part of breeder program," Mr. Alvarez said, referring to a scheme to use reactors to make more nuclear fuel than the reactor consumed. "Then it became a proliferation thing," with supporters reasoning that such a system would safely consume materials that could be used for a bomb. "And now it's a waste-management thing," he said. "But the whole problem is they're pouring money into something that's cutting-edge for the late 1960's." Some scientists argue that recycling is essential. At a recent Washington forum on nuclear waste and its possible uses, Phillip J. Finck, deputy associate director of the Argonne National Laboratory, an Energy Department complex, said that by 2010, long before Yucca Mountain can open (if, indeed, it ever does), the United States would have more than the 70,000 metric tons of fuel that will fit there. Moreover, Mr. Finck argued, without recycled fuel, the world will have to rely on finite reserves of uranium. At the forum, sponsored by the Foundation for Nuclear Studies of Washington, Ernest J. Moniz, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former under secretary of energy, said that if the world built enough reactors to provide energy without contributing to global warming, a new Yucca Mountain would be needed every three and a half years. But Professor Moniz and others expressed caution about reprocessing. Frank N. von Hippel, a physicist at Princeton, said that a new generation of reactors would cost tens of billions of dollars and that it would be a long time before it was clear that reprocessed fuel was needed. The fuel to be reprocessed would be too radioactive to move very far; hence the idea was that the reprocessing plant would be adjacent to the reactor. Ivan Oelrich, vice president of the Federation of American Scientists, said that building scores of new reactors, with a reprocessing plant adjacent, was unlikely, and that while opening Yucca would be hard, switching to this kind of reprocessing was "trading one difficult political problem for an impossible problem." Still, concern over global warming and the increase in natural gas prices have given hope to nuclear advocates, who want new waste techniques as well as new reactors. The reprocessing strategy is subtle - to extract more use out of used fuel and to reduce the heat created by waste that cannot be recycled and still has to be buried. The heat is not a problem in the first few decades, when a repository could be left open for ventilation. The harder time is the next 1,500 years, when heat would be given off by longer-lived radioactive materials, mostly a category called actinides, and also the isotopes that are created as those actinides go through radioactive decay. Heat, not volume or weight, determines the physical capacity of Yucca or any other underground repository, because designers want to keep the repository below the boiling point of water. Above the boiling point, the resulting steam could damage the containers and possibly the rock as well. Reprocessing means chopping up nuclear fuel and separating the ingredients, uranium that was not used in the reactor and other elements that were created in the reactor and could be used as fuel, including plutonium and neptunium. Gulf Oil tried to do that in the early 60's in West Valley, in upstate New York, but dropped it as uneconomical, leaving the taxpayers with a cleanup bill of more than $1 billion. At that plant, and at plants still operated in Britain and France, the plutonium is recovered by chemical separation. The new plan is for "electrometallurgical" reprocessing, in which giant electrodes are inserted in a mix of waste components, somewhat like electroplating. The salvaged materials include uranium 235, the isotope used in bombs, which splits easily, and uranium 238, which makes up more than 99 percent of uranium in nature but is harder to split. One use of uranium 238 in a reactor is as a "fertile" material that can absorb stray neutrons and become plutonium 239, which can be used in reactors and bombs. But existing reactors split the uranium using "thermal" neutrons. The new ones would use "fast" neutrons, which travel thousands of times as fast. The current generation of American power reactors uses water to slow the neutrons to the speed optimal for splitting uranium 235. The water also carries off the heat, which is used to make electricity. Fast neutrons, in contrast, have enough energy to split uranium 238. But to make use of them, reactors would need a heat transfer fluid that does not slow down the neutrons, probably molten sodium. The water-based reactors are kept under high pressure to keep the water from boiling. A sodium reactor could run with the sodium at atmospheric pressure. At some point, the sodium has to be run through a heat exchanger, a cluster of thin-walled metal tubes, to give off its energy to ordinary water, which turns to steam and spins a turbine for electricity. And if there is a leak and the sodium and water come into contact, the sodium burns. There are other problems. Plutonium and neptunium are potential bomb fuels; the risk that they might be illicitly diverted, or that other countries might follow the United States' example and build their own reprocessing centers, led two presidents, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, to block General Electric from opening a reprocessing center in Morris, Ill. Further, the companies that run reactors are showing no interest in new kinds of reactors and little interest in plutonium. When the Energy Department decided to get rid of some surplus weapons-type plutonium by turning it into nuclear fuel, no utilities would take it, even at no charge. The Tennessee Valley Authority finally agreed to take the fuel. It described the transaction as selling the government "irradiation services." -------- MILITARY -------- arms Contractors Are Warned: Cuts Coming for Weapons By LESLIE WAYNE, December 27, 2005 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/business/27weapons.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1136167869-98BP+3i07wZEneQVbunkTg&pagewanted=print Everyone at the conference was hanging on the words of Ryan Henry, and it was not difficult to figure out why. Mr. Henry, a top Pentagon planning official, was giving an early glimpse of the Defense Department's priorities over the next four years to an industry gathering in New York of executives of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics and other leading military contractors. For his listeners, there was one question hanging in the air: What will the impact be on me - and on my company? Some of the answers were already clear, even if there were few details. Mr. Henry, whose official title is principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy, said the Pentagon's spending binge of the last several years - its budget has increased 41 percent since 9/11 - cannot be sustained. "We can't do everything we want to do." It was a message that the industry has been bracing for. The Pentagon budget, James F. Albaugh, chief executive of Boeing's $30 billion military division, said at the conference, has "been a great ride for the last five years." But, he added: "We will see a flattening of the defense budget. We all know it is coming." The issue, however, goes beyond tightening budgets. Mr. Henry told the contractors that the Pentagon was redefining the strategic threats facing the United States. No longer are rival nations the primary threat - a type of warfare that calls for naval destroyers and fighter jets. Today the country is facing international networks of terrorists, and the weapons needed are often more technologically advanced, flexible and innovative. But one big question, analysts say, is whether the Pentagon and Congress have the desire, and will, to kill weapons programs where hundreds of billions of dollars - as well as the careers of powerful generals and admirals - are invested. In the years ahead, Mr. Henry said, the Pentagon would like to move "away from massive force." This would mean, for instance, that fewer fighter jets would be needed because the upcoming Joint Strike Fighter F-35 has more capabilities than the existing F-16's. He noted that special operations forces played a big role in the early days of the Iraq war - once controlling up to two-thirds of the country - and are expected to be used in greater numbers in the future. This would mean the Pentagon would want to buy more of the highly agile and high-technology weapons that they need. Specialized skills like language, intelligence and communication are also becoming top priorities. As for aerospace, he said the Pentagon would be looking for aircraft with longer ranges, and, therefore, did not need ships or nearby bases for them to land. Increasingly, the Pentagon will be depending on unmanned aerial vehicles, which can work longer hours than piloted craft and do not put Air Force lives at risk. In the future, he said, unmanned craft will be used not only for surveillance, as they are in Iraq, but for combat as well. To illustrate what the Pentagon envisions as the future, Mr. Henry showed the group a copy of the photograph that is one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's favorites. It shows American troops on horseback in Afghanistan, calling in air strikes and armed with global positioning devices. "In terms of our strategic environment," Mr. Henry said, "we are at an inflection point." He argued that the world was vastly different from the world that existed the last time the Pentagon was required to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the military and national security strategy - what is known as the Quadrennial Defense Review - in early 2001. He outlined these top strategic priorities that will be at the core of the review: defeating global terrorism, defending the nation against terrorist attacks on American soil, preventing other nations from acquiring weapons of mass destruction and influencing countries that Mr. Henry described as at a "strategic crossroads." The quadrennial review is scheduled to be released in February, the same day as the Pentagon's 2007 budget request, and Mr. Henry said that many of the review's new priorities would be reflected in that budget plan. But already there are signs of trouble ahead. In the last few years, Mr. Rumsfeld has tried to kill some weapons systems he saw as Cold War anachronisms and to push a military modernization plan. But his efforts were thwarted by what Washington calls the Iron Triangle of Congress, the uniformed military command and military contractors. Many military experts said the same fate could be in store for this review, although Mr. Henry, and some military analysts, argued that this round could be different. Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a free-market policy lobbying organization based in Arlington, Va., said, "The war in Iraq has not been as successful as expected." He went on: "Rumsfeld's notion of transformation is firmly rooted in the Pentagon and it calls into question previous spending plans. While thematically, this may sound like what we have heard before, that was before Iraq and there was not as much urgency as now." In addition, there is now greater attention in Washington, both in Congress and at the Pentagon, on out-of-control spending on some weapons. The Pentagon currently has $1.3 trillion of weapons program in its portfolio - with $800 billion of the bills for them still to be paid. The Pentagon has commissioned a major study to make recommendations on curbing these runaway costs. But given the difficulty the Pentagon has had in getting Congress to kill politically popular weapons systems, many analysts raised questions about whether the Pentagon's efforts will succeed. "There is a big chasm between rhetoric and the budget process," said Winslow T. Wheeler, a military analyst at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, the analytical and research arm of the World Security Institute, which describes itself as an "authoritative and impartial monitor of security issues." "Osama is happy for us to spend billions on and F-22A fighter jet systems that can do him no harm," Mr. Wheeler said. "It's hard to conceive of a larger gap between words and decisions." Mr. Wheeler, a former adviser to Congressional Republicans on military issues, said that while civilian leaders, like Mr. Ryan, talk of transformation, they often cave in to the Pentagon's top military officers and their career concerns. "It is true that programs are going to be hunting for dollars," Mr. Wheeler said, "and it is true there are more programs than dollars. But the civilian leaders are doing nothing to bring the budget in line. Even though we are hearing a lot of rhetoric from the office of the defense secretary, we see they are going along with what the services want. It shows who is running the Pentagon." Specifically, Mr. Wheeler criticized the Pentagon's decision to continue financing many weapons systems that some say are ripe for cuts. Among them are the next generation destroyer, the DD(X), which is projected to cost more than $1 billion each; the costly F-22A, which has a total program acquisition cost of $361 million each; and the V-22 Osprey, a Marine aircraft that has had numerous problems in test flights. Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the Teal Group, a northern Virginia aerospace business consulting company, said there was "a huge difference between this quadrennial review and the last." He went on: "The last time we had a quadrennial review, it was followed by double-digit upward budget growth. If we are lucky, there will be a flat budget and a lot of programs that still need care and feeding." And that is exactly what industry executives at the conference said they were grappling with. The future, Mr. Albaugh of Boeing said, "will be less about innovation and more about cost control. We will see a competition for resources, and cost control will be more of an issue." Boeing has already taken some hits. The Air Force has said it does not want any more of Boeing's C-17 Globemaster cargo planes once it receives those already on order, although the program is so popular in Congress, it may be difficult to kill. In addition, a $20 billion aerial refueling tanker program collapsed in a procurement scandal and its future is uncertain. Even if the program is revived, the Air Force will probably be buying 15 or so tankers a year, not leasing 100 as originally planned. "Because of budget pressures, programs that are not transformational will be scrutinized," Mr. Albaugh said. He added that "all big programs because of their size" were at risk and that weapon systems currently in development "with performance problems could be in jeopardy." Mr. Albaugh's views were echoed by other industry executives. "We're not going to have the flush years of past Pentagon budgets," said Daniel J. Murphy Jr., a former admiral and chief executive of Alliant Techsystems. "We are going to be cutting costs, even on cost-plus contracts. We will produce at cost-plus, but at a lower cost." Mark H. Ronald, chief executive of BAE Systems, the British based military supplier, said that given the lack of growth in future Pentagon budgets, "the name of the game going forward is taking market share" from other military contractors. To prepare the industry for this change, Gordon R. England, the Pentagon's No. 2 official, was the host of a dinner earlier this month with chief executives of the largest military contractors - the first such meeting since the Bush administration took office. One message that emerged was that the Pentagon would frown on contractors who ran to Congress to undermine its cost-cutting efforts. Still, some military analysts remain skeptical. "Congress equates weapon systems with jobs and votes," Mr. Thompson said. "It's hard to convince them of anything that will lead to less jobs and fewer votes." -------- asia China deal creates rift between India, Nepal ISN SECURITY WATCH (27/12/05) (By Sudeshna Sarkar in Kathmandu) http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=14049 The rift between South Asian neighbors Nepal and India has widened further after the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) purchased arms and ammunition from China, paying hard cash while continuing to ignore older debts to India that have mounted up to over US$26 million. The cash-strapped RNA last month paid US$80,000 to buy 18,000 grenades and four million rounds of 7.62mm bullets from Poly Technologies Incorporated in Beijing in a surprisingly prompt transaction, with the consignments arriving in the capital, Kathmandu, in November and the payment also being made by 15 November. This has ruffled the feathers of India, Nepal’s largest trading partner, as over 20 private companies, including some of India’s biggest automobile manufacturers, are yet to be paid for military supplies sent to the RNA by New Delhi since 2002. Before India suspended military supplies to Nepal in February to show concern at Nepalese King Gyanendra’s power grab with the help of the army, New Delhi had been the Himalayan kingdom’s largest arms donor, selling weapons and equipment to the RNA at a 70 per cent markoff. Between 2002 and 2005, Indian military assistance to Nepal has been worth over US$110 million, of which the RNA was asked to pay about one-third when it had the funds. The Indian aid - which included helicopters, mine-protected vehicles, rifles and ammunition, grenades, ambulances, bullet-proof jackets, night-vision equipment, and concertina wire coils - was obtained from private Indian companies, which are now pressing New Delhi for payment. Over 20 private companies are involved, including some of the top automobile makers in the country, like Tata Motors, Mahindra and Mahindra, Maruti, and Ashok Leyland. The creditor’s list also includes Hindustan Aeronautics, the largest public-sector undertaking under the Defense Ministry’s Department of Defense Production, which has until now exported two indigenously-made Lancer light attack helicopters and two Advanced Light Helicopters (ALHs) to the RNA. Sources in India’s defense department, who did not wish to be named, said some of the manufacturers had also threatened the Indian government with legal action. Though India says the bills have been pending with the RNA for over one-and-a-half years, Nepal’s newly appointed Home Minister Kamal Thapa professed ignorance about the debt. “Let the Indian government approach us officially, we will study the bills after that,” Thapa told ISN Security Watch on Tuesday. Defense sources say the prompt payment to the Chinese company was made because of the commissions involved. A section of senior officers in the RNA had been unhappy with the Indian aid, since it involved a government-to-government transaction and elbowed out brokers. However, after the Indian military aid stopped, the RNA issued a public notification asking for interested arms manufacturers abroad to enlist in coordination with a local partner. Most of the arms supplies obtained by the RNA since then have likely benefited brokers, who are often senior army officials. Indian defense sources predicted that the Chinese deal would sour future transactions with India. Nepal currently has a great need for arms, since King Gyanendra is going ahead with his decision to hold elections on 8 February, despite even though the major parliamentary parties will be boycotting them. Besides the boycott, the government also has to contend with Maoist guerrillas who have threatened to disrupt the elections. The rebels, who have been waging a nine-year war to abolish the monarchy and install a republic, have called a week-long countrywide strike from 5 February targeting the transport industry, educational institutions, offices, and business establishments in a bid to intimidate voters. They have also threatened to take “action” against candidates contesting the polls and election officials. With the ceasefire called by the militants ending on 1 January, there is fear that fresh violence could break out in a country where the insurgency has already claimed over 12,000 lives. To preempt guerrilla attacks, the RNA has stepped up its vigilance in Rolpa district in mid-western Nepal, the cradle and heartland of the uprising. On Monday, the RNA clashed with the rebels’ “People’s Liberation Army” in Rolpa. The RNA said it had lost a soldier in the fight, but the guerrillas clamed eight people had been killed, including six soldiers. The home minister said the government had considered all possible developments after 1 January and was ready for any contingency. Besides beefing up security in the 50-odd municipalities, he said the government was also mulling compensation for victims of Maoist attacks during the polls. However, he ruled out postponing the elections. “The king has a roadmap for bringing lasting peace and strengthening democracy,” he said. “Elections are an integral part of that vision.” Gyanendra has also said he would hold general elections by April 2007. However, opposition parties say elections are a ploy to legitimize his power seizure and deceive the international community. ---- Kyrgyzstan's base proposal TODAY'S EDITORIAL December 27, 2005 Washington Times http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20051226-095628-8953r.htm It was only two months ago that Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev assured Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the United States could continue use of its Manas Air Base in that Central Asian country. The U.S. base in Kyrgyzstan became all the more important after Uzbekistan asked the United States to close its base in July. Now, Mr. Bakiyev has tacked a hefty price tag onto his earlier commitment. Mr. Bakiyev said Thursday the United States should pay "tens of times more" than it currently does for use of its air base. "Until now the payment has been symbolic," he said. Mr. Bakiyev apparently wants close to $200 million a year from Washington for use of the base. That figure is so high that some observers have speculated that Kyrgyzstan wants the United States out altogether. "Sources say the government is under pressure from China and Russia to evict the U.S. from the country," the Financial Times reported Thursday. More than likely, however, the new Kyrgyz demands are related to financial, not geopolitical, concerns. A democratic uprising in Kyrgyzstan in March forced out dictator Askar Akayev, but it has not edged out government corruption and other problems. According to a recently issued report from the International Crisis Group: "Property is being redistributed in a chaotic and sometimes violent manner. Government, criminals and others are scrambling for a share of the country's valuable assets, including many that the Akayev family monopolized." Amid the chaos and corruption, Mr. Bakiyev is probably looking for a reliable source of income. In recent weeks, Kyrgyzstan used another approach in its attempt to get more funds from the United States. The current Kyrgyz government asked the United States to pay again for past use of the base and fueling costs, even though the United States had already made payments for those services under the former Akayev government. The current government said that much of that money was lost to graft, and it therefore asked the United States to compensate for the lost resources. The United States, wary of setting an unwelcome precedent, has correctly maintained that graft is an issue for Kyrgyzstan to resolve and declined to make additional payments. The Kyrgyz president is well aware he has a strong bargaining chip in the U.S. base. About 1,000 troops are stationed in Manas, now the only base in Central Asia for staging operations in Afghanistan. In October, Mr. Bakiyev told Miss Rice that the United States could continue using its airbase "until the situation in Afghanistan is completely stabilized." Kyrgyzstan is probably not being unduly pressured by Russia and China to evict the United States, and is more than likely prepared to continuing playing the great powers off each other. Kyrgyzstan has both a Russian and an American base on its soil. If the Kyrgyz government were to price itself out of the U.S. base, Moscow and Beijing would not need to compete as tenaciously for clout in the country. -------- business U.S. puts sanctions on Chinese firms for aiding Tehran By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published December 27, 2005 http://washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20051227-124948-5253r Several Chinese companies involved in selling missile goods and chemical-arms materials to Iran have been hit with U.S. sanctions, Bush administration officials said yesterday. The sanctions cover six Chinese government-run companies, two Indian firms and one Austrian company, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The penalties have been under consideration since April and were approved by Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick within the past several weeks. An announcement will be published in the U.S. government's Federal Register in the next several days -- and perhaps as early as today, the officials said. The sanctions were imposed under the Iran Nonproliferation Act, which Congress passed in 2000 to deter international support for Iran's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and missile-delivery systems. The penalties, which will last until December 2007, bar the companies from doing business with the U.S. government and prohibit U.S. firms from obtaining export licenses to sell sensitive products to these companies. The details of the transfers to Iran were not disclosed. The sanctions are part of a more aggressive policy aimed at identifying foreign companies engaged in helping rogue states gain access to weapons technology. So far, 40 companies and people have been punished since 2001. They come as the United States and Europe consider whether to seek U.N. Security Council action on Iran's covert nuclear arms programs. Iran has violated International Atomic Energy Agency commitments by denying access to numerous nuclear-related facilities. The U.S. government suspects oil-rich Iran is building nuclear weapons under the cover of producing civilian facilities for generating electrical power. These latest sanctions show that China is continuing to support the missile and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs of states that support international terrorism. "We think these transfers helped [Iran's] ballistic missile and WMD programs," a senior official said. Beijing has denied U.S. reports that the government or any of its companies have supplied missile- or weapons-related goods and technology to Iran and other rogue states and, in 2004, denounced a previous round of sanctions as "wrong." A Chinese Embassy spokesman could not be reached for comment yesterday. The Chinese companies involved in the transfers are the China National Aerotechnology Import Export Corp., known as CATIC; the missile exporter China North Industries Corp., known as NORINCO; Zibo Chemet Equipment Co.; the Hongdu Aviation Industry Group; Ounion International Economic and Technical Cooperative Ltd.; and the Limmt Metallurgy and Minerals Co. The officials said that three of the Chinese companies have been sanctioned in the past for illicit arms transfers -- CATIC, NORINCO and Zibo. "NORINCO is a serial proliferator," one official said. "All these sanctions are for transfers to Iran." The 2000 law requires the U.S. government to impose sanctions on companies or people that supply Iran with goods, services or technology related to nuclear weapons, missiles and toxic chemicals that can be used to make chemical arms. Zibo is known to make glass-lined containers that can be used to make chemical weapons. CATIC and Norinco are involved in manufacturing missiles. A CIA report to Congress made public last year stated that Chinese companies' supplies of ballistic missile-related assistance have "helped Iran move toward its goal of becoming self-sufficient in the production of ballistic missiles." Chinese firms also have provided dual-use missile-related items, raw materials and assistance to Iran, Libya and North Korea, the CIA report stated. The two Indian chemical companies that will be sanctioned are Sabero Organics Chemical and Sandhya Organics Chemical. The Austrian firm Steyr-Mannlicher, which makes high-quality assault weapons, also is being sanctioned. The sanctions announcement will also state that the U.S. government is lifting sanctions imposed last year on Chaudhary Surendar, one of two Indian nuclear scientists who had been linked to Iran's nuclear program. India's government had denied that Mr. Surendar was linked to Iranian proliferation activities Mr. Surendar was sanctioned in September 2004 for his role in providing weapons of mass destruction and missile goods to Iran under the Iran Nonproliferaiton Act. The other scientist, Y.S.R. Prasad, continues to face sanctions until they expire in September. -------- iraq Ukraine Completes Troop Withdrawal From Iraq Created: 27.12.2005 MosNews http://mosnews.com/news/2005/12/27/ukriraqexit.shtml Ukraine has completely withdrawn its troops from Iraq. The last column of Ukrainian military equipment in Iraq has passed 600 kilometers and arrived at the Kuwaiti port of Ah Shuaiba on Tuesday. The column includes eight armored vehicles and 44 troops, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry press service was quoted by RIA-Novosti news agency as saying. Therefore, there is no Ukrainian peacekeeper at the Iraqi territory left. The 867 Ukrainian soldiers have served as a part of the U.S.-led coalition under Polish command in southern and central Iraq. All are due home by Dec. 30, making the former Soviet nation the latest country to wind down its presence in the coalition. Eighteen Ukrainian soldiers died and 32 others were wounded in Iraq. On Monday, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko made an unannounced one-day visit to his country’s peacekeepers in Iraq. -------- landmines Egypt seeks to resolve landmine legacy Tue Dec 27, 2005 1:02 PM ET (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051227/wl_mideast_afp/egyptminesconference_051227180227 CAIRO - A conference underlining the gravity of Egypt's landmines problem kicked off in Cairo, with delegates appealing for international support in the mine clearing effort. "The existence of large numbers of landmines in the northwestern coast impedes development and causes serious health and environmental damage," chairman of Egypt's Human Rights Council, Butros Butros Ghali said. Ghali, the former UN Secretary General, told delegates that the continued presence of mines and other unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the region also represented a human rights violation. Egypt is one of the most heavily-mined regions in the world, a legacy of World War II and the Arab-Israeli wars, which left the northwestern desert infested with an estimated 22 million mines and UXOs. Officials complain that the mines, spread over the vast desert expanse, have already claimed some 8,000 victims and continue to hold up land needed for agriculture and development. "The mines problem is among the most serious facing humanity and Egypt is among the worst countries affected," Fathi Surur, speaker of the Egyptian parliament, said in a speech to participants at the event. Over the years, Egypt has succeeded in reducing the number of these deadly devices to around 16 million and stresses that more can be done with better funding and cooperation from the international community. "Egypt has a right to establish development projects on all of its lands," International Cooperation Minister and head of the National Committee for Demining and Developing the Northwest coast," Fayza Abul Naga'a, said. Britain and Germany also continue to blame each other for planting large numbers of mines and UXOs in the western desert, although they have offered some help and maps. Egyptian experts visited the Brussels headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ( NATO) recently for talks with officials on boosting cooperation in the effort to rid the country of mines and UXOs. The two-day conference that is also being attended by delegates from the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and international experts, was expected to end with recommendations on the best way to deal with the problem. -------- russia / chechnya Russia's Indigenous People Fear the Worst as Toxic Spill Enters Fishing Waters December 27, 2005 — By Yuras Karmanau, Associated Press http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=9537 DZHARI, Russia — A shamanic legend holds that when fish disappear from the mighty Amur River, so will the Nanai indigenous people disappear from Earth. The prophesy hangs heavily over the people of the Russian Far East village of Dzhari as they await the arrival of a toxic stew of potentially cancer-causing nitrobenzene and other poisons spewed into their river by a chemical plant explosion in China last month. Russian authorities have reassured the population that nitrobenzene indicators in the Amur's waters do not exceed maximum acceptable levels. Yet the indicators in fish are 20 times higher and, according to the Institute of Water Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the level in fish is dozens of times above what could be considered safe. "We must tell people the truth," said Vladimir Popov, the Khabarovsk regional government's first deputy chairman, who chairs the emergency response committee. "Nitrobenzene collects in fish and doesn't leave the organism." Regional authorities have imposed a ban on fishing from the Amur for at least two years -- inspiring dread in local inhabitants. "We'll die if we stop eating fish," protested 56-year-old Boris Geiker, who eats fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Just steps from his wooden house, its frame hung with fish, hangs a freshly painted sign: "Fishing absolutely prohibited." "For us, fish means even more than bread does" for Russians, Geiker said as he untangled his fishing tackle outside the house in -30 C (-22 F) weather. The Nanai, who today number close to 11,000, call the Amur "our provider." More than half of the tens of thousands of native people of the Russian Far East live along the Amur, and all put fish at the center of their ethnic culture. Larisa Beldy, a 51-year-old Nanai craftswoman, showed off a pair of boots made from fish skin. Her hand-embroidered robe was decorated with traditional Nanai drawings. "Civilization has practically destroyed the Nanai language, and the toxic slick could destroy the culture and health of my people," she said mournfully as she cradled her 7-month-old grandson Grisha in her arms. Pollution has already taken a heavy toll. Just 7 percent of girls and 9 percent of boys born to indigenous families are considered to be in good health, official statistics show. The insufficient flourine and iodine in the water and soil is accompanied by a surfeit of manganese, iron, polymetals and even radionucleides, which promote chronic diseases. The native people's immunity is half the norm in Russia, according to research by biologist Nikolai Ryabinin, leader of the Amur Ecological Foundation. "The small peoples are swiftly degenerating," Ryabinin said. There are no jobs in Dzhari, 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Khabarovsk. The single store in the village is empty. The 700 inhabitants are grouped in extended families who help each other survive, sharing government pensions and subsidies for children. "We can hardly make ends meet," said Nikolai Beldy, 67, who was using an ax to chop up frozen fish for his year-old grandson Alexei and daughter Tatyana. "And what will we eat? There's nothing else (other than fish) here." For now, he is not venturing out to fish for fear of running into government inspectors. But Beldy said the toxic slick will not stop him from fishing. "The fish is even more dangerous for people than toxic water," said Lyubov Kondratyeva, a researcher at the institute. Khabarovsk regional governor Viktor Ishayev has promised that the authorities will import fish from unpolluted regions of Russia for the indigenous peoples of the Far East. Yet there is none to be seen so far in Dzhari, where the only visible, organized preparation for meeting the slick is the delivery of huge barrels of yellowish water, which the authorities claim is clean, to every home. Stanislav Beldy, the village administration chief, said he is preparing for the worst. "So it's really true we're going to disappear?" he asked. "The poison is already in the Amur, and we have yet to see the imported fish." -------- spies Italian Court Seeks Arrest of 22 CIA Agents Tuesday, December 27th, 2005 Headlines Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/27/1443255 An Italian court has issued a European arrest warrant for 22 CIA agents suspected of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003. The CIA agents are accused of grabbing Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr off the streets and then flying him to Egypt where he was reportedly tortured. Meanwhile the U.S. government has admitted it may have flown detainees to Syria even though the country has one of the worst human rights records in the Middle East. The U.S. embassy in Britain was forced to make the admission after the U.S. Ambassador to Britain, Robert Tuttle, told the BBC "I don't think there is any evidence that there have been any renditions carried out in the country of Syria. There is no evidence of that." But the U.S. Embassy has since issued a clarification to Tuttle's comments acknowledging the reports in the media that the U.S. had in fact sent detainees to Syria. The embassy spokeswoman said the ambassador "recognized that there had been a media report of a rendition to Syria but reiterated that the United States is not in a position to comment on specific allegations of intelligence activities that appear in the press". -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- justice Question the PATRIOT Act Now – Before It's Too Late by Rep. Ron Paul, December 27, 2005 Antiwar.com http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=8310 Recent revelations that the National Security Agency has conducted broad surveillance of American citizens' e-mails and phone calls raise serious questions about the proper role of government in a free society. This is an important and healthy debate, one that too often goes ignored by Congress. Public concerns about the misnamed PATRIOT Act are having an impact, as the Senate last week refused to reauthorize the bill for several years. Instead, Congress will be back in Washington next month to consider many of the Act's most harmful provisions. Of course most governments, including our own, cannot resist the temptation to spy on their citizens when it suits government purposes. But America is supposed to be different. We have a mechanism called the Constitution that is supposed to place limits on the power of the federal government. Why does the Constitution have an enumerated powers clause, if the government can do things wildly beyond those powers – such as establish a domestic spying program? Why have a 4th Amendment, if it does not prohibit government from eavesdropping on phone calls without telling anyone? We're told that Sept. 11 changed everything, that new government powers like the PATRIOT Act are necessary to thwart terrorism. But these are not the most dangerous times in American history, despite the self-flattery of our politicians and media. This is a nation that expelled the British, saw the White House burned to the ground in 1814, fought two world wars, and faced down the Soviet Union. Sept. 11 does not justify ignoring the Constitution by creating broad new federal police powers. The rule of law is worthless if we ignore it whenever crises occur. The administration assures us that domestic surveillance is done to protect us. But the crucial point is this: Government assurances are not good enough in a free society. The overwhelming burden must always be placed on government to justify any new encroachment on our liberty. Now that the emotions of Sept. 11 have cooled, the American people are less willing to blindly accept terrorism as an excuse for expanding federal surveillance powers. Conservatives who support the Bush administration should remember that powers we give government today will not go away when future administrations take office. Some senators last week complained that the PATRIOT Act is misunderstood. But it's not the American public's fault nobody knows exactly what the PATRIOT Act does. The Act contains over 500 pages of detailed legalese, the full text of which was neither read nor made available to Congress in a reasonable time before it was voted on – which by itself should have convinced members to vote against it. Many of the surveillance powers authorized in the Act are not clearly defined and have not yet been tested. When they are tested, court challenges are sure to follow. It is precisely because we cannot predict how the PATRIOT Act will be interpreted and used in future decades that we should question it today. -------- OTHER -------- environment Time for Chemical Plant Security December 27, 2005 NY TIMES Editorial http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/opinion/27tues1.html?hp=&pagewanted=print It is hard to believe, but more than four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress has still not acted to make chemical plants, one of the nation's greatest terrorist vulnerabilities, safer. Last week, Senators Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, unveiled a bipartisan chemical plant security bill. We hope that parts of the bill will be improved as it works its way through Congress, though even in its current form the bill would be a significant step. If terrorists attacked a chemical plant, the death toll could be enormous. A single breached chlorine tank could, according to the Department of Homeland Security, lead to 17,500 deaths, 10,000 severe injuries and 100,000 hospitalizations. Many chemical plants have shockingly little security to defend against such attacks. After 9/11, there were immediate calls for the government to impose new security requirements on these plants. But the chemical industry, which contributes heavily to political campaigns, has used its influence in Washington to block these efforts. Senator Collins, the chairwoman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, has held hearings on chemical plant security, and has now come up with this bill with both Republican and Democratic sponsors. The bill requires chemical plants to conduct vulnerability assessments and develop security and emergency response plans. The Department of Homeland Security would be required to develop performance standards for chemical plant security. In extreme cases, plants that do not meet the standards could be shut down. Until recently, it appeared that the bill might include pre-emption language, which would block states from coming up with their own chemical security rules. That would have made the bill worse than no bill at all. New Jersey has just imposed its own chemical plant security rules, and other states may follow. These states should be free to protect their citizens more vigorously than the federal government does, if they choose. To Senator Collins's and Senator Lieberman's credit, the bill now expressly declares that it does not prevent states from doing more. The bill's biggest weakness is that it does not address the issue of alternative chemicals. In many cases, chemical plants in highly populated areas are using dangerous chemicals when there are safer, cost-effective substitutes. A strong bill would require chemical companies to investigate alternatives, and to use them when the cost is not prohibitive. Senator Lieberman has said that he hopes to strengthen the bill's approach to alternative chemicals, which would be an important improvement. The burden now falls on the House of Representatives to pass a bill that is at least as tough, and that does not pre-empt the states' authority in this area. A leading antiterrorism expert has described the nation's chemical plants as "15,000 weapons of mass destruction littered around the United States." The American people have waited long enough to be protected from these homegrown W.M.D.'s. -------- ACTIVISTS Critical Mass Bike Rides Face Police Crackdown Tuesday, December 27th, 2005 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/27/1443258 Cycling advocates have faced targeted surveillance and policing over the past year. We bring you excerpts from the documentary "Still We Ride," which traces the police crackdown on Critical Mass bike rides in New York City since the Republican National Convention. [includes rush transcript] The ad hoc bicycle advocacy movement Critical Mass consists of monthly group bike rides in cities around the world. In New York City, the rides have been specially targeted by NYPD officers in uniform and in plain clothes. Last August, when thousands descended on New York for the Republican National Convention, over three thousand bicyclists and skaters participated in a Critical mass ride on the eve of the start of street protests. That night, police moved in on the bikers and arrested hundreds. Over a week and a half surrounding the RNC, police arrested nearly 400 bike riders. Since then, activists and civil liberties groups say the City of New York has been targeting bicyclists and Critical Mass in particular. Police presence at rides includes plain clothes officers who videotape riders without identifying themselves as members of the NYPD. * Still We Ride, documentary produced by Elizabeth Press, Andrew Lynn and Christopher Ryan. * Elizabeth Press, co-director of Still We Ride. She is also a producer at Democracy Now! RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, we are going to speak with Jim Dwyer, who did the expose in The New York Times. We'll also speak with Eileen Clancy, who was with I-Witness Video, who provided the videotapes to The New York Times, but first, we're going to an excerpt of a documentary about the cycling movement known as Critical Mass. CYCLIST: Critical Mass is like a way of saying, ‘Hey, everybody! Come on! Let's do it! We can all do this. We can all make our city a better, more fun place to live.’ CYCLIST: If you ride with a bunch of other people, it feels good. CYCLIST: This is a story of bicycle riders which call themselves critical and a system which calls them criminal. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: You hand these out every month, or is it just this month? CYCLIST: Just distributing it today. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Bike rules. CYCLIST: On the last Friday of every month we meet at 7:00 at Union Square, and we take to the streets and we ride. CYCLIST: This is Critical Mass. And it's just very cool to be able to exercise democracy. This is what democracy looks like. CYCLIST: You could see that there’s a direct relation to more people biking and Critical Mass being big. CYCLIST: This is way bigger than last time. This is mad. CYCLIST: It's really about reoccupying the city on a different basis, and that pleasure is a crucial subversive principle of that reoccupation and re-inhabitation of our lives. CYCLIST: It's amazing. Like, as far as I can see in either direction is bicycles. CYCLIST: When you're riding your bicycle, it's an amazing thing. You really feel the connection between like what you do and how it affects everything else. And you really almost, without even realizing it, become very environmentally aware. CHRIS CARSSON, Co-Founder of Critical Mass: Nothing here is for sale. You’re not even welcome to sell anything here. It's all about just coming together with a bunch of other people moving through the streets. You're mobile. You're in motion the whole time. And you don't know what's going to happen. It's actually open-ended. We don't have -- you cannot predict what is going to happen at any given moment in Critical Mass. And I think that's part of the magic of it. It speaks to people's craving for authentic, spontaneous human interaction and community. It's something you don't get to do very much in this society. I have been involved in Critical Mass since day one. I was one of the people who helped start it with about several dozen other people here in San Francisco. The concept came along to try to meet up once a month and fill the streets with bikes. CYCLIST: The logic of the dance between Critical Mass bicyclists and police, wherever you are, there's been a number of incidents. New York is definitely on the forefront of this struggle right now. The police, on some level, as individual rank-and-file policemen, are offended by Critical Mass. AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt of the documentary, Still We Ride by Elizabeth Press, Andrew Lynn and Christopher Ryan. When we come back, an excerpt specifically on police surveillance, and then we'll be joined by representatives of The New York Times, of I-Witness Video and the New York Police Department. [break] AMY GOODMAN: Before we go to our extended discussion on the expose of undercover police surveillance of political protest in New York, we wanted to play another excerpt of Still We Ride, the film that examines the police crackdown on the monthly Critical Mass bike ride in New York, that looks at some of the covert police tactics used by the New York Police Department. It’s directed by Elizabeth Press, Andrew Lynn and Christopher Ryan. Elizabeth Press is a producer here at Democracy Now! Welcome, Elizabeth. To introduce this piece, I certainly remember well at one of the Critical Mass bike rides that you were on when you just had passed Times Square, coming out to see the ride, and you were filming the whole thing, when we spent most of our time trying to get you out of detention, out of arrest. ELIZABETH PRESS: Yes. Yes, so since then, since that night in August, I have been documenting Critical Mass with a few other people. And there have been more than 650 arrests in the last 16 months, and we have created a documentary called Still We Ride that we just saw a clip from, and we’re going to see another clip from. And this clip comes from after the October Critical Mass ride in 2004. In October, there were 35 arrests on that ride, and then there was an after-party at the Time’s Up! space, and Time’s Up! is a direct action environmental group that exists here in New York City. And this is a clip that leads into the story of undercovers. BILL DiPAOLA, Time’s Up!: It's the night of October 29, going into the 30th. We're the at Time's Up! environmental space on 49 East Houston Street, New York City. Today we had the Critical Mass bike ride. We had a federal judge trying to protect us from the permit rule. We had a small party at the space. MATT ROTH, Time’s Up!: By about 11:30 or so, there had been several undercover cops, including a Lieutenant Fanale, wearing this Redskins jersey. She had sort of come into the party very definitely undercover, no badge showing. And apparently, she had sent a distress signal. I don't know why she would have. If she were inside the party, she would have just seen people dancing and having a good time. BILL DiPAOLA: The police tried to come into the space without a permit. CYCLIST: Where is your warrant? Where is your warrant? BILL DiPAOLA: We were able to hold the doors back. They started pepper spraying us, arresting people. Now they have the whole place surrounded. CYCLISTS: We do not consent to a search. MATT ROTH: They picked up this one woman. They took her camera. They were trying to wrench it out of her hand, and she ended up having damage to her wrist from it. They completely destroyed her video camera. It was actually Lieutenant Fanale who came at her and like smacked the camera out of her hand. CYCLIST: Get your hands off me. Keep moving. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: What happened to your hand? CYCLIST: They were trying to get my camera out of it, so they were hitting it repeatedly to get me to release the camera. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: What is it all about? UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I don't know. It's about people trying to show that they're in control, I guess. Two different crowds, two different mentalities. All I saw was the people dancing. People were dancing, and the cops just showed up. That’s it, yeah. It was crazy. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I have no idea. I’m trying to get my work up to go home. MATT ROTH: They called Norman Siegel. They woke him up, and he came down. BILL DiPAOLA: Okay, this is Norman Siegel. He's our lawyer. Listen, let’s do this in a really orderly fashion. NORMAN SIEGEL, Civil Rights Attorney: We were able to get people out. Eventually, we ended whatever this standoff was. As people were leaving and going and getting their bikes off of the Puck building fence, the police at one point pulled out a saw and cut a couple bikes off of the Puck building. This was part of the targeting and the selecting of Critical Mass bike ride community for this kind of punishment, and it's chilling, it's intimidating. I think it's overkill, it's unnecessary. CHRISTOPHER RYAN: Have you ever been in a criminal court case before? PAULETTE: No. I haven't even been a juror on a criminal court case. MATT ROTH: The whole process is very much political. The fact that I'm going to court and I don't know what’s going to happen, and March is how many -- it's seven months or eight months after my arrest. It's like the punishment is the process. PAULETTE: I didn't have any special fear of police officers or suspicion of them or paranoia or thinking that somehow they were working for the other side. You know, I thought they were as much a victim of the system as I was. But now, I just don't feel so trusting at all. EILEEN CLANCY, I-Witness Video: It's really up to the broader public to know and to understand what's going on out there and for a consensus to be developed about how these types of events should be policed. BILL DiPAOLA: Just crazy things are going on to stop a few people from biking, but if you could see what they did with the community gardens, they spent just as much money. So you have to wonder, is it really about the bicycling, or is it about community versus the corporate behavior. EILEEN CLANCY: This amount of policing has really translated into a loss of democracy for people. POLICE LOUDSPEAKER: It is dangerous and illegal to ride a bicycle in a procession on the public streets within New York City. GIDEON OLIVER, Civil Rights Attorney: The Police Department has always sent, you know, a certain amount of police officers on bikes or scooters. You know, they go up along the sides, and you know, and cork and facilitate the ride as it goes. And it seems to me that that doesn't cost nearly as much money as the way they're cracking down now, and it kept everyone safe for years, so why can't it continue to keep them safe? You never kind of want to believe that that much money and governmental power could be wielded, you know, because essentially somebody has a grudge, but that's really what it starts to feel like when this goes on for months and months completely unchecked. POLICE OFFICER: You want to talk about a waste of tax dollars? This is a waste of tax dollars. We have to be here because of this. PAULETTE: Originally, I decided to take this to trial because it seemed like there were unfair politically motivated, preemptive mass arrests. But that almost seems like nothing compared to what's going on now. AMY GOODMAN: Excerpt of the documentary, Still We Ride, produced by Elizabeth Press, Andrew Lynn and Christopher Ryan. ---- New Video Evidence Shows NYPD Covert Surveillance of Cyclists and Protests Tuesday, December 27th, 2005 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/27/1444202 We host a roundtable discussion on covert police surveillance of demonstrations in New York City. Newly released video tape shows what the New York Times describes as "the robust presence of disguised officers" since the Republican National Convention in August 2004. We speak with the New York Police Department, I-Witness video, and The New York Times. [includes rush transcript] Last Thursday, The New York Times published an article revealing that it had obtained videotapes showing the New York Police Department conducting surveillance by planting undercover officers to secretly infiltrate and monitor anti-war protests, bike rallies, and even a vigil for a dead cyclist. The footage the Times obtained showed officers holding protest signs, carrying flowers with mourners, riding their bicycles – and videotaping people at events. The Times says that the footage shows at least ten undercover operatives taking part in seven public gatherings since the Republican National Convention in August 2004. In an editorial published the day after the story ran, The Times wrote, "it is a sad day when a police force generally known for its professionalism is caught using underhanded tactics to spy on and even distort political protests and mass rallies." This is the latest in a series of revelations about domestic spying that have come to light in the past few weeks. Last week NBC News revealed that the Pentagon has been monitoring peaceful anti-war protesters and the New York Times exposed how President Bush ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without court-approved warrants. Also, newly released documents show that counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been monitoring domestic organizations active in causes as diverse as peace, the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief. * Jim Dwyer, New York Times Metro reporter, author of the expose on covert police surveillance published December 22nd. * Paul J. Browne, New York City Police Department's Deputy Commissioner of Public Information. * Eileen Clancy, forensic video analyst and member of I-Witness video, a project that assembled hundreds of videotapes shot during the RNC. * Norman Siegel, longtime civil rights attorney. He is former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Our guests to talk about police surveillance of protest are Eileen Clancy of I-Witness Video; Jim Dwyer, New York Times reporter; Paul J. Browne joins us on the phone, Deputy Commissioner of Public Information for the New York Police Department; and Norman Siegel is with us in studio, long-time civil rights attorney, former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Jim Dwyer, let's begin with you, your expose of last Thursday. What did you find? JIM DWYER: We found that in the last 16 months, there was very robust presence by disguised police officers at a number of events, including anti-war protests, poor people's march during the R.N.C. last year, and also at these mass bike rides, these group bike rides called Critical Mass. And until September 11th, the surveillance by the police of First Amendment-protected activities had been one of the most controlled and limited of all police powers, not only in New York City, but in big cities around the country, and also there were a lot of restrictions on the F.B.I. After September 11, there were a lot of revisions made to those controls. They were done in each jurisdiction, but they all essentially moved in the same direction, which was to ease those restrictions. And New York Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly both sought to ease those restrictions, saying that the threat of terrorism was so great that they were handcuffed in preventing future terrorists because of these rules. AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the videotapes that you got. JIM DWYER: The videotapes were from a variety of sources. They were all accumulated by I-Witness Video by Eileen Clancy's sort of one-person operation, but with many tentacles, I would say, of information coming in from civilians, bystanders who were filming things, legal observers, activists who were filming stuff, as well as the Police Department's own video, which was made public, in effect, during these trials of people arrested at these protests or at the bike rides, because the videotape would be turned over as part of the discovery process during the pretrial proceedings. AMY GOODMAN: And these videotapes that you say document undercover police work, describe them. JIM DWYER: Well, in some cases, they're very explicit. You see people who are dressed up with buttons like "I'm a shameless agitator," or, you know, buttons describing the mayor with a kind of a vulgarity, and people putting stickers on their bikes that say, "Bicycle riding is not a crime," and so forth. And then they would go out and either circulate in the protest or they would ride in the bike ride. Sometimes they would be videotaping. Sometimes they would be holding slogans, you know, protest signs or signs indicating some kind of political belief. And in one case -- or in a couple of cases, what you see is what appear to be faked or sham arrests taking place of these individuals, and the purpose of those arrests is not entirely clear, but we know that in one instance, it had a very profound effect on a demonstration, when a man was arrested, who seemed to be standing on a sidewalk doing nothing more than holding a sign. He's arrested by a police lieutenant, or a police lieutenant started the process of arresting him. The crowd -- this is during the R.N.C. -- objected to his arrest. People started shouting, “Let him go! Let him go!” And then, a confrontation developed between police officers in tactical riot gear and some of the people who were yelling and hollering about this arrest. When you look at the videotape closely, it shows that the man actually did not have handcuffs on when he was led away. When they unzipped his backpack, it seemed that he had a radio of some sort in there, looked like a two-way radio, and he seemed to have a very cordial relationship, which was not typical at the moment of what was going on between the police and some of the demonstrators. So that was a pretty interesting piece of video. And there was another piece where some officers -- some people were arrested during one of the bike rides. And one of the officers -- well, let me not jump ahead and say he's an officer. One of the people who was arrested gets down on his knees, and he says to the arresting officer, “I'm on the job,” which is police lingo for meaning, “'I’m a cop, I'm a police officer, too.” And so, the uniformed officer responds by saying, “Hey, Louis,” typically a way of saying, “Hey, Lieutenant,” “Hey, Louis, he's under.” So this man was led down the block and got back on his bike and away he rode. And two other people who were with him, a woman and a man, were put into the van with other people who were arrested, but about 25 minutes later, they were videotaped down in the Lower East Side at the scene of yet another arrest. So it was pretty clear that those people were not bike riders. It looks like the person who was arrested on 23rd Street holding the sign was not a protester. And that's what the videotapes show. AMY GOODMAN: Paul Browne, you’re Deputy Commissioner of Public Information. Your response to the New York Times reporter's expose, Jim Dwyer? PAUL J. BROWNE: Well, I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what -- it's just wrong, flatly wrong, to say that after September 11th our activity in these areas picked up. That's not what our reform of the Handschu Accord was all about. We went to court to have more leeway in conducting undercover investigations. Nothing described by Jim Dwyer was an undercover investigation. None of the officers were undercover officers. And it's more than a semantical difference in the Police Department. What he describes is activities typically done by anti-crime or plainclothes officers, beside the large crowds, whether it be New Year's Eve, whether it be a political protest, to act or direct the actions of uniformed police officers when some sort of violence or criminal activity of any kind breaks out or lawbreaking, whether that would be just to arrest the bottle thrower in the middle of the crowd or direct his arrest or to identify the people blocking cross-town traffic during one of the mass bike rides in order to have them arrested. That's what he described. That's not undercover activity. It's not undercover police officers. It's not covered by Handschu. We did this kind of activity before and after September 11, and it's virtually unchanged. And that's the basic mistake in that reporting. AMY GOODMAN: They're not undercover, they're what? PAUL J. BROWNE: They're anti-crime or plainclothes officers. It may be a semantical difference in Jim's head, but it's not in the Police Department’s. JIM DWYER: Actually, if I – AMY GOODMAN: Jim Dwyer. PAUL J. BROWNE: And the other thing is when he uses the term, “Hey, Louis, he's under," for your listeners, “under” means under arrest, not undercover. JIM DWYER: Right. Well, he was promptly released, and whether he was undercover or plainclothes or whatever, but -- PAUL J. BROWNE: Can I interrupt one second, Jim? You’re modulating in and out. I don't know if there's a way to improve what I am hearing. JIM DWYER: Okay, I will try and talk louder. One of the things that happened when the Police Department went into the -- when the city went in after 9/11 and sought different kinds of guidelines about the use of undercover officers was that it asked specifically that the distinction between undercover officers and plainclothes officers be eliminated from the guidelines that were put on them, and the court granted that request. It may still be that the function is, as Commissioner Browne says, entirely different, but that -- not to get too semantical on anyone. AMY GOODMAN: On this issue of Handschu, for people who are not familiar with this agreement, I'd like to bring in Norman Siegel, long-time civil rights attorney. Explain what the Handschu Agreement is in New York. NORMAN SIEGEL: First, it's Barbara Handschu and other political activists in the early 1970s, went to court on the premise that they were engaged in the First Amendment-protected activity and that the police were engaged in surveillance, spying on them, in violation of the First Amendment. In 1985, an agreement was entered into with the City of New York and the Police Department that, in effect, was a traditional check and balance on the Police Department, so with regard to video cameras at First Amendment activity, the police could turn on the video cameras when illegal activity was taking place or, in fact, someone was threatening or that there was imminent activity that was going to lead to illegal activity. There were also provisions in there with regard to when an undercover could engage in undercover, and it was basically a check. There was a three-person commission that was set up that was supposedly independent of the Police Department that would review complaints by political activists with regard to surveillance, and they would put out an annual report. And, as Mr. Browne has stated, after 9/11, the Police Department and the City of New York went into the federal court and were able to lower the standard, and one of the concerns that I and other people in this civil rights community have is that we don't think the traditional check, the accountability that we need in a democracy, over our law enforcement people is present. And with the lowering of the standard, I believe that this activity has increased and will increase in the months and years to come. AMY GOODMAN: And that issue, Paul Browne of undercover versus plain clothes, that Jim Dwyer just raised. PAUL J. BROWNE: Well, there's two distinct functions here, what I’m talking about. Regardless of how he described them, that may not be important to your listeners, police officers who go to demonstrations in plain clothes are what we call anti-crime cops. They’re there for one purpose and that only. It has nothing to do with political surveillance. And that's the misleading part of that story. They're there to either intervene or to direct police intervention on some kind of lawbreaking that breaks out at that particular event. AMY GOODMAN: Why do they get arrested? PAUL J. BROWNE: They may get arrested or appear to be arrested just to keep functioning. I’m not certain that they did get arrested. I don't know who these individuals are, but assuming if some of them are police officers, they may be led away, as if they're under arrest, and then they continue to function. AMY GOODMAN: We have to break. When we come back, we'll continue this conversation with Paul Browne, Deputy Commissioner of New York Police Department, Deputy Commissioner of Public Information; Norman Siegel, long-time civil rights attorney; Jim Dwyer of The New York Times; and we'll bring in Eileen Clancy of I-Witness Video who has videotape of so much of this undercover work. [break] AMY GOODMAN: We're talking about police surveillance of political activity here in New York City. Our guests are Norman Siegel, long-time civil rights attorney, former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union; Jim Dwyer of The New York Times, did an expose on Thursday about police surveillance of protest over the last year; Paul Browne joins us on the phone, he is the Deputy Commissioner of Public Information for the New York Police Department; and Eileen Clancy is with us of I-Witness Video. Explain you what have documented in the videotapes that you have gathered, Eileen? EILEEN CLANCY: The videotapes that are contained in The New York Times story show not merely the presence of police officers who are attending these events, because, of course, there are actually at some of these protests and demonstrations, there are dozens and even hundreds of police officers involved in policing these essentially always non-violent peaceful demonstrations. The videotapes really -- these videotapes are looking at police officers who are going an extra step, dressing in clothing to appear to be demonstrators, putting on political slogans and stickers, in large parts in participating in the events in the case of the bicycle rides, bicycle riding with the bike riders, that type of thing, and maybe that have gone over the line, I think, in certain ways. The situation with the woman that's featured in the Times story, who appears to be an undercover police officer, it's not merely that she was -- she was participating in the event. She seemed to be calling in to police commanders where the locations of things, that type of a thing, and then apparently, she was arrested and then released very quickly and appeared at other events. She also participated in a very tiny event, about 15 or 20 bicycle riders, who were having a memorial vigil, a silent memorial vigil for a 21-year-old woman that was run over by a garbage truck on Houston Street and Avenue A. And in remembrance of this woman, a few bicycle riders got together, joined together at Union Square, and they were followed by I don't know how many police officers in unmarked vehicles, motorcycles, vans, and we don't know what else. And this woman police officer participated in this small event. It is hard to imagine -- I mean, these bicycle riders rode single-file in bicycle lanes, obeyed all the traffic laws. And as I said, they were followed by a large amount of police, considering their numbers, many more police than attended this little ride. Then they stopped at the scene where the woman had been killed, they had a memorial event, passed out flowers and so forth. And this police officer videotaped the individuals involved in this event. This is absolutely repugnant. I mean, think what we have to do is we have to think about what is it the police are doing? Is there a legitimate purpose to this? What is this supposed to accomplish, beyond intimidation? AMY GOODMAN: Paul Browne of the New York Police Department, your response. PAUL J. BROWNE: Well, I think, starting to say that these events are always non-violent is just not the case. Beginning in 2002, when I returned the second time to the Police Department, New York had to cope with hosting the World Economic Forum. During that event, you had self-described anarchists, who would mask up, carry bottles of urine to throw at the police and bricks in their knapsacks, in one instance in an attempt to smash windows as the Plaza Hotel. We had anti-crime cops close to them. And when they attempted to move out, they were arrested. During the R.N.C., there were others who wanted to stop delegate buses from -- not only just peaceful protest, but others who wanted to, after the main march, wanted to effect a shutdown of the convention. There was an attempt to shut down Wall Street. Grandiose, I grant it, but attempted nonetheless, attempt to stop delegate buses from reaching the convention site. In those instances, anti-crime officers, plainclothes officers were involved in identifying where those individuals were so that uniformed officers could move in. NORMAN SIEGEL: What's the rationale for Critical Mass for violence? It’s been going on for ten years. Let me finish my question. For ten years, it's going on. PAUL J. BROWNE: You asked me what’s the rationale. I’ll tell you. Critical Mass was going along well, until a few months before the convention, when the riders -- the ride was essentially hijacked by people who wanted to make more -- who wanted to shut down the city in the process. They took over the FDR Drive, the West Side Highway. That's when the police began devoting resources to it. And you just can't decide that because you want to make a point about bike riding that you can shut down cross-town traffic at will. NORMAN SIEGEL: In the last year, has there been that kind of activity? PAUL J. BROWNE: Yes, there has. And we have made the arrests to stop it. AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to Still We Ride, the documentary about the Critical Mass movement. This is just a two-minute clip, and it begins with attorney Steve Hyman talking about what it takes for people not to be arrested. And it goes on to bring you the voices of police officers who are on the scene. This is Still We Ride, the documentary that was produced by Democracy Now! producer, Elizabeth Press, along with Andrew Lynn and Christopher Ryan. STEVEN HYMAN, Civil Rights Attorney: There are real issues as to whether or not a permit is really just a device by the police to try to put an end to Critical Mass, and because once you have that device, that permit, they then set the ground rules and the terms, and when, where, how far it goes. So once that starts, then Critical Mass, as it is conceived and as the participants participate in it, will be at an end. NORMAN SIEGEL: If you have a right to do something, you should not have to ask the government for permission to do that. FATHER FRANK MORALES: It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that these guys sit around and figure, “Hey, we’ve got to stop this.” They had to stop the bandshell from being a place of free speech back some years ago, so they demolished it. They had to stop spontaneous marches from taking place, so they put permits on everything and put fee -- you have to pay a fee to get a permit, and this, that and the other thing. They are trying through every means to limit our ability to dissent. POLICE OFFICER: If these guys applied for a route and stuff like that, they could do whatever, but they don't want to go that route. That’s the thing. POLICE OFFICER: The peaceable people probably don't come any more. They used to come with bicycles with seats on them, with their kids. You don’t want to bring your kids to the circus. This is ridiculous. POLICE OFFICER: They’ve been riding for ten years, never a problem, you know. But at the R.N.C., they decided to use it as a tool to protest. Other people, not the Critical Mass people. The Critical Mass people have been riding for a long time, never a problem, rode peaceably, obeyed the rules, do what they gotta do. And then they were infiltrated by the ACLU and other groups, and they turned it into -- now it’s become a political protest. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Do you think it could ever go back? Like, how could they go backwards and get the police off their back? POLICE OFFICER: And now it’s become this. It’s become an anarchist group. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I had heard that they were still arresting people even if they stopped at the lights and stuff. POLICE OFFICER: They can’t. What are they going to arrest them with? What are they going to charge them with? UNIDENTIFIED MAN: The parade thing. POLICE OFFICER: You have to break the law in order for a police officer to arrest you. That’s just the way it is. AMY GOODMAN: That is an excerpt of Still We Ride. And those are the voices of police officers on the street, one saying, “What are they going to charge them with?” another saying it was a peaceful group until it was infiltrated by the ACLU, and now it's become an anarchist group. Norman Siegel, your response. NORMAN SIEGEL: Well, first of all, infiltrated by the ACLU, just not even close to reality. I think it shows that the police themselves, rank-and-file, are not sure that this is a very effective tactic. And also, with regard to the legitimate government interest of making sure that there isn’t violence at any of the events, I think when the Police Department has substantial evidence, reasonable basis for having people at a First Amendment activity, I have always felt that officers in uniform, which they do have, is the best deterrent to any kind of violent activity. And the idea of putting people in non-uniform, plainclothes, as well as undercover, undermines what a democracy is supposed to be about. If I go to a First Amendment peaceful protest activity, the government should not have a file or a video database on my peaceful activity, and the part that also troubles me is that when they're doing the video surveillance, what’s happening to that video? If, in fact, the video shows illegal activity, then you can keep it for the criminal case, Mr. Browne, but when, in fact, the video shows no illegal activity, are you erasing that material? Are you making sure that in a democracy, we don't have the government having video databases on peaceful First Amendment activity? AMY GOODMAN: Paul Browne of the New York Police Department. PAUL J. BROWNE: We don't keep political databases. We do preserve video for trials and for arrest situations and, as you well know, because some of them have been turned over for discovery purposes. AMY GOODMAN: Let me just bring in Eileen Clancy for a minute. PAUL J. BROWNE: Okay. I just want to make one quick point about the bike rides. We have also asked, repeatedly, to work out an arrangement with the organizers. Though they claim there is no organization, there is organization of the rides. We have asked to work with them to -- so they could go forward in -- and have cross-town traffic accommodated, some safety issues that we're worried about accommodated. And we have been -- the Police Department has been refused on that. AMY GOODMAN: Eileen Clancy? EILEEN CLANCY: Ever since the Tompkins Square Park riots have made it clear years ago that it was critically important for police officers to be identified, in case there were problems with misconduct, so they could be followed up on, you know, there had been for years and years a sense that pretty much, you know, you had police officers with numbers on their riot helmets and that sort of a thing in New York. And having so many police officers at these scenes now, you are not sure if they're police officers. Sometimes they actually give commands to people or push people or move them around. People don't know how to react, because they don't know that they're police officers. It creates this kind of confusion. And it's really impossible in cases of misconduct to track down -- to investigate these properly. C.C.R.B. has complained about this. AMY GOODMAN: The Civilian Complaint Review Board. NORMAN SIEGEL: The Civilian Complaint Review Board. EILEEN CLANCY: Thank you, folks. But also, one of the important things, it’s not clear at all why police officers who are videotaping these political demonstrations are not identified. Under the original Handschu rules, they all had to be identified as police officers. And now, pretty much every time you see them, they do not have any police identification on them at all. They are sometimes doing this clandestinely from inside cars and vehicles. It's a very confusing situation. AMY GOODMAN: Commissioner Browne? PAUL J. BROWNE: Well, they are identified. They wear -- the officers who do videotaping are in -- are either in uniform or are wearing jackets that -- EILEEN CLANCY: That's absolutely not true, Commissioner Browne. I'm sorry, that's just absolutely not true. It's plainly visible. I mean, what comes to mind right away is a police officer wearing a black leather jacket and a Che Guevara t-shirt, that’s seen at many of these Critical Mass events, without any police identification whatsoever. This is typical. PAUL J. BROWNE: Well, I can tell you, they wear wind jackets that say TARU on the back. It's a technical -- AMY GOODMAN: Some do. I think it's quite clear some do, some don't. We have been showing videotape of people who are, whatever you call, undercover or plainclothes. PAUL J. BROWNE: Well, I don’t know. You’re saying they’re undercover. I explained, I know it may not be an important difference to you, but it’s a very important difference -- AMY GOODMAN: I said undercover or plainclothes. PAUL J. BROWNE: Undercover officers conduct investigations of groups. That's why Handschu is so important. The anti-crime cops do not. ---- "It's An Excellent Relationship": NYPD on Police - CIA Links Tuesday, December 27th, 2005 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/27/154249 New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, Paul Browne, described the ties between the NYPD and the the CIA as "an excellent relationship" on today's edition of Democracy Now! [includes rush transcript] In light of the NYPD's recent surveillance activity, Democracy Now! asked Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne about the connections between the New York Police Department and the CIA. In January 2002, David Cohen was appointed to be the NYPD’s first Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence. Cohen came to New York after a 35-year career with the CIA. From 1995 to 1997, Cohen served as the CIA's Directorate of Operations, where he oversaw the agency's worldwide operations, managed the CIA's global network of offices and personnel, and maintained agency relationships with foreign intelligence and security services. At the time of his appointment Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said “David has a strong reputation for forging ties and working effectively with other government agencies, foreign governments, and the private sector, and his drawing upon those strengths and contacts will greatly benefit the City as he directs the Police Department's intelligence efforts." * Paul J. Browne, New York City Police Department's Deputy Commissioner of Public Information RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Let me just ask you, before we get to the end of the program, I wanted to ask you about the relationship between the New York Police Department, F.B.I, and C.I.A. In January 2002, David Cohen was appointed to be the NYPD's first Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence. He came to New York after a 35-year career with the C.I.A. From 1995 to 1997, Cohen served as the Directorate of Operations, where he oversaw the agency's worldwide operations, managed the C.I.A.’s global network of offices and personnel and maintained agency relationships with foreign intelligence and security services. At the time of his appointment, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said of David Cohen, quote, “David has a strong reputation for forging ties and working effectively with other government agencies, foreign governments and the private sector, and his drawing upon those strengths and contacts will greatly benefit the city as he directs the Police Department's intelligence efforts.” Your response, Commissioner Browne? PAUL J. BROWNE: Well, what's the question? AMY GOODMAN: The relationship between the New York Police Department and the C.I.A., where David Cohen comes from and now heads intelligence for the New York Police Department? PAUL J. BROWNE: Well, it’s an excellent relationship, one that I don't think -- we certainly had some relationship, but not to the extent now, where I think part of the reason we're so successful in placing officers overseas in key capitals and inside some of their counterterrorism organizations is a result of the relationships that Commissioner Cohen has forged and had already established from his experience in the C.I.A. But we now have people in Tel Aviv, Amman, Jordan, the U.K., Interpol, and Toronto and Montreal, focusing on their counterterrorism activities and asking the New York question, essentially, ‘Have you seen anything you're seeing, say, in Amman, Jordan, connected to New York, in terms of terrorism?’ And to be able to do that and do it relatively quickly, I think, is one example. AMY GOODMAN: Norman Siegel, your response to C.I.A./police relationship? NORMAN SIEGEL: I think that what New York is doing, and we're finding out because of Jim and Eileen's work, is very similar to what's going on on the national level. And I think New Yorkers and Americans have to be asking the question, “How much power do we want to give to our law enforcement people post-9/11, taking into account that, with regard to spying and First Amendment activity? Recently on East 79th Street, a group of seniors were involved in a housing demonstration and TARU showed up and started videoing these people -- the police -- and it was across the street from Mayor Bloomberg's house. There was no illegal activity. There was an agreement with the Police Department. This is the beginning of very serious substantial questions about how much power we want to give to the NYPD with regard to First Amendment activity. AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. Norman Siegel, civil rights attorney; Paul Browne, Deputy Commissioner of New York Police Department; Jim Dwyer of the New York Times; and Eileen Clancy of I-Witness Video. ---- Canada's Thinker-activists and Critics of Globalization by Prof. Michael Keefer December 27, 2005 GlobalResearch.ca http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KEE20051223&articleId=1595 Resisting the Post-National: Canadian Critiques of the Geo/Cultural/Politics of Globalization The unpleasant neologism of “Geo/Cultural/Politics” is intended as one marker of a sequence of unmaskings I would like to offer here—and as a compressed way of saying that globalization, though represented by its advocates in discourses strongly flavoured with claims both of economic rationality and of historical inevitability, is in actuality a political project designed to enhance, at the expense of everyone else, the geopolitical power of social elites associated with trans-national corporate interests;1 that it does so through an economics of piracy sustained by barely-concealed threats of violence on the part of state powers controlled by those same interests;2 and that this project is both associated with and to a significant degree propagated by particular forms of cultural representation and socio-cultural reproduction, and also dedicated to the destruction of competing forms of representation and social reproduction.3 But perhaps the best apology for this neologism, this act of compression, might be to suggest that the phenomenon itself is uglier than any language I can use in describing and analyzing it. Although I will be principally discussing the contributions of a number of contemporary English-Canadian public intellectuals and activists—let’s compress again, and call them ‘thinker-activists’—to emergent discourses of resistance to globalization, I do not mean to suggest that the fact of their being Canadian has provided them with privileged insights into the matter. Nor do I want to imply that the forms of resistance to the condition of globalized post-nationalism (which is also to say neo-liberalism or neo-conservatism) that they have advocated and participated in have necessarily taken a recognizably nationalist form. Let me add, parenthetically, that when I conflate neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism I am not forgetting that the former term refers to a political economy and ideology of pseudo-democratic corporatism whose penetration of national economies and devastation of social infrastructures is facilitated by international institutions like the World Bank and the IMF and trade agreements modeled on the U.S.-Canadian FTA and the subsequent NAFTA, while the latter term refers to a harder-edged ideology with Leo Straussian-monetarist roots which has increasingly cast aside any pretence of working through quasi-legal instrumentalities in favour of a geopolitics of naked aggression. The two are different—but only as the left and right wings of the same bloody bird. Canadian anti-globalizers While Canadians as such have no privileged access to an understanding of globalization, a number of Canadian thinker-activists have made signal contributions to the anti-globalization movement. Maude Barlow, for example, who has been a significant presence at meetings of the World Social Forum, is the founder of a nationalist public-interest movement, The Council of Canadians, that has more than 100,000 members. She played a key role in the late 1990s in exposing the secret negotiations towards a proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), and has been an important voice in the international struggle against corporate appropriations of world water resources, and in mobilizations of Canadian resistance to corporatist continental integration (see Barlow and Clarke 1997 and 2002, and Barlow). Linda McQuaig’s witty, exhaustively researched, and deservedly best-selling books have included defenses of a publicly owned social infrastructure, demolitions of the globalizers’ anti-democratic ‘there-is-no-alternative’ ideology, and, most recently, in It’s the Crude, Dude, an incisive analysis of the contemporary geopolitics of oil depletion and imperial aggression (see McQuaig 1991, 1995, 1998, 2001 and 2004). Naomi Klein’s brilliant book No Logo, which offers a spirited account of the economics and politics of trans-national ‘branding,’ outsourcing and maquiladora or sweat-shop production, and of current struggles to expose and demystify this system, has enjoyed a wide international success. Klein’s subsequent work has included a series of lucid political essays, which she identifies as “dispatches from the front lines of the globalization debate”; the writing and co-producing of a film, The Take, which documents worker-occupied and managed factories in Argentina; and, most recently, No War, an edited collection which includes her own essay “Baghdad Year Zero,” a report on the corporate looting of Iraq being attempted by the war criminals of the Bush administration (see Klein 2000, 2002 and 2005, and Lewis and Klein). Any short list of leading English-Canadian critics of globalization should include at least another six or eight names: Himani Bannerji, Stephen Clarkson, Daniel Drache, James Laxer, David McNally, Sherene Razack, John Ralston Saul, and Mel Watkins. Not bad for a start—and I haven’t yet got around to mentioning the two thinkers whose writings against globalization will be the principal subject of this paper: economist Michel Chossudovsky, and philosopher John McMurtry. One can speculate about the immediate socio-historical contexts that have fed this work by Canadian public intellectuals. Nearly sixty years ago the distinguished Canadian economic historian Harold Innis remarked that “Oscar Wilde wrote an essay on the decay of lying but I am not sure that it would bear reading in this country. We are all too much concerned with the arts of suppressio veri, suggestio falsi” (Innis 386). But concerned in what sense? People who have had to endure what Innis elsewhere called “the Siamese twin relationship between Canada and the United States—a very small twin and a very large one, to be exact” (Innis 238), have interested themselves in a variety of ways in suppression of the truth and the insinuation of falsehoods. While a majority of Canadian politicians, media executives and journalists (dare we say academics as well?) appear to have become direct practitioners of these dubious arts, an honourable minority have developed an interest in falsehood and deception that is, instead, critical and interrogative. It may be that a high but not wholly suffocating level of obfuscation in one’s surroundings is a stimulus to strong critical thinking. The not unrelated facts that Canadians enjoy the benefits of socialized medicine denied to our American neighbours, and that the destruction of our public medicare system has for at least the past fifteen years been a principal if unacknowledged goal of Canadian and American neoliberals and neoconservatives alike, may have helped to orient that critical thinking toward the discourses and infrastructures that further, or disable, social justice. And perhaps it has helped to have periodic pokes in the eye from that very large and sometimes openly unfriendly Siamese twin of ours. Recent such pokes, prompted by Canada’s lack of enthusiasm for the “War on Terror,”4 have included the spectacle of right-wing U.S. media pundits like the dreary Ann Coulter amusing themselves with threats of invasion against a northern neighbour already labeled “Soviet Canuckistan” by their colleague Patrick Buchanan (see Carr, Coulter), and—more materially—the Bush administration’s announcement that despite repeated rejections of its position on Canadian softwood lumber imports by international trade tribunals, including the NAFTA adjudication panel, it will continue to collect punitive tariffs of twenty percent—while Canada can whistle for the more than five billion dollars of punitive tariffs already collected, which by most interpretations of trade law should long since have been reimbursed. There is of course an ethical as well as a commercial dimension to the intermittent political and economic bullying which these episodes exemplify. For out of fear that if Canada showed insufficient zeal in the hunt for potential Islamist terrorists the United States might delay or obstruct commercial traffic across what used to be celebrated as the longest undefended border in the world, the Canadian government has shamefully participated in a U.S.-organized campaign of arbitrary arrest and torture—most notoriously in the case of Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who while returning from a vacation in Tunisia was arrested in New York by the FBI and then “renditioned,” with the full connivance and participation of the RCMP, to the torture-chambers of Syria (see Walkom). Arar, need it be said, was in no way involved with terrorist activities. I turn now to thinker-activists whom I regard as two of the pre-eminent Canadian critics of globalization: Michel Chossudovsky and John McMurtry. At this point a brief declaration of interest may be in order. John McMurtry has been for many years an admired colleague of mine at the University of Guelph, where he taught until his retirement last year; and Michel Chossudovsky has published a number of my articles, including a series of essays and bibliographical studies on the subject of the stolen U.S. presidential election of 2004, at the website of his Centre for Research on Globalization.5 Michel Chossudovsky Googling Michel Chossudovsky is a sobering experience: there are several scores of thousands of references to his work on the Internet. During the 1970s, his major publications as an economist were a series of research papers on socialist and neoliberal economic policies and their consequences in Chile before and after the 1973 coup, and on capital accumulation, agriculture, and health and medical care throughout Latin America (Chossudovsky 1973, 1977a and b, 1979). In 1986 he published a book on econ