NucNews August 3, 2006 -------- NUCLEAR -------- business Nuclear resurgence fires up Cameco CEO Uranium price driving appetite for juniors By Gyle Konotopetz - Business Edge Published: 08/03/2006 - Vol. 6, No. 16 http://www.businessedge.ca/article.cfm/newsID/13137.cfm Jerry Grandey opens the conversation with a clever quip about global warming that speaks volumes about his business. "If global warming's coming, well, I've got my palm tree potted and I'm just waiting," cracks Grandey, CEO of Saskatoon-based Cameco Corp. The good-humoured Grandey may be joking, but the subject of global warming is not something he finds amusing at all. Yet Grandey is heartened by the fact that Cameco, the world's largest producer of uranium, is finally in a position to make a major impact on the issue of greenhouse gas emissions that many scientists link to global warming. It's not surprising that the 60-year-old Grandey, one of the world's most influential proponents of nuclear energy, is in particularly good spirits these days. Cameco Corp. CEO Jerry Grandey sees a bright future for nuclear power in helping to curb global warming trends. Cameco and Grandey have been through the worst of times, languishing through more than a decade of depressed uranium prices, but now the company and the man are enjoying the best of times. Not only have uranium prices skyrocketed to the $46 US per-pound range from a rock-bottom price of $7 five years ago, but, more importantly, the nuclear energy industry is undergoing a renaissance as it garners respect from political leaders. Since Grandey was appointed CEO at the start of 2003, 10 years after joining the company, Cameco's stock has soared from the $6 range to a recent price in the $50 range, a gain of almost 750 per cent. The company's market cap has swelled to the $16-billion range. And, with Cameco producing about 20 per cent of the world's uranium and boasting the world's largest high-grade reserves of uranium in Saskatchewan's Athabasca Basin, the company's name has become synonymous with so-called 'yellow cake' and the nuclear energy industry. Remarkably, even some nuclear opponents have come onside in supporting the building of nuclear power plants. Grandey knows something about nuclear activists. He was once one of them. 1. How's life in Saskatoon? "I like it quite a bit. This time of year is absolutely spectacular. The winters are a little long, but you can escape it once in a while ... it's a great community to raise kids in. My wife (Tina) moved from a lovely community in Denver. She'd never been to Canada or Saskatoon. But she was quite supportive of this and now she is quite engaged in the community in philanthropy." 2. Growing up in Long Beach (California), who was your mentor or role model? "My father and my grandfather. My father (Loren Grandey) came from Ohio, where he grew up on a family farm. I would go back there every summer and work on the farm. They had a sawmill and dairy cattle and pigs. I'd milk the cows and combine (harvest). When I was a kid, I had an avid interest in geology. My dad was in the oil and gas business, running refineries (he worked for Union Oil) so that's part of the reason that I developed an interest in geology and rock collecting. I became interested in physics and mathematics, and I ultimately studied geophysics. My dad was quite a positive influence. He was quite active in youth organizations that I participated in, whether it was in church activities or Boy Scouts of America. He was pretty demanding in terms of making sure I wasn't wasting time and was actively engaged in activities and doing well in school. He was a chemical engineer, so his interest in the sciences probably led to mine." 3. I read that your father was involved in the Manhattan Project, producing the first atomic bomb. Did he talk to you about that? "No, not a whole lot. I knew that my parents lived at Los Alamos (New Mexico) and I knew he taught at MIT (university) during the war, but I never really connected the dots until I was either a young adult or a little later. While at MIT, my father was doing research on something that was brand new at the time, called radar. He ultimately went to Los Alamos to work on the (Manhattan) Project because radar was one of the ways they triggered the bomb." 4. How did you initially become interested in the uranium business? "Well, I had a little bit of an exposure to nuclear as an anti-nuclear activist when I was in Chicago (while attending law school at Northwestern University). There, I began to study nuclear energy issues and some of the early technical challenges the industry faced and some environmental issues. I wasn't so much of a protester as I was working on the legal aspects of licensing (nuclear power projects) and trying to oppose the licensing of nuclear plants around the Great Lakes, on the U.S. side. It turned out that all federally licensed projects that had a significant impact on the environment had to go through the National Environmental Policy Act process." 5. How'd you get your start in the uranium business? "While I was working for a major Denver law firm, uranium became a hot mineral once again, no pun intended. I began to work on business opportunities for a number of clients of the law firm, licensing of properties, tax issues and those kinds of things. One of my clients was a small entrepreneur and I was helping him build a coal company. It turned out that he had created a uranium company called Western Uranium in the 1950s and 1960s. It had been sold to Phelps Dodge. He wanted to start over again in the uranium company and asked me to get involved with him as a general counsel. He passed away unexpectedly in 1982 and from that moment, I stopped being a lawyer and began running his private companies, selling the coal company and then growing up the uranium company (Concord Mining) from really nothing to being the largest uranium company in the U.S. All during that time the price of uranium kept climbing. In 1990, we sold the company to another entrepreneur whom I had known and worked with and who wanted to pursue the uranium entrepreneurial dream. I stuck around for about a year and a half, then didn't do much for a while and then Cameco asked if I wanted to join Cameco. I looked at the assets and quickly said yes." 6. What's your outlook for uranium prices? "I don't see much downside, given the fact that we've got inventories being rebuilt and we've got people that are speculating on the price of uranium. Particularly in the nearer term, there is continued upward pressure on the price. It's like any commodity and at some point the industry will overproduce and the price will go back down. But because we don't have 10 or 20 years of inventory hanging over us as we had in the early 1980s, I don't see the same downside. I think it will become much more like other commodities with shorter cycles of price increases and price decreases." 7. What was life like for you in the 1990s while uranium prices were depressed? "Since I've been in this business, I believed that inventories would be finite and they'd some day dry up, which would mean a price increase. I also had a very strong conviction that the environmental benefits of nuclear energy would some day be recognized, as indeed they were by environmentalists in the '70s. "They (environmentalists) then somehow decided it was not a good technology and indeed thought it might be evil. I firmly believed that those environmental benefits - clean air and the fact that its waste product is minuscule and easily handled - would be recognized and that it would be a low-cost provider of electricity. And all through the '90s, even though it was gloom and doom, and the price kept going down, we kept talking to our investors and potential investors about the price recovering some day. One thing we've said we won't do, and we haven't done, is just get bigger to get bigger. It's got to make economic sense to us and to our investors." 8. How do you see the rampant speculation in the uranium junior market playing out? "There'll be winners and there'll be companies that disappoint investors. That's always the way it goes. Right now, there is a huge appetite for junior uranium companies, driven, I think, by the price increase in uranium. With any phenomenon of this type, you need to be quite judicious in the ones that you pick. You've got to be confident that management of the company is committed to the industry and spending the money wisely in exploration." 9. Are you looking at any attractive acquisition targets in that market? "It's a little bit early. This junior phenomenon started a year to a year and a half ago from a handful, five or so, who were out there hanging on in the bleak times. Today, there's probably well over 400. They've had no difficulty raising capital in the market and they're all-out acquiring properties and doing exploration. My own sense is that it's about a three- to five-year cycle until the ones that are good and fortunate find something that would be of interest to Cameco." 10. What's your level of interest in diversifying your business model into other investments, such as nuclear power plants? "We've been very clear that the vision goes all the way from exploration through to the generation of nuclear electricity. Bruce Power (an Ontario nuclear power plant in which Cameco is a major partner) is a great example of that and there are opportunities there. About two years ago, we spent a lot of time looking at a (nuclear power) opportunity in Texas, succeeded in negotiating an acquisition (for a 25.2-per-share of the South Texas Project for $333 million US) and then it was taken away from us by the rights of first refusal (exercised by two of the project's partners). Since that time, we've looked at a number of others. From a standpoint of Cameco's access to capital, given the fact that our investors are bigger risk-takers than say, a utility investor, our cost-to-capital tends to be higher than that of a utility. And they tend to be able to pay more than what we can pay for these nuclear assets. So we're in a watch mode with respect to nuclear generation and we haven't said it's no longer part of the vision - but most of our energies are being spent on the front end of the fuel cycle, which would be exploration and uranium production." 11. What's your view of the issue of disposing of nuclear waste? "The technical solution is quite well known and is very simple - disposing of a spent fuel in an engineered repository, not unlike what mankind does with most of his waste, but in a much more technical and much more sophisticated way. The volumes that we talk about are absolutely minuscule. After 40 years of operating nuclear plants in Canada, all of the spent fuel today is stored on the sites of the utilities with no problem. If it were all collected and put in one location, it would occupy a space no bigger than a basketball court to a depth of about 10 metres. So you're talking about a very small volume of material - it's solid, easily managed and easily transported - and the solution is to put it into a geologic repository that's specially designed at a central location. Well, there's plenty of Canadian Shield in Canada and other geologic formations that are suitable. The difficult issue is convincing the decision-makers that the public supports it. And I say that because I don't think most of the public really cares. They just want to know that it's going to be properly taken care of. But there is a subset of the public that knows that if we find the solution, and we actually begin to dispose of nuclear waste and make it work, there is no longer an impediment to a full-scale deployment of nuclear energy. And we find that subset quite vocal in trying to prevent a solution from being implemented. That makes it politically very difficult. There is also the challenge of finding a host community that is willing to host, on a voluntary basis, the geologic repository." 12. With the global shift toward the building of nuclear power plants, have you noticed much of a change in attitudes toward nuclear? "There's been a big, big change (in attitudes). And it has crossed all aspects of society in North America and Europe. You can just take a look at our customer base. Five years ago, a utility chief executive officer would have been shot between the eyes if he even suggested that the utility build a nuclear plant. Today, they're all talking about it in regions where new plants are needed. There are 11 sites being worked on in the United States. And you've seen what Canada's done in Ontario with the government pronouncements (of major investment in nuclear energy) and the desire on the part of OPG (Ontario Power Generation) and Bruce Power to be part of that process." 13. Do you think Canadian politicians are paying enough attention to energy shortages and nuclear energy? "Not at the federal level yet, and it does need to happen. Energy supply and its relationship to environmental issues like Kyoto (accord) will bring nuclear to the forefront and will engage a pretty vigorous debate in Canada as to what that means, not just in Ontario but more broadly through the country. In Alberta, you've got some tremendous challenges with greenhouse gas issues." 14. Is Cameco experiencing cost escalations that have been hitting oilsands projects in Alberta? "We certainly are. We're in the midst of constructing Cigar Lake (project), which is the next high-grade (uranium) mine that will be brought on line in 2007. And we're finding trouble attracting contractors and qualified tradespeople like electricians and plumbers and carpenters. So there is a spillover into Saskatchewan, which is driving up the cost of our construction and making it more difficult for us to find qualified people." 15. Is there a possibility that Cameco would become involved in the oilsands industry? "We had an opportunity about seven or eight years ago to get engaged in a project and we ultimately decided that it didn't fit with our vision and mission. I think that was a correct decision. We would have been engaged in doing some of the mining while the partner would have handled the upgrading and processing. Given the cost overruns that ultimately were experienced, it might have been a challenge for us to hang in there. We made the decision to focus on what we do best." 16. Do you foresee nuclear energy becoming a part of the development of oilsands projects? "I do. I firmly believe that will come, although not soon. I don't believe you can continue the rate of expansion, which requires tremendous energy input, relying simply on natural gas that will ultimately be in short supply. I believe the present generation of plants, and even the next generation, come in 1,000-megawatt sizes, and that's probably too big. Ultimately, it's going to come down to when the nuclear industry has smaller plants. When that generation of plants becomes available, assuming they're cost effective, I think then that'll open up Alberta and other places that have got energy-intensive requirements." 17. What's your view of the environmental costs of developing the oilsands? "I just marvel at the money investment and the amount of CO2 that is going to get generated. I have always been a skeptic about global warning, what we're doing and whether it's going to happen anyway. I don't think we can as a society have a laissez-faire attitude. And I think that's even beginning to dawn on people like (U.S. President) George Bush and others that it can't be just lip service and no action. From a personal perspective, I'd say that is probably why I am no longer an anti-nuclear activist. Now I'm an active proponent of the (nuclear) industry because it's a solution. It's quite irresponsible to run around talking about problems and threats and risks, and not offering concrete solutions. The question for society is how you make decisions where the risk is mitigated and the social costs are minimal." 18. When you reflect on your career, of what are you most proud? "I'm extraordinarily proud of Cameco and I have to give a lot of credit to my predecessor, Bernard Michel. We have collectively, I think, built a great organization. There are two things that stand out over the course of my career. Before I joined Cameco, when I was with the privately held uranium company, we negotiated a wilderness compromise with five national environmental organizations. It was really quite an achievement that took the effort of a lot of people. The second thing was the agreement that Cameco has with the Russians in dismantling nuclear weapons through 2013. That's our highest-grade mine, obviously. The program is dismantling 20,000 weapons over a 10-year period of time and to date, we've dismantled 11,000 weapons with our Russian partners. Yes, there was a lot of commercial imperative to do that, but in the final analysis, it was a case of there being a lot more uranium coming into the market that kept the price low. But it absolutely needed to be done for the benefit of humankind." 19. Considering it's a small centre, is Saskatoon the best home base for a company the size of Cameco? "Saskatoon is the best place - absolutely without question. You get great employees with a wonderful Prairie work ethic, you've got a very supportive community and the major foundational assets are here in the province. So there's every reason in the world as we grow here to have the headquarters of the company here." 20. How long would you want to remain CEO? "The retirement age at Cameco is 65. I had the happy occasion of turning 60 recently, so there's lots of time to continue to pursue this vision that we've painted for ourselves and try to grow the production base of the company. By using the asset base and the ability to produce uranium cheaply, we want to find our way into more of the fuel cycle and perhaps all the way through to more generation of nuclear electricity. As I've said before, it would be dependent upon finding value if we do it. But in any event, we'll stay focused on producing uranium and growing there." Jerry Grandey * Title: President/CEO, Cameco Corp. * Born/raised/age: Long Beach, Calif./60. * Family: Wife Tina, two children. * Education: Northwestern University (Chicago area), law degree; Colorado School of Mines. * Career: Grandey joined Cameco in 1993 as senior vice-president of marketing and corporate development. He was promoted to executive vice-president in 1997, president in 2000 and CEO on Jan. 1, 2003. Prior to joining Cameco, he worked in the mining industry in the U.S. as CEO and vice-chair of Concord Mining Business Unit, a uranium mining company, and president of Energy Funds, a coal and uranium company. He practised law in Denver in the 1970s, specializing in mineral financing, natural resources and environmental law. * Moonlighting: Grandey is on the boards of the Canadian Nuclear Association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the National Mining Association, Saskatoon YMCA, Royal University Hospital Foundation and on the board of governors of Junior Achievement Saskatchewan. He is also past-president of the Uranium Producers of America and past vice-chair of the World Nuclear Association. * Starts his day by: Swimming about two miles. * Drives to work in: Three-year-old E500 Mercedes-Benz. * Recommended Business Book: Good To Great, by Jim Collins. * Favourite Movie: 2001: A Space Odyssey. * Prized Possession: Historical art collection by Colorado artists. Cameco Corp. * Brass: Jerry Grandey, president/CEO; O. Kim Goheen, chief financial officer; Terry Rogers, chief operating officer. * Profile: Cameco is the world's largest producer of uranium, operating mines in the Athabasca region of Saskatchewan and the U.S. The company's 70-per-cent owned McArthur River mine in Saskatchewan is the world's largest high-grade uranium deposit. Cameco also has a 31.6-per-cent interest in the Bruce Power Limited Partnership, which operates a nuclear generating station in southern Ontario. * Stats: Cameco has 550 million pounds of proven and probable uranium reserves and generates 1,000 megawatts of electricity from its share of the Bruce Power nuclear plant. * History: Cameco was formed in 1988 from a merger of two Crown corporations - Saskatchewan Mining Development Corp. and Eldorado Nuclear Ltd. * Recent Stock Price (TSX:CCO): $45.17 (52-week range, $26.45-$49.95). * Website: www.cameco.com * Head Office: 2121 11th St. W., Saskatoon, S7M 1J3. * Phone/Fax: 306-965-6200/965-6201. (Gyle Konotopetz can be reached at gyle@businessedge.ca) -------- europe Sweden's Nuclear Reactor Thursday, 3 August 2006, 12:32 pm Press Release: Greenpeace http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0608/S00059.htm Call for immediate closure of Sweden's nuclear reactors following near-meltdown incident. Greenpeace demands action as Swedish regulator meets to decide on possible shut-downs. Sweden 2 August 2006. Sweden's nuclear regulator SKI will meet in emergency session tomorrow (3 August) to decide on a possible immediate shut-down of all but one of the country's nuclear power stations supplying up to 50% of Sweden's electricity. Greenpeace has called for the reactors to be shut down following a serious incident last week at Sweden's Forsmark nuclear power station, in which "it was pure luck there wasn't a meltdown" according to a former director of the plant. The Forsmark incident was caused by the failure of back-up generators following a problem with the main power supply. If the backup system fails after a grid cut-off or a whole blackout, the operator loses instrumentation and control over the reactor leading to an inability to cool the core, which can lead to a meltdown (1). In a report published last year, Greenpeace highlighted the widespread and frequent problems of failing power backup systems of nuclear reactors, which have also been reported in the US and Germany. Swedish media reported yesterday that a former director of the Forsmark plant said "It was pure luck that there was not a meltdown. Since the electricity supply from the network didn't work as it should have, it could have been a catastrophe." Without power, the temperature would have been too high after 30 minutes and within two hours there could have been a meltdown. "The Forsmark incident is just another illustration of the nuclear industry and nuclear regulators gambling with the lives of thousands or even millions of people" said Jan Vande Putte of Greenpeace International. "It has proved that a simple power blackout - something which has been happening regularly during the recent heatwaves - can very easily lead to a catastrophic reactor meltdown. This is a prime example of why this technology is inherently dangerous, must be phased out worldwide and never allowed to return. A combination of safe, renewable sources of energy and energy efficiency measures are the only sane solution for power generation." ---- Swedish nuclear reactors stopped Forsmark supplies one-sixth of Sweden's electricity Thursday, 3 August 2006 (BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5241780.stm Four of Sweden's 10 nuclear reactors have been shut down, following an electricity failure. The Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, SKI, has been holding an emergency meeting, following the incidents at the Oskarshamn and Forsmark plants. The firm operating Oskarshamn, in southern Sweden, stopped two of its three reactors late on Wednesday, citing safety concerns. Last week, two reactors were also shut down at Forsmark, north of Stockholm. Safety checks The two reactors in Oskarshamn - about 250km (150 miles) south of Stockholm - were shut down after the operator said their safety could not be guaranteed. Last week's shutdown in Forsmark - some 75km (46 miles) north of Stockholm - came after a short-circuit in a unit supplying power to the reactors. SKI spokesman Anders Bredfell told the BBC News website that the Forsmark incident ranked as a number two on the 0-7 scale used by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to classify nuclear incidents. "We can't say how long the reactors will remain shut down," he said. He stressed there was "no danger of a meltdown" at Forsmark. He said two of the four backup generators had failed to start there, but two were sufficient to run the plant's cooling system. In addition, the plant has gas turbines that can be used to supply power in an emergency, he said. On Friday SKI asked all of Sweden's other nuclear plants to prove that the same failure could not happen to them, Mr Bredfell explained. "The Oskarshamn reactors were shut down because they couldn't prove that the same thing couldn't happen there," he said. The IAEA was automatically informed about the Forsmark incident, and Sweden's response showed that the procedures for such incidents were working, he added. The environmental group Greenpeace in Sweden has urged the government to stop all nuclear reactors in the country. Sweden plans to phase out all of its reactors in the next few years. ---- On the Nuclear Shutdowns in Sweden Thursday, August 03, 2006 NEI Nuclear Notes http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2006/08/on-nuclear-shutdowns-in-sweden.html#links The AP has flashed the following story concerning an incident at the Oskarshamn nuclear power plant in Sweden: Swedish nuclear authorities held an emergency meeting Thursday after two reactors were shut down at a plant in the southeast of the country. The plant in Oskarshamn, about 250 kilometers (150 miles) south of the capital, Stockholm, shut down two of its three reactors late Wednesday after the company running the plant reported that "safety there could not be guaranteed." The decision followed an incident last week at another nuclear plant in Sweden, in Forsmark, where backup generators malfunctioned during a power outage, forcing a shutdown of one of its reactors, said Anders Bredfell, a spokesman for the Swedish nuclear authority, SKI. Since then, the former plant manager at Forsmark has been claiming that the incident at the plant is the most dangerous in the nuclear industry since Chernobyl, and that there was a risk of a meltdown. Greenpeace, rather predictably, has called for the country to shut down all of its nuclear power plants. Per Jander over at the World Nuclear Association Blog disagrees: This is absolute nonsense. The unit is in perfectly fine condition, plant management has sent in a report to the Swedish regulator (SKI) and is now awaiting permission to restart. No equipment is damaged, and reactor safety was never compromised. A short circuit in an external switchyard resulted in a powerful transient and the power plant was automatically disconnected from the grid. Initially the power plant switched to in-house power generation, but through a complicated chain of events the turbines were stopped and power supply of the safety system was switched to two of the four back-up diesel generators. Normally all four diesel generators should provide the systems with power, but this time only two went online. Safety systems are divided into four identical subsystems, each with their own diesel generator and capacity to manage 50% of the plant needs. If all subsystems and all diesels are working properly, there are twice the required capacity available. In this particular case, when two diesel generators started automatically and worked well during the entire chain of events, there were always sufficient power to cool the reactor and keep other safety functions online. The serious aspect of this event is that the automatic power supply of safety systems were partly compromised because of a fault in the external grid. Because of possibilities of similar design, further three reactors in Sweden have been taken offline, and will not be restarted until the risk of a similar event is removed. The remaining six reactors in Sweden have a different design that prevents these kinds of issues. When looking at this story, I hope our readers keep the Swedish domestic political situation in mind. As we've written in recent months, Sweden is on the verge of reversing its policy of phasingout the nation's nuclear power plants -- a notion that's shared by both center-left and center-right forces in the nation's parliament. Further, public support for the industry has never been higher in the nation. A majority of Swedish voters are against early shutdown of the plants. For more on these polls, click here and here. For many European Green parties, their efforts to shut down nuclear power plants all over the continent were a major high water mark in their history. The possibility that this decision in Sweden (and elsewhere) could be reversed would be a serious setback -- hence the tenor of Greenpeace's latest statement. One last point: Even though the Swedish authorities didn't request the shutdown of any units, the owners of the plants did so voluntarily in order to address the problem. -------- india Premature to pass judgement on N-deal: Govt Press Trust of India, Thursday, August 03, 2006 http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=71933 New Delhi, August 3: The government said it would be premature to give a judgement on the legislation passed by the American Congress over the Indo-US nuclear deal as final legislation has not been passed. "The US Congress is yet to pass the final legislation that would facilitate civil nuclear energy cooperation between the two countries. The US House of Representatives voted on a Bill on 26 July, 2006 and Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a draft senate Bill on 29 June, 2006. "It would be premature to pass judgement on the legislation until its final text is known", Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha to a question raised by CPI-M member Sitaram Yechury. Yechury wanted to know whether the legislation passed by the US Congress on the Indo-US nuclear agreement is in contravention to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's assurance given in the Rajya Sabha. He said expansion of nuclear power capacity would be an important aspect of energy security and the country's 3-stage nuclear power programme provides that the larger fraction of nuclear energy in the long run would be derived from fuel sources available within the country through fast reactors and through use of thorium. nuclear power capacity set-up through international civil nuclear cooperation is to be viewed as an additionality to India's domestic programme, Sharma said. -------- japan Japan Surveying Radiation in Disputed Waters: Seoul REUTERS SOUTH KOREA: August 3, 2006 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/37497/story.htm SEOUL - Japan has informed South Korea it plans to conduct a survey for radioactive waste in waters between the two countries that have been the subject of a territorial dispute, a South Korean official said on Wednesday. Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon did not indicate the exact area where the survey for radioactive pollution would be conducted or when Japan plans the mission. "The Japanese government has recently notified us that it plans to conduct a survey for radioactive pollution in the East Sea (Sea of Japan) at an appropriate time," Ban told reporters. "It is the clear position of our government that if Japan wants to conduct a maritime survey in our EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone), it must seek our government's authorisation," he said. The two countries have seen their ties strained over the past year over the island dispute. Some analysts have said the row has affected Seoul and Tokyo's efforts to bring North Korea back to talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme. Ban said he would visit Tokyo on Aug. 7 and hold talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso on the nuclear issue. Japan's top government spokesman said Japan had the right to conduct surveys near the islands. "Our policy is to carry out a survey if necessary, at an appropriate time, but we have not made any specific decisions," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe told a news conference. He added the survey for radioactivity has been carried out every year to find out about the maritime contamination. South Korea's Yonhap new agency said that from the 1950s to the 1990s, the Soviet Union and then Russia dumped nuclear waste in waters off of Vladivostock. In 1994, Japan, Russia and South Korea conducted a survey in the Sea of Japan. Japan has followed with yearly surveys Last month, South Korea sent a survey vessel near the desolate islands claimed by both countries, which led to protests from Tokyo. The islands called Tokto in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan lie about the same distance from the mainland of the two countries. They are situated in rich fishing grounds and above deposits of gas hydrate -- a crystalline solid rich in methane -- which Seoul's state gas company said could be worth billions of dollars. Following the dispatch of the South Korean survey vessel to the area, Japan said it may resurrect its own survey of the waters, which it called off in April following talks with Seoul. Although economics are a factor in the dispute, Seoul is also deeply motivated by rancour over Japan's 1910-1945 rule over the peninsula. It says Japan's claims to the islands are an attempt to revert to its past militarist tendencies. (With additional reporting by George Nishiyama in Tokyo) ---- New North Korean Missile Bases Target US Military In Japan by Staff Writers Seoul (AFP) Aug 03, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/reports/New_North_Korean_Missile_Bases_Target_US_Military_In_Japan_999.html North Korea has been building new underground missile bases along its east coast, targeting Japan and US military facilities in Japan, a report said Thursday. Some 200 Rodong missiles with a range of up to 2,200 kilometers (1,360 miles) and 50 SSN-6 missiles with ranges of 2,500 to 4,000 kilometers are at the new bases, the state-run Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS) said in the report carried by Yonhap news agency. "The new bases clustered along the east coastal line are for medium- and long-range missiles targeting Japan and US military bases in Japan," read the report by Yun Deok-Min, an IFANS arms control expert. "Combined with its nuclear weapons, North Korea's ballistic missiles provides it with a powerful deterrent." North Korea has also constructed new underground missile bases deep in mountains near its border with China, to avoid outside attacks, it said. The communist nation set off new alarm bells in the region with its July 5 test-firing of seven ballistic missiles which splashed in the Sea of Japan (East Sea). In 1998, it test-launched a missile over Japan. The UN Security Council unanimously condemned the latest missile tests and adopted a resolution imposing weapons-related sanctions on Pyongyang. North Korea is said to have a large stockpile of short-range Scuds and medium-range Rodong missiles. It has also tested long-range Taepodong missiles which are in theory capable of hitting US soil. Sales of missiles and missile technology were believed to be a main source of hard currency for impoverished North Korea, the report said. North Korea has earned 150 million dollars a year from its missile business, according to the report which cited no sources. Pyongyang has allegedly sold a total of 500 Scuds to Iran, Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Yemen; a small number of Scuds also to Vietnam and Sudan; and 50-100 Rodong missiles to Iran, Pakistan and Libya, it added. A Scud missile is said to sell for two million dollars, a Rodong for four million dollars, and a Taepodong-2, the most advanced type, is expected to sell at around 20 million dollars, it said. Nort Korea is locked in a standoff with the United States and its allies over its nuclear weapons development which Pyongyang says is for self-defense. Pyongyang's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Thursday warned against Japan's recent US-backed military buildup which it said "is aimed to mount a preemptive attack" on North Korea. "The Japanese reactionaries had better behave with discretion, bearing in mind that reinvasion of Korea is as foolish an act as jumping into fire with (a) faggot on one's back," Rodong said. Japan invaded Korea in 1910 and occupied it until the end of World War II in 1945. -------- pakistan US says Pakistan's new nuclear reactor not very powerful: press Thu Aug 3, 2006 (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060803/pl_afp/uspakistannuclear_060803155858 WASHINGTON - The nuclear reactor being built in Pakistan is much smaller than a private arms control group has claimed and could simply be a replacement for the Khushab reactor that makes two nuclear warheads a year, according to a report. The US government's intelligence data shows that the new reactor is roughly the same size as the one functioning in Khushab, and not 20 times larger as the Institute for Science and International Security said in a technical assessment, goverment officials told The New York Times. International observers reacted with alarm after the Washington Post on June 24 reported the reactor's existence, citing the US-based private arms-control group. The group said satellite photos showed the heavy-water reactor could produce more than 200 kilogrammes (440 pounds) of weapons-grade plutonium a year. This would be enough to make 40-50 nuclear weapons every year. "We have consulted with our experts and believe the analysis is wrong," National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones told the NYT. "The reactor is expected to be substantially smaller and less capable than reported." Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior intelligence official said the United States has been tracking the new reactor for years. "This has been looked at for a long time and hasnt generated a lot of hand-wringing," the official said. "It could be a replacement," of Pakistan's existing nuclear reactor at Khushab. Institute president David Albright said he was "confident in our evidence and calculations," and reminded the daily of the US government's poor track record in analyzing its own intelligence, inviting it to present "the reasons it thinks we're wrong." The Times noted that the US government's more modest assessment could be in deference to Pakistan's role as a key US ally in the war against terrorism. Pakistan remains at the heart of an investigtion into a nuclear blackmarket headed by its disgraced chief nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who confessed in 2004 to passing atomic secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri recently said the new nuclear reactor five years in the making was not a threat and would not spark an arms race with rival India. "It's nothing new, the world knows about it, the world knows that it's safe in our hands," Kasuri told AFP in an interview Friday at Asia's top security forum in Kuala Lumpur. -------- security PRESIDENT BUSH CLEARS THE WAY FOR A GLOBAL NUCLEAR EXPANSION [Rachel's introduction: In recent months, President Bush has reversed long-standing U.S. policies, intending to expand nuclear power world- wide. This inevitably expands the threat from nuclear weapons.] By Peter Montague Rachel's Democracy & Health News #866, August 3, 2006 http://www.precaution.org/lib/06/prn_nukes_again.htm President Bush has said many times that nuclear weapons are the greatest threat to U.S. security, particularly nuclear weapons in the hands of hostile groups, like Al Qaeda, or unstable governments. The tight connection between nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants is well-understood, unmistakable and unavoidable. People who want to build nuclear weapons almost always start by building a nuclear power plant. Israel developed a nuclear arsenal starting with components and know-how provided by a nuclear power plant. India did the same. So did India's chief rival, Pakistan. So did India's other major rival, China. So did North Korea, using reactors provided by China and by Switzerland. Iraq was building the Osiraq nuclear power plant until 1981 when Israel blew it to smithereens to prevent the next logical step, an Iraqi A-bomb. Iran is reportedly heading down this same path now, starting with nuclear reactors provided by our ally, Russia. Despite the clear, tight connection between nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons, and despite the President's oft-repeated warning that the greatest threat to our national security is an atomic bomb in the wrong hands, the President is now taking very aggressive steps to expand the number of nuclear power plants worldwide. In February, Mr. Bush announced a major new U.S. program to sell nuclear power plants all around the world. The President's program is called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). An important first step in the GNEP is to build many more nuclear power plants in the U.S. -- a "nuclear renaissance," as it is being called in nuclear industry puff pieces, such as this one from the New York Times. To build more nuclear plants in the U.S., the problem of nuclear waste disposal must be solved and the GNEP offers two ways to do this, a long term solution and a short term solution. The problem is highly-radioactive reactor fuel. To fuel a reactor, slightly-enriched uranium is formed into pellets, which are then packed into long rods. When these rods are placed close to each other in the core of a reactor, the uranium in the rods undergoes a controlled chain reaction, producing heat plus new "fission products" that are intensely radioactive, including plutonium. Eventually these unwanted fission products "poison" the chain reaction and the fuel must be withdrawn from the reactor and replaced. The poisoned fuel rods become "high level radioactive waste" and they must be held securely for upwards of 240,000 years. Because our species, homo sapiens, has only been on the planet for roughly 100,000 years, we have no experience handling long-lived, highly-dangerous problems of this nature. We are flying blind. Scientists have been working on the nuclear waste problem since 1940; however, after 66 years of intense effort, there is still no satisfactory solution in sight. The current plan for handling these wastes is to bury them in a hole in the ground beneath the Nevada desert at a place called Yucca Mountain. Unfortunately, the Yucca Mountain waste dump has been mired in problems, including falsification of data by scientists of the U.S. Geological Survey. The Yucca Mountain dump was supposed to open in 1998, but the government now says there is no way to estimate when the site will be opened because of the many problems it has encountered. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Energy now acknowledges that by 2010 -- 4 years from now -- the existing nuclear power plants in the U.S. will have produced enough high-level waste to fill the Yucca Mountain dump completely. Yucca Mountain will need to be expanded, or a second high-level waste dump will have to be built, and the government has not announced any plans for a second waste dump. Without some solution to this waste problem, nuclear power cannot readily expand in the U.S. A group of private utilities calling itself Private Fuel Storage (PFS) has devised a solution to the high-level waste problem -- "temporary" storage of up to 100 years on Goshute Indian land in Skull Valley, Utah. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a license to PFS in March, but the State of Utah is not enthusiastic about the project, to put it mildly, and numerous stumbling blocks remain, preventing PFS from accepting any wastes. So how can the domestic U.S nuclear industry expand? The long-term solution to the problem of irradiated reactor fuel is embodied in President Bush's GNEP plan -- to develop an entirely new set of machines and processes called an "advanced fuel cycle" to "reprocess" and "recycle" the irradiated reactor fuel, and reduce the volume of waste produced by each nuclear power plant, using complex machines ("fast reactors") and technologies that do not exist today. At a Congressional hearing on the "advanced fuel cycle" in April, members of Congress estimated that the GNEP could cost upwards of $200 billion. "This would put GNEP in the realm of the U.S. space program in terms of long-term cost," said Representative Al Green (D-Tex.). It seems clear that Mr. Bush and his friends at General Electric and Westinghouse -- the only U.S. firms that still manufacture nuclear power plants -- are serious about tapping the taxpayer in a major way to make this global business venture work for them. Obviously an expensive and experimental program of this nature can expect to encounter significant delays (not to mention cost overruns). Even optimistic estimates have the first test machines starting to operate around 2014 to 2019, so this will not solve the growing high- level waste problem, which is already preventing the U.S. nuclear industry from expanding. So some other short-term solution is needed. As luck would have it, the President's GNEP provides the solution. As a first step toward implementing GNEP, President Bush announced July 8 that he has decided to permit "extensive U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia for the first time... reversing decades of bipartisan policy," the Washington Post reported. The Post noted that Mr. Bush had resisted such a move for years, insisting that Russia first stop building a nuclear power station for Iran near the Persian Gulf. But the administration has changed its mind, now viewing Mr. Putin, Russia's leader, as a "more constructive partner" in trying to pressure Iran to abandon plans for making A- bombs. Now here's the important part: The Post pointed out that, a nuclear cooperation agreement would clear the way for Russia to import and store thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel from U.S.-supplied reactors around the world. The Post says this is a critical component of Mr. Bush's plan to spread civilian nuclear energy to power-hungry countries everywhere on earth because Russia would provide a place to send the used radioactive material. Under this scenario, it doesn't matter if the long-term solution ("fast reactors" and all the rest) ever develops -- Russia will become the world's permanent waste dump. The Post noted that some people have criticized Russia's plan to turn itself into the world's nuclear waste dump because Russia has a miserable record of nuclear accidents and horrendous widespread contamination from nuclear wastes. Its transportation network is antiquated and inadequate for moving vast quantities of radioactive material. And the country has not fully secured the nuclear facilities it already has against theft or accidents. Not to mention that it has recently been supplying nuclear technology to Iran. Never mind all that. The Post summarizes: Mr. Bush's new Global Nuclear Energy Partnership envisions promoting civilian nuclear power around the world and eventually finding a way to reprocess spent fuel without the danger of leaving behind material that could be used for bombs. Until such technology is developed, Mr. Bush needs someplace to store the spent fuel from overseas, and Russia is the only volunteer. So there you have it. Mr. Bush has a grand plan for placing nuclear power plants around the globe in every country that wants one. There used to be a major hurdle blocking such proliferation of A-plants, called the Non-Proliferation Treaty. ("Proliferation" is the official term for spreading A-bomb-making capabilities from country to country.) Countries that want nuclear power plants used to have to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), promising not to make any nuclear weapons. The NPT was standing in the way of Mr. Bush's grand plan for a nuke in every country that wants one, so earlier this year he quashed the NPT with great fanfare by announcing that he was ignoring it. He signed a deal providing U.S. nuclear power technology to India -- a nation that has pointedly never signed the NPT. As the New York Times observed, the President has turned the NPT "into Swiss cheese." In direct violation of the NPT, India will now receive nuclear fuel from the U.S., freeing India's home-made nuclear fuel for diversion into A-bombs -- the very situation the NPT was designed to avoid. So the skids are now fully-greased for Mr. Bush's grand global plan for a nuke plant in every garage. The non-proliferation treaty is effectively dead, and the problem of high-level waste has been "solved" by arranging for it all to be sent to Russia. To be sure, some details remain to be worked out, but the outlines of the President's Grand Nuclear Plan are now in place. Only one major question remains. Why would President Bush want to spread nuclear power plants -- and thus the very real threat of nuclear weapons -- around the world? As we search for an answer to this perplexing question, rational thought fails us, so we turn instead to dark humor. On July 19, Mike Peters, the Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist for the Dayton Daily News ran a cartoon of three Presidential figures -- Eisenhower, Nixon, and George W. Bush. The banner above the three reads, "Republican Campaign Slogans." On his chest, Mr. Eisenhower has the words, "I like Ike." Mr. Nixon's slogan is, "Four More Years." George Bush's slogan is "WW III." -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- california Watchdogs appeal Diablo renewal In appeal of waste storage permit, Mothers for Peace cites previous violations in handling of hazardous substances By David Sneed Thu, Aug. 03, 2006 Sn Luis Obispo Tribune http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/15187114.htm * Lawsuit by Mothers for Peace (PDF) http://www.sanluisobispo.com/multimedia/sanluisobispo/archive/mothersappeal.pdf The San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace has appealed a state decision to renew for another 10 years a hazardous waste storage permit for Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, citing past problems at the facility that resulted in nearly $200,000 in fines. The nuclear watchdog group is asking the state Department of Toxic Substances Control to update the plant’s permit to prevent future violations and reflect recent hazardous waste problems at other nuclear facilities across the country. The permit allows Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to store toxic substances, such as chemicals and corrosives, as well as low-level radioactive waste for as long as a year before it is shipped to permanent disposal facilities. The appeal has been referred to Watson Gin, deputy director of the department’s Hazardous Waste Management Program, who will review it to determine if it raises legitimate concerns. If so, he will reopen the permit to public comment and issue a ruling within a month, said Carol Singleton, department spokeswoman. Mothers for Peace referenced several violations that prompted $193,715 in fines against the utility in 2003. The violations listed by the state included failure to keep containers of hazardous waste closed, treatment of hazardous waste in an unauthorized unit and failure to keep proper records. "Mothers for Peace is dismayed that the very agency that found numerous violations at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is willing to renew the hazardous waste facility permit," said June Cochran, a spokeswoman for the group. The group is also concerned about recent discoveries of leaking spent fuel storage tanks at five other nuclear facilities. The group is concerned that earthquakes could cause similar leaks at Diablo Canyon. Reach David Sneed at 781-7930. -------- nevada Nuke Dump Timeline Questioned Thursday August 3, 2006 11:31 PM By ERICA WERNER Associated Press Writer http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5992459,00.html WASHINGTON (AP) - A Senate committee chairman says the Bush administration's new timeline for opening the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada in 2017 ignores the possibility of lawsuits and delays. ``Experience has shown that the schedule for Yucca is a slippery thing,'' Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., told the project's new director on Thursday. ``My concern is that the new timetable does not include any margin for any further project delays by the (Energy Department), its contractors, or legal action by the state of Nevada all of which would cause DOE to miss these new deadlines,'' Domenici said at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The dump originally was supposed to open in 1998. Last year, the department abandoned a 2010 deadline. Edward F. ``Ward'' Sproat, director of the department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said he understood Domenici's concerns about the latest timeline. ``I'm not saying that was the most probable schedule. I said it was the best achievable schedule,'' Sproat said. Even if the 2017 scenario were to come true, Domenici said, there already would be enough nuclear waste at commercial reactors and defense sites to fill the Yucca Mountain site, and it would take until 2040 to move all that waste. Currently, there are more than 50,000 tons of nuclear waste piled up at commercial nuclear power plants in 31 states. The administration wants to lift the 77,000-ton storage cap on the dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and allow as much waste as the mountain can safely hold - 132,000 tons or more. Domenici said the solution also includes a new effort to recycle nuclear waste, as well as an interim storage plan he has proposed. Sproat has expressed doubts about the interim storage plan, saying it could take nearly as long to set it up as it would to begin moving waste to Yucca Mountain. -------- MILITARY -------- arms US to Supply Food With One Hand, Arms With Other by Thalif Deen August 3, 2006 (Inter Press Service) http://www.antiwar.com/ips/deen.php?articleid=9467 As Israel's bombing of Lebanon continues unabated into its fourth consecutive week, the United States says it stands ready to provide food, medicine, and humanitarian assistance to the thousands of internally displaced Lebanese caught in the crossfire. But Washington has also decided to accelerate the supply of lethal weapons to Israel – "perhaps intended to kill the very Lebanese the United States is planning to feed and shelter," says one Arab diplomat at the United Nations. "It is U.S. hypocrisy at its worst," he told IPS, speaking on condition of anonymity, because his country receives millions of dollars in U.S. economic aid. "The right hand obviously does not know what its left hand is up to. Or does it?" he asked. Irene Khan, secretary-general of the London-based Amnesty International (AI), is equally harsh in her reaction. "It is ridiculous to talk about providing humanitarian aid on the one hand, and to provide arms on the other," she says. In the face of such human suffering in Lebanon and Israel, Khan says, "It is imperative that all governments stop the supply of arms and weapons to both sides immediately." Asked if there is a contradiction between the two, President George W. Bush told reporters last week: "No. I don't see a contradiction in us honoring commitments made prior to Hezbollah attacks into Israeli territory." Bush also made an obvious slip when he said: "I am concerned about loss of innocent life, and we will do everything we can to help move equipment… I mean, food and medicines, to help the people who have been displaced and the people who suffer." In a statement released last week, AI quoted British press reports relating to two chartered Airbus A310 cargo planes filled with GBU 28 laser-guided bombs containing depleted uranium (DU) warheads and destined for the Israeli air force landing at Prestwick airport, near Glasgow. The planes landed for refueling and crew-rests after flying from the United States. "Other reports claimed that the USA has requested that two more planes be permitted to land in the UK en route to Israel in the next two weeks. The reports said the aircraft will be carrying other weapons, including bombs and missiles," AI said. "The UK government should refuse permission for its sea and air ports to be used by planes or ships carrying arms and military equipment destined for Israel or Hezbollah," said Khan. Amnesty International has also written to British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett urging the government to suspend its own sale or transfer of all arms and military equipment to Israel. Beckett was quoted as saying: "We have already let the United States know that this is an issue that appears to be seriously at fault, and we will be making a formal protest if it appears that that is what has happened." Meanwhile, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused the Israelis of using artillery-fired cluster munitions in populated areas of Lebanon. "Cluster munitions are unacceptably inaccurate and unreliable weapons when used around civilians," Kenneth Roth, executive director of HRW warned. "They should never be used in populated areas." Armed mostly with state-of-the-art U.S.-supplied fighter planes and combat helicopters, the Israeli military is capable of matching a combination of all or most of the armies in Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. The annual survey of U.S. arms sales, conducted by the U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS), shows a total of $8.4 billion of arms deliveries to Israel in the 1997-2004 period, with fully $7.1 billion or 84.5 percent coming from a single source: the United States. A major factor in this trend was the rise in U.S. Foreign Military Financing – outright U.S. grants to Israel – which now totals about $2.3 billion a year paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Meanwhile, AI's Khan said the pattern of attacks and the extent of civilian casualties show a blatant disregard of international humanitarian law by Israel and Hezbollah. She also said that "direct targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure and launching indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks amount to war crimes." Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, says that the 192-member UN General Assembly must immediately establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI) as a "subsidiary organ" under UN Charter Article 22. The ICTI would be organized along the lines of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was established by the Security Council in 1993. "The purpose of the ICTI would be to investigate and prosecute Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide against the peoples of Lebanon and Palestine – just as the ICTY did for the victims of international crimes committed by Serbia and the Milosevic regime throughout the Balkans," Boyle told IPS. Furthermore, the establishment of ICTI by the General Assembly would serve as a deterrent effect upon Israeli leaders, including the prime minister, defense minister, the chief of staff, and Israel's other top generals that they will be prosecuted for their further infliction of international crimes upon the Lebanese and the Palestinians, said Boyle, author of Biowarfare and Terrorism (Clarity Press: 2005) and Destroying World Order (Clarity Press: 2004). Without such a deterrent, he said, Israel might be emboldened to attack Syria with the full support of the U.S. right-wing neoconservatives, who have always viewed Syria as "low-hanging fruit" ready to be taken out by means of their joint aggression. The Israeli press has reported that the Bush administration is encouraging Israel to attack Syria. If Israel attacks Syria as it did when it invaded Lebanon in 1982, Iran has vowed to come to Syria's defense. "This scenario could readily degenerate into World War III," warned Boyle. "For the UN General Assembly to establish ICTI could stop the further development of this momentum toward a regional if not global catastrophe." -------- britain Britain blasted over arms supply to Israel North Korea Times Thursday 3rd August, 2006 http://story.northkoreatimes.com/p.x/ct/9/cid/b8de8e630faf3631/id/f554be178c7cd112/ A second furore has arisen in Britain over the sale of military equipment to Israel. The British government was criticised recently for allowing U.S. planes to stop at a Scottish airport for refueling, while rushing bombs to Israel. British MPs are now protesting the sale of military equipment to Israel. According to The Guardian Thursday, government guidelines say export licences would not be agreed if there was a 'clear risk' they might be used for internal repression or would 'provoke or prolong armed conflict or aggravate existing tensions or conflicts'. Ministers have also said they would block the sale of equipment which could be deployed 'aggressively' in the occupied territories. The government must explain why it continues to approve the sale of arms to Israel in apparent breach of its own guidelines, a cross-party committee of senior backbenchers demanded Thursday. MPs want to know 'what the [government's] policy actually means and how it is implemented in practice', Roger Berry, Labour chairman of the quadripartite committee, told the Guardian. In a reference to Israel, he asked: 'If the guidelines do not apply in those circumstances, where do they apply?' Margaret Beckett was Wednesday threatened with legal action unless she bans the supply of British military equipment to Israel. Phil Shiner, of Public Interest Lawyers, has written to the foreign secretary saying the sale of arms to Israel is unlawful and makes Britain complicit in breaches of international law by Israel. Both Britain and the United States chide Iran and Syria for privately supporting Hezbollah, while they both publicly support Israel. The British government, said The Guardian report, last year approved 22.5m pounds ($42m) worth of arms-related exports to Israel, almost twice the amount in 2004. The U.S. presently provides $3 billion worth of aid to Israel each year, the majority of it for the purchase of arms. Meantime, British Ministers are also facing possible legal action over the use of British airfields by the U.S. planes carrying bombs. The government has insisted the planes will coninue to be allowed to land and refuel, despite the controversy, but future flights will be accommodated at military airports, rather than civilian fields. The flights are believed to be carrying 'bunker buster' bombs, with depleted uranium warheads. A Glasgow-based human rights lawyer, Aamer Anwar, said the government's actions violated the European human rights convention, the Geneva convention, and the International Criminal Court Act 2001. -------- israel / palestine To Israel with love Why America gives Israel its unconditional support Aug 3rd 2006 | WASHINGTON, DC From The Economist print edition http://economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7255198 ANYBODY who doubts the size of the transatlantic divide over Israel should try discussing the Middle East conflagration in Britain and then doing the same in America. Everybody watches much the same grisly footage. But, by and large, people draw very different conclusions. The emphasis in Britain is overwhelmingly on the disproportionate scale of the response. Americans are much more inclined to give Israel the benefit of the doubt—and to blame Hizbullah. Some Jewish organisations are so confident of support for Israel that they even take out slots during news programmes, pleading for donations. Opinion polls confirm that Americans are solidly on Israel's side. A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted on July 28th-30th showed that eight in ten Americans believed that Israel's action was justified—though a majority were worried about the scale of the action. A plurality (44%) thought that America was doing “about the right amount” to deal with the conflict. An earlier USA Today poll found that 53% put “a great deal” of the blame for the current crisis on Hizbullah, 39% put the blame on Iran and only 15% blamed Israel. Similarly, Americans are far more likely than Europeans to side with Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A Pew Global Attitudes survey taken between March and May found that 48% of Americans said that their sympathies lay with the Israelis; only 13% were sympathetic towards the Palestinians. By contrast, in Spain for example, 9% sympathised with the Israelis and 32% with the Palestinians. The political establishment is even more firmly behind Israel than the public is. Support for Israel stretches from San Francisco liberals like Nancy Pelosi to southern-fried conservatives like Bill Frist. The House and Senate have both passed bipartisan resolutions condemning Hizbullah and affirming Congress's support for Israel. The House version passed by 410 to 8 (of which three were from districts in Michigan with concentrations of Arab-Americans). The Senate resolution, sponsored by 62 senators—including the leaders of both parties—passed unopposed. Indeed, the parties are engaged in a competition to see who can be the most pro-Israeli. Twenty or so Democrats, including Ms Pelosi, the House leader, and Harry Reid, the Senate leader, demanded that Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, retract his criticisms of Israel or have his invitation to address Congress cancelled. (Mr Maliki, strongly backed by the administration, was eventually allowed to go ahead.) Several leading Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, have addressed pro-Israeli rallies. The contrast with the simmering rage within the Labour Party over Tony Blair's support for George Bush could hardly be more marked. Pro-Israeli forces command the intellectual high ground as well as the corridors of power. Commentators such as Charles Krauthammer issue column after column ridiculing the notion of proportionality and stressing Hizbullah's responsibility for civilian casualties. Most middle-of-the-road commentators question the effectiveness, rather than the morality, of Israel's actions. Out-and-out critics of Israel are relegated to the sidelines. Why is America so much more pro-Israeli than Europe? The most obvious answer lies in the power of two very visible political forces: the Israeli lobby (AIPAC) and the religious right. AIPAC, which has an annual budget of almost $50m, a staff of 200, 100,000 grassroots members and a decades-long history of wielding influence, is arguably the most powerful lobby in Washington, mightier even than the National Rifle Association. “Thank God we have AIPAC, the greatest supporter and friend we have in the whole world,” says Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister. The lobby, which is the centrepiece of a co-ordinated body that includes pressure groups, think-tanks and fund-raising operations, produces voting statistics on congressmen that are carefully scrutinised by political donors. It also organises regular trips to Israel for congressmen and their staffs. (The Washington Post reports that Roy Blunt, the House majority whip, has been on four.) The Christian right is also solidly behind Israel. White evangelicals are significantly more pro-Israeli than Americans in general; more than half of them say they strongly sympathise with Israel. (A third of the Americans who claim sympathy with Israel say that this stems from their religious beliefs.) Two in five Americans believe that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God, and one in three say that the creation of the state of Israel was a step towards the Second Coming. Religious-right activists are trying to convert this latent sympathy into political support. John Hagee, a Texas televangelist who believes that supporting Israel is a “biblical imperative”, recently founded Christians United for Israel. Last month he brought 3,500 people from across the country to Washington to cheer Israel's war against Hizbullah. Mr Hagee's brigades held numerous meetings on Capitol Hill; both Mr Bush and Mr Olmert sent messages to his rally. These pressure groups are clearly influential. Evangelical Christians make up about a quarter of the American electorate and are the bedrock of Mr Bush's support. Congressmen take on AIPAC at their peril. But they deal with well-heeled lobbies every day. And the power of the religious right can hardly explain why Democrats are so keen on Israel. Two other factors need to be considered: the war on Islamic radicalism, and deep cultural affinities between America and Israel. Seeing themselves in Israel Americans instinctively see events in the Middle East through the prism of September 11th 2001. They look at Hizbullah and Hamas with their Islamist slogans and masked faces and see the people who attacked America—and they look at Israeli citizens and see themselves. In America the “war on terror” is a fact of life, constantly reiterated. The sense that America is linked with Israel in a war against Islamist extremism is reinforced by Iranian statements about wiping Israel off the surface of the earth, and by the political advance of the Islamists of Hamas in Palestine. But the biggest reason why Americans are so pro-Israel may be cultural. Americans see Israel as a plucky democracy in a sea of autocracies—a democracy that has every right to use force to defend itself. Europeans, on the other hand, see Israel as a reminder of the atavistic forces—from nationalism to militarism—that it has spent the post-war years trying to grow beyond. Americans are staunch nationalists, much readier to contemplate the use of force than Europeans. A German Marshall Fund survey in 2005 found 42% of Americans strongly agreeing that “under some conditions, war is necessary to obtain justice” compared with just 11% of Europeans. A Pew survey found that the same proportion of Americans and Israelis believe in the use of pre-emptive force: 66%. Continental European figures were far lower. Yet all this unquestioning support does not mean that America will give Israel absolute carte blanche to do whatever it wills. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, was visibly shaken after the tragedy in Qana where at least 28 civilians, half of them children, were killed by Israeli bombs. There are growing worries both about Israel's conduct of the war and its wider impact on the Middle East. Many of these anxieties are expressed by the “realist faction”. Chuck Hagel, a Republican maverick, has given warning that America's relationship with Israel “cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships”. Richard Haass, a State Department official under George Bush senior who now heads the Council on Foreign Relations, has laughed publicly at the president's “birth of a new Middle East” optimism about the crisis. Some of the worries extend to conservatives. Tony Blankley, a former press secretary for Newt Gingrich and a fire-breathing columnist for the Washington Times, says that “We ignore world opinion at our peril.” A few cracks are starting to appear. But they are still insignificant in the mighty edifice of support. -------- mideast Lebanon: Death Toll at 900, One-Third Children Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 Headlines Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/03/149240 Earlier today in Beirut, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said the death toll from Israel’s invasion has reached 900 people. * Lebanon Prime Minister Fouad Siniora: “It is taking an enormous toll on human life and infrastructure and has totally ravaged our country and shattered our economy. Over 900 killed and 3,000 injured so far and the number is still rising." According to Prime Minister Siniora, one-third of the casualties are children under the age of twelve. The number of refugees has also reached one million people. ---- Saudi Arabia rules out oil weapon Thu Aug 3, 2006 (Reuters) http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060803/ts_nm/energy_saudi_dc_2 RIYADH - Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest crude exporter, believes oil should not be used as a weapon because it is the economic lifeline of Arab states, its foreign minister said. Asked whether the oil weapon should be used if the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah escalates, Prince Saud al-Faisal said: "The two issues should not be mixed because oil is among the economic capabilities that countries... need to meet their obligations toward their citizens. "If we ignore this reality and start asking that the foundations of our life (be used) and enter into reckless adventures, the first to be hurt will be our citizens and no wise government can accept this," he told a news conference. His comments were carried on the official Saudi Press Agency late on Wednesday. Saudi Arabia and other U.S.-allied Gulf members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries ( OPEC) have made clear in the past they do not intend to repeat the 1973 Arab oil embargo, sanctioned by Saudi Arabia's then King Faisal to punish the West for backing Israel in the Arab-Israeli war. Saudi Arabia, OPEC's largest producer, has repeatedly vowed to remain a trustworthy supplier to world oil markets and pledged to maintain at least 1.5 million barrels a day (bpd) of spare production capacity. The kingdom, which holds the bulk of OPEC's spare capacity, has accelerated oilfield expansion plans to hike its production capacity to 12.5 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2009 from 11.3 million bpd to meet growing world demand. Global oil prices hit a record-high of $78.40 a barrel last month on fears the Israeli-Lebanese conflict could spread to Middle East oil producers. Tensions in OPEC members Iraq, Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela have also contributed to the price rally. Riyadh, a key regional U.S. ally, has criticized Washington for not pressing for an immediate ceasefire in the Lebanon conflict, warning that continued Israeli attacks could trigger a wider conflict in the region. The kingdom has also blamed guerrilla group Hizbollah for the conflict. -------- space North American Aerospace Defense Combat Operations Center To Be Mothballed Over the next two years, 230 NORAD personnel, including 30 Canadians, will be moving out of the mountain and to an above-ground building at the at nearby Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. by John C.K. Daly UPI International Correspondent Washington (UPI) Aug 03, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/reports/North_American_Aerospace_Defense_Combat_Operations_Center_To_Be_mothballed_999.html The North American Aerospace Defense Combat Operations Center inside Colorado's Cheyenne Mountain is being mothballed. The NAADC, or NORAD, was founded in 1958 by the United States and Canada to provide aerospace control and security for North America's airspace. NORAD's Combat Operations Center was built in the 1960s. The center's 15 steel buildings are mounted on 1,319 massive springs to absorb the shock from a nuclear blast. When built, the center was originally designed to provide a 70 percent survival rate if a five megaton nuclear weapon exploded three miles away, but the facility was ultimately hardened to withstand a thermonuclear blast as close as 1.5 nautical miles. The Canadian Globe and Mail newspaper reported Monday that the Cheyenne Mountain facilities would be maintained on "warm standby," ready for use on short notice. Over the next two years, 230 NORAD personnel, including 30 Canadians, will be moving out of the mountain and to an above-ground building at the at nearby Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. Maj. Jason Proulx, a Canadian Forces officer working with NORAD's public-affairs office at Peterson Air Force Base, said, "We're evolving with the times. We're not faced so much with the threat of aerial bombardment from the Soviet Union. We're faced with the threat of terrorists." NORAD commander, Adm. Timothy Keating, said during a recent interview, "A missile attack from Russia or China is very unlikely." He told reporters, "Moving the missions from a hardened facility to Peterson AFB does not change the level of security. An assessment is underway to ensure that the security level is commensurate with the threats." One of the issues involved in the transfer is that Peterson AFB houses the U.S. Northern Command, created after Sept. 11, 2001, to monitor terrorist threats to North America. Keating also commands Northern Command. Keating commented, "I can't be in two places at one time." -------- us Rumsfeld snub of Senate committee draws criticism Updated 8/3/2006 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-08-02-rumsfeld_x.htm WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he essentially was too busy to testify at a public hearing on the Iraq war, raising a new furor on Capitol Hill over the three-year-old conflict. Speaking to Pentagon reporters Wednesday, Rumsfeld said he thought it was enough for him to attend a private briefing with the entire Senate on Thursday. Citing his crowded calendar, he declined the Senate Armed Services Committee's request to testify publicly on Thursday morning. Rumsfeld's decision drew protests from committee Democrats who said much had changed in the six months since he last testified and took questions from the committee. The request for his appearance came from the committee chairman, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., and the top Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan. Rumsfeld suggested that complaints about his decision could be politically motivated. "Let's be honest: Politics enters into these things, and maybe the person raising the question is interested in that," said Rumsfeld, without identifying anyone. The defense secretary said he had testified in the past and was not reluctant to face off against some of the committee's more vocal war critics, including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. "America is in deep trouble in Iraq, yet Secretary Rumsfeld refuses to explain and defend his policies in full public view tomorrow," Kennedy said. "Avoiding a congressional hearing may take the sting out of the process for Secretary Rumsfeld, but it does nothing to reassure the American people or our men and women in uniform that we have a viable policy in Iraq," he said. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., wrote Rumsfeld on Wednesday, urging him to change his mind. "The American people should hear directly from you," said Clinton, who has criticized the administration's handling of the war. Unlike Kennedy, she has not called for Rumsfeld's resignation. Rumsfeld's relations with Congress have been testy at times and he has occasionally resisted testifying publicly on controversial subjects, including the debate over whether high-level officials should be held accountable for the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, were to testify Thursday. Rumsfeld last appeared before the committee on Feb. 7, when he and Pace were questioned about the war's strain on the military. In the six months since, the number of U.S. troops in Iraq has dipped but now is back up to about 133,000, as part of an effort to quell the violence in Baghdad. The total could exceed 135,000 in the weeks and months ahead. In other comments, Rumsfeld and Pace, citing intelligence concerns, sidestepped a question about whether they have seen evidence that Iran is supporting Hezbollah in its fight against Israel. Rumsfeld said it is evident that Hezbollah is using Iranian weapons, adding, "Hezbollah's a terrorist organization, and Iran's their principal financial and military supplier and supporter. The linkage is tight." Rumsfeld also offered an explanation for why as many as two-thirds of the Army's brigades and many National Guard units are rated not ready for combat. He said the Pentagon is wrestling with standards that would best describe the condition of the units. And he noted that highly experienced units coming home from Iraq leave a lot of equipment behind, and as a result are considered not combat ready. "The Army today is vastly better than it was two, four, six or eight years ago," he said. "It has much more equipment, much better equipment, and it's better trained and more experienced." He and Pace also said that funding to address the National Guard's needs — which equal about $21 billion through 2011 — has been included in budget plans over the next five years. -------- war crimes Human Rights Watch Accuses Israel of War Crimes For Indiscriminately Targeting Lebanese Civilians Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/03/1344244 HRW Emergencies Director Peter Bouckaert speaks from Beirut on the bombing of Qana, Israel’s use of cluster bombs, phosphorous weapons and depleted uranium. Earlier today Human Rights Watch issued a new report titled “Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon." [includes rush transcript] Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of committing war crimes for systematically failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their attack on Lebanon. Last night the group issued a major new report titled "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon." The co-author of the report, Peter Bouckaert, joins us on the line from Beirut. He is the the emergencies director for Human Rights Watch. * Peter Bouckaert, Emergencies Director for Human Rights Watch, co-author of the new report "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon." RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: The co-author of the report, Peter Bouckaert, joins us on the phone from Beirut. He is the Emergencies Director for Human Rights Watch. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Peter. PETER BOUCKAERT: Thanks for having me on. AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what you found? PETER BOUCKAERT: Human Rights Watch has been on the ground in Lebanon, as well as in Israel, investigating the kind of attacks that are taking place on both sides of this border. Our findings have been that Israel is carrying out indiscriminate attacks inside Lebanon and that this is resulting in the deaths of many civilians. We've identified eyewitnesses and survivors to many of these attacks, and we can clearly state that Israel's excuse that Hezbollah is really responsible for the civilian deaths has no foundation in fact, because in many of these sites where civilians are being killed, like the tragic case in Qana just a few days ago, there was no Hezbollah anywhere nearby and no rocket firing taking place when Israel struck civilian homes and civilian cars. AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk more about what you found in Qana? Are you revising the numbers downward of the number of people killed there? PETER BOUCKAERT: Yes. Originally it was reported that more than 50 people died in Qana. However, our preliminary investigation, based on interviews with the survivors and the doctors at the hospital and rescue workers, has now established that at least 28 people died in Qana, and those bodies have been recovered. It's possible that that death toll will rise slightly, but we do not think that it will rise to the 54 people who had been originally reported killed. There was no conscious effort by the Lebanese authorities to inflate the death toll from Qana. It simply happened in the chaos and confusion of the rescue efforts that certain assumptions were made, because the authorities had a list of 63 people who were believed to be inside the building, and they had identified only nine survivors. However, they have reached the village only hours after the attack had taken place, and in fact, there were at least 22 survivors. So that explains the discrepancy which happened in the heat of the moment in this very difficult rescue effort. AMY GOODMAN: Is it possible there are still bodies in the wreckage? PETER BOUCKAERT: Well, according to the family members, at least 13 people are still missing from the home they were sheltering in in Qana. It's unclear whether their bodies remain buried or whether they fled from the scene during the bombardment in the night and simply have not been located. The rescue effort and the recovery effort has now been called off in Qana. The recovery teams do not expect to find any more bodies, so we’re still trying to establish what has happened to these 13 people. I think it's important that this slight controversy over the numbers of those killed in Qana does not distract from the fact that a very brutal attack took place in Qana, a totally unjustified attack took place, and that Israel has had to backtrack significantly on its original statement. Originally Israel said that they had attacked Qana because Hezbollah was there and was firing rockets at the time of the attack. Now, Israeli officials have been forced to admit, under heavy scrutiny, that they had no information about Hezbollah present at the time of the attack or rocket firing and that Qana had simply been put on the target list, because several days before, rockets had been fired from nearby Qana. And that just shows you how indiscriminate many of these attacks are. Israel is not adhering to the laws of war, because it's failing to distinguish between military objects it's entitled to attack and civilian homes, cars and infrastructure, which it should refrain from attacking. And that's why so many civilians are dying in Lebanon today. AMY GOODMAN: Peter Bouckaert is Emergencies Director at Humans Rights Watch. Looking at the Lebanese government and Lebanese Red Cross’s response to the Human Rights Watch report, and they stand by 57 deaths in Qana. They say, “It's confirmed there are 57 bodies,” according to Elias Diab, an official in the Lebanese Red Cross operations room in Beirut. “27 of them are children,” he said. PETER BOUCKAERT: Well, we went to visit the hospital in Tyre, which is the official government hospital where all the bodies were taken to. We established that there are 28 bodies there. And according to the officials at the hospital, there are no bodies which were taken to any other hospital. And we're certainly willing to look at the evidence that the Lebanese authorities have and revise our death figures, but I spoke to many journalists who were on the scene of this very brutal killing all day long who closely followed the recovery effort, and they reported to me that they did not see more than 27, 28 bodies being recovered from the rubble. But as I said before, I think it's really important that the controversy over the numbers does not distract from the larger picture of what is happening in Lebanon today. We issued a report today called “Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon,” which is on our website, www.hrw.org, which clearly shows that Israel, time and time again, is striking civilian homes and civilian cars, killing entire families without any military objects in sight. And there is a deep, deep crisis in Southern Lebanon today. Tens of thousands of civilians remain stuck in their homes in towns which are the scenes of very fierce fighting. And they're simply not able to flee, because the fighting is too fierce and because their cars are being attacked on the road and because they cannot afford the extremely high taxi fares that are being charged. At the same time, Israeli officials are saying that anybody left in the south after they have issued these warnings is going to be considered a Hezbollah supporter, and therefore, a fair, legitimate target. It's a dire situation. Humanitarian supplies are running out. Medical personnel cannot reach the wounded. Bodies are being left in the street rotting, because recovery teams cannot reach them. And that should be the focus of our attention. And there needs to be real pressure on the international community and on Israel and Hezbollah to allow for an improvement in the humanitarian situation and to respect the laws of war. AMY GOODMAN: Peter Bouckaert, what are those laws? Human Rights Watch, accusing Israel of war crimes; what exactly are war crimes? PETER BOUCKAERT: Well, war crimes are grave breaches of the laws of war, and the laws of war have a very clear principle. Combatants, like Israel and Hezbollah, have to distinguish between military targets that they are allowed to attack and civilians, objects, which they have to refrain from attacking. Obviously, sometimes civilians do get killed in legitimate military attacks. I’ve worked in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and we documented many abuses there, too, and many cases in which civilians were killed. But what we see in Lebanon is very different, and also what we see in Israel. Inside Israel Hezbollah is carrying out direct attacks against civilians with the aims to kill civilians. And this is a war crime, because their attacks are against civilians. Inside Lebanon, we find that Israel is not making the most fundamental distinctions of the laws of war, which is that it has to refrain from attacking civilian objects. In plain words, before pulling the trigger, they have to make sure that they're aiming at a military target. And time and time again, we find that civilians are being killed without any military objective in sight. AMY GOODMAN: Peter Bouckaert, the head of the military, Halutz, the general, says that “Hezbollah places civilians as a defensive shield between itself and us, while the Army places itself as a defensive shield between the citizens of Israel and Hezbollah's terror. That's the main difference between us,” he says, Hezbollah using civilians as a human shield. Your response? PETER BOUCKAERT: Well, Human Rights Watch has no problem denouncing the kind of war crimes and abuses that Hezbollah is committing against Israel. We have said since the beginning that these are war crimes and that Hezbollah should stop these indiscriminate attacks against civilians. But at the same time, it's a very convenient excuse for Israel to say that civilians are being killed because Hezbollah is shielding behind them, and that's simply not the reality on the ground in many of the cases we have documented. Time and time again, we have documented that civilians have been killed without any Hezbollah being in the neighborhood, without any Hezbollah being inside their homes, and without any Hezbollah weapons being stored, and also that civilians are being hit on the road time and time again, when they're traveling in cars which are clearly marked with white flags. On a daily, basis Israel is hitting ambulances, they're hitting humanitarian convoys, they're hitting UN bases multiple times a day. Sometimes 30 separate attacks on UN observer posts are being documented in a single day. So, the problem is that Israel simply is not taking the kind of precautions they need to take. Yes, Hezbollah is a difficult enemy to fight. It's a guerrilla enemy. It's not an enemy with tanks and armored cars, which are easy to hit. But Israel has the obligation to take the precautions required under the laws of war. And I’ve been in Iraq and Afghanistan and Kosovo and Chechnya and many other places, and I have seen these distinctions being made by armies. And so, what we are seeing in Lebanon is very different from what we see in these other conflicts. AMY GOODMAN: Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch has also reported on cluster bombs, the Israeli military use of that. Can you elaborate? PETER BOUCKAERT: Yes. My research team in Northern Israel has been able to photograph cluster bombs in the possession of the artillery teams firing into Lebanon. And we have also been able to document their use on the ground inside Lebanon. Cluster bombs are very dangerous weapons. Basically what happens is that an artillery shell is fired, it opens up over its target and drops these small bomblets over a very wide area, which are supposed to explode on impact. They create a virtual minefield, exploding minefield, when they drop. Now, what we find is that it's an indiscriminate weapon, which is extremely dangerous to use against a civilian-populated area. And we documented in the village of Blida a cluster bomb attack which killed an elderly woman and wounded an entire family of twelve, including seven children. The husband of that family lost both of his legs in the attack. But the problem also with cluster bombs, in addition to them being an indiscriminate weapon, is that many of them fail to explode. As much as 14% of cluster bombs’ bomblets, those small bomblets, fail to explode. And so, they leave behind a legacy of death and destruction and maiming after this conflict is over. And it's not just a theoretical legacy. In Kosovo and Iraq, we found that children pick these things up, because they're curious, and farmers step on them when they're out working their fields. Israel absolutely should not be using cluster bombs in this conflict. And it's an entirely inappropriate weapon against a guerrilla force, anyway, from a military perspective, because cluster bombs are designed to be used against dense concentrations of military troops. You drop cluster bombs on them to kill them. They are anti-personnel weapons. They should not be used against a widely dispersed enemy like Hezbollah, which isn't concentrated in any place. AMY GOODMAN: Peter Bouckaert, after Human Rights Watch came out with its report on Israel's use of cluster bombs, they admitted in fact they are using cluster bombs, but they said they're using them legally. What does that mean? PETER BOUCKAERT: Well, they also issued one of the most bizarre statements I’ve ever heard of. One Israeli official said they're using cluster bombs, yes, but they're not using them against populated areas and they're also not using them against Hezbollah. So I’m not quite sure what he was trying to say they're using them against. We don't think cluster bombs can be used within laws of war in populated areas. It's simply too dangerous a weapon. It's too indiscriminate a weapon. And all countries should refrain from using cluster bombs in populated areas. And we're talking about our experience in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, where we documented horrendous death tolls and the horrendous injuries, because cluster bombs were used in urban areas, especially by the U.S. and U.K. government in Iraq, where they’ve used them widely in populated areas. AMY GOODMAN: Are there any reports of the use of phosphorus as a weapon? PETER BOUCKAERT: There are many reports of the use of phosphorus, and we know that the Israelis have phosphorus in their military -- along with their artillery team. Now, the issue with phosphorus is different, because there are legitimate uses of phosphorus as a weapon --not as a weapon, as an illumination tool. But the problem occurs when phosphorus is used as an offensive weapon, because it causes horrific burn wounds, which can be very disfiguring to civilians. There have been reports that Israel has fired on vehicles and at homes with phosphorus weapons. We're still investigating those, and we do take them serious, because in Fallujah the U.S. Marines did use phosphorus as an offensive weapon, after first denying they did, and it was a very serious violation of the laws of war. AMY GOODMAN: Peter Bouckaert, I wanted to ask you about another weapon. There are reports of the U.S. sending Israel bunker buster bombs, GBU-28 guided bomb unit bombs, and that they're depleted uranium. Do you know about this? PETER BOUCKAERT: Yes. We have seen those reports. And those shipments are already going through to Israel. There's a controversy between the United States and England about the use of English bases to transfer weapons to Israel, without seeking permission from English authorities. And we think it's very disturbing that at this moment the U.S. is still sending weapons to Israel, when there is such widespread evidence of their misuse by the Israeli authorities. Yes, these are smart munitions. And in the ideal world, it's good to use smart munitions, because you end up hitting the targets you want to hit. But the evidence on the ground clearly establishes that Israel is misusing these weapons, that they’re firing them indiscriminately at civilian targets. So we believe it's important that countries put some limits on the way their weapons are used and stop weapons shipments if weapons are used in violation of the Geneva Conventions. AMY GOODMAN: Peter Bouckaert, we want to thank you very much for being with us, Emergencies Director at Human Rights Watch. He's speaking to us from Beirut. The report that Human Rights Watch has just put out is called "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon." -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- courts / tribunals Las Vegas Sued Over Ban on Feeding Homeless Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 Headlines Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/03/149240 In Las Vegas, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit to strike down a new law that makes it illegal to feed the homeless in public parks. The Las Vegas City Council approved the measure last month. Violators will face a fine of up to $1,000 dollars and as many as six months in prison. Three people have already been arrested for the offense. City officials say they’ve enacted the law because soup kitchens have kept people away from visiting public spaces. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the group Food Not Bombs, which provides free vegetarian meals to the poor. --- 'No feeding homeless' law gets Las Vegas sued Posted 8/3/2006 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-03-no-feeding-homeless_x.htm LAS VEGAS — Activists sued Wednesday to strike down a new city law that makes it illegal to feed homeless people in parks. The law violates free speech, free assembly and other rights, says the federal suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada. The suit was filed on behalf of five activists and the local chapter of Food Not Bombs, a national organization that describes its objective as "sharing free vegetarian food with hungry people and protesting war and poverty." The group and its members regularly served meals to homeless people in a Las Vegas park, angering neighbors and sparking the debate that led to the ordinance, passed July 19. It prohibits "providing food or meals to the indigent for free or for a nominal fee" in a city park and defines indigent as a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to county public assistance. Violators face a fine up to $1,000 and as many as six months in jail. Seven people have been issued summonses, and three have been arrested. Lee Rowland, public advocate for the ACLU of Nevada, called the ordinance "immoral" and "embarrassing for the city." Its language violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by "requiring people to make a snap judgment about others based on how they look," she said. City attorney Brad Jerbic said he had not seen the suit but planned to defend the law and the City Council, which is named in the complaint along with Mayor Oscar Goodman, the city manager, city marshals and police. The law was aimed at the advocates' activities in Huntridge Circle park near downtown, Jerbic said. Their mobile meals program drew homeless people away from shelters and health providers. "The shelters provide food, beds, counseling services and doctors," he said. "What this is doing is, it's pulling them away from services and abandoning them in these parks." -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land: Documentary Examines US Media Coverage of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/03/1351216 How has the US media covered the conflict in the Middle East? We play an excerpt of the documentary “Peace Propaganda and the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” The film was directed by Bathsheba Ratzkoff and Sut Jhally of the Media Education Foundation. [includes rush transcript] We continue our coverage of the situation in the Middle East by examining how the U.S. press has been reporting on Lebanon, Israel and Gaza. Some have suggested that America is watching a different war than much of the world. The British journalist Julian Borger came to that conclusion after watching the news in Washington and London. The British press, he said, overwhelmingly emphasized the civilian casualties in Lebanon. Meanwhile the U.S. media has focused on the situation in Israeli cities like Haifa. Some journalists from the Middle East are now refusing to work with American news outlets. Earlier this week, two producers working for Fox News in Amman Jordan resigned in protest. In their resignation letter, Serene Sabbagh and Jomana Karadsheh wrote "We can no longer work with a news organization that claims to be fair and balanced when you are so far from that. Not only are you an instrument of the Bush White House, and Israeli propaganda, you are war mongers with no sense of decency, nor professionalism.” We air an excerpt from the documentary “Peace Propaganda and the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” The film was directed by Bathsheba Ratzkoff and Sut Jhally of the Media Education Foundation. * Peace Propaganda and the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Film directed by Bathsheba Ratzkoff and Sut Jhally of the Media Education Foundation. More info on the documentary online at www.pppl.org RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: In a few minutes, we're going to speak with a panel of media analysts and journalists here in New York, in Beirut and in Tel Aviv. But first, an excerpt from the documentary, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The film was directed by Bathsheba Ratzkoff and Sut Jhally of the Media Education Foundation. NARRATOR: Americans rely on the news media for information about events occurring around the world. News, especially television news, exerts a powerful influence on our perceptions, telling us which events are important and shaping our understanding of the issues. Given the central role played by the United States in the Middle East conflict and thus the vital role played by American voters, influencing U.S. media coverage of the conflict is crucial. Controlling the images and words used to explain the conflict has become an important extension of the struggle. PROF. ROBERT JENSEN: Israel is really fighting a war on two fronts. The first is a military campaign being waged in the Occupied Territories against the Palestinian people. And the second is a PR campaign being waged here in the U.S. through the American media to ensure continued support for Israel's occupation. Alon Pinkas, Consul General for Israel in New York and the coordinator of Israel’s PR efforts, was recently quoted as saying, “We are currently in a conflict with the Palestinians, and engaging in a successful PR campaign is part of winning the conflict.” So you could say that in addition to the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel is also involved in an attempt to ideologically occupy the American media. NARRATOR: The roots of Israel's public relations campaign go back to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon that earned it worldwide criticism, in particular the massacre of Palestinian civilians at the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. To the Israeli government, the problem was not the deaths of thousands of civilians. Rather, it was the damage to Israel's public image, a public relations disaster in need of damage control. ROBERT FISK: They surrounded Beirut. In three months, 17,500 people, almost all of them civilians, were killed. I saw many thousands of their bodies. Then came the massacre of Sabra and Chatila by Israel's own allies, as the camp was surrounded by Israeli troops. And they desperately said, “What went wrong?” It was concluded that the problem was, it wasn't good enough public relations. PROF. ROBERT JENSEN: After the public relations disaster of Lebanon, Israel decided to set up permanent institutional structures to control how Americans would think about the Middle East. In 1983, Israel launched the Hasbara Project, the aim of which was to ensure good press in the U.S. media. The goal was to train Israeli diplomats in communications and public relations. For example, they trained press officers in Israeli consulates in the U.S. to ensure that American journalists would write stories favorable to Israel. As one of these press officers said in the 1980s, he had breakfast, lunch and dinner with journalists and that a typical day would involve conversations with producers at leading news and TV talk shows about the content of the program. He described it as, in fact, quote, a “joint formulation of ideas.” This targeting of the American media goes on in the present day. ALISA SOLOMON: The Israeli press office is spitting out press releases, statements, information all the time. So you could sit in a bureau in Jerusalem and file stories from there all the time, without really having to have much imagination or have much energy or have much drive. The Palestine Authority press office is almost useless, and they certainly aren't providing you with readymade stories the way the Israeli press office is. HUSSEIN IBISH: Because of the lack of access to Palestinian officials in the West Bank and the sophistication of Israel's PR techniques inside Israel, a lot of times the stories are already tilted in Israel's favor, before they ever leave American journalists sitting in the area. ALISA SOLOMON: When you're talking about how the story’s covered from the U.S., the propaganda machine is even more effective than it is in Israel. NARRATOR: American news coverage is influenced by a complex set of institutional relationships. These influences can be thought of as a series of filters through which the news must travel before it emerges in the voices of news anchors. To understand how American news media report on the Middle East conflict, we need to understand how these institutional filters operate. Among the most important of these filters are the business interests of the corporations that own the mass media, interests that extend beyond the United States and across the globe to the Middle East. The economic interests of media owners are shared by political elites, politicians and policymakers who form a second filter. These political elites have the power to access and influence mainstream media and are themselves part of a system dominated by corporate money and interests. The strategic importance of the Middle East to these two groups is reflected in media coverage of the region and of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A third filter, Israel's own public relations efforts, further affects the coverage. The government of Israel employs some of the largest American public relations firms as image consultants to coordinate its political and media campaigns. Nine Israeli consulates helped implement these PR campaigns by developing relationships with journalists and monitoring media outlets. Scores of private American organizations, both Christian and Jewish, reiterate the official line and organize grassroots opposition to any coverage deemed unfavorable to Israel. The most important of these is AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, widely regarded as the most powerful foreign lobby in Washington. This institutional framework of American business and political interests in combination with Israeli public relations shapes media coverage of the Middle East. At the same time, those progressive organizations opposing Israeli government policy, such as Jews Against the Occupation and Americans for Peace Now, rarely make it through these filters. Finally, if any news stories critical of Israeli policy do surface, there are a host of media watchdog groups that monitor and pressure journalists and media outlets, the most important of which is CAMERA. ALISA SOLOMON: You have activist organizations from the right, the pro-Israeli right, that very effectively, they say monitor, I would say harass, journalists and their editors and try to make sure that the coverage is objective, by which they mean pro-Israel. SETH ACKERMAN: You can see all of the kind of pressure groups who write campaigns of letters to the editor against news outlets and ask for -- demand that stories be changed or that reporters be fired. ROBERT FISK: The abuse against the journalists is something you just have to take into account. Both literally and metaphorically, if you work in the Middle East, you've got to take the sticks and stones. What I object to is that my American colleagues don't seem to be prepared to do that. SETH ACKERMAN: And even in Israel itself, you know, you can find the main daily newspapers, like Ha’aretz, for example, provides coverage on the ground and analysis, some of which has views on the conflict that you would never -- that would be almost beyond the pail for an American journalist at the New York Times to write. ROBERT FISK: The main major television news networks and newspapers in the United States have long ago got their fear to be supreme over their duties as journalists. They are not monitoring the centers of power when it comes to the relationship between America and the Middle East, Israel and America, and America and the Arabs and the Palestinians. They will not ask the right questions. They will not report it using the correct words. They will not confront the reality. And they've given up. And I think once you acquire fear, it’s very difficult to get rid of it. AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, war correspondent of the Independent, in the documentary, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, produced by the Media Education Foundation. You can go to their website at pppl.org. ---- Is America Watching a Different War? American, Lebanese and Israeli Panel on How the US Media is Covering the Invasion of Lebanon Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/03/1359222 Some have suggested that Americans are watching a different war in Lebanon than much of the world. We’re joined by three panelists -- Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) in New York, Middle East Broadcasters editor Habib Battah in Beirut and Ha'aretz reporter Gideon Levy in Tel Aviv. [includes rush transcript] We continue our coverage of the situation in the Middle East by examining how the U.S. press has been reporting on Lebanon, Israel and Gaza. Some have suggested that America is watching a different war than much of the world. The British journalist Julian Borger came to that conclusion after watching the news in Washington and London. The British press, he said, overwhelmingly emphasized the civilian casualties in Lebanon. Meanwhile the U.S. media has focused on the situation in Israeli cities like Haifa. Meanwhile some journalists from the Middle East are now refusing to work with American news outlets. Earlier this week, two producers working for Fox News in Amman Jordan resigned in protest. In their resignation letter, Serene Sabbagh and Jomana Karadsheh wrote "We can no longer work with a news organization that claims to be fair and balanced when you are so far from that." They went on to write “Not only are you an instrument of the Bush White House, and Israeli propaganda, you are war mongers with no sense of decency, nor professionalism.” We speak with a panel of media analysts and journalists here in New York as well as in Lebanon and Israel. We are joined by Peter Hart in our New York studio as well as Habib Battah in Lebanon and Gideon Levy in Israel. Peter Hart is a media analyst with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Habib Battah is managing editor of Middle East Broadcasters Journal. He is a former correspondent for The Daily Star and al Jazeera. Gideon Levy is a journalist working for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. * Gideon Levy. Journalist working for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. * Habib Battah. Managing editor of Middle East Broadcasters Journal. * Peter Hart. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about media coverage, we're joined by Peter Hart in our New York studio, of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting; Habib Battah in Lebanon; and Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz in Israel. We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Peter Hart, let's begin with you. Your assessment of the current crisis coverage. PETER HART: I think there are a lot of things to talk about. One of the first things to understand is that the media in this country are obsessed with a timeline, establishing when history began in this story. And usually in the media, it begins when Palestinians attack. CBS reporter Bob Simon said just as much a couple of weeks ago on the evening news. June 25th, Hamas captures an Israeli soldier. That's when history began. July 12th, Hezbollah does the same, captures two Israeli soldiers. That's when this story begins. You can appreciate this history, but you have to ignore a lot of very relevant history: dozens of Palestinians dead in Gaza in the months prior; the attempt to destroy the Palestinian government in Gaza; the fact that the day before this capture of an Israeli soldier in the West Bank, two Hamas members, alleged Hamas members, were captured by Israeli forces in Gaza, crossing that border. We hear a lot of talk about borders and sovereignty being the story, but when Israel crosses that border, it's apparently not a story. The same is true in Lebanon. There's a lot of context to that story that predates July 12. In late May, a member of Islamic Jihad was killed in Lebanon. Many people in Lebanon and Israel actually think Israel had something to do with it. Border skirmishes had been going on for the past month and a half or so. These are things that are excluded from the timeline. If you read your newspaper, they have a graph, they have a chart. Almost all of them have done this. And they begin on June 25. They begin on July 12. And they ignore all of this relevant back story. AMY GOODMAN: You were mentioning Bob Simon; you mean, Bob Schieffer of CBS? PETER HART: Bob Simon did that. Bob Schieffer pretends that the timeline doesn't matter. He says this is the Middle East. It doesn't matter who did what. These are irrational people, which is at best lazy and, I think, at worst downright bigoted. AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, you work for Ha'aretz in Israel. What is the Israeli press reporting? GIDEON LEVY: You mean the coverage of the war right now? AMY GOODMAN: Yes. GIDEON LEVY: You see always in times of war they’re also changing a little bit, and what happens to the entire society happens also to the media, mainly becoming more united, more nationalistic, more militaristic, and even more chauvinistic and violent. Same happens here, though I must tell you there is a sense of criticism already now about this war, but mainly about tactical aspects of it. Should we use the territorial option or not? Did the army function well or not? Questions like this are being raised already now. My main criticism about the Israeli media right now is a very old one, namely ignoring almost totally the sacrifice of the other, the sacrifice of the Lebanese people, the destruction, the killings. All this is covered in the Israeli media in a very, very hidden way, modest way, and really out of proportion, so that the Israeli reader is not really exposed to pictures and reports that the European reader is exposed to. This, I think, is not something to be proud about. AMY GOODMAN: I’m going to ask you after break about how this relates to public opinion in Israel, the whole issue of media manufacturing consent for war. We'll also be joined by Habib Battah in Lebanon, who has been watching U.S. media from Beirut. [break] AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about media coverage from Tel Aviv, from Beirut and from here in the United States, we're joined by Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, we're joined by Gideon Levy in Tel Aviv of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, and in Beirut we're joined by Habib Battah. He is managing editor of Middle East Broadcasters Journal, a former correspondent for the Beirut Daily Star and Al Jazeera. He recently published a piece on Al Jazeera called "Watching American TV in Beirut." Well, Habib Battah, what do you see? HABIB BATTAH: When I’m watching the media coverage here from Lebanon, I’m reminded of -- the American media coverage -- I’m reminded of being in Qatar during the Iraq war, the beginning of it at least, and watching how the use of sources on American media reflected the policy of the United States government. And those sources are mainly retired military analysts. I was watching a show last night, Hardball on MSNBC, and the three guests were two American generals and a former colonel. So there really isn’t a diversity, and these sources allowed assumptions they made that kind of slip under the radar, and these assumptions typically would assume the best of Israel and the worst of Hezbollah. So the conflict isn’t approached from an objective point of view. It's approached from reflection of the policy of the government. Just like the United States government won't talk to Hezbollah, American media, you'll rarely find a Hezbollah source being featured or Hezbollah claims being countered to IDF claim. Just like in the Iraq war, the IDF claims become the main source of information, the sole source often, which misleads that into being really the fact on the ground. We hear the American reporters assume that Hezbollah is using human shields. At the same time, they also assume that Israel has committed all of these massive killings of civilians by accident and that, indeed, the killing of the UN soldiers was, as some reporters put it, even before the Israeli government came out and apologized for this, reporters on some British networks and American networks were saying this was an accident waiting to happen. So that's an assumption, whereas on the Hezbollah side the assumption would be absolute war, that these are using human shields. And I just wanted to also mention the tone of the coverage, the reporters' familiarity with Israel and Israeli cities compared to Lebanon. And we see, for example, some reporters touting Tel Aviv as a city that is very familiar. It's like a city in California, they said, a very modern city. When an attack is on Nazareth, they'll call it the holy town of Nazareth, the hometown of Jesus. When there was an attack on Qana, we didn't hear that, you know, Qana has a biblical reference, as well, as being the place where Jesus made wine. There was no identity, identifying with that place. Beirut, as well, could be described as the city in California, in some sense. So that's a real problem in identifying and actually giving more sympathy. AMY GOODMAN: Habib Battah, speaking to us from Beirut, managing editor of Middle East Broadcasters. Gideon Levy with us from Tel Aviv with Ha'aretz. Gideon, what about this issue of how the Israeli media coverage relates to Israeli public opinion? And I’m wondering if today in your headlines, of the headlines in newspapers in Israel, report on this Human Rights Watch report that says that Israel is deliberately targeting civilians. GIDEON LEVY: I didn't see it. I mean, I think I saw it in one of the websites, but I didn't see it in the newspapers. But I can ensure you, if it will appear, it will appear in a very small place, as all the question of human rights and all the question of the damages that we created in Lebanon is partly hidden from the Israeli public opinion, hidden in a way that it does not get the proportional place, not in size, not in the location. As you know, location is very important in media. So if you mention in the head of a news program 20 casualties, it's one thing. And if you say just in the beginning, it's another thing. There are scenes that we see from Lebanon. We see pictures from Lebanon. It's not that we don't see pictures of Lebanon. But if someone wants really to know how does it look like there, he has to move to BBC or CNN or Sky News or one of those international networks, because in Israel they will show again and again our casualties, our sacrifice, which is very natural and very understandable. The only problem is lack of proportion. AMY GOODMAN: And how does it relate to Israeli public opinion? Do you think Israeli public opinion would change if the media changed? GIDEON LEVY: That's a big question that I kept on asking myself for many years concerning the occupation. Would the Israelis know everything about the brutality and the cruelty of the occupation, would they change their mind? It's a speculation. I truly believe that for sure, at least among part of the Israelis, it might have brought to a change in their perceptions, because would they really know how cruel the occupation is, I think they couldn't live in peace with it. And they would have understand that democracy, as civilized society, cannot live with such phenomena in its backyard. But, you know, it’s just a speculation, because the matter of fact is that most of the Israelis are not exposed. One more remark, you might also say that the Israelis who want to know, they can quite easily know, because if you are really interested, you have the place where to look at, both in the Israeli media and in foreign media. The problem is that most of them also don't want to know. That's the problem. AMY GOODMAN: I just wanted to be specific about what I said. The Human Rights Watch report says Israel is indiscriminately targeting civilians. I said “deliberately.” They said “indiscriminately.” Habib Battah, you've been comparing the same network, that is, CNN with CNN International. Is that right? Can you see what we see here in the United States, which is different than CNN International? HABIB BATTAH: Yes. It's very interesting that there is a very big difference in the reporting styles of CNN International and CNN United States. Reporters on the American network will -- recently a reporter with the IDF said that Hezbollah is like no terror organization Israel has ever seen, whereas the international reporters won't describe Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. They'll call it a militia. And then, so you kind of wonder, why would they adjust the message based on the audience, when the goal is journalism? It shouldn't really change from audience to audience. And in that way, again, we are seeing a reflection of the American policy of labeling Hezbollah a terrorist organization. AMY GOODMAN: Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the images that we see in the United States. PETER HART: I think it goes without saying that Americans see a very different war in this case and in most cases. You’re mentioning the Human Rights Watch report. It's reported halfway through a page one story in the New York Times today. The headline in the New York Times is “Civilians Lose as Fighters Slip Into Fog of War.” The subhead is “Lebanese Deaths Show Dilemma for Israel.” That is the approach, I think, of a lot of television reporters, that there is a PR battle that Israel is losing if we show the realities of this war. There's a CNN show called Reliable Sources, the media discussion show hosted by Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post reporter. It has been obsessed with the idea that television might be too graphic in the United States, that people will get the wrong impression, the wrong impression being that Lebanese civilians are the ones who are suffering under this bombardment from the Israeli military. That is underscored by CNN reporters -- Anderson Cooper, Paula Zhan, Wolf Blitzer -- constantly reminding viewers after a particularly gruesome or graphic report that Hezbollah hides among civilians, so this is the trouble you get into when do you this. It's reminiscent after 9/11 and when the war in Afghanistan began, there was a memo inside CNN. If you're showing graphic images of Afghanistan, remind viewers that this is happening because of 9/11. CNN would cut back to ground zero to remind people that however you feel about those images, if you feel that these people are suffering for no reason, you should be reminded that they're getting something that they deserve. And I think that's the message that CNN and much the rest of the media is sending right now. AMY GOODMAN: It’s interesting. I was invited on MSNBC on Chris Matthews's show Hardball for the tenth anniversary of MSNBC, and they were doing it live from Rockefeller Plaza. He usually does it in Washington, D.C. And there was a crowd of bystanders. And when we were in commercial, the producers said to people, if they're going to be on camera, they were handing out American flags. So on the one hand, they said these are just New Yorkers. And if you wanted to be called on, you know, you'd wave that American flag, whatever your view was. But it certainly skewed the image that people had of who these New Yorkers were. PETER HART: And I think there really is no debate in the media about the current war. There is no debate in Washington. I think that the media reflects that. I think the only real dissenter who’s regularly on the American media is Pat Buchanan. And that really says something about the spectrum of debate. Public opinion polls suggest that there's a good chunk of the American public who thinks this has gone too far, the Israeli response has gone too far. That idea is mentioned almost nowhere in the American media. AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to Gideon Levy, Israeli journalist with Ha’aretz. Your piece, “Operation Peace for the IDF,” “The war that the IDF has declared on Lebanon and […] Gaza, will never be considered another ‘war of no choice.’ […] This is unequivocally a war of choice,” you write. Why? GIDEON LEVY: I think there is no doubt about it. There was a provocation made by the Hezbollah, and Israel has chosen to react in a very, very, very aggressive way, attacking almost all Lebanon. And this is a war of choice. Justified or not, it was a choice of Israel to react. It could have reacted in a much more limited way, local way, just attacking the Hezbollah bases around the border. But Israel chose to go to an overall war against Hezbollah, which is almost an overall war against Lebanon. This is a classical war of choice. HABIB BATTAH: Can I just add, it’s not almost a war against Lebanon. AMY GOODMAN: Habib Battah in Beirut. HABIB BATTAH: Yeah, it's not almost a war. Being here in Beirut, you just have to go down to the gas station and find that there’s no gasoline or go to the hospital and find out that it's a matter of days. Life support systems will probably end, because there's no more electricity in the country. So it's not really a war against Hezbollah, and it's very disheartening to watch the reporters report from a major bridge and say this was a Hezbollah supply line, when actually, you know, for all we know Hezbollah’s probably out in the bushes or on some four-wheel drive. This is a major civilian bridge that hundreds of thousands of people are using. Another big problem that I also see, and I would build on the point about the CNN memo, is I was watching CNN last night, and they were reading a viewer opinion, and it was the opinion of a New York City fireman. And the anchor introduced it by saying it was a very emotional letter. And the fireman was saying from New York City that you only have to stand on 9/11, the ruins of 9/11, to understand all of this death and killing in the world today. And so, we wonder, what does Lebanon have to do, this conflict between territory and soldiers and prisoners, have to do with the events of September 11? Nothing, really. AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Habib Battah, about the bombing Al-Manar, the communications tower at the beginning of the attack, the TV station. HABIB BATTAH: Sure, sure. Al-Manar, I mean, if you’re not familiar, is actually a network that is very strongly supportive of Hezbollah. It wasn't the only channel that was targeted by Israel, though. I mean, Israel also targeted the communication towers for several Lebanese stations, including LBC, which is a Christian broadcaster and the most vocally critical of Hezbollah, the only network that seems to be actually criticizing Hezbollah at this point. It's very strange to understand their strategy, why they would be knocking that out. The view was that basically the images being shown on international television were very strong. And the follow-up of reporters is also important, and I haven't seen that follow-up. I haven't seen a lot of reporters asking Israeli officials just why they bombed the towers that were used by LBC and other -- AMY GOODMAN: Habib Battah, we're going to have to leave it there, managing editor of Middle East Broadcasters; also Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting; and finally, Gideon Levy of Ha'aretz newspaper, speaking to us from Tel Aviv. -------- ENERGY -------- alternative energy Energy Department to Spend $250 Million on Fuel Study August 03, 2006 — By Jim Paul, Associated Press http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=10992 CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The federal government will spend $250 million to help create two research centers that will focus on finding more efficient ways to produce cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels, Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman announced Wednesday during a visit to Illinois. "This is an important step toward our goal of replacing 30 percent of transportation fuels with biofuels by 2030," Bodman said in a statement. "The mission of these centers is to accelerate research that leads to breakthroughs in basic science to make biofuels a cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels." Bodman made his announcement during a discussion of bioenergy with local officials, farmers and businessmen in Channahon that was hosted by Rep. Jerry Weller. Universities, laboratories, nonprofit organizations and private companies around the nation can compete for the money by submitting proposals to establish and operate a center, the department said. The proposals are due by Feb. 1, 2007, and the choices will be announced next summer. The two winning organizations each will receive $25 million per year for five years, beginning in the 2008 federal fiscal year, to develop and operate the research centers, which are expected to be fully operational by 2009, said Raymond L. Orbach, undersecretary of energy for science. While corn and soybeans are widely used to produce ethanol and biodiesel for fuel, the new research centers will be charged with looking to efficiently break down other natural materials, or biomass -- such as grasses, crop residue and animal byproducts -- to help make fuel. Plants and plant wastes can be turned into fuel by using an enzyme to convert cellulose, the primary structural component of green plants, into sugar. The sugar is then fermented and distilled into ethyl alcohol, or ethanol. "It's looking at what we've learned from nature through microbial function to try to understand how nature does it, and then make it more efficient," Orbach said in a telephone interview. Farm states such as Illinois should benefit from the research because it could lead to new cash crops and markets for them, said Mazon-area farmer Jay Fillman. "When you do that basic research, that can really open up new opportunities and probably make it a more sustainable, economic driven industry, instead of being driven by the subsidies as it is right now," he said. And developing new raw materials for biofuels lessens the nation's dependence on food crops as the primary sources of ethanol and biodiesel, said Weller, R-Ill. "We have to diversify our sources of raw material, and that's why this research is so very, very important," he said. "There are other crops that can be developed from this research not only to provide good farm income in Illinois, but also to help us reduce our dependence on imported oil." The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign might compete to host one of the centers, said Hans Blaschek, assistant dean at the university's College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. The agriculture college and the university's Institute for Genomic Biology already are focusing research efforts on biomass energy and the DOE's announcement Wednesday is just the latest in a line of research initiatives on the subject, he said. "There is just an incredible amount of activity in this area. I've never seen it like this in 25 years," Blaschek said. "I think we here at Illinois can be competitive and hope to be competitive." -------- ACTIVISTS Judge condemns anti-war protester's actions Thursday, August 3, 2006 Australian Broadcasting http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200608/s1705190.htm A Perth Magistrate has told a 20-year-old man who took part in a protest against Israel's bombing of Lebanon he had "brought shame to Australia". Raymond Alfred Grenfell today pleaded guilty to obstructing a police officer during the protest on Saturday. The court heard he tried to pull a police officer away from a man being arrested after protesters surrounded Prime Minister John Howard's car. Magistrate Paul Heaney fined Grenfell $400 and ordered he pay court costs. He refused to give Grenfell a spent conviction, saying the behaviour at the protest had been reported around the world. ---- Weapons of Mass Destruction Discovered Here: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and North Dakota By Bill Quigley 08/03/06 "Information Clearing House" http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14342.htm On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, the US dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki. These nuclear weapons killed over 100,000 people, almost all civilians, and injured many tens of thousands more. Fr. Carl Kabat, 72, Greg Boertje-Obed, 51, and Michael Walli, 57, sit in jail in North Dakota awaiting a federal criminal trial because of weapons of mass destruction and because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I visited them last week. Their crime? They tried to disarm one of the 1700+ nuclear weapons in North Dakota. On June 26, 2006, they went to the silo of a Minuteman III first-strike nucclear missile and wrote on it "If you want peace, work for justice." Then they hammered on its lock and poured some of their own blood over it. They waited to be arrested and have been in jail ever since. If convicted, they face imprisonment of up to ten years for criminal damage to federal property. The Minuteman III is a first-strike intercontinental nuclear missile with a range of over 6000 miles and carries 27 times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. There are over one hundred fifty Minuteman III missiles planted in the grounds in silos in just the northern part of North Dakota. Fr. Kabat has been a Catholic priest for over forty years. Greg Boertje-Obed was a First Lieutenant in the US Army. Mike Walli served two tours in Vietnam. All three men were born in small towns or rural areas of the Midwest. Walli and Boertje-Obed are members of the Loaves and Fishes Catholic Worker community in Duluth, Minnesota. Together they are called the "Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares." The Plowshares movement seeks to follow the instructions of Isaiah (2:4) and Micah (4:3) to "beat your swords into plowshares." At the time of their arrest, the three specifically linked their actions to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "Two of the most terrible war crimes occurred on August 6th and 9th, 1945. On August 6th, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, killing more than 100,000 people (including U.S. prisoners of war). Three days later the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan, killing more than 50,000 people. Use of these weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations were abominable crimes against humanity." They went on to say "U.S. leaders speak about the dangers of other nations acquiring nuclear weapons, but they fail to act in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which commits the U.S. to take steps to disarm its weapons of mass destruction. We act in order to bring attention to people's responsibility for disarming weapons of state terrorism. We can begin the process of exposing U.S. weapons of mass destruction, naming them as abominations that cause desolation, and transforming them to objects that promote life." Mike Walli enlisted in the army as a young man. With the experience of two tours in Vietnam, he said "This is not about our national defense. The hundreds of Minuteman III nuclear weapons are offensive weapons of mass destruction. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached that the United States is the chief purveyor of violence in the world. We must become a people-oriented society rather than a thing-oriented society. We must kick the war economy habit." Greg Boertje-Obed, who, after his time as an officer in the military, married and is the father of an eleven year old daughter, told me "There is a sense of righteousness and harmony that comes from being in jail on August 6. When I was in the military, I was trained to fight and "win" a nuclear war. It became clear that all the preparations for a nuclear war were wrong. In contrast Jesus taught "Love your enemies.don't fear those who can kill the body. those who live by the sword will die by the sword." Now is the time to turn away from the ways of violence. Treat others the way we want to be treated. Now is the time to take steps to help the starving, ill, orphaned, weak, war-oppressed, and down-trodden all over the world. It is time to turn away from the bomb and the possibility of ending all life on our planet and to end the nuclear nightmare. Fr. Carl Kabat spent several years in the Philippines and Brazil. "August 6th and August 9th are appropriate times to be in jail," he reflected. "We are here to witness against the insanity of nuclear weapons. When these bombs were dropped on the Japanese I was too young to realize what had happened. Those bombings were war crimes that we, even today, do not acknowledge. The indiscriminate killing of children, women, old people and everyone else certainly cannot be accepted under any just theory of war. Perhaps the fact that we are in jail can help us as a nation remember the criminality of those days in the past. None of us can make up for the killings in the past, but there is a possibility that our being in jail during this time might help stop such insanity from being repeated in the future." North Dakota is home to more nuclear weapons than any other of the 50 states. The Bureau of Atomic Scientists estimated that the state contained more than 1700 nuclear warheads, not counting the ones planted in concrete silos in the ground. A friendly cab driver in Bismarck told me "If North Dakota seceded from the Union, we would be the world's third most-powerful nuclear state." The Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares hope their actions will invite the people of North Dakota, and the rest of the US, to do something about our nation's nuclear weapons of mass destruction in light of many issues of justice, including the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill is a legal advisor with the Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares. You can write Fr. Carl Kabat, Greg Boertje-Obed, or Mike Walli c/o Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center, 66 Museum Drive, Dickinson, ND 58601. You can find out more about the Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares at: http://www.jonahhouse.org You can contact their community c/o Loaves and Fishes Catholic Worker Community at 218.728.0629. You can email Bill Quigley at Quigley@loyno.edu