NucNews August 15, 2006 -------- NUCLEAR -------- business UniStar Nuclear Accelerates Its Pace for Early Reviews by the NRC Submission Ahead of Schedule in Support of a Potential Fleet of New Nuclear Plants in the U.S. Tuesday August 15, 2006 /PRNewswire/ http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060815/dctu049.html?.v=60 http://pepei.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?ARTICLE_ID=266282&p=6 BALTIMORE, Aug. 15 -- UniStar Nuclear, the jointly developed enterprise of Constellation Energy (NYSE: CEG - News) and AREVA, has advanced the submittal of documents in support of its application for a new nuclear power plant license. The company submitted the entire Quality Assurance (QA) program document to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The QA program will govern the design, construction and operation of a planned potential fleet of U.S. EPR advanced nuclear power plants to be built in the United States. UniStar Nuclear's QA program submittal is the first from the nuclear industry exclusively related to a license application that will be sent in under the NRC's combined construction and operating license application (COLA) process. The timing demonstrates UniStar Nuclear's commitment to its principle of working effectively with the NRC toward early review and issue resolution in licensing much-needed, emissions-free new nuclear generating capacity in the U.S. "Being first with this submittal demonstrates our steadfast commitment to meeting or exceeding key deliverable dates in a disciplined fashion consistent with the new licensing process," said George Vanderheyden, president of UniStar Nuclear. "Early submission of thoroughly detailed, stand-alone documents related to the license application helps the NRC manage its resources more effectively and moves us further along the path to new nuclear power generation in the near term." UniStar Nuclear is exceeding expectations and accelerating the review process with the NRC by submitting this document two months prior to the target deadline of September 2006. This QA submittal provides the NRC staff with the information needed to make a full and complete evaluation of this section in support of the COLA process. "We are aware of the resource challenges that could face the commission in the years ahead," said Vanderheyden. "This document submittal is just one of the milestones in our licensing strategy that demonstrates our commitment to working with commissioners and staff in innovative ways to bring certainty and predictability to the new combined licensing process." The Quality Assurance program is required by the licensing process and lays out the quality assurance requirements for the proposed fleet of U.S. EPR advanced nuclear power plants. This program provides the standards and requirements that will ensure the highest standards of quality, accuracy and completeness across all aspects of plant design, construction and operations. "We focused on the QA program now, for two main reasons," said Rod Krich, senior vice president for regulatory affairs, who is leading UniStar Nuclear's licensing work and serves as the primary contact with the NRC. "The NRC has asked that early submissions be complete and the QA program can be reviewed as a complete stand-alone document. Also, since this document lays out the QA basis going forward, it provides a fleet standard to ensure consistent quality standards are applied across all potential future UniStar Nuclear projects." The early submission of this application-related document allows UniStar Nuclear to stay ahead of schedule toward submitting the completed reference COLA for the planned U.S. EPR fleet by June 2008. UniStar Nuclear (http://www.unistarnuclear.com) is headquartered in Annapolis, Md. Constellation Energy (http://www.constellation.com), a FORTUNE 200 company with 2005 revenues of $17.1 billion, is the nation's largest competitive supplier of electricity to large commercial and industrial customers and the nation's largest wholesale power seller. Constellation Energy also manages fuels and energy services on behalf of energy intensive industries and utilities. It owns a diversified fleet of more than 100 generating units located throughout the United States, totaling approximately 12,000 megawatts of generating capacity. The company delivers electricity and natural gas through the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE), its regulated utility in Central Maryland. As the leading U.S. nuclear supplier and a key player in the electricity transmission and distribution sector, AREVA's 5000 American employees are committed to serve the nation and pave the way for the future of the electricity market. The company's commitment to America is reflected in its initial investment of $200 million in the U.S. EPR. With 40 locations across the nation and $1.8 billion in revenues in 2005, AREVA combines homegrown leadership, access to worldwide expertise and a proven track record of performance. In the U.S. and in over 100 countries around the world, AREVA is engaged in the 21st century's greatest challenges making energy available to all, protecting the planet and acting responsibly towards future generations. AREVA, Inc. is headquartered in Bethesda, Md. Visit us at http://www.us.areva.com. Source: UniStar Nuclear -------- depleted uranium Troops deserve better study of depleted uranium effects August 15, 2006 Appleton WI Post Crescent http://www.postcrescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060815/APC0602/608150573/1036 You might have read — in Sunday's paper, among other places — about eight members of an Army National Guard unit who are suing the Army because they've become ill through, they contend, exposure to depleted uranium. You probably haven't read about Army Spc. Dustin Brim, a 22-year-old from Florida who died of an array of cancers in 2004 after serving in Iraq. His mother has come to suspect depleted uranium in her son's death, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal. But you probably are at least vaguely aware of Gulf War Syndrome, the name given to explain medical problems encountered by some Gulf War veterans who were generally stymied by the U.S. military in their efforts to have their illnesses addressed or, at times, even acknowledged. Depleted uranium is one of the suspected causes of Gulf War Syndrome. The Defense Department has minimized the danger that depleted uranium poses. It says that, because of the training troops receive on how to handle it, it should be safe. But based on the illnesses some of these soldiers are developing, it's time to take a closer look at it. Because of its density, depleted uranium is used to provide an armored coating for tanks as a stronger defense against attack. It's also used to coat shells our troops fire, making them more powerful in penetrating enemy armor. Depleted uranium is also radioactive and leaves behind a dust that lasts a very long time. Does breathing in that dust cause the types of illnesses being seen in these veterans? That's the important question. But not enough has been done to answer it, even after the controversy over Gulf War Syndrome. In the past four months, the House and Senate have passed separate bills that call for a study on the effects of depleted uranium exposure. Those pieces of legislation are in a committee to be reconciled. The result should provide a clear mandate to provide some answers. Not nearly enough is known about the health risks truly posed by the use of depleted uranium. It's past time to find out. The troops who are risking their lives in support of our nation deserve to know. -------- india PM's I-Day speech fails to cut ice with Left Press Trust of India Tuesday, August 15, 2006 http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=72456 New Delhi, August 15: The Left parties said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Independence Day address had failed to inspire confidence that India would continue to pursue an independent foreign policy in view of the developments relating to the Indo-US nuclear deal. The Prime Minister has failed to inspire confidence that India shall relentlessly pursue an independent foreign policy. This assumes significance in the ongoing debate in the country on the Indo-US nuclear deal and the implications it has for India's foreign policy," CPM Politburo member Sitaram Yechury said in the forthcoming issue of party organ People's Democracy. "Neither has the Prime Minister given any assurance that in our anxiety to shore up our nuclear energy requirements, we shall not, in any way, compromise on our independent foreign policy", he said in the editorial written on Tuesday and added that this would continue to remain ‘an issue of contention’. CPI secretary D Raja said now that eminent scientists have also expressed concern over the developments taking place in the US Senate and Congress on this issue, the government cannot afford to ignore them and those of the Left parties. -------- missile defense General To Recommend US Missile Defense Sites In Europe Soon The US already has a missile defense system based in Fort Greely, Alaska (pictured). by Jim Mannion (AFP) Aug 15, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/reports/General_To_Recommend_US_Missile_Defense_Sites_In_Europe_Soon_999.html Huntsville AL - The head of the US missile defense agency said Tuesday he expects to make recommendations in a matter of months on where to position interceptor missiles and radar in Europe to best protect against the threat of Iranian missiles. The European site would be the first expansion outside of the United States of an unproven US missile defense system that currently is aimed at thwarting a limited long-range missile attack by North Korea. "We are facing a real threat," General Henry Obering said in a speech here. "It is one that is growing. It is one that I consider to be one of the preeminent threats we'll face in the 21st century." Obering's comments came just weeks after North Korea test fired a long-range Taepo-dong 2 missile and six shorter range Nodong and Scud-type missiles. Although the long-range missile test failed early in flight, the others were successful. "And so we have to be careful that we don't jump to the wrong conclusions about it. Even though they had a failure in a long range test does not mean they don't have capability," Obering said. "I don't take a lot of solace that they had a failed test. It shows their intent to get out their systems," he said. Iran has tested a medium range Shahab-3 missile with a reported range of some 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) but not missiles capable of reaching the United States. "From Iran, we know they've expressed their intent to develop more capable missiles," he told reporters after the speech to a conference on missile defense. US officials said last month that Iranian officials were present at the North Korean test launches. Obering said US teams have been inspecting possible sites in several European countries to base interceptor missiles and a forward-based radar, General Henry Obering told reporters here. US teams visited sites in the Czech Republic last month. Poland also has been in close consultation with the Americans on a site on their soil. Ideally, the site selected would protect both the United States and Europe against the threat of a long-range missile attack by Iran, Obering said. But he said other factors such as soil conditions for missile silos, the infrastructure needed to support the installations, and the possible future sites for a future powerful X-band targeting radar have to be weighed. "All that information is being gathered and should be available to us in the next several months," he said. "We will have recommendations with respect to alternative sites," he said. "In terms of a decision, I don't know the decision timeline." US plans call for stationing 10 interceptor missiles in Europe by 2011. But Obering noted that funding for a European missile defense has not yet passed through Congress, where the House of Representatives voted to withhold funding for it this year. Funding, he said, is "a major factor in terms of our timing, our scheduling of activity that may occur." Meanwhile, it remains unclear whether the missile defense system will work under real world conditions. President George W. Bush said it had a "reasonable chance" of shooting down a North Korean missile, but a recently retired Pentagon weapons evaluator put the odds at no better than five to one. Obering said he had higher confidence in the system. The Missile Defense Agency will conduct its next flight test at the end of the month, he said. An interceptor missile will be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at a target missile fired from Alaska. "It's about as close as we can come to an end-to-end complete operational rig-out of the system. And then we will have another flight against a target in the November, December timeframe that will be a planned intercept," he said. The system has succeeded in only five of 10 attempts to intercept a mock warhead in space. The last intercept occurred in 2002, and that was followed by two failures. ---- "Star Wars" agency helps Israel on rocket threat By Jim Wolf Tue Aug 15, 2006 (Reuters) http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060815/pl_nm/arms_mideast_usa_dc HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency has begun working with Israel to help find ways to counter enemy rockets, a much shorter-range threat than the "Star Wars" mission to block ballistic missiles for which is it known, the head of the agency said on Tuesday. "We have been working with the Israelis ... as they go through with development of their own indigenous capabilities for that threat," Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering told reporters after a speech at a missile-defense conference here. "That is not mature. That is still in development," he said of the effort to defeat something he likened to mortar or artillery fire. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency grew out of the so-called "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative launched by then-President Ronald Reagan in 1983. It is building a multibillion-dollar shield designed to thwart all classes and ranges of incoming ballistic missiles. The United States has a long history of high-tech joint projects with Israel, including co-development of the Arrow, the system Israel has deployed to defend against short- and medium-range missiles. Until now, the Missile Defense Agency -- noted for its work on layered defense against intercontinental missiles -- has not been known to be involved in addressing the rocket threat to Israel from Lebanon's Hizbollah fighters. Israel's defense ministry recently asked the Pentagon for information about a next-generation chemical-laser system for intercepting short-range Katushya and Kassam rockets, Globes Online, an online publication, reported on Sunday. The system at issue, called Skyguard, is built by Northrop Grumman Corp. and based on a tactical high-energy laser the company co-developed with the Israeli army in the 1990s. Northrop, based in Los Angeles, had no immediate comment. Company officials told reporters July 12 they were awaiting a show of interest from Israel to kick off an export-license request for the updated system. Israel is interested because of the threat from Hizbollah rockets to strategic sites including oil refineries and chemical factories in and around the northern city of Haifa, Globes Online said. In northern Israel on Tuesday, residents were returning to their homes to escape weeks of heavy cross-border Hizbollah rocket fire as a U.N. truce largely held for a second day and the Lebanese Army prepared to move south. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- georgia Permit sought for new reactor at Georgia nuclear plant The Associated Press By RUSS BYNUM August 15, 2006 http://www.topix.net/content/ap/2721242330306240258932591630381779939276 The Southern Co.'s nuclear subsidiary applied Tuesday for a site permit that would allow the utility to add two reactors to the Alvin W. Vogtle nuclear plant in eastern Georgia. The proposed $3 billion project, which would nearly double Plant Vogtle's output of 2,430 megawatts, requires approval by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Southern Co. spokeswoman Carrie Phillips said the plant's owners haven't made a final decision yet to develop the new reactors at Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, 30 miles south of Augusta. She said a permit would give the owners 20 years to make a final decision whether to build new reactors. The U.S. has 103 nuclear power plants scattered across 31 states, but no orders for new reactors have been placed since 1973. Recently, high energy prices have raised the profile of nuclear power as a way to generate electricity without churning out greenhouse gases. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said earlier this month he expects 12 utilities to file papers over the next three years to build 18 nuclear reactors. -------- MILITARY -------- israel / palestine Christians United for Israel: New Christian Zionism Lobby Hopes to Rival AIPAC Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/15/1326256 We take a look at a new recently established group called Christians United for Israel - an evangelical organization that believes supporting expansionist policies of the Israeli government is: "a biblical imperative." We speak with investigative journalist Max Blumenthal who reports they lobbied the Bush administration to adopt a confrontational posture toward Iran, refuse aid to the Palestinians and give Israel a free hand in its attack on Lebanon. [includes rush transcript] In March of this year, a study on the role of the Israel lobby in US foreign policy caused an uproar in the academic community and in the media. The paper's authors, Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard University and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, argued the pro-Israel lobby has unduly influenced the United States to set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of Israel. The study emphasized the activities of the pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. Well, there's another side of the pro-Israel lobby that's drawing increasing attention -- and some say its far more influential. A new group was recently established called Christians United for Israel - CUFI. They're an evangelical organization that believes supporting expansionist policies of the Israeli government is: "a biblical imperative." In a new article for The Nation, journalist Max Blumenthal reports group members have held several meetings with White House officials to talk about US policy in the Middle East. They've apparently lobbied the administration to adopt a confrontational posture toward Iran, refuse aid to the Palestinians and give Israel a free hand in its attack on Lebanon. We're going to speak with Max Blumenthal in a moment but first, we hear from Christians United for Israel. Their inaugural event was held last month in Washington, DC. More than 3,000 people were in attendance to hear speeches from Israeli and American dignitaries. Among the speakers was Kansas Republican Senator Sam Brownback. * Sam Brownback (R - Kansas), speaking at a Christians United for Israel summit in July 2006. [Click for mp3 of full address] The group's founder, Texas television evangelist John Hagee, also spoke. * John Hagee, speaking at a Christians United for Israel summit in July 2006. [Click for mp3 of full address]. We speak with Max Blumenthal. He writes about Christians United for Israel in a new piece for the Nation titled "Birth Pangs of a New Christian Zionism." * Max Blumenthal, Puffin Foundation writing fellow at the Nation Institute. His work has appeared in The Nation, Salon, The American Prospect and the Washington Monthly. His blog is MaxBlumenthal.Blogspot.com. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: We are going now to speak with Max Blumenthal in a moment. But first, we turn to Christians United for Israel. Their inaugural event was held last month in Washington, D.C. More than 3,000 people were in attendance to hear speeches from Israeli and American dignitaries. Among the speakers was Kansas Republican Senator Sam Brownback. SEN. SAM BROWNBACK: Thank you in your energy. Thank you in your prayers. Thank you for standing with Israel in this difficult time. I close with noting that the recently elected Prime Minister of Israel addressed a joint session of Congress about a month or so ago. And he spoke there, and I sat as I listened to him give an eloquent speech, uniting speech, thinking to myself, the United States doesn't have a closer partner in the world than Israel today. And it is true. And it's important for us, when our friend is in difficulty, Israel, that we stand by them in this difficult time. Thank you for being here. God bless you all. God bless the United States of America. And God bless the Israeli people. AMY GOODMAN: Republican Senator Sam Brownback speaking last month at the inaugural banquet for Christians United for Israel. The group's founder, Texas television evangelist, John Hagee, also spoke. JOHN HAGEE: We gather in Washington, D.C., tonight for one of the most dramatic moments in the history of American Christiandom. We gather here from every state in the nation. We gather here with more than 3,400 spiritual leaders. We gather for one purpose: to express our solidarity with the state of Israel and the Jewish people, because this historic event is being telecast across the nation and around the world; because this telecast is being seen in Iran, where a new Hitler, the President of Iran, threatens to annihilate Israel with a nuclear holocaust, saying Israel should be wiped off the map and saying, like it or not, the Zionist regime is headed toward total annihilation, to be ended with a sudden storm; because the enemies of Israel are doubtless watching this telecast and question our resolve as Christians to stand with Israel until Islamofascism is totally defeated; because this will be seen in Israel by a war-weary people who at this very hour are once again fighting Hamas terrorists whose covenant calls for the death of Jewish people and total destruction of Israel; because God in heaven is watching and has commanded us, keep not silent concerning Israel. Well, those of you in this audience who stand in solidarity with Israel, until victory comes, stand and send a message to the U.S. Congress, to the people of Israel, to the enemies of Israel: We are with you. We stand with you. Israel, you are not alone. AMY GOODMAN: John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel. We're joined now by Max Blumenthal, who writes about Christians United for Israel in a new piece for The Nation. He's a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute. He's based in Washington, D.C. His pieces have appeared in The Nation, and Salon, American Prospect, Washington Monthly. His piece is called "Birth Pangs of a New Christian Zionism." Explain, Max. MAX BLUMENTHAL: Christian Zionism has been a force within the Christian right for over 20 years, and they've made -- the Christian Zionist movement, they've made themselves an asset to Israel by sending millions in aid money to Israel. They're a major source of Israeli tourism, especially during the Second Intifada. They were perhaps the only source of tourism revenue for Israel, which is a key source of revenue for the Israeli government. And on an individual basis, leaders of the Christian Zionist movement have lobbied the government, especially the Bush administration, which has had an open door policy to them. But never before has there been an official Washington lobbying organization for the Christian Zionist movement. So now you have Christians United for Israel, which was founded in February by John Hagee, who commands a mega-church in San Antonio with 18,000 members. He's a huge force in Texas politics, a close, personal friend of Tom DeLay. And what this organization has done is they've convened all of the major Christian Zionist mega-churches in the country under one umbrella group, and they've hired a lobbyist. Hagee has a lot of money through his congregation. And their lobbyist is a guy named David Brog, who’s the former chief of staff to Arlen Specter, and he's Jewish, so this makes him a huge asset to this organization, because he can beat back criticism from other Jewish leaders that Christian Zionists harbor ulterior motives for supporting Israel, that they have an Armageddon-based agenda for supporting Israel. And if you look at what John Hagee has written in his books, like Jerusalem Countdown, his most recent book, which cites 17 unnamed Israeli intelligence sources to claim that Iran is producing nuclear suitcase bombs and that Israel must engage in a "nuclear showdown" with Iran or risk committing national suicide, if you look at what he's written, he does have an Armageddon-based agenda. And so I think what this lobby does, it plays an instrumental PR role on behalf of the Christian Zionist movement in preventing legitimate criticism of their motives for supporting Israel, and they are bolstering what AIPAC is doing and possibly even radicalizing what AIPAC is doing, by providing them a grassroots base in the heartland. The majority of America's 60 million evangelicals are premillenial dispensationalists. They believe that the end times could come at any moment, and they're looking for signs of that, so they're sympathetic to supporting Israel for these reasons. And so they provide a strong grassroots base. This is the Republican base. This is the only component of the Republican base that still supports Bush's policies in Iraq without question, unconditionally, and supports Israel's expansionism. While the American Jewish community is willing to, you know, stand for Israel and show solidarity for Israel, they also support a peace process, and they support a sovereign Palestinian state. But this group doesn't. You know, for instance, Pat Robertson went on the 700 Club and said that Ariel Sharon's descent into a comatose state was punishment for dividing the land for the Gaza withdrawal, for pulling 9,000 extremist settlers out of a huge swath of land. And, you know, then last week, Pat Robertson was flown to Israel to pray with Ehud Olmert and go on the 700 Club and tell his viewership that the Lebanese civilians, the Lebanese society was harboring terrorists, and therefore, civilian casualties were justified. So they play a PR role on behalf of the extremist wing of Israeli political culture. They're very connected to people like Benjamin Netanyahu, who's positioning himself to succeed Ehud Olmert in the wake of Olmert's possibly imminent resignation. So I think there's a real danger here. AMY GOODMAN: David Brog is someone you interviewed, Max Blumenthal? MAX BLUMENTHAL: Right, right. AMY GOODMAN: So you spent time with him. You said that he told you during the meetings with the White House, “CUFI representatives pressed White House officials to adopt a more confrontational posture toward Iran, refuse aid to the Palestinians and give Israel a free hand as it ramped up its military conflict with Hezbollah,” and that the White House instructed Brog not to reveal the names of officials he met with. MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, we know in the past that Karl Rove and people in Karl Rove's shop, like Tim Goeglein and Elliott Abrams, who’s in the State Department, who’s traveling, you know, to Israel with Condoleezza Rice, have met with Christian Zionist groups, so this is not an anomaly. But this group has a much larger voice than any of the other groups that have met with the Bush administration, and they claim -- David Brog claimed to me that their principal achievement has been keeping a ceasefire off the table for the past month. So, their principal achievement has been essentially giving Israel a free hand and the IDF a free hand to kind of, you know, ramp up the war, and I think this has had catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and the peace process. I’m not discounting the influence of AIPAC. I’m not saying that Christians United has anywhere near the influence of AIPAC, but in a Republican-dominated Washington, Christians United represents where the Republican base is at, and that's why you have Sam Brownback going to their banquet. That's why Ken Mehlman, the head of the RNC, spoke at their banquet. AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a clip of another prominent member of Christians United for Israel, television evangelist Rod Parsley. This is an excerpt of his television show, Breakthrough. ROD PARSLEY: I was walking down the road the other day! A woman started screaming, sitting in a wheelchair! She said, “God told me that if I ever got near you, I was coming out of this chair!” I said -- I’m just walking down the street in my blue jeans! Didn't have a choir! Didn't have Wendell! I looked at her! “How long you been in that chair?” “20 years! Now get over here and put your hands on me!” I said, “Alright! Silver and gold have our number! Such as I have, not I can work up, not I can go pray down, such as I have, get ready, it's about to fall on you! Give I thee in the name of Jesus!” Before I could get my hand on her, she lifted up those legs, kicked the edges of that wheelchair open and went running down the road! And a police officer had to stop her! He said, “What happened?” She said, “God just brought me out of this chair!” AMY GOODMAN: Evangelist Rod Parsley, an excerpt from his television show, Breakthrough. We're talking to Max Blumenthal, who has written a piece in The Nation called “Birth Pangs of a New Christian Zionism.” Can you talk about the Anti-Defamation League and CUFI and Brog? MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, but before that, I just want to kind of explain who Rod Parsley is. He's a really influential preacher in Ohio, and he's the leading force behind Ken Blackwell's campaign there. So I think he's someone who should be watched. He's not as well known as Jerry Falwell, but he's forming a political network in Ohio, and so he's an instrumental player in this movement and in politics in a swing state. AMY GOODMAN: Also has a mega-church. MAX BLUMENTHAL: And he has a mega-church. And I don't know what he was just talking about there, but he has a more of a crossover style, so he can reach out to people from the inner-city, and he can also reach out to people from the exurbs, who are Republicans, the traditional Republican base. So I think he represents a new generation of the Christian right. Last year, Anti-Defamation League President Abe Foxman, the president of the largest American Jewish organization, kind of came out of nowhere and gave a speech attacking the Christian right as the greatest threat to American Jewish interests, to constitutional rights of American Jews. I think it was something that had been, you know, that a lot of American Jews had wanted him to do for a long time. ADL has principally focused in the past on supporting Israel and supporting Israel no matter what Israel does. And they've also had alliances. Abe Foxman has had alliances with people like Ralph Reed over Israel. He paid to reprint a Ralph Reed editorial supposedly supporting Israel in a full page of the New York Times in the late ’90s. So this represented a break from the past. And Abe Foxman was immediately attacked by a chorus of Christian right criticism, including David Brog. David Brog was one of the first people to attack him, and he attacked him, of course, from a Jewish perspective, saying, you know, “Evangelicals saved Jews from the Holocaust. We owe them a lot. And they support Israel now.” In the Wall Street Journal in an op-ed, in the most influential op-ed section for the conservative movement, he was joined by most evangelical leaders in attacking Foxman, and every single one held Israel over Abe Foxman's head and said, “If you continue to criticize us, we will withdraw support for Israel.” So it just shows that their support for Israel, or their purported support for Israel, is completely conditional, and that they're using it to weaken the interests of American Jews domestically. And since then, Abe Foxman has been pretty much silent, although he sends fundraising pitches out warning of the Christian right's machinations. He doesn't speak about it publicly anymore. And on Friday or Monday, the ADL ran these two, I thought, really ridiculous full-page ads in the New York Times saying, “Hezbollah must be stopped.” Well, the ceasefire had already happened, so they had been stopped. So I thought that was a complete waste of their money. And there's just a void right now in the Jewish community for saying that the Christian right is a threat. AMY GOODMAN: Max Blumenthal, I wanted to end on the issue of rapture. Last month, Harper's magazine reported traffic on internet bulletin boards, talking about rapture or end times, greatly increased following the outbreak of violence in the Middle East. One person wrote online, "I've been having rapture dreams and I can't believe that this is really it! We're on the edge of eternity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Another person wrote, "I too am soooo excited!! I get goose bumps, literally, when I watch what's going on in the [Middle East]!!" MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, I was listening on July 21 to Janet Parshall, who’s one of the leading evangelical and Republican broadcasters. She can get Dick Cheney on her show in a heartbeat. And she said, “As soon as the missiles started flying between Israel and Hezbollah,” she said a voice just brimming with glee, “these are the times we've been waiting for. This is straight out of a Sunday school lesson.” So the Christian Zionists have a tendency to celebrate things that most Israelis consider tragic. You know, I question whether John Hagee agonizes over the dozens of deaths of Israeli soldiers. I question whether he agonizes over the Israelis, the thousands of Israelis who had to spend the last month in bomb shelters. I don't think he does agonize. I think what Hagee and the Christian Zionists want is to fight a battle to the last Jew. AMY GOODMAN: Max Blumenthal, I want to thank you very much for being with us. His piece in The Nation magazine is called "Birth Pangs of a New Christian Zionism." ---- Peres says Israel achieved goals in war Tue Aug 15, 2006 (Reuters) http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2006-08-15T211643Z_01_N15423855_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-4 ATLANTA - Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres said on Tuesday Israel had achieved its goals during a conflict in Lebanon and that Hizbollah had lost close to half its fighting power. "They (Hizbollah) thought they will bring Israel on our knees. I don't say it's easy but we withstood it and we feel that we went out of it militarily in a good shape and politically in an even better one," said Peres, told a news conference. Asked whether the war had been a public relations success for Israel, he said it was more important to win a military battle. Peres said he was confident a U.N. force would be able to protect Israel's borders in part because of its stronger mandate. "Southern Lebanon is not a great piece of land but 30,000 soldiers in this piece of land is filling in this area .... The United Nations gave Unifil an authority that it did not have," he said. Peres was in Atlanta as part of a four-day tour of six U.S. cities to raise humanitarian funds for parts of northern Israel damaged during the war. -------- latin america Venezuelan dissident on the run AP August 15, 2006, Australia Herald-Sun http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20127788-663,00.html A DISSIDENT Venezuelan labour leader who was serving an almost 16-year sentence for leading a crippling oil strike against President Hugo Chavez has escaped from prison. Carlos Ortega, the jailed president of the one million-member Venezuelan Workers Confederation, or CTV, escaped along with three military officers from the Ramo Verde military prison. Troops and police were securing ports, airports and embassies to prevent the fugitives from fleeing or seeking asylum at a diplomatic compound. Attorney-General Isaias Rodriguez said: "This is to prevent . . . one of the most horrible crimes committed against Venezuela from going unpunished -- a crime of conspiracy along with a coup in which one of the leading figures was Carlos Ortega". Ortega, who is considered by the opposition a political prisoner, was found guilty in December of civil rebellion and instigation to commit illegal acts for his role in the 2002-03 strike that aimed to topple the Chavez Government. ---- Arrest Warrants Issued for Over 50 Grassroots Leaders in Oaxaca, Mexico Friday, August 18th, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/18/1353205 We go to Oaxaca in southern Mexico where over 50 arrest warrants have been issued for grassroots leaders who have mobilized to demand that the state governor be removed. In June, Oaxaca's governor, Ulises Ruiz, ordered a police crackdown on more than 70,000 teachers on strike, who had staged an encampment in the city center. [includes rush transcript] We turn to Mexico where massive street demonstrations continue in the capital in support of populist presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Monday marked the first day that police used tear gas and truncheons to break up the demonstrators. But while the world's attention is on Mexico city, another battle is gaining intensity in the south of the country, in the state of Oaxaca. In June, Oaxaca's governor, Ulises Ruiz, ordered a police crackdown on a peaceful encampment of 70,000 teachers on strike in the city center. Since then, others have joined the teachers to create a broad movement opposed to Ruiz's government. Over the past month the Oaxacan People's Assembly, known as APPO, has launched a campaign of civil disobedience aimed at forcing Ruiz to step down. Protesters have blockaded streets and government buildings. This past week a group of women took over the state run Television station Canal 9. Since the uprising began, the state has intensified its use of force. As many as four members of APPO were fatally shot this past week. Nearly ten people have been injured and many more detained. Allegedly state-backed gunmen have also raided media outlets critical of the government. We are joined on the line from Oaxaca by three guests: * Jill Freidberg, filmmaker who has spent several years in Oaxaca. She is producer of the film "Granito De Arena", which documents the Oaxaca teacher's union movement. More information at Corrugate.org. * John Gibler, journalist whose articles have been published on ZNet, and will appear in Z magazine as well as in These Times Magazines next month. John is also a Human Rights Fellow with Global Exchange. * Sergio Beltran, general coordinator for Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca, or Unitierra, an NGO for alternative education. Through Unitierra he has been a participant in the Oaxaca People's Assembly. He also is part of the broadcasting team of Oaxaca's community radio station: Radio Planton, where he produces a show on the mass media. RUSH TRANSCRIPT JUAN GONZALEZ: Filmmaker Jill Freidberg interviewed some of the women following the takeover. APPO WOMAN 1: We want to talk a little bit about the events that have taken place from August 1 until now, when the woman all marched in the march of the pots and pans, and after that we decided. APPO WOMAN 2: It was decided after the rally, after the march in which, according to the press, over 10,000 women participated, we decided to head over to Channel 9. APPO WOMAN 3: We were indignant that they had denied us our right to information. All you heard on the radio, in the press, and especially on TV, was lies. APPO WOMAN 4: Neighbors from different neighborhoods, people from communities around the city of Oaxaca, come here throughout the night, constantly, bringing us food, bringing us everything we need. APPO WOMAN 1: So we were still here. We've been able to broadcast on the television and the radio, and we want to continue using that for the community. We know that a lot of critical voices haven't had a space, and now is the time for them to have a voice. People have been coming here from all the different neighborhoods, and this is a peaceful struggle. We don't have weapons. We're all women in here. APPO WOMAN 2: This is now a people's movement. It's a just struggle. We are only asking for what is rightly ours and that our rights be recognized. And he, as governor, has to give us what we have a right to, in every neighborhood, in every community, but that hasn't happened. That's why civil society is so angry, and we are stronger now than ever. JUAN GONZALEZ: Since the uprising began, the state has intensified its use of force. As many as four members of APPO were fatally shot this past week. Nearly ten people have been injured and many more detained. Allegedly state-backed gunmen have also raided media outlets critical of the government. AMY GOODMAN: We're joined now on the telephone from Oaxaca by three guests. Jill Freidberg, filmmaker who spent several years in Oaxaca, she’s producer of the film, Granito de Arena, which documents the Oaxaca teacher’s union movement. John Gibler is a journalist who spent several weeks traveling between Oaxaca and Mexico City in these last weeks. His articles appear on Znet and the upcoming issue of Z Magazine and In These Times. And Sergio Beltran is with us, general coordinator for the University of the Earth in Oaxaca, or Unitierra, an NGO for alternative education. Through Unitierra he has been a participant in the Oaxaca People’s Assembly. He's also part of the broadcasting team of Oaxaca’s community radio station, Radio Planton, where he produces a show on the mass media. We welcome you all to Democracy Now! We wanted to begin with Sergio. Last month we talked to one of the teachers in the teachers’ union. Can you talk about where the police had moved in and opened fire? Can you talk about what has happened since and the significance of these women occupying the TV station and forcing the station to run footage of police attacking protesters? SERGIO BELTRAN: Sure. First of all, good morning to everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. Well, after June 14, what happened was that a locally seated movement of the union of teachers was transformed in a very broad social process against the way the governor has been acting since he is empowered since last December. One of the most important attacks was to Radio Planton, because Radio Planton was the voice of the movement, and people listened to the radio, although it’s a small canal radio from the union of teachers, because it was the only way to have, like, good information about what was happening. Still now, the government is using all the time they got into the national media to say that nothing is happening in Oaxaca, everything is in calm, it's just a bunch of people that have took in a rally five or six blocks of the city. And people was seeing all the time that it was more than that, that it was a regional movement all around the state, and then when the violence come, the whole people, a lot of the social sectors and all the official movements of Oaxaca come together with the same demand: stop this way of making politics, because violence is not the way, and we deserve a better government there. And then, it was massified, the whole [inaudible], since then. People and this movement have been working on that line specifically with demonstrations and rallies, all of them after August the 1st, when the women [inaudible] decided that it was enough, this bloc of people nation, decided to march to the channel, to Canal 9, and getting control over the state government radio station. So, for me, the most important thing that has happened in Oaxaca is this particularity. I can't find any other example in Latin America, when the people get actually in control of several ways of communication with the rest of the society. Not only the Canal 9 in the TV and the Radio Cacerola, the way that the women have renamed this radio station, the station, but also Radio Planton, and for several days after June 14 ‘til more or less one week ago, the university radio was controlled by the students supporting the movement. JUAN GONZALEZ: Jill Freidberg, you've been filming this ongoing unrest in the teachers strike there. Could you talk a little bit about how extensive this is and the importance of Oaxaca, of one of many states in Mexico, as a longtime center of resistance within the country? JILL FREIDBERG: Well, Oaxaca is one of Mexico's poorest states. It's also one of Oaxaca’s most indigenous states, and it’s also the state where historically the Democratic Teachers’ Movement has been largest and has had the most strength. And so, we're talking about a state where, in relationship to the teachers’ movement, you know, almost -- there isn't a community in the state that doesn't have a teacher, and not in every -- I mean, I’m not saying that in every community that there is a good relationship between the teachers and the community, but there is a long history of struggle between schoolteachers and other Oaxacans, campesinos, indigenous, marginalized populations, who have fought together against the injustices that you see in every corner of the state. So when the newly arrived governor, Ulises Ruiz, attacked the teachers’ encampment on June 14, it was sort of an inevitable evolution that that long history of struggle would spark an outpouring of what was initially was an outpouring of support for the teachers, but which immediately evolved into a popular movement that really is -- I mean, I really want to emphasize the sort of broad spectrum of participation, and not even all the people and all the organizations and all the communities that are participating necessarily have a history of supporting the teachers’ movement, but who share in common a -- you know, they're fed up with the injustices and especially the level of escalation of those injustices in the state since the arrival of this governor, Ulises Ruiz. And like Sergio said, there has been this attempt, this nationwide media attempt, to say that nothing is happening in Oaxaca, but, in fact, this is a movement that does -- that is throughout the state. I don't even know now what the number is, somewhere around 30 municipalities across the state have replaced the local governments with popular governments. City halls around the state have been taken over by communities, who in many cases have aligned themselves with the APPO, with the popular assembly. And, I mean, the fact that they're trying to say that nothing is happening in Oaxaca, I think, actually demonstrates just how profound what's happening in Oaxaca is. AMY GOODMAN: John Gibler, I wanted to bring you into the conversation before the program ends. You've written a piece at ZNet called “Pistol Policy: State Denial and Repression in Oaxaca.” Can you talk about the four people who were recently killed and also put this in the context of the national debate that is going on right now, the contest over who will be president? JOHN GIBLER: Of course. First off, the shootouts have all taken place in the context of either marches or meetings that the APPO have held, protest gatherings, or in one case, several people were ambushed on their way to such a meeting. That's where three people in the Triqui region, three indigenous people, were killed by armed gunmen who were not in uniform. Later, a few days later, in a march that was actually held, convoked on a day's notice to pull people into the streets to demand that people who had been either disappeared or taken prisoner and beaten be presented and be released. During that march, armed gunmen shot from two sides of the street into the crowd, wounding three people and killing one person, Jose Colmenares, who’s a mechanic and husband of one of the teachers and members of the teachers’ movement. The policy here has been systematic, that it's isolated, unarmed gunmen who appear in the crowds, shoot sometimes into the air, as with the case the week before in several protest gatherings in Oaxaca City, and is also the case with the Noticias newspaper, the critical newspaper in Oaxaca state. Armed gunmen entered with Uzis and shot into the ceiling. There, bullet fragments wounded six people. But in several cases, amazingly, the APPO members have actually detained the gunmen themselves and disarmed them and then turned them over to federal agents or detained people who were suspected of being -- they weren't seen to have shot, but were seen either running or caught, in the case of the March shooting, they were caught in the -- JUAN GONZALEZ: John, we just have about 30 seconds, but just a quick comment on how this impacts on the overall battle over the presidency right now in the election. JOHN GIBLER: Definitely. It shows that the working class society in Mexico is boiling. And I think the concrete image here in Mexico City is the spirit of resistance. It's something that, I think, gives encouragement to the protesters in Mexico City in their fight against the electoral fraud. AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you all for being with us from Oaxaca: John Gibler, journalist, his piece appears at ZNet; Jill Freidberg, who’s continuing to document this; and Sergio Beltran, general coordinator for Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca. We will certainly continue to cover what is happening in Oaxaca and, in general, what is happening in Mexico. -------- mideast FACTBOX - Costs of war in Lebanon and Israel Tue Aug 15, 2006 (Reuters) http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2006-08-15T081933Z_01_L15538264_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-11 Lebanon and Israel counted their losses from 34 days of fighting as a truce between Israeli troops and Hizbollah guerrillas held for a second day on Tuesday. The Israeli military said the air force had attacked about 7,000 targets in Lebanon and the navy had fired 2,500 shells during the conflict, while 3,970 Hizbollah rockets hit Israel. Here are some facts about the losses on each side: LEBANON * CASUALTIES - Around 1,110 dead and 3,700 wounded, the vast majority of them civilians. The death toll includes 35 Lebanese soldiers and police, as well as five U.N. peacekeepers. In addition, Israel says it killed about 530 Hizbollah fighters. Hizbollah has acknowledged about 80 dead. * DISPLACED - More than 900,000 Lebanese fled their homes. At least 60,000 foreigners were evacuated via Cyprus or Turkey. Many thousands more found their own way out. * ECONOMY - Lebanon's Council of Development and Reconstruction put bomb damage at $2.5 billion to the end of July. More damage was inflicted in the last two weeks of the war, when major road bridges were destroyed in the north. - The total includes: roads, bridges, ports and airports ($404 million), power ($208 million), telecoms ($99 million), water ($74 million), industry ($190 million), military installations ($16 million). - The Beirut Stock Market closed for two weeks after prices tumbled 14 percent and the Central Bank spent more than $1 billion in foreign currency reserves to keep the pound stable. - Lebanese economists have cut growth forecasts to zero or below from 5-6 percent. Some say the economy could shrink by 2-3 percent, with the tourism sector particularly hard hit. - Hizbollah estimates more than 15,000 homes have been completely destroyed and many more damaged. * ENVIRONMENT - Some 10,000-15,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil spilled onto Lebanon's coast after Israel bombed a power station south of Beirut, causing the biggest ecological crisis in the country's history. The spill will cost at least $100 million to clean up, the environment ministry estimates. ISRAEL * CASUALTIES - 157 dead, of which 40 were civilians killed by Hizbollah rocket fire and the rest soldiers, most of whom were killed in fighting inside Lebanon. Some 1,000 people were wounded in rocket attacks in Israel and 450 soldiers were hurt in fighting in Lebanon. * DISPLACED - Some 300,000 Israelis fled their homes in response to rocket attacks on northern Israel. * ECONOMY - The Bank of Israel has put economic damage in lost tourism and industrial activity at 5 billion shekels ($1.5 billion), or up to 1 percent of projected gross domestic product. Israel's Manufacturing Association puts the cost to northern industries at 4.6 billion shekels and estimates that projected GDP may fall by 11.5 billion shekels, or 1.9 percent. ---- Lebanon war cost Israel $1.6bn Julian Borger in Jerusalem Tuesday August 15, 2006 Guardian Unlimited http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1850823,00.html Israel's month-long war against Hizbullah has cost the country $1.6bn (£850m), or about 1% of GDP, according to initial government estimates. About a third of that went directly to the army. Most analysts believe the ceasefire arrived just in time to stop the conflict putting a significant brake on Israel's high growth rate, although the economy is vulnerable to any resumption in the fighting. However, the total bill is unlikely to exceed the approximately $2.5bn Israel receives each year in aid from the US - $2.2bn of that in military grants. At least 6,000 houses or businesses in the north were destroyed or damaged during the fighting. Much of the region's fruit harvest rotted on the trees because farm labourers spent the month in their shelters. More than a million people were displaced from the north and about a quarter of the region's small businesses had to be saved from bankruptcy by emergency government support, according to Oded Feller, the president of the Chamber of Commerce for Haifa and the north. On top of that, 30,000 reservists left their jobs around the country when they were called up. Most importantly, tourism died completely in the northern beach resorts and around the Sea of Galilee and was badly hit in the rest of the country. Even if fighting does not break out again, there are likely to be ripple effects on tourism into next year at least. With the truce holding for the time being, the Tel Aviv stock market has already recovered to within 2% of its pre-war level and the shekel has also bounced back. The 5% growth rate of the past three years could be slowed, but perhaps by less than 1%, government economists hope. "In a couple of months, we can recoup half the losses. The factories will work overtime," said Shraga Brosh, the head of the Manufacturer's Association of Israel. Foreign investment, which has fuelled the high growth of recent years, is expected to double this year to about $12bn, mostly in the form of acquisitions of Israeli start-ups, he said. "Right now, there is no negative reaction. Those people who plan to invest in Israel are keeping their investment here. People believe the economy is strong." According to Mr Brosh, the damage would have been much more serious if the war had gone on even a few weeks longer, and such economic considerations may have played a role in the government's decision to accept the UN ceasefire. Israel's capacity to sustain confidence will depend on whether the truce represents the start of a lasting peace on the northern border or only a lull before the next round in the Arab-Israeli struggle. The tourist industry is the economy's canary - the first to succumb to the impact of instability - and it has taken a beating. The number of foreign tourists arriving in the second half of the year is expected to halve, a loss that would represent 0.4% of GDP. "We're getting no future bookings whatsoever. Nobody is coming here," said Mark Feldman, the managing director of Zion Tours in Jerusalem. There have been a few "solidarity tours" by pro-Israeli groups to help prop up the industry, and there are even "Katyusha tours" of the north. But Mr Feldman said the tours accounted for little more than 5% of the war losses. "The economic effects have yet to be felt, and the long-term ramifications are very, very serious," he said. "As British and German companies start planning for 2007, Israel will be omitted from the brochures. So I can't give a figure for loss of income tomorrow." -------- un New UN Chief In Kosovo Expects To Be The Last August 15, 2006 Radio Free Europe http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/8/af23ff92-7a23-433d-a18e-665aa51469ce.html The newly appointed UN administrator of Kosovo today said he expects to be the last UN official to run the Serbian province. Joachim Ruecker pledged to make it his priority to give Kosovo's two million people "a clear perspective." The German diplomat was named to the post by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on August 14. Kosovo has been run by the UN since 1999. -------- us Waiting for Reinforcements The fighting won't end: Gearing up for another wave of homeless vets by Jarrett Murphy August 15th, 2006 Village Voice http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0633,murphy,74181,5.html On the first Tuesday in August, Thomas Mullifield, who fought with the Army in Vietnam from 1964 to 1967 and struggled with alcoholism in the 1990s, was engaged in another battle—against the overheated, leaden air filling the residence that he and 149 other vets call home on Commonwealth Avenue in the Bronx. It was the first day of the big heat wave, and Mullifield, with a donation check freshly deposited, was trying to track down air conditioners for the New Era shelter. He found some at a Home Depot in Mount Vernon. Victory. The rest of the $62,000 (a gift from the New York State Association of Electrical Contractors and IBEW Local 3) was already earmarked for new furniture. But who knows where the cash would come from for a new paint job on the New Era Veterans residence or for the other projects that Mullifield, who works as veterans services director there, wants to tackle at the 13-year-old shelter? "It's unending," he says. So is demand. The waiting list to get into the facility usual holds 30 to 35 names of men and women (there are eight ladies in the residence now) who served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and periods in between. The logjam is a fact of life, Mullifield knows. But what bothers him are the phone calls he's been getting lately—four or five a week—about Iraq or Afghanistan vets who have no place to stay. None live at New Era yet; they have to go through the city shelter system first. But the fact that they are out there, just as he once was, pisses him off. "I can't see a young kid going through what I went through," he says. A fulcrum question this political season is whether to set a firm timetable on when to bring the troops home from Iraq. But one way or another, sooner or later, they will come. According to one estimate there will be a million of them. As in the past, some will be fine when they return to civilian life, and some won't. This summer several area veterans groups are claiming that New York City, for its part, is failing to prepare for the returning warriors—ignoring the lesson lived by thousands of earlier vets who've ended up on the city's streets, in state prisons, or just generally lost. They're upset that the City Council failed to move on a bill drafted by Hiram Monserrate to place Veterans Resource Centers in every borough. They're peeved that Mayor Bloomberg's office of veterans services has a budget of merely $202,000 and a staff of only three. And they're furious that the city is now trying to collect back salary from reservists and guardsmen who stayed on the city payroll when they went overseas years ago. The Bloomberg administration has responded that it offers veterans lots of benefits, like property tax breaks and preference in hiring for jobs. The city also spends millions indirectly on veterans through the departments of Homeless Services and Health and Mental Hygiene; together those agencies are providing more than $2 million to the New Era residence under current contracts. And when the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs said it was considering consolidating VA hospitals in Manhattan and Brooklyn, Bloomberg told a federal panel that they ought to keep them all open. "It goes without saying that these are all top-priority services, and they all must be maintained," he testified last year. (The VA announced last week that it will keep both facilities open.) To local vets groups, the city's efforts don't pass muster. "Supporting the troops is more than a slogan. Supporting the troops is putting words into action," says Joe Bello, a Navy vet from the Gulf War era. A property tax break only helps if you can afford to buy a house, Bello points out. Job preferences only assist those in a position to seek such jobs. And a little outreach to returning veterans now, the critics say, could save this generation of vets from having to use city-funded shelters later. Bello organized an angry rally on the City Hall steps last month featuring a panoply of vets groups: Vietnam Veterans of America, Black Veterans for Social Justice, Incarcerated Veterans Consortium, Veterans for Peace, American Veterans for Equal Rights, and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). There were calls for state as well as city action, especially regarding testing vets for exposure to depleted uranium. And there was an undercurrent of political threat, with references to the 300,000 vets in the city and the power they could wield at the ballot box. Local pols had better listen, Bello warned. "If you do not," he said, "like the Bonus Marchers of the 1930s, we will return." IAVA is already laying the foundation for a political movement with its VoteVets PAC, which funds only candidates who are veterans of the current wars. They're backing candidates in six House races this year, so the value of VoteVets' efforts won't be known until November. At places like New Era, in the Bronx, vets are fighting more private battles. Many struggle with alcoholism, physical problems like amputations stemming from diabetes, or mental woes like post-traumatic stress disorder. Most residents get veterans benefits of about $600 a month, and many work outside the center. All pay 30 percent of their income to live in one of the single rooms at New Era, one of two shelter facilities in the city that cater exclusively to veterans. It's a permanent residence, so while some residents eventually move on, others stay indefinitely. There are movie nights, poetry groups, music sessions, a gym, counseling. Although residents are supposed to take care of themselves, sometimes there's food on hand for guys who can't afford their own, obtained at a local pantry or through Feed the Children or City Harvest. Mostly, there's company. "They find living here comfortable because they're with veterans and they can relate," Mullifield says. And they're candid about how much they blame their time in uniform for what's happened since. Pedro Arteaga, for example, says as he waits for the elevator that his life really turned for the worse after he had knee surgery in 1994, when he started drinking to kill the pain. There might be some connection, though, to his time in the Navy in the '80s when he went on an assignment "where the shit hit the fan," he says. He was 24 and on the backup team for an extraction mission in El Salvador. As his squad moved in, Arteaga was about to say something to his lieutenant when a bullet popped a huge hole in the officer's chest. "I just started shooting anything that moved," Arteaga says. The problem was, the guys he was exchanging fire with were the other U.S. team. "I killed our own guys. I was the only one who survived. All I knew was, they were shooting at me, so I shot at them. That evening I got a bottle of tequila. That killed the pain." He's been at New Era for three years, and is suing for benefits after being turned down for a disability. Keith Jones, who on a recent day was cleaning the floors in the lobby, never saw combat. An antiwar activist when he was drafted, he avoided Vietnam because his typing skills made him a valuable headquarters clerk. When he was discharged he moved around jobs in construction, warehousing, printing, steel mills, and shipbuilding. "Then came on computers and those jobs disappeared. In fact, every job I've had is obsolete," he jokes. When the shipbuilding company went to Maine, Jones went to care for his ailing dad in D.C. Gigs painting houses soon dried up, so he started drinking; he ended up at New Era about six years ago. "Everybody under 60 is still looking for work," Jones says of his fellow tenants. The trick for him is that when he goes to get a job, background checks show a criminal record he swears he doesn't have. Down the hall is a computer room that Aldis Hodges built for the residents. He fixes and sells PCs to raise money for the facility and a little cash for himself, using a skill he picked up during his time in the Marines. Hodges's problems started when that stint ended. "I'm one of the many who was caught up in the first downsizing in the military," he says. "One day I'm in the military, the next day they tell me they don't need me any more. It was a traumatic experience for me. I was never prepared to deal with not being in the military after almost nine years of not having another care in the world." Hodges says the jolt of his discharge killed his marriage (from which he has two children) and left him with no place to go. He entered New Era seven years back. He says he's in no rush to leave. But Dorcedious Davis is. She's trying to move out so she can take in her niece, whose mother, Davis's sister, died a couple years back. Davis was an Army medic in the Gulf War who was injured in a vehicle accident during Desert Storm. The damage derailed her return to civilian life. "I was working for the post office," she says. "The seizures got worse and I couldn't continue to perform my duties." A year later—five years ago—she entered New Era. Since then she's obtained her college degree and built New Era's fairly large library of books and videos. She's lost some memory because of her injuries and has battled depression, but in New Era, "I've found myself," she says, surrounded by books ranging from pulp to fine literature and movies that, yes, include war films. She says she's careful about when to screen those flicks, because there are residents at New Era who have flashbacks. Mullifield himself didn't bottom out until 1999, when he got divorced and ended up homeless. He entered a rehab center for vets and found sobriety, God, and a mission. "I seen what's going on with the vets," says Mullifield, a steady smoker who sports a couple of mean- looking tattoos. "I kind of carried that." He remembers too well what it was like to return from war. "When I came home I was off the hook, a gunslinger," he says. "You couldn't tell me anything." The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans believes one out of every three men who live on the street is a vet. But whether Iraq and Afghanistan vets emerge as a sizable homeless population in New York depends not only on how many troops have trouble, but also how large their woes appear amid wider struggles. A spokesperson for Homeless Services says veterans are only a small part of the population in city facilities, and that Iraq and Afghanistan vets haven't shown up in shelters yet. -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE Rise in police-involved shootings raises concern in Las Vegas Posted 8/15/2006 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-15-vegas-police-shootings_x.htm LAS VEGAS — Police here insist it's not their fault. They say criminals in America's famously anything-goes city are getting more brazen, and officers have had no choice but to shoot 21 people so far this year. Eleven people have died in police confrontations in 2006. By comparison, Las Vegas police were involved in 13 shootings in all of 2005, nine fatal. "Every situation needs to be judged on its own merits," said Clark County Sheriff Bill Young, whose 2,118 officers cover the glittering Las Vegas Strip, vast suburban sprawl and remote desert hamlets in an area the size of Massachusetts. "To say we have a cowboy mentality is just not true," Young said. "No cop goes to work wanting to be involved in one of these." The number of shootings is not a record. Police shot 41 people in 1974, and 28 in 1978. The department had 30 police shootings in 1986, when the region had fewer than 600,000 residents. Today 1.8 million people call the Las Vegas area home. But with shootings on a pace to exceed 33 this year, critics worry about whether younger academy grads are too aggressive. Amid a hiring push aimed at raising the number of officers to 2,300, the average age of rookie officers has dropped from 29 in 2001 to 27 today. They're expected to take command, respond quickly and act appropriately — sometimes forcefully, sometimes gently — in a dizzying array of unpredictable situations in a transient, fast-growing community with a rising crime rate. Gayle Biggham, 42, teaches her 18-year-old son to keep his hands in plain view if he is stopped by officers, and to be respectful. "I tell him, 'No. Don't run, son. They shoot first and ask questions later.'" Young says that's not fair. He defends department training and officer decision-making in almost every case. But he said the rash of shootings is spurring a departmental review. "If we're right, we're right, and I'm going to defend it," he said. "If we're wrong, we're not going to fold our arms and make like there isn't room for improvement." Two cases stand out: the slaying of a handcuffed teen shot in the back while running from homicide detectives in May, and the fatal shooting July 4 of a motorist who police say defied officers' commands to turn down his booming car stereo. "Right now I think the public is uneasy," said Andrea Beckman, executive director of a police Citizen Review Board, which can recommend departmental discipline for officers. Samuel Walker, a police policy consultant, author and criminal justice professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said the sheer number of shootings indicates a problem. "You need to look at incident review, and look for patterns," Walker said. "It's really about policy, training and supervision." On Feb. 1, the law enforcement community was shaken when Sgt. Henry Prendes, 37, a popular 14-year police veteran, died in a hail of assault weapons fire while answering a domestic violence call. Police said he was ambushed. The slaying weighs heavily on a department in which the last on-duty officer death was a training accident in 1988. Las Vegas isn't the only metropolitan area to lose an officer and see a spike in officer-involved shootings this year. In Philadelphia, where an officer was shot and killed dead in May, 16 people have been killed by police — the most in at least 25 years. Las Vegas' livelihood depends on a tourist-friendly image as a fun, safe place for 38.5 million visitors a year — not video clips of police shootouts. Clark County set up a panel last month to review the public hearing process that determines whether police are justified when they kill someone. Community outrage followed an inquest that cleared two detectives in the May 13 slaying of a 17-year-old murder suspect shot twice in the back while running handcuffed from a detective's car where he had been left unattended. The FBI opened an investigation. The local NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union called the finding that the shooting was "justified" proof that the system favors police. "We believe definitely that the system is broken," said W. Dean Ishman, president of the Las Vegas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars America's one-eyed view of war: Stars, stripes, and the Star of David There are two sides to every conflict - unless you rely on the US media for information about the battle in Lebanon. Viewers have been fed a diet of partisan coverage which treats Israel as the good guys and their Hizbollah enemy as the incarnation of evil. Andrew Gumbel reports from Los Angeles 15 August 2006 UK Independent http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1219241.ece If these were normal times, the American view of the conflict in Lebanon might look something like the street scenes that have electrified the suburbs of Detroit for the past four weeks. In Dearborn, home to the Ford Motor Company and also the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, up to 1000 people have turned out day after day to express their outrage at the Israeli military campaign and mourn the loss of civilian life in Lebanon. At one protest in late July, 15,000 people - almost half of the local Arab American population - showed up in a sea of Lebanese flags, along with anti-Israeli and anti-Bush slogans. A few miles to the north, in the heavily Jewish suburb of Southfield, meanwhile, the Congregation Shaarey Zedek synagogue has played host to passionate counter-protests in which the US and Israeli national anthems are played back to back and demonstrators have asserted that it is Israel's survival, not Lebanon's, that is at stake here. Such is the normal exercise of free speech in an open society, one might think. But these are not normal times. The Detroit protests have been tinged with paranoia and justifiable fear on both sides. Several Jewish institutions in the area, including two community centres and several synagogues, have hired private security guards in response to an incident in Seattle at the end of July, in which a mentally unstable 30-year-old Muslim walked into a Jewish Federation building and opened fire, killing one person and injuring five others. On the Arab American side, many have expressed reluctance to stand up and be counted among the protesters for fear of being tinged by association with Hizbollah, which is on the United States' list of terrorist organisations. (As a result, the voices heard during the protests tend to be the more extreme ones.) They don't like to discuss their political views in any public forum, following the revelation a few months ago that the National Security Agency was wiretapping phone calls and e-mail exchanges as part of the Bush administration's war on terror. They are even afraid to donate money to help the civilian victims of the war in Lebanon because of the intense scrutiny Islamic and Arab charities have been subjected to since the 9/11 attacks. The Bush administration has denounced 40 charities worldwide as financiers of terrorism, and arrested and deported dozens of people associated with them. Consequently, while Jewish charities such as the United Jewish Communities are busy raising $300m to help families affected by the Katyusha rockets raining down on northern Israel, donations to the Lebanese victims have come in at no more than a trickle. Outside Detroit and a handful of other cities with sizeable Arab American populations, it is hard to detect that there are two sides to the conflict at all. The Dearborn protests have received almost no attention nationally, and when they have it has usually been to denounce the participants as extremists and apologists for terrorism - either because they have voiced support for Hizbollah or because they have carried banners in which the Star of David at the centre of the Israeli flag has been replaced by a swastika. The media, more generally, has left little doubt in the minds of a majority of American news consumers that the Israelis are the good guys, the aggrieved victims, while Hizbollah is an incarnation of the same evil responsible for bringing down the World Trade Centre, a heartless and faceless organisation whose destruction is so important it can justify all the damage Israel is inflicting on Lebanon and its civilians. The point is not that this viewpoint is necessarily wrong. The point - and this is what distinguishes the US from every other Western country in its attitude to the conflict - is that it is presented as a foregone conclusion. Not only is there next to no debate, but debate itself is considered unnecessary and suspect. The 24-hour cable news stations are the worst offenders. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News has had reporters running around northern Israel chronicling every rocket attack and every Israeli mobilisation, but has shown little or no interest in anything happening on the other side of the border. It is a rarity on any of the cable channels to see any Arab being tapped for expert opinion on the conflict. A startling amount of airtime, meanwhile, is given to the likes of Michael D Evans, an end-of-the-world Biblical "prophet" with no credentials in the complexities of Middle Eastern politics. He has shown up on MSNBC and Fox under the label "Middle East analyst". Fox's default analyst, on this and many other issues, has been the right-wing provocateur and best-selling author Ann Coulter, whose main credential is to have opined, days after 9/11, that what America should do to the Middle East is "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity". Often, the coverage has been hysterical and distasteful. In the days following the Israeli bombing of Qana, several pro-Israeli bloggers started spreading a hoax story that Hizbollah had engineered the event, or stage-managed it by placing dead babies in the rubble for the purpose of misleading reporters. Oliver North, the Reagan-era orchestrator of the Iran-Contra affair who is now a right-wing television and radio host, and Michelle Malkin, a sharp-tongued Bush administration cheerleader who runs her own weblog, appeared on Fox News to give credence to the hoax - before the Israeli army came forward to take responsibility and brought the matter to at least a partial close. As the conflict has gone on, the media interpretation of it has only hardened. Essentially, the line touted by cable news hosts and their correspondents - closely adhering to the line adopted by the Bush administration and its neoconservative supporters - is that Hizbollah is part of a giant anti-Israeli and anti-American terror network that also includes Hamas, al-Qa'ida, the governments of Syria and Iran, and the insurgents in Iraq. Little effort is made to distinguish between these groups, or explain what their goals might be. The conflict is presented as a straight fight between good and evil, in which US interests and Israeli interests intersect almost completely. Anyone who suggests otherwise is likely to be pounced on and ripped to shreds. When John Dingell, a Democratic congressman from Michigan with a large Arab American population in his constituency, gave an interview suggesting it was wrong for the US to take sides instead of pushing for an end to violence, he was quickly - and loudly - accused of being a Hizbollah apologist. Newt Gingrich, the Republican former House speaker, accused him of failing to draw any moral distinction between Hizbollah and Israel. Rush Limbaugh, the popular conservative talk-show host, piled into him, as did the conservative newspaper The Washington Times. The Times was later forced to admit it had quoted Dingell out of context and reprinted his full words, including: " I condemn Hizbollah, as does everyone else, for the violence." The hysteria has extended into the realm of domestic politics, especially since this is a congressional election year. Republican have sought to depict last week's primary defeat of the Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, one of the loudest cheerleaders for the Iraq war, as some sort of wacko extremist anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli stand that risks undermining national security. Vice-President Dick Cheney said Lieberman's defeat would encourage "al-Qa'ida types" to think they can break the will of Americans. The fact that the man who beat Lieberman, Ned Lamont, is an old-fashioned East Coast Wasp who was a registered Republican for much of his life is something Mr Cheney chose to overlook. Part of the Republican strategy this year is to attack any media that either attacks them or has the temerity to report facts that contradict the official party line. Thus, when Reuters was forced to withdraw a photograph of Beirut under bombardment because one of its stringers had doctored the image to increase the black smoke, it was a chance to rip into the news agency over its efforts to be even-handed. In a typical riposte, Michelle Malkin denounced Reuters as "a news service that seems to have made its mark rubber-stamping pro-Hizbollah propaganda". She was not the only one to take that view. Mainstream, even liberal, publications have echoed her line. Tim Rutten, the Los Angeles Times liberal media critic, denounced the "obscenely anti-Israeli tenor of most of the European and world press" in his most recent column. It is not just the US media which tilts in a pro-Israeli direction. Congress, too, is remarkably unified in its support for the Israeli government, and politicians more generally understand that to criticise Israel is to risk jeopardising their future careers. When Antonio Villaraigosa, the up-and-coming Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles, was first invited to comment on the Middle East crisis, he sounded a note so pro-Israeli that he was forced to apologise to local Muslim and Arab community leaders. There is far less public debate of Israeli policy in the US, in fact, than there is in Israel itself. This is less a reflection of American Jewish opinion - which is more diverse than is suggested in the media - than it is a commentary on the power of pro-Israeli lobby groups like Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which bankrolls pro-Israeli congressional candidates. That, in turn, is frustrating to liberal Jews like Michael Lerner, a San Francisco rabbi who heads an anti-war community called Tikkun. Rabbi Lerner has tried to argue for years that it is in Israel's best interests to reach a peaceful settlement, and that demonising Arabs as terrorists is counter-productive and against Judaism. Lerner is probably right to assert that he speaks for a large number of American Jews, only half of whom are affiliated with pro-Israeli lobbying organisations. Certainly, dinner party conversation in heavily Jewish cities like New York suggest misgivings about Israel's strategic aims, even if there is some consensus that Hizbollah cannot be allowed to strike with impunity. Few, if any, of those misgivings have entered the US media. "There is no major figure in American political life who has been willing to raise the issue of the legitimate needs of the Palestinian people, or even talk about them as human beings," Lerner said. "The organised Jewish community has transformed the image of Judaism into a cheering squad for the Israeli government, whatever its policies are. That is just idolatry, and goes against all the warnings in the Bible about giving too much power to the king or the state." -------- ENERGY Eurasec summit to focus on common energy market, customs union 15/ 08/ 200 (RIA Novosti)6 http://en.rian.ru/world/20060815/52638451.html MOSCOW, August 15 - Senior politicians from all over the former Soviet Union will gather on Russia's Black Sea coast Tuesday for a two-day summit of an organization seeking to promote economic and trade ties. The heads of states of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Belarus will arrive in the resort of Sochi to discuss a common energy market and customs union as part of the Eurasian Economic Community. Ukraine's new prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, will attend the summit as part of his first foreign trip in this capacity. "The agenda includes the formation of a customs union within the organization," a Kremlin source said. "Strategy and tactics for the community's progress will be discussed in this context." Eurasec Secretary General Grigory Rapota said the legal base for the customs union would probably be completed this year. "However, this does not mean that the exact date for establishing the union had been set," he said. The Kremlin official said the leaders would discuss formation of the common energy market as part of a Russian initiative to set up international centers offering nuclear fuel services announced by President Vladimir Putin at the Eurasec summit in St. Petersburg in January. "We need to create a prototype of such global infrastructure that would enable all concerned parties to have equal access to nuclear energy. I would like to emphasize that non-proliferation requirements have to be reliably observed in the process," Putin said. The president said the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, should oversee the centers. "A system of IAEA-controlled international centers offering nuclear fuel services, including enrichment, without discrimination, should become a key element of the suggested infrastructure," he said then. The Kremlin source said the leaders would also discuss the preparation of documents establishing the legal basis for Uzbekistan's accession to Eurasec. The five members of Eurasec, set up in 2000, agreed in January to admit Uzbekistan to the organization, which also includes Moldova, Armenia and Ukraine as observers. Cooperation within the Collective Security Treaty Organization - Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan - is also high on the agenda, he said. "One of the best illustrations of cooperation is the attendance Robert Kocharyan, the president of Armenia, which is observer in Eurasec and member of the CSTO," he said. -------- OTHER -------- environment Black Sea Residents Want to Aid Marine Recovery REUTERS NORWAY: August 15, 2006 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/37657/story.htm OSLO - People living around the Black Sea seem willing to pay more to help the sea recover from near-collapse after decades of pollution and overfishing, a UN-sponsored survey showed on Monday. The Black Sea Ecosystem Recovery Project said it would put the findings -- based on 400 interviews with residents around the Black Sea in Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Georgia -- to governments in the region to encourage action. "Almost 80 percent of respondents said they would be ... prepared to pay extra money towards improving the Black Sea environment," it said in a statement. The project was funded by the UN's Global Environment Facility lending group. It also said that almost 40 percent of those questioned reckoned that lack of government action was the main barrier to cleaning up the Black Sea, where 21 of 26 major fish species have been considered commercially extinct since the 1990s. The Black Sea faces threats including pollution from factories, overfishing and coastal development even though it has recovered slightly since a near ecological collapse in the 1990s. Ivan Zavadsky, director of the UN's Danube/Black Sea Programme, said that poor farming practices were the main threat with thousands of tonnes of nitrogen and phosphorous fertilisers running into the sea every year and choking marine life. And he said that the partial environmental recovery in the past decade was largely because the economic downturn after the collapse of the Soviet Union had cut fertiliser use. "Economic collapse and good luck does not provide a good strategy for managing the Black Sea environment," he said in a statement. Steve Menzies of the Black Sea Ecosystem Recovery Project said the small sample of just 400 people meant big margins of error. "Our goal was to get an idea of people's attitudes and to raise awareness of the state of the Black Sea," he said. -------- ACTIVISTS Longtime Activist Dorothy Ray Healey, 91, Dies Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 Headlines Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/15/1326238 And a memorial service is scheduled for this Sunday in Washington DC for Dorothy Ray Healey. The longtime labor organizer, civil rights activist and radio commentator died last week at the age of 91. From the late 1940s through the 1960s she was chairwoman of the Southern California district of the Communist Party USA. She was also a longtime programmer on Pacifica Radio, first at KPFK in Los Angeles and later at WPFW in Washington. In 1951, she and 14 other Californians were indicted and convicted under the Smith Act for conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence. Although she was sentenced to five years in prison, her sentence was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1957. In 1962 Dorothy Healey explained why she became a communist. * Dorothy Healey: I was convinced that it wasn't enough simply to view with horror the exploitation of man by man and the horrors that resulted from that -- the injustice, the bigotry, the intolerance, the insecurity, the unemployment -- that one had to get at the basic cause of why. And I became convinced that the reason was the existence of an economic system that had within it all of these built-in characteristics that provided the horrors of society that I so detested."