NucNews August 18, 2006 -------- NUCLEAR -------- africa Uranium Pebbles May Light the Way By Megan Lindow, Wired News 02:00 AM Nov, 18, 2003 http://wired.com/news/technology/1,61088-0.html CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- South Africa seems an unlikely place for the launch of a global revolution in nuclear energy technology. Africa's only nuclear power plant occupies a desolate stretch of coastline north of Cape Town. Nevertheless, along the southern tip of the continent -- in the shadow of an aging, obsolescing water-cooled reactor -- state-run utility giant Eskom and its international partners want to build the world's first commercial "pebble bed" reactor. To developers, the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor design promises to deliver an "African Renaissance" -- a rebirth of nuclear energy. The PBMR is safer, cleaner, smaller and more affordable than conventional nuclear power plants, says Tom Ferreira, spokesman for the PBMR consortium. In fact, proponents insist that the reactor's design features make it "meltdown-proof" and "walk-away safe." "It is physically impossible for it to suffer the kind of accident at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl," Ferreira says. To skeptics, however, the PBMR project sounds like a reckless return to an energy source that was long ago rejected as too dangerous and costly. Construction of new reactors ground to a halt in the anti-nuclear atmosphere that followed the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. A new reactor hasn't been commissioned in the United States since the 1970s, and many environmentalists would like to keep it that way. Yet as South Africa, the United States and other countries face ever-growing energy demands and mounting concerns over global warming, attitudes toward nuclear power are changing. Finland is building a new reactor, as are Japan and other Asian countries. Anxious to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, the Bush administration also has called for a nuclear energy revival. South Africa's government, meanwhile, is scrambling to provide a domestic supply of affordable energy to millions of citizens long deprived under apartheid. Coal, which currently supplies 90 percent of the country's power, is cheap and plentiful, but also highly polluting. Renewable forms like solar and wind energy have their limits. Hydropower isn't an option, either. For now, at least, that leaves nuclear power. Andrew Kadak, a professor in MIT's nuclear engineering department, says that burgeoning interest in the PBMR, and in next-generation nuclear technology, signifies a worldwide nuclear revival. "What needs to be done now is to build the plant and show people how really good it is," he says. The PBMR's small size and relative simplicity are major advantages, advocates say. A new plant can be constructed in two years, while building a traditional plant requires at least six years. Unlike the typical 1,100-megawatt facility, the PBMR design is adaptable to changing local power needs. Once the core 165-megawatt plant is built, additional power-generating modules can be added to it. Like conventional reactors, the PBMR produces energy by harnessing the heat of a nuclear chain reaction to power an electricity-generating turbine. The main difference between the two systems lies in the storage of the enriched uranium fuel, and in the delivery of heat to the power plant. Instead of traditional fuel rods, the PBMR reactor is packed with tennis ball-size graphite "pebbles," each containing thousands of tiny uranium dioxide particles. The PBMR system relies on superheated helium gas, instead of the usual steam, to drive the turbines. The fuel-storage system makes the PBMR inherently safer, Ferreira says, by preventing the radioactive material from overheating to the point of a meltdown. "With a conventional reactor, you've got to do a whole host of things to prevent the chain reaction from running away," he says. "In a PBMR, you've got to do a whole lot of things to keep the chain reaction going." When the system malfunctions, the reactor simply shuts down, he says. The heat dissipates, and the radioactivity is contained. The PBMR already boasts a successful track record. A 15-megawatt demonstration model was built in Germany during the 1960s, and it ran without a glitch for 21 years. But the government axed the program in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster. In 1993, a German scientist took the moribund project to Eskom, where work slowly began to commercialize the technology. Now, the group hopes that the $1 billion project will establish South Africa as the world's leading supplier of PBMR technology. The PBMR still needs government approval, however, and other potential roadblocks remain. Earthlife Africa, an environmental group, has filed an appeal that could kill the project before it reaches the final approval stages. Environmentalists have been alarmed by, among other things, developers' claims that the plant's built-in safety features remove the need for elaborate emergency backup and containment systems that are required for conventional reactors. This greater simplicity is what, in theory, makes the PBMR less expensive to build than water-cooled reactors. "If one could predict with confidence that severe accidents or sabotage attacks were so unlikely as to be incredible, then protection against them might not be justified," wrote Edwin S. Lyman, scientific director of the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington. "However, in the case of the PBMR, significant uncertainties remain." Nevertheless, if the first PBMR proves successful, the consortium hopes to begin tapping the $100 billion global market for new power stations by 2010. Eventually, the PBMR consortium hopes to offer added perks, such as the capacity to desalinize seawater and generate hydrogen using the heat generated from the nuclear reaction, Ferreira adds. The PBMR consortium intends to seek U.S. funding next year to work on producing hydrogen power. Ferreira acknowledges that South Africa has a limited window of opportunity to realize its nuclear ambitions. While South Africa's program is most advanced, PBMR technology is also being pursued in China and at MIT. Unforeseen glitches and delays could cause this developing nation to miss out on a rare chance to count itself among the world's technological leaders, he says. "Pebble-bed reactors will be built in the world, regardless of whether we do it or not," Ferreira says. "It's got so many things going for it that I can almost not see it not happening." -------- depleted uranium NEW RADIATION SAFETY STANDARDS TO BE INTRODUCED IN ARMENIA ON JULY 1, 2007 YEREVAN, August 18, 2006 /ARKA/ http://www.arka.am/en/archive/n08/n1808/180802.html New radiation safety standards are to be introduced in Armenia on July 1, 2007, Head of the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Inspection Ashot Martirosyan told reporters. He said that at its sitting today the Armenian Government is to approve the new standards. "The period left until July 1, 2007, will be used for necessary preparations," he said. Martirosyan stated that the standards have been elaborated in conformity with the requirements of IAEA and WHO. Stricter radiation safety requirements will be set to nuclear-power facilities and to the population. Specially, the radiation level for employees of enterprises and organizations using sources of nuclear energy has been reduced from 5 Rem to 2 Rem, and for the population from 0.5 Rem to 0.2 Rem. "The document also separates the responsibility and competence of relevant bodies," Martirosyan said. He reported that advanced experience of Russia, the USA and European countries was used in the elaboration of the standards. He pointed out that 2 Rem is not at all a reduction of the radiation level because it is extremely low in Armenia's enterprises and doe not even reach the standards set. P.T. -------- india Diffident Indian PM hailed for speech on nuke deal NEW DELHI (AFP) Aug 18, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/2006/060818083325.s8g6pzpw.html India's sometimes diffident prime minister was hailed Friday by the press and analysts for his passionate defence of a controversial nuclear pact with the United States, but some critics of the deal remained unconvinced. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh tried Thursday to calm fears of India's political and scientific establishments that a historic civilian nuclear deal with the United States would blunt India's nuclear weapons program. Singh, wearing his trademark pale blue turban, spoke for more than an hour, beginning with a surprisingly emotional preface in which he promised to "discharge my duties for the country to the last ounce of my blood". The prime minister took the offensive with quotes from "The Prince," Niccolo Machiavelli's medieval treatise on statecraft, to present himself as a man unafraid to take unpopular political decisions for the good of the nation. "It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things," quoted Singh. He said the deal was crucial to meet the energy needs of power-starved India which is aiming to sustain annual economic growth of eight to 10 percent. The premier's comments came in response to criticism of the deal from eight nuclear scientists, opposition groups as well as Singh's own left-wing legislative allies. On Friday, the Hindu newspaper applauded his performance before parliament, saying it indicated a "transformed" man. "In a way Singh won the day even before he came down to the specifics of the nuclear deal," political editor Harish Khare wrote. Under the pact, India has agreed to open most of its atomic reactors to international inspection but is allowed to keep pre-selected military nuclear facilities out of public scrutiny. In return, India will receive unfettered access to long-denied US nuclear technology to generate power. Washington has been withholding civilian nuclear know-how from India since 1974 when New Delhi conducted its first atomic test. New Delhi conducted more tests in 1998. The deal, passed by the House of Representatives 359-68, now has to be approved by the US Senate. However some US lawmakers are demanding a greater convergence of views between New Delhi and Washington on foreign policy, most notably on Iran. Others have also questioned whether India can be trusted with critical nuclear secrets and have demanded that more stringent safeguards be put in place. Singh assured Indian lawmakers that he would not accept any fettering of India's strategic program or "shifting of goalposts". "We will not accept any conditions that go beyond the July 18 and the March 2 (accords)," Singh said, referring to meetings between him and US President George W. Bush in Washington and in New Delhi during which the deal was negotiated. Strategic analyst C. Raja Mohan called Singh's performance "impressive". "He's gaining in stature and confidence and that's very good news," Raja Mohan told AFP. "He's willing to respond to his political opponents in a political manner, no longer only in a defensive or a technocratic manner." Raja Mohan, who called the technical debate a "pseudo-debate," said Singh addressed the larger question of who should control Indian foreign policy. "The prime minister has finally stood up to defend the constitutional right of his government to conduct foreign policy," Raja Mohan wrote in his column Friday in the Indian Express newspaper. Many of the deal's critics said they were reassured by the speech, but opposition politicians and some strategic experts said they were unconvinced. "The fact that he stood his ground and provided assurances of various kinds was soothing to the ears of many," said Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the independent Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. "(But) if you read his speech very carefully it is short on specifics and long on platitudes." -------- iran Clever moves may become a dangerous game for Iran Foreign Editor's Briefing by Bronwen Maddox August 18, 2006 UK Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-2318005,00.html THE Lebanon crisis has turned up the heat even further in the world’s standoff with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. This week has brought new signs that Tehran won’t back down. But Iran has stirred in, too, some mollifying gestures and clearly hopes to play a clever game, one step back from the brink of outright provocation. The question is whether it might provoke more than it has bargained for, at a point when Washington is inclined to see the Lebanon conflict as a proxy war between Iran and the US. Iran said yesterday that it would launch a series of huge “war games”, or military practice manoeuvres. They were “aimed at introducing Iran’s new defensive doctrine”, said a military spokesman, General Mohammad Reza Ashtiani. For all the liberal use of the word “defensive”, this is hardly a friendly stunt. The war games — dubbed “Blow of Zolfaghar”, in reference to a sword that belonged to Imam Ali, one of the most revered figures of Shia Islam — are designed to show that Tehran is standing up to the superpower. “Our army is ready to defuse all plots against the Islamic Republic of Iran”, Ashtiani added. Iran is all too aware of the US forces on its borders in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Interior Ministry also said this week that Iran would boost patrols on its borders — while adding that this was merely to target drug smugglers. These bristly gestures will only add to regional tension. Iran has denied accusations by the US and Israel that it has funded and armed Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla force. It has helped it only through inspiration, it says. But the US fears that Iran has used Hezbollah to extend its influence throughout a “Shia crescent”. Iran is a largely Shia Muslim country; it is the mentor of the Shia fighters of Hezbollah; while Iraq is now led by its Shia majority. These tensions will come to a head on Tuesday, Iran’s selfimposed deadline for replying to a proposal from the US and European Union, who are trying to persuade it to back down on its nuclear work. They suspect that Iran’s development of civil nuclear power is a cover for military ambitions, something that Iran denies. Under the offer, other countries, including the US, would help Iran to run a civil nuclear programme. They would supply it with fuel for its reactors, so that it had no need to master uranium enrichment, the most controversial work, which would also equip Iran with the skills to make a bomb. This week Iranian officials appeared to offer an olive branch, saying that they were prepared to talk about suspending uranium enrichment. European officials greeted this with exasperation, however, calling it a delaying tactic and saying that suspension of that work was a condition for any talks to begin. In any case, President Ahmedinejad repeated his usual uncompromising stance yesterday. He said: “How can the Iranian nation give up its obvious right to peaceful nuclear technology when America and some other countries test new atomic bombs each year?” The United Nations Security Council has set a deadline of August 30 for Iran to stop enrichment or face sanctions. Yesterday a top US negotiator said that the US intended to move “very quickly in the first part of September” to impose sanctions if Iran had not stopped. The penalties “will be well deserved” said Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State, who has carried out much US diplomacy on the Iranian threat. “It’s not a mystery to the Iranians what is going to happen.” He added that the US’s Arab allies, led by Saudi Arabia, were also concerned about Iran’s ambitions in the region. “There is broadened concern about the policy of a country that flexes its muscles,” he said. “Iran wants to be the dominant country in the region.” -------- korea Bush warns North Korea not to pursue nuclear testing Fri Aug 18, 2006 (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060818/wl_afp/usnkoreapolitics_060818164207 CAMP DAVID, United States - US President George W. Bush warned North Korea against nuclear testing but would not say whether he had information confirming that preparations for such a test were under way. "It's a hypothetical question," Bush told reporters. "And you're asking me to divulge intelligence information I have. I'm not going to do that, as you know." But he added: "If North Korea were to conduct a test, it's just a constant reminder for people in the neighborhood, in particular, that North Korea poses a threat." The US television network ABC reported on Thursday that North Korea may be preparing to conduct an underground test of a nuclear bomb. "It is the view of the intelligence community that a test is real possibility," the network quoted a senior US State Department official as saying. A senior military official told ABC that an unidentified US intelligence agency had recently observed "suspicious vehicle movement" at a suspected North Korean test site. The activity included the unloading of large reels of cable outside an underground facility called Pungyee-yok in northeast North Korea, it said. ABC said cables can be used in nuclear testing to connect an underground test site to observation equipment. It said the intelligence had been brought to the attention of the White House last week but cautioned that it was "not conclusive." An imminent nuclear test was predicted in North Korea last year but no test occurred. ABC said underground nuclear tests are "notoriously difficult" to detect ahead of time and noted that the United States had failed to predict nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998. North Korea claims to have built nuclear weapons and sparked international alarm last month by test-firing seven ballistic missiles. In Huntsville, Alabama on Tuesday the head of the US missile defense agency said 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 in Huntsville. "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. ---- S. Korea: No evidence of North nuke test Posted 8/18/2006 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-08-18-north-nukes_x.htm SEOUL — South Korea said Friday it has no clear evidence that communist North Korea is preparing for a nuclear test, responding to a news report citing a U.S. official saying intelligence showed possible signs of an upcoming test. "I haven't heard that we have confirmed clear evidence that North Korea is pursuing a nuclear test," Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok told lawmakers at a committee hearing. Lee said there is frequent speculation about the North's nuclear program, but that not all of it turns out to be true. "We are closely monitoring North Korea's activities related to the nuclear program and missiles," he said. Lee Yong-joon, head of the South Korean Foreign Ministry's task force on the North Korea nuclear issue, said South Korea was monitoring movements in North Korea in close cooperation with the United States. He declined to comment directly on the report about a possible test, citing protocol. The United States and South Korea "share all intelligence and evaluations" related to North Korean movements, Lee told The Associated Press. South Korea's spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, also declined to comment directly on the report. "We cannot specifically confirm the report as it is an intelligence matter," a spokesman said on condition of anonymity, citing policy. The comments came after ABC News quoted an unidentified State Department official as saying a North Korean nuclear test was "a real possibility." The report also cited an unidentified senior U.S. military official as saying that a U.S. intelligence agency recently had seen "suspicious vehicle movement" at a suspected test site, including the unloading of reels of cable outside an underground facility in northeast North Korea. Such cables are connected to outside monitoring equipment and could be a possible sign of an upcoming test. The report said the White House was told about the intelligence last week. The White House declined to confirm the report, but an official there who refused to be identified said Washington's position was that a "North Korean nuclear test would be an extremely provocative action that would draw universal condemnation from the international community." North Korea claims to have nuclear weapons but has not conducted any known test that would confirm that assertion. A June report from the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said the North had enough radioactive material to build between four and 13 bombs. U.S. officials said in May 2005 that they detected possible signs of a nuclear test, citing construction of a tunnel and a reviewing stand, but nothing more happened at that time. The North test-fired seven missiles last month over international objections, drawing U.N. Security Council sanctions. No progress has been made since then on the impasse, and the North has refused to return to international talks on its nuclear programs that have been stalled since November. A researcher with links to the South Korean intelligence community said Friday that "caution is needed" when dealing with observations of activity inside North Korea because their intentions are often unclear, declining to comment directly on the latest report. He said it was too early to say whether a test was imminent from a single piece of information, noting that equipment to measure radioactivity and seismic activity, as well as excavators, would have to be in place for a nuclear test. Also, people would have to be evacuated from near the possible test site, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his position. ---- No Indication Of North Korea Nuclear Plan Says Russia by Staff Writers Moscow (AFP) Aug 18, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/reports/No_Indication_Of_North_Korea_Nuclear_Plan_Russia_999.html Russia has no information that would confirm a US news report that North Korea might be preparing an underground nuclear bomb test, the foreign ministry said Friday, criticising what it called attempts to "inflame" the situation. "At the moment we have no information that would confirm such reports," a spokesman at Russia's foreign ministry said. "Such information appears regularly in the foreign media but so far no reports of this kind have been confirmed," the spokesman told AFP. "We believe that given the need to resolve the situation on the Korean peninsula, inflaming things is counterproductive," he said. ABC television network said Thursday that the communist state may be preparing an underground nuclear test, quoting US officials. A senior military official told ABC that an unidentified US intelligence agency had recently observed "suspicious vehicle movement" at a suspected North Korean test site. The activity included the unloading of large reels of cable outside an underground facility called Pungyee-yok in northeast North Korea, it said. ABC said cables can be used in nuclear testing to connect an underground test site to observation equipment. An imminent nuclear test was predicted in North Korea last year but no test occurred. ABC said underground nuclear tests are "notoriously difficult" to detect ahead of time and noted that the United States had failed to predict nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998. North Korea claims to have built nuclear weapons and sparked international alarm last month by test-firing seven ballistic missiles. ---- Libya's Kadhafi to press NKorea on weapons: Japan TOKYO (AFP) Aug 18, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/2006/060818041210.6kwl80xy.html Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi has promised he will press North Korea to give up weapons of mass destruction, following the example of his own country, Japan has said. Kadhafi met earlier this week for two hours with Iwao Matsuda, Japan's minister of state for science and technology policy, who praised Libya's 2003 decision to abandon its weapons of mass destruction program. "In response, leader Kadhafi said ... he has been calling on North Korea and other nations of concern to follow Libya's example," a Japanese foreign ministry statement said late Thursday. "He said further cooperation from industrialized nations is necessary for such efforts to be effective," it said. Japan and the United States have led a drive to punish Pyongyang after it test-fired seven missiles on July 5. North Korea, which US President George W. Bush branded in 2002 as part of an "axis of evil," says it has nuclear weapons and has boycotted disarmament talks since November last year to protest US financial sanctions. Libya, which has accepted responsibility for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, has seen its pariah status disappear after Kadhafi's 2003 announcement that he was renouncing his weapons programs. This week, Tripoli announced a new round of bidding for rights to hunt for oil as the world's energy giants flock back to the North African country. Matsuda, the most senior Japanese official to visit Libya, said at Wednesday's meeting that Japan hoped to receive the country's oil. Kadhafi responded that "Libya is a stable supplier of oil among oil-producing countries and expressed his hopes to receive Japan's help for peaceful nuclear purposes and utilization of solar energy," the statement said. -------- russia Russian tycoon buys historic K-19 nuclear submarine Friday August 18, 2006 INDEPENDENT By Andrew Osborn http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10396866 MOSCOW - No self-respecting Russian oligarch is without a super yacht but Vladimir Romanov, owner of Hearts Football Club in Scotland, has gone one better and bought his very own Soviet nuclear submarine. Nor has the 59-year old Russian-born tycoon bought just any old submarine; he has purchased the legendary K-19 ballistic missile boat, the star feature of a Hollywood film called 'K-19: The Widow Maker' featuring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson. In saving the vessel from the scrap yard, Mr Romanov, who is estimated to be worth £1 billion (NZ$3bn), has bought himself a piece of history that was at the centre of one of the most chilling nuclear accidents of the Cold War. On July 4 1961 large amounts of coolant leaked from the K-19's nuclear reactor after it overheated during a training exercise in the Atlantic Ocean. What has been described as a 'Chernobyl-style' nuclear explosion was only averted after crewmembers repaired the reactor knowing that in doing so they would receive fatal doses of radiation. Eight of the 139-strong crew died within a week, fourteen died within two years, twenty others suffered long term illnesses and cancers, and only 48 of the original crew are still alive. The accident was hushed up for 30 years and only made public in 1990 under Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost or openness. Earlier this year Mr Gorbachev proposed that the K-19's surviving crew members be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize arguing that an explosion could have sparked a third world war and been seen as 'a Soviet provocation' by the United States. Mr Romanov, who is famous in Scotland for his ownership of Edinburgh-based Hearts Football Club, plans to have the submarine lovingly restored and turned into a museum, possibly on the Moscow River. Famously secretive, he has not disclosed how much he paid for the vessel. The purchase was not an impulse one; Mr Romanov did his own military service on the K-19 from 1966-69 and has described the period as character building. Every six months he and his fellow sailors were apparently locked into the torpedo tubes that were then flooded with water "to toughen them up." His spokesman Charlie Mann said that the purchase was "a matter of emotion." "He has always felt very close to the vessel. When he heard that it had fallen into disrepair he felt it was important to put back into the water. "This is not about money. It was a hugely significant part of his life," he said. Mr Romanov concluded complex negotiations with the Russian Navy to buy the K-19 during a trip to an Arctic naval base last month. In turning the vessel into a museum he is fulfilling the wishes of the K-19's late captain Nikolai Zateev on whose watch the nuclear accident occurred. Because of his football connections and his fabulous wealth, Mr Romanov is often called Scotland's answer to Roman Abramovich. Though born in Russia, he is a citizen of Lithuania from where he controls a vast business empire. -------- security Government, Pentagon seal once-public Cold War nuke data 08/18/2006 @ 8:53 am Filed by RAW STORY http://www.rawstory.com/printstory.php?story=2943 The U.S. military and government have sealed access to previously available data from the Cold War era, RAW STORY has learned: How Many and Where Were the Nukes? What the U.S. Government No Longer Wants You to Know about Nuclear Weapons During the Cold War National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 197 Edited by William Burr Posted - August 18, 2006 For more information: Dr. William Burr, Thomas Blanton, 202/994-7000 http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB197/index.htm Washington, D.C., August 18, 2006 - The Pentagon and the Energy Department have now stamped as national security secrets the long-public numbers of U.S. nuclear missiles during the Cold War, including data from the public reports of the Secretaries of Defense in 1967 and 1971, according to government documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive. Pentagon and Energy officials have now blacked out from previously public charts the numbers of Minuteman missiles (1,000), Titan II missiles (54), and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (656) in the historic U.S. Cold War arsenal, even though four Secretaries of Defense (McNamara, Laird, Richardson, Schlesinger) reported strategic force levels publicly in the 1960s and 1970s. Documents posted today by the National Security Archive include: * Recently released Defense Department, NSC, and State Department reports with excisions of numbers of nuclear missiles and bombers in the U.S. arsenals during the 1960s and70s. * Unclassified tables published in a report to Congress by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird as excised by Pentagon reviewers. * A "Compendium of Nuclear Weapons Arrangements" between the United States and foreign governments that was prepared in 1968 and recently released in a massively excised version under Defense Department and DOE guidelines. * Canadian and U.S. government documents illustrating the public record nature of some information withheld from the 1968 "Compendium." "It would be difficult to find better candidates for unjustifiable secrecy than decisions to classify the numbers of U.S. strategic weapons," remarked Archive senior analyst Dr. William Burr, who compiled today's posting. "This problem, as well as the excessive secrecy for historical nuclear deployments, is unlikely to go away as long as security reviewers follow unrealistic guidelines." Government officials have legally classified once-public information since the passage of the 1998 Kyl-Lott amendments, which authorized reclassification of sensitive archival documents. "The government is reclassifying public data at the same time that government prosecutors are claiming the power to go after anybody who has 'unauthorized possession" of classified information," said Archive director Thomas Blanton. "What's really at risk is accountability in government." Nixon Strategy chart: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB197/nixon_strategy.pdf ---- Port Newark to Serve As Testing Ground for Future Port Security Measures (AP) Friday, 18 August http://www.wcbs880.com/pages/70896.php?contentType=4&contentId=190638 NEWARK, NJ -- The call was as chilling as it was precise -- U.S. intelligence sources had gotten information that a container cargo from the Middle East bound for Port Newark might contain a radiological dirty bomb, or even a nuclear weapon. This was not long after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, and thin trails of smoke from what had once been the World Trade Center still curled into the sky from time to time about 10 miles away in the background. Authorities found that the container had already been hitched to a truck, and it was being driven out of the seaport. They spotted the truck, blocked it off, and a quick scan of the container revealed some ominous readings: Whatever was inside was indeed radioactive. The terrifying specter of that day gives some insight into why the U.S. government is trying to upgrade its nuclear detection capabilities at the nation's key shipping points. A vast array of new technology is being used at or planned for Port Newark to help screen for dirty bombs or terrorist weapons, making it the testing laboratory for new safety measures that could one day be protecting the entire nation's ports. Five years ago, as he stood next to the trailer that was hauled from Port Newark, the cell phone of Kevin McCabe, the seaport's chief inspector for what would later become the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, bleated urgent rings from high-level state and federal officials demanding to know what was inside the container. ``I told them, `We don't know yet, but I'm standing about three feet away from it, so if anything happens, I'll be the first to know,''' McCabe recalled. Sweat poured and pulses raced as authorities pondered what their next move should be. They were minutes away from a decision to shut down the seaport, Newark International Airport, and part of the New Jersey Turnpike. Just in time, more sophisticated radiation detection equipment arrived from New York City in an unheard-of 22 minutes, and was able to determine that the cargo inside was harmless, and that the readings were generated by bolts of Egyptian carpet, a source of naturally occurring radiation. ``The economic consequences of shutting those things down would have been immense, but we were afraid we could have had a real potential catastrophe on our hands,'' McCabe said. Today, four major security initiatives or upgrades are either under way or planned at Port Newark within the next few months, all aimed at finding better ways to screen cargo containers for nuclear material. ``New Jersey-New York is a target, and we're going to be the most likely first choice to get these things,'' McCabe said. With 5,000 to 6,000 containers arriving each day, Port Newark trails only the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in terms of volume. One of the most innovative security initiatives is a plan, still in its infancy, to convert some of the huge yellow ``straddle carriers'' that lift and carry cargo containers into mobile radiation detection devices. The 40-foot-tall vehicles, which resemble huge metallic giraffes, would have the lift and grappling mechanism taken out and replaced by radiation scanners. The vehicle could then pass over rows of stacked cargo carriers and check them for radiation much more quickly than existing methods, which look at one box at a time. A prototype is quietly being tested in the Bahamas, and studied to see how well it could be adapted to the bustling Port Newark docks. Port Newark also recently got four new portable radiation detection trucks that can slowly scan cargo containers and create an image of what's inside, and is getting two of the newest high-tech imaging portals that exist. One is arriving in September and a second in January. The port is also likely to get a new generation of stationary radiation detectors called Advanced Spectroscopic Portals next year, through which trucks pulling cargo containers must pass before leaving the seaport. They will eventually replace the existing radiation detectors. ``The ASP program provides significant improvement in the detection of special nuclear materials such as highly enriched uranium and weapons grade plutonium,'' said Val S. Oxford, director of the homeland security department's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office. Authorities say the $1.1 billion program should drastically cut down on false alarms by more accurately distinguishing between truly dangerous sources of radiation and naturally occurring ones, such as ceramic tile, kitty litter or textiles. About 7 percent of the containers that come into Port Newark _ 350 to 400 as day _ are considered to be high-risk, singled out for extra inspections, either because of where it comes from, what is listed in its contents, or officials' unfamiliarity with the shipper. Of those, 25 to 30 are completely emptied and checked by hand. Others are scanned for radiation using hand-held or truck-mounted detectors. All cargo is screened using a computer system that remains the backbone of the government's port security efforts. It incorporates a database going back 25 years listing virtually everything that has come into or gone out of the port, and who shipped it. The database provides a useful source of knowledge of past patterns, and helps authorities spot anomalies, such as a particular shipper who has never sent one type of material from a certain spot and suddenly starts doing so, McCabe said. Information on all cargo bound for the U.S. has to be entered into the system 24 hours before being loaded on board ships in foreign ports. ``If we see something unusual, we're on top of it,'' he said. ---- Lapse Allows Guns into Tennessee Nuke Plant by Ben Lando and Donna Borak Friday, August 18, 2006 by United Press International http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0818-08.htm Poor safeguards at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Sequoyah Nuclear Plant allowed M-4 assault rifles to enter the facility unchecked and be improperly stored in a secure zone, United Press International has learned. The Sequoyah Nuclear Plant, located 18-miles north of Chattanooga, produces 26 percent of Tennessee's electricity and accounts for 65 percent of the state's total nuclear generation. Officials acknowledged the security lapse at the facility, saying personnel "inadvertently" transported the factory-sealed shipment of weapons to an incorrect warehouse. "They delivered the right cargo to the right people; it was inadvertently taken to the wrong warehouse," TVA spokesman John Moulton told UPI in a telephone interview Wednesday. Moulton said TVA was expecting the shipment of weapons without any ammunition for use by the private security personnel contracted by Pinkerton Government Services, Inc. The weapons were, however, inadvertently transported to the wrong warehouse, rather than the armory section of the nuclear facility. According to the Washington-based Project on Government Oversight, an independent government watchdog, the cargo contained 30 M-4 assault rifles. TVA declined to comment on the weapons details citing security reasons. A Pinkerton security employee with first-hand knowledge of the incident told UPI on condition of anonymity Wednesday that the brown cardboard box of weapons had been mislabeled and slipped past numerous checkpoints at the nuclear site. Personnel at Pinkerton were strongly discouraged to speak to the media, the employee said. "It should only take one, no less than two checkpoints to identify it (the box of weapons)," the employee said. "(There were) four chances for those weapons to be discovered on that day and they weren't." Numerous calls to Pinkerton and its parent company, Securitas Security Services USA, Inc., and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security were unreturned. There has been varying accounts of when the incident happened. TVA says the unchecked shipment arrived in late June, while POGO says it arrived last week. The employee says the shipment arrived on a Saturday in late July. The employee said little has been done at the facility despite repeated warnings of potential vulnerabilities made to Pinkerton, TVA and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Complaints of possible threats to security, the employee said, were "scoffed at." "I told them that this very thing could happen," the employee said. "I'm not the only one who has been singing this song. "TVA and Pinkerton royally screwed up." Moulton, of the TVA, said Pinkerton was not involved in the incident. Both Pinkerton and TVA have a hand in security operations at the nuclear site. The security company is responsible for inspecting shipments to the plant and TVA regulates security operations at the site. Although security personnel mishandled the cargo after delivery, Moulton said that at no time were the weapons outside of TVA control. It took 24 hours before TVA personnel discovered the weapons, which were all accounted for. Under TVA regulations, staff receiving shipments of weapons is required to notify nuclear security. But in this case, nuclear security was made aware of the package only after personnel discovered the misplaced cargo the next morning, Moulton said. The facility is now undergoing a review of security procedures to determine if changes need to be made to the delivery system. "We self-identified this matter for further evaluation to determine whether there are changes that need to be made in the receiving process," Moulton said. "We are evaluating that now." The Pinkerton security employee said that before the incident, policy did not require security officials to inspect all packages with factory seals. Inspections were left to the discretion of security officials, the employee said. Since the security lapse, however, the inspection policy at TVA has been revamped to include more mandatory searches on items delivered to the site, the official said. But, the employee said, even with the upgraded security policy on cargos, exceptions of some cargo inspections still pose a risk. Moulton said the NRC was reviewing the matter. The NRC declined comment. "Unfortunately, we don't comment on security at nuclear power plants because we don't want to release any information that might aid an adversary," Ken Clark, a spokesman for the NRC in Atlanta, told UPI in a telephone interview Wednesday. Clark said any security concerns at the nuclear site had been addressed and there was "no imminent danger to the plant or public safety." Additional calls to the NRC to confirm its involvement in the review of the incident at Sequoyah Nuclear Plant were not returned. This incident highlights the vulnerabilities of the nation's nuclear power plants, said Peter Stockton, a spokesman for POGO. "There are really terrible procedures allowing this to happen," he said in a telephone interview Wednesday. Stockton said if disgruntled insiders knew about this vulnerability and were able to bring weapons and explosives into the nuclear facility, there may be irreparable damage. "We're talking a whole lot worse than Three Mile Island," he said. "If an insider knows where the target sets are, in other words, the way to damage the reactor or to blow a hole in the spent fuel pool, it would be a hell of lot worse than anything we've ever seen in this country before." -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- new mexico Hobbs nuclear plant challenged in court By Associated Press August 18, 2006 http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/nw_state/article/0,2564,ALBQ_19863_4926731,00.html WASHINGTON - Two nuclear watchdog groups want a court to throw out a federal government license for a uranium enrichment plant near Hobbs. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June granted the license allowing Louisiana Energy Services to build and operate the National Enrichment Facility. It would enrich uranium for use in commercial power plants, and would be the first major commercial nuclear facility to be licensed in 30 years. The company plans to start work later this month. Public Citizen and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service challenged the decision in papers filed this week with the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. They argue that the company hasn't shown a plausible strategy to dispose of depleted uranium waste. They also fear high costs could force the company to abandon the project and its radioactive waste. Michele Boyd, a spokeswoman for Public Citizen, said NRC made numerous mistakes in approving the project. Marshall Cohen, vice president for communications and government relations for LES, said the project was carefully vetted by the government. "Their action and filing will not stop the project," he said. There is no place in the United States to dispose of waste from such a plant. -------- us nuc waste Researcher urges nuclear waste options August 18, 2006 PhysOrg http://www.physorg.com/news75126877.html The Bush administration is eagerly pushing nuclear power as a way to help solve the U.S. energy crisis. But in its new plan for nuclear waste management, the administration is taking the wrong approach, says an MIT professor who studies the nuclear energy industry. "My hope is that over time, the administration will rethink its priorities in this area," says Richard Lester, professor of nuclear engineering and director of the Industrial Performance Center. In a recent article published in Issues in Science and Technology, Lester argued that the Bush administration's plan, known as GNEP (Global Nuclear Energy Partnership), is not the best way to encourage further development of nuclear energy. GNEP, which President Bush announced earlier this year, is meant to stimulate the nuclear industry by coming up with better ways to manage spent nuclear fuel. The plan focuses on reprocessing spent fuel, but Lester believes the administration should focus on finding regional storage facilities for the nuclear waste. Right now, uncertainty over how to deal with spent fuel, which remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, is one of the major obstacles to the construction of new plants. Thousands of spent fuel rods are now stored in secure pools or concrete casks located near nuclear plants, which is not considered a long-term solution. The administration has been pushing a plan to move all of the nation's spent fuel to a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, but that facility is not scheduled to open until at least 2017. Many years and billions of dollars have gone into planning for the repository there, over the protests of Nevada residents, and success is still not assured. If the project fails, an alternative will be needed. And even if it succeeds, spent fuel will remain at nuclear power plants for decades before it can be removed. Several nuclear energy companies have sued the federal government for failing to fulfill its contractual obligation to remove spent nuclear fuel from their plants. That failure does not bode well for construction of new plants, Lester said. "If electric power companies can't believe the government is going to fulfill its obligations, it's going to be a real deterrent for them to go ahead with new power plants," he said. In the meantime, the Bush plan calls for developing new technology to reprocess spent fuel to recover usable plutonium and uranium and eliminate other long-lived radioactive elements known as actinides. But according to Lester, the government's efforts would be better focused on other solutions, such as establishing a small number of regional facilities, where nuclear plants could send their spent fuel to be stored safely for several decades. GNEP does not address the utilities' spent fuel storage problem. Instead, it "is being sold as a technical fix for three other problems," Lester said, but "each of these problems is either not as serious as the administration suggests or could be solved in a different way that is less costly and less risky." Those perceived problems are lack of space at Yucca Mountain; the long life of radioactive material; and a potential shortage of uranium. Yucca Mountain, a ridgeline geological formation about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has already been tunneled in preparation for waste storage. When Congress approved the Yucca Mountain site, it put a 70,000-metric-ton limit on the amount of waste that could be stored there, but there is room for much more if Congress wants to raise the limit, Lester said. Any effort to remove the long-lived radioactivity from the waste would require construction of reprocessing plants, special "burner" reactors and other nuclear facilities, which would be costly and difficult to site. And even if these plants were successfully built, it would be nearly impossible to eliminate all of the long-lived radioisotopes in the waste, Lester says. "When you really look at the technical feasibility of reducing the toxic lifetime of waste, it has less potential than the administration is claiming, and the costs and shorter-term risks of doing it are significant," he said. Moreover, according to Lester, there are other, less costly ways to reduce the long-term risks of nuclear waste disposal that the administration has ignored. Supporters of GNEP also say that reprocessing spent fuel could be necessary in the future if uranium becomes scarce, but according to the 2003 MIT report, "The Future of Nuclear Power," there is enough uranium to last for several decades, even if many new nuclear plants are built. Lester said he is not opposed to research on new fuel cycle technologies, but he argues that reprocessing will not be needed for several decades, if then, and that to spend billions of dollars over the next few years on demonstrating reprocessing and related technologies, as the administration is proposing, would not be a wise use of resources. -------- MILITARY -------- arms Officials: U.S. blocked missiles to Hezbollah Posted 8/18/2006 By John Diamond, USA TODAY http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-08-17-iran-missiles_x.htm WASHINGTON — The United States blocked an Iranian cargo plane's flight to Syria last month after intelligence analysts concluded it was carrying sophisticated missiles and launchers to resupply Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, two U.S. intelligence officials say. Eight days after Hezbollah's war with Israel began, U.S. diplomats persuaded Turkey and Iraq to deny the plane permission to cross their territory to Damascus, a transfer point for arms to Hezbollah, the officials said. The episode was detailed by one U.S. intelligence official who saw a report on the incident. It was confirmed by a U.S. official from a second intelligence agency and by a diplomat with a foreign government. They did not want their names used because they were not authorized to discuss the incident. HOW MISSILES WERE DETECTED: The science of 'crate-ology' Their account illustrates the quiet support the United States gave Israel during the 34-day war, even enlisting help from Muslim nations where acting on Israel's behalf is politically anathema. Israel and President Bush have accused the Shiite-dominated government of Iran, Hezbollah's primary supplier, of shipping the Shiite militia increasingly sophisticated weapons by way of Syria. ON DEADLINE: Your reaction The Iraq and Turkish governments would not discuss the incident. Iran's United Nations mission denied trying to send Hezbollah weapons. The intelligence officials did not provide reports, satellite photos or other evidence to corroborate the sequence of events. Their account could not be independently verified. The officials described this timeline: •July 15: Three days after the war began, a source tipped off U.S. intelligence about an imminent shipment of missiles from Iran to Hezbollah. •July 19: A spy satellite photographed Iranian crews loading three missile launchers and eight crates, each normally used to carry a Chinese-designed C-802 Noor missile, aboard a transport plane at Mehrabad air base near Tehran. Israel says Hezbollah fired a C-802, a precision-guided anti-ship cruise missile, at an Israeli warship off Lebanon's coast on July 14. •July 20: The Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane left for Damascus, but Iraqi air-traffic controllers denied it permission to enter Iraq's airspace. The Iranian flight crew then requested permission to fly over Turkey. Turkish controllers granted permission — but only if the plane would land for an inspection. The plane returned to Tehran, where the military cargo was unloaded. •July 22: The plane flew humanitarian aid to Damascus after stopping for inspection in Turkey. Though the missiles were not visible in the satellite photos, the launchers and specialized crates with distinctive shapes allowed U.S. analysts to identify the missile type, the intelligence officials said. Asked about the account during an interview Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "We work on these kinds of things all the time." But she added, "I can't comment on specific cases." -------- mideast War inflicted $3.6 billion damage on Lebanon Fri Aug 18, 2006 (Reuters) By Lin Noueihed http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-08-18T142310Z_01_L18829610_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-1 BEIRUT - A month of Israeli bombardment has inflicted a "disastrous" $3.6 billion worth of physical damage on Lebanon from which it could take years to recover, the country's reconstruction chief said on Friday. Al-Fadl Shalaq, head of the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR), compared the devastation from the 34-day war between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas to the damage from the 1975-1990 civil war that tore the country apart. "I have witnessed all the wars in Lebanon but I have never seen a war this fierce and I do not see a response to clearing the rubble of war to match it," he told Reuters in an interview. "When they say 900,000 people are displaced, that is a quarter of the population. What country can bear having a quarter of its population displaced? Imagine if a quarter of France's 60 million population, or 15 million, were displaced." More than 100 bridges were destroyed or damaged by Israeli air strikes along with roads, factories, ports, airports, the telecoms network, schools, hospitals, petrol stations and military installations. Entire villages in the south of Lebanon, which saw the worst of the fighting, were reduced to rubble. A CDR report estimated that $3.6 billion worth of damages were inflicted on Lebanon by the war that killed at least 1,181 people in Lebanon and 157 in Israel. The estimate covers the cost of physical damage alone, but economists say Lebanon's economy could shrink by 2-3 percent this year, down from a forecast of some 6-7 percent GDP growth. That implies about $2 billion in lost growth this year though the effects could last longer as factories that have been bombed and businesses that have closed down will not reopen. HIGH INTENSITY WAR "For a country like Lebanon to sustain such large losses in such a short time means the intensity of the fire, destruction, ruin and fighting was high," Shalaq said. "The result is that you can compare these losses with the losses Lebanon sustained over 17 years except this time we witnessed it in one month." Shalaq said 30,000 homes had been hit, a quarter of them in the crowded southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hizbollah stronghold that was battered by Israeli air strikes. He said that if rebuilding began immediately, it would take at least a year to repair the infrastructure and three years to replace or repair damaged buildings. But bickering among fractious politicians is already slowing things down, he added. "The divisions in the country are delaying the start of a serious reconstruction effort led by the government. What I was fearing is now beginning to happen. I had feared that the Lebanese would return to bickering among themselves," he said. In Israel, where some 300,000 people fled their homes because of Hizbollah's rocket attacks, the Bank of Israel has put economic damage in lost tourism and industrial activity at $1.5 billion, 1 percent of forecast GDP. It took years and billions of dollars for Lebanon to recover from the 1975-1990 civil war, and now the country must start the process again. "Sometimes I feel tired and exhausted," Shalaq said. "Our ambitions and hopes of Arab unity and a free Palestine have not been realized but one continues to work. One has no choice but to work." ---- Israeli offensive destroyed up to 30,000 homes: Finnish minister August 18, 2006 Pakistan News International http://www.thenews.com.pk/update_detail.asp?id=8122 HELSINKI: Between 15,000 and 30,000 homes were destroyed during Israel's month-long offensive in Lebanon, the aid minister of Finland, which holds the current EU presidency, said Friday. "The numbers on how many houses or house units were destroyed are very rough estimates. Numbers we heard are something between 15,000 and 30,000 house units," Paula Lehtomaeki said following a four-day visit to Lebanon accompanied by the EU's commissioner for development and humanitarian aid Louis Michel. "That makes at least 100,000 people without a home and decent shelter. Winter is not so far away, we only have a couple of months to provide the basic shelter for these people," she told a news conference. Aid is urgently needed, she said. "The ceasefire that began on Monday morning, hours before we arrived in Beirut, has improved the possibility to meet the humanitarian needs, and it has improved the possibilities to have humanitarian access to victimes in need. "But it has also changed the internal situation in Lebanon in the way that people who had escaped from their home areas because of the bombings in the beginning of the conflict started immediately on Monday to return back to their homes, and this movement has been much broader and much faster than anybody could have expected." A ceasefire took effect in Lebanon on Monday, following a UN resolution, which paves the way for the deployment of the international peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon. ---- Fears over cluster bomb clean-up The unexploded bomblets are the size of a drinks can Friday, 18 August 2006 (BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5263616.stm Clearing unexploded Israeli cluster bombs from southern Lebanon could take 12 months, the head of the UN weapons clearance team there has told the BBC. Chris Clark, head of the UN Mine Action Service in southern Lebanon, said 22 people have been injured, but none killed, while handling live munitions. "Bomblets" have been already been found at 30 locations, but Mr Clark said he expected a final total of over 100. Israel says all munitions it uses in conflict comply with international law. But the New York-based group Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of acting outside the rules of war by firing cluster bombs into civilian areas. Critics of cluster bombs say the relatively high numbers of unexploded bomblets can kill and maim long after conflict has ended. All Israeli cluster bombs found in southern Lebanon were contained in artillery shells, the UN said, and were not dropped from planes overhead. Lengthy task Speaking to the BBC from Tyre, southern Lebanon, Mr Clark said UN mine clearance teams had inspected just 40% of sites known to have been hit by Israeli munitions during the recent conflict with Hezbollah. "The picture is still emerging at the moment, but there is a general spread of these munitions throughout southern Lebanon," Mr Clark said. The Mine Action Service had a presence in southern Lebanon long before this year's fighting, clearing mines and unexploded ordnance from previous conflicts. But Mr Clark said the aftermath of the recent fighting had to take precedence over the search for mines laid during Israel's 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon. "Now there is a whole new problem here. In terms of the new problem I would like to think that we could get it under control in six months and complete clearance in 12 months." Legality questioned Thousands of Lebanese have been returning to their homes to inspect damage caused by Israeli air strikes and clashes on the ground between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters. Mine clearing teams in the area, as well as Human Rights Watch, have warned of the dangers of casualties as people clear rubble from homes and roads. Mr Clark hopes further casualties can be minimised by telling people to stay away from the bomblets, which resemble the bulky batteries often used in torches. The director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, has warned that cluster bombs with high failure rates "effectively become anti-personnel landmines", and that their use in civilian areas breaks a legal ban on indiscriminate attacks. In response, the Israeli military told the BBC: "All the weapons and munitions used by the Israel Defence Forces are legal under international law and their use conforms to international standards." -------- philippines Philippine soldiers may be involved in killings 8/18/2006 REUTERS http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Philippines+%26+South+Asia&month=August2006&file=World_News2006081832440.xml LUPAO, Philippines • Individual Philippine soldiers may be involved in the murders of some left-wing activists but the military does not sanction the killings, one of the country’s top generals said yesterday. The number of political and community activists shot dead in the Philippines has risen dramatically this year, with rights group Amnesty International saying this week it was gravely concerned that members of the security forces could be involved. Beyond fighting Muslim rebels, Philippine soldiers and police have been battling a communist insurgency for nearly 40 years at the cost of more than 40,000 lives. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has declared an “all-out war” against the New People’s Army (NPA) and accuses some leftists of links to the rebels, but she denies any government, military or police role in the killings. Major-General Jovito Palparan, head of the 7th infantry division, has been vilified by leftist groups as “The Butcher” for allegedly giving his troops the green light to assassinate peasant leaders and human rights activists. “Some soldiers are emotional when their comrades are hurt or killed. There could be soldiers who decide to take the law into their own hands but that’s illegal,” Palparan said. Palparan, 55, said he was looking into reports that some of his troops were involved in the murder of a village leader in the northern region of Tarlac earlier this year. Amnesty International estimated at least 51 activists were killed in the first six months of 2006, many of them gunned down by masked men on motorcycles. Last year, 66 were murdered. But Palparan said most of them were linked to the NPA. “They are not innocent,” he said on his way to talk about the latest counter-insurgency campaign with residents of the hamlet of Lupao, the scene of a military massacre in 1987. “They are targeted because they are doing things that are offensive.” Peace talks with the NPA stalled in 2004 when Manila refused to persuade Washington and some European governments to drop the rebel group from terrorist blacklists. Arroyo, who last month singled out Palparan for praise in her annual address to the nation, was weighing up a short list of names for a “new, powerful commission that will probe the killings”, her spokesman said. But Palparan, who is set to retire next month, said he worried the outcry about the murders at home and abroad would cool the government’s fervour about going after the NPA. “It might influence their thinking so that the leadership might follow the enemy’s line and slow us down,” he said. -------- spies The CIA-Contra-Crack Connection, 10 Years Later Reporter Gary Webb was the victim of his own hyperbole, but he never got credit for what he got right. By Nick Schou August 18, 2006 Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-schou18aug18,0,3219677.story?coll=la-opinion-center http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/sf/latimes8_18_06.htm TEN YEARS AGO today, one of the most controversial news articles of the 1990s quietly appeared on the front page of the San Jose Mercury News. Titled "Dark Alliance," the headline ran beneath the provocative image of a man smoking crack — superimposed on the official seal of the CIA. The three-part series by reporter Gary Webb linked the CIA and Nicaragua's Contras to the crack cocaine epidemic that ripped through South Los Angeles in the 1980s. Most of the nation's elite newspapers at first ignored the story. A public uproar, especially among urban African Americans, forced them to respond. What followed was one of the most bizarre, unseemly and ultimately tragic scandals in the annals of American journalism, one in which top news organizations closed ranks to debunk claims Webb never made, ridicule assertions that turned out to be true and ignore corroborating evidence when it came to light. The whole shameful cycle was repeated when Webb committed suicide in December 2004. Many reporters besides Webb had sought to uncover the rumored connection between the CIA's anti-communism efforts in Central America and drug trafficking. "Dark Alliance" documented the first solid link between the agency and drug deals inside the U.S. by profiling the relationship between two Nicaraguan Contra sympathizers and narcotics suppliers, Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses, and L.A.'s biggest crack dealer, "Freeway" Ricky Ross. Two years before Webb's series, the Los Angeles Times estimated that at its peak, Ross' "coast-to-coast conglomerate" was selling half a million crack rocks per day. "[I]f there was one outlaw capitalist most responsible for flooding Los Angeles' streets with mass-marketed cocaine," the article stated, "his name was 'Freeway' Rick." But after Webb's reporting tied Ross to the Nicaraguans and showed that they had CIA connections, The Times downgraded Ross' role to that of one "dominant figure" among many. It dedicated 17 reporters and 20,000 words to a three-day rebuttal to "Dark Alliance" that also included a lengthy musing on whether African Americans disproportionately believe in conspiracy theories. All three major U.S. dailies, The Times included, debunked a claim that Webb actually never made — that the CIA deliberately unleashed the crack epidemic on black America. The controversy over this non-assertion obscured Webb's substantive points about the CIA knowingly doing business south of the border with Nicaraguans involved in the drug trade up north. The Washington Post titled one of its stories "Conspiracy Theories Can Often Ring True; History Feeds Blacks' Mistrust." The New York Times chipped in with a scathing critique of Webb's entire career, suggesting that he was a reckless reporter prone to getting his facts wrong. "That article included virtually none of the good things Gary did," said Webb's former Cleveland Plain Dealer colleague, Walt Bogdanich, now a New York Times editor. "It didn't include the success he achieved or the wrongs he righted — and they were considerable. It wasn't fair, and it made him out to be a freak." There is no denying that the papers were right on one serious count — "Dark Alliance" contained major flaws of hyperbole that were both encouraged and ignored by his editors, who saw the story as a chance to win a Pulitzer Prize, according to Mercury News staffers I interviewed. Webb asserted, improbably, that the Blandon-Meneses-Ross drug ring opened "the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles," helping to "spark a crack explosion in urban America." The story offered no evidence to support such sweeping conclusions, a fatal error that would ultimately destroy Webb, if not his editors. At first, the Mercury News defended the series, but after nine months, Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos wrote a half-apologetic letter to readers that defended "Dark Alliance" while acknowledging obvious mistakes. Webb privately (and accurately) predicted the mea culpa would universally be misperceived as a total retraction, and he publicly accused the paper of cowardice. In return, he was banished to a remote bureau in Cupertino, Calif.; he resigned a few months later. Meanwhile, spurred on by Webb's story, the CIA conducted an internal investigation that acknowledged in March 1998 that the agency had covered up Contra drug trafficking for more than a decade. Although the Washington Post and New York Times covered the report — which confirmed key chunks of Webb's allegations — the L.A. Times ignored it for four months, and largely portrayed it as disproving the "Dark Alliance" series. "We dropped the ball on that story," said Doyle McManus, the paper's Washington bureau chief, who helped supervise its response to "Dark Alliance." Unable to find suitable employment, a bewildered Webb left journalism, endured a difficult divorce and battled growing depression and financial despair. But even his suicide failed to dull the media's contempt for "Dark Alliance." The L.A. Times and the New York Times published brief obituaries dismissing Webb as the author of "discredited" stories linking the CIA to Southern California drug sales. Unlike the media pariahs who came after "Dark Alliance" — most notably fabulists Stephen Glass of the New Republic and Jayson Blair of the New York Times — Webb didn't invent facts. Contrary to the wholly discredited reporting on Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction by New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Webb was the only victim of his mistakes. Nobody else died because of his work, and no one, either at the CIA or the Mercury News, is known to have lost so much as a paycheck. The editors involved with the story, including Managing Editor David Yarnold, survived the scandal to receive generous promotions. History will tell if Webb receives the credit he's due for prodding the CIA to acknowledge its shameful collaboration with drug dealers. Meanwhile, the journalistic establishment is only beginning to recognize that the controversy over "Dark Alliance" had more to do with poor editing than bad reporting. "In some ways, Gary got too much blame," said L.A. Times Managing Editor Leo Wolinsky. "He did exactly what you expect from a great investigative reporter." NICK SCHOU is an editor for OC Weekly. His book, "Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb," will be published in October. -------- un UN Launches $60M Appeal For Lebanon Oil Spill Friday, August 18th, 2006 Headlines Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/18/1352207 The UN has launched a sixty-million dollar appeal to help clean a massive oil spill along Lebanon’s eastern Mediterranean coastline. Up to 15,000 tons of oil have poured into the sea following Israel’s bombing of a southern Beirut power station last month. On Thursday, U.N. Environment Programme Executive Director Achim Steiner warned the environmental dangers are growing by the day. * U.N. Environment Programme Executive Director Achim Steiner: "Access to the area has been impossible, in terms of aerial surveys, first hand observations including taking water samples. And in that sense it remains an emergency because depending on the nature, the size and the movement of this oil slick it may not only be Lebanon and the southern coast of Syria that is affected. It may still affect others, it may spread further. The second reason why it remains an emergency is that with every day that passes without us being able to take remedial action on a significant scale the cost of actually coping with this oil slick will increase." UN Force Draws Pledges of 3,500 Troops In other news from Lebanon, the UN has drawn pledges of more than 3500 troops for a new peacekeeping force. 2,000 soldiers will come from Bangladesh. On Thursday, the French government set back hopes for an immediate deployment by announcing it will commit just 200 troops, far less than had been expected. Meanwhile, United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon commander Alan Pellegrini vowed a stronger presence. * UNIFIL commander Alan Pellegrini: "UNIFIL now will be very different from the previous one. I want to make it understood that the old UNIFIL is dead and the the new UNIFIL will be stronger, enhanced with more people, and above all, with new rules of engagement in order to enable UNIFIL to enforce the task given by the mandate." -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- courts / tribunals "There Are No Hereditary Kings in America" - Judge Rules NSA Warrantless Spy Program Unconstitutional Friday, August 18th, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/18/1352240 A federal judge in Detroit has ruled that the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program is unconstitutional and must be halted. In her 43-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor wrote "There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution." We speak with constitutional law attorney Glenn Greenwald. [includes rush transcript] A federal judge in Detroit has ruled that the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program is unconstitutional and must be halted. President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency program in 2001 and it was revealed in the media last year. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor found that the program violated freedom of speech, protections against unreasonable searches and a constitutional check on the power of the presidency. In her 43-page ruling, Taylor wrote "There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution." Attorney General Alberto Gonzales held a news conference after the decision came out to defend the surveillance program. * Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General, speaking August 17, 2006. The wiretapping suit was filed in Michigan by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a number of journalists, lawyers and scholars who believed their communications had been monitored. The Justice Department has appealed the decision and a hearing is set for September 7th. The ruling is on hold while the appeals process is under way. * Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law attorney specializing in presidential power and First Amendment issues. He is the author of the new book "How Would a Patriot Act?" and runs the blog Unclaimed Territory. RUSH TRANSCRIPT JUAN GONZALEZ: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales held a news conference after the decision came out to defend the surveillance program. ALBERTO GONZALES: We have confidence in the lawfulness of this program, and that's why the appeal has been lodged. This is an important program. We have the leaders in the intelligence community who have testified to Congress that it's been effective in protecting America. And so, we're going to do everything that we can do in the courts to allow this program to continue. AMY GOODMAN: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The wiretapping suit was filed in Michigan by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a number of journalists, lawyers and scholars, who believe their communications have been monitored. The Justice Department has appealed the decision, and a hearing is set for September 7. The ruling's on hold while the appeals process is underway. Glenn Greenwald joins us now on the phone, a constitutional law attorney specializing in presidential power and First Amendment issues, author of the new book, How Would a Patriot Act? He runs the blog, “Unclaimed Territory.” We welcome you, Glenn, to Democracy Now! GLENN GREENWALD: Thanks for having me. AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the significance of this federal judge ruling? GLENN GREENWALD: Well, there are several aspects to why it's so significant, the first of which is, this is the first time a federal court has ruled on the legality of the Bush administration's highly controversial warrantless eavesdropping program, and the court rather resoundingly said that it violates several constitutional protections and also violates the law. So it's the first judicial decision on what has been a highly controversial political issue. And then, beyond that, the court was very emphatic in rejecting the Bush administration's arguments, not just with regard to warrantless eavesdropping, but more broadly with regard to its radical theories of executive power that say that the President has almost unchecked authority in the area of national security, and it's now the second court, after the Supreme Court in Hamdan did that, to say that that theory is alien to our constitutional traditions. JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, the administration has clearly indicated it's going to appeal this ruling to the Federal Court of Appeals, and some critics have said that the judge's ruling in some areas will open itself up to possible reversal. Could you talk about that? GLENN GREENWALD: Well, the opinion in certain places is not a model of constitutional scholarly reasoning. It is a little bumpy in some places. But with an issue that is of this magnitude, of an initiative that’s this significant and has such implications for so many areas of how our government works, an appeals court is going to look at these issues starting from scratch, anyway. I mean, it doesn't much matter how artful the district court's opinion is, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeal, and quite possibly the Supreme Court after that, is going to look from the beginning to see whether or not this program really is unconstitutional and whether or not it violates the law. So there are parts of the opinion that are actually quite eloquent and quite powerful, in terms of reaffirming the basic principle of our system of government. There are other areas, though, where it’s true there are argumentative holes in the judge's opinion. AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, that was a pretty strong quote of U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who said, "There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers created by the Constitution." GLENN GREENWALD: Well, it is strong language. And interestingly, though, the Supreme Court of the United States used similar language one month ago in Hamdan, when it said also that the President has no right, including in the area of national security, including in time of war, to act outside of the law, that in our system of government, the President is subject to the rule of law. Only a king can operate outside of the rule of law. And this court has adopted that approach, that rhetoric, because the Bush administration’s theory of executive power really does vest in him the power of a monarch, and it's very encouraging, and surprisingly so, to see courts being so explicit about what this government is arguing in and why it's so wrong. JUAN GONZALEZ: The judge’s decision, according to some analysts, would also be almost a prevent defense against the current legislation that Senator Specter is trying to put through in the Senate on the government surveillance program. Could you talk about that? GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah. I think that's actually, you know, one of the most significant parts of the ruling is, you know, there's legislation pending, and since it was agreed to by the White House and Specter, it has a good chance of passing, which would all but eliminate restrictions on the President's ability to eavesdrop on Americans. That’s its purpose, is to legalize what this administration has been doing, because they know that this program violates the law, as it's currently written. And this court ruling essentially prevents that strategy, because it concluded that warrantless eavesdropping, eavesdropping on Americans in secret and without any restrictions, violates the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment and the First Amendment, and since that practice is unconstitutional, no congress, no congressional statute could authorize it, because Congress can't empower the President to do something unconstitutional. And the ruling likely means that that Specter bill would be dead on arrival, that it would be an unconstitutional bill, and it proposes to authorize the President to do things that the Constitution prohibits. AMY GOODMAN: Now, there was one argument that the judge did not accept. Can you explain that, Glenn Greenwald? GLENN GREENWALD: Yes. There was a part of this case brought by the ACLU that seeks to challenge not only the legality of warrantless eavesdropping, but also of the data mining program that USA Today reported a couple of months ago, which suggests that the National Security Agency has a program to collect data that chronicles every domestic telephone call, which Americans make or receive. And the administration argued that for the court to try and examine that program and to rule on the legality of that program would require the disclosure of state secrets. And unlike in the warrantless eavesdropping case, where the government has already confirmed publicly that that program exists, the government has never confirmed this program exists at all, for data mining, and so the court accepted the argument that to try and rule on the legality would be to jeopardize national security, and therefore dismissed that part of the case. JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Glenn, there was also the whole issue of standing. The government had argued that the folks who brought this lawsuit didn't even have legal standing, because they couldn't prove that they were directly affected by the surveillance program. How did the judge deal with that? GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, that's probably the biggest hurdle that this lawsuit faced from the beginning, and probably it’s the one that's most vulnerable on appeal. You know, U.S. citizens can’t just run into court and challenge laws. They have to show that the laws have been directly harming them. And the problem here is that the Bush administration has been eavesdropping in complete secrecy. Congress has never investigated how they've used this power, and so nobody knows who's been eavesdropped on. And so the problem is, how do you ever challenge a law that nobody can ever prove has been used against them? And what the ACLU did was created a rather creative strategy that the court accepted, which said that these plaintiffs are people who in their profession are required to communicate with people in the Middle East, including those suspected of terrorist ties. The plaintiffs include lawyers who represent suspected terrorists. They have to talk to witnesses over in the Middle East, whom the Bush administration might find suspicious. They are professors who do research that requires the same thing. And what they allege is that because the world knows that the Bush administration is eavesdropping on anyone they want, in secret, with no judicial oversight, people have stopped talking to them. Their clients aren't open in how they communicate. Witnesses won’t talk to them. Nobody will talk to scholars and researchers, and therefore there's been actual harm to their ability to carry out their professional duties, and that actual harm confers on them the authority to challenge this law. AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Glenn Greenwald, who wrote the book, How Would a Patriot Act? He’s a constitutional law attorney who specializes in presidential power. When we come back from break, Glenn, I want to ask you about this AIPAC ruling and what it means for freedom of the press. Stay with us. [break] AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Glenn Greenwald. His book is called How Would a Patriot Act? He also runs a blog called “Unclaimed Territory.” Glenn, I wanted to ask you about another recent court ruling. Last week, a federal judge ruled private citizens can be prosecuted if the government decides they've received or disclosed information harmful to national security. The ruling comes in the case against two former employees of AIPAC, that’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee. They've been charged with passing on classified information to the Israeli government. Can you talk about the significance of the ruling and the implication for journalists? GLENN GREENWALD: Sure. One of the things that I focus on in my book, actually, is that the Bush administration is in intent upon shutting down all methods of the American people learning about what the government is doing. And the two principal ways we've learned about what they're doing are whistleblowers, who are under vigorous attack, and the media. The reason we know about warrantless eavesdropping or secret prisons in Eastern Europe or the use of torture is because the media has found out about it and reported it. And this administration is intent upon criminalizing investigative journalism, by creating a way to put journalists in prison, for the first time in a long, long time in our country, who report on what the government is doing in secret. And this AIPAC case is the first time ever that the government has tried to use a law that was passed in 1917 called the Espionage Act to imprison, not government employees who pass on classified information, but private citizens who do nothing more than receive classified information. You had mentioned that the employee -- the individuals had passed on the information to the Israeli government. There is a suggestion they did that, but that is not part of the criminal case. The only thing they are accused of doing is receiving classified information. And the reason it's so dangerous to make that a crime or to try to make that a crime is because that is something that journalists do every single day, by definition. They receive classified information that they know is classified. And if you can be imprisoned for that act, it essentially means the government can imprison journalists at will. It is an extremely dangerous decision, and the whole case, the purpose of the case, is to enable and empower the Bush administration to put journalists in prison. JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, this Espionage Act, which as you mentioned was passed right around the time of World War I, led to quite massive crackdowns during that war on both the press and activist groups, didn’t it? And it has a pretty checkered history, in terms of constitutional law scholars. GLENN GREENWALD: Right. I mean, at the height of World War I, there was definitely sort of a crazed domestic intent to declare people who were opposed to the war as subversives and to put them in prison. And that was why that law was passed. And you're right, it was exercised in ways that we would today find not only horrifying, but clearly unconstitutional, after a century of Supreme Court cases. But even back in 1917, when the Congress debated this law, there was a proposal to include the media, to include journalists within the provisions of the law, and the Congress rejected that provision on the grounds that it would essentially render journalists useless, because they would be too afraid to report anything meaningful. And despite the Congress doing that, the law was enacted without that provision and now the administration is trying to use it against journalists. AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, in May, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was questioned about the whole AIPAC case by ABC's George Stephanopoulos. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So you believe journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information? ALBERTO GONZALES: Well, again, George, it depends on the circumstances. There are some statutes on the book, which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility. That's a policy judgment by the Congress in passing that kind of legislation. We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected. Obviously, we want to work with the press in getting the information that we can to pursue criminal wrongdoing, but we want to do so in a way, of course, that's respectful of the role that the press plays in our society. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, let me try and get specific on it then. Are you open to the possibility that the New York Times should be prosecuted for publishing their initial story on what the President calls his terrorist surveillance program? ALBERTO GONZALES: George, we are engaged now in an investigation about what would be the appropriate course of action in that particular case. I’m not going to talk about it specifically. But as we do in every case, it's a case-by-case evaluation about what the evidence shows us. Our interpretation of the law, we have an obligation to enforce the law and to prosecute those who engage in criminal activity. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Including possibly the journalists themselves? ALBERTO GONZALES: I’m not going to talk about, again, specific cases, but if the law provides that that conduct is in fact criminal and the evidence is there to support it, we have an obligation, of course, to look at that very seriously. AMY GOODMAN: Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General, being questioned by George Stephanopoulos. Glenn Greenwald, your response? GLENN GREENWALD: You know, one of the reasons why I wrote my book is because I felt like the national media was failing to report what this administration is really doing, just how radical and extremist they are. And the most surprising failure in that regard is the fact that the Bush administration is being quite open about the fact that they're entertaining the possibility of criminally prosecuting journalists for the stories that they write about the Bush administration. And you would think that if the national media cared about anything, took a stand against this government on any issue, it would be that one, and yet there was Attorney General Gonzales openly speculating about the possibility that Jim Risen and Eric Lichtblau and the editors of the New York Times will be criminally prosecuted for the story they wrote about the warrantless eavesdropping program, and the media virtually did nothing. There was no outcry. There was no defense collectively on their part in order to defend against these measures. There is nothing more dangerous than even the threat that journalists can be put into prison, because that will be in their minds when they go to report on the Bush administration. Our democracy needs a very aggressive and adversarial press. And this is what the administration is doing, is they’re trying to neuter the press, even more than it's been neutered, with the threat of imprisonment. And it’s hard to think of a greater danger to our democracy than that. AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, I want to thank you very much for speaking with us, constitutional law attorney specializing in presidential power and First Amendment issues. His book is called How Would a Patriot Act?, and he runs the blog, “Unclaimed Territory.” We’ll link to his pieces at salon.com and to his blog at our website, democracynow.org. -------- homeland security / national intelligence Bush predicts courts will uphold security wiretaps Fri Aug 18, 2006 (Reuters) By Tabassum Zakaria http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-08-18T215848Z_01_N18397261_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-EAVESDROPPING-BUSH.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C1-TopStories-newsOne-2 CAMP DAVID, Maryland - Stung by a judge's ruling, President George W. Bush said on Friday he expects U.S. courts to uphold his belief that a National Security Agency eavesdropping program does not violate U.S. civil rights. At a news conference, Bush said he strongly disagreed with a ruling on Thursday by U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit that wiretaps under the Terrorist Surveillance Program violated freedom of speech, protections against unreasonable searches and a constitutional check on the power of the presidency. The Justice Department had immediately appealed the decision and obtained approval to continue the program until the appeal is heard September 7. "I believe our appeals will be upheld," Bush said at the presidential retreat of Camp David. With national security a major concern ahead of November congressional elections, the Republican National Committee tried to portray Democrats as soft on the issue, putting out an Internet video headlined "Democrat Judge Weakens National Security." RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman said in a statement the judge had sided with the American Civil Liberties Union and was a "reminder of what is at stake in 2006." 'USE EVERY TOOL' "Will we use every tool in our arsenal to respond to emerging threats, or embrace the Democrat-ACLU position that just made it harder for our intelligence agencies to detect terrorist plots inside the United States?" he said in a statement. The program allows the government to bypass warrant requirements and monitor communications, such as e-mail and telephone calls, into and out of the United States by people believed linked to al Qaeda or related groups. Democrats contend Bush is overstepping his constitutional power by approving domestic spying and some Republicans also have expressed concerns. Democrats questioned whether the program has been effective, saying the administration has shown no evidence that terrorist plots have been disrupted by its use. "Rather than make unsubstantiated claims about his program's effectiveness, the president should listen to law enforcement officials and work with Congress to implement tough and smart policies to fight terrorism," said a statement from the office of Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Bush said those who applaud the decision "simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live" and that the alleged British terror plot broken up last week was evidence that attacks were still being planned against American targets. "This country of ours is at war," Bush said. "And we must give those whose responsibility it is to protect the United States the tools necessary to protect this country in a time of war. "I put this program in place. We believe -- strongly believe -- it's constitutional. And if al Qaeda is calling into the United States, we want to know why they're calling." -------- terrorism "More Propaganda Than Plot" - Former British Ambassador on Alleged UK Terror Plot Friday, August 18th, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/18/1352248 Questions have been raised over whether British authorities were pressured by the United States to make the arrests last week in the alleged terror plot to blow up transatlantic airliners. We speak with former British ambassador Craig Murray who says, "The one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot." [includes rush transcript] A judge in Britain has ruled police have until next week to continue to hold 23 suspects arrested in the alleged plot to blow up airplanes bound for the United States. British police arrested 24 people in raids last week. One person has since been released. No one has been charged with a crime. Questions have been raised over whether British authorities were pressured by the United States to make the arrests. A senior British official told NBC News that British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence. The British official suggested the attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. Some did not even have passports. Now, a former British ambassador is suggesting that the timing of the arrests has been deeply political and should be viewed with skepticism. Craig Murray is Britain's former ambassador to Uzbekistan. He was removed from the post two years ago in part because of his outspoken criticism of Uzbekistan's human rights record. * Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan. - Read Craig Murray's article: The UK Terror plot: What's Really Going On? - For more information: CraigMurray.co.uk The British government is reportedly considering an airport screening system that would include identifying passengers by their ethnic or religious background. Security at British airports was radically tightened last week after authorities claimed they foiled the alleged terror plot. Increased passenger searches have caused significant delays at airports in Britain and calls have increased for profiling to select travelers for searching. * Gareth Crossman, Director of Policy at the British civil rights group Liberty. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Craig Murray is Britain's former ambassador to Uzbekistan. He was removed from the post two years ago, in part because of his outspoken criticism of Uzbekistan's human rights record. He was in the studio with us here in New York City recently. He now joins us on the phone from Britain. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Ambassador Murray. CRAIG MURRAY: Thank you. AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the case and what questions you have for the British government? CRAIG MURRAY: Yes. I think we need to be rather skeptical about this case. It's being used to cause a tremendous amount of hype, a tremendous amount of disruption at airports, and really put the fear of terror up to levels as high as the government can actually get up again, but it doesn't seem to be based on a very great deal of evidence. And certainly the claims that this was going to be bigger than 9/11 and that it was an imminent attack appear to be very dubious. There’s, as you've reported, no sign that the people had plane tickets. It's very difficult to bomb a plane without a plane ticket, no sign that they’d actually made any bombs yet. And the evidence is that these people had been under surveillance for quite a long time by the British Security Services, who hadn't seen any need of the early arrests. And then a combination of some new intelligence coming out of Pakistan, which it seems very likely was got under torture -- it was certainly got by interrogation by Pakistani intelligence services -- and pressure from United States officials has led to this, to the arrests, still nobody charged, and the most enormous political propaganda being made of the case. JUAN GONZALEZ: Ambassador, in an article you've written here in the United States for Counterpunch, you raised a track record of the British government, in terms of holding folks under antiterrorism statutes. Could you talk about some of those numbers that are not well known here in the United States? CRAIG MURRAY: Yes, certainly. The British government has passed, since September the 11th, four new antiterrorist laws, four different traunches of legislation, and under those bills, over one thousand Muslims have been arrested, but very few have been charged. Less than 12% of those arrested are ever charged with anything. And then of those who have been charged, very few are convicted. In fact, just about 2% of all those arrested are ever convicted of anything, and of those convicted, the large majority of those aren’t convicted of anything to do with terrorism. They're convicted of something else that the police happened upon, while they were taking their houses apart, just the sort of happenstance finding of something else illegal. So, you know, we've got very good reason to be very, very skeptical of these continual arrests of Muslims. We've had a whole series of so-called plots, which made the front pages at the time but turned out simply to be untrue. AMY GOODMAN: Ambassador Craig Murray, you talk about President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair having a conversation about these arrests. Can you explain the whole issue of the timing and what you understand they talked about? CRAIG MURRAY: Yes, they spoke, according to -- and I should say, my source of this is the mainstream media. Sky News, which is the Fox News affiliate over here, showed still photographs, which they said were -- heard George Bush having this conversation with Tony Blair, in which they discussed the timing of the arrests, and they discussed them on the Sunday before the arrests were made the following Thursday. And that's very peculiar to me. That immediately rings all kinds of alarm bells. I mean, if this is a genuine potential imminent terrorist operation, it's strange that all these amazing new hold-ups at airports weren't introduced for another four days until after the people had been arrested. That seems strange. But also, what are the Prime Minister and the President doing discussing the details of forthcoming arrests? That should be an operational matter for the experts, for the professionals and the security services and the police who are responsible for this kind of surveillance. They should be acting at the correct moment, when the evidence is in place and when they're certain that the people are, in their view, definitely involved, and when they can secure their conviction. They shouldn't be subject to pressure from politicians, as to when they move. And one of the results of this is, I don't think we will ever know whether or not there really was this threat that, you know, we're told was greater than 9/11, and the officials have said it was going to cause murder on an unimaginable scale. Well, we'll never know, because if you arrest people before they even buy their airplane tickets, even if it does turn out to be true, that these people had, as is alleged, been bragging about what they were going to do in internet chat rooms, how do you know if that was really serious or if it was just talk, if you don't let the thing develop to a stage where you actually really see what's happening? But instead, I think we all have to suspect that for political reasons, Blair and Bush had the arrests made early. JUAN GONZALEZ: Ambassador, you've also raised questions about the involvement of Pakistan and some of the arrests occurring there and information gleaned from interrogations of people held by the Pakistanis. CRAIG MURRAY: Yeah. There are several points here. One point is that allegedly both the Pakistani and the British intelligence services had infiltrated this group. So the question is, was there agent provocateur stuff going on here? You know, were the Pakistani intelligence services themselves egging on people to do some kind of bomb plot? Was there an element of that in the British intelligence services? The other question is the use of torture. Some of the information came from Pakistan intelligence from alleged militants picked up on the Pakistan-Afghani border. Now, then, you know, Pakistan is a dictatorship, and its security services are pretty brutal, and human rights organizations there have said that almost certainly that would have involved torture. And I know from my experience in Uzbekistan that in such circumstances, under torture or the imminent threat of torture, people will say anything in order to stop the pain, and , you know, they will spill out the names of hundreds of people they know back home in the UK and say, “Yes, he’s a terrorist. He’s a terrorist. He’s a terrorist. Please stop beating me.” So, you know, there are all kinds of reasons to be skeptical about this. AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Ambassador Craig Murray in London, former ambassador to Uzbekistan, who while he was the ambassador there, started to expose the level of human rights abuses that were going on in prisons, where thousands of political prisoners were held. Ambassador, NBC reported a Pakistani intelligence official told them that Rashid Rauf, the main suspect in the London bomb plot, was taken to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to point out al-Qaeda training camps, and AP reported yesterday that Pakistani intelligence officials are discounting the U.S. government's claim that the plot was the work of al-Qaeda. According to the officials, the suspects were too inexperienced to carry out the plan. Can you comment on this? CRAIG MURRAY: Yeah, the idea of any serious links to al-Qaeda seems to be imaginary at the moment, on top of which, this gentleman in Pakistan who was providing so much of the information is himself quite an interesting character. He fled the UK to Pakistan several years ago, when he was wanted for questioning by police in connection with the murder of his uncle. Now, there was no indication that that murder was anything to do with al-Qaeda, anything to do with Islam at all, anything to do with terrorism. This is a guy who fled the country, rather than be questioned about the murder of his uncle, and he's now the valued intelligence asset who's giving the information on this bomb plot. Now, that surely must raise some additional questions about his credibility, as well. JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, the British government is reportedly considering an airport screening system that would include identifying passengers by their ethnic or religious background. Security at British airports was radically tightened last week, after authorities claimed they foiled this alleged terror plot, but increased passenger searches have caused significant delays at airports in Britain, and calls have increased for profiling to select passengers for searching. Gareth Crossman also joins us on the line from London. He is a Director of Policy at the British civil rights group Liberty. Welcome to Democracy Now! GARETH CROSSMAN: Good morning -- or afternoon. JUAN GONZALEZ: Your reaction to these discussions now about possible profiling of passengers? GARETH CROSSMAN: Yes, I think the initial reports, which seem to be suggesting that there was going to be some sort of two-tiered screening process, which would be one process for basically British Asians or British Muslims and one for everyone else, are extremely worrying. To be fair to the government, they have backed down slightly from that in the last few days, and following discussions with colleagues in the European Union, it seems that the move towards more intelligence-based screening might be what's actually being proposed, the distinction being that intelligence-based profiling might take race or ethnicity as one factor, amongst several, when considering profiling. The devil is in the detail in this sort of thing, but it does seem that, you know, the initial concerns that we and many others had, that essentially this was going to mean that there were going to be two queues, one of Asians and one of everyone else, is unlikely to happen, at least that's how it appears at this moment. AMY GOODMAN: Gareth, your reaction to the judge’s ruling that the suspects continue to be held? The law, what, under the new antiterrorism laws of Britain are that they can be held for a month without a charge, but a judge has to agree to it every week, of them being held without charge within that month. GARETH CROSSMAN: Yes, I mean, this is actually something that was subject of the most recent -- we've had so many, but the most recent terrorism act that was passed by the British parliament. Initially the government were actually after 90 days detention -- that's three months, that's the equivalent of actually a six-month custodial sentence in the UK -- before being charged. The previous time limit had been 14 days. It was extended by compromise up to 28 days. Now, what will be interesting is what happens if these people are still being held around the 28-day mark, because we know, because the government has said, they still really do want to get 90 days detention. And what possibly might be a concern is if there are hints that people might have to be released, because they can't be detained for long enough. Now, 28 days is a long period of time to hold people in custody. This is prior to any charge being brought. JUAN GONZALEZ: And if the government appears before a judge to request an extension, do they have to present any reason or just is it a mere formality? GARETH CROSSMAN: Yeah, what you actually have to do is that you have to satisfy the court that there is an ongoing investigation and that it is necessary for one of several reasons, the essential reason being because you're still in the process of gathering evidence, that further time is needed. The judge will then weigh the arguments for and against and will make a decision as to whether or not he or she believes that further detention is, in fact, justified. And this process can continue up until the cut-off point of 28 days. AMY GOODMAN: Gareth Crossman, I want to thank you for being with us, Director of Policy at the British civil rights group Liberty, and also Ambassador Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan. Thanks for joining us. -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars Can Journalists Be Prosecuted for Receiving Classified Information? Friday, August 18th, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/18/1352244 A federal judge ruled last week that private citizens could be prosecuted if the government decides they have received or disclosed information harmful to national security. We take a look at the significance of the ruling and its implication for investigative journalists. [includes rush transcript] Last week a federal judge ruled private citizens could be prosecuted if the government decides they have received or disclosed information harmful to national security. The ruling comes in the case against two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. They've been charged with passing on classified information to the Israeli government. * Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law attorney specializing in presidential power and First Amendment issues. He is the author of the new book "How Would a Patriot Act?" and runs the blog Unclaimed Territory. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Glenn Greenwald. His book is called How Would a Patriot Act? He also runs a blog called “Unclaimed Territory.” Glenn, I wanted to ask you about another recent court ruling. Last week, a federal judge ruled private citizens can be prosecuted if the government decides they've received or disclosed information harmful to national security. The ruling comes in the case against two former employees of AIPAC, that’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee. They've been charged with passing on classified information to the Israeli government. Can you talk about the significance of the ruling and the implication for journalists? GLENN GREENWALD: Sure. One of the things that I focus on in my book, actually, is that the Bush administration is in intent upon shutting down all methods of the American people learning about what the government is doing. And the two principal ways we've learned about what they're doing are whistleblowers, who are under vigorous attack, and the media. The reason we know about warrantless eavesdropping or secret prisons in Eastern Europe or the use of torture is because the media has found out about it and reported it. And this administration is intent upon criminalizing investigative journalism, by creating a way to put journalists in prison, for the first time in a long, long time in our country, who report on what the government is doing in secret. And this AIPAC case is the first time ever that the government has tried to use a law that was passed in 1917 called the Espionage Act to imprison, not government employees who pass on classified information, but private citizens who do nothing more than receive classified information. You had mentioned that the employee -- the individuals had passed on the information to the Israeli government. There is a suggestion they did that, but that is not part of the criminal case. The only thing they are accused of doing is receiving classified information. And the reason it's so dangerous to make that a crime or to try to make that a crime is because that is something that journalists do every single day, by definition. They receive classified information that they know is classified. And if you can be imprisoned for that act, it essentially means the government can imprison journalists at will. It is an extremely dangerous decision, and the whole case, the purpose of the case, is to enable and empower the Bush administration to put journalists in prison. JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, this Espionage Act, which as you mentioned was passed right around the time of World War I, led to quite massive crackdowns during that war on both the press and activist groups, didn’t it? And it has a pretty checkered history, in terms of constitutional law scholars. GLENN GREENWALD: Right. I mean, at the height of World War I, there was definitely sort of a crazed domestic intent to declare people who were opposed to the war as subversives and to put them in prison. And that was why that law was passed. And you're right, it was exercised in ways that we would today find not only horrifying, but clearly unconstitutional, after a century of Supreme Court cases. But even back in 1917, when the Congress debated this law, there was a proposal to include the media, to include journalists within the provisions of the law, and the Congress rejected that provision on the grounds that it would essentially render journalists useless, because they would be too afraid to report anything meaningful. And despite the Congress doing that, the law was enacted without that provision and now the administration is trying to use it against journalists. AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, in May, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was questioned about the whole AIPAC case by ABC's George Stephanopoulos. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So you believe journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information? ALBERTO GONZALES: Well, again, George, it depends on the circumstances. There are some statutes on the book, which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility. That's a policy judgment by the Congress in passing that kind of legislation. We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected. Obviously, we want to work with the press in getting the information that we can to pursue criminal wrongdoing, but we want to do so in a way, of course, that's respectful of the role that the press plays in our society. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, let me try and get specific on it then. Are you open to the possibility that the New York Times should be prosecuted for publishing their initial story on what the President calls his terrorist surveillance program? ALBERTO GONZALES: George, we are engaged now in an investigation about what would be the appropriate course of action in that particular case. I’m not going to talk about it specifically. But as we do in every case, it's a case-by-case evaluation about what the evidence shows us. Our interpretation of the law, we have an obligation to enforce the law and to prosecute those who engage in criminal activity. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Including possibly the journalists themselves? ALBERTO GONZALES: I’m not going to talk about, again, specific cases, but if the law provides that that conduct is in fact criminal and the evidence is there to support it, we have an obligation, of course, to look at that very seriously. AMY GOODMAN: Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General, being questioned by George Stephanopoulos. Glenn Greenwald, your response? GLENN GREENWALD: You know, one of the reasons why I wrote my book is because I felt like the national media was failing to report what this administration is really doing, just how radical and extremist they are. And the most surprising failure in that regard is the fact that the Bush administration is being quite open about the fact that they're entertaining the possibility of criminally prosecuting journalists for the stories that they write about the Bush administration. And you would think that if the national media cared about anything, took a stand against this government on any issue, it would be that one, and yet there was Attorney General Gonzales openly speculating about the possibility that Jim Risen and Eric Lichtblau and the editors of the New York Times will be criminally prosecuted for the story they wrote about the warrantless eavesdropping program, and the media virtually did nothing. There was no outcry. There was no defense collectively on their part in order to defend against these measures. There is nothing more dangerous than even the threat that journalists can be put into prison, because that will be in their minds when they go to report on the Bush administration. Our democracy needs a very aggressive and adversarial press. And this is what the administration is doing, is they’re trying to neuter the press, even more than it's been neutered, with the threat of imprisonment. And it’s hard to think of a greater danger to our democracy than that. AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, I want to thank you very much for speaking with us, constitutional law attorney specializing in presidential power and First Amendment issues. His book is called How Would a Patriot Act?, and he runs the blog, “Unclaimed Territory.” We’ll link to his pieces at salon.com and to his blog at our website, democracynow.org. -------- ENERGY -------- alternative energy Siemens to Build Wind Turbine Blade Factory in USA REUTERS GERMANY: August 18, 2006 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/37728/story.htm FRANKFURT - Germany's Siemens plans to set up a wind turbine blade factory in Iowa, its first US factory since it entered the wind power business two years ago, to take advantage of growing demand for clean energy there. The industrial conglomerate said on Thursday it would modernise and equip an existing 20,000 square metre (200,000 square feet) site at Fort Madison, where it expects to employ 250 people and start production in the first half of next year. "Thanks to the timely tax breaks for wind power passed by Congress and the continuing high oil and gas prices, this market should keep developing very positively," Siemens' head of wind power, Andreas Nauen, said in a statement. The United States trails Europe in developing wind power, with wind energy accounting for less than 1 percent of US electricity production, but its potential is thought to be huge, and current capacity is up 37 percent from last year's. Oil major BP Plc said earlier this week it had bought US wind energy firm Greenlight Energy Inc. for around US$98 million to boost its wind power business in North America. Siemens' turbines unit, Power Generation, said it had chosen the Fort Madison site for its proximity to transport links, because moving the 45-metre blades is a logistical challenge. Siemens, which makes a wide range of products from light bulbs to trains, entered the wind power market by buying Denmark's Bonus Energy at the end of 2004. Its capacity has almost tripled since then to around 1,100 megawatts, and its staff has increased to 2,000 employees from 800. Order intake in the first nine months of this fiscal year rose 182 percent over the year-ago period. Power Generation made sales of 8.1 billion euros (US$10.4 billion) in Siemens' past fiscal year to end-September, around 11 percent of Siemens' total revenues. It is one of the conglomerate's most profitable units. ---- Japan Sees Biodiesel Boost With New Fuel Standards Story by Ikuko Kao REUTERS JAPAN: August 18, 2006 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/37719/story.htm TOKYO - Japan, the world's third-largest oil consumer, will set out nationwide biodiesel standards this year in an effort to kick-start demand, but will not force refiners to sell it, government officials said on Thursday. Lagging international moves to use more biofuel to battle soaring crude oil prices and help ease global warming, Japan hopes the law -- allowing about 5 percent of fatty acid-derived fuel in diesel -- will spur more sales of green fuels made from renewable sources such as soybeans and sugar. Given gasoline-oriented Japan's limited diesel consumption and lack of incentives, however, the take-up from consumers and refiners is likely to be tepid at first, officials conceded. "The legislation is expected to be passed by the end of this year, and the law will become effective by the end of this fiscal year (to March 2007)," an official at the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, a unit of the trade ministry, told Reuters. Japan now allows oil companies to blend about 3 percent of ethanol, another biofuel produced from crops such as sugar or corn, into gasoline, the motor fuel of choice for most drivers. It does not have rules to regulate biodiesel quality, deterring potential retailers from offering it and limiting its use to voluntary efforts by some local municipalities using waste vegetable oil for public transport, officials say. Tokyo will not require retailers or refiners to blend a minimum percentage of pure biodiesel into their motor fuel, as some nations and governments have done. But it may consider tax incentives in future to encourage consumers to use biofuels, said the official, who asked not to be named. The government will also offer financial support for companies that are developing ethanol blending technologies. Faced with opposition from its powerful refiners and limited domestic crops, Japan has been slow to join the biofuel demand boom, which got a boost this year when US President George W. Bush made it a cornerstone of his energy policy. Oil prices that stay stubbornly above US$70 a barrel have also made alternatives more economic, while a global push for cleaner fuels has aided momentum toward the cleaner fuel. But for the moment, no bio-transportation fuel -- diesel or gasoline -- is sold at pumps at Japanese gas stations at all. Malaysian Golden Hope Plantations Bhd.'s first export cargo of biofuel is due to be shipped to Japan this month, although Europe is expected to be the top market. HIGH HOPES, NO INCENTIVES Japan hopes to replace about 500,000 kilolitres (3.14 million barrels) of transportation fuels with bio-ethanol a year by 2010, another official said, but did not say how it would achieve that goal, which is less than 0.2 percent of Japan's total oil demand. "Writing up the specifications of biodiesel can define the standard quality of the fuel and help introduce the industry and consumers to biodiesel," the official said. Refiners feared that bio-blended fuels could damage cars and oil production systems, although proponents say that as much as 10 to 20 percent of biofuel is safe in standard engines. There are signs they are coming around, if slowly. Japan's largest refiner Nippon Oil Corp. is working with auto giant Toyota Motor Corp. to develop commercial biofuel, but is not expecting immediate results. "We do not have a fixed timetable but the industry as a whole targets at 2010," a spokesman for Nippon Oil said. The Petroleum Association of Japan, the industry's lobby, said earlier this year it hoped a gasoline blended with 3 percent of ethyl tertiary butyl ether (bio-ETBE) would meet about 20 percent of the country's total demand by 2010. Diesel is mostly used to fuel trucks and buses in Japan, with demand totalling 37.34 million kl (643,000 barrels per day) last year. Gasoline demand was 61.6 million kl (1.1 million bpd). While countries like Thailand and the United States enjoy double benefits from biofuel -- curbing oil imports and lifting rural incomes -- Japan is unable to feed itself, meaning it must still relay on crops in Malaysia or Brazil to provide it with most of its imported biodiesel or ethanol. But officials see limited demand for the time being. "I would expect to start with blending used vegetable oils like some local governments have been doing," said one official. ---- Singapore Turns to Biodiesel to Fight Rising Fuel Costs Story by Jessica Jaganathan REUTERS SINGAPORE: August 18, 2006 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/37729/story.htm SINGAPORE - Singaporean Kom Mam Sun ran his Nissan truck on biodiesel fuel for two years to test his business idea of turning used cooking oil from restaurants into fuel for vehicles. The experiment was such a success that the 32-year-old entrepreneur opened his first biodiesel plant in June and has already made S$50,000 (US$31,600) in profits. "My customers in the construction industry are happy with biodiesel so far as it's better and cleaner especially when they deal with heavy machinery," Kom said. Kom's venture highlights growing interest in Singapore, Asia's largest oil-refining centre, in the potentially lucrative biofuels industry in the face of rising conventional fuel prices. Singapore is well placed to develop such an industry as it has easy access to palm oil, a key biodiesel ingredient, from its neighbours Malaysia and Indonesia. Both countries together produce about 80 percent of the world's palm oil supply. "Biodiesel is a sustainable and renewable fuel that is friendly to the environment," said John Hall, global marketing director of Germany-based Peter Cremer Gruppe energy business. Peter Cremer (Singapore), the Asian arm of Germany's Cremer Gruppe, plans to set up a US$20 million plant in Singapore by May 2007 with enough capacity to produce 200,000 tonnes of biodiesel. "We are using a feedstock that is renewable in that it can be harvested and grown again, whereas once you use the earth's oil reserves they cannot be replenished," Hall said. The firm would sell the fuel at US$40 per barrel to earn a profit, he said. Given record crude oil prices of more than US$70 per barrel, many countries including the United States are trying to encourage the use of biofuel to reduce dependence on crude oil. The European Union has set a 2010 target for biofuels to comprise at least 5.75 percent of the transport fuel supply. "Global trends are driving the development of agricultural products into new sources of energy and materials," said Teo Ming Kian, chairman of Singapore's Economic Development Board. ENVIRONMENTAL COST But despite being renewable, biofuels might not be as friendly to the environment as they seem, say environmentalists. Friends of the Earth and British political activist George Monbiot say the expansion of the biofuel industry could lead to deforestation as plantations to provide the renewable fuel are established on land cleared of rain forests. In a September 2005 report, Friends of the Earth said that palm oil plantations were responsible for an estimated 87 percent of deforestation in Malaysia. "In terms of its impact on both the local and global environments, palm biodiesel is more destructive than crude oil," Monbiot wrote on his Web site. Energy analysts doubt whether biodiesel products will lead to a reduction of dependence on conventional fuels. "The fuel market is so big that biodiesel can't make a significant difference and will only be a small fraction of the overall diesel use in Asia," said energy analyst Victor K. Shum. "But with oil prices so high these days, biodiesel does get more and more cost-effective," he added. As for the Singaporean entrepreneur Kom, he's not concerned about competition thanks to low overheads and a direct-selling strategy. "I have my truck which I've been testing out the biodiesel on and it's been my advertisement on the go. That's all I need," said Kom with a laugh. ---- Wave Power Farms Follow Surfers to Cornish Coast REUTERS UK: August 18, 2006 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/37717/story.htm LONDON - The flock of surfers to the Cornish coast in search of England's biggest waves could soon be joined by fleet of wave power farms under a unique project backed by the government on Thursday. An innovative project to fix a power "socket" to the seabed off the Cornish coast, so a variety of wave energy devices floating on the surface can send their power to the grid, got a 4.5 million pound boost from the Department of Trade and Industry on Thursday. The 20 million-pound Wave Hub, led by the South West of England Regional Development Agency, will act as a giant extension cable linking up to four wave energy devices to the power grid. The Hub is set to become the focus of wave power research as Britain increasingly looks to its coastal waters for emissions-free electricity. The government hopes wave and offshore wind energy can help meet the UK's growing demand for power without increasing carbon dioxide emissions. The project still needs to get planning approval and a decision is expected by the end of the year. "The project has still to get through a robust consent process before getting into the water, and to finalise the device developers who will connect to it," Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks said on awarding the grant. "But if successful, it... could provide three per cent of Cornwall's electricity needs. That is up to 20 MW of renewable and secure emission free energy powering 7,500 homes," he added. If approved, the Hub is set to star