NucNews September 26, 2006 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety 'Oh no, not again' Meeting stirs up memories of 1979 uranium disaster By Zsombor Peter Staff Writer September 26, 2006 Gallup NM Independent http://www.gallupindependent.com/2006/sept/092606zp_urnmmtng.html GALLUP — On July 16, 1979, the earthen dam of a United Nuclear Corporation settling pond in Church Rock gave way, releasing 94 million gallons of radioactive wastewater and 1,100 tons of uranium tailings into the Rio Puerco. According to the McKinley Community Health Alliance, it was the largest release of radioactive material by volume in the country's history. Today, on the brink of what could become the latest round of uranium mining on the Navajo reservation, the next generation of mining companies is touting the safety of the newest techniques. But local activists say they've heard it before, and they're urging locals not to buy it again. To fight the uranium mining industry's latest charge, the Health Alliance brought together a panel of area professors, health care professionals and activists at El Morro Theater Monday evening. There they spoke to a crowd of more than 100 about the history of uranium mining in the area and about the specter of another round. New technology With uranium now fetching upwards of $50 per pound, Monday's panelists feared the renewed enthusiasm with which mining companies have begun pursuing new concessions. And with more than half the world's remaining uranium deposits, according to Johnnye Lewis, director of the UNM Health Sciences Center's Community Environmental Health Program, the Colorado Plateau and the Navajo Nation's Eastern Agency in particular is where many of them are looking. The company troubling them most is the Texas-based Hydro Resources, Inc., which has its eye on a few sites near Church Rock and more near Crownpoint. The Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM) has been fighting its plans since 1994. While the company has a license to proceed from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it's still waiting on a few final permits. If it gets the chance, Hydro Resources won't be digging for uranium in cavernous underground or pit mines as its predecessors did. It will be using a relatively new process called in situ leach mining, a process that injects relatively harmless chemicals into the ground to dissolve the much more dangerous uranium in the sub-surface rock, then brings the mixture to the surface for refining. The good news, said Mansel Nelson, program coordinator for Northern Arizona University's Environmental Education Outreach Program, is that the process does not come with the piles of tailings uranium mining used to. And without having to send miners underground, it keeps them that much safer. The danger, he said, is that the dissolved uranium might seep out of the mining area before it's captured. Throw the Westwater Canyon Aquifer and the 15,000 McKinley County residents who depend on it as their sole source of drinking water into the mix, and Monday's panelists start to worry. Old promises With the new technology comes the promise of improved safety that the companies can restore the in situ mines to pre-mining conditions when they're done and the lure of new jobs. But the record on cleaning up these new mines is not encouraging, Nelson said. And Chris Shuey, director of the Uranium Impact Assessment Program of the Southwest Research and Information Center, sees few lasting gains from uranium mining booms of the past. "We're listening to the same old promises that we've heard in the '50s and '60s," Shuey said. Yet decades after those experiences, he said, hundreds of abandoned mines remain unrestored and thousands of reservation residents still await word on their claims for compensation. Lewis and her colleagues, meanwhile, prepare to study whether the contamination from those rounds of uranium mining played any role in the unusually high rates of kidney failure in the area. The mining companies aren't backing down. One of them, said ENDAUM representative Lynnea Smith, opened up a local office to pursue land claims just months after the Navajo Nation Council approved the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005, which bans uranium mining on Navajoland. "The companies aren't stopping," she said. "They want the uranium and they want the money." Those who live on the reservation know the potential future they're facing, said Health Alliance representative Jana Gunnell, who presided over the Monday's event. It's the people in Gallup, she said, who might not, and for whom her group organized the evening. Gunnell insisted on the need to say no to Hydro Resources and its peers now, "so that we're not in a position to say, 'Oh no, not again.' " -------- australia Alice council petitioned to declare nuclear-free zone Tuesday, September 26, 2006 Australia Broadcasting http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200609/s1748573.htm The Alice Springs Town Council has received a petition supported by more than 70 local businesses to declare the town a nuclear-free zone. The full council met for the first time last night in its new chambers. The Arid Lands Environment Centre presented the petition of more than 1,100 signatures to the council. The centre's Nat Wasley urged aldermen to join others, including their Marrickville council counterparts in Sydney, in declaring the town nuclear free. She said it was not legally binding and would not affect materials needed for medical purposes, but would send a symbolic message to the Federal Government that the region is not willing to accept a nuclear waste facility. Council has referred the petition to the corporate and community services committee. -------- business Cal Receives Grant To Counter 'Dirty Bomb' Attacks cbs5.com September 26, 2006 http://www.topix.net/content/cbs/4112261283262592792504133823032966132951 FORT PEIRCE, Fla. A family of four found shot to death along an isolated stretch of highway had moved to Florida from Texas four months ago, authorities said Saturday. A University of California at Berkeley team has received a grant of almost $1 million to help develop treatments designed to better counter the effects of a radiological, or dirty bomb, attack. The $998,325 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was issued as part of the federal government's Project Bioshield, which seeks to prepare for or prevent widespread nuclear or radiological contamination. The research team is developing agents for decontaminating people who may have been exposed to plutonium or similar radioactive substances, according to Kenneth Raymond, principal investigator of the program. The chemical agents under development are designed to bind with poisonous metal ions that enter the human body upon radiological contamination. The dangerous ions could then leave the body through natural excretion. The research could also one day help to clean up the treatment of radioactive waste in the environment. Menlo Park-based SRI International will test the agents in development on animals. Within 18 months officials at NIAID hope to begin clinical trials. The research team includes Raymond, Pat Durbin-Heavey and David Shuh, all members of the Chemical Sciences Division at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Others working on the program include Eleanor Blakely of the Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division and Polly Chang of SRI. -------- depleted uranium U.S. military spreads radiation contamination against the Iraq population Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination grows worse by Prof Souad N. Al-Azzawi, Global Research Columnist September 26, 2006 http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2006/09/26/01233.html Depleted Uranium (DU) weaponry has been used against Iraq since the Gulf War 1 in 1991. Estimated (DU) expenditure of 320 - 800 tons wereshot on the withdrawing Iraqi troops from Kuwait to the north of Basrah City. The use of (DU) ammunition and bombs on Iraqi territory has continued since 1991. Different generations of (DU) supported Tomahawk missiles & Bunker Buster Bombs have been used during the 90's on what were known as the "No Fly Zones" (Northern & Southern regions of Iraq), and the 1998 attack on Iraq. With the comprehensive sanctions that were imposed on Iraq, the USA & its allies purposely used these radioactive & toxic weapons to exhaust Iraq's strength & population to prepare for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Hundreds of tons of (DU) expenditure were also used during the invasion of Iraq. This was done to worsen the radioactive contamination impact. The occupying forces have forbade any kind of (DU) related formal research programs. They have also covered up and denied DU's damaging health effects, and refused to release information on the amounts, types and locations of these weapons within Iraq. As a consequence, thousands of Iraqi children and their families are suffering from different low level radiation (LLR) related diseases such as congenital malformations, malignancies, congenital heart diseases, chromosomal aberration and multiple malformations. Women in the contaminated areas suffered high rates of miscarriages and sterility. Pressure from anti-DU groups and the international community due to the effects of the Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) on Gulf War veterans, helped Iraqi researchers start a series of investigation programs on the contaminated areas to estimate the radiation dose the people in southern Iraq and the Iraqi troops were exposed to during military engagements in 1991, and assess the level of contamination in the surrounding environment. The American administration still claims that the biological and chemical agents of hydrocarbon smoke of oil field fires in southern Iraq are the main causes behind the (GWS) and not the exposure to the DU. This is very false and misleading information. Chemical fumes and hydrocarbons were released to Iraq's environment in each Iraqi city due to the 1991 air raids and bombing proves that the areas of Ta'meem, and Salahiddin were the most polluted cities due to the destruction of mines and huge material and armed forces industries. This resulted in the formation of SOx, NOx, and COx plumes and hydrocarbon smoke clouds. Pollution also resulted from the burning of thousands of rubber tires used to mislead Tomahawk missiles off their targets. The American and British occupation forces are totally responsible for in contravention of United Nations Coventions: 1. Forbidding any release of statistics related to civilian casualties after the occupation. 2. Refusal to clean up contaminated areas. 3. Depriving international agencies and Iraqi researchers the right to conduct full (DU) related exploration programs by U.S. occupation forces to prevent further damages is the best evidence that these forces are covering up their certain conclusive evidence of the harmful health impacts of DU. All these acts are crimes against humanity because these weapons are causing undifferentiated harm and suffering to civilians in all contaminated areas. Health effects can range from fatigue and muscular pain to genetic disorder, chromosome aberrations, and malignancies. Existence of DU in the environment will maintain continuous exposure to both toxic and radioactive effects which represent continuous systematic attacks on civilians in an armed conflict (Article 4 of the official regulations and article 7 of ICC). Make comments about this article in The Canadian Blog. ---- A Visitor from Hiroshima By Amitabh Pal September 26, 2006 The Progressive http://www.progressive.org/mag_apb092606 In spite of my intense interest in nuclear issues, I have never been able to go to Hiroshima. So, it was a memorable moment when a journalist from Hiroshima visited us at The Progressive on September 25. It is one of the fringe benefits of working here that you get to meet interesting people, and over the years I have been introduced to—and even written about—other fascinating visitors. (See an April 2005 column I did about a group of Bangladeshi garment workers that came by.) But the encounter with Akira Tashiro, senior staff writer and special project editor at The Chugoku Shimbun, the Hiroshima city daily, was unique. Tashiro has been at the newspaper since 1972, and has done wonderful work on a number of fronts. His writing seems to be among the most progressive in Japan, especially when it concerns nuclear weapons. Perhaps this is to be expected. “One hundred and thirteen of a staff of 350 died when the bomb dropped,” he says of his newspaper. To be anti-nuclear, he says, “is only natural for us.” (Tashiro added that the above casualty number does not include people who died in the years subsequent due to the after effects of radiation.) Tashiro’s paper is no small-town newsletter. It has a circulation of 720,000, he informed us, and is among the hundred-largest newspapers in the world, according to the World Association of Newspapers. It’s wonderful, then, that it is doing such good work. Tashiro himself has undertaken some remarkable assignments. During the 1980s, he did an extensive project on Star Wars, aka, the Strategic Defense Initiative, for which he interviewed the likes of Edward Teller and Robert McNamara. (Teller was adamantly insistent that Japan also join in the scheme, Tashiro says, because he wanted Japanese funding for his boondoggle. That interview was “confrontational,” he remembers.) In the early ’90s, Tashiro did a series of articles on the effects of Depleted Uranium on returning Gulf War soldiers. For this, he interviewed numerous veterans and catalogued the multiple effects of Gulf War Syndrome. Tashiro still can’t believe that, in spite of all the evidence, the Pentagon still officially denies that the syndrome actually exists. Tashiro is currently in the United States for a few months to work on his existing project—the changes the country has undergone since September 11. He has been traveling the country speaking with people from all backgrounds. Tashiro’s writings have had a concrete impact back home. His Depleted Uranium series helped initiate awareness about an issue that almost no one in Japan had heard about, he says. And, after India and Pakistan detonated their bombs in 1998, an article of his led to a delegation of Japanese peace activists and bomb survivors visiting both countries. It also helped create a project that invites Indian and Pakistani youth to Hiroshima every year. Tashiro is critical of current politicians in Japan, including the new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The leaders are rightwing and don’t want to remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki because that raises uncomfortable questions, he says. Due to this, the younger generation, including in Hiroshima itself, is slowly forgetting what happened sixty-one years ago, he says. Tashiro is also disapproving of the belligerent attitude that many in Japan and the United States have toward North Korea, saying that the only solution to the standoff is by engaging the country and its leadership, both directly and through South Korea. He says that North Korea can be deterred by traditional means because it knows it would be annihilated if it used its nuclear weapons. It was a real privilege listening to Tashiro expound on his work and his views. The dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima was a cataclysmic moment in modern history, and it is heartening to know that some people are dedicating their life’s work to ensure that we don’t let another Hiroshima happen. Meeting Akira Tashiro was a real honor. It was like a part of Hiroshima visiting us. (To read some of Tashiro’s work in English, please go to http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp) -------- iran Why Bush Will Nuke Iran by Paul Craig Roberts Antiwar.com September 26, 2006 http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=9749 The neoconservative Bush administration will attack Iran with tactical nuclear weapons, because it is the only way the neocons believe they can rescue their goal of U.S. (and Israeli) hegemony in the Middle East. The U.S. has lost the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Generals in both war theaters are stating their need for more troops. But there are no troops to send. Bush has tried to pawn Afghanistan off on NATO, but Europe does not see any point in sacrificing its blood and money for the sake of American hegemony. The NATO troops in Afghanistan are experiencing substantial casualties from a revived Taliban, and European governments are not enthralled over providing cannon fodder for U.S. hegemony. The "coalition of the willing" has evaporated. Indeed, it never existed. Bush's "coalition" was assembled with bribes, threats, and intimidation. Pervez Musharraf, the American puppet ruler of Pakistan, let the cat out of the bag when he told CBS' 60 Minutes on Sept. 24, 2006, that Pakistan had no choice about joining the "coalition." Brute coercion was applied. Musharraf said Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage told the Pakistani intelligence director that "you are with us" or "be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age." Armitage is trying to deny his threat, but Dawn Wire Service, reporting from Islamabad on Sept. 16, 2001, on the pressure Bush was putting on Musharraf to facilitate the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, stated: "'Pakistan has the option to live in the 21st century or the Stone Age' is roughly how U.S. officials are putting their case." That Musharraf would volunteer this information on American television is a good indication that Bush has lost the war. Musharraf can no longer withstand the anger he has created against himself by helping the U.S. slaughter his fellow Muslims in Bush's attempt to exercise U.S. hegemony over the Muslim world. Bush cannot protect Musharraf from the wrath of Pakistanis, and so Musharraf has explained himself as having cooperated with Bush in order to prevent the U.S. destruction of Pakistan: "One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that's what I did." Nevertheless, he said, he refused Bush's "ludicrous" demand that he arrest Pakistanis who publicly demonstrated against the U.S.: "If somebody's expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views." Bush's defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel's defeat by Hezbollah in Lebanon have shown that the military firepower of the U.S. and Israeli armies, though effective against massed Arab armies, cannot defeat guerillas and insurgencies. The U.S. has battled in Iraq longer than it fought against Nazi Germany, and the situation in Iraq is out of control. The Taliban have regained half of Afghanistan. The king of Saudi Arabia has told Bush that the ground is shaking under his feet as unrest over the American/Israeli violence against Muslims builds to dangerous levels. Our Egyptian puppet sits atop 100 million Muslims who do not think that Egypt should be a lackey of U.S. hegemony. The king of Jordan understands that Israeli policy is to drive every Palestinian into Jordan. Bush is incapable of recognizing his mistake. He can only escalate. Plans have long been made to attack Iran. The problem is that Iran can respond in effective ways to a conventional attack. Moreover, an American attack on another Muslim country could result in turmoil and rebellion throughout the Middle East. This is why the neocons have changed U.S. war doctrine to permit a nuclear strike on Iran. Neocons believe that a nuclear attack on Iran would have intimidating force throughout the Middle East and beyond. Iran would not dare retaliate, neocons believe, against U.S. ships, U.S. troops in Iraq, or use their missiles against oil facilities in the Middle East. Neocons have also concluded that a U.S. nuclear strike on Iran would show the entire Muslim world that it is useless to resist America's will. Neocons say that even the most fanatical terrorists would realize the hopelessness of resisting U.S. hegemony. The vast multitude of Muslims would realize that they have no recourse but to accept their fate. Revised U.S. war doctrine concludes that tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons cause relatively little "collateral damage" or civilian deaths, while achieving a powerful intimidating effect on the enemy. The "fear factor" disheartens the enemy and shortens the conflict. University of California Professor Jorge Hirsch, an authority on nuclear doctrine, believes that an American nuclear attack on Iran will destroy the Nonproliferation Treaty and send countries in pell-mell pursuit of nuclear weapons. We will see powerful nuclear alliances, such as Russia/China, form against us. Japan could be so traumatized by an American nuclear attack on Iran that it would mean the end of Japan's sycophantic relationship to the U.S. There can be little doubt that the aggressive U.S. use of nukes in pursuit of hegemony would make America a pariah country, despised and distrusted by every other country. Neocons believe that diplomacy is feeble and useless, but that the unapologetic use of force brings forth cooperation in order to avoid destruction. Neoconservatives say that America is the new Rome, only more powerful than Rome. Neoconservatives genuinely believe that no one can withstand the might of the United States and that America can rule by force alone. Hirsch believes that the U.S. military's opposition to the use of nuclear weapons against Iran has been overcome by the civilian neocon authorities in the Bush administration. Desperate to retrieve their drive toward hegemony from defeat in Iraq, the neocons are betting on the immense attraction to the American public of force plus success. It is possible that Bush will be blocked by Europe, Russia, and China, but there is no visible American opposition to Bush legitimizing the use of nuclear weapons at the behest of U.S. hegemony. It is astounding that such dangerous fanatics have control of the U.S. government and have no organized opposition in American politics. ---- Media Tall Tales for the Next War by Norman Solomon Antiwar.com September 26, 2006 http://www.antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=9746 The Sept. 25 edition of Time magazine illustrates how the U.S. news media are gearing up for a military attack on Iran. The headline over the cover-story interview with Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is "A Date With a Dangerous Mind." The big-type subhead calls him "the man whose swagger is stirring fears of war with the U.S.," and the second paragraph concludes: "Though pictures of the Iranian president often show him flashing a peace sign, his actions could well be leading the world closer to war." When the USA's biggest news weekly devotes five pages to scoping out a U.S. air war against Iran, as Time did in the same issue, it's yet another sign that the wheels of our nation's war-spin machine are turning faster toward yet another unprovoked attack on another country. Ahmadinejad has risen to the top of Washington's – and the American media's – enemies list. Within the last 20 years, that list has included Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, and Slobodan Milosevic, with each subjected to extensive vilification before the Pentagon launched a large-scale military attack. Whenever the president of the United States decides to initiate or intensify a media blitz against a foreign leader, mainstream U.S. news outlets have dependably stepped up the decibels and hysteria. But the administration can also call off the dogs of war by going silent about the evils of some foreign tyrant. Take Libya's dictator, for instance. For more than a third of a century, Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi has been a despot whose overall record of repression makes Noriega or Milosevic seem relatively tolerant of domestic political foes. But ever since Gaddafi made a deal with the Bush administration in December 2003, the silence out of Washington about Gaddafi's evils has been notable. When Gaddafi publicly celebrated the 37th anniversary of his dictatorship a few weeks ago, he declared in a speech on state television: "Our enemies have been crushed inside Libya, and you have to be ready to kill them if they emerge anew." The New York Times noted that Gaddafi's regime "criminalizes the creation of opposition parties." Today, while the human rights situation in Iran is reprehensible, the ongoing circumstances are far worse under many governments favored by Washington. Here at home, media outlets should be untangling double standards instead of contributing to them. But so many reporters and pundits have internalized Washington's geopolitical agendas that the mainline institutions of journalism continue to rot from within. That the rot goes largely unnoticed is testimony to how Orwellian "doublethink" has been normalized. These are not issues of professionalism any more than concerns about public health are issues of medicine. The news media should be early warning systems that inform us before current events become unchangeable history. But when the media system undermines the free flow of information and prevents wide-ranging debate, what happens is a parody of democracy. That's what occurred four years ago during the media buildup for the invasion of Iraq. Now, warning signs are profuse: The Bush administration has Iran in the Pentagon's sights. And the drive toward war, fueled by double standards about nuclear development and human rights, is getting a big boost from U.S. media coverage that portrays the president as reluctant to launch an attack on Iran. Time magazine reports that "from the State Department to the White House to the highest reaches of the military command, there is a growing sense that a showdown with Iran … may be impossible to avoid." The same kind of media spin – assuming a sincere Bush desire to avoid war – was profuse in the months before the invasion of Iraq. The more that news outlets tell such fairy tales, the more they become part of the war machinery. -------- pakistan Musharraf writes on nuclear links By David E. Sanger The New York Times Published: September 26, 2006 http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/26/news/nukes.php WASHINGTON President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan has written in a memoir that he now believes that the equipment sent to North Korea several years ago by Pakistan's nuclear chief included some of Pakistan's most technologically advanced nuclear centrifuges. The assertion has deepened the mystery about how much progress North Korea has made in what is often called its second, and very secret, nuclear program. Musharraf has been promoting the new book, "In the Line of Fire" (Free Press), in appearances from the East Room of the White House to American morning talk shows. The book was released Monday. In it, he says for the first time that his suspicions about the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer who built an illicit nuclear network that also supplied Iran and Libya, dated back to 1999. "I received a report suggesting that some North Korean nuclear experts, under the guise of missile engineers, had arrived" at Pakistan's nuclear laboratories "and were being given secret briefings," the book says. The timing is significant because it was not until more than three years later, in 2002, that the United States gathered solid evidence that North Korea was trying to enrich uranium, a step toward producing nuclear fuel for weapons that require centrifuge technology. But Musharraf, who took over as president in 1999 in a coup, apparently never shared his suspicions with the United States. "It's a significant admission," one senior U.S. intelligence official said, "since the Pakistanis spent years denying that there was any evidence of dealings with North Korea and telling us, 'No problem here.'" The official would not agree to let his name be used and said he had not had time to read the book closely. North Korea has openly boasted of producing plutonium, a different approach to getting fuel for nuclear weapons, at its main nuclear facility at Yongbyon since it forced international inspectors to leave the country three and a half years ago. But through much of the 1990s, the plutonium program was frozen under an agreement reached with the Clinton administration. Musharraf's account - which seems to be based on his own recollections and on Pakistani interrogations of Khan, who is under house arrest and undergoing treatment for cancer - supports other intelligence reports that North Korea began searching in the 1990s for an alternative way to make a nuclear weapon. It settled on the same approach Iran is using: enriching uranium, with prototypes and designs provided by Khan and his network for tens of millions of dollars. Iran says its enrichment is solely for peaceful purposes. But U.S. intelligence officials say it is still unclear where in North Korea this uranium enrichment may be under way or how much progress may have been made. U.S. assessments of North Korea's nuclear programs have been largely guesswork. Part of the mystery surrounds what kind of technology North Korea received. At first, it was assumed that it bought Pakistan's cast-offs, like a first- generation centrifuge, the P-1, identical to the kind that Iran is now trying to get running at its main nuclear fuel plant. But Musharraf's account suggests that North Korea might have leaped ahead to the next generation, the P-2, which can enrich more uranium and is faster. Musharraf's account is important because it suggests North Korea and Iran are working with the same advanced equipment, at secret locations. Musharraf denies in the book that any senior Pakistani officials, himself included, knew about Khan's illicit activities. He never explains how Khan was able to fly his goods to North Korea and Iran on Pakistani military aircraft. He describes the engineer as "such a self-centered and abrasive man that he could not be a team player." "He had a huge ego," Musharraf writes, adding that, "he had managed to build himself up into Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer rolled into one." Musharraf blames Karzai Musharraf, bristling at allegations that his country harbors Taliban rebels, criticized Afghanistan's leader, saying he failed to draw people away from the Islamic militants, Reuters reported from New York. Musharraf and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who are due to meet President George W. Bush on Tuesday, have been odds over Afghan accusations that Taliban leaders are running the insurgency Quetta, Pakistan. The Pakistani leader said Karzai needed to do more to end marginalization of ethnic Pushtun who formed the main support base for the Taliban. "The sooner Mr. President Karzai understands his own country's environment, the easier it will be for him," Musharraf said Monday. -------- MILITARY -------- landmines UN: It will take over a year to clear Lebanon of cluster bombs By Reuters 26/09/2006 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/767528.html Up to a million unexploded cluster bombs fired by the Israel Defense Forces are now the biggest threat facing civilians in south Lebanon, UN agencies said on Tuesday, adding that it could take more than a year to clear all the ordance from Lebanon. The agencies said the unexploded bombs litter streets, homes and orchards. Fourteen people have been killed and 90 wounded by unexploded ordnance since the end of the war in mid-August, with all the fatalities and most of the injuries caused by cluster munitions, the UN Mine Action Coordination Center said. So far, the Lebanese Army, United Nations peacekeepers, the UN Mine Action Coordination Center and its contractors have cleared almost 40,000 unexploded cluster bombs, but up to a million more remain. With an estimated 12-15 months needed to clear the south of cluster bombs, they pose mortal danger to displaced civilians returning to their villages after the 34-day war, the UN said. "The problem now rests with cluster bombs. They get caught up in bushes, in trees, in hedges. They get caught up in wire fences... They are lying in people's houses, in their front gardens," Chris Clark, program manager of the UN Mine Action Coordination Center in southern Lebanon, told a news conference. "A lot of these cluster bombs, small as they are, are caught up in the rubble and pose a continuing problem to any reconstruction ... but the main problem will be for people who just want to go back to their houses, clear the rubble out and try to restore their lives," Clark added. Clark said Israel had also yet to provide detailed information on the amounts of cluster bombs fired or the coordinates of the strikes, which would help munitions clearance teams identify the main areas on which to focus their efforts. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said some 200,000 Lebanese remained displaced, their return home slowed by the destruction of their houses and by unexploded bombs. With winter coming up and most people in the south relying on agriculture for their main source of income, the UNHCR is concerned that farmers will be unable to return to their fields, robbing them of their livelihood, or will face a deadly threat if they do as rain sinks the bombs into the soil. "Displacement which we would have expected to end much more quickly is going to continue for many, many more months to come... We expect that instead of the displacement ending so people can return to their homes in 12 months or so now it could take up to 24 months," UNHCR's Arjun Jain said. Clark said that Israel fired around 3,000 bombs, rockets and artillery a day into Lebanon in the early days of the war, rising to some 6,000 a day at the end, with around 40 percent of the cluster bombs dropped on the south failing to explode. Israel denies using cluster bombs illegally. -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- terrorism Negroponte Tries to Cloud Terror Report by Ivan Eland September 26, 2006 Antiwar.com http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=9750 John D. Negroponte, President Bush's director of national intelligence, is now busy undermining a National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has worsened radical Islamic terrorism around the world. He previously had approved the document. According to the New York Times, the highly classified estimate, a consensus view of the 16 spy agencies of the U.S. intelligence community, finds that the U.S. invasion of a Muslim land has motivated the radical Islamic jihadist movement to metastasize and spread around the world. Yet Negroponte, the president's political appointee who is in charge, nominally at least, of the 16 agencies, came up with the usual twisted Bush administration phraseology to undercut his own estimate. Negroponte, in what can only be termed Washington gobbledygook, said of the estimate, "The conclusions of the intelligence community are designed to be comprehensive, and viewing them through the narrow prism of a fraction of judgments distorts the broad framework they create." That fraction of judgments appears to be 100 percent of the 16 intelligence agencies, because the National Intelligence Estimate represents the consensus view of that community. If instead Negroponte means that leaks of the report by intelligence officials misrepresent the actual classified report, such distortion is unlikely, because the New York Times interviewed more than a dozen officials from various government agencies and outside experts, a sampling of both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. In reality, Negroponte, without much of a defense for the colossally horrendous ill-effects of the Iraq invasion, is attempting the age-old Washington trick of throwing out arguments, no matter how lame or twisted, to muddy the waters when really bad news has hit the media. A good intelligence professional would stand by and defend the best judgment of his trained intelligence analysts and himself, but alas, Negroponte is also one of the president's political appointees. So by clouding the matter, he is attempting to lessen the erosion of public confidence on the one issue on which Republicans and the president outpoll the Democrats: effectiveness in fighting the war on terror. Unfortunately, for the Republicans, the intelligence estimate ties together the Democrats' favorite issue, Iraq, with the war on terror, in a way that's unfavorable for the GOP. Although the intelligence estimate is nonpolitical, those in the intelligence community who leaked were not behaving as such. The estimate was completed last April, but was leaked, strategically, just before an important midterm election that will decide who's in charge of the House of Representatives, and maybe even the Senate. Most of the U.S. intelligence community has an intense distaste for the Bush administration – arising from pressure on spy agencies by Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials before the war, to make the Iraqi threat "larger than life," and from the administration's leaking of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Also, when deciding whether to invade Iraq, the administration refused to pay attention to an analysis from intelligence agencies that concluded that even if Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, he was unlikely to use them or give them to terrorists, unless the United States were to back him into a corner by threatening the existence of his regime. Finally, the administration did not heed the intelligence community warning made in January 2003, before the war, that a U.S. invasion could cause internal strife in Iraq for a long time. Now the administration is learning that payback from spy agencies is hell, especially during an important election year. Given Bush's Iraq invasion and his inflammatory rhetoric in the war on terror designed for domestic voters, using words such as "crusade" and "the struggle for civilization" – when combined with the pope's veiled attack on Islam – it's no wonder the U.S. intelligence community has confirmed that the wildfire of radical Islamic terrorism is being intensified worldwide. It's a shame that our governmental and religious leaders cannot behave more responsibly and make the world a safer place, instead of endangering us all by generating more hatred. ---- Anthrax Not Weapons-Grade, Official Says By WILLIAM J. BROAD New York Times September 26, 2006 http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/sf/nyt9_26_06_2.htm Seeking to clear up public confusion, an F.B.I. official has reiterated the bureau’s judgment that the anthrax in the letter attacks five years ago bore no special coatings to increase its deadliness and no hallmarks of a military weapon. In theory, that finding could widen the pool of potential suspects in the unsolved case since the perpetrator would have required less skill and could have worked with more commonplace materials. What started as the largest criminal investigation in American history now, five years later, appears to be stalled. The statement by the Federal Bureau of Investigation official contradicts an array of assessments over the years about the anthrax attacks, which in late 2001 killed 5 people and sickened 17 others. Tainted letters were dropped into a mailbox in Princeton, N.J., sending anthrax to several news media offices and two United States senators. Soon after, a variety of public and private experts proclaimed the deadly spores to have been specially treated to enhance their ability to float in the air and reach deep into human lungs, where they could germinate and kill their host. Some experts called the anthrax military-grade. But the bureau official, Douglas J. Beecher, a scientist at the F.B.I. Laboratory in Quantico, Va., disputed such claims as misguided in a recent journal article. “A widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production,” Dr. Beecher wrote in the August issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology. “The persistent credence given to this impression fosters erroneous preconceptions, which may misguide research and preparedness efforts and generally detract from the magnitude of hazards posed by simple spore preparations.” The F.B.I. declined to make available lead scientists in the inquiry. The Hartford Courant and The Washington Post referred to the Beecher piece in recent articles. William C. Patrick III, a scientist who once made germ weapons for the American military and is now a private consultant on biological defense, agreed with the F.B.I.’s assessment. “The material was good, but not weapons grade,” Mr. Patrick said in an interview. “You can’t make that in your basement. It requires sophisticated equipment.” The misconceptions in the case began early, reinforced by edgy public officials and federal scientists struggling to assess an unfamiliar threat quickly. In Washington, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology studied the anthrax and found what it believed to be added silica, a signature of military anthrax. “This was a key component,” an institute official said at the time. “Silica prevents the anthrax from aggregating, making it easier to aerosolize.” Last year, Edward G. Lake, a retired computer systems analyst in Racine, Wis., self-published a book, “Analyzing the Anthrax Attacks,” that documented the silica misunderstanding as well as many other federal and private blunders. “There were,” Mr. Lake said in an interview, “a lot of false assumptions.” For its part, the F.B.I. has quietly but fairly consistently argued for a humdrum explanation. In November 2001, it said the culprit was probably a domestic loner with at least limited scientific expertise who was able to use laboratory equipment obtained for as little as $2,500. Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army biodefense expert, came under intense scrutiny in the case even as he vigorously proclaimed his innocence. His extensive ties to the American military establishment seemed like circumstantial evidence of guilt among those who saw the anthrax as highly refined and possibly of weapons-grade. In 2003, Dr. Hatfill sued the bureau and the Justice Department, saying leaks to the news media about him and the public description of him by Attorney General John Ashcroft as a “person of interest” in the case had violated his privacy rights. He also has defamation suits pending against The New York Times, Reader’s Digest and Vanity Fair. Joseph Persichini Jr., acting assistant director of the Washington field office of the F.B.I., said in a recent statement that the bureau’s “commitment to solving this case is undiminished.” “Despite the frustrations that come with any complex investigation,’’ he said, “no one in the F.B.I. has, for a moment, stopped thinking about the innocent victims of these attacks — nor has the effort to solve this case in any way been slowed.” Nicholas Wade contributed reporting. -------- POLITICS -------- us politics Consult America – Before the Next War by Patrick J. Buchanan September 26, 2006 CREATORS SYNDICATE http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=9748 "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war." So Winston Churchill is widely quoted. Those words, however, were spoken in 1954, decades after Churchill's voice had been the most bellicose for war in 1914 and 1939, the wars that bled and broke his beloved empire. Yet Churchill's quote frames well the main question on the mind of Washington, D.C.: Will President Bush effect the nuclear castration of Iran before he leaves office, or has he already excluded the war option? One school contends that the White House has stared down the gun barrel at the prospect of war with Iran, and backed away. The costs and potential consequences – thousands of Iranian dead, a Shia revolt against us in Iraq joined by Iranian "volunteers," the mining of the Straits of Hormuz, $200-a-barrel oil, Hezbollah strikes on Americans in Lebanon, terror attacks on our allies in the Gulf and on Americans in the United States – are too high a price to pay for setting back the Iranian nuclear program a decade. Another school argues thus: If Tehran survives the Bush era without dismantling its nuclear program, Bush will be a failed president. He declared in his 2002 State of the Union Address that no axis-of-evil nation would be allowed to acquire the world's worst weapons. Iran and North Korea will have both defied the Bush Doctrine. His legacy would then be one of impotency in Iran and North Korea, and two failed wars – in Iraq and Afghanistan – which will be in their sixth and eighth years. Those who know him best say that George Bush is not a man to leave office with such a legacy. He will go to war first, even if no one goes along. But before America faces this question, two others need answering. Is Iran so close to a nuclear weapon that if we do not act now, it will be too late? Or do we have perhaps a decade before Iran has the capacity to build nuclear weapons? Early this year, Israel was warning that if Iran was not stopped by March 2006, it would be too late. Iran would by then have acquired the knowledge and experience needed to build nuclear weapons. The neoconservatives, too, have been demanding "Action this day!" and were stunned by Bush's statement at the United Nations that America does not oppose Iran's acquisition of peaceful nuclear power. The other side argues that Iran is perhaps a decade away from being able to produce enough fissile material for a bomb, that the 164 centrifuges Tehran has are so primitive and few in number it will take years even to produce fuel for nuclear power plants. While the International Atomic Energy Agency has not given Iran a clean bill of health, it has never concluded that Iran is working on a bomb. Where does this leave America? With grave questions, the answers to which should be given not by George Bush alone, but by the American people through their representatives in the Congress. Lest we forget, it is not President Bush who decides on war or peace. The Congress is entrusted with that power in the Constitution. The Founding Fathers wanted a clear separation between the commander in chief who would fight the war and the legislators who would declare it. They had had their fill of royal wars. Congress, when this election is over, should return to Washington to conduct hearings on how close Iran is to a nuclear capacity, and place that information before the nation. We do not need any more cherry-picked and stove-piped intelligence to take us to war. But the critical question that needs to be taken up in congressional and public debate is this: Even if Tehran is seeking a nuclear capacity, should the United States wage war to stop her? Is a nuclear-armed Iran more of an intolerable threat than was a nuclear-armed Stalin or Mao, both of whom America outlasted without war? Today, Republicans and Democrats are competing in calling Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a Hitler who will complete the Holocaust, a terrorist with whom we cannot deal. But the Iran he leads has not started a war since its revolution, 27 years ago, and knows that if it attacks America, it will invite annihilation as a nation. Bismarck called preemptive war committing suicide out of fear of death – not a bad description of what we did in invading Iraq. Today, President Bush does not have the constitutional authority to launch preemptive war. Congress should remind him of that, and demand that he come to them to make the case and get a declaration of war, before he undertakes yet another war – on Iran. Before any air strikes are launched on Iran's nuclear facilities, every American leader should be made to take a public stand for or against war. No more of these "If-only-I-had-known" and "We-were-misled" cop-outs. -------- ENERGY WRAPUP - Russia Turns Up Heat on Foreign Energy Projects Story by Tom Miles REUTERS RUSSIA: September 26, 2006 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/38254/newsDate/26-Sep-2006/story.htm MOSCOW - Russia turned up the heat on massive foreign-led energy projects on Monday, ordering a full environmental probe of Royal Dutch Shell's Sakhalin venture and warning TNK-BP over violations at its Kovykta gas field. Russian moves to put the brakes on Shell and Exxon Mobil developments on Sakhalin Island in Russia's Far East have raised suspicions the Kremlin is seeking a bigger stake for Gazprom in the multi-billion dollar projects, signed when oil prices were lower and power lay with foreign investors. Russian officials say they are motivated by concerns over the environment -- Sakhalin is adjacent to feeding grounds for the endangered Gray Whale -- and dissatisfaction the fields are running well over budget, cutting into Moscow's future earnings under the production sharing agreements that govern them. Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev said in a statement on Monday there was no question of removing Shell's licence for the world's biggest liquefied natural gas project. Shell was not immediately available for comment, but Sakhalin-2's Shell-owned operator Sakhalin Energy warned of delays last week after Russia revoked environmental permits. That dismayed import-dependent Japan which is looking to Sakhalin to meet much of its future energy needs. It also sparked protests from Brussels, London and The Hague. "There is no question of removing the licence because of the results of the investigation," Trutnev said. "The inspection should only examine whether the operator is abiding by environmental protection legislation, not the other aspects of resource use in Sakhalin region or offshore." Shell has infuriated the Kremlin by doubling its estimate of the project's cost to US$20 billion. Exxon's Sakhalin-1 project could cost US$17 billion, a Russian official said last week, a US$4.2 billion overshoot that Moscow says it will oppose. Both projects are governed by production sharing agreements which mean they recoup their costs before paying any royalties to the Kremlin, so cost increases push back the date when the Russian state can expect to see its first revenues. Later this week the deputy head of the environmental watchdog Oleg Mitvol will visit Sakahlin-2 and hold talks with project managers. British, German, Japanese, US, Dutch and South Korean diplomats are invited to attend. In another blow to foreign operators and energy hungry Asia refiners, Russia's technical standards watchdog said on Sept 21 more checks were needed on Exxon's Pacific terminal, meaning regular shipments could not start before mid-Nov. TNK-BP WARNING TNK-BP, a joint venture involving Britain's BP, had previously escaped Moscow's attentions. But on Monday Russian prosecutors warned TNK-BP unit Rusia Petroleum, which holds the licence to the huge Kovykta gas field in Russia's Far East, over violations of environmental law. Rusia Petroleum's general director Valery Pak received an official warning, the prosecutor general's office said in a statement on its website. This covered rule violations, the protection of nature and the conditions of the Kovykta licence agreement, it added. TNK-BP said only last week that there was no sign of any threat to its licence for Kovykta. "We haven't received anything on this. We've got all the permits in place, we've had all the environmental reviews, so I'm not sure what to make of this," said TNK-BP chief executive Robert Dudley at the time. Kovykta has reserves of more than 2 trillion cubic metres of gas, which TNK-BP wants to export to China. But Russian gas monopoly Gazprom has so far only allowed it a licence to supply gas to the local Irkutsk region. Sakhalin-2 involves the construction of the world's biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant with capacity of 9.6 million tonnes a year that would supply customers in Japan, the United States and Asian countries. -------- alternative energy Biofuels to Survive Lower Crude Prices - Official Story by Hari Ramachandran REUTERS INDIA: September 26, 2006 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/38258/newsDate/26-Sep-2006/story.htm MUMBAI - Bio-diesel projects will not be hit by the fall in crude oil prices as investors feel the current dip is temporary and prices will bounce back, a senior Indonesian trade official said on Monday. "Even if crude oil prices go down for a while, people believe after one or two years they will again go up," said Derom Bangun, executive chairman of the Indonesian Palm Oil Association. Palm oil can be added to gasoline to make bio-diesel at a cost of US$60-65 a barrel, analysts say, and used to run cars, power plants and factories. Crude oil prices touched a record-high of US$78.40 a barrel in July, but have since fallen to around US$60. "Developments in bio-diesel will continue and investments on new plants will not be hampered," Bangun told Reuters at the weekend on the sidelines of an edible oil conference. "It is not the government but private investors who will decide when and where to build biodiesel plants." The world's top palm oil producers, Malaysia and Indonesia, have each decided to set aside 6 million tonnes a year of the commodity as feedstock for production of biofuels and biodiesel, nearly 40 percent of their crude palm oil production. Palm oil is traditionally used in foods and cosmetics, but rising biofuel demand has sent palm oil prices soaring 12 percent this year. However, Malaysian crude palm oil futures plunged by more than 3 percent by midday on Monday to their lowest levels in more than two months, pushed lower by a decline in the prices of crude oil and soyoil. Biofuels are plant-based fuels, and include ethanol, which is made from sugar or grains and added to gasoline, and biodiesel, which is produced using oilseeds or palm oil. Biofuel plants are spreading around the world as countries look at ways to cut dependence on imported oil, curb greenhouse gas emissions and boost local agriculture. Bangun said Indonesia expected six new bio-diesel plants to be in operation by 2007, and about 500,000 tonnes of bio-diesel to be produced from three of these plants by early next year. He estimated about 600,000 tonnes of palm oil would be used for bio-diesel production in Indonesia in 2007. Indonesia expects about 15 million tonnes of palm oil output in 2006, of which about 11.3 million tonnes are likely to be exported and the remaining used domestically. Bangun told the conference that growing demand for biodiesel would support palm oil prices and were likely to drive them higher in the fourth quarter of 2006 and early part of 2007. He said during the next 12 months crude palm oil prices would be fluctuating in the range of US$510 to US$550 per tonne, cost and freight Rotterdam basis, with an average of US$530 per tonne. ---- Australian Renewable Energy Firm Axiom Plans IPO REUTERS AUSTRALIA: September 26, 2006 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/38257/newsDate/26-Sep-2006/story.htm SYDNEY - Australian renewable energy firm Axiom Energy Ltd is set to raise A$36 million (US$27 million) in a share market listing as it looks to tap into the fast-growing market for environmentally friendly fuels. Melbourne-based Axiom, which makes biodiesel fuels from renewable plant extracts and animal fats, is offering about 51.5 million shares at 70 Australian cents each in the initial public offering (IPO) to help fund its first biodiesel production plant. Fund managers said the likelihood of continued strong growth in biodiesel, driven by the increasing numbers of motorists turning to diesel-powered cars as petrol prices soar, is a key selling point for Axiom. "There has been a lot of interest in diesel these days given the high petrol price environment," said a fund manager at a European firm, who declined to be identified. "Axiom is probably in the right market," he added. Car manufacturers such as France's PSA Peugeot Citroen have already started selling cars that run on diesel in Australia and more are expected to follow suit. The plant will have a production capacity of 150 million litres of biodiesel a year. Australian consumption of diesel fuel is around 15 billion litres a year. Axiom's share offer comes as worries over a US economic slowdown and over the possibility of more interest rate rises this year have dampened investors' risk appetite. Australian IPOs raised just A$2.8 billion in the first six months of 2006, compared with A$14.41 billion raised in the whole of 2005. Uncertainty over the market outlook was behind a disappointing trading debut on Monday for another alternative fuel maker, Sterling Biofuels International Ltd. Sterling, which plans to build a plant in Malaysia to process palm oil into biodiesel, started trading at its issue price of A$1.00 before slumping as much as 12 percent to an intra-day low of A$0.88 as at 0338 GMT. But demand remains healthy for the right sort of offer, others said. "People are now more selective but there is still a lot of liquidity in the market," said Sinclair Currie, a portfolio manager at Deutsche Asset Management. Axiom's IPO closes on Oct. 20 and trading of its shares on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) is expected to commence on Oct. 31. Axiom had planned for an IPO in 2005 but backed out after the government said it would tax the company's diesel produced from waste plastics -- a product Axiom planned to make in a secondary operation but which it has since scrapped. (US$1=A$1.33) -------- OTHER -------- environment Earth Hottest in Thousands of Years WASHINGTON, DC, September 26, 2006 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2006/2006-09-26-01.asp The world's temperature has increased to levels not seen in at least 12,000 years, U.S. climate scientists report in today's issue of "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." Rapid warming has occurred in the past 30 years, the researchers said, and there is little doubt that human activities are the primary factor. Study coauthor James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies said the new findings imply that the world is "getting close to dangerous levels" of manmade greenhouse gases. The study concludes the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels in the current interglacial period, which has lasted nearly 12,000 years. This warming is also forcing a migration of plant and animal species toward the poles, the researchers said. Worldwide instrumental temperature measurements during the past century show the planet warmed at a rate of 0.36 degree Fahrenheit (0.2 degree Celsius) per decade for the past 30 years. This observed warming is similar to the warming rate predicted in the 1980s in initial global climate model simulations with changing levels of greenhouse gases, the researchers said. earth Furthermore, the warming in recent decades has brought global temperature to a level within about 1.8 degree Fahrenheit (one degree Celsius) of the maximum temperature of the past million years. "That means that further global warming of 1 degree Celsius defines a critical level," Hansen said. "If warming is kept less than that, effects of global warming may be relatively manageable." During the warmest interglacial periods, the climate was "reasonably similar" to today, Hansen added. "But if further global warming reaches 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know," he said. "The last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about three million years ago, when sea level was estimated to have been about 80 feet higher than today." Hansen added that global warming is already beginning to have noticeable effects in nature. Plants and animals can survive only within certain climatic zones - the warming of recent decades has thus forced many of them to begin to migrate poleward. A 2003 study that appeared in the journal "Nature" found that 1,700 plant, animal and insect species moved poleward at an average rate of about 4 miles per decade in the last half of the 20th century. Hansen said that migration rate is not fast enough to keep up with the current rate of movement of a given temperature zone, which has reached about 25 miles per decade in the period 1975 to 2005. "Rapid movement of climatic zones is going to be another stress on wildlife" Hansen said. "It adds to the stress of habitat loss due to human developments. If we do not slow down the rate of global warming, many species are likely to become extinct. In effect we are pushing them off the planet." Another key finding is the temperature change in the area of the Pacific Ocean where the sometimes dramatic weather pattern known as El Niño develops. An El Niño is an that typically happens every two to seven years when the warm surface waters in the West Pacific push eastward toward South America, in the process altering weather patterns around the word. Hansen and his colleagues suggest that increased temperature difference between the Western and Eastern Pacific may boost the likelihood of strong El Niños, such as those of 1983 and 1998. The study comes in the wake of a slew of new research documenting increased warming and the effects on the environment, particularly in the Arctic. polarbears European scientists recently reported dramatic openings over large areas of the Arctic's perennial sea ice pack in August and a study released last week found Greenland's ice sheet is melting far faster than scientists had previously thought. Two other studies published this month by NASA scientists indicate that Arctic sea ice is melting at extraordinary rates. One study found that the total amount of Arctic sea ice has fallen by 6 percent over each of the last two winters, compared to a loss of 1.5 percent per decade since 1979. The second study revealed that perennial sea ice in the Arctic shrank by 14 percent between 2004 and 2005, a striking change compared to the period between 1979 to 2003, when perennial ice decreased at a rate of 9 percent per decade. Furthermore, British scientists reported this month that ice core records from Antarctica show the current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide - the leading greenhouse gas - are higher now than at any time in the past 800,000 years and increasing at an unprecedented rate. -------- ACTIVISTS A Soldier of Conscience Is Coming Home By Paul Rockwell t r u t h o u t | Report Tuesday 26 September 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092606E.shtml I don't want to kill innocent people. - Darrell Anderson A soldier of conscience is coming home. On Saturday, September 30th, US Army war-resister Darrell Anderson, supported by Ontario military families and Iraq war veterans, will cross the Peace Bridge from Canada to the US. When asked why Darrell, after years of exile, is turning himself over to the military, his mother, Anita Dennis, told the Toronto Star: "He feels that everything he did was a moral stand and he has to follow it through, which means coming back and facing it, telling everybody what's happening to soldiers and the innocent Iraqi people." Darrell is a 22-year-old soldier from Lexington, Kentucky, who won a Purple Heart after he was wounded in Baghdad, where he spent seven months on duty. Darrell enlisted in the Army in 2003 in good faith. He wanted money for college, and he wanted to serve his country in time of need. It was the daily atrocities that turned Darrell against the war and transformed his view of military service. "I can't go back," he told me in an interview. "If I return to Iraq, I have no choice but to commit atrocities. And I don't want to kill innocent people." In one incident, Anderson was stationed at a checkpoint near a police station in Baghdad when a speeding car swerved in his direction. Darrell said he received orders to shoot. There was a family in the car - two children, a man and his wife. Darrell's buddies screamed: "Shoot! Why don't you shoot? Why don't you shoot?" He simply could not pull the trigger of his M-16. "The car posed no threat," he told me. "My superior came over and said, 'What are you doing!?' I said, 'Look, there's children in the back. It's a family. I did the right thing. It's wrong to fire in this situation.' My superior told me: 'No, you did the wrong thing. You will fire next time, or you will be punished. That's our orders.'" American soldiers are under constant pressure to kill Iraqi civilians, Darrell said. "At traffic stops, we kill innocent people all the time. If you are fired on from the street, you are supposed to fire on everybody that is there. If I am in a market, I shoot people who are buying groceries." I remember watching old World War II films where Nazis in Poland or Czechoslovakia would call civilians into the street, line them up, and threaten reprisals if they did not yield vital information. Occupiers need intelligence, but local natives rarely give information voluntarily. From the US raids on hamlets in Vietnam, to the French raids in the Casbah in Algeria, to the ongoing door-to-door raids in Iraq, the main features of imperial occupations have never changed. Darrell was involved in numerous nighttime raids on Iraqi homes. "When we raid homes in the middle of the night," Darrell explains, "twenty guys blow through the house at gunpoint, and it's pretty terrifying for all the Iraqi families. We kick down the doors or bash them with a sledgehammer. One team goes in to clear the bottom floor. The second team heads upstairs. The women are screaming and crying, the children are freakin' out, and the men ask us, 'Why, why, what have we done?' We separate the women, and their men are handcuffed and taken away. Even if we are looking for a single person, all the men are considered enemy until proven otherwise." "Once we raided a home based on faulty information we got from a drunk. We paid him for the tip. We busted into a house and yanked some guy and sent him to Abu Ghraib for torture ... Sometimes we closed off the whole section of a city and raided a couple hundred homes, door-to-door." Darrell compares Iraq to the tragedy of Vietnam, another American war in which unseen, distant commanders, whose own lives were never in danger, sent vulnerable young men and women into situations where war crimes become an everyday aspect of military conduct. "Baghdad is in rubble," he said. "The big buildings were blown up. Many were targets, and houses in Najaf are blown to pieces." Darrell summed up his feelings recently: "I started to think. What's it really for? I was willing to die for my country. I thought I was going over there to defend my country. But that's not what I was doing.... Innocent people are being killed every day. I still believe in my country, but I can no longer be a part of the Army or that war." Paul Rockwell is a writer who lives in Oakland, California.