NucNews October 4, 2006 -------- NUCLEAR -------- britain Royal opening for clean-up centre Wednesday, 4 October 2006 BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/5406734.stm The Princess Royal is to officially open a centre for research and training in cleaning up nuclear sites. The Caithness facility, called t3UK, is thought to be the first of its kind in the country, and has been driven by the decommissioning of nearby Dounreay. Princess Anne will be given a tour of the complex in Janetstown, near Thurso, and meet staff. Higher education institute UHI and local company JGC Engineering Technical Services are involved with the project. One of t3UK's main roles will be to research and develop new ways of dismantling nuclear sites and disposing of radioactive waste. The building also houses an arm of JGC, which develops and tests equipment for use in the clean-up of Dounreay. The UK Atomic Energy Authority, which runs the plant, expects decomissioning work to be completed in 2036. The 140-acre Dounreay site is being cleaned up at a cost of £2.9bn. ---- Plans to reopen radioactive dump Wednesday, 4 October 2006 BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/5405872.stm Radioactive waste materials and warheads are set to be dumped once again on Foulness Island in Essex but at much lower levels than in the past. The Environment Agency believes the government will soon give the go-ahead now a public consultation has ended. The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) transported decommissioned nuclear warheads to Foulness Island until 2003 and now wants to resume the practice. Consultation findings are due to be presented to Whitehall this month. Radioactive wastes containing tritium, arising from the decommissioning and maintenance of nuclear warheads at AWE Aldermaston and AWE Burghfield, were disposed of at Foulness between 1998 and 2003. Support for proposals Although there have been no transfers of wastes since 2003, the Ministry of Defence has asked that the disposal route be available in the future for potential disposals. The Environment Agency consultation document proposes to reduce the volume and amount of radioactivity in the wastes consigned to Foulness. David Griffiths, of the Environment Agency, said local residents are generally in favour of the plans. He said: "Once we told residents what was being proposed and why, most people were as happy as they were ever going to be. "They were generally supportive of our proposals and we assured them that only what needed to go there would be stored. "Some were worried that it would become some kind of radioactive dump but this was not true as it is waste that would be burned in incinerators on the island." The results of the public consultation are expected to show broad support, as long as the amount of waste is cut by 90%. ---- Nuclear waste --firm allays fears Oct 4 2006 ICT Amworth UK http://ictamworth.icnetwork.co.uk/news/localnews/tm_headline=nuclear-waste-%2D%2Dfirm-allays-fears-%26method=full%26objectid=17876595%26siteid=86764-name_page.html The company responsible for disposing of Britain's nuclear waste has stressed no underground storage would take place near Tamworth without public consultation. Government-owned company Nirex spoke out, after anti-nuclear campaigners claimed a hit list of potential nuclear burial sites, drawn up 20 years ago is about to be revisited. The list includes a site at Kingsbury along with another 11 in Warwickshire and one in Solihull. Anti-nuclear campaigners voiced their fears following recommendations by the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management that underground burial of radioactive waste is the best way forward. The Government is expected to endorse the committee's findings later this month. The Kingsbury site was primarily selected along with the others due to their geological suitability for high to medium level nuclear waste disposal and Nirex has agreed geology would play a key part in the decision. Anti-nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace, Nathan Argent, said: "Government acceptance of the recommendations will mean organisations like Nirex will have to go back and revisit the sites to see if they are still suitable." Greenpeace believes burying radioactive waste is unsafe in the long term and could prove fatal to future generations. But Nirex spokesman Ben Russell said: "There is a legitimate process taking place, but all Greenpeace is doing is trying to undermine it. They just seem to be playing spoiler tactics." Nirex believes underground disposal offers the safest means of dealing with long-term radioactive waste. Mr Russell said: "There are 37 locations in the UK which have radioactive waste in temporary locations. "Some of this waste will be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years and therefore needs to be put in a proper long-term facility." Underground disposal is now favoured by most countries including the US and Japan. Mr Russell said: "You can find geological formations which have not changed for billions of years. "We are very fortunate in the UK because we are not on a geological fault line. We don't get earthquakes and volcanoes." He said the disposal of nuclear waste was not about 'digging a big hole and dumping it'. "It is a multi-barrier facility, the waste is chemically treated and put into stainless steel drums and they are placed in an engineering facility about 500 to 1,000 metres down in solid, stable bedrock. "That will then be filled with a concrete solution that will seal it in." Mr Russell conceded the drums would eventually degrade, but he said: "By that time something like 90 per cent of the radioactivity will have decayed. "What is left will be within an underground cavern and eight to nine percent will decay within that cavity before it even gets to the geological rock." He said what was left would be absorbed by the natural rock, leaving at worst 0.005 per cent of the original radioactive content, making it to the surface in hundreds of thousands of years time. The Government believes local communities can be given incentives to put themselves forward for underground storage sites such as compensation or cheaper electricity. -------- business GE, SILEX Receive U.S. Government Authorizations Required To Proceed With Uranium Enrichment Technology Deal GE Energy 10/4/2006 WebWire http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=21603 WILMINGTON, N.C. - October 4, 2006 :- GE Energy’s nuclear business and Australia materials technology developer Silex Systems Limited have received the U.S. government authorizations required to proceed with an agreement granting GE exclusive rights to develop and commercialize Silex’s advanced, laser-based uranium enrichment technology. The ‘SILEX’ Technology is the world’s first, third-generation process for enriching uranium used as fuel in commercial nuclear reactors. It is designed to be an ultra-efficient, more cost-effective production system than existing, extremely energy-intensive gaseous diffusion or capital-intensive centrifuge enrichment methods. The agreement provides for a phased approach to the commercialization of the SILEX technology and the potential construction of a commercial enrichment facility. These operations would be funded by GE and built at GE’s existing nuclear energy headquarters and technology site in Wilmington, N.C. or another suitable location in the United States. In return, GE will provide Silex with a series of scheduled payments as specific technology development milestones are reached, and ultimately royalty payments based on revenues generated by commercial operations using the SILEX Technology. “GE’s agreement with Silex comes at an ideal time, just as the global nuclear industry is preparing to build new reactors around the world,” said Andy White, president and CEO of GE Energy’s nuclear business. “These new reactors will require a steady supply of enriched fuel. We expect the SILEX Technology to help us fulfill the industry’s growing fuel demands.” Dr. Michael Goldsworthy, who founded Silex in 1988, noted that the commercial arrangement with GE presents Silex with its best opportunity to see its years of work come to fruition. “We are excited to proceed with GE towards completion of the various phases of the process contemplated by the agreement, including a test loop demonstration facility and full-scale commercial production,” he said. “We anticipate that the SILEX Technology will play a crucial role in supporting the expansion of carbon-free nuclear electricity generation throughout the world.” GE already provides a number of nuclear products and services. With the SILEX Technology, GE will be able to expand into the enrichment sector and enhance its ability to serve customers in the nuclear industry. “GE’s commercialization of the SILEX enrichment technology is a crucial part of our long-term growth strategy for the nuclear business, positioning GE to be a leading global competitor in the industry for decades to come,” White said. GE Energy’s nuclear business develops advanced light water reactors and provides a wide array of technology-based products and services to help owners of both boiling and pressurized water reactors safely operate their facilities with greater efficiency and output. About GE Energy GE Energy (www.ge.com/energy) ) is one of the world’s leading suppliers of power generation and energy delivery technologies, with 2005 revenue of $16.5 billion. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, GE Energy works in all areas of the energy industry including coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy; renewable resources such as water, wind, solar and biogas; and other alternative fuels. Numerous GE Energy products are certified under ecomagination, GE’s corporate-wide initiative to aggressively bring to market new technologies that will help customers meet pressing environmental challenges. ---- Authorities approve GE uranium plan, possible Wilmington plant October 4, 2006 Triangle Business Journal http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2006/10/02/daily20.html?from_rss=1 GE Energy Inc. said Wednesday that U.S. government regulators have given the green light for the company to develop and commercialize a laser-based, uranium-enrichment technology and possibly build manufacturing facilities in Wilmington. Atlanta-based GE Energy had announced in May a deal with Silex Systems Ltd. to develop the technology. The agreement between GE Energy and the Sydney, Australia, company gives GE the right to commercialize the technology under a "phased approach" and possibly build a test loop, pilot plant and a full-scale, commercial enrichment plant. The facilities would be built at GE's existing nuclear energy headquarters in Wilmington "or another suitable location in the United States," the company said in May. GE officials said the company would pay Silex an undisclosed amount in scheduled milestone payments and royalties should the technology reach commercialization. Financial details were not disclosed. The Silex technology represents a new, laser-based "isotope separation" process for enriching uranium for use in civilian nuclear power plants. It is more efficient than existing civilian fuel enrichment processes such as gas diffusion or gas centrifuge plants, says GE. The low-grade enriched uranium would be used for industrial purposes. "GE's commercialization of the Silex enrichment technology is a crucial part of our long-term growth strategy for the nuclear business, positioning GE to be a leading global competitor in the industry for decades to come," said Andy White, president and CEO of GE Energy's nuclear business. About 6,000 of GE's 330,000 worldwide employees work in North Carolina, where the company has 20 locations. -------- depleted uranium Small victory for ailing G.I.s October 4, 2006 NY Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/458080p-385493c.html A Manhattan federal judge has ruled that a group of New York Army veterans who fell ill after inhaling depleted uranium dust from exploded U.S. shells can sue the federal government - but only for medical malpractice after their discharge. A 1950 Supreme Court decision - commonly known as the Feres Doctrine - has long prohibited suits against the federal government by soldiers, U.S. District Judge John Koeltl ruled last week. "To the extent that the injuries asserted in the plaintiffs' complaint arise out of their military service ... the court is without jurisdiction to hear those claims," Koeltl stated in his 29-page opinion. George Zelma, the plaintiffs' lead lawyer, had argued during a Sept. 6 hearing that despite the broad prohibition of the Feres Doctrine, Congress had never intended "our government to betray its own troops." Koeltl rejected Zelma's argument, but he did allow the eight former National Guardsmen to sue the government for medical malpractice they allege was committed by Veterans Administration doctors after they were discharged back into civilian life. "I'm satisfied that we got something," said Ray Ramos, one of the plaintiffs and a former NYPD cop who served as a sergeant in the 442nd Military Police Company in Iraq during 2003. "Because of the Feres Doctrine, I was afraid the judge would rule against us on everything," Ramos said. "This gives us a day in court." In April 2004, the Daily News revealed in a series of articles that several soldiers from the 442nd Military Police Company had been exposed to depleted uranium, a low-level radioactive heavy metal that has been used by the Pentagon since the 1991 Persian Gulf War in artillery penetrators and in the plating for M-1 tanks. Several soldiers from the 442nd - most of them cops, firefighters and correction officers in civilian life - had been sent home from Iraq in late 2003 with a variety of ailments that included constant headaches, blood in their urine, blurred vision, numbness in their hands and persistent rashes. The Army doctors could not account for any of the ailments. The men claimed they were never warned about possible uranium exposure while in Iraq, and when they returned home military doctors either refused to test them for exposure to the radioactive metal or in some cases lost their test results. Independent exams and analyses of urine samples arranged by The News for nine of the sick soldiers showed that at least four had inhaled depleted uranium dust, according to a nuclear medicine expert who conducted the tests. Another test sponsored by The News on a soldier from another National Guard unit, Gerard Matthew, revealed in September 2004 that he also had signs of depleted uranium exposure. In May 2004, Matthew's wife gave birth to a girl who was missing three fingers on one hand. Critics of the military's use of depleted uranium say the microscopic dust released by exploding shells can lodge in a person's lungs for years and cause physical or genetic damage from either the low-level radiation it emits or from its chemical toxicity. Pentagon officials have repeatedly defended its use as safe. The government says there have been virtually no illnesses documented among soldiers exposed to depleted uranium, even among those wounded with fragments from depleted uranium shells. The News' articles created a national firestorm, one that led the Pentagon to tighten testing procedures for all soldiers, and they sparked efforts in more than a dozen state legislatures to require testing of all returning National Guard troops. But the debate over depleted uranium continues to rage. Pentagon officials insist that depleted uranium shells, because of their incredible penetrating power, are an essential weapon that saves lives in combat. Opponents, on the other hand, say our military is spreading radioactive contamination. As for the former soldiers who dared to sue their government, they want a judge and jury and ordinary Americans to hear what happened to them as a result of depleted uranium exposure - and what our government did or didn't do about it. And Koeltl's decision may still make that possible. ---- Veteran speaks on his battles since returning from Gulf War Wednesday, October 4, 2006 Evelyn Cronce El Defensor Chieftain http://www.dchieftain.com/news/65273-10-04-06.html Veteran Jerry Wheat spoke to audiences at the Disable American Veterans Hall and at the Socorro Public Library about his experiences in the first Gulf War in 1991. He especially spoke on the physical and bureaucratic problems he continues to battle from wounds received when his Bradley armored personnel carrier was accidentally hit twice by "friendly fire" with American shells made from depleted uranium. Wheat was deployed in Saudi Arabia in late December 1990 with the 3rd Armored Division of the 47th Cavalry. On Feb. 27, 1991, on a reconnaissance mission in Iraq, Wheat found himself in a sandstorm facing the enemy's Republican Guard. The Bradley he was driving pulled back to reload and was hit by an armor-piercing round. When he came to, he was on fire and removed most of his clothing, including his bulletproof vest. When he discovered that the Bradley would still run, he attempted to head back to his unit and was hit a second time. This time, without his protective gear, the shrapnel penetrated his body and became embedded. Wheat was evacuated to the field hospital where the shrapnel was removed. He said the pieces were small, the largest being only about three-quarters of an inch. His commanding officer told Wheat that he was lucky to be alive after having been hit by two T-72 Russian tank rounds. "He didn't tell me I had been hit by 'friendly fire,'" Wheat said. For the next couple of weeks, until the ceasefire, Wheat continued to drive the Bradley until the engine finally quit and had no access to shower facilities. "I was just happy to be alive. The Bradley, my clothes and my sleeping bag were all covered in a fine dust, not sand," he said. "There were still pieces of shrapnel in my sleeping bag and my gear. The fine dust got over everything, including the MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat) I ate. There was no place to wash up." Then the ceasefire was declared and Wheat returned to his family at the base in Germany, but he started having health problems. He had still not had an opportunity to shower or clean up when he arrived home still dusty. His 3-year -old son, who had never had respiratory problems, was rushed to the hospital that night and spent the next week in the hospital with breathing problems. Wheat feared some kind of heavy metal poisoning. Wheat discovered that he had been hit by depleted uranium when his father, working at Los Alamos, took samples of the shrapnel from Wheat's sleeping bag and had them tested. Wheat brought the shrapnel from his gear and the shrapnel that had worked its way out of his body since the incident to the lecture. Damacio Lopez tested it with a Geiger counter and demonstrated that it registered 1,200 counts per minute. Wheat has had numerous health problems since the incident, but the Veterans Administration has not said that any of his problems, including the cancerous tumor in the bone of his shoulder, were caused by depleted uranium. He said the V.A. blames his problems on post-traumatic stress. Wheat's lecture was followed by a showing of the video documentary "Invisible War: The Politics of Radiation." Much audience discussion followed both the presentation and the video. There was a great deal of concern expressed about effects of depleted uranium as used by the military. Concern was expressed as well about historic testing of depleted uranium weapons, and whether or not it is still being tested, for the military at New Mexico Tech and at White Sands Missile Range. Tom Delahante, Disabled American Veterans president, suggested everyone who has been exposed to shrapnel from any of the Middle East conflicts or from Bosnia, either during the fighting or from souvenirs brought back by soldiers, or from the testing of depleted uranium done locally should contact the DAV. "You don't want to deal with the VA alone," said Delahante. "Jerry's story is typical." ecronce@dchieftain.com ---- Wis. House Candidate Cited In Minn. Oct 4, 2006 Associated Press http://wcco.com/crime/local_story_277071442.html (AP) Luck, Wis. The Green Party candidate in a northern Wisconsin U.S. House district said Tuesday he was cited for trespassing while protesting at a Minnesota munitions company that's been frequently targeted by peace demonstrators. Mike Miles of Luck said he was among 78 people ticketed Monday at Alliant Techsystems' headquarters in Edina, Minn., in trying to present some documents to company CEO Daniel Murphy. Miles said ATK produces depleted uranium ammunition, which he contends blurs the line between conventional and nuclear war and raises health risks for civilians and U.S. troops in Iraq. "Congress has been all but silent about the effect of depleted uranium weapons on Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops," Miles said in a statement. "In the meantime, cancers in troops and birth defects in their children are multiplying while VA benefits are being cut." Miles, 53, is running against U.S. Rep. Dave Obey, a Democrat, and Republican newcomer Nick Reid in Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District. ATK describes itself as a $3.4 billion advanced weapon and space systems company that employs about 15,000 people in 22 states. Company spokesman Bryce Hallowell said Tuesday night there was no documented evidence of health problems from the depleted uranium. He said ATK gets the substance from commercial suppliers and uses it in certain shells because it is the hardest substance for penetrating armor. The company, he said, remains determined to provide U.S. troops with the best possible weapons on the battlefield. Miles was arrested at ATK two years ago when he ran for the same House seat. -------- india India wary of 'game plan' 04 October 2006 Nuclear Engineering International http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectioncode=132&storyCode=2039373 Varying interpretations and last minute amendments in the Indo-US cooperation deal have shaken the Indian nuclear establishment and polarised political parties – problems that could derail the whole process. By Raghavendra Verma Fuel reprocessing, inspection schedules, civilian/military separation and unilateral moratoriums versus bilateral commitments: the list of hurdles potentially hindering the Indo-American nuclear cooperation deal, pending ratification by the USA Congress, is long. Under the agreement, India is supposed to separate its nuclear facilities into civilian and military categories. Those reactors defined as civilian will be open to full International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards and in return will receive imported nuclear material, technology and full international cooperation from the USA. However, in August, a group of top retired nuclear scientists, wary of vaguely defined provisions and their strategic implications, approached India’s parliamentarians to impress upon the government their concerns about the deal. They claimed that India’s right to conduct scientific research and undertake strategic policymaking is being compromised and that their secret programmes could be made open to the US government via the IAEA. They also warned about the loss of thousands of young scientists who might leave the country’s nuclear establishment for other jobs, once the prestige and challenge of innovation is taken away from them. Not only have they received support from right wing parties that are worried about perceived threats to India’s nuclear weapons programme, but they have also found allies in the communists who had opposed India testing an atom bomb in 1998. The latter are now more concerned about country’s alliance with the ‘imperialist Americans’. The cause of confusion lies in the language of the signed agreement, as explained by Arun Shourie, an opposition leader from the right wing BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) and the most vocal critic of the deal: “To every apprehension (expressed by scientists and opposition), the answer (by the government) used to be the bland assertion, ‘nothing will be done that violates the 18 July (2005) joint statement’,” in which India agreed to undertake the obligations and best practices that go with being a responsible nuclear weapons state. Shourie added: “But that sudden scripture was a general statement of intent, an empty vessel into which anything could be and was being poured.” Responding promptly to the uproar, prime minister Manmohan Singh has fought his corner and backed the deal with assurances on every point of confusion and emphasised that under the agreement: “We will be free to build new reactors and whether to declare them civilian or military will be our option.” This direct approach did pacify the scientists but their apprehensions lingered on. “Americans want India to abandon its frontier areas research in nuclear and other energy technologies, so that we always remains a buyer of such technologies and their plants,” said Adinarayana Gopalakrishnan, former chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, and an active campaigner against the proposed nuclear cooperation. Explaining what he saw as the “American game plan,” he said: “While India will be allowed to import only light water reactors, which use enriched uranium, the access to the key technologies for uranium enrichment, fuel reprocessing and heavy water will be denied.” The Indian government has pointed to the fact that India has an indigenous enrichment plant in Mysore, and has even claimed that it could supply fuel for the new plants, but Gopalakrishnan argues that it is too small and requires upgrading. Reacting to the amendments to the bill by US Congressmen that puts a binding obligation on India not to test nuclear weapons in the future, and denies India any right to leave the treaty on its own, the chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, Anil Kakodkar, said that India has no bilateral commitment to ban nuclear tests and it is exercising self-restraint only under a unilateral moratorium. He also stated that the inspections into the 14 nuclear facilities to be designated for power generation will begin only after the deal’s fuel supply and technology transfers actually start. In an interview with The Hindu newspaper, Kakodkar reminded the world about India’s track record as a “safe and responsible nuclear player” and made it clear that the Indian nuclear programme “will continue whether or not the deal with the US comes through.” Thorium programme The future of India’s nuclear programme relies heavily on its thorium-based fast breeder reactor project, which it has been pursuing for more than 30 years at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) in Kalpakkam, in south India. With more than 1000 scientists and engineers involved in the operations, the programme will remain outside the purview of any international inspections. In this project the 40MWt sodium cooled Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) has been operational for the last 20 years and work has commenced on building a demonstration fast breeder power reactor of 500MWe capacity, which is expected to start operations by 2011. This reactor will initially be fuelled with a mixed oxide of depleted uranium and plutonium, and subsequent units of this kind will use metallic alloy in place of the mixed oxide, to give a shorter fuel breeding time. Simultaneously, experts claim, all research and development work necessary to build the Indian nuclear programme’s final stage thorium/U-233 breeders is fast nearing completion and by 2020, the first of these reactors of 500MWe capacity are expected to be commissioned. Once India reaches this stage, given its abundant national resources of thorium, the country could rely upon nuclear power to provide long-term energy security. However, at present the energy shortage remains the most serious problem for the $692 billion Indian economy that is growing at more than 8% annually. Already its energy prices are among the highest in the world and per capita consumption amongst the lowest. The contribution of nuclear power from 18 functional reactors is less than 3% – or 3400MWe – which the Department of Atomic Energy plans to enhance to 20,000MWe over the next 15 years. To achieve this goal, government planners are advocating for private investments in the nuclear power sector and diversion of all the public funding earmarked for nuclear programmes to the development of fast breeder reactors. An Atomic Industrial Forum has already been set up to explore a possibility of starting a nuclear power generation company in joint venture between the state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation and Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, and private companies Larson & Toubro and Reliance Energy. Success of these ventures is greatly dependent on a future supply of uranium, which is a rare substance in India. There are four mines producing just 230 tonnes – 0.5% of world’s yearly output – and that too, said prime minister Singh, at a “quite prohibitive cost when compared to international prices.” Therefore lot depends on the outcome of the Indo-US nuclear deal and subsequent approval from the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the multinational body that controls the export of nuclear material, equipment and technology. These approvals will decide the fate of India’s request for uranium supply from Australia that was repeated during prime minister John Howard’s visit to New Delhi earlier this year. ---- India wary of 'game plan' 04 October 2006 Nuclear Engineering International http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectioncode=132&storyCode=2039373 Varying interpretations and last minute amendments in the Indo-US cooperation deal have shaken the Indian nuclear establishment and polarised political parties – problems that could derail the whole process. By Raghavendra Verma Fuel reprocessing, inspection schedules, civilian/military separation and unilateral moratoriums versus bilateral commitments: the list of hurdles potentially hindering the Indo-American nuclear cooperation deal, pending ratification by the USA Congress, is long. Under the agreement, India is supposed to separate its nuclear facilities into civilian and military categories. Those reactors defined as civilian will be open to full International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards and in return will receive imported nuclear material, technology and full international cooperation from the USA. However, in August, a group of top retired nuclear scientists, wary of vaguely defined provisions and their strategic implications, approached India’s parliamentarians to impress upon the government their concerns about the deal. They claimed that India’s right to conduct scientific research and undertake strategic policymaking is being compromised and that their secret programmes could be made open to the US government via the IAEA. They also warned about the loss of thousands of young scientists who might leave the country’s nuclear establishment for other jobs, once the prestige and challenge of innovation is taken away from them. Not only have they received support from right wing parties that are worried about perceived threats to India’s nuclear weapons programme, but they have also found allies in the communists who had opposed India testing an atom bomb in 1998. The latter are now more concerned about country’s alliance with the ‘imperialist Americans’. The cause of confusion lies in the language of the signed agreement, as explained by Arun Shourie, an opposition leader from the right wing BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) and the most vocal critic of the deal: “To every apprehension (expressed by scientists and opposition), the answer (by the government) used to be the bland assertion, ‘nothing will be done that violates the 18 July (2005) joint statement’,” in which India agreed to undertake the obligations and best practices that go with being a responsible nuclear weapons state. Shourie added: “But that sudden scripture was a general statement of intent, an empty vessel into which anything could be and was being poured.” Responding promptly to the uproar, prime minister Manmohan Singh has fought his corner and backed the deal with assurances on every point of confusion and emphasised that under the agreement: “We will be free to build new reactors and whether to declare them civilian or military will be our option.” This direct approach did pacify the scientists but their apprehensions lingered on. “Americans want India to abandon its frontier areas research in nuclear and other energy technologies, so that we always remains a buyer of such technologies and their plants,” said Adinarayana Gopalakrishnan, former chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, and an active campaigner against the proposed nuclear cooperation. Explaining what he saw as the “American game plan,” he said: “While India will be allowed to import only light water reactors, which use enriched uranium, the access to the key technologies for uranium enrichment, fuel reprocessing and heavy water will be denied.” The Indian government has pointed to the fact that India has an indigenous enrichment plant in Mysore, and has even claimed that it could supply fuel for the new plants, but Gopalakrishnan argues that it is too small and requires upgrading. Reacting to the amendments to the bill by US Congressmen that puts a binding obligation on India not to test nuclear weapons in the future, and denies India any right to leave the treaty on its own, the chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, Anil Kakodkar, said that India has no bilateral commitment to ban nuclear tests and it is exercising self-restraint only under a unilateral moratorium. He also stated that the inspections into the 14 nuclear facilities to be designated for power generation will begin only after the deal’s fuel supply and technology transfers actually start. In an interview with The Hindu newspaper, Kakodkar reminded the world about India’s track record as a “safe and responsible nuclear player” and made it clear that the Indian nuclear programme “will continue whether or not the deal with the US comes through.” Thorium programme The future of India’s nuclear programme relies heavily on its thorium-based fast breeder reactor project, which it has been pursuing for more than 30 years at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) in Kalpakkam, in south India. With more than 1000 scientists and engineers involved in the operations, the programme will remain outside the purview of any international inspections. In this project the 40MWt sodium cooled Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) has been operational for the last 20 years and work has commenced on building a demonstration fast breeder power reactor of 500MWe capacity, which is expected to start operations by 2011. This reactor will initially be fuelled with a mixed oxide of depleted uranium and plutonium, and subsequent units of this kind will use metallic alloy in place of the mixed oxide, to give a shorter fuel breeding time. Simultaneously, experts claim, all research and development work necessary to build the Indian nuclear programme’s final stage thorium/U-233 breeders is fast nearing completion and by 2020, the first of these reactors of 500MWe capacity are expected to be commissioned. Once India reaches this stage, given its abundant national resources of thorium, the country could rely upon nuclear power to provide long-term energy security. However, at present the energy shortage remains the most serious problem for the $692 billion Indian economy that is growing at more than 8% annually. Already its energy prices are among the highest in the world and per capita consumption amongst the lowest. The contribution of nuclear power from 18 functional reactors is less than 3% – or 3400MWe – which the Department of Atomic Energy plans to enhance to 20,000MWe over the next 15 years. To achieve this goal, government planners are advocating for private investments in the nuclear power sector and diversion of all the public funding earmarked for nuclear programmes to the development of fast breeder reactors. An Atomic Industrial Forum has already been set up to explore a possibility of starting a nuclear power generation company in joint venture between the state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation and Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, and private companies Larson & Toubro and Reliance Energy. Success of these ventures is greatly dependent on a future supply of uranium, which is a rare substance in India. There are four mines producing just 230 tonnes – 0.5% of world’s yearly output – and that too, said prime minister Singh, at a “quite prohibitive cost when compared to international prices.” Therefore lot depends on the outcome of the Indo-US nuclear deal and subsequent approval from the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the multinational body that controls the export of nuclear material, equipment and technology. These approvals will decide the fate of India’s request for uranium supply from Australia that was repeated during prime minister John Howard’s visit to New Delhi earlier this year. -------- iran Iran to activate 'nuclear tourism' Wednesday 04 October 2006, http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/BC53222A-97EF-452E-82A1-D701D28680D4.htm The nuclear plant being built in Bushehr could be on the itinerary After marvelling at Isfahan's magnificent architecture and admiring the ruined city of Persepolis, how about checking out a nuclear installation? Iran's state news agency said on Wednesday that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the country's president, has made the tour possible. Rahim Mashaii, the head of Esfandyar, Iran's tourism and cultural heritage organisation, was quoted as saying: "Foreign tourists can visit Iranian nuclear sites, after Dr.Ahmadinejad issued an authorisation ordering this organisation to study ways to do so." No details were given on the nature of the visits that would be allowed, or when it would become legal for tourists to take a trip to one of the facilities. Possible attractions for tourists would include the uranium conversion facility outside Isfahan, the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz or the Islamic republic's first nuclear plant being built in the southern city of Bushehr. "This authorisation has been issued since the Iranian nuclear activities are peaceful" Rahim Mashaii, the head of Esfandyar, Iran's tourism and cultural heritage organisation So far, only the United Nations atomic inspectors and reporters have been allowed to visit the sites. "This authorisation has been issued since the Iranian nuclear activities are peaceful," Rahim Mashaii said. The authorisation comes amid a growing push from the United States for Iran to appear before the UN Security Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear programme, which Washington alleges masks a weapons drive. -------- mideast Yemen to use nuclear energy to generate power 10/04/2006 Gulfnews.com By Nasser Arrabyee http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/06/10/04/10072050.html Sanaa: Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said his country will use nuclear energy to cover the shortage of electricity in Yemen in cooperation with the United States and Canada. "We will generate electric energy from nuclear energy in cooperation with the United States and Canada," said Saleh in an iftar banquet held at the Republican Palace on Monday. The event is an annual tradition during Ramadan. "In the first stage, we will generate 20,000 mega watts, this is no longer election propaganda, it is serious," Saleh told his invited audience, which included religious scholars, state and government officials, tribal shaikhs and social figures. However, the leaders of the Joint Meeting Parties (JMPs), the opposition alliance, did not attend. President Saleh also said the government would work on finding solutions for the scarcity of water in some Yemeni cities. "One of the biggest problems we are facing now is the water scarcity, I would urge citizens to organise and rationalise the use of water because this issue has become a big problem and there should be awareness programmes about it. "Searches are underway and negotiations are going on with a number of friendly countries for desalination of sea water for drinking purposes, not for irrigation, to solve the water scarcity problem in Sanaa, Taiz and other cities," he said. Saleh criticised using large quantities of water for qat plantations, calling upon the concerned bodies to organise awareness programmes to educate people in general and youngsters in particular about the harmful effects of qat. "About 35 to 40 per cent of water goes on qat irrigation, so people need to be aware how to preserve water and spreading awareness is the responsibility of all. "It's too difficult to abolish this plant, but treatment of this issue should be gradual, by reducing it, and by educating people about it. Fathers and mothers have to educate their children to give up the habit of chewing it," he added. Saleh pointed out the qat habit is one of the reasons behind corruption. "There are many people getting paid about 20,000 Yemeni rials (Dh400) as a monthly salary and they pay about 5,000 rials daily (Dh100) for qat, where does this money comes from?" He said people must be breaking the law in one way or another to obtain the money for qat. Fighting corruption Saleh also pointed out the deteriorating situation in Iraq and Somalia saying that Yemeni people supported "security and stability" by voting for him in the last presidential elections. Saleh said his party, the General People's Congress, (GPC), would fulfil all its promises it gave to voters and the government would draw a detailed plan to translate his election programme into reality. He said fighting corruption would be his top priority. -------- treaties At The Desktop With The ICBM Button At The Ready Typically, a two-person missile combat crew is on alert in an underground launch control center for 24 hours at a time monitoring their ICBMs, ready to launch them if directed. (U.S. Air Force photo/Master Sgt. Lance Cheung)Desktop image available - 1024x768 - 1280x768 - 1280x1024 by 1st Lt. Thomas Trask for 490th Missile Squadron Malmstrom AFB (AFPN) Oct 04, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Missile_Squadron_Poised_For_72_Hour_Alerts_999.html Missile combat crews in the 490th Missile Squadron here are helping the 20th Air Force transform missile operations as crewmembers started performing 72-hour alerts using three-person crews Sept. 30. Twentieth Air Force Commander, Maj. Gen. Thomas F. Deppe, suggested the 72-hour alert initiative and directed one squadron at each 20th AF wing to test the program. Officials from 20th AF will evaluate the program's progress after three months to determine whether to implement the initiative across all of the missile squadrons. Within General Deppe's guidelines, each wing commander may implement the program as he prefers. The 490th MS will convert from a four-flight organizational structure to a three-flight structure to better schedule the longer alert periods. Historically, combat crews consisted of two officers -- one commander and one deputy commander -- who performed 24-hour alert shifts, not including transit time to and from missile alert facilities. Crewmembers in the 10th, 12th and 564th MS will continue to perform alerts on 24-hour rotations. The 490th MS crews, augmented with select crewmembers from the 341st Operations Support Squadron and 341st Operations Group Standardization and Evaluation element, will conduct alerts for 72-hour periods. Crews will consist of two commanders and one deputy commander, and will continue to operate the launch control capsule in two-person teams. Individual crewmembers will alternate time between the LCC and the MAF. During the test phase 19 crews, 57 total officers, will participate. The 72-hour alert schedule is built on a 45-day cycle. A benefit of the program is a more predictable schedule for crewmembers. Each 490th MS flight will post on alert together and eventually will schedule training together to meet operations requirements. Crews should expect a maximum of six alert periods in 45 days. Though crewmembers may see an increase in time-off alert, crewmembers may also see an increase in work hours during each cycle. "The biggest risk that jumps out to everyone is that it's different," said Lt. Col. Scott Fox, 12th MS commander, who was on the initial 20th AF project team to study the alert changes. "But the security forces members, facility managers and chefs go out for that many more days already." Another concern is crewmember down time. "People need to know that we're looking (at time off)," Colonel Fox said. "Even up through General Deppe; I heard him personally reinforce it. We need to try as hard as we can to come up with some protected amount of time off." "The plan is to have the first 48 hours, after returning from the field, reserved as hands off," said Lt. Col. David Mason, 490th MS commander. The program's longer work cycles are also of concern to crewmembers' spouses. Lt. Col. Doug Smith, 490th MS deputy commander, spoke with 10 spouses Sept. 19 to answer questions about the program and help defuse concerns about the program's effect on time spent with families. Officials also identified crewmember proficiency as a potential risk. "With two commanders to one deputy, that's a new ratio. We have to adjust our crew force to look like that ratio," Colonel Fox said. "That means some of the deputies are going to upgrade to commander potentially much earlier than they would have under the current construct. That's a risk. Some of them might not be ready at the 12-month point, which is about when we expect the deputy-to-commander transition to take place under the new system." Benefits of the plan include decreased driving time, with resultant fuel and vehicle maintenance savings, and increased crewmember interaction with enlisted Airmen. Crews currently are sequestered underground during the 24-hour alert period and have little face-to-face interaction with the teams they command in the missile complex. "With the 72-hour alert schedule, at least 12 hours of an alert is going to be spent topside where (crewmembers) can learn leadership," said Col. Sandy Finan, 341st Space Wing commander. "They can start developing leadership skills and interacting with the people they are leading." Colonel Mason hopes the trial period will help iron out any bugs and provide enough data and feedback for General Deppe. "All the planning is complete; now is the time to execute," Colonel Mason said. "This is a big change that affects the entire operations group and the way we conduct business. But I'm optimistic we'll adapt and move forward with the new alert structure if directed to do so after the demonstration period." The alert transformation is still being refined and there likely will be a few obstacles to overcome during the program's execution. "We've sat down; we've brainstormed; we've thought about it from every angle," said Lt. Col. David Bliesner, 341st Operations Group deputy commander. "There are going to be things that pop up and are consequences we didn't foresee. We're going to have to adjust to them on the fly." With so many changes taking place across the Air Force, 490th MS officials recognize that change is the way of the future. "The entire Air Force is changing," Colonel Finan said. "We've done 24-hour alerts for a very, very long time. We are creating history here, and we want to be the ones who lead that change." -------- u.s. nuc facilities NRC report finds no health impact from tritium leaks at nuclear plants October 04, 2006 SNL Financial By Kathleen Hart http://www.snl.com/interactivex/article.aspx?CdId=A-4754663-11615 A report released by the NRC on Oct. 4 found no health impact from inadvertent releases of radioactive liquids containing tritium from U.S. nuclear power plants. "We looked at a wide range of releases that go back to 1996, and even included a substantial release from the Edwin I. Hatch plant in 1986, and none of these events led to appreciable radiation doses to people outside the plants," Stuart Richards, an NRC senior manager who led the task force that produced the report, said in an Oct. 4 news release. "There are however, areas of our regulations that could better cover these sorts of inadvertent spills and leads," he added. In the Hatch incident, about 141,500 gallons of water were released from the Georgia plant's spent fuel pool to a gap between the two reactor buildings and subsequently to the surrounding environment. The plant is owned by Southern Co. Environmental surveys conducted by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources found that both the tritium and fission products released to a swamp in the area surrounding the plant, which drains to the Altamaha River, and in the river itself "posed no immediate danger to downstream water users or to nearby residents," the report said. "Periodic reports submitted to the NRC indicate a general reduction in activity in the swamp area resulting from radioactive decay and weathering and the potential erosion and migration of the radionuclides within the originally contaminated area." The task force found that contamination in groundwater on-site may migrate offsite undetected. In November 2005, Exelon Corp. notified the NRC that elevated levels of tritium had been measured in shallow groundwater monitoring wells near the Braidwood nuclear plant in Illinois. "Exelon has undertaken remediation activities to reduce the levels of the tritium in the groundwater at the Braidwood site," the report said. "Although there have been a number of industry events where radioactive liquid was released to the environment in an unplanned and unmonitored fashion, based on the data available, the task force did not identify any instances where the health of the public was impacted," the report, "Liquid Radioactive Release Lessons Learned Task Force Final Report," said. "Virtually all commercial nuclear power plants routinely release radioactive materials to the environment in liquids and gases," the report said. However, NRC regulations place limits on these releases to ensure that "the impact on public health is very low." NRC guidelines require that the release of radioactive material in a liquid form from a nuclear power plant must not result in radiation doses of greater than 3 millirem to anyone in an unrestricted area. "To place 3 millirem of radiation in perspective," the report said, "the average member of the public in the United States receives a radiation dose of about 360 millirem per year, primarily from natural sources such as radon in the soil and cosmic radiation, and from medical sources such as diagnostic X-rays." A passenger on a cross-country flight receives a radiation dose of about 3 millirem, the report added as another example. Some nuclear power plant components that have leaked were not subject to surveillance, maintenance or inspections by NRC requirements, the report said, adding that "relatively low leakage rates may not be detected by plant operators, even over an extended period of time." Many of the components and systems that have leaked "are built to standards less strict than those for systems needed for reactor safety," the NRC news release said. "A number of the systems involved in the releases also fall outside the NRC's requirements for regular maintenance and inspections, increasing the possibility that leaks might go undetected." The task force, which included an Illinois Emergency Management Agency representative in addition to members of each of the NRC's regional offices and NRC headquarters staffers, produced 26 recommendations. One recommendation called for the NRC to evaluate the need to enact regulations and/or provide guidance to address remediation. Another recommendation said that the NRC "should require adequate assurance that leaks and spills will be detected before radionuclides migrate offsite via an unmonitored pathway." ---- NRC says Indian Point, other radioactive leaks led to mistrust The Associated Press By JIM FITZGERALD October 04, 2006 http://www.topix.net/content/ap/2022722919397817871738758122632338425190 A federal task force concluded Wednesday that leaks of tritium and other radioactive isotopes at nuclear plants including Indian Point have not endangered public health but may have damaged public confidence in the industry. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission task force determined that public reaction to the leaks revealed 'a level of mistrust' toward Indian Point and the commission. In a 78-page report, the task force said that assurances of safety were probably overshadowed by the public perception that the leaks were accidental, unmonitored, possibly long-standing and not immediately publicized. A leak from a spent-fuel pool at Indian Point, 35 miles north of midtown Manhattan in Buchanan, was discovered in August 2005 but not made public until a month later. Besides tritium, traces of strontium, cesium, cobalt and nickel isotopes were found in the groundwater beneath the plant, and the plant owners conceded that some unmonitored contamination had reached the Hudson River. Officials stressed throughout that none of the contamination reached any drinking water or otherwise endangered the public. The NRC report noted that following the disclosure of leaks at Indian Point and at the Braidwood nuclear power plant in Illinois, media coverage was widespread. 'Concerns were expressed by members of Congress, as well as by state and local officials,' the report said. 'Public meetings in the vicinity of the plants were widely attended, and the opinion expressed by the audiences was generally negative toward both the plant operator and the NRC.' Even before the leaks, many residents and officials in the lower Hudson Valley had been skeptical of Indian Point's claims of safety. The report recommended that even if there is no known threat to public health, the NRC and the plant owners should consider voluntarily notifying the public of 'radioactive releases to the environment that are not significant from a radiation dose perspective but that could be of general public interest nonetheless.' Jim Steets, a spokesman for Indian Point owner Entergy Nuclear Northeast, said notification procedures had already been changed. 'We had a rationale for waiting to see if we couldn't provide better information but learned from that experience that the perception was we were holding back information that could impact public health,' he said. 'In retrospect it makes far more sense to announce it publicly even if we have limited information.' -------- california Area named finalist for nuclear power plant Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2006 By TONY FLOYD Henderson Daily News http://www.hendersondailynews.com/articles/2006/10/06/news/05nukeplantwed.txt Henderson-Rusk County would be mentioned in the same breaths as other nuclear power plant sites if a Chicago-based electric utility company selects the area for a new multibillion-dollar nuclear facility targeted for start up in 2015 at the earliest. That was the chief message delivered by Exelon Corp. and Henderson Economic Development Corp. officials during a special joint luncheon meeting of the Henderson City Council and the HEDCO Board of Directors Tuesday at Henderson Federal Savings Bank. Exelon officials confirmed that Henderson-Rusk County was among four finalists in Texas under consideration for the proposed plant. Company officials were greeted with cautious optimism by a group of about 60 area business leaders who welcomed them to Henderson-Rusk County and conducted tours of an unnamed 600-acre-plus site in southern Rusk County in which Exelon officials have expressed interest. No further details on the property were disclosed. Exelon officials did, however, confirm that the plant would employ 500-800 full-time, highly-skilled workers, as well as between 2,000 and 3,000 during the construction phase. Further, the plant would bring in about 1,000 workers at two-year intervals during the plant refueling process. Martin Coveney, Exelon vice president-business operations, told local business leaders the company filed documents with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Sept. 29, signaling Exelon's intent to move forward with nuclear plant plans in Texas. Exelon currently operates three natural gas-fired plants in the state - two in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and one in LaPorte, near Houston. “Obviously, we are very excited,” said Joe Sorrels, HEDCO board president. “This is a project that could have a very significant impact on the Rusk County-area economy, but everyone should understand that this is not an instant process. “It was a first visit only, and it's far from a done deal,” Sorrels said. “But we do feel that we have a very good site available and we are confident that we made a positive impression on them (Exelon officials) Tuesday. “We'll just have to see where it goes from here,” he added. Exelon's Coveney characterized Tuesday's meeting as an opportunity to gauge the Henderson-area community's reception to the prospect of a nuclear technology project operating nearby. “We won't push anywhere where the reception is not favorable, and this has been a very positive experience everywhere we've been,” Coveney said. He described nuclear power as “clean-air technology” in which no greenhouse gases, which are linked with global warming concerns, are released into the atmosphere. Its principal fuel source is uranium, which is in abundant supply globally. The industry's chief operations challenge is safely disposing of used fuel, Coveney said. The Exelon executive said his company is the largest producer of nuclear-fired power in the United States and the third largest in the world. About 20 percent of electric power is produced by nuclear power in the U.S., compared with about 80 percent in France. “I would remind everyone that when it comes to nuclear power, Exelon has tremendous experience,” Coveney said. Sorrels said he believed the Exelon project would be on a scale comparable to all the positive contributions of TXU power and mining operations in Rusk County. TXU has proposed adding a fourth power plant at its Martin Creek Lake facility in eastern Rusk County as part of an $11 billion expansion plan systemwide. “We recognize and appreciate all the positive contributions of TXU to the Rusk County economy, and we believe this project could be equally positive.” Exelon officials made it clear that the company will not make a firm commitment to building the plant in Texas until numerous questions are resolved, including a permanent solution to used fuel disposal, broad public acceptance of a new nuclear power plant and assurances that a new plant using new technology can be financially successful. -------- maine Governor Applauds U.S. Court of Federal Claims Decision Involving Maine Yankee October 4, 2006 Governor's Office http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/index.php?topic=Portal+News&id=24433&v=article-2006 AUGUSTA - Governor John Baldacci expressed cautious optimism today regarding last weekend’s sealed U.S. Court of Federal Claims decision finding in favor of suits brought by Yankee Atomic against the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which includes the now closed and decommissioned Maine Yankee power plant in Wiscasset. The judge’s decision supports optimism that Maine ratepayers would be able to see reduced rates in the future. The federal DOE, however, is expected to file an appeal of the decision handed down by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The federal court issued a ruling Saturday evening of $75.8 million damages against the U.S. Department of Energy for its failure to meet the federally statutory and Department contract to initiate the removal of high-level radioactive spent nuclear fuel assembles from the Maine Yankee plant as required by law beginning January 31, 1998. The seal on the decision was lifted today by the court. The Governor said that this court action is a clear and strong message that the federal government needs to hold to its agreement to move nuclear waste from Maine and other states to a permanent national facility. In addition, the Governor stated that he hopes Maine ratepayers will experience reduced rates in the future from the court decision. “This is a good first step in ensuring Maine ratepayers receive relief they deserve,” said Governor Baldacci. “For years Mainers have been paying the cost of DOE’s broken promise to accept for disposal all spent nuclear fuel at Maine Yankee and other nuclear units. I would hope that following a final appellate decision, Maine ratepayers will see their rates reduced in the future.” Maine Yankee originally sought $78.1 million in damages due to the breach of contract by the federal Department of Energy. Half of Maine Yankee ratepayers are located in Maine (those customers of Central Maine Power, Bangor Hydro-Electric and Maine Public Service), with the remaining 50% paid by other New England states’ consumers. The judge’s decision concerns only damages Maine Yankee incurred through 2002. Maine Yankee is able to seek additional damages for the period after 2002 in the future. Also involved in the suit were Connecticut Yankee and Yankee Atomic. Connecticut Yankee was awarded approximately $34.1 million. Yankee Atomic was awarded $32.9 million. Governor Baldacci has called on Congress to fund and enact legislation that would direct the federal government to keep its long standing commitment to establish a national repository for the secure storage of spent nuclear fuels and high level radioactive waste. In a July letter sent by the Governor to United States Senate Senator Pete Domenici, Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy & Water Development, Governor Baldacci stated: “In today’s world, the security concerns of Americans are not well served by having thousands of metric tons of nuclear waste left in facilities in thirty-one states, including Maine. Our best interests will be served by consolidating these materials in a facility selected for its remoteness and for its ability to be secured. Yucca Mountain has been selected from a number of sites because it best meets the several evaluation criteria. Now the Federal government must move forward to complete this project.” -------- MILITARY -------- arms US suspends F-16 sale to Taiwan 10/4/2006 The Peninsula/REUTERS http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Rest+of+the+World&month=October2006&file=World_News2006100494239.xml taipei • The United States has temporarily blocked the sale to Taiwan of 66 advanced fighter planes after the island’s parliament repeatedly failed to approve funds for an earlier arms package, a Taiwan defence official said yesterday. This year Taiwan requested the F-16C/D fighter jets over a five-to-10-year period, in a deal that could be worth as much as $5.5 bn. The National Defence Ministry says the planes are needed to defend Taiwan from any assault by China, which views the separately ruled island as part of its territory. In 2001 the United States offered to sell a previous weapons package, but opposition lawmakers have blocked a special budget to buy the arms in parliament, where they hold a slim majority, claiming the package is unnecessary and expensive. That package included eight diesel-electric submarines, 12 P-3C Orion anti-submarine aircraft and Patriot anti-missile systems. As a result of those delays, President George W Bush had declined to approve the F-16 sale, said the Taiwan defence department official on condition of anonymity. “The special arms package still has not been passed. Once it is passed, this case (for the F-16s) will be approved,” said the official, citing comments by National Defence Minister Lee Jye made a day earlier during parliamentary questions. US arms sales to Taiwan are a politically sensitive issue, as they are opposed by Beijing, and viewed in Washington as a test of Taiwan’s willingness to invest in its own defence and cut the chance of a cross-straits clash that could end up drawing in the United States. -------- latin america Chavez Rebuffs Rumsfeld Over Arms Claim Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 Democracy Now! Headlines http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/04/1427250 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrapped up a visit to Nicaragua Tuesday with a new warning for Venezuela. Speaking at a conference of defense ministers, Rumsfeld said neighboring countries have told him they’re concerned Venezuela’s arms purchases could end up in the hands of armed guerrillas Rumsfeld did not say whom he had spoken to. In Venezelua, President Hugo Chavez called on Colombian President Alvaro Uribe for an explanation. * Venezuela President Hugo Chavez: "The only neighbouring country of ours that has guerillas is Colombia. Therefore from here I request with much respect that the president of Colombia, Mr. Alvaro Uribe, say something since his silence would indicate that he agrees [with Rumsfeld]." Secretary Rumsfeld’s visit to Nicaragua has also attracted controversy amid accusations the Bush administration is meddling in that country’s presidential elections. The Bush administration openly opposes the current frontrunner, former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, and says a victory for him would force the US to re-evaluate its ties. Rumsfeld was asked to comment. * Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "I don't get involved in politics in the United States so you can be certain that I'm not going to get involved in politics in Nicaragua." ---- Cuba: Period Since Castro Hospitalization Undermines US Predictions Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 Democracy Now! Headlines http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/04/1427250 In Cuba, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon is calling on the Bush administration to re-think its policy of seeking regime change in that country. Alarcon said the two months since Fidel Castro’s hospitalization show the White House’s predictions of upheaval have been off-base. * Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon: "One thing that has been clearly demonstrated is the schizophrenia of some in the United States, it has also shown how out of touch with reality some people are in the White House, where Condoleezza Rice seemed to be talking about another planet." -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE Welcome to Fascist America! by Gene Callahan October 4, 2006 Lew Rockwell.com http://www.lewrockwell.com/callahan/callahan160.html My fellow Americans, it’s official now: We live in a fascist nation. Now, the term "fascist" has been thrown around over the last fifty years in a loose way that has drained it of much of its meaning. If someone wanted to cut 5% off of a leftist professor's favourite welfare programme, the professor would call his opponent a "fascist." I’m not using the word like that. I mean honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, 1930s style fascism, featuring such old favourites as: * Secret prisons – they’re back! * Torture – we’re doing it. * Spying on all citizens. * Arrests and indefinite imprisonment without trial. * Rampant militarism. * Secret detention. * Enforced disappearance. * Denial and restriction of habeas corpus. * Prolonged incommunicado detention. * Unfair trial procedures. (This list was compiled partially based on the work of Amnesty International, available here.) An absolutely mind-numbing response to complaints that our traditional legal system is being torn apart is the question, "So, you want to protect the rights of terrorists?" Um, no, I want to protect the rights of non-terrorists who might be falsely accused of terrorism! That was sort of, you know, the whole idea of our legal system. I’m sure there was some neo-con around in the 1700s saying to Jefferson or Madison, "So, you want to protect the rights of murderers and robbers?" but luckily they ignored him. We’ve now gotten to the point where Nazi Germany was, say, in 1934. Remember, at that time, if you had told a typical German what his government would do over the next ten years, he would have looked at you as a madman. After all, his land had been civilized for over a thousand years. His was the nation of Albertus Magnus, Gutenberg, Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Bach, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, Heisenberg, Reimann, Mann, Lessing, Herder, Handel, Dürer, Leibniz, Gauss, Helmholtz – he could have gone on, but you get the point. His nation could not possibly descend into barbarism! If you tried to tell him he was living in a police state, he would have pointed out that his government had used its vast new powers very judiciously, and only against a few trouble-makers. So far. It is interesting, in gauging the direction we are heading, to look at the proclamations of "respectable" opinion writers who support this administration. For instance, we have people at a "libertarian" think tank proclaiming that Moslems are not entitled to full civil rights in the US. (Perhaps we need to make them wear something special on their clothing like, say, a yellow star, so we know just who they are, hey?) But "conservatives" provide even more stunning examples of purely fascist reasoning. For example, conservative demagogue Ann Coulter has called for the editor of The NY Times to face the firing squad for his part in publicizing this administration's abuses of power. Let’s look at a recent column by Douglas MacKinnon at TownHall.com. MacKinnon considers all of those involved in revealing the sordid collection of secret programmes that have been launched by the Bush administration as "traitors" who have publicized these schemes "purely because they don’t like the policies of the new president." Well, he’s right in that "they don’t like the policies" that they consider unconstitutional violations of our rights. Far from "aiding the enemy," these revelations aided us, the American people, by letting us know what our government has in store for us. Consider what the point of classifying these programmes was in the first place, and who they were being kept secret from. The jihadists no doubt already knew about the secret prisons – their friends are in them! They surely knew that the war in Iraq has been helping their recruiting – it’s their recruiting! ("Praise be to Allah, Abdul, I read in The NY Times that it is the Iraq War that is sending us these thousands of new recruits – who knew?") They no doubt suspect they may be wiretapped – what they didn’t know was that all the rest of us are, as well. No, not one of these leaks helps terrorists, nor was one of them classified to stop terrorists from finding them out. We were the ones who weren’t supposed to find out about them. MacKinnon continues: "And if even one American lost his or her life because of a leak, then I would want that person to be executed for treason." So anyone who reveals our fascist government policies is a traitor who can be executed! This is obviously an attempt to intimidate the opposition so that our police state can be expanded without the annoying work stoppages caused by public outcry when the latest bit of construction is revealed. And just how does MacKinnon propose to show that some American lost his life because a journalist revealed that the US government tortures people across the globe, rather than, say, because the policies he supports have inspired a million new jihadists? Secret trial, perhaps? Or why even bother with trials for filthy traitors? Herr Goebbels – oops, I mean MacKinnon – writes, "Until we severely punish those who leak classified information, then the traitors among us will not only continue to flourish, but will grow more brazen with the secrets they reveal." Yes, what we ought to be able to do, you know, is simply seize anyone who even mentions our government’s "secret" prisons, and, without a trial, throw them in a secret prison! This is the logical conclusion of this fascist’s article, after all, since those who talk about the American Gulag are pretty much terrorists themselves. Folks, this is coming real soon, and, once it does, domestic opposition is pretty much over. One journalist – that will be about all it takes – will be seized as a "terrorist" and thrown in the Gulag. The government may release him, but then another will simply disappear in the night in Iraq or Afghanistan, and rumors will circulate that he is being kept in a cage somewhere and waterboarded. No journalist lacking heroic courage will any longer be willing to seriously protest government policy. America is full of decent people, who could never believe their own government could become fascist. So were Germany and Italy in the 1920s. But they became fascist anyway. They passed laws suspending civil liberties, but the government promised the frightened populace that those laws would only be used against targets like "Communist terrorists." And, a little bit at a time, the target kept getting bigger and bigger, slowly enough that the people who weren’t paying close attention never detected it. And, next thing you know, there were millions of people dead! So, it turns out, it would have been worth paying attention after all. Gene Callahan [send him mail], the author of Economics for Real People, is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and a contributing columnist to LewRockwell.com. His first novel, PUCK, has just been published. -------- courts / tribunals ACLU gets OK to pursue Patriot Act suit Judge rules against government, meaning Muslim groups can continue challenge of anti-terrorism measure Wed, Oct. 04, 2006 By David Ashenfelter DETROIT FREE PRESS http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/15674607.htm DETROIT - A federal judge in Detroit rejected the government's request to dismiss an ACLU lawsuit challenging the constitutionally of the controversial USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism measure Congress enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. U.S. District Judge Denise Hood issued the ruling without fanfare Friday, nearly three years after promising a speedy decision in the case. Congress amended the act in March, well after the hearing before Hood in December 2003. Hood said in a 15-page decision that the American Civil Liberties Union's clients -- six Muslim groups that provide religious, medical, social and educational services to Muslims and people of Arab descent -- established that they have been harmed or threatened by Section 215 of the law. The U.S. Justice Department said it was studying the decision and had no comment Tuesday. Michigan ACLU Executive Director Kary Moss said she was satisfied with the decision. "She confirmed what we've said all along, that our clients are suffering concrete harm as a result of the Patriot Act," Moss said of Hood's ruling. "Even though we think the act fails to comply with the Constitution, we believe our legal challenge and advocacy in Congress has fixed some of the worst problems." The ACLU had charged that the Patriot Act enabled the government to obtain warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington without having to offer evidence to justify the request. The ACLU said the law had caused people served by the Muslim groups to stop attending mosque, practicing their religion and expressing opinions about religion and politics for fear of being targeted by the government. The ACLU said the law has had a chilling effect on their clients' right to free speech and association because it enables the government to seize membership lists from political groups, find out what books people checked out of libraries or what they told social service agencies about medical and family problems without their ever learning about it. A Justice Department lawyer countered in the December 2003 hearing that the FBI had never used the law and, as a result, no harm had been done. He asked Hood to dismiss the suit. In March, Congress amended the law. The Justice Department contended that the amendments corrected any constitutional deficiencies in the law. The ACLU disagreed. Hood's ruling means the ACLU's clients can proceed with their lawsuit and gives them 30 days to amend their initial complaint in light of amendments adopted by Congress in March. Moss said she would check with her clients to see whether they still want to proceed with the suit. She said the revised law gives any business receiving a request for records of customers and employees the right to consult with a lawyer before turning anything over to the government. Moss said the law still prohibits anyone who receives a records request from divulging it for one year, but the business can challenge the order after the year has lapsed. And, she added, the ability of the government to obtain a warrant to seize records without probable cause from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court still poses a problem. -------- homeland security / national intelligence Software Being Developed to Monitor Opinions of U.S. October 4, 2006 By ERIC LIPTON New York Times http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/nyt510.html WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — A consortium of major universities, using Homeland Security Department money, is developing software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas. Such a “sentiment analysis” is intended to identify potential threats to the nation, security officials said. Researchers at institutions including Cornell, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Utah intend to test the system on hundreds of articles published in 2001 and 2002 on topics like President Bush’s use of the term “axis of evil,” the handling of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, the debate over global warming and the coup attempt against President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. A $2.4 million grant will finance the research over three years. American officials have long relied on newspapers and other news sources to track events and opinions here and abroad, a goal that has included the routine translation of articles from many foreign publications and news services. The new software would allow much more rapid and comprehensive monitoring of the global news media, as the Homeland Security Department and, perhaps, intelligence agencies look “to identify common patterns from numerous sources of information which might be indicative of potential threats to the nation,” a statement by the department said. It could take several years for such a monitoring system to be in place, said Joe Kielman, coordinator of the research effort. The monitoring would not extend to United States news, Mr. Kielman said. “We want to understand the rhetoric that is being published and how intense it is, such as the difference between dislike and excoriate,” he said. Even the basic research has raised concern among journalism advocates and privacy groups, as well as representatives of the foreign news media. “It is just creepy and Orwellian,” said Lucy Dalglish, a lawyer and former editor who is executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Andrei Sitov, Washington bureau chief of the Itar-Tass news agency of Russia, said he hoped that the objective did not go beyond simply identifying threats to efforts to stifle criticism about an American president or administration. “This is what makes your country great, the open society where people can criticize their own government,” Mr. Sitov said. The researchers, using an grant provided by a research group once affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency, have complied a database of hundreds of articles that it is being used to train a computer to recognize, rank and interpret statements. The software would need to be able to distinguish between statements like “this spaghetti is good” and “this spaghetti is not very good — it’s excellent,” said Claire T. Cardie, a professor of computer science at Cornell. Professor Cardie ranked the second statement as a more intense positive opinion than the first. The articles in the database include work from many American newspapers and news wire services, including The Miami Herald and The New York Times, as well as foreign sources like Agence France-Presse and The Dawn, a newspaper in Pakistan. One article discusses how a rabid fox bit a grazing cow in Romania, hardly a threat to the United States. Another item, an editorial in response to Mr. Bush’s use in 2002 of “axis of evil” to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea, said: “The U.S. is the first nation to have developed nuclear weapons. Moreover, the U.S. is the first and only nation ever to deploy such weapons.” The approach, called natural language processing, has been under development for decades. It is widely used to summarize basic facts in a text or to create abridged versions of articles. But interpreting and rating expressions of opinion, without making too many errors, has been much more challenging, said Professor Cardie and Janyce M. Wiebe, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Pittsburgh. Their system would include a confidence rating for each “opinion” that it evaluates and would allow an official to refer quickly to the actual text that the computer indicates contains an intense anti-American statement. Ultimately, the government could in a semiautomated way track a statement by specific individuals abroad or track reports by particular foreign news outlets or journalists, rating comments about American policies or officials. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, said the effort recalled the aborted 2002 push by a Defense Department agency to develop a tracking system called Total Information Awareness that was intended to detect terrorists by analyzing troves of information. “That is really chilling,” Mr. Rotenberg said. “And it seems far afield from the mission of homeland security.” Federal law prohibits the Homeland Security Department or other intelligence agencies from building such a database on American citizens, and no effort would be made to do that, a spokesman for the department, Christopher Kelly, said. But there would be no such restrictions on using foreign news media, Mr. Kelly said. Mr. Kielman, the project coordinator, said questions on using the software were premature because the department was just now financing the basic research necessary to set up an operating system. Professors Cardie and Wiebe said they understood that there were legitimate questions about the ultimate use of their software. “There has to be guidelines and restrictions on the use of this kind of technology by the government,” Professor Wiebe said. “But it doesn’t mean it is not useful. It can just as easily help the government understand what is going on in places around the world.” -------- POLITICS -------- investigations Classic Washington Pushoff - Fmr. Counterrorism Advisor Rand Beers on Rice's Reported Dismissal of Pre-9/11 CIA Warnings Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/04/1428200 In his new book, "State of Denial," Bob Woodward reveals that then-CIA director George Tenet had warned of an imminent threat from al-Qaeda in a July 2001 meeting with Condoleezza Rice. We speak with former counterterrorism advisor Rand Beers. He served on the National Security Council under four consecutive presidents before resigning on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. [includes rush transcript] The Bush administration is coming under renewed scrutiny over its actions in the months prior to the Sept. 11th attacks. In his new book, State of Denial, Bob Woodward reveals that on July 10, 2001 then CIA director George Tenet called President Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to hold an emergency meeting to review the latest on Osama Bin Laden. Intelligence was showing an increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. According to the Tenet and his counterterrorism chief Cofer Black told Rice that al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself. They also said that they needed to immediately take covert or military action to thwart bin Laden. Woodward reports that Tenet hoped his abrupt request for an immediate meeting would shake Rice but he left feeling that Rice had brushed off the warnings. Two months later the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked. After the publication of Woodward's book, Rice initially suggested such a meeting in July 2001 did not even take place. On Sunday, Rice told reporters said, "The idea that I would have ignored that, I find incomprehensible. I am quite certain that it was not a meeting in which I was told that there was an impending attack, and refused to respond." But on Monday the State Department confirmed that Rice did meet with Tenet and Black on July 10th and that after the meeting Rice was compelled enough to ask the CIA to give the same briefing to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and to then Attorney General John Ashcroft. * Rand Beers, served in the Bush administration as Senior Director for Combating Terrorism on the National Security Council. He also served on the National Security Council during the Reagan, first Bush and Clinton administrations. He resigned in protest from the Bush administration in March 2003, five days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He is currently president of the National Security Network. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Rand Beers joins us now from Washington, D.C. He served in the Bush administration as senior director for combating terrorism on the National Security Council. He also served on the National Security Council during the Reagan, first Bush and Clinton administrations. He resigned in protest from the Bush administration in March 2003, five days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He is currently president of the National Security Network. We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Rand Beers. RAND BEERS: Thank you. It’s good to be here. AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us about this July meeting? RAND BEERS: Well, I think it’s pretty straightforward, and the facts are on the table now. There was a meeting. It was a surprise or emergency or unscheduled meeting. Rice was there. Richard Clarke and Roger Cressey, his deputy, were there, in addition to Tenet and his assistant, Cofer Black. They did present information, which said that there was a huge amount of intelligence coming indicating that an attack was imminent. The United States was either the target in an overseas environment or possibly within the United States. So the information was all clearly put on the table, based on the information that was particularly new when they went into the room. What Dr. Rice appears to have done is a classic Washington pushoff, which is to say, “Go brief somebody else.” She did not, as the National Security Advisor, do what previous national security advisors had done with this kind of a meeting, which was to herself call a meeting of senior levels in the government to discuss the serious information that was available. And so, as I have said before, the issue here is, what did she do about it? And what she did about it was basically nothing. JUAN GONZALEZ: There has been, though, since the Woodward book focused attention on this meeting, apparently some conflict over to what degree George Tenet believed that she was taking the information seriously. In fact, I think the Washington Post has even written an article questioning their own Bob Woodward's account of it. Your sense of the degree to -- as the facts are being sorted out now? RAND BEERS: As I said, I think the issue is not what did she specifically do in the room. The issue is, was there any evidence of the administration of the National Security Council at the highest level taking this kind of threat information seriously enough that they were prepared to shake up the government in order to make sure that we were as ready as possible? If seniors don't communicate to their junior officers that they take an issue seriously, then business as usual prevails. And I’m afraid that’s what happened here. JUAN GONZALEZ: And the degree to which the 9/11 Commission dealt with whatever failures might have occurred here in terms of the response by Rice or the top government officials? RAND BEERS: Well, it appears that the information that the 9/11 Commission had didn't give them enough of a sense of how significant this meeting may have been, but they certainly did report that during that time frame, there was a lot of intelligence, and Tenet and Dick Clarke were very much concerned that we weren't doing enough. AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Rand Beers, former counterterrorism advisor, who served on the National Security Council under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush. Can you talk about those days before the invasion of Iraq, what was going on, what you understood in 2001, and what happened between that time when you were still serving under George W. Bush and the time that you quit? RAND BEERS: Well, I was, during that period, both at the State Department and then at the National Security Council staff. And what was basically happening after 9/11 and up to the invasion was that it became more and more clear wherever you were sitting in government that what we were doing in Afghanistan after the expulsion of the Taliban and al-Qaeda was shifting all of our assets and all of our attention in the direction of Iraq. I became increasingly concerned that the level of attention to Afghanistan was putting us in a more perilous situation there. The amount of violence was increasing. Even only a year after the expulsion of the Taliban, they were already beginning to reconstitute, they were already beginning to attack. And we’re seeing today, I think, the real clear picture of that shift, because the amount of violence in Afghanistan has increased significantly. The instability across the country is now greater than it was, and the individuals who live in Afghanistan, I think, are more fearful of their own security than they have been for some time. So, what we have is the reason that we began this war on terrorism in Afghanistan turning out to be a situation that is getting perilously close to the instability in Iraq. JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you about the Afghanistan situation. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist made a stunning recommendation, I thought, this week, when he suggested that maybe it was time to bring some of the former Taliban leaders into the Afghan government as a means of quelling the growing rebellion there. To hear that kind of recommendation from a key Republican leader was, to me, quite astonishing. Your response? RAND BEERS: Well, I agree with you. I think it was astonishing. It is true, however, that there have been a couple of former Taliban officials who have publicly recanted their association with the Taliban, who have been taken by President Karzai into some formal or informal roles in the government. But what Senator Frist appeared to be saying went far beyond those simple measures that Karzai has taken, suggesting perhaps that he drank something while he was in Afghanistan that may have affected his mental acuity. AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the whole controversy about the ABC so-called docudrama that very much blamed the lead-up to 9/11 on the Clinton administration, about President Clinton being distracted by Monica Lewinsky, about -- what was it? -- in 1998, Sandy Berger seen refusing to authorize the raid designed to capture bin Laden. You were there all during this time. What is your reaction to this? RAND BEERS: Well, my reaction is that this clearly was a drama and not a documentary. Those kinds of insinuations don't really square with the reality of the picture. Richard Clarke and Sandy Berger and Bill Clinton all understood how serious the situation had become, and they sought to take action within the boundaries of what the events were showing at that particular time. As Clinton himself has said, no, he didn't catch bin Laden, and that’s a failure in the long run of history. But I think they took a country that was paying no attention to these kinds of issues and put it in a position that we were, in fact, capable of taking significant action and that, after the bombing of the USS Cole, we had a plan that Richard Clarke put forward with the National Security Advisor and the President, which they then passed on to the incoming administration. So I think they were poised to do something, and it wasn't done. JUAN GONZALEZ: I would like to ask you about the big picture in Iraq. You are a career civil servant and focusing on national security issues. What has the war in Iraq accomplished, in terms of security for the United States and in terms of generally fighting terrorism around the world? RAND BEERS: Well, I’m sorry to say that the reason that I resigned from the National Security Council staff and the government has turned out to be true, and that is that I was concerned then, and we see now, that our entry into Iraq, the way in which we entered with a small, rather than a large, coalition, without UN approval, without Arab support, has ended up making Iraq a recruiting poster for al-Qaeda. It has made our job more difficult around the world. There’s a civil war going on there now. It’s not a terrorist activity, although there are some small number of international terrorists who are present there. But that doesn't matter, because we are present in a Muslim country in the region. We are now viewed as occupiers, and that has made our ability to deal with terrorists, to reduce the ability of terrorists to recruit, to reduce the support of terrorists in the Muslim world, has made that all more difficult. And as the National Intelligence Estimate has said, Iraq is now one of the four principal reasons that they came to the judgment that al-Qaeda and its movement has more advantages than vulnerabilities, and that situation is expected to prevail for the next five years. AMY GOODMAN: Rand Beers, Michael Scheuer said yesterday on FOX that there’s a document to prove that there were at least eight opportunities to kill or capture bin Laden, and that it’s a lie that it couldn't have been done before 9/11, and that goes back to President Clinton. Your response? RAND BEERS: With all due respect to Michael Scheuer, who served his country well, I’m sure there is a document -- I don't dispute that -- that he thought he could have produced an operation that could have captured bin Laden. But he was fairly well down in the hierarchy of the Central Intelligence Agency. And his suggestions and plans and ideas were all reviewed by people higher than him, most of them career CIA officials, and they were not approved. The fact that they were not approved, I think, is representative of the notion that just because you come up with a plan, doesn't mean that the plan is executable or even feasible. JUAN GONZALEZ: One of the issues that has gotten more attention recently is all of the former generals and high-ranking military leaders who have spoken out against the government's policies right now in Iraq. Is it your sense that there’s a growing rift among the senior military leaders of the country and the civilian leadership in the White House in the way that they’re pursuing this war? RAND BEERS: I think that we’re seeing basically the tip of the iceberg. These individuals are representative of their colleagues who are still on active duty. We have had reports for the last two-and-a-half years of concerns, not just with individuals, but across the entire spectrum of military leadership, that the civilian leadership in the Pentagon pays little attention to professional views, seeks to ensure that their views prevail and then claims that those were all recommendations made by the military. AMY GOODMAN: Rand Beers, how hard was it for you to resign, after decades of service, five days before the invasion of Iraq? RAND BEERS: It was one of the most anguishing times of my life. When you are responsible for undertaking a significant task and when you have people who work for you, who are working their fingers to the bone on a daily basis, to say that you can't be a part of that any longer, to walk away from the friendships and the professional relationships like that is extraordinarily difficult. And I really had a very difficult weekend, before I came to the office on Monday and told people that I was leaving. AMY GOODMAN: The final straw for you? RAND BEERS: The final straw for me was that the reports that were coming in from the field just continued to mount, and we weren't really paying attention to them, because the senior leadership had determined that we were going into Iraq, and I just couldn't go along with that decision. And I was working in the White House. The President deserved the full support of the people who were working for him. And I couldn't give that to him. So the better course of action was for me to say I have to leave, and that’s what I did. AMY GOODMAN: Rand Beers, thanks very much for joining us, former counterterrorism advisor who served on the NSC, National Security Council, under Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. Beers resigned in protest from the NSC in March 2003, five days before the U.S. invasion, currently president of the National Security Network. Thank you. -------- OTHER -------- environment The century of drought One third of the planet will be desert by the year 2100, say climate experts in the most dire warning yet of the effects of global warming The Independent (U.K.), Oct. 4, 2006 Steve Bloomfield http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1786829.ece Drought Seen Overtaking Half the Planet By 2100 http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=6083&method=full Drought threatening the lives of millions will spread across half the land surface of the Earth in the coming century because of global warming, according to new predictions from Britain's leading climate scientists. Extreme drought, in which agriculture is in effect impossible, will affect about a third of the planet, according to the study from the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. It is one of the most dire forecasts so far of the potential effects of rising temperatures around the world - yet it may be an underestimation, the scientists involved said yesterday. The findings, released at the Climate Clinic at the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth, drew astonished and dismayed reactions from aid agencies and development specialists, who fear that the poor of developing countries will be worst hit. "This is genuinely terrifying," said Andrew Pendleton of Christian Aid. "It is a death sentence for many millions of people. It will mean migration off the land at levels we have not seen before, and at levels poor countries cannot cope with." One of Britain's leading experts on the effects of climate change on the developing countries, Andrew Simms from the New Economics Foundation, said: "There's almost no aspect of life in the developing countries that these predictions don't undermine - the ability to grow food, the ability to have a safe sanitation system, the availability of water. For hundreds of millions of people for whom getting through the day is already a struggle, this is going to push them over the precipice." The findings represent the first time that the threat of increased drought from climate change has been quantified with a supercomputer climate model such as the one operated by the Hadley Centre. Their impact is likely to even greater because the findings may be an underestimate. The study did not include potential effects on drought from global-warming-induced changes to the Earth's carbon cycle. In one unpublished Met Office study, when the carbon cycle effects are included, future drought is even worse. The results are regarded as most valid at the global level, but the clear implication is that the parts of the world already stricken by drought, such as Africa, will be the places where the projected increase will have the most severe effects. The study, by Eleanor Burke and two Hadley Centre colleagues, models how a measure of drought known as the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is likely to increase globally during the coming century with predicted changes in rainfall and heat around the world because of climate change. It shows the PDSI figure for moderate drought, currently at 25 per cent of the Earth's surface, rising to 50 per cent by 2100, the figure for severe drought, currently at about 8 per cent, rising to 40 cent, and the figure for extreme drought, currently 3 per cent, rising to 30 per cent. Senior Met Office scientists are sensitive about the study, funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, stressing it contains uncertainties: there is only one climate model involved, one future scenario for emissions of greenhouse gases (a moderate-to-high one) and one drought index. Nevertheless, the result is "significant", according to Vicky Pope, the head of the Hadley Centre's climate programme. Further work would now be taking place to try to assess the potential risk of different levels of drought in different places, she said. The full study - Modelling the Recent Evolution of Global Drought and Projections for the 21st Century with the Hadley Centre Climate Model - will be published later this month in The Journal of Hydrometeorology . It will be widely publicised by the British Government at the negotiations in Nairobi in November on a successor to the Kyoto climate treaty. But a preview of it was given by Dr Burke in a presentation to the Climate Clinic, which was formed by environmental groups, with The Independent as media partner, to press politicians for tougher action on climate change. The Climate Clinic has been in operation at all the party conferences. While the study will be seen as a cause for great concern, it is the figure for the increase in extreme drought that some observers find most frightening. "We're talking about 30 per cent of the world's land surface becoming essentially uninhabitable in terms of agricultural production in the space of a few decades," Mark Lynas, the author of High Tide, the first major account of the visible effects of global warming around the world, said. "These are parts of the world where hundreds of millions of people will no longer be able to feed themselves." Mr Pendleton said: "This means you're talking about any form of development going straight out of the window. The vast majority of poor people in the developing world are small-scale farmers who... rely on rain." A glimpse of what lies ahead The sun beats down across northern Kenya's Rift Valley, turning brown what was once green. Farmers and nomadic herders are waiting with bated breath for the arrival of the "short" rains - a few weeks of intense rainfall that will ensure their crops grow and their cattle can eat. The short rains are due in the next month. Last year they never came; large swaths of the Horn of Africa stayed brown. From Ethiopia and Eritrea, through Somalia and down into Tanzania, 11 million people were at risk of hunger. This devastating image of a drought-ravaged region offers a glimpse of what lies ahead for large parts of the planet as global warming takes hold. In Kenya, the animals died first. The nomadic herders' one source of sustenance and income - their cattle - perished with nothing to eat and nothing to drink. Bleached skeletons of cows and goats littered the barren landscape. The number of food emergencies in Africa each year has almost tripled since the 1980s. Across sub-Saharan Africa, one in three people is under-nourished. Poor governance has played a part. Pastoralist communities suffer most, rather than farmers and urban dwellers. Nomadic herders will walk for weeks to find a water hole or riverbed. As resources dwindle, fighting between tribes over scarce resources becomes common. One of the most critical issues is under-investment in pastoralist areas. Here, roads are rare, schools and hospitals almost non-existent. Nomadic herders in Turkana, northern Kenya, who saw their cattle die last year, are making adjustments to their way of life. When charities offerednew cattle, they said no. Instead, they asked for donkeys and camels - animals more likely to survive hard times. Pastoralists have little other than their animals to rely on. But projects which provide them with money to buy food elsewhere have proved effective, in the short term at least. -------- ACTIVISTS Congressional candidate from northern Wisconsin arrested 10/4/2006 BusinessNorth, Duluth MN http://www.businessnorth.com/kuws.asp?RID=1640 The Green Party candidate for the 7th Congressional race was arrested and ticketed in Minnesota Monday. Mike Simonson reports from Superior. As a member of Nukewatch and an active anti-war protester, 53 year-old Mike Miles was among 78 people arrested for protesting at Alliant Techsystems in Edina, Minnesota…a company he says makes depleted uranium weapons. "We all just walked up the driveway and approached the front door and met a phalanx of police officers who sat us down and took us into a parking garage, gave us citations and sent us off the property.” : Miles...who is making his second bid for the 7th Congressional district seat...doesn’t think his arrest will hurt his candidacy or credibility. "We live in times that require this kind of drastic action. Anything less than this is not admitting the issues that face us are serious enough to overwhelm us. So, yeah, it's the right thing to do at the right time.” Miles is challenging incumbent Congressman Dave Obey along with republican Nick Reid in November's election. ---- Veteran speaks on his battles since returning from Gulf War Evelyn Cronce El Defensor Chieftain Reporter Wednesday, October 4, 2006 http://www.dchieftain.com/news/65273-10-04-06.html Veteran Jerry Wheat spoke to audiences at the Disable American Veterans Hall and at the Socorro Public Library about his experiences in the first Gulf War in 1991. He especially spoke on the physical and bureaucratic problems he continues to battle from wounds received when his Bradley armored personnel carrier was accidentally hit twice by "friendly fire" with American shells made from depleted uranium. Wheat was deployed in Saudi Arabia in late December 1990 with the 3rd Armored Division of the 47th Cavalry. On Feb. 27, 1991, on a reconnaissance mission in Iraq, Wheat found himself in a sandstorm facing the enemy's Republican Guard. The Bradley he was driving pulled back to reload and was hit by an armor-piercing round. When he came to, he was on fire and removed most of his clothing, including his bulletproof vest. When he discovered that the Bradley would still run, he attempted to head back to his unit and was hit a second time. This time, without his protective gear, the shrapnel penetrated his body and became embedded. Wheat was evacuated to the field hospital where the shrapnel was removed. He said the pieces were small, the largest being only about three-quarters of an inch. His commanding officer told Wheat that he was lucky to be alive after having been hit by two T-72 Russian tank rounds. "He didn't tell me I had been hit by 'friendly fire,'" Wheat said. For the next couple of weeks, until the ceasefire, Wheat continued to drive the Bradley until the engine finally quit and had no access to shower facilities. "I was just happy to be alive. The Bradley, my clothes and my sleeping bag were all covered in a fine dust, not sand," he said. "There were still pieces of shrapnel in my sleeping bag and my gear. The fine dust got over everything, including the MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat) I ate. There was no place to wash up." Then the ceasefire was declared and Wheat returned to his family at the base in Germany, but he started having health problems. He had still not had an opportunity to shower or clean up when he arrived home still dusty. His 3-year -old son, who had never had respiratory problems, was rushed to the hospital that night and spent the next week in the hospital with breathing problems. Wheat feared some kind of heavy metal poisoning. Wheat discovered that he had been hit by depleted uranium when his father, working at Los Alamos, took samples of the shrapnel from Wheat's sleeping bag and had them tested. Wheat brought the shrapnel from his gear and the shrapnel that had worked its way out of his body since the incident to the lecture. Damacio Lopez tested it with a Geiger counter and demonstrated that it registered 1,200 counts per minute. Wheat has had numerous health problems since the incident, but the Veterans Administration has not said that any of his problems, including the cancerous tumor in the bone of his shoulder, were caused by depleted uranium. He said the V.A. blames his problems on post-traumatic stress. Wheat's lecture was followed by a showing of the video documentary "Invisible War: The Politics of Radiation." Much audience discussion followed both the presentation and the video. There was a great deal of concern expressed about effects of depleted uranium as used by the military. Concern was expressed as well about historic testing of depleted uranium weapons, and whether or not it is still being tested, for the military at New Mexico Tech and at White Sands Missile Range. Tom Delahante, Disabled American Veterans president, suggested everyone who has been exposed to shrapnel from any of the Middle East conflicts or from Bosnia, either during the fighting or from souvenirs brought back by soldiers, or from the testing of depleted uranium done locally should contact the DAV. "You don't want to deal with the VA alone," said Delahante. "Jerry's story is typical." ecronce@dchieftain.com ---- Congressional candidate from northern Wisconsin arrested 10/4/2006 News From 91.3 KUWS Wisconsin http://www.businessnorth.com/kuws.asp?RID=1640 The Green Party candidate for the 7th Congressional race was arrested and ticketed in Minnesota Monday. Mike Simonson reports from Superior. As a member of Nukewatch and an active anti-war protester, 53 year-old Mike Miles was among 78 people arrested for protesting at Alliant Techsystems in Edina, Minnesota…a company he says makes depleted uranium weapons. "We all just walked up the driveway and approached the front door and met a phalanx of police officers who sat us down and took us into a parking garage, gave us citations and sent us off the property.” : Miles...who is making his second bid for the 7th Congressional district seat...doesn’t think his arrest will hurt his candidacy or credibility. "We live in times that require this kind of drastic action. Anything less than this is not admitting the issues that face us are serious enough to overwhelm us. So, yeah, it's the right thing to do at the right time.” Miles is challenging incumbent Congressman Dave Obey along with republican Nick Reid in November's election.