------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Italy, France Agree High - Speed Alpine Train Link
ESSAY Waiting for Righty
China and U.S. Explore Options on Missile Shield
DU USE ALREADY ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
Athens Conference
Pentagon 'knew Nato shells contained dangerous nuclear waste'
Anti-nuclear protester sets himself on fire
Rumsfeld: Star Warrior Returns
1972 ANTI-BALLISTIC MISSILE TREATY
THE TOP 10 PRONUCLEAR ARGUMENTS...ANSWERED
Alaska
VIRGINIA
The Man Who Never Was
Missile defense great if it worked

MILITARY
RUMSFELD REVEALED: ATRC January Update
EU to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi
Pastrana tries to save peace talks
Substance abuse costly for states
Iraq: Airstrikes Injured 7 People
South Korean Jet Fires Missile
Space Is Playing Field For Newest War Game
Army detonates nerve gas bomblet
Army brass seen as targets

OTHER
Fuel cells may redistribute power
A U.N. study heightened global warming fears
Humans biggest threat to Galapagos
Oregon's land use laws threatened
GAO: US Influence on IMF Threatened
Judge Admits Kenya Statements in Embassy Terrorism Case

ACTIVISTS
Corporate Democracy; Civic Disrespect
Samuel H. Day Jr.
World forum protest cleanup begins
Brazil forum attracts sympathizers
Stop Global Warming!
The left is right?


-------- NUCLEAR

Italy, France Agree High - Speed Alpine Train Link

January 29, 2001
Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-italy-f.html

TURIN (Reuters) - Italy and France agreed on Monday to start work on a multi-billion dollar high-speed train link between Turin and Lyon, incorporating a controversial 32.5 mile tunnel through the Alps.

Italian and French leaders, meeting at their annual bilateral summit, also settled a damaging rift over the Mont Blanc tunnel by agreeing it would reopen in September.

It closed in March 1999 following a blaze in which 39 people died.

``We have concluded an historic accord on the Turin-Lyon link which is crucial to the infrastructure between our two nations,'' Amato told a joint news conference after separate talks with French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

``It is central to the network of rail links being built in Europe,'' he said, adding that the 32.5 mile tunnel would cut pollution in one of Europe's most congested regions.

A joint government commission will now begin geological, environmental and technical tests, to be wrapped up by 2006. The $10 billion tunnel and rail link should be in service by 2015.

``An historic decision has been taken today,'' Chirac said. ''The economy called out for this link and the people (of the region) wanted it.''

The European Investment Bank, the long-term financing arm of the European Union, said it would be happy to help finance the project but said it preferred Italy's twin-tunnel link proposal rather than France's plan for just one tube.

The rail link involves burrowing one of the world's longest tunnels under the scenic Alpine region of Valle di Susa between Turin and the French border -- a project opposed by environmentalists.

AMBITIOUS ENGINEERING PROJECT

The Valle di Susa project would rank as the world's third longest rail tunnel. The Gotthard rail tunnel in Switzerland, due for completion in 2010, will be the world's longest at 56.9 km. The Seikam rail tunnel in Japan, opened in 1988, is currently the longest at 53.8 km.

France, eager to see freight off the roads and on to rail, put pressure on Italy to finalize a deal in Turin, while Rome insisted on a date for the reopening of Mont Blanc. Its closure hit the economies of its northern regions hard and meant higher costs and longer routes for Italian hauliers.

Amato said the Mont Blanc tunnel would open in September but with much greater security and regulation of traffic.

France and Italy also inked a deal to develop a low-orbit satellite, aimed at both civilian and military use.

Italy's Alenia Spazio, a unit of engineering company Finmeccanica, would work on radar specifics. France's Alcatel would focus on optics systems. An industrial source said the project was worth 1.5 trillion lire.

Italian and French leaders discussed the future of the EU, the mad cow disease scare and other bilateral issues.

Chirac took the opportunity to launch Europe's sternest broadside to date against the new Bush administration's plan to develop its anti-missile defense shield.

``Our concern is that...NMD (the National Missile Defense plan) cannot fail to relaunch the arms race in the world,'' Chirac warned.

---

ESSAY Waiting for Righty

January 29, 2001
New York Times
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

DAVOS, Switzerland - Colin Powell's State Department, nibbling its nails about anti-globalist protests, warned Americans about traveling to the World Economic Forum in dangerous Davos, where the elite meet to not compete. But intrepid opinionmongers trekked into these Alps to learn how Chinese and Russian leaders react to Bush administration plans for a missile defense.

Internal political paranoia in Beijing inclines its leaders to make a deal. Lee Kuan Yew, dictator of Singapore, recently cracked down on Falun Gong adherents who were stretching and breathing deeply in a public park without a permit. That showed the believers who was boss in the shopping-mall nation, but unlike the insecure dictators in China, Lee did not imprison, torture or murder them.

I asked Lee why Beijing was so exercised over the exercise movement. The "senior minister" suggested that when the fervor of an ideology dies, anomie sets in; gripped by the lethargy of life without meaning, people turn to new movements offering cohesion. Remembering the Boxer Rebellion, an imperfect analogy, Communism's leaders see the Falun Gong as a challenge to authority.

Other Asian observers here say that Beijing's leaders are foolishly making martyrs out of the Falun followers, much as the Romans did in seeking to suppress the nascent Christian movement. Feeling weakness within, Beijing wants a temporary accommodation with the barbarians of the West.

Hence, a Chinese position is being explored to agree to a level of U.S. missile defense that would counter blackmail from rogue states - but, in return for inspection rights given the U.S., would not be overly effective against what China likes to think of as its own nuclear deterrent.

In Russia, a similarly happy outcome is possible, but the impetus is different from China's. The Russian regime is supremely confident of its political stability.

Vladimir Putin is building a corporate state along Perón-Pinochet lines. The K.G.B., the army and a selection of oligarchs rule through an elected president who maintains popularity by tight control of the mass media. (The last opposition oligarch, forced out of the country, is trying to sell his TV network to non-Russian media operators like Ted Turner, thought to be "untouchable" by censors.) This command combination will maintain power so long as the people have bread.

Bread is now on Russian tables mainly because OPEC has nearly tripled the price of energy, Russia's major export. The Saudi oilmen here have passed the word that oil prices will be kept up around $25 a barrel for at least a year. Add this to the delayed effect of the pre-Putin ruble devaluation, which killed imports and lately revived local industry, and Russians have a sense of not-so-hard times.

The Chechen guerrilla war can never be won, but casualties are down and international human-rights pressure is weakening. Even Russia's democratic reformers have taken to differentiating between Chechen "bandits" and suffering Chechen people.

Those reformers are dispirited because they represent less than a fifth of the Russian electorate. The only two democratic leaders left standing - Grigory Yavlinsky and Boris Nemtsov - are the best long-term hope for a peaceful and prosperous nation, but they grind their teeth as Putin visits a monument to the Stalinist Andropov in the morning and honors the dissenter Sakharov in the afternoon.

As the K.G.B.-military-oligarch clique consolidates power behind Putin, it faces a new U.S. president with firm ideas about a national missile defense. Neither bluster about the ABM treaty, nor visits to Cuba or North Korea, nor arms deals with Iran will block the new American policy. Putin will now have to deal with an inexorable Bush decision, not a forlorn Clinton hope.

And his current stability means Putin will be able to negotiate major revision of the ABM treaty or its replacement with little internal dissent. Russia's president can gain points with Americans by deploying reformers, thereby jump-starting arms control, or he can string out negotiations by demanding the U.S. abandon NATO coverage of the Baltics, which we won't buy.

Thus do insecure leaders in Beijing and too-secure leaders in Moscow approach the changed American defense policy. Expect posturing and jockeying, but their policies must adjust to America's missile defense - the new fact on the strategic ground.

------

China and U.S. Explore Options on Missile Shield

Monday, January 29, 2001
International Herald Tribune
New York Times Service
Erik Eckholm
http://www.iht.com/articles/8995.htm

BEIJING With President George W. Bush dead set on building a national missile defense, American and Chinese military experts have begun exploring ways to make such a shield more palatable to China and say a compromise, though extremely difficult, might be possible.

American plans for a missile shield have stirred opposition in capitals across the globe, but China's resistance may be the most intractable. If the Bush administration does push ahead with its plans - and it has given every sign that it will - Beijing's objections loom as a stiff foreign policy challenge.

A way out of the impasse might be found, military experts say, but it will require near-heretical political steps by leaders in Washington and Beijing. Without some accommodation, experts and Chinese officials warn, the shield could poison relations, set off a dangerous weapons race across Asia and even raise the chances of a war. Up to now, American officials have said the proposed defenses are intended to counter only smaller powers, such as Iran and North Korea, while offering little more than assurances that a missile shield is not aimed at stifling China.

But Chinese leaders are acutely aware that any working system may effectively neutralize their bantam nuclear forces and they fear it will subject them to potential American bullying, particularly regarding Taiwan. Now, experts from both countries say, as it has become clear that a new American administration is determined to press ahead with a missile shield, new thinking is required.

"If the American intention is to use this system to defend against China, then I can't see any room for compromise," said Li Bin, a nuclear physicist and arms control expert at Qinghua University who advises the government. "But if they really are just worried about the so called rogue states, and they aren't trying to undermine China's deterrent, then it may be possible in principle to reach agreement."

An unofficial group of private American military experts visited Beijing recently to discuss the issue with Chinese officials and scholars. The Chinese listened to proposals for compromise, according to some who attended, but did not endorse them and mainly restated Beijing's opposition to the American plan. But the fact that Chinese authorities attended and allowed such meetings to take place at all indicated their strong desire to find a way for their concerns to be taken into account.

"We wanted to help the Chinese understand more clearly that the missile defense train has already left the station," said Bates Gill, a weapons expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington who was part of the American group. "They can try to engage in a serious dialogue with the United States, or they can keep their heads in the sand as important decisions get made."

The immediate goal would not necessarily be a treaty, like those the United States negotiated with the much more powerful Soviet Union to stabilize the arms race, which openly endorsed a balance of terror. Rather, the two countries could begin by seeking a more informal "strategic understanding" about the expected size of the shield, as well as the number and kinds of offensive weapons China plans to develop, Mr. Gill said.

-------- depleted uranium

DU USE ALREADY ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW

Mon, 29 Jan 2001
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>
Reply-to: du-list@yahoogroups.com

Friends,

I posted this a couple of weeks ago but because of it's obvious extremely important legal/political/military/environmental/economic nature & potential ramifications feel it important to post again.

Attorney Karen Parker lays out the 4 reasons that DU use are ALREADY illegal under international law and have been since they were first used. Please spread this to interested parties and make some calls, send some faxes & e-mails to your local media about this, wherever in the world you are. The world's media and public must know that the laws are ALREADY on the books. Thanks.

-Bill Smirnow

--------

depleted uranium paper for free militant use

Mon, 29 Jan 2001
From: "bruno vitale" <vitalebru29@hotmail.com>

Report on Athens Conference, 26 Jan. 2001

Mon, 29 Jan 2001
From: "Cat" <cat@freewomen.freeserve.co.uk>

Report on an International Scientific Conference on Environmental Consequences of the Balkan Crisis, Medecins du Monde-Greece Athens 26 January 2001 Catherine A. Euler, Ph.D. C.Euler@lmu.ac.uk International Depleted Uranium Study Team (IDUST)

The night before the conference enormous street demonstrations against DU and NATO had taken place in Athens, which were attended by some 2-3,000 people. However, no one at the conference mentioned the intensely political demonstrations. The conference positioned itself as a non-political event which tried to find out the scientific truth about DU. It was clear that depleted uranium had been a matter of great concern throughout the Balkans, and most of those attending were from the region. The programme began with an introduction by Dr Theophilos Rosenberg, the director, who emphasised that Medecins du Monde-Greece had developed an excellent reputation for complete impartiality throughout the Balkans Crisis, and that the doctors had continued to treat the ill and wounded in Kosovo and Serbia during the bombing.

He was followed by Mr. E. Sideris, a radiobiologist at the Democritus Institute, who said that the action of internal alpha particles could lead to "extensive degeneration in the DNA." However, he said, quoting from the last press release of the World Health Organisation, some 95% of uranium is eliminated by the faeces or excreted in urine after 180-360 days. While other scientists, like Dr. Durakovic and Dr Sharma, have shown that the insoluble uranium can last much longer in the human body than this, perhaps more than twenty years, Mr Sideris seemed unaware of this research. He also suggested that no problems whatsoever had been created for those people near the El-Al crash in Amsterdam, and repeated the increasingly popular myth that no increases in leukemia had coccurred after Chernobyl. Even though the McDiarmid American Armed Forces Radiobiology Institute (AFFRI) studies with rats had shown DU-caused alterations to the hippocampus, in the brain, he insisted that the risk of DU was mainly for the civilians, not the soldiers, and no risk at all for the people of Greece. Nevertheless, he ended his talk with the comment that, "only a sick mind could design a weapon of this sort." He appealed for anyone with more information on leukemias in Gulf War veterans to contact him, as he cannot find it on any of the databases.

Dr. Andjelka Vukicevic, of the Institute of Public Health, Serbia, focused his presentation on the chemical pollutants released by the bombing of Pancevo and other industrial locations, which released hydrocarbons, benzene, phenols, xylenes, toluene, phosgene, dioxins, vinyl chloride monomers, chromium, arsenic, nickel, etc. He reported no immediate increase in local health problems. Dr. M. Solos, Associate Professor of Environmental Chemistry at the University of Athens, emphasised the toxicity of DU as a heavy metal, saying that "the food chain in that region is expected to manifest the same consequences as with other heavy metals...the transfer from sediment to tissue causes a risk to the future." He said concentrations of heavy metals would be expected to increase particularly in organisms living at the bottom of lakes and rivers.

Professor of Atmospheric Pollution at Thrace, Dr. S. Rapsomanikus, said there was a transport of toxic organic aerosol over Greece during the 1999 conflict, after the pollutants were ejected to the troposphere. His studies had mostly focused on the distribution of organic compounds, rather than DU, but he also said that the distribution of radioactivity monitors on the borders of Greece was not ideal.

Dr Predag Polic, the Chair for Applied Chemistry at the University of Belgrade, had been working with the UNEP team collecting samples. He emphasised the chemical pollution caused by the bombing, particularly the "tons and tons" of PCBs released by bombing transmitter stations in the national parks. He reported on a survey of natural and anthropogenic radioactivity in Yugoslavia which had reported no significant increase, though soil samples containing a uranium bullet had registered 100x higherthan normal background. He suggested that most of the danger from radioactivity was limited to Kosovo.

Dr Maria Sotiropoulou-Arvaniti, President of the Greek section of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), said the radioactivity from the explosion of DU shells was very different from that at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She said there was an increase in leukaemia in southern Iraq, and a significant increase in infectious diseases, herpes, anaemias, etc. She said the uranium missiles used in Bosnia in 994-1995 had not yet shown their full effect, and that banning radioactive weapons, as well as nuclear weapons, was the only way we were to survive as a species.

After lunch, I spoke about the great divide in scientific opinion about DU. One side insists it is harmless, a view mostly promulgated by NATO and the US and UK ministries of defence, who do quote from several scientists. B. Rostker, from the US DoD, for example, reports that "no human cancer of any kind has ever been seen as a result of exposure to uranium." Other scientists, however, insist it could very well be the cause of the cancers, illnesses and genetic abnormalities we are seeing in Iraq and among Gulf War veterans. I suggested that the main reason for this difference in approach was due to varying theories of radiation risk. One model, the linear non-threshold model, held that risk decreased as radiation dose decreased. This was a mathematical model based on extrapolating from the external acute exposures of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Survivors. However, several studies has shown empirical support for what Dr. Chris Busby calls the biphasic cellular response model, in which very low doses actually cause more harm than a higher dose, up to a certain point. The only way to contribute towards a settling of the dispute was to carry out an independent epidemiological survey, not another desk study. I then outlined the study as suggested by Dr. Rosalie Bertell, and indicated that the International Depleted uranium Study Team would like to co-ordinate it, and that we needed both more partners and more funding. I suggested that those needing more information about the competing models of radiation risk should consult the DU section at URL: http://www.llrc.org

Dr. Hannu Vuori, the co-director of the Department of Health and Social Welfare for the UN Mission in Kosovo, then focused largely on UNMIK's role in rebuilding hospitals. He said the level of radioactivity in DU was extremely minimal, and could not be detected at a distance of ten centimeters from the shell. He said the World Health Organisation was currently in Kosovo conducting a study, and was carrying out a review of the literature. "UNMIK doesn't want to belittle the problem," Dr. Vuori said. "Cases have been found where scientists belittle theories later found to be right." He said all 112 sites where DU has been found would be marked in the field. He suggested one strategy would be to establish a testing facility for voluntary testing of the local population could take place. He said his department had been designated as the focal point for depleted uranium work. But, he said, in the light of what we have learned from the WHO, the radiation from badly maintained x-ray machines and heavy metals from the ca mines are a much greater radiation risk.

Dr. Theophilou, a nuclear physicist at the Democritus Institute, said he had worked for twelve years in the laboratory for atomic fission run by the European Union. He insisted that we know enough from physics to condemn DU munitions, and that epidemiology was not required but more molecular biology was. He said alpha particles have a charge of 4.5 million electron volts, and that to change a molecule one needed only one-fourth of an electron volt. Erroneous copies of cells will be produced, he insisted, and this leads to carcinogenesis and leukaemias. If the alpha particle damaged the DNA, then erroneous copies would be produced forever afterwards. He said that with the addition of only one alpha particle, the health of the individual was in a hostile environment. He emphasised that alpha particles were extremely energetic atoms, and that their high temperature could also damage nearby cells. He said he was extremely concerned when he heard there were particles of Pu mixed with the DU. Speaking of dust particles 1-10 microns in size, he said "these particles can reach all the different areas of our body, and most are insoluble." He indicated that harmful reactions could result from the entry of uranium to the stomach, where it would be transformed by hydrochloric acid. He said the dust could be transferred up into the atmosphere and travel very far, in the same way that dust from the Sahara has been found in Greece. He thought it certainly was theoretically possible that some particles of DU had travelled as far as Greece from Kosovo.

Dr. A.K. Geranios, a Professor of Nuclear Physics at Athens University, saidthere were six or seven labs performing tests on alpha exposures to n may not be correct, because we have only had 55 years to study the effects of radiation, and we need a much longer time period before we know very much. "We can't have an overt model of results at very low levels because of the long period of time in which they need to be determined." He spoke at length about how several radiation limits were in fact set by economic or financial considerations between countries, and not according to their biological effects. He said the levels of radiation standards had continuously dropped since the 1930s. "Some people say we are exaggerating the risks. Since the 1930s we have never had an exaggeration of risk. On the contrary, we have tended to underestimate risks." He said it was not right to use ordinary risks, such as the risk of an automobile accident, to calculate risks from radiation hazard, because the latter are not repeatable and observable in the way the one-off events of the former type of risk are. Radiation risks were not one-off events, but continued as long as the decay continued. To wait until we have further proof of the harm of DU was "utterly fallacious," he said, "and until then we must make sure the weapon is abolished."

Dr. Dugachuini Binishi, the director of Pristina University Hospital in Kosovo, said a leukaemia risk for soldiers there was highly unlikely, and that there had been no cancer increase reported amongst the civilian population in the last five years. There had been no increase in leukaemia as a result of Chernobyl, he said. [This is based on an error-filled study reported by UNSCEAR, and is inaccurate]. He said there is no association between DU and lung disease or renal dysfunction, according to US scientists. While it was important to identify and mark off sites where DU was used, "we need help to treat our current leukaemia. We don't have drugs, or anything, to help solve it...If each European country would take 1-2 of these patients, that would be the best help we could receive."

Dr. G. Rigatos, a doctor of oncology, said that "no matter what the quantity, we know uranium may be carcinogenic." There had been studies in 1902, 1921, 1931 and 1934 showing the relationship between radiation and cancer, and the Minister of Health in the Ukraine had certainly reported an increase in leukaemia after Chernobyl. There is an increase in malignant neoplasmas in Iraqi patients, and 100,000 US soldiers are also ill. We are now seeing localised nuclear war, he said.

Dr. Milan Orlic, the president of the Nuclear Sciences Institute in Belgrade, went through all the decay products of U238, and said radiation levels in Serbia had not increased, and there was an extremely small risk from DU, and that over 200 metres from an impact site, there were no dangers at all. Even if there were one gram of DU aerosol present per square metre of air, this might result in 3-30mg in humans, and thus only in 0.1-0.3 mSv exposure to the human being, averaged out over the body. He said the so-called Balkans Syndrome was more likely to be correlated with other agents present besides DU. [Of course, the energy from alpha particles is not averaged out over the whole body, it is deposited within a 30-micron radius of cells, but this was not mentioned.]

Dr. K. Pangalos, a professor of genetics, spoke next. He listed the kind of genetic abnormalities which could be attributed to genetic effects, and those most likely to be the cause of environmental or teratogenic changes (occurring during foetal development). He said there had been an increase in miscarriages in the Middle East region, with a peak increase in 1994. He said some of the dysplasias, or extremity abnormalities, had not been integrated into statistical assessment of the region, and that some of these were attributable to classical genetic mutations. Manifestations in children of one eye and enlarged heads (macroencephaly) could be teratogenic, but could be hereditary. Eventual changes in genetic material may not be apparent even in the next generation. He would say that in the third or fourth generation it would be more apparent. He suggested that those countries using DU must ban these weapons if "they don't wish to mourn the consequences in their populations."

He was followed by Dr. Dimistris Moghnie, who had spent ten years working as a doctor in Iraq after the Gulf War. He said the cancers in Al Basarah had increased from 1,713 in 1991 to 22,000 in the year 2000. In the district of Kerbela, they had increased from 943 in 1991 to 16,000 in 2000. In the district of Muthanna, they had increased from from 511 to 9600.

The conference ended with presentations on the role of international law. One professor said that although International Humanitarian Law should protect civilians, there had been no clear law prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons, so it was unclear whether they were illegal or not. Another said DU weapons were more likely to be illegal under conventions protecting the environment from warfare. Although DU weapons were not included in a prohibition, they were included in a general way because of their effects on civilians and the environment.

The conference was reported on the front page of the Athens daily paper, Ekathimerini, with the headline: "NGOS: Toxic Pollution May Be Worse Than DU" http://www.ekathimerini.com/news/content.asp?id=68228

---

Pentagon 'knew Nato shells contained dangerous nuclear waste'

29 January 2001
THE INDEPENDENT
By John Lichfield in Paris
From: Zoiritsa@aol.com

(London)
Some shells fired in the Gulf and Balkan wars contained a type of recycled nuclear waste that is much more hazardous than depleted uranium, according to a book to be published in France next week.

The book, Depleted Uranium: The Invisible War, could change the debate on whether weapons used by the United States and Nato caused widespread sickness among war veterans and civilians.

The authors, a Frenchman, a Belgian and an American, produce evidence that the US government knew six years ago that its stocks of "safe" depleted uranium had been contaminated by spent nuclear fuels. Whether this recycled material was mixed up with the "classic" depleted uranium (DU) accidentally or deliberately remains unclear.

The book uncovers evidence that the Pentagon knew in 1995 that its armour-piercing shells and bombs contained substances more environmentally menacing than the "natural" depleted uranium that Washington, London and Nato headquarters have repeatedly defended. In other words, the entire DU debate has been based on false premises.

The findings of Martin Meissonnier, Frederic Loore and Roger Trilling have been independently confirmed in the past few days by researchers at a Swiss government laboratory, which analysed spent US munitions from Kosovo. The lab found that the shells contained traces of an isotope of uranium - uranium 236 - which occurs only in nuclear waste.

The Pentagon spokesman, Kenneth Bacon, admitted last week - in reply to a question from one of the authors of the book - that depleted uranium intended for armour-piercing weapons had been contaminated by small amounts of plutonium at the defence department nuclear plant at Paducah in Kentucky.

The vigorous defence of DU weapons by the US and other Nato governments has been based on the argument that DU is a "natural" material of relatively low radioactivity. DU, in its classic form, is the heavy metal left behind - mostly uranium 238 - when the most fissile part of raw uranium, mined from the earth, is removed for use as a nuclear fuel, so classic DU is obtained before the nuclear reaction process.

The book produces evidence that at least some of the weapons used in the Gulf and Balkans contained another kind of uranium, obtained by recycling spent nuclear fuels after the reaction process. The danger is that this form of uranium - sometimes called "dirty depleted uranium" - can contain traces of highly radioactive materials, such as plutonium.

Mr Trilling said yesterday: "The whole debate should go back to square one. We are not saying that we know for sure that DU caused Gulf syndrome sicknesses, or the similar illnesses reported in the Balkans. Personally, I doubt that depleted uranium weapons are the cause, or sole cause, of the Gulf or Balkan syndromes, whatever these weapons may have actually contained.

"What we are saying is that the US government's defence of depleted uranium has been, to be charitable, extremely misleading. The book is a plea for more research - not research on abstract theories about classic depleted uranium, but on the actual contents of US and Nato weapons. Until then, everyone on all sides of the argument is talking in the dark and should shut the hell up."

The book is based on two years of interviews and investigations originally done for a French television documentary, which was shown last year. Extra material has been discovered in the past few months. The writers allow both sides of the argument about classic DU to make their cases in great detail. But there are three important new pieces of information:

* Independent research by Dr Asaf Durakovic, an American of Croatian origin, has found traces of uranium 236 in the urine or bodies of 42 American Gulf veterans. Uranium 236 is not present in the natural world and should not be present in "clean" depleted uranium.

* An official report by the US Army Environmental Policy Institute in 1995 acknowledged the possibility that "depleted uranium used by the Department of Defense contains traces of uranium 236". This implies that some of the DU used in US weapons was created from spent nuclear fuel, not from raw, mined uranium.

* The nuclear plant at Paducah in Kentucky was accused of "waste, fraud, abuse and bad management" by the General Accounting Office, the official US government watchdog, in 1992. The accounting office report protested that the plant was recycling uranium from nuclear waste, without proper safeguards, endangering its own workers. Paducah is one of the three sites in America that produce the DU used by US and Nato weapons. It was the site named by the Pentagon spokesman last week as a source of contamination of some DU weapons with plutonium.

Mr Trilling said yesterday that the "charitable" interpretation of the evidence was that clean and "dirty" forms of DU had been mixed up at Paducah, or in US Department of Defense stocks, some time in the 1980s. A decision had been taken to use up the stocks in the belief, or hope, that only small quantities of highly radioactive material were involved.

"Uranium Appauvri: La Guerre Invisible" by Martin Meissonnier, Federic Loore and Roger Trilling. Robert Laffont; FF139.

-------- taiwan

Anti-nuclear protester sets himself on fire

Monday, January 29, 2001
By Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/01/01292001/ap_fire_41676.asp

An anti-nuclear protester set himself on fire outside of Taiwan's legislature on Monday, waving his arms and rolling on the ground before witnesses extinguished the flames with bottled water.

Before igniting himself, the man - dressed in sneakers, a hooded jacket and black pants - gave a protest letter to TV crews that were covering a small anti-nuclear demonstration outside of the legislature.

Chen Shi-chi, a doctor at Taiwan University Hospital, said the man was in stable condition and did not suffer serious burns. It was not immediately known how the man set himself on fire or how long he burned.

A letter written by the man who burned himself Monday urged lawmakers not to support the construction of the island's fourth nuclear plant. The letter, written by hand and signed with the name Huang Ting-fang, said the plant, one-third complete, would harm future generations "for a thousand years."

The protest came just hours after lawmakers decided to hold a special legislative session on Tuesday and Wednesday to debate the government's decision to scrap the nuclear plant.

The project has been the source of controversy for several months. It was approved several years ago by the previous Nationalist Party government, which lost the presidential election in March.

President Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party has long opposed the nuclear plant, and Chen's government halted construction on it last fall.

The opposition-controlled legislature complained that the minority government did not have the authority to cancel the plant without consulting lawmakers.

Earlier this month, the island's highest court ordered the government to consult with the legislature before canceling the project.

One anti-nuclear protest leader, Cheng Chien-liu, said the man who set himself of fire Monday was not part of his demonstration.

"We didn't see him clearly and we didn't recognize him," Cheng said. "All of a sudden he came running out in flames from the right side of the building. We tried to put out the fire with bottled water, but there were some parts where the water was not enough."

After he set himself on fire, the man walked several steps flapping his arms. Seven bystanders doused the flames with bottled water. Another man used a small fire extinguisher.

It was the second self-immolation in two days. On Sunday, a 22-year-old man in the southern city of Tainan set himself on fire and was in serious condition, police said. The man, who had just left the military, had written a letter criticizing the nuclear plant, but his family did not think the project inspired his act, police said.

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Rumsfeld: Star Warrior Returns

January 29, 2001
The Nation
by MICHAEL T. KLARE
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010129&c=3&s=klare

The surprise selection of Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary provides a clear signal of President-elect George W. Bush's intent to transform radically the military policy of the United States. Of all the candidates considered for this position, Rumsfeld is the most ardent advocate of ballistic-missile defense and a tougher stance toward Russia and China. A longtime Republican activist with markedly conservative views, Rumsfeld is also known for his opposition to all arms-control measures and for favoring the deployment of weapons in space.

Along with other members of Bush's national security team--Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice--Rumsfeld can be expected to push hard for the establishment of a full-scale National Missile Defense system. In 1998 he authored a report on ballistic missile threats that ignited the Republicans' current drive for a national missile shield. Now, as Defense Secretary, he will be in a strong position to lead the charge for NMD.

But while NMD deployment will be Rumsfeld's top priority, it is by no means his only major objective. With the blessing of President-elect Bush, Rumsfeld will campaign for a wide range of policy shifts. These will include a greater emphasis on warfare in space, the accelerated procurement of high-tech weapons and a diminished commitment to UN peacekeeping operations. It all looks depressingly like the cold war era, when "national security" meant distrust of all other states and the pursuit of ever more potent weapons.

Rumsfeld's service to Republican Presidents (and presidential hopefuls) goes back to the Nixon Administration, when he became director of the Office of Economic Opportunity after several terms in Congress. While at the OEO, Rumsfeld impressed the White House staff with his managerial skills, and in 1970 he was made counselor to the President. (It was at this time that Rumsfeld developed close ties with Cheney, who had served as his special assistant at the OEO.)

Fortunately for Rumsfeld, Nixon appointed him ambassador to NATO in 1972, thus sparing him from possible association with the Watergate scandal. When Nixon was forced to abandon the presidency, Rumsfeld was brought back to Washington by the new President, Gerald Ford, to serve first as White House Chief of Staff and later as Defense Secretary. Although not remembered for any major innovations during his fourteen months at the Pentagon (late 1975 to early 1977), Rumsfeld shielded the military from any major penalties following its defeat in Vietnam and laid the groundwork for procurement of a wide range of new weapons systems, including the B-1 bomber and M-X missile.

Following the election of Jimmy Carter, Rumsfeld left Washington for the private sector. From 1977 to 1985 he served as chief executive officer and then president of G.D. Searle, a major pharmaceutical corporation later acquired by Monsanto. Several years later, he took control of another large company, the General Instrument Corporation. As at Searle, he slashed costs (mainly by eliminating staff) and boosted profits, giving him a reputation as a skilled, tough-minded corporate manager.

During his years in the private sector, Rumsfeld retained his links to the military establishment (serving for a time as chairman of the RAND Corporation, a prominent military think tank) while developing new ties with conservative figures in the corporate world. Among his close confidants is Theodore Forstmann, a corporate buyout specialist who owned Gulfstream Aerospace (in 1999 he sold it to General Dynamics for $4.8 billion) and managed the buyout of General Instrument, giving Rumsfeld a paper profit of $11 million. Forstmann is also the major figure behind Empower America, a political advocacy outfit boasting many prominent Republicans (Rumsfeld among them) on its board of directors. Described by the New York Times as "a home for Washington's conservative elite," Empower America has campaigned for big tax cuts, space defenses and school vouchers.

Urged no doubt by his conservative buddies, Rumsfeld agreed in September 1996 to take over management of Bob Dole's failing presidential campaign. Although he was unable to secure victory at the polls, Rumsfeld did breathe some life into the campaign by persuading Dole to promise mammoth tax cuts and to adopt a tougher stance on military policy. Under prodding from Rumsfeld, Dole lashed out against President Clinton on his handling of the Iraq situation and called for the deployment of a national missile shield by the year 2003. In this sense, Rumsfeld laid the foundation for George W. Bush's 2000 campaign against Vice President Al Gore.

After the 1996 election, Rumsfeld returned to the corporate world--he took over Gilead Sciences, a biotechnology firm, and sat on the board of several corporations (including Asea Brown Boveri, a giant European electrical firm, and the Tribune Company)--while continuing his support for right-wing military causes. Especially significant was his close association with the Center for Security Policy, a think tank established by former Reagan Administration official Frank Gaffney Jr. to campaign for the deployment of "Star Wars" defenses.

Having gained renewed stature among the Republicans in Congress for his hard-line views, Rumsfeld was selected in 1998 to chair the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States. Composed of six Republicans and three Democrats, the Rumsfeld Commission (as it came to be called) examined classified intelligence data on the ballistic missile programs of Iran, Iraq and North Korea in order to calculate their future capacity to attack the United States. By employing worst-case reasoning to the often contradictory data on these countries' military capabilities, the commission concluded that one or another of the "rogue states" could deploy missiles capable of striking the United States in as little as five years--half the time predicted by the CIA.

Although these findings were challenged by Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and prominent figures in the arms-control community, the Rumsfeld commission's report was seized upon by Republican activists as incontrovertible evidence that the United States must proceed rapidly with the development of a full-scale missile defense system. This is the "most important warning about our national security system since the end of the cold war," House Speaker Newt Gingrich asserted at the time.

Fearful of being portrayed by Congressional Republicans as ignoring a major threat to US security, President Clinton agreed in early 1999 to proceed with development of a limited NMD system--one aimed at protecting the Western United States against a hypothetical North Korean missile attack--while putting off a decision on actual deployment. But this did little to satisfy the hawks on Capitol Hill, who sought to develop a much more robust system covering the entire nation. At Rumsfeld's urging, moreover, Bush made this a central theme of his campaign.

While a candidate, Governor Bush articulated other themes originally crafted by Rumsfeld during the Dole campaign of 1996. These include a promise to get tougher on Saddam Hussein and other "rogue state" leaders, to pursue the development of new high-tech weaponry and to abjure involvement in UN-sponsored peacekeeping missions. Together, these themes came to represent the skeleton of a new approach to national security--one that favors protection of the United States and its overseas assets rather than, say, the construction of a stable world order or the enforcement of international law.

Throughout the campaign, Bush declared his intention to undertake a sweeping transformation of US military policy. At the very least, this would entail the development and procurement of new high-tech weapons and a greater emphasis on war in space. But more than this, it would involve a shift in the very orientation of US strategy. "Our military requires more than good treatment," he declared at the Citadel in September 1999. "It needs the rallying point of a defining mission."

Although unclear on the details, Bush sketched out the broad outlines of this new mission. In place of the "vague, aimless and endless deployments" of the Clinton era (read: Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo), US military power would henceforth be reserved for more pressing objectives--to protect US national interests around the world and to defeat any power that might be so foolhardy as to threaten these key interests. More emphasis will also be placed on "homeland defense," meaning the protection of the United States from missile attack and other hypothetical threats from rogue states and terrorists.

In announcing Rumsfeld's selection as Defense Secretary, Bush made it clear that he expects his top military official to carry out this strategic transformation. "We must work to change our military to meet the threats of a new century," Bush declared on December 28. "And so one of Secretary Rumsfeld's first tasks will be to challenge the status quo within the Pentagon, to develop a strategy necessary to have a force equipped for warfare of the twenty-first century."

In his response to Bush, Rumsfeld indicated that he has every intention of conducting a major overhaul of military policy. "It is clearly not a time at the Pentagon for presiding or calibrating modestly. Rather, we are in a new national security environment. We do need to be arranged to deal with the new threats, not the old ones."

It is still too early, of course, to calculate all the consequences of this shift in outlook. Many of the initiatives favored by Bush--the development of high-tech weapons, the acceleration of research on ballistic missile defenses--have already been undertaken by the Clinton Administration. But there is no doubt that Bush and Rumsfeld will push much harder for deployment of a national missile shield and for the deployment of weapons in space. They are also likely to abandon the ABM treaty, which prohibits missile defenses of the sort they favor.

In pursuing these policies, the new administration will inevitably inflame US relations with Russia and China, thereby precluding any further progress on arms control. It is very likely, in fact, that Russia and China will respond to US initiatives by expanding their own nuclear arsenals and by forging a closer military relationship. Relations with China will become particularly tense, especially if--as is expected--Bush approves the delivery of new warships and antimissile weapons to Taiwan. The result will be a more unstable and polarized environment, producing exactly the sort of world in which the Republican's instinctive preference for cold war-like policies will find a natural outlet.

The pursuit of missile defense and the abrogation of the ABM treaty will also alienate many US allies, most of whom oppose NMD. One likely result is the further development of an autonomous European military posture, with all that this entails. And, of course, we can expect diminished US support for the UN. Where all this leads is anybody's guess, but it is hard to believe that the final outcome will be a more peaceful world.

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1972 ANTI-BALLISTIC MISSILE TREATY

Key provisions of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the former Soviet Union:

-- Limits the scope of anti-missile systems. Based on the assumption that if both the United States and Russia are vulnerable to a devastating retaliatory nuclear attack, neither would launch a first strike.

-- Neither party can deploy a missile defense that covers its entire territory. Either can have a defense that protects a single site, with no more than 100 interceptors deployed. Moscow has such a system to defend Moscow; the United States deployed one to protect missile fields in North Dakota in the 1970s but shut it down.

-- Ratified in 1972 and amended in 1974. Some argue the treaty is no longer in force because the Soviet Union no longer exists.

-- Either party can withdraw from the treaty, on six months notice.

-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said at his confirmation hearing that the treaty is "ancient history," implying that it is no longer relevant. "It was a long time ago that that treaty was fashioned," he said. "We're in a very different world. The Soviet Union's gone. The principal threats facing the United States are not the fear of a strategic nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. And it strikes me that we should accept the treaty in that sense. And I personally believe it ought not to inhibit a country, a president, an administration, a nation, from fashioning offensive and defensive capabilities that will provide for our security in a notably different national security environment."

Source: Associated Press

-------- u.s. nuc facilities

THE TOP 10 PRONUCLEAR ARGUMENTS...ANSWERED

THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS
NUMBER 67 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1981
by The Mother Earth News
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/top10args.html

Despite the fact that nuclear power plant construction has slowed since the accident at Three Mile Island. America's conflict over the peaceful use of atomic energy goes on. Indeed, smarting from the wounds inflicted by the near-disaster outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the proponents of nuclear energy have "come out swinging" with magazine and television advertisements, traveling speakers, literature, and even airport advocates who loudly promote their point of view.

Well, there's nothing wrong with people's expressing their opinions, of course. On the other hand, though, the folks here at MOTHER feel there's nothing wrong with rebutting such propositions ... especially when the arguments seem to us to be either subtly misleading or down-right incorrect. So we spent some time seeking out the strongest and most commonly used pronuclear statements we could find. Then we sent the arguments off to Dr. John Gofman, chairman of the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility and one of our country's most prominent opponents of nuclear power. The following, then, are ten of the arguments most often used by proponents of nuclear power . . . and Dr. Gofman's replies.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The pronuclear arguments presented here come from a variety of sources: Nos. 1, 3, and 10 from national ads by America's Electric Energy Companies, Dept. TMEN, Department C, P.O. Box 420, Pelham Manor, New York 10803 . . . Nos. 2, 4, and 6 from Petr Beckmann's The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear ($5.95 postpaid from The Golem Press, Dept. TMEN, Box 1342, Boulder, Colorado 80306) . . . Nos. 5 and 9 from Bernard L. Cohen's opposition to John Gofman as set forth in "Radiation Fantasies", Reason magazine, March 1980 (Reason Foundation, Dept. TMEN, 1129 State Street, No. 4, Santa Barbara, California 93101) . . . No. 7 from an energy debate attended by a MOTHER staffer . . . No. 8 from John Gofman's debating experiences {as cited in "Irrevy": An Irreverent, Illustrated View of Nuclear Power $3.95 postpaid from the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility, P.O. Box 421993, San Francisco, California 94142).

Dr. Gofman will be the subject of the Plowboy Interview in MOTHER NO. 68.

Do some of the arguments of nuclear power supporters "feel" wrong to you, even though you have trouble pinpointing the fallacies in them? Then you'll be glad to read . . .

THE TOP 10 PRONUCLEAR ARGUMENTS...ANSWERED

ARGUMENT 1: We receive more radiation sitting in our living rooms than is given off by nuclear power plants. A brick wall puts out 3.5 millirems of radiation per year but a nuclear power plant releases only 0.3 millirem in the same time period. In fact you can stand right next to a nuclear power plant and receive no radiation at all.

GOFMAN: First let me agree that certain building materials do give off enough radiation doses to deserve consideration. Let me also agree that there is a very low dose of radiation emitted at the fenceline of a nuclear power plant that is functioning normally If this were not the case, workers couldn't park their cars nearby or even approach such utilities at all.

However, the "no dose at fenceline" statement doesn't consider the radiation people can receive from the entire nuclear power fuel cycle. We need to take into account all of the steps that make up the atomic energy process including the production of mountains of uranium tailings (unshielded piles that are continuously releasing radioactive radon) . . . the inventory of radioactive poisons--such as cesium 137 strontium 90 and iodine 131--that "leak" or "puff" into the atmosphere when a power plant is not functioning normally . . . the quantities of radioactive wastes being moved in fallible vehicles that can (and do) leak . . . and the so-called burial sites which have also been shown to leak and spread their material into the environment at large.

Now let's come to the claim that a nuclear power plant itself releases only 3/10 of a millirem per year. Were that radiation dose--coupled of course with other fuel cycle emissions--truly always so small I would hardly waste my time concerning myself with the hazards of nuclear power. But the proof that advocates of this energy source have no confidence whatsoever in their estimate of the plants' releases lies in their behavior with respect to the legal radiation standards.

As late as 1979, nuclear power plants were, legally, allowed to bombard the public with 170 millirems per year. When my colleague Arthur Tamplin and I proposed a tenfold reduction in that standard, the nuclear industry and pronuclear government agencies fought us tooth and nail. Now it has to be regarded as the acme of strange behavior for an industry to say, "Look, we're never going to give you more than 3/10 of a millirem per year" . . . and then demand that the permissible standard remain more than 500 times as high as that limit! So I would say that as long as the industry fights against reducing legal standards to a level comparable to the 3/10 millirem per year that nuclear power advocates claim is the maximum dose per plant, any member of the public can dismiss such ludicrously low estimates.

(The legal standard was changed in 1979. It now permits 25 millirems per year of ionizing radiation to be passed on to the general public, under normal operating conditions! The Catch-22 here is that if anything occurs to make the operating conditions "abnormal", a nuclear facility is permitted to release an increased--and unrestricted--quantity of radiation.)

ARGUMENT 2: People living in high altitude cities, such as Denver, receive twice as much natural radiation as do those living at low altitudes . . . yet the residents of such cosmically bombarded locales don't display double the average incidence of cancer.

GOFMAN: The answer to this favorite pronuclear argument is that the cosmic radiation hitting the people in Denver probably does cause an increase in the number of cancer cases per capita. (One should not expect to find twice as many cases of cancer, of course, because radiation is not the only cause of the disease.) But to statistically demonstrate such a reality, we would first have to know [1] that the medical reporting of disease categories was equally accurate in that city and the sea-level community to which Denver was being compared, [2] that the people who are considered "at risk" in both communities had all lived at the same location all their lives, and [3] that any other carcinogenic factors--aside from background radiation--were identical in both areas. (Undoubtedly they would not be identical.)

The fact is that no expert in the field of vital statistics would be prepared to contest the point that Denver residents may be experiencing an increased cancer incidence rate as a result of cosmic radiation . . . when compared with otherwise equivalent people at sea level.

ARGUMENT 3: A chest X-ray exposes a person to 50 millirems of radiation, and a coast-to-coast jet flight gives one a dose of 5 millirems. But the spokespersons of the antinuclear "movement" don't complain about those hazards.

GOFMAN: An individual has the right to choose to accept the radiation received by flying coast to coast or by having a chest X-ray . . . in exchange for a perceived benefit for him- or herself. (The dose received from a variety of medical X-rays is high enough, though, that I would not recommend undergoing such examinations unless the procedures are required in order to make an accurate diagnosis of a potentially fatal disease.)

But nuclear power does not offer a voluntary choice . . . the radiation released by nuclear power is imposed upon people. Indeed, atomic power represents the use of an entire population as involuntary guinea pigs in a gigantic game of Russian roulette . . . the results of which could be an epidemic of cancer, leukemia, and genetic disease. And there would be no justification for such an involuntary imposition of risk even if the majority of the people in a country voted in favor of nuclear power . . . because the majority has no right to risk committing genocide against the minority.

ARGUMENT 4: The genetic dangers often cited by antinuclear activists are obviously exaggerated, because not even the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II produced any harmful genetic effects.

GOFMAN: I've often heard the statement that the Hiroshima/Nagasaki data show that no genetic damage results from radiation, so I went out of my way to analyze, very carefully, those particular scientific papers . . . and I was astounded to discover that the findings in that study were exactly the opposite of what is being claimed! The often quoted Neel-Kato-Schull study examined dominant genetic diseases that are expected to cause death in early life among children under 17 years of age, and definitely indicated that ionizing radiation increased the incidence of such diseases.

The Neel-Kato-Schull findings were significant at what is called the "5% level", which means there's one chance in 20 that the findings were the result of chance . . . and 19 chances out of 20 that the findings were correct. Now the scientists who did this work decided that--considering the delicacy of the matter--they didn't want to trumpet their results around . . . so they concluded in their paper that they found "no clear effects" (my italics).

Well, they had indeed found that radiation has an effect on the incidence of genetic damage, at the 5% level of significance. But--by twisting the words in their summary--they provided pronuclear advocates with the opportunity to grab at the statement that "no effect was clearly observed" and then to jump to the fraudulent conclusion that "no effect exists".

The Japanese evidence certainly does not prove the absence of genetic effects of radiation.

ARGUMENT 5: Antinuclear advocates exaggerate the dangers of plutonium. After all, the substance is easily safeguarded because it's produced in very small quantities. Furthermore, other dangerous poisons--like lead, which has an infinite half-life--are continually being spewed into the environment.

GOFMAN: Plutonium has to be one of the most dangerous carcinogens that I know of. In fact, I believe that my own estimates of its toxicity--figures that are thousands of times higher than those of "official" estimating bodies--may well be understated.

And--although nuclear advocates claim that the carcinogen is now made in relatively small quantities--if we develop an industry involving reprocessing fuel rods (which must surely come to pass if we commit ourselves to the nuclear energy route), society will be handling millions of kilograms of plutonium. Under such circumstances, in order to avoid a lung cancer epidemic, the containment of this plutonium will have to be 99.9999% perfect . . . in other words, they'll have to safely guard all but one part in a million!

And yes, lead does have an infinite half-life and may be injuring the brains of many, many children . . . particularly those in urban environments. However, pointing to the dangers of another damaging pollutant to justify creating plutonium is the equivalent of arguing that if others are committing murder, then additional homicide is justified!

The correct assessment involves the realization that if we're letting the lead industry get away with dangerous pollution, we should do something about the lead industry . . . and not promote still another dangerous violation of human rights and health.

ARGUMENT 6: If all U.S. power were nuclear in origin, the radioactive waste produced would amount to only the size of one aspirin tablet per person per year.

GOFMAN: The important concern here, of course, is not only the amount of poison, but its toxicity. A fully developed nuclear industry would produce more than enough hazardous substances to kill everyone on the earth many times over. So the real issue is not whether each citizen's "share" of such materials occupies the size of a football field, a garage, or an aspirin . . . but whether one hundredth, one ten-thousandth, or one millionth of the accumulated poisons will escape. If the cumulative amount that is released is anything like one-thousandth of the little "aspirins" nuclear proponents speak about, we'll have one giant "headache": a cancer and leukemia epidemic that will make all of history's advances in public health care seem trivial.

ARGUMENT 7: Antinuclear activists often complain that the potential damage caused by atomic power isn't covered by any insurance companies. But the reason such businesses haven't insured the industry is simply that they have no actuarial experience on which to base their rates.

GOFMAN: Yes, the insurance companies have said, "We don't know the safety of nuclear power plants, so we won't insure them." For this reason, Congress passed--and twice renewed--the Price Anderson Act, a law that relieves the nuclear power industry of any liability claims beyond $560 million (a small sum in the event of a major catastrophe). Congress has also decreed that the taxpayers would, in effect, reimburse the nuclear industries for $460 million of that $560 million!

The insurance companies are smart . . . they don't know the risks, so they won't insure. Does that mean it would be a good idea for you to "bet your life" on nuclear power?

If the utilities were sincere about the safety claims that they make publicly, they would agree to repeal the Price-Anderson Act and say, "We'll put our assets on the line and insure each other." None of the power companies has done so . . . which should tell you what they really think about the safety of their plants.

ARGUMENT 8: Nuclear power supplies 13% of our country's electricity today. If Industry is denied that energy, many jobs will surely be lost.

GOFMAN: The relationship of employment to energy is a very complex matter. If you simply shut off the electricity serving a specific factory tomorrow, then of course the people working there will be out of work. On the other hand, the longrange increased use of electricity in factories often results in more mechanization and a decrease in the number of humans required to conduct the businesses' activities.

Furthermore, there's little reason to believe that the method of energy production affects employment . . . though many solar advocates claim that "their" energy source will produce more jobs per dollar than most other power alternatives.

And as for any possible energy--not jobs--shortage that could occur if we were to abandon atomic power (nuclear plants do produce 13% of our electricity, but that amounts to only 3% of our total annual energy consumption) . . . the American Institute of Architects has calculated, in two carefully researched reports, that we could work up to a 26% saving in America's projected energy use by 1990 (which would be equivalent to the production of about 430 giant nuclear plants) simply by putting conventional technology to work to make our buildings energy-efficient.

ARGUMENT 9: The question of the risks of nuclear power is a deeply technical issue that only well-informed scientists, in that specific field, can understand . . . and the majority of such people support nuclear power.

GOFMAN: I have several things to say in response to that one! First, by simply using common sense, the layman will often behave far more intelligently than would a Ph.D. The ordinary man-in-the-street can look at the amount of radioactivity that would be produced in a full-scale nuclear industry and realize that containing such toxins to 99.9999% perfection day in, day out, year in, and year out--when one considers all the possible human and machine fallibilities--is impossible. But the expert who looks at a computer printout based on the perfect execution of a string of single operations and then concludes that the toxins can be contained to one part in a million is, to my way of thinking, the person who's behaving like an idiot.

Let me now address the idea that the majority of qualified scientists support nuclear power. When considering this statement, you should first realize that the U.S. government funds about half of the research in this country. And, as I can tell you from my own personal experience, the government doesn't like results that disagree with its policies. Therefore, many scientists are publicly silent on nuclear power, or declare that the issue is too controversial to take a stance on, when privately they will admit their reservations.

Most important, though, scientific truth is not a popularity contest. Throughout history, almost every step forward in science was resisted by the majority of contemporary scientists. When most people thought that our earth was the center of the universe, the planet was traveling through space just as it's doing today . . . even though the "vast preponderance" of scientific opinion was steadfastly against such an idea. So remember: No matter how many votes a scientific committee may cast . . . the truth of nature remains unchanged.

ARGUMENT 10: Every activity--including driving a car--is risky. It's impossible to have a risk-free society. Consequently the benefits of an action must be weighed against its hazards . . . and nuclear power's benefits outweigh its risks.

GOFMAN: It is absolutely true that we cannot have a risk-free society. And, since that's the case, we should recognize that those who produce hazards for others must be fully prepared to take the financial consequences of the risks. This rule does hold true among individuals, and a corporation or the government should not be allowed to assume the right--which individuals do not have--to aggress against others. Yet nuclear power is currently absolved from the responsibilities of its actions by the Price-Anderson Act.

Moreover, the entire concept of a benefit vs. risk doctrine is immoral. There is no benefit to society that can justify the forcible imposition of risks or threats to life upon individuals. Indeed, there is a straight path from accepting the benefit vs. risk doctrine for society as a whole to the philosophy we saw epitomized in Nazi Germany.

Lastly, let me sum up my replies to all of the arguments presented here by reminding people that the nuclear power question is fundamentally a human rights issue. People have the right not to be aggressed against and used as guinea pigs in a massive human experiment. However a concern for human rights must not be equated with a craven fear of progress or challenge! Humanity has faced very difficult problems and perilous situations in the past, and shown great ingenuity in devising systems that can minimize dangers in a fashion which results in only voluntary risks being taken. But such things have to be done in a sensible way, without coercion, and with each party or industry involved taking the responsibility for his, her, or its actions. Radiation and Human Health, by John W. Gofman, M.D. Ph.D. R&HH (available starting October 1, 1981) is a practical book which can make a positive contribution to the health of those who use it, and especially to the health of their children, who are the most sensitive to radiation injury. The book provides necessary information for making recurring personal and family decisions about voluntary exposures to medical, dental, and occupational radiation.

928 pages, hardcover, $29.95 prepaid. CNR pays for packing and shipping. Tax on Californians: $1.80. Committee for Nuclear Responsibility P.O. Box 421993, San Francisco, CA 94142

This document can always be found at http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/top10args.html

-------- alaska

01/01/29
USA Today
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Alaska

Fairbanks - The North Slope Borough mayor thinks shipping nuclear waste across the top of the globe is dangerous. Russia and Japan are negotiating a deal to deliver recycled nuclear waste from western Europe to Japan via the Northern Sea Route, which passes close to the Alaska coastline. Mayor George Ahmaogak said he doesn't believe assurances from Japan that the radioactive material won't be a threat if there is an accident.

-------- virginia

VIRGINIA

Monday, January 29, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59875-2001Jan29?language=printer

Dominion Resources of Richmond is buying the Millstone nuclear power complex in Connecticut for $1.3 billion, the highest price ever paid for a nuclear plant. Connecticut regulators approved the deal last week. The current owners are Connecticut Light and Power and United Illuminating Co. Dominion hopes to close the deal in April.

The Navy says Newport News Shipbuilding Inc. is overrunning its contract target price for the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and is not meeting the cost-saving targets to which the company agreed. Navy officials say the shipyard is nearly $88 million, or about 4 percent, over the price agreed to in the contract. The shipyard agreed to build the carrier for nearly $3 billion. Navy officials said a 1999 strike, some Navy delays and other problems have caused the Reagan to run behind schedule and over budget. A shipyard spokesman said the company was on schedule with its targets after cutting $25 million in costs in 1999 and $45 million last year.

-------- us nuc politics

The Man Who Never Was

Monday, January 29, 2001
Washington Post
By William M. Arkin
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52563-2001Jan26?language=printer

On the wall of the "correspondents corridor" at the Pentagon is a special collection of magazine covers featuring secretaries of defense working and posing with troops in the field, aboard ships and kicking the tires of some magnificent machines.

Many think it telling that the cover for the 20th secretary of defense, William S. Cohen, was not from some military trade publication but from Parade Magazine. There was the secretary beaming with his second wife, Janet Langhart, a former Boston television personality. Everyone knows that Washington is filled with just such gossip and grump, a place where it is so easy to call others power conscious and vain. Yet facts are facts: Cohen was barely out of the door last week when a traditional cover from Armed Forces Journal International went up to replace Parade, a symbolic shift, some say, back to business.

By his own admission, Cohen leaves behind a Pentagon that is grossly underfunded and over-stretched, a military that the W. Bush administration says needs firmer civilian control. The more reporting I've done, the more I've become convinced that these problems are Bill Cohen's making: He is the worst secretary of defense ever. I know you can't judge a man by a magazine cover, but in this case, the contents are pretty persuasive as well.

In Hawk's Clothing

The secretary of defense is a particularly busy man, 24/7 before Web speak was ever invented, an inner circle decision maker with a co-finger on the nuclear button, manager of the largest government department, global diplomat and adult supervisor of the uniformed services.

One of the first things reporters noticed when Bill Cohen took the job was how the new secretary worked at a leisurely Senate pace, and congressional style. "He always managed to have an extra day for something," says one reporter who traveled with Cohen overseas. Unlike his predecessor William Perry, who was a hard driver and a man who could function well on a couple of hours sleep, Cohen was noted to often arrive on a weekend for a Monday meeting, never eschewing the finest five-star hotels. Aides who worked with Cohen also joke that the new secretary built "hair dressing time" into his busy schedule - he is nicely coifed.

Whereas Perry was a superb technocrat and experienced Defense Department insider and the same person in public and in private, observers all agree that Cohen was much more difficult to read, aloof and extremely distant to all but his inner circle. He surrounded himself with a "Maine mafia" of former Senate aides and campaign cronies, giving up regular meetings with the service chiefs and the regional commanders in chief. A retired senior officer says that Gen. Henry Shelton's biggest disappointment as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is that he was never able to establish a close working relationship with Cohen.

In encounters with the troops, reporters also say that Cohen acted more like a Senator than a secretary, rambling on to a confusing message. Cohen particularly loved to pepper his speeches and toasts with quotations, sometimes even conflicting quotations in the same speech. "How about what Bill Cohen has to say?" a reporter asks, noting that Cohen seems particularly disengaged when in the field.

Perhaps reporters are not good judges, particularly when assessing someone who they think was both distrustful of the media and thin-skinned if a story criticized him. Yet others agree. After Cohen became the sole Republican in 1974 to vote to demand that Richard Nixon turn over White House tapes, "some colleagues suspected him not of love of principle but of a species of love of self," a New Republic profile in 1997 said. A former Senate colleague puts it more bluntly: When Bill Cohen goes to exercise, he always chooses the bicycle facing the mirror.

During his 24 years in Congress, Cohen was busy, but staffers on the Hill point out that he never chaired a committee, and was well known for not wanting to work too hard. He did, of course, find time to write or co-author three novels and two books of poetry. When he became secretary, he was halfway through a new thriller on bio-terrorism, a fiction that would influence his view on the one issue that aides and friends say really excites him.

Mandate for Mis-Leadership When President Clinton appointed the moderate Republican Cohen as Secretary of Defense in December 1996, he said the retiring senator would "secure the bipartisan support America's armed forces must have and clearly deserve."

Cohen's first order of business was to improve relations with the Republican Congress and set the course for an enduring post-Cold War defense. He was seen as someone who might be able to cut through the increasingly difficult defense budget process. He could convince his former colleagues to accept another round of money-saving base closures, to choose country over pork. Yet on both objectives, he has failed miserably.

Soon after Cohen became secretary of defense, in an atmosphere sometimes polarized by sexual harassment, gays in the military and women in combat, betting men thought it only a matter of time before the pathologically independent Mainer would resign on principle over something. "I voted against your Bosnia policy," Cohen supposedly said to the president at a White House meeting early on. Yet the troops are still there, as they are in the Middle East, victims of an administration that loved to use force and of a secretary who couldn't say no.

Cohen inherited Bosnia and Iraq, but his opportunity to put his stamp on the Defense Department was the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). He could either set the tone to move toward a new strategy or could truly commit to an expansion needed to fulfill the prevailing two theater of war needs for America's armed forces. Cohen chose a completely timid, non-controversial middle course, trimming manpower and cutting procurement quantities without threatening any particular weapon. "Cohen paid no attention," says a senior correspondent of the new secretary's involvement in the process. "He presided over it as a set of photo opportunities."

Cohen would also preside over the Desert Fox attack on Iraq in December 1998, insisting that the 72-hour pinprick Baghdad bombing was a "sustained" operation of some military consequence. Three months later,when bombing of Yugoslav commenced, Cohen would privately seethe at the reluctance of NATO to follow the United States' lead in targeting, seemingly oblivious to the earlier mixed message provided to both Slobodan Milosevic and the allies from the Iraqi folly. Cohen would publicly insist that everything that was unfolding was a "planned, sustained, phased air campaign," losing credibility with anyone who knew how improvised the entire war was.

Poison Programs

No wonder when Operation Allied Force was all over, Cohen reflected that "Serbia, which is about the size of my home state of Maine and which has an economy about one-quarter the size of San Diego's, managed to step onto the fighting field, challenging this matchless force and raising in the process profound questions about the best way to prepare for and respond to such adversaries in the future." It was not a statement taking responsibility. It was an advertisement for the secretary's fascination with so-called "asymmetrical warfare."

The realm of the unconventional is Cohen's true passion: the use of chemical and biological agents, information warfare, drug wars, reinvigorating "homeland defense." Cohen himself loves to recount his performance holding up a five-pound bag of sugar on ABC's "This Week" as an illustration of how little Anthrax it would take to bring the United States to its knees.

But Cohen's pet program is a shambles, a panicked, reactive, Hollywood-based mess, with a growing and domestically intrusive terrorism response apparatus that enlists the military, states, cities and local law enforcement agencies at the cost of readiness, civil liberties and the development of non-military solutions. Says one recently retired Army officer who worked as a congressional liaison for Cohen: "It's a money machine. If there is one real incident with several hundred deaths involving a [weapon of mass destruction], I would say that the response, coordination and assessment would be no better than before we started throwing money at it." Add to Cohen's legacy of exaggeration the controversial mandatory Anthrax vaccination program and the never-ending leadership crisis whose symptoms are Gulf War and now Balkans syndrome. We'll have to read Cohen's book next year to see how it all turns out.

Anarchy? On My Watch?

As Donald Rumsfeld assumes the office of the secretary, one of his first orders of business is preparing a supplemental budget to Congress that not only will be a salve for the disgruntled armed forces but also the beginning of a credible process where the secretary of defense leads and makes the final decisions.

The reason to exert control is that under William Cohen, the formal budget became a joke. If the civilian leadership cut or canceled a program, the services would sign off on the cuts and then turn around and appeal to their allies on the Hill for add-on funding. It is a process that has always occurred sub rosa, but budget observers say the "unfunded priorities list" and a new super list of long-term shortfalls has ballooned out of control in the last four years. Now the Air Force, Army and Navy are making an independent case that they need $100 billion more annually. It is a fitting legacy for Cohen's failure to make hard decisions and build a convincing national military strategy. It is a lawlessness that reflects both Cohen's reluctance to engage and his lack of backbone in exerting true civilian control over the uniformed military.

--------

Missile defense great if it worked

January 29, 2001
Excite News
Iowa State Daily
By Tim Kearns
Iowa State U.
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010129/university-40

(U-WIRE) AMES, Iowa -- "Hopefully, he is not as stupid as he seems, nor as mafialike as his background makes him appear."

Those were the words of Fidel Castro last week about none other than President Bush, reported in Friday's Des Moines Register in the article "Castro hopes for smart Bush."

How does he get off saying such a thing? The United States is undoubtedly the ultimate power in the world today, and within seconds, we could nuke Cuba back to the Stone Age. Hell, we could nuke them back to the Precambrian.

So, how can he say that? Simple. He has survived through 10 presidencies, and he'll probably make it through this one. He doesn't live in fear of the United States or any country attacking him. Yet our great country, the most powerful in the world, is afraid of some rogue state striking us with a nuclear missile?

Something's wrong here. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about Bush. We have a good reason to be afraid of other countries attacking us -- though not with missiles.

However, I do have to question our motivation to construct an illegal missile defense system. We still have a treaty -- the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia -- that prohibits construction of such a system. But worse than that, we don't have working technology for it anyway. But like Reagan, Clinton and Bush the elder, Dubya is willing to violate a treaty and throw up a non-working system to protect us from missile attack.

Well, here's where the disagreement between myself and the president comes in. In fact, it's not so much a disagreement as it is a difference of knowledge, because I have the ultimate missile defense system in mind.

It is simple, scientifically feasible, and will not even violate the ABM treaty. It's called not pissing other countries off.

The irony, of course, is that by constructing our system, we will be violating that single axiom of ultimate missile defense. Building the system will clearly infuriate Russia, who has promised to back out of every arms agreement they've ever made with the United States if we continue with our plans, and it has also frustrated our Canadian and European allies.

Granted, we made the Russians mad when we expanded NATO, which is basically an archaic collective security group which we created to protect ourselves from those same Russians. Speaking of NATO, they are against it, too. Yet the real problem is that our technology isn't even functional, at even the most optimal conditions.

So, we'll be offending our allies; we can do that periodically. We have lots of nuclear weapons.

Most troubling is that the only nations who aren't protesting our missile defense system are the nations that we see posing a threat to us. Saddam Hussein has nothing bad to say about the national missile defense system. In fact, he's probably in one of his bunkers, rolling on the floor with laughter.

Castro isn't worried either. He knows nothing's going to change our view of Cuba until he dies, and he has no such plans.

Basically, looking at the scorecard, we will be offending Western Europe, Russia, China and Canada. On the plus side, we will not be offending Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea or Cuba. Whew. Those rogues probably appreciate it now since they don't have to waste money developing missile technologies.

It's not surprising, either. Just a glance at world history tells us what happens when countries try to create isolationist defense systems. France built a giant wall, known as the Maginot Line, along their German border between World War I and World War II. Their allies had no confidence in them since France made great efforts to protect themselves, and accordingly would not benefit from any collective security alliances. Then, in the ultimate irony, the Germans just went around it anyway.

Basically, we'll be looking at the same thing. The fact is if you're an Iraqi and want to commit terrorist acts, you don't waste your time with missiles anyway. Missiles are too expensive. Smuggling a few canisters of anthrax into the country in a diplomatic pouch and then releasing them in a subway, on the other hand, is cheap, efficient and to the point.

I feel bad for Bush. His party is pushing the Missile Defense System, and Clinton passed the buck on this one, forcing him to make the decision. No matter what choice he makes, it will be the wrong one, through no fault of his own.

But even if you do want a National Missile Defense, I've got a great idea. Make it work before you build it. I think I read that somewhere.

This is alchemy of the modern age, at the taxpayer's expense. It needs to stop. All it will defend us against is a budget surplus.

-------- MILITARY

RUMSFELD REVEALED: ATRC January Update

January 29, 2001
From: "Frida Berrigan" <BerrigaF@newschool.edu>

Dear Friends,

We compile this email update with heavy hearts-- Bush is in the White House. But we are also looking forward to the humor the next four years will teach us. We are surprised to find that even the outgoing White House staff has a good sense of humor, pestering the new staff with pranks-- removing W's from computer keyboards and putting paper with unflattering Alfred E. Newmanesque pictures of George W. in the printers.

The Bush Administration, with its team of militarists, gives us more and stronger reasons than ever to stand together and work conscientiously for sensible policies that prioritize the needs of people over the needs of corporations, particularly military corporations.

We have here three resources, which collectively make up our RUMSFELD REVEALED mini-project, that we hope will be helpful in strengthening the foundation for that struggle.

The last resource we offer here is Bill's "The State of War and Peace at the Turn of the Millennium," which provides insights to provoke and inspire us.

Because these are so lengthy, we will send additional analysis on the unraveling situation in Colombia and other issues in a follow up email later this week.

Thanks from all of us at the Arms Trade Resource Center,

Bill Hartung Michelle Ciarrocca Dena Montague Frida Berrigan

I. HIGHLIGHTS FROM RUMSFELD'S CONFIRMATION HEARING
II. ANALYSIS OF THE RUMSFELD II REPORT ON U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY AND SPACE
III. THE TEXT OF BILL HARTUNG'S "RUMSFELD RECONSIDERED" PRESENTATION (in a MS Word attachment)
IV. THE TEXT OF BILL HARTUNG'S "STATE OF WAR AND PEACE."

Please reply to this email if you encounter difficulties opening the documents.

RUMSFELD'S CONFIRMATION HEARING:

At his confirmation hearings for the Secretary of Defense post, Donald Rumsfeld responded only vaguely to questions concerning the exact size and scope of the administration's favored missile defense system and how soon they would try to deploy one. He said, "the president-elect has indicated that it is his intention to deploy a missile defense system. I know of no decisions that have been made by him or by me with respect to exactly what form that might take." And no matter how quickly the administration would like to move forward, Rumsfeld was right in saying, "It would be premature for me to comment on it," during his confirmation hearings. Rumsfeld later revealed that, "the press has, kind of, played me up as an expert in missile defense, and I'm not. I know a lot about the threat, and I've spent a lot of time on it, but I've spent much less time on the ways of dealing with it, and that is something I've simply got to wrap my head around."

Senator Kennedy tried to pull out specifics on what would constitute a 'workable' missile defense system asking, "when the president-elect announced you as the nominee, he spoke of a need for the United States to build a missile defense system that will work, and I'm interested in what your definition of a system that will work is . . . when will we know that it will work? I mean, would you establish as a baseline that it clearly has to pass a field test?"

Rumsfeld's answer: "Senator, I would really like to avoid setting up hurdles on this subject... I was reading the book, "Eye in the Sky," about the Corona program and the first overhead satellite and recalling that it failed something like 11, 12 or 13 times during the Eisenhower administration and the Kennedy administration. And they stuck with it and it worked and it ended up saving billions of dollars because of the better knowledge we achieved . . . you know, this isn't the old star wars idea of a shield that would keep everything off of everyone in the world. It is something that in the beginning stages is designed to deal with a handful of these things, and persuade people that they are not going to be able to blackmail and intimidate the United States and its friends and allies."

Rumsfeld continued, in later responses, to discuss why he feels the ground-based system is inadequate, saying, "my further impression is that the current system was designed to fit within the [ABM] treaty . . . Think what's happened to technology in the intervening period. I mean, to try to fashion something that fits within the constraints of that and expect that you're going to get the most effective program, the earliest to deploy and the most cost-effective, it boggles the mind. That isn't how people do advanced technologies, is to sit down with those kinds of constraints and try to fit it in that straitjacket."

Unfortunately, Mr. Kennedy found these answers adequate and possibly placed too much hope in Rumsfeld's ability to objectively assess the missile defense program (for more on this refer to our Baltimore Sun Op-ed). Kennedy replied, "I think you make good response to the question. I think we can give assurance though that there's going to be a very careful review in terms of the effectiveness by you, as it moves along. And that it's going to have to meet the criteria. I'm not prepared to establish that criteria, but it's going to be meaningful criteria in terms of actually being able to function and being able to work in the different phases."

Following up on President Bush's campaign promise to reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal and take the weapons off hair trigger alert, Senator Kennedy asked Mr. Rumsfeld pointed questions about his longstanding opposition to arms control treaties and efforts. Kennedy asked, "I've long been an advocate of arms control and was pleased to see the president-elect's interest in this area. I understand that when you were President Ford's Secretary of Defense, you did not support the SALT II Treaty, and are opposed now to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Will you support the president-elect's arms control agenda?"

Rumsfeld's reply, "Well, you can be sure I'll support the president- elect's agenda. He's the president. I will, however, offer my views, I hope persuasively and thoughtfully, in deliberations with the National Security Council, as I did during that time. I mean, people, honorable people, can come to different views, and I did with respect to SALT II." In follow up questions on the CTBT, Rumsfeld argued the usual anti-arms control mantra saying his concerns were two-fold. First, "We simply must have confidence in the safety and reliability of our weapons," and secondly is "the difficulty of verification" with the treaty.

As for the ABM Treaty, Rumsfeld echoed the familiar conservative view saying, "I mean, that treaty is ancient history. It dates even back farther than when I was last in the Pentagon. That's a long time." But this dangerous view flies in the face of standard international legal understandings of the obligations inherited by Russia as successor of the Soviet Union.

On the issue of defense spending, Rumsfeld assured Senator Warner of his commitment to "work toward a significant increase." And, similar to the presidential debates when both candidates were trumpeting increases in defense spending, the ever-loyal 'Blue Dog' Democrat Senator Lieberman said this to Rumsfeld: "The Bush-Cheney campaign had a document out suggesting the willingness to spend $45 billion more over the next 10 years for national security. Vice President Gore and I doubled that to $100 billion -- big spenders that we are. But what is interesting and, of course, focuses the tough choices you will have is that the Joint Chiefs have essentially told us that what we really need is at least $50 billion more a year. So let me first put in an appeal, that you and I've spoken about, which is that all of us who care about national security have to really reach out and try to build more of a public understanding for the need to spend more to keep our national security strong in this age."

Lieberman went on to say: "If you look at what people think we ought to spend more money on, as we are deciding how to spend the surplus, national security comes out way down on the list, and that's not good. And as long as that exists, it's going to be hard for us here to make the decisions we should make."

Rumsfeld gave no dollar amounts and said nothing about the view of the American public on military spending.

Senator McCain, a champion for cutting pork out of the budget, presented the issue to Mr. Rumsfeld saying, "When you were Secretary of Defense, [the defense budget included] about $200 to $300 million a year of unrequested add-ons in the defense appropriations process. It's now up around $6 or $7 billion at minimum -- at minimum. And new gimmicks have been invented since you were there. One of them is the so-called "wish list" that comes over from the Pentagon that although not requested in the budget, would be really great to have. So they pick and choose from that very long list....I don't think you need any advice, but unless you get a handle on this spending -- $1.5 billion for a helicopter carrier that the Navy and Marine Corps said they neither want nor need, continued acquisitions of C-130s which 10 years ago the United States Air Force said they didn't need. We're going to have a C-130 in every schoolyard in America before this is over. You're going to have to get a handle on this, and you may have to face down some very powerful interests, both on the Hill and off the Hill."

While Rumsfeld cautiously agreed claiming, "that the question that has to be posed is whether or not something is going to contribute to our national security, and whether or not it meets the priorities that are important for this country. That has to be our focus," Georgia Senator Max Cleland found humor in McCain's illustration. Cleland assured Mr. Rumsfeld that, "since the C-130s are built in Georgia, I'd like to say that I'm for schoolyards being able to be moved anywhere in the world at a moment's notice."

In other matters, Rumsfeld did not go into any great detail about conclusions of the Commission to Assess U.S. National Security Space Management and Organization, which he chaired. The 69 page executive summary (evaluated later in the email) was released, perhaps not coincidentally, the same day Rumsfeld's confirmation hearings began. But he did assert the need for the US to "strengthen our intelligence capabilities and our space capabilities" and the "vulnerability of space assets."

In response to a question from Senator Levin about an article in Defense Daily pointing out that, "Rumsfeld understands the need for militarization of space," Rumsfeld denied it, saying, "I don't know quite what it means." But he went on to say, "We know what's been done on land by way of military conflict, we know what's been done on the sea and we know what's been done in the air. I think it would be a stretch to suggest that space will not, at some point in the future, find itself receiving similar attention . . . we have a lot of assets in space . . . there's no question in my mind, but that it's in our interest to create the kinds of deterrents and capabilities so that it's not attractive to disable the United States and our enormous dependence on space assets." Rumsfeld added, "And I should say, these were my views as a member of the commission; they are not the views of the administration, since I've not had a chance to even discuss these things with President-elect Bush or the National Security Council."

The answers Rumsfeld supplied shed little light on exactly how he'll run the Pentagon. While members of Congress from both parties lauded Rumsfeld as 'pragmatic' and 'well-seasoned,' his close relationships with some of the most conservative, pro-Star Wars think tanks such as Empower America and the Center for Security Policy, cast serious doubts on these assertions. Although Rumsfeld has signaled that he would divest himself from financial investments that might be a 'conflict of interest' during his service, it remains to be seen if he'll do the same with these organizations. But hopefully Rumsfeld will follow his own 'rules,' one of which is, "Beware when any idea is promoted primarily because it is 'bold, exciting, innovative and new.' There are many ideas that are 'bold, exciting, innovative and new,' but also foolish."

OBJECTIVE ASSESSORS NEED NOT APPLY: STACKED PANEL ON NATIONAL SECURITY SPACE MANAGEMENT RELEASE THEIR REPORT

The Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, chaired by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld until his appointment (at which point he resigned), released its 69-page executive summary on January 11, 2001.

ANATOMY OF THE PANEL: STACKED TO THE GILLS WITH INDUSTRY INSIDERS

Before delving into the findings, let's take a look at who's who on the panel. The makeup of this commission, strikingly similar to the first commission chaired by Mr. Rumsfeld, calls into question the objectivity of their findings. Two of the thirteen members on the panel served on the previous panel, which looked at the ballistic missile threat facing the United States- Donald Rumsfeld and William Graham. Four-Rumsfeld, Graham, Charles Horner, and Malcolm Wallop- are board members of Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy. As mentioned earlier, Rumsfeld is also on the Board of Empower America and is said to be a financial supporter of the Heritage Foundation, while Wallop is a Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Duane Andrews is Corporate Executive Vice President and Director of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), which received $1.5 billion in Pentagon contracts in year 2000 and ranked as the Pentagon's tenth top contractor. SAIC is the integration contractor for the Air Force's Space and Missile System Center's advanced programs, and its' website proudly explains, "We support the Defense Department and Services' space system planning, including the National Security Space Architect, in determining the space systems that will support the warfighter into the 21st century."

Commission members Gen. Howell Estes and Gen. Thomas Moorman serve as Vice Chairman and member on the Board of Trustees for the Aerospace Corporation, "a leader in the application of space technology." The "private, nonprofit" Aerospace Corporation ranked as the Pentagon's 47th contractor in 2000, receiving more than $334 million in DOD contracts last year. Moorman is also a partner in Booz-Allen Hamilton, ranked as the DOD's 34th top contractor last year receiving close to $420 million in contracts for work on everything from missile defense to the Milstar program and numerous classified programs.

Gen. Jay Garner is president of SY Technology, located in Huntsville, Alabama - home of the National Missile Defense program. SY Technology, a small business, has "unique expertise in space and missile defense technologies, systems engineering and integration." Admiral David Jeremiah is the president of Technology Strategies & Alliances Corporation, which works on - you guessed it - missile defense, space launch systems, technology transfer, and battlespace management. Admiral Jeremiah also serves on the Board of Directors for number of Pentagon contractors, including Litton Industries (#6 on the DOD's top contractors) and Alliant Techsystems (#29), and has a seat on Northrop Grumman's (#5) Advisory Board.

Regardless of what the Commission had to say, it seems rather apparent that the majority of the members, which are employed and/or associated with defense contractors, have a serious and direct conflict of interest.

THE REPORT: FINDINGS INCLUDE WARNING ABOUT SPACE "PEARL HARBOR" RISK

The Commission examined space-related national security issues, as the Wall Street Journal explained it, "what's at stake and what it will take to ensure that the U.S. remains pre-eminent." But the reality is that this report, like the first Rumsfeld report, is about shaping congressional opinion to favor even more money for an already bloated military budget. Claiming the US is at risk of a "space Pearl Harbor," the report makes a number of recommendations - ranging from the need to develop new technologies to defend US space assets, to ensuring the US can deploy weapons in space, and potentially forming a Space Corps within the Air Force.

Here are some of the Commissions conclusions and recommendations:

ˇ The US has an urgent interest in promoting and protecting the peaceful use of space and in developing the technologies and operational capabilities that its objectives in space will require.

ˇ The US government should vigorously pursue the capabilities called for in the National Space Policy to ensure that the President will have the option to deploy weapons in space to deter threats to and, if necessary, defend against attacks on US interests.

ˇ The US must develop, deploy and maintain the means to deter attack on and to defend vulnerable space capabilities. Explicit national security guidance and defense policy is needed to direct development of doctrine, concepts of operations and capabilities for space, including weapons systems that operate in space and that can defend assets in orbit and augment air, land and sea forces.

ˇ The US is more dependent on space than any other nation. Yet, the threat to the US and its allies in and from space does not command the attention it merits from the departments and agencies of the US government charged with national security responsibilities.

ˇ The US government should shape the domestic and international legal and regulatory environment for space in ways that ensure US national security interests and enhance the competitiveness of the commercial sector and the effectiveness of the civil space sector. ˇ An attack on elements of US space systems during a crisis or conflict should not be considered an improbable act. If the US is to avoid a "Space Pearl Harbor" it needs to take seriously the possibility of an attack on US space systems.

ˇ The president should consider the appointment of a Presidential Space Advisory Group to provide independent advice on developing and employing new space capabilities.

ˇ The Department of Defense requires space systems that can be employed in independent operations or in support of air, land and sea forces to deter and defend against hostile actions directed at the interests of the US. In the mid term a Space Corps within the Air Force may be appropriate to meet this requirement; in the longer term it may be met by a military department for space. In the nearer term, a realigned, rechartered Air Force is best suited to organize, train and equip space forces.

According to Spurgeon Keeny, head of the Arms Control Association, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans nuclear arms or weapons of mass destruction in space but remains vague on weapons such as space lasers. But the Commission's findings and recommendations back up the US Space Command Vision for 2020 document, which lays out the overall goal of US domination of space to "protect US interests and investments," of which deployment of a missile defense system is but the first step. Clearly, the majority of the panel's members and their affiliations stand to make millions of dollars if these recommendations are carried out, and given Mr. Rumsfeld's hearty support for the findings, and his role in crafting pro-NMD arguments, pressuring the White House and Congress to stop NMD and the militarization of space needs to be a top priority.

RESOURCES:

= To connect with others organized to stop the militarization of space check out the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space - www.space4peace.org

= The Global Network is holding a National Conference and Protest in Huntsville, AL, March 16-18 200. For more information, email globalnet@mindspring.com

= An organization affiliated with the Global Network is putting together "The Globalize Peace, Not Corporate War: Resist Space Age Counter-Insurgency Terror," a demonstration on Armed Forces Day, May 19, 2001. For more info, email pnut119@hotmail.com

= For a little "light reading" download the COMMISSION TO ASSESS UNITED STATES NATIONAL SECURITY SPACE MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION executive summary at the Center for Security Policy website - http://www.security-policy.org/ (scroll down the page for link).

-------- burma/myanmar

EU to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi

1/29/2001
InfoBeat News
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405993918

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - European Union envoys began talks Monday aimed at breaking a decade-long deadlock between Myanmar's military rulers and pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi.

The visit from the EU delegation comes amid signs of improving relations between the government and Suu Kyi's supporters, including talks that started about four months ago and were kept secret until recently.

The three envoys _ from Belgium, France and Sweden _ were scheduled to meet with Foreign Minister Win Aung on Monday. They were also expected to meet with Suu Kyi during their four-day visit, which began Sunday.

The military, which has held power since 1962, brutally crushed an uprising led by Suu Kyi in 1988 and two years later refused to recognize the outcome of a general election which her National League for Democracy won by a landslide.

Since then, the junta has imprisoned hundreds of Suu Kyi's followers, forced others into quitting the party. Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since September.

Recently, the junta has stopped virulent attacks on Suu Kyi's party and has released some political prisoners. Last week, the military released dozens of detained party members, including vice chairman Tin Oo.

But while easing the pressure on Suu Kyi may be a sign the military wants to end punishing sanctions imposed by the EU and the United States, some in Myanmar and abroad fear the political stalemate will continue.

-------- colombia

Pastrana tries to save peace talks

1/29/2001
InfoBeat News
Associated Press
By JUAN PABLO TORO
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405993764

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Colombia's president, cutting short a visit to Europe, met with members of his government Sunday trying to salvage peace talks with leftist guerrillas as a crucial deadline nears.

Returning from Europe Saturday, Andres Pastrana met immediately with his peace envoy, Camilo Gomez, and was talking Sunday with members of his Cabinet. He is expected to meet early this week with delegates from the European Union and U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson.

The meetings come with only three days before the deadline expires on a rebel enclave allowed by the government.

On Wednesday, Pastrana must decide whether to send in troops to retake the Switzerland-sized haven in southern Colombia ceded to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Doing so would mark the end of negotiations with the rebels and could spark an escalation in the nation's already bloody 37-year armed conflict.

Some 3,000 soldiers are poised to retake the rebel stronghold, centered in the town of San Vicente del Caguan, 185 miles south of the capital Bogota. Army soldiers killed five FARC combatants Sunday during fighting in the town of Hato Corozal, 185 miles northeast of Bogota.

Pastrana _ who was elected to make peace with the FARC _ created the enclave in 1998 as a precondition for starting negotiations with the 15,000-strong insurgency. But after two years, Pastrana has almost nothing to show for his concession, and Colombians are growing troubled by reports that the rebels are abusing the demilitarized zone and ruling its residents with an iron fist.

The FARC suspended talks in November, accusing the government of failing to sever ties with rival right-wing paramilitary groups.

Pastrana wants the rebels to resume negotiations before he'll extend the zone, but rebel commanders have said there is almost no chance of that happening before the deadline.

Government negotiators, however, have urged Pastrana to extend the concession, saying the two sides have been hammering out details of a prisoner exchange despite the FARC's official freeze.

Pastrana was deciding on the fate of one rebel enclave while nearing a deal to grant a Delaware-sized haven to the smaller leftist National Liberation Army, or ELN.

-------- drug war

Substance abuse costly for states

01/29/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/nlead.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Dealing with the effects of drug, alcohol and cigarette abuse cost states about as much as they pay for higher education, a private study estimates.

States spent $81.3 billion dealing with substance abuse in 1998 - or about 13% of their budgets, according to the study being released Monday by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

The three-year, state-by-state study, titled "Shoveling Up: The Impact of Substance Abuse on State Budgets," put New York at the top in percentage of funds - 18% of its budget - spent to "shovel up the wreckage" of abuse. South Carolina had the lowest percentage - under 7%.

"Substance abuse and addiction is the elephant in the living room of state government, creating havoc with service systems, causing illness, injury and death and consuming increasing amounts of state resources," said Joseph A. Califano Jr., the center's president.

Only about 4% of the amount spent, or $3 billion, was for prevention and treatment programs, Califano said. The rest of the money spent was drawn from state services ranging from law enforcement and welfare to health care and education.

The report recommends greater investment in prevention and treatment, particularly among prisoners to keep them from committing drug-related crimes after their release.

"Governors who want to curb child abuse, teen pregnancy and domestic violence and further reduce welfare rolls must face up to this reality: Unless they prevent and treat alcohol and drug abuse and addiction, their other well-intentioned efforts are doomed," Califano said.

Total state spending in 1998 was $620 billion, with 13.1% related to substance abuse, the report said. By comparison, states spent on average 13.1% of their budgets on higher education, 11.3% on Medicaid and 8.3% on transportation.

State justice systems had the largest portion of the expenses attributed to substance abuse, spending $30.7 billion on prisons, juvenile justice and court costs.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said the report demonstrates the need for a "balanced strategy" to deal with drug abuse.

"We cannot simply arrest our way out of the problem," Edward H. Jurith, acting director of the office, said in a statement. "Treatment programs that follow a criminal from arrest to post-release follow-up must be implemented to end the cycle of drug abuse and crime."

Federal estimates, using 1995 data, place the overall federal, state and local costs of drug and alcohol use at $277 billion annually, including law enforcement and social programs.

The new study, which does not include federal funds, relied on data from the states about their spending on prevention programs, research and health care costs directly related to substance abuse. For indirect costs, researchers estimated the "burden" on state resources.

For example, to estimate substance abuse costs in elementary and high school education, researchers considered the expenses caused by all abusers. Mothers who drink while pregnant and have children with fetal alcohol syndrome influence the costs of special education when those kids go to school. Student drug use affects the need for drug testing and health care, and drug-related violence might require more spending on security and repairs. Teachers who abuse substances can cost the state in productivity, work time and more expensive health insurance.

Of the states, New York's estimated 18% amounted to more than $8.6 billion. Massachusetts was second, spending 17.4% of its budget, or $2.7 billion, followed by California, which spent nearly $11 billion, or 16% of its state budget.

Puerto Rico spent the smallest percentage of its budget, 6.1%, on substance abuse. South Carolina spent 6.6%, and Connecticut spent 7.6% of its budget.

In terms of substance-abuse spending per person, however, the District of Columbia topped the list, laying out $812 per resident. North Dakota spent the least, $155 per person.

Susan Foster, the study's principal researcher, cautioned against comparisons between states because the report does not include federal funds and states spend different proportions of their budgets on social programs.

-------- iran

Iraq: Airstrikes Injured 7 People

January 29, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-US.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq said seven people were injured by U.S. and British warplane airstrikes on civilian targets Monday. The U.S. military said the most recent strikes came Sunday and that civilians were not targeted.

``Seven people were injured when enemy warplanes bombed residential and service installations in southern Iraq,'' the Iraqi military said in a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency. It said the planes attacked civilian targets in six provinces.

A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., said American and British planes struck southern Iraq on Sunday, not Monday.

``We never strike any civilian targets,'' said Lt. Col. Mark Samisch. ``We go to painstaking lengths to only strike military targets.''

On Jan. 20, Iraq said six people were killed and three injured in airstrikes, but that its air defense units hit one of the aircraft. The U.S. military denied any aircraft were hit.

Allied aircraft patrol no-fly zones over southern and northern Iraq, established after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Shiite Muslim rebels in the south and Kurds in the north from Iraqi government forces.

Iraq does not recognize the no-fly zones and has been challenging allied aircraft since December 1998.

Samisch said Sunday's strikes were a response to Iraqi violations of the southern zone, including surface-to-air missile systems placed south of the 33rd parallel.

-------- korea

South Korean Jet Fires Missile

January 29, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-SKorea-Missile-Fired.html?printpage=yes

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- A South Korean air force fighter jet accidentally fired a missile that landed in waters off the southwestern coast Monday.

There were no reports of casualties, said 2nd Lt. Yoon Won-jae, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry.

The U.S.-built F-5E Tiger II fighter jet was on routine training when it accidentally fired an American-made Sidewinder heat-seeking air-to-air missile, he said. The missile was released from the left wing just after the jet took off from the U.S. air base in Kunsan, 110 miles south of Seoul, Yoon said.

The U.S. military was not involved in the accident, he said. About 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea.

-------- space

Space Is Playing Field For Newest War Game
Air Force Exercise Shows Shift in Focus

Monday, January 29, 2001
Washington Post
By Thomas E. Ricks

SCHRIEVER AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. -- Last week, the possibility of war in space moved from pure science fiction created in Hollywood to realistic planning done here by the Air Force.

Spurred by the increased reliance of the U.S. military and the U.S.economy on satellites, and facing a new secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is more focused on space than his predecessors were, the Air Force's Space Warfare Center here staged the military's first major war game to focus on space as the primary theater of operations, rather than just a supporting arena for combat on earth. The scenario was growing tension between the United States and China in 2017.

"We never really play space," Maj. Gen. William R. Looney III said. "The purpose of this game was to focus on how we really would act in space."

The unprecedented game, involving 250 participants playing for five days on an isolated, super-secure base on the high plains east of Colorado Springs, was the most visible manifestation of a little-noticed but major shift in the armed forces over the last decade.

The Gulf War showed the U.S. military for the first time how important space could be to its combat operations -- for communications, for the transmission of imagery and even for using global positioning satellites to tell ground troops where they are. The end of the Cold War allowed many satellites to be shifted from being used primarily for monitoring Soviet nuclear facilities to supporting the field operations of the U.S. military.

But military thinkers began to worry that this new reliance on space was creating new vulnerabilities. Suddenly, one of the best ways to disrupt a U.S. offensive against Iraq, for example, appeared to be jamming the satellites on which the Americans relied or blowing up the ground station back in the United States that controlled the satellites transmitting targeting data.

In response, the Air Force over the last year focused more on space -- not just how to operate there, but how to protect operations and attack others in space. It established a new "space operations directorate" at Air Force headquarters, started a new Space Warfare School and activated two new units: the 76th Space Control Squadron, whose name is really a euphemism for fighting in space, and the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron, whose mission is to probe the U.S. military for new vulnerabilities.

All those steps come as Rumsfeld, who just finished leading a congressional commission on space and national security issues, takes over the top job at the Pentagon. Among other things, his commission's report hinted that if the Air Force doesn't get more serious about space, the Pentagon should consider establishing a new "Space Corps."

So, perhaps to show that it is giving space its due, the Air Force held its first space war game here, and even invited reporters inside for a few hours. The players worked in a huge building behind two sets of security checkpoints, the second of which features two motion detectors, four surveillance cameras and a double-fenced gate with a "vehicle entrapment area."

Yet officials were notably jumpy about discussing specifics with the reporters they brought in. "We're doing something a little unprecedented, bringing press into the middle of a classified war game," said Col. Robert E. Ryals, deputy commander of the Space Warfare Center here.

The U.S. military has a long tradition of conducting war games, not so much to predict whether a war will occur, but to figure out how to use new weapons, how to best organize the military and how political considerations might shape the conduct of war.

After World War II, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz commented that the war in the Pacific had been gamed so frequently at the Naval War College during the 1930s that "nothing that happened during the war was a surprise -- absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics towards the end of the war. We had not visualized these."

Last week's space war game was set in 2017, with country "Red" massing its forces for a possible attack on its small neighbor, "Brown," which then asked "Blue" for help. Officials described "Red" only as a "near-peer competitor," but participants said Red was China and Blue was the United States. When asked directly about this, Lt. Col. Donald Miles, an Air Force spokesman, said,"We don't talk about countries."

Going with the conventional wisdom in the U.S. military, the game assumed that the heavens will be full of weapons by 2017. Both Red and Blue possessed microsatellites that can maneuver against other satellites, blocking their view, jamming their transmissions or even frying their electronics with radiation. Both also had ground-based lasers that could temporarily dazzle or permanently blind the optics of satellites.

The Blue side also had a National Missile Defense system, as well as reusable space planes that could be launched to quickly place new satellites in orbit or repair and refuel ones already there. Veiled comments made by some participants indicated that both sides also possessed the ability to attack each others' computers -- in military parlance, "offensive information warfare capabilities" -- but no one would discuss those.

On Monday, as the game began, no conflict had occurred -- or was even inevitable. As Red threatened its neighbor Brown, the first major question that Blue faced was whether to stage a "show of force" in space, akin to sending aircraft carriers to the waters off a regional hot spot.

On Day Two of the game, Blue decided to show force by launching more surveillance and communications satellites, making it harder for Red to stage an early knockout attack -- that is, a successful Pearl Harbor.

Space gives the United States "more opportunities to demonstrate resolve" without using force, said Maj. Gen. Lance L. Smith, who played the role of commander of a Blue military task force. Asked whether that included taking over Red's broadcast satellites, he said: "Those are the kind of options."

On Day Three of the game, privately owned foreign satellites became a key issue. The Blue side asked the foreign firms not to provide services to Red. In response, Red tried to buy up all available services to constrain the U.S. military, which relies heavily on commercial satellites for many of its communications. Red offered to pay far more than is customary. Blue then said it would top Red's offer. The eight people playing the foreign firms responded that they would honor their contracts, which left Blue worried and unhappy.

Robert Hegstrom, the game's director, concluded that "dealing with third-party commercial providers is going to be a priority for CincSpace" -- the U.S. commander for space operations.

Another lesson of the early friction between Blue and Red was that the Pentagon should prepare plans for what to do if it picks up indications that an adversary is getting ready to shoot blinding laser beams at commercial satellites operated by U.S. firms. Among other things, one official said, the government could tell the American companies to close the "shutters" over the optics on those satellites.

For four days, the two sides tiptoed up to the edge of war, but never actually fired a shot. They did come close: At one point, the Red military prepared a plan to fire dozens of nonnuclear missiles at U.S. military installations in Hawaii and Alaska. They calculated that those missiles would use up all the shots the United States had in its missile defense arsenal -- and thereby leave the U.S. homeland open to being hit by subsequent missiles.

But the players found that "theater missile defense" -- that is, coverage of a region, usually by U.S. Navy warships -- bolstered deterrence in two ways, by making it harder for Red to attack deployed U.S. forces, and by encouraging U.S. allies to stay in the coalition, which would keep them under the protective umbrella of those ships.

Red also launched cyberattacks on U.S. computers, said Miles, the Air Force spokesman, who declined to provide details.

Officials were unusually tight-lipped about what actually happened in the game but were willing to describe some of their conclusions.

Not surprisingly, they found that many of the weapons on the Air Force's drawing boards -- missile defenses, anti-satellite lasers and "reusable space planes" -- could have a useful role in deterring future wars by discouraging adversaries from thinking they can preemptively knock out the United States.

"With a robust force, we can absorb some losses before [the situation] becomes critical," said Hegstrom, the game director. But, he said, with the "thin" space presence the United States will have in 2017 if current trends continue, "it becomes critical to respond almost immediately." Thus a future president might be backed into escalating quickly, launching preemptive strikes against enemy weapons that could attack key U.S. satellites. "Space surprised us a bit" in how much it might help boost deterrence of a future war, said retired Air Force Gen. Thomas S. Moorman Jr., who played part of the Blue team's political leadership. "It turns out that space gives you a lot of options before you have to go to conflict."

But generally the players came up with more questions than answers, both about how deterrence might work in the 21st century and how to employ the new weapons the Air Force is contemplating.

"We know what deterrence was with 'mutually assured destruction' during the Cold War," said Brig. Gen. Douglas Richardson, commander of the Space Warfare Center. "But what is deterrence in information warfare?"

Likewise, said Maj. John Gentry, who played a staff member on the Blue force, the small attack satellites that both sides possessed are only barely understood. "A lot more thinking will have to go into the microsatellite, the concept of operations about how to use it," he said.

"I hate to use the word 'paradigm,' but mind-set changes are happening here," added Maj. George Vogen, who helped run the game. "This is the next step in seeing the growth of space into its own right."

Bruce K. Gagnon Coordinator Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 90083 Gainesville, FL. 32607 (352) 337-9274 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com

-------- u.s.

Army detonates nerve gas bomblet

1/29/2001
InfoBeat News
Associated Press
By STEVEN K. PAULSON
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405994003

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (AP) - Army workers detonated a Cold War-era bomblet Sunday and began neutralizing the deadly sarin nerve gas it contained.

In coming weeks, the Army will detonate five more grapefruit-sized sarin bomblets found during efforts to convert the former Rocky Mountain Arsenal to a wildlife refuge.

``Everything went well. They're dousing it with neutralizer and that will take several hours, but once it is cracked open, the threat is basically over,'' project spokesman Omar Jabara said Sunday.

The Army and state officials agreed detonating the bomblets in a steel chamber and neutralizing the gas with a caustic solution would safely prevent environmental contamination or health threats.

The Army had planned to detonate the bombs outdoors, but neighbors complained and the state raised concerns as well.

Army officials said they would monitor air to make sure no gas escaped.

Sarin kills by attacking the nervous system, paralyzing vital organs. Each bomblet holds 1.3 pounds of gas and is capable of killing people within 900 feet.

A sarin gas attack in a Tokyo subway in 1995 killed 12 people.

The bomblets were manufactured at the arsenal northeast of Denver from 1953 to 1957. Nature tours at the 27-square mile prairie were suspended in October after sarin was confirmed in the first bomblet.

------

Army brass seen as targets

January 29, 2001
Washington Times
By Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001129224237.htm

The Army's top officer has sent a message to his generals warning they are vulnerable to terrorist attacks like the USS Cole bombing when their planes stop at overseas civilian airports.

In his message, Gen. Eric Shinseki, Army chief of staff, refers to one specific incident in which a jet carrying top brass was unguarded during a refueling stop at a foreign airport.

"This situation represented an unacceptable security seam and an unacceptable risk to senior U.S. Army leaders," said the message, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.

A spokesman for Gen. Shinseki declined to comment last week except to confirm that the alert was sent.

A military-intelligence source said "there are threats" against senior officers. He declined to elaborate.

Military officials say Gen. Shinseki's advisory reflects the Pentagon's heightened awareness of its duty to ensure force protection in the aftermath of the suicide-bomber attack on the USS Cole in Yemen on Oct. 12. Officials also said the message represents a realization that senior officers can be top targets of anti-American terrorists, notably exiled Saudi Arabian millionaire Osama bin Laden.

Meanwhile, an Army official said the threat condition for soldiers in Europe was raised several weeks ago, not because of a specific threat, but because of "the general picture out there."

One source said troops were told not to park their cars near "sensitive buildings so a suspicious vehicle stands out."

Gen. Shinseki issued his warning after two retired commanders issued 30 recommendations on how forces overseas could be better protected against terrorists. Former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen named the commission, led by Army Gen. William W. Crouch and Navy Adm. Harold W. Gehman, in an effort to prevent a Colelike terrorist attack.

"The terrorist threat is extremely dangerous," Gen. Crouch said. "It is enduring. It's not going away. They are persistent. They are tenacious. They're a patient opponent. We have to deal with that."

Gen. Shinseki wrote of the refueling stop:

"A recent experience has raised my concern for the safety of senior U.S. Army leaders traveling [outside the country]. The event that triggered this message was a scheduled refueling stop in a foreign civilian airport by a marked military aircraft with senior Army leaders on board. While no incident occurred, the opportunity for a USS Cole-like attack was potentially significant, as the aircraft and its occupants were without established security in a high-risk environment.

"In this instance, force-protection planning was not fully taken into consideration as an integral part of travel planning and coordination, and no senior leader had reviewed and approved the details of the travel plan with a filed flight plan, a known arrival time and no external security. This situation represented an unacceptable security seam, and an unacceptable risk to senior U.S. Army leaders."

Gen. Shinseki issued new guidelines forsenior leaders' travel:

• Generals or senior civilians are responsible for planning and approving all stops and layovers at foreign airports.

• Those same personnel must ensure that each refueling stop or layover calls for adequate security around the aircraft.

• The senior person on board must approve any stop in a high-threat airport.

The message states that the Army's criminal-investigative division is available to advise trip planners on stops at potentially dangerous airports.

"Security planning can help identify weakness, measures to correct noted weaknesses, assist in determining levels of protection appropriate to the threat and facilitate coordination of security resources while in travel status," the message says.

Gen. Shinseki said his alert does not mean generals should become reclusive. "I expect senior Army leaders to remain visible and engaged with our soldiers who are on point," he said. "Leaders must remain in charge, particularly during transit when vulnerability to terrorist attack is high. Complacency can have tragic results."

Critics have faulted the USS Cole captain for not employing stricter force-protection action as the destroyer stopped to refuel in Yemen, a known haven for anti-American terrorists. Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations, ruled last week that no one on the ship, including the captain, would be disciplined following a Navy investigation into force-protection measures.

Mr. Cohen said that the entire chain of command, but no individual, was responsible for not protecting the Cole.

The Shinseki messages provided no details on where the security lapse occurred and who was involved during the refueling.

Said one officer, "The incident upon which this is based has not been positively classified as a terrorist attempt through the unclassified channels, but I understand that there's more behind this message than has been released to the field."

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Fuel cells may redistribute power

1/29/2001
InfoBeat News
Associated Press
By WILLIAM McCALL
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405992322

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - As the lights dim in parts of the nation because of an energy shortage, the model for supplying clean and abundant electricity in the 21st century can be found at a Portland sewage plant.

Methane collected from decomposing waste provides hydrogen to power a commercial fuel cell that transforms the volatile gas into enough electricity to light more than 100 homes for a year.

Fuel cells were invented in the 19th century. But most Americans had never heard of them until a faulty one blew a hole in Apollo 13 in 1970, scuttling what would have been the third moon landing and nearly costing three astronauts their lives.

Fuel cells remain an essential part of the space program, reliably powering the space shuttle.

Utilities, investors and government planners are now starting to pay close attention to some down-to-Earth uses for a technology that converts the most abundant element in the universe _ hydrogen _ into electricity and water.

``It's no longer science fiction,'' said Steve Millett, one of the leading researchers in the field. ``It's real.''

Millett works at Battelle, the institute founded by a steel industry family in Columbus, Ohio, which now develops all kinds of technology for industry and the government, including NASA.

Millett says fuel cell technology was transformed during the last decade from a cottage industry into one of the most rapidly expanding high-tech businesses in the world, partly due to the automotive industry's suddenly keen interest in hybrid electric motors.

``More and more auto companies have awakened to the fact that their sales are dependent on fuel prices,'' Millett said, ``so the auto companies are investing more in fuel cells and pushing harder than any other industry.''

As 2001 began, it was reported that Exxon Mobil Corp. planned to join Toyota and General Motors in an alliance to develop environmentally friendly fuel cell vehicles. Ford and Daimler-Chrysler also have fuel cell projects in the works.

Yet as recently as 1996, there was only one major manufacturer of commercial-size fuel cells in the country _ ONSI Corp. in Windsor, Conn., a subsidiary of International Fuel Cells.

ONSI built units the size of a minivan to provide electricity to facilities that were too remote from the main power grid or needed reliable backup power, such as hospitals and resorts.

Now dozens of manufacturers and many large companies are considering fuel cell development in an industry that has one of the fastest-growing trade associations in the country _ the U.S. Fuel Cell Council in Washington, D.C.

``There are a lot of big names in the business now,'' said Bob Rose, the council's executive director. ``General Electric is in, along with 3M, DuPont, United Technologies.''

In the 1960s and 1970s, utilities were interested in building big fuel cell plants capable of producing one to three megawatts as part of a central power supply. But the long-range goals have shifted to a smaller scale: putting a washing machine-sized fuel cell in every home, or smaller units in every car and truck. And that's attracted a broader range of companies and investors, Rose said.

Motorola, for example, is working with the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to miniaturize fuel cells for handheld electronic devices like cell phones.

Mark Williams, fuel cell product manager at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, W.Va., said the U.S. Department of Energy _ the lab's parent agency _ has been funding fuel cell research across the country for years. But now initial public offerings of stock in various technology development companies are spurring investment interest, along with research funding by established companies.

``The alliance of auto manufacturers, fuel cell developers, utilities, universities _ there's a whole new initiative that's bringing it together,'' Williams said.

At the Portland sewage treatment plant on the peninsula formed by the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, the city is generating electricity from only the third commercial fuel cell of its kind in the nation to use waste ``biogas.''

The fuel cell began operating in July 1999. It's such a success that the Environmental Protection Agency gave the city a ``clean air excellence'' award for converting waste gas from sewage into 200 kilowatts of electricity.

David Tooze, energy program manager for Portland, said the city needed to pull together several grants to cover the $1.3 million cost of the fuel cell. But it has proved to be more than worth the investment by producing electricity at 8 cents per kilowatt hour, at a time when the deregulated spot market easily pushes the price to 20 cents per kilowatt hour.

Fuel cells are an extremely clean source of power because they combine hydrogen and oxygen _ the two elements that make up water, the main byproduct.

``A lot of long-term energy planners recognize fuel cells could be one of the major links that bridge us from a society that operates on fossil fuels and their pollution liability, to an energy economy that operates on hydrogen, which is essentially clean burning,'' Tooze said.

Much of the fuel cell pioneering work is taking place in the Pacific Northwest. A public power consortium of 13 utilities called Energy Northwest is taking part in a Bonneville Power Administration test of fuel cells made by a company founded in the central Oregon town of Bend.

Bonneville officials see fuel cell technology as a way to redistribute the power grid on a more local level. The Portland-based federal power marketing agency already oversees one of the cleanest energy sources in the nation, the string of 29 hydroelectric dams along the Columbia and Snake rivers.

But salmon conservation and increasing power demand have forced the BPA to search for alternate sources of electricity. Fuel cells could be a way to take the load off the central power grid and create a system of residential generators that could power homes and even provide a surplus to the grid.

But fuel cells are still too expensive.

For example, a Boise-based company called Idacorp has joined the BPA to test for home use fuel cells that are in the $25,000 range. The company hopes the cost per unit eventually will drop to the $5,000 to $7,000 range.

Still, fuel cell development is becoming part of a nationwide shift away from reliance on any single power source.

``It's going to take time, and it's not effortless, but the move toward the so-called hydrogen economy has started,'' said Millett, the Battelle researcher. ``We've taken the baby steps.''

On the Net:
Battelle: http://www.battelle.org
Bonneville Power Administration: http://www.bpa.gov
U.S. Fuel Cell Council: http://www.usfcc.com
National Energy Technology Laboratory: http://www.fetc.doe.gov

-------- environment

A U.N. study heightened global warming fears

Monday, Jan. 29, 2001
Slate
By Michael Brus
http://slate.msn.com/cx/Spin/01-01-29/Spin.asp_3FShow_3D1/29/2001

The report, compiled by scientists from 90 countries, predicted a global temperature rise of more than 10 degrees this century, double the prevailing prediction. Diplomatic talks to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions collapsed in November and will resume in May. Scientists' spin: Don't take our word for it-northern polar sea ice has shrunk by up to 15 percent in the past 40 years. Skeptics' spin: This study has a political agenda and stresses worst-case scenarios. And even if it's right, politicians will never reduce emissions. We should focus on adapting to the warming, not stopping it.

---

Humans biggest threat to Galapagos

1/29/2001
InfoBeat News
Associated Press
By MONTE HAYES
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405992227

PUERTO BAQUERIZO, Galapagos Islands (AP) - Sea lions snooze and their cubs frolic amid the late afternoon shadows falling over the shore, even as oil from a grounded tanker stains the rocks nearby and fills the air with a heavy stench.

For now, the Galapagos Islands, a trove of rare plants and animals, appear to have escaped what could have been an ecological disaster. After a tanker ran aground Jan. 16, spilling at least 185,000 gallons of diesel and bunker fuel into the pristine waters off San Cristobal Island, winds and currents carried most of the fuel out into the open sea.

Good fortune may have averted disaster but the question remains whether the Galapagos _ made famous by Charles Darwin's theory on how species evolve _ can ultimately survive the presence of perhaps the world's most aggressive species: Homo sapiens.

The Galapagos Islands were already under siege from unchecked migration by Ecuadoreans escaping the poverty of the mainland 600 miles to the east.

Their presence and the alien animal and plant species they have brought with them are pushing the islands' fragile ecosystem to the breaking point, scientists say.

``You couldn't have a more potent symbol of human impact on these islands, which for millions of years were without the touch of man,'' said Robert Bensted-Smith, director of the Charles Darwin Research Station on the island of Santa Cruz. ``The oil spill is a symbol of how we can mess them up without even thinking about it.''

Only one pelican and two seagulls are known to have died from the spill off San Cristobal, the easternmost island in the remote Pacific archipelago. But dozens of sea lions and birds, including albatrosses and blue-footed boobies unique to the Galapagos, had to be trapped and cleaned.

Scientists say the main concern now is whether fuel will settle to the bottom of the ocean and kill algae, the only source of food for marine iguanas, another species found only in the Galapagos.

``It was a close shave, but I think it's safe to say the spill did not have a major impact on the Galapagos,'' said Godfrey Merlen, a British researcher who has lived in the archipelago for two decades and is helping the Galapagos National Park Service monitor the damage.

Man's presence is most visible in Puerto Ayora on the island of Santa Cruz, the largest town in the archipelago.

Salsa music floats out from the Five Fingers Discotheque on the seafront Charles Darwin Avenue in Puerto Ayora, home to 10,000 of the island chain's 16,000 residents. Stores offer T-shirts with Galapagos motifs, including one that shows a blue-footed booby and reads: ``Do Boobies Walk in their Sleep?''

But before the pizza parlors and taco shops, the islands sparked the interest of a young British naturalist.

During a five-week visit in 1835 to the Galapagos archipelago, Charles Darwin began to form his theory of evolution based on the ``survival of the fittest'' after observing how finches differed from island to island, their beaks changing to adapt to different food sources.

He called the volcanic islands, believed to be only 4 million years old, ``a living laboratory of evolution.''

``Both in space and time,'' he wrote later, ``we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact _ that mystery of mysteries _ the first appearance of new beings on this earth.''

The Galapagos were first known as ``The Enchanted Isles,'' a name given by Spanish conquistadors who encountered them in 1546.

They evidently were impressed by the eery-looking islands with their moonscapes of porous volcanic rock, jagged cliff formations and lava fields. Giant tortoises, some weighing 550 pounds, lumbered to drinking ponds in the misty highlands. Thousands of marine iguanas that looked like throwbacks to some prehistoric time sunned themselves atop rocks on the shores.

Today's visitors are perhaps most enchanted by the lack of fear in animals that lived for thousands of years without worries of predators.

It's common for finches to plop down on the edge of a diner's plate and nibble at the food. At South Plazas Island, visitors can sit at the edge of 75-foot cliffs as seabirds such as red-neck frigatebirds and gulls swoop down. Many land within inches and gaze up in curiosity at the newcomers.

This trusting nature, charming as it is, has a downside: it has made the Galapagos' native animal species vulnerable to aggressive alien species introduced to the islands, sometimes by accident but often intentionally.

``Goats eat most of the vegetation and so they completely change the habitat for tortoises and land iguanas,'' Bensted-Smith said. ``Pigs dig up the eggs of sea turtles and tortoises. Rats prey on baby tortoises and tortoise eggs. Cats prey on birds and marine and land iguanas. Feral dogs are most notorious for having nearly wiped out the land iguanas.''

But it's man himself who has been the most disruptive in recent years.

Since the mid-1990s, fishermen, many of whom have migrated from the mainland in the last few years, have clashed repeatedly with the Galapagos National Park Service and the Charles Darwin Research Station.

Seeking to exploit the rich waters off the islands, they oppose limits on fishing for lobster and for sea cucumbers, bottom-feeding invertebrates crucial to the shallow water ecosystem. Fishermen also want freedom to hunt the Galapagos' protected sharks. Sea cucumbers and shark fin fetch astronomical prices in Asia, where they are prized as aphrodisiacs. In November, fishermen seized three giant land tortoises from the national park and ransacked its facilities on Isabela Island, destroying computers and office equipment. They also looted the home of the park director, who hid in a mangrove swamp to escape the mob.

In 1995, fishermen blocked the entrance to the Charles Darwin Research Station in Puerto Ayora for four days to demand that the center drop its request to the national park to halt sea cucumber fishing.

``It was a state of siege. I have never felt so terrified or helpless,'' said Chantal Blanton, Bensted-Smith's predecessor.

The fishermen threatened to kill Lonesome George, the last of a subspecies of land tortoise kept at the station. Blanton's husband slept in the tortoise's pen for days to protect him, and Blanton kept a machete in her office for months afterward.

Longtime residents of the islands are no happier with the newcomers.

There were only 69 people living on Santa Cruz Island when Gunda Schreyer's parents arrived from Germany in 1951. In those days, she said, the people who made the long journey to the Galapagos to start a new life were people who appreciated the tranquility and beauty of the islands.

``I just hope the Galapagos don't end up like a ghost town after the gold is gone,'' she said.

---

Oregon's land use laws threatened

1/29/2001
InfoBeat News
Associated Press
By JEFF BARNARD
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405993376

JACKSONVILLE, Ore. (AP) - Oregon practically invented what it means to be green, leading the nation in restoring salmon habitat, reining in urban sprawl and protecting farms and forests from becoming housing tracts.

But in November, voters shocked property rights advocates and environmentalists alike by approving a constitutional amendment known as Measure 7 that could bring all those regulations _ and even local zoning _ tumbling down.

Amid the hot presidential race and 26 measures on the ballot, Measure 7 got little attention before election day.

``This definitely slipped in under the radar,'' said Randy Tucker of 1000 Friends of Oregon, a land use watchdog group. ``Many people didn't believe it possible Oregonians would pass something that basically repeals land use planning.''

While the amendment does not overturn land use or environmental laws, ``it raises serious questions about the extent to which we can enforce them,'' said Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber.

Measure 7 is the most sweeping property compensation law in the nation. It says that if the state or a local government passes or enforces a regulation that restricts the use of private property, the owner shall be paid for any loss in value. It does not allow claims for restrictions on pornography, nude dancing, bars and casinos.

For now, a court order has put the measure on hold while challenges work their way up to the Oregon Supreme Court.

In the meantime, everyone from the governor to the mayor of the little ranching and logging town of Enterprise is trying to figure out how to deal with it without going broke. A committee that drafted a fiscal impact statement for the state Voters' Pamphlet estimated it could cost state and local governments $5.4 billion a year.

``The proponents are saying it's just a little fella, don't worry about that Tyrannosaurus,'' said Portland City Commissioner Charlie Hales. ``I saw the movie. He's going to break out of the backyard and eat people.''

Portland City Attorney Jeff Rogers says it puts property owners in the position of being able to say: ''`I've got my land and can do whatever the hell I want, regardless of what you say as a neighbor or as a mayor, unless you pay me not to.'''

Supporters say it will be a friendly watchdog, keeping rampant government in check.

Larry George, executive director of Oregonians in Action, a property rights group that led the campaign for Measure 7, says the amendment rights a fundamental wrong: government control over private property.

It is the first good news truck driver Frank Hardin and his family have seen in 12 years of trying to mine gravel from the site of an old gold mine outside Jacksonville.

They filed suit against Jackson County, which denied a conditional use permit to mine the material, and the town of Jacksonville, which didn't want gravel trucks driving through its historic district, claiming $50 million _ the first claim filed under Measure 7 _ representing the value of the 18 million tons of rock they can't mine.

``We don't want their money,'' said Hardin. ``We just want to use our property. So far all we've been able to do is pay taxes. And they raise the taxes every year.''

The issue goes back to 1973, when Oregon adopted the nation's most comprehensive land use laws to protect farms and forests from development and to control urban sprawl. Oregon has also been a leader in controlling logging, keeping beaches free of development, and restoring salmon habitat _ all on private land.

Cities and counties fear claims like Hardin's could bankrupt them. They have enacted ordinances to waive enforcement of regulations that generate claims.

``We have no idea where we would find the funds to pay what someone feels is a just claim,'' said Enterprise Mayor Susan Roberts, president of the Oregon League of Cities.

The measure is so vaguely written that even Oregonians In Action, a private property rights group, wants the Legislature to help define it. House Speaker Mark Simmons, a Republican, wants at least a discussion, but Senate President Gene Derfler, also a Republican, sees no reason to do anything yet since the Oregon Supreme Court could make it all moot.

Meanwhile, lawyers, land use advocates, environmentalists and property rights advocates around the country are watching closely.

``If it can pass in Oregon, surely it can pass anywhere,'' said Nancie Marzulla, president of Defenders of Property Rights in Washington, D.C.

Florida and Texas have so-called property takings compensation laws, but they are not as far-reaching as Oregon's. And less radical measures were defeated at the polls in Washington and Arizona.

``It's why people moved West,'' Portland City Commissioner Hales said. ``They wanted more freedom and less regulation. How much more? We'll find out.''

-------- imf / world bank

GAO: US Influence on IMF Threatened

January 29, 2001
New York Times
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Congress-IMF.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- American influence at the International Monetary Fund could weaken if Congress keeps ordering the Treasury to ensure that IMF operations reflect U.S. policies, congressional analysts say.

A new report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found 60 provisions of federal law that say the United States must vote or exert U.S. influence only in ways that advance American policy objectives.

The report, ``Efforts to Advance U.S. policies at the Fund,'' said, ``These mandates cover a wide range of policies including issues considered core to the fund, such as exchange rate policy, and emerging issues, such as environmental policy.''

The U.S. representative to the 24-member IMF board also has to consider a recipient's history on human rights, religious freedom, military spending and local labor laws when voting on an IMF loan.

Some of the 60 provisions passed during the last 30 years are optional, which gives the representative some leeway in applying them, but many others are mandatory. And the Treasury Department told the GAO the number of mandatory conditions is growing so rapidly it threatens to hurt U.S. credibility with other members of the IMF.

Timothy Geithner, undersecretary for international affairs at Treasury during the Clinton administration, said in a Jan. 8 letter to the GAO that the growing number of ``legislative mandates ... without consolidating or rationalizing the provisions already in effect risks overloading and thereby weakening our influence in the fund.''

``This situation also makes if more difficult to give adequate attention to the full range of mandates,'' the letter said.

Included in the mandatory provisions set by Congress are demands that the U.S. vote against loans for countries that sponsor terrorism, traffic in nuclear weapons technology or threaten U.S. companies.

The GAO focused on three particular policy issues -- sound banking principles, labor policies and military spending -- to determine whether the United States was effective in exerting its influence on certain member countries.

It found that the Treasury Department and the U.S. executive director at the fund ``actively promoted U.S. policies'' as required by the congressional mandates.

The GAO observed, however, that the United States has had little success in promoting labor reforms as part of IMF loan programs, because other members view this topic as outside the IMF's core mandate.

Congressional Republicans have recommended sweeping operational changes at the IMF and its sister institution, the World Bank. A congressional commission recommended last year that the IMF restrict its operations to providing short-term emergency loans to countries facing financial crises and stay out of programs designed to reduce poverty.

The 183-nation IMF arranged multibillion-dollar financial rescue packages in the past seven years for Mexico, three Asian nations, Russia and Brazil.

-------- terrorism

Judge Admits Kenya Statements in Embassy Terrorism Case

January 30, 2001
New York Times
By BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/30/nyregion/30TERR.html?pagewanted=all

A federal judge ruled yesterday that United States prosecutors could use statements given overseas by three defendants in the 1998 bombings of American Embassies in East Africa, even though the defendants were not given lawyers at the time and, in some cases, claimed that they were threatened with violence during questioning.

The judge, Leonard B. Sand of Federal District Court in Manhattan, said that although "classic Miranda doctrine" calls for a defendant to be advised of the right to counsel before questioning begins and given a lawyer if he cannot afford one, that may not always be feasible when American officials interrogate suspects on foreign soil.

The ruling not only represented a victory for the government's efforts to prosecute three of the four defendants on trial, but could also have a major impact on the interrogation of terrorism suspects in the future.

United States investigators, for example, are trying to track down about a dozen fugitives in the case who are believed to be hiding overseas, including Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile who is charged in the East Africa attacks and is also suspected in the attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen Oct. 12.

In arguing to have their clients' statements ruled inadmissible, lawyers for two of the defendants, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali and Mohamed Saddiq Odeh, said their clients were not only not offered lawyers or properly advised of their rights, but were also threatened by American officials during their questioning. They were told that if they did not talk, they would be left in the hands of Kenyans, whom the suspects feared would use violence on them, the lawyers said.

But F.B.I. agents involved in the questioning overseas denied making any threats.

In his ruling, Judge Sand said American officials had not violated the due process rights of the defendants and said he found the testimony of the agents believable.

Judge Sand said the decision by Mr. al-'Owhali, a Saudi citizen, to talk to his American interrogators without a lawyer "was a consequence of the strong desire he expressed to be tried in America so that he could confront directly his avowed enemy."

Prosecutors say that on Aug. 22, after 10 days of lying to investigators, Mr. al-'Owhali confessed to helping to carry out the embassy bombing in Nairobi, Kenya, on Aug. 7, 1998, which along with a nearly simultaneous blast in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed 224 people.

The decision by Judge Sand was in part a reversal of one earlier this month, in which he ruled in secret, that Mr. al-'Owhali's statements should be suppressed. He withdrew that opinion after the government asked for a chance to present new evidence and legal arguments. In his ruling yesterday, Judge Sand made it clear that he was satisfied, based on the new evidence, that the authorities had complied with Miranda rules and constitutional requirements of due process.

In Mr. al-'Owhali's long interrogation in Nairobi, for example, the judge said American prosecutors and F.B.I. agents had acted properly in telling him that he could not have a lawyer because that was accurate - Kenyan law does not provide for one in such cases.

"Miranda," the judge said, "which we find to be applicable as far as feasible to this interrogation, does not sanction or require the making of false statements to a suspect."

Because the trial is so near - Judge Sand said he wanted to have opening statements on Monday -he said he was issuing the ruling orally, and would follow with a full opinion.

So his announcement yesterday came from the bench, without the usual citation of legal precedents or the disclosure of the secret testimony and legal documents that have been filed with him pertaining to the interrogations.

But legal experts who were interviewed after reading the transcript deemed the ruling significant.

"It's very important," said H. Richard Uviller, professor of law at Columbia University, "because it underscores what the Supreme Court has said on other occasions - that the precise form of the Miranda warnings is not written in stone."

Yale Kamisar, a University of Michigan law professor and an expert on confessions, said the judge appeared to be saying that when "American agents do the best they can possibly do in overseas interrogations," which may involve modifying Miranda to fit the special situations confronting them, "their action passes muster under Miranda."

The third defendant whose statement will be allowed is Khalfan Khamis Mohamed.

Prosecutors had no comment on the ruling.

Frederick H. Cohn, a lawyer for Mr. al-'Owhali, said the judge "followed the law as he saw it." But it was "absolutely outrageous," he said, that prosecutors, having put on a limited case and losing the original suppression motion, used their "position to say it doesn't matter - we get a second bite at the apple."

In finding Mr. al-'Owhali's confession admissible, Judge Sand said he was relying on new government testimony offered in closed court hearings last week. A heavily censored transcript shows that one F.B.I. agent, Stephen Gaudin, said American officials had carefully reviewed Mr. al-'Owhali's rights with him.

Agent Gaudin said a prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, told Mr. al-'Owhali: "`Listen, you're the boss. You control what you say and what you don't say. If you want to continue to talk to us, you can. If you don't want to talk to us, you don't have to.'"

Mr. al-'Owhali has said in an affidavit that he was "trapped into a position" that he talk to either the Americans or the feared Kenyans, in effect, no choice at all. But Judge Sand ruled that "talking without counsel to the Americans was not a Hobson's choice with which he was confronted, but rather a course of action he voluntarily chose to pursue." Judge Sand did suppress certain statements by Mr. al-'Owhali that were made before Aug. 22, when, prosecutors say, he was lying about his role and his identity. The judge suppressed those statements on the ground that the form advising Mr. al-'Owhali of his rights was deficient.

Any defendant who is convicted could argue in an appeal that Judge Sand's ruling on the admissibility of the statements was erroneous and that the conviction should be reversed for that reason. There is no provision allowing the defendants to appeal the decision before the trial begins.

-------- activists

Corporate Democracy; Civic Disrespect
[An interesting analysis....]

Mon, 29 Jan 2001
From: Joan Norman <defender@firstworld.net>
by John K. Galbraith

With the events of late in the year 2000, the United States left behind constitutional republicanism, and turned to a different form of government. It is not, however, a new form. It is, rather, a transplant, highly familiar from a different arena of advanced capitalism. This is corporate democracy. It is a system whereby a Board of Directors--read Supreme Court -- selects the Chief Executive Officer. The CEO in turn appoints new members of the Board. The shareholders, owners in title only, are invited to cast their votes in periodic referenda. But their franchise is only symbolic, for management holds a majority of the proxies. On no important issue do the CEO and the Board ever permit themselves to lose.

The Supreme Court clarified this in a way that the Florida courts could not have. The media have accepted it, for it is the form of government to which they are already professionally accustomed. And the shameless attitude of the George W. Bush high command merely illustrates, in unusually visible fashion, the prevalent ethical system of corporate life.

Al Gore's concession speech was justly praised for grace and humor. It paid due deference to the triumph of corporate political ethics, but did not embrace them. It thus preserved Gore for another political day -- the obvious intention. But Gore also sent an unmistakable message to American democrats: Do not forget.

It was an important warning, for almost immediately forgetting became the media order of the day. Overnight, it became almost un-American not to accept the diktat of the Court. Or to be precise, Gore's own distinction became holy writ: One might disagree with the Court, but not with the legitimacy of its decision. Press references from that moment forward were to President-elect Bush, an unofficial title and something that the Governor from Texas (President-select? President-designate?) manifestly is not.

The key to dealing with the Bush people, however, is precisely not to accept them. Like most Americans, I have nothing personal against Bush, Dick Cheney, nor against Colin Powell and the others now surfacing as members of the new administration. But I will not reconcile myself to them. They lost the election. Then they arranged to obstruct the count of the vote. They don't deserve to be there, and that changes everything.

They have earned our civic disrespect, and that is what we, the people, should accord them. In social terms, civic disrespect means that the illegitimacy of this administration must not be allowed to fade from view. The conventions of politics remain: Bush will be president; Congress must work with him. But those of us outside that process are not bound by those conventions, and to the extent that we have a voice, we should use it.

In political practice, civic disrespect means drawing lines around the freedom of maneuver of the incoming administration. In many areas, including foreign policy, there will be few major changes; in others such as annual budgets and appropriations, compromises will have to be reached. But Bush should be opposed on actions whose reach will extend beyond his actual term.

First, the new president should be allowed lifetime appointments only by consensus. The public should oppose -- and 50 Senate Democrats should freely block -- judicial nominations whenever they carry even the slightest ideological taint. That may mean most of them, but no matter. And as for the Supreme Court especially, vacancies need not be filled.

Second, the Democrats should advise Bush not to introduce any legislation to cut or privatize any part of Social Security or Medicare.

Third, Democrats should furiously oppose elimination of the estate tax a social incentive for recycling wealth to the non-profit sector, to foundations and universities, that has had a uniquely powerful effect on the form of American society. Once gone, this ingenious device will never be reenacted.

Fourth, the people must unite to oppose the global dangers of National Missile Defense -- a strategic nightmare on which Bush campaigned -- that threatens for all time the security of us all.

Fifth, Congress should enact a New Voting Rights Act, targeted precisely at the Florida abuses. This should stipulate: mandatory adoption of best-practice technology in all federal elections; a 24-hour voting day; a ban on private contractors to aid in purging voter rolls; and mandatory immediate hand count of all under-votes in federal elections.

With those steps taken, Democrats must also recognize and adapt to the new political landscape that emerged from this election. Outside of Florida, Democrats are finished in the South. But they have excellent prospects of consolidating a narrow majority of the Electoral College -- so long as, in the next election, there is no Ralph Nader defection.

What can prevent such a thing? Only a move away from the main Clinton compromises that so infuriated the progressive left. Nader's voters were motivated passionately by issues like the drug war, the death penalty, consumer protection and national missile defense -- issues where New Democrats took Republican positions in their effort to woo the South. Clinton the Southerner succeeded at this -- but against Republicans who were only weakly "Southern" at best. Gore, on the other hand, was principally a Northern candidate, strongly backed by the core Democrats, who ran against, and defeated so far as ballots were concerned, a wholly Southern Republican. Future Republicans almost surely also be "Southern,"; for that is where the base of the party now lies. And future Democrats, if they are Northern candidates too, can beat them -- all the more so if they bring the Greens back into the Democratic fold.

In short, Al Gore's campaign proved that there is an electoral majority in the United States for a government that is truly a progressive coalition, and not merely an assemblage of sympathetic lawyers, professors and investment bankers. Rather, Americans will elect a government that firmly includes and effectively represents labor, women, minorities -- and Greens. This is the government we must seek to elect --if we get another chance.

And for that, the first task is to assure that the information ministries of our new corporate republic do not successfully cast a fog of forgetting over the crime that we have all just witnessed, with our own eyes.

---

Samuel H. Day Jr.

January 29, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59921-2001Jan29?language=printer

Journalist

Samuel H. Day Jr., 74, a political activist and journalist whose efforts to publish a detailed account of how to build a hydrogen bomb resulted in a First Amendment case, died Jan. 26 in Madison, Wis., after a stroke.

As managing editor of Madison-based Progressive magazine in 1979, he fought the government, which eventually dropped its case, to publish freelance writer Howard Morland's article "The H-Bomb Secret: How We Got It, Why We're Telling It."

Mr. Day left the magazine in 1980 to work on his own and later helped found Nukewatch, a public interest group monitoring nuclear weapons transportation and deployment.

---

World forum protest cleanup begins

1/29/2001
InfoBeat News
Associated Press
By ONNA CORAY
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405993706

ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) - Switzerland counted the cost Sunday of mayhem unleashed by anti-globalization protesters outraged at being the target of the country's biggest security operation since World War II.

As political controversy mounted over whether police themselves were to blame for Saturday night's violence, newspaper commentaries likened Switzerland to a dictatorship for banning demonstrations against the World Economic Forum meeting.

Demonstrators gathered peacefully Sunday afternoon in Zurich _ the scene of pitched battles late Saturday between riot police firing tear gas and water cannons and protester prevented from reaching the meeting in the Alpine resort of Davos, about 90 miles away.

Police arrested 121 people _ mostly Swiss and German _ from a mob of 1,000 militants ``intent on violence,'' Esther Maurer, president of the Zurich police department, told a news conference. She said the level of violence had rarely been witnessed in the Swiss financial capital.

Two policemen were injured by stones and one soldier was trampled to the ground and his weapons stolen. Maurer said the fact that all police were clad in full riot gear prevented a higher casualty toll.

Authorities said the damage ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Hundreds of passengers were trapped in Zurich's main railway station _ many of them feeling the effects of tear gas aimed at demonstrators. Prevented from occupying the station and reaching the nearby Bahnhofstrasse _ one of the world's most exclusive shopping streets _ protesters then went on a rampage in downtown Zurich. They set fire to cars, smashed windows and spray-painted buildings.

Swiss Sunday newspapers largely blamed the authorities.

``Police methods just like a dictatorship,'' headlined the tabloid SonntagsBlick.

``The spirit of Davos suffocated in tear gas,'' said the respected SonntagsZeitung, in reference to the Alpine meeting's atmosphere, credited with forging groundbreaking political accords and multibillion economic deals over the years.

Non-governmental critics of globalization attending a parallel conference in Davos were furious and threatened to quit in protest.

``The attitude was one of you're guilty until presumed innocent,'' stormed U.S. environmentalist Jeremy Rifkin, likening Switzerland as a police state.

The Swiss Trade Union Federation accused authorities of ``violating basic principles of democracy.''

The Socialist party _ of which Swiss President Moritz Leuenberger is a member _ condemned the ban as a violation of free speech.

But Leuenberger himself defended the police action.

``It wasn't a disproportionate police response, it was disproportionate violence by demonstrators,'' a visibly annoyed Leuenberger told journalists in Davos. He said he was shocked by television images from Zurich.

Center and right-wing parties defended the massive security operation as necessary to protect the world's elite and to ensure that Switzerland hosts the prestigious Davos conference in years to come.

``The freedom of the demonstrators stops when they endanger the freedom of other people,'' said Peter Aliesch, a local government leader in the state of Graubuenden that ordered the ban on demonstrations.

John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, umbrella organization for U.S. labor unions, urged forum leaders to listen to nonviolent critics such as workers, environmentalists and religious leaders rather than ``the few who are violent.''

---

Brazil forum attracts sympathizers

1/29/2001
InfoBeat News
By TONY SMITH AP
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405992793

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil (AP) - What's it take to make a World Forum ``social'' and not ``economic''?

Bermudas and sandals for a start, not suits and Italian loafers. Then there's the line for the payphones, and no constant beeping of cell phones. There are also plastic-wrapped sandwiches, instead of venison served with wine. And finally, protest rather than policy-making.

The World Social Forum in Porto Alegre is a self-styled nemesis to the World Economic Forum being held at Davos, a ritzy ski resort high in the Swiss alps that is home to an annual gathering of the rich and powerful of the international economy.

The forum in Porto Alegre, a socialist-governed city in southern Brazil, has attracted as many as 10,000 activists and sympathizers of the world's growing anti-globalization lobby. And with just a fraction of the resources of the representatives in Davos, this grassroots movement is harrying boardrooms and even influencing policy at institutions such as the World Bank and World Trade Organization.

``We have no pretensions to be a substitute for politicians, but we are determined to pressure governments to do the right thing,'' said Sergio Haddad, an organizer and president of the Brazilian Association of Non-governmental Organizations.

The right thing, according to Haddad, includes, ``universal, ethical values..., putting the focus back on human beings and not just growth and profits.''

Around the globe, concerns are growing over the environment, workers' rights, consumer protection and job preservation. At the same time, the growth of democracy, cheaper travel and advances in telecommunications all make it easier for the like-minded to unite in protest.

The result is an explosion of the number of citizens' groups and their memberships.

Haddad's association counts 270 members, but he reckons Brazil could have as many as 100,000 non-governmental organizations.

In the United States, some 2 million such organizations could exist, 70 percent founded in the last 30 years, according to World Watch magazine. In Eastern Europe, some 100,000 citizens' groups sprang up in the six years following the collapse of Communism in 1989.

The World Wildlife Fund has increased membership from just over half a million in 1985 to 5 million today.

Haddad says the recent rise of citizens' movements began at 1992's Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, when grassroots groups forced countries to agree to reduce greenhouse gases. Next came 1994's ''50 Years is Enough'' campaign that forced a rethink of how the World Bank was run.

Then, in December, 1999, street riots disrupted the World Trade Organization's summit in Seattle and last year, a group of NGOs forced a drastic reduction in Third World Debt.

``I think you can say we have made those guys in Davos uncomfortable,'' said Haddad.

They certainly squirmed Sunday. During a live debate broadcast by satellite between the world economy's elite in Davos and opponents in Porto Alegre, financier George Soros acknowledged the grassroots movement had been ``successful in attracting attention.''

``I think we should start a dialogue,'' he said. But all hopes for dialogue disappeared when Hebe de Bona Fini, a delegate in Porto Alegre, called Soros ``a hypocrite,'' and a ``monster.''

With Brazilian summer temperatures sizzling at over 86 degrees farenheit, however, it was Porto Alegre delegates, activists and sympathizers, mostly dressed in shorts and sneakers, who looked more uncomfortable Friday.

While in Davos, besuited delegates and journalists drank non-alcoholic cocktails offered by the Saudi delegation at the centrally heated World Economic Forum building, participants here packed auditoriums and classrooms in Porto Alegre's Catholic University.

The Forum's agenda is so broad _ one workshop, for example, was entitled ``Dialogue among feminists, ecologists and biotechnology sectors'' _ few concrete proposals are expected to emerge.

But for many, that doesn't matter.

``People are here and they're all very interested,'' said Veronique Laughlin, 25, a French-American activist handing out flyers for a lecture by the latin American Council of Social Sciences on ``social protest and alternatives to neoliberalism.''

``What this shows is that there's a sort of global citizenship arising around the world that can combat this idea that uncontroled capitalism is the only approach,'' she said.

Ideology notwithstanding, a sandwich vendor at the social forum has been selling an average of 1,500 cans a day of _ believe it or not _ Coca-Cola, an icon of globalization.

``I'm against globalization if it kills off the diversity of cultures,'' said Laughlin, who said she does not drink Coke. ``But that corporation is so big, that it even gets in here.''

--------

Stop Global Warming!

Mon, 29 Jan 2001
IFG NYC Teach-in On Globalization and Technology!

CONTACT IFG FOR POSTERS YOU CAN PUT UP IN YOUR COMMUNITY

The International Forum on Globalization, New York Open Center, The International Center for Technology Assessment, The Turning Point Project, Lapis Magazine, and the Nation Institute

Present a Teach-In on Technology and Globalization

Saturday, February 24 & Sunday, February 25, 2001 Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue New York City 40 Speakers + 25 Workshops

Our society places all its bets on technology as the panacea for our ills. But it may be time to reconsider. Far from Paradise-on-Earth, we are rolling toward ecological collapse: rapid climate change and rising seas; ozone holes; loss of species and habitat; accelerated cancer rates; terminal forms of air, water, and soil pollution, as well as unprecedented levels of social, political, and personal alienation and despair. All are rooted in the excesses of technology.

Now a terrifying new generation of technologies - from biotechnology to eugenics to robotics to nanotechnology -are raising the stakes and bringing unprecedented new threats to the planet. Meanwhile the new telecommunications technologies that we had hoped would bring democracy and empowerment may be producing the opposite: rampant commercialization, global corporate concentration and mergers, and centralization rather than decentralization.

In the era of economic globalization, the problems are magnified a millionfold. All-powerful global bureaucracies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and others are preventing the ability of communities or nation-states to slow the rate at which giant global corporations freely exploit the planet, dominate social systems, destroy local economies, and deploy the most powerful and dangerous technologies in history.

This dynamic interaction between new technology, economic globalization, and centralized global power is arguably the most important condition of the New Millennium, but it's rarely publicly debated or exposed to democratic processes.

This landmark event at Hunter College, February 24 and 25, 2001, hopes to launch that debate.

Who should control the evolution of technology? What are the intrinsic consequences of certain technologies in terms of health, the environment, social justice and democracy, religion, and how we view ourselves and the cosmos? Has science failed? Why have there been no referenda on the most dangerous technological trends: nuclear, biotechnology, transport, the globalization of industrial agriculture, corporate power, and global media concentration? Do the new telecommunications serve democracy or the opposite? How can we change paths? How can we create more viable, local democratic systems that serve different values? These are a few of the questions to be discussed in two days of plenaries and workshops, led by some of the world's greatest thinkers on technology, globalization, and democracy. Please join us.

For Tickets contact the New York Open Center Registration 212-219-2527 ext. 110; or 1-888-629-9269 fax: 212-226-4056; email: nyocreg@aol.com For Information visit the IFG website at www.ifg.org TICKET PRICES: Saturday $30, Sunday $25, Both days $50 Half price for students, IFG & NYOC members.

Participating Speakers

Jeremy Rifkin: Foundation on Economic Trends; Author, The Biotech Century; Biosphere Politics

Vandana Shiva: Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Ecology (India); Author, Monoculture of the Mind; Biopiracy: the Plunder of Nature and Knowledge; Stolen Harvest

Jerry Mander: Internat'l Forum on Globalization; Author, Case Againstthe Global Economy; In the Absence of the Sacred; Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

Andrew Kimbrell: Internat'l Center for Technology Assessment; Author, The Human Body Shop

Paul Hawken: Author, Natural Capitalism; The Ecology of Commerce

Fritjof Capra: Center for Ecoliteracy, Author; The Tao of Physics; The Turning Point

Helena Norberg-Hodge: Internat'l Society for Ecology and Culture; Author, Lessons from Ladakh

Kirkpatrick Sale: Author, Rebels Against the Future; Human Scale; Conquest of Paradise

David Ehrenfeld: Rutgers University; Author, The Arrogance of Humanism

Maude Barlow: Council of Canadians

David Suzuki: Host, "The Nature of Things" (Canadian Broadcast Corporation); Author, The Sacred Balance

Richard Hayes: Exploratory Initiative on the New Human Genetic Technologies

Mark Crispin Miller: Project on Media Ownership; Author, Boxed In: The Culture of TV

Joan Gussow: Former Chair, Department of Nutrition, Columbia University

Debra Harry: Indigenous People's Council on Biocolonialism

Martin Teitel: Council for Responsible Genetics; Author, Genetically Engineered Food: Changing the Nature of Nature; Rainforest in Your Kitchen

Anuradha Mittal: Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First); Author, America Needs Human Rights

Satish Kumar: Editor, Resurgence Magazine

Lori Wallach: Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch; Co-Author, Whose Trade Organization?

Steve Talbott: The Nature Institute; Author, The Future Does Not Compute

Langdon Winner: Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst.; Author, Autonymous Technology; The Whale and the Reactor

John Cavanagh: Inst. for Policy Studies; Author, Global Dreams

Chet Bowers: Portland State U.; Author, Let Them Eat Data

Walden Bello: Focus on the Global South; Author, Dragons in Distress: Asia's Miracle Economics in Crisis

Frances Moore Lappé: Author, Diet for a Small Planet

Charlene Spretnak: Author, Resurgence of the Real

Randy Hayes: Rainforest Action Network

Karl Grossman: State University of New York; Author, The Wrong Stuff; Weapons in Space

Jackie Cabasso: Western States Legal Foundation

Jane Healey: Author, Endangered Minds

Bruce Gagnon: Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space

Pat Roy Mooney: Rural Advancement Foundation International

William L. Rukeyser: Learning in the Real World

>Dr. Arpad Pusztai: Former Senior Scientist, Rowett Research Institute

And many others

Saturday, February 24, 2001 Plenary Panels & Presentations: 9 am - 10 pm Technology & Globalization

Overviews on the symbiotic relationship between new technology, global corporations, global bureaucracies, and their effects on social, political, and environmental concerns.

Technology & the homogenization of global consciousness & culture

The cultural and political consequences of global telecommunications, especially in the age of corporate consolidation. We will discuss global TV, the internet, e-commerce, and the impacts of technology in education.

Systems of control: corporations & the bretton woods model

Free trade and globalization are not inevitable, like evolution. We look at the systems that gave corporations dominance, and what we can do about it.

New military technology & control from space

Alarming new technologies will enable the U.S. military to carry out its stated new goal to function as protector (from space) of global corporations and their investments.

Globalization of industrial agriculture & food

Mechanized, high-intensive, corporate monocultural agriculture is being promoted as the only way to feed the world, but in fact, it promotes hunger, drives farmers off their lands, creates ecological havoc, and lowers food quality.

Technology, globalization & nature

The prime victim of the technology-globalization symbiosis is the natural world. Through trade deals, nature loses its protection; through technology, nature is assaulted as never before. Media, meanwhile, train our world view so we think this is perfectly normal.

Special evening panel:

biotechnology & the post biological sciences

Remaking the nature of nature, science now takes us beyond the biological realm to a post biological era that includes promoting biotechnology, eugenics, nanotechnology, and robotics. This leads us to consider crucial questions about the irreversible alteration of all life on earth.

Sunday, February 25, 2001 Workshops & Presentations: 9 am - 5 pm Partial List

Flawed Paradigms of Science The Precautionary Principle: Guilty Until Proven Innocent In Perspective: Gandhi, Mumford, Ellul Systems of Agriculture: Global to Local Technology in the Third World Technology, Globalization, and Our Changing Concept of Nature Television and the Cloning of Cultures The Casino Economy: Instant Global Financial Movement & Speculation Is Technology Neutral? Computers in the Classroom Corporations as Technology The Merging of Humans and Machines Virtuality versus Community and Culture Indigenous Alternatives to Globalization Computers, Surveillance, and Privacy Computers and Work The Viability of Alternative Systems

(Program subject to change) This event is not sponsored by or affiliated with Hunter College

Antonia Juhasz Program Director International Forum on Globalization Building 1062, Fort Cronkhite Sausalito, CA 94965 415-229-9357 http://www.ifg.org

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The left is right?

January 29, 2001
liberzine.com
by Michael Mallinger
http://www.liberzine.com/michaelmallinger/010129activists.htm

Left wing activists have always been a mystery to me. Despite the intellectual advancements made by Downsian political scholars and Dick Morris' efforts to enable former President Clinton to "triangulate" toward the Center, left wing activists insist on monopolizing the media's attention and keeping their extremism in the public eye. In light of the events that took place in Berlin in 1991, I've often wondered why they continue to shoot their centrist allies in the feet. When the coordinators of Counterprotest.net, the libertarian activist group, asked me to help observe one of the left-wing coalition's organizational meetings at George Washington University last Thursday night, I was eager to oblige.

Ever since their WTO protest in Seattle, the leaders of the radical left have called their movement a spontaneous order -- a collection of autonomous individuals whose uncoordinated actions disrupt the efforts of politicians and negotiators to impose their undemocratic will on people. In a way, they assert that by stealing the principles of Nobel Prize winning economist F.A. Hayek, they can defeat proponents of free market policies at their own game. Although these bold claims are rather esoteric, the radical left operates like any other political coalition.

The meeting of the G.W. Direct Action Committee was like any other successful organizational meeting: it was well-attended by students and utilized speakers and discussion panels to provide them with information on how to get involved in groups working on issues such as globalization, civil rights, the war on drugs, the death penalty, and many others. Although each of the speakers took time to bash President George W. Bush and to encourage students to participate in the various inaugural protests here in Washington to revive the "Fighting Left," three of them said things that influenced my understanding of how their movement operates and keeps its members motivated.

The first speaker who stuck out in my mind was from the International Socialist Organization. Although his discussion focused on what he believes to be the institutionally racist nature of the United States Constitution, he made many references to how poorly organized he perceives the left-wing coalition to be. Specifically, he demanded that it do a better job in the future to counteract the influence of free market groups on the new administration in the White House. In reality, anyone who watches the news understands that this coalition functions with remarkable efficiency. It is the protests -- not the meetings of the WTO, World Bank, and IMF -- that people will remember about the international negotiations that took place at the turn of the century. In criticizing his fellow leaders for their "paltry" organizational efforts, he was able to able to put additional pressure on the students to get involved.

The second speaker who managed to connect with the crowd was an anarchist who works with a number of local organizations including "Food, Not Bombs," and many others. He spoke about his personal experience getting arrested by federal officers while traveling to North Carolina to help set up another group. He pointed out that, if individual members of the left want to have a serious impact on how political decisions are made, they must be willing to make personal sacrifices to aid their cause. He explained that people who are serious about being an agent of change don't just contribute to their movement in their spare time -- they sacrifice high-paying jobs to work directly for groups that influence legislators and public opinion. Most importantly, he emphasized that the state's efforts to persecute them should serve as a reminder of how important their ideals really are.

The final speaker of the night was from a group called the World Bank Bonds Boycott. Unlike members of other IMF/World Bank protest groups, he demonstrated an acute understanding of how the World Bank's projects harm poor people. Surprisingly, although he blamed corporations and the institutions of global capitalism for part of the problem, he spent a great deal of time talking about how public universities take advantage of their tax-exempt status to load their endowment funds with bonds that finance World Bank projects. He encouraged students to follow the example set by the anti-sweatshop labor movement and demand that their schools refuse to purchase these bonds. This led to the most interesting exchange of the evening.

One student questioned whether or not students could actually do anything, short of transferring, to punish university officials for their bad behavior. Most of the students seemed to understand that public universities face very strong incentives to address the concerns of their state boards of regents who administer their funding, but have little reason to address the concerns of students regarding financial matters. At this point, the anarchist who had spoken earlier chimed in and pointed out that many university officials are frequently forced to put themselves in "vulnerable" situations. He offered an account of how he and his friends threatened to publicize a series of events that took place at American University in exchange for the administration's cooperation on certain issues. He characterized this tactic as "finding where the soft spots are."

Although it has been fifty-seven years since Hayek published The Road to Serfdom, his claims that only the most ruthless leaders rise to the top of unrestrained governments still ring true. Even student activists who support democracy and transparency in decision-making do not hesitate to threaten to destroy people's careers behind closed doors if doing so will serve their ends. It seems that, the more things change regarding how the radical left delivers its message to the media and the public, the more they stay the same.

The left wing protesting coalition is not a trendy college fad that will fade away once the World Bank and WTO cease making headlines. It has expanded and evolved to occupy a permanent position in the struggle for power on the progressive side of the political spectrum. While it may promote extremist ranting that harms the progressive cause, its ruthless efficiency represents a serious threat to economic freedom and liberty everywhere. Its leaders are extremely knowledgeable individuals who understand how to handicap their opponents and keep their members motivated in the face of widespread success.

Proponents of free market policies should take note of that success and harness the awesome power that coalitions working on groups of issues can wield. Although not every progressive activist supports the protection of civil liberties, many of them do feel strongly that the Bill of Rights (minus the Second Amendment) must be protected. Most of them understand that the crony capitalism and corporate welfare peddled by organizations like the World Bank will not help poor people. Many of them are serious about fighting the war on drugs. Although their immoral tactics should not be tolerated, well-organized progressive organizations could prove to be valuable allies in the fight against militantly imperialistic foreign policies, xenophobic immigration laws, and other injustices that harm poor people the most. Free market activists should look upon the activities of their progressive brethren not as a sign that what little moral fabric that permeates western culture is now unraveling, but as an opportunity to make advancements on issues that both groups feel strongly about. We have everything to gain from working with those who understand our arguments and want to help make any part of our vision a reality. --30--

Michael Mallinger is a libertarian activist and a research associate at a think tank in Washington, D.C.