------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
No more sanctions
Baby teeth clues to 'nuclear cancer'
Irresponsible weapons - Depleted uranium arms very harmful
BRIDGES TO PALESTINE
Nations resist Bush's harder line
Alert: New Zealand's defence changes need support
Bush risks new row by quitting ABM pact
Federal Government Should Abandon Current Nuclear Cleanup Program
A RETURN TO NUCLEAR MADNESS?
Nuclear workers' compensation program shouldn't move
Bill would order Chao to handle ill workers
More on worker exposure issue
NPPs Linked To Increased Childhood Cancers
Nuclear consolidation predicted to continue
PG&E files for Chapter 11 reorganization
WHY NUKES ARE NOT THE ANSWER
Rancho Seco Project Suffers Setback
Alarm forces evacuation at Hanford's PFP
Hastings seeks reprieve for FFTF
MILITARY
Japanese history text irks Beijing, Seoul
Senators Urge Bush to Maintain Myanmar Sanctions
Tour de France unveils tough anti-doping measures
Ruling in smugglers' case goes to appeal court
Tonnes of pot found in T-shirt shipment
Ashcroft spells out agenda pushing social responsibility
Osprey hydraulic system cited as cause of crash
Pentagon cancels beret statement
OTHER
Europe's view: a self-centered US
Watching the 'sea' grass grow ... from space
Fear of disease spurs airline fare cuts
Kyoto cools
Environmental backlash hits White House
Bush expresses 'regret' for collision
China and US stand firm
Staying cool with China
US-CHINA STANDOFF
US and China can still limit the damage from the crisis
Spies Like Us
Beijing Steps Up its War of Word Over Air Collision
Powell Offers China Aides Outline for Standoff's End
Hundreds of FBI leaders to take polygraph tests
China crisis may define Bush
Bush's foreign policy style irks allies
Bush says China must release U.S. crew
Sources: Hanssen befriended stripper
Chinese file spying charges against scholar
Incident increases likelihood of weapons sales to Taiwan
Surveillance plane on China's Hawaii
U.S. expresses regrets but not official apology
Some Camera to Watch Over You
ACTIVISTS
Sign-on to letter Irradiation of school lunches
Ka Hsaw Wa
Protest IMF on Monday!
NYC Citigroup Action!
Mass Action Prep Guide
Lawyers shun summit
Turks protest in wake of fuel-price boost
City Council OKs laws intended to discourage violence
-------- NUCLEAR
No more sanctions
The Washington Times
Published 4/5/01
Selig S. Harrison
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010405-66621.htm
The symbolism is striking. In the same week that tensions between the United States and China escalate over the spy plane incident, India´s second-ranking leader arrives in Washington as a counterweight to Chinese power in Asia.
The visit of Foreign and Defense Minister Jaswant Singh offers an opportunity for the Bush administration to accelerate the thaw in the long-troubled India-U.S. relationship that began with the end of the Cold War. But regrettably, the administration has been in disarray over India policy, with the president´s national security team at odds over whether to treat New Delhi as a friend or foe.
The atmosphere for the Singh visit was poisoned recently when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld criticized Russia for selling civilian nuclear technology to "countries like Iran, North Korea and India, which are threatening the United States, Western Europe and countries in west Asia."
By contrast, Mr. Rumsfeld´s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, referring to the "enormous common interests" that India and the United States share, has declared that "building a healthy relationship with India is very important to our whole Asian strategy." Secretary of State Colin Powell pledged to give "a high priority to engaging very broadly with India, a powerful country soon to be the largest country in population on the face of the earth."
Mr. Rumsfeld referred to India as a threat because it has acquired nuclear weapons. Yet National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, writing in Foreign Affairs, viewed a nuclear India as a stabilizing offset to a nuclear China. The United States should no longer bracket India with Pakistan, she suggested, "thinking only of Kashmir or of the nuclear competition between the two states." Instead, the United States should recognize India´s "potential to emerge as a great power" and treat it as a factor in the overall Asian balance of power with Beijing.
Far from posing a threat, India is actively seeking closer ties with the United States. Trade and investment relations are soaring as the Indian economic growth rate nears 7 percent and New Delhi increasingly pursues business-friendly economic reforms. The distrust over security issues that marred relations during the Cold War has been rapidly declining, though Mr. Rumsfeld´s barbed statement showed that old suspicions die hard.
President Bush, working voters of Indian origin, pledged during his campaign to remove the economic sanctions imposed by President Clinton in the aftermath of India´s 1998 nuclear tests. Mr. Rumsfeld, backed by John Bolton, undersecretary of state-designate for security affairs, wants to keep the sanctions in place, State Department sources say, while Miss. Rice favors ending them.
Mr. Singh´s visit should be the occasion for burying the self-defeating sanctions policy. Pressuring India to reverse its commitment to develop nuclear weapons merely strengthens Indian hawks who oppose closer relations with Washington and favor an all-out nuclear buildup that would stimulate nuclear arms races with China and Pakistan. By the same token, U.S. acceptance of the reality of a nuclear-armed India would strengthen moderate elements in the Indian leadership who want to restrain the size and character of the buildup.
The principal objective of a U.S. policy designated to encourage nuclear restraint should be limiting the number of warheads. Other key U.S. goals could be keeping Indian nuclear forces under civilian control, reducing the frequency of missile tests and formalizing the de facto Indian restrictions that now exist on the export of nuclear technology. Getting India to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty would be a desirable goal if, and when, the United States itself ever signs the treaty.
Moderate elements in New Delhi share many of these objectives but would need U.S. quid pro quos to make them politically supportable, starting with an end to economic sanctions. The sanctions have blocked $3 billion in multilateral aid credits for power projects and other economic development priorities.
Together with lifting sanctions, the United States should greatly reduce the sweeping restrictions on the transfer of dual-use technology that were imposed after the 1998 tests. These restrictions cover many items with little relevance to nuclear weapons.
The most important step that the United States could take to ease nuclear tensions and strengthen Indian advocates of nuclear restraint would be to relax the existing U.S. ban on the sale of civilian nuclear reactors. New Delhi urgently needs to expand its civilian nuclear power program to help meet its burgeoning energy needs and finds it galling that China is permitted to buy U.S. reactors, while India is not.
American policy should be based on a tacit recognition that a multipolar Asian balance of power in which India possesses a minimum nuclear deterrent will be more stable than one in which China enjoys a nuclear monopoly.
Selig S. Harrison, a senior fellow of the Century Foundation and a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center.
-------- britain
Baby teeth clues to 'nuclear cancer'
From: Wendy MacLeod-Gilford <berg@nfs1.gn.apc.org>
BBC Online Health
Thursday, 5 April, 2001
Campaigners believe nuclear power can increase cancers US scientists want British parents to keep their children's baby teeth to help them test a link between nuclear power and cancer. They claim that children who live near nuclear power stations could be at a greater risk of cancer, and that the teeth will reveal how much radioactivity they have received. But the drive has been condemned as "junk science" by one power company in the US. Professor Ernest Sternglass, professor of radiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, has launched "Operation Tooth fairy" to look into the links, but say they need the baby teeth from children living near power stations in Britain, particularly in Somerset and Essex to compare the data. Research in South Florida claims that children there are three times more likely to get cancer than those in other parts of America, although the source of the cancers has yet to be established. However, a similar study among baby teeth found exceptionally high levels of the radioactive carcinogen Strontium 90. They found the highest levels among children who live down-stream or down-wind from Miami's Turkey Point power station. Professor Sternglass said: "We found to our amazement and shock that the levels of strontium 90 per gram of calcium in the teeth of new born babies...is as high as it was at the height of nuclear bomb testing."
Claims dismissed The scientists believe the Strontium 90 is carried down-wind in the water droplets within clouds, then causes contamination when it falls in rain. Professor Sternglass expects British children's teeth to show similarly high levels because of our wet and damp climate. There are calls in Florida for the nuclear power stations to lose their licences following this research, but the power stations strongly denied any links. Rachel Scott, of Florida Power and Light, dismissed the scientists' claims.
"I think this is junk science - these folks have a conclusion and they are trying to fit the data to support that conclusion - and it is just not so." Pete Roche. Greenpeace Nuclear Campaign Canonbury Villas LONDON N1 2PN 0207 865 8229 pete.roche@uk.greenpeace.org
--
Wendy MacLeod-Gilford
Blewbury Environmental Research Group
37 Columbia Way Grove
Wantage Oxon. OX12 0QJ Tel+Fax: 01235 771290
-------- depleted uranium
Irresponsible weapons - Depleted uranium arms very harmful
Michigan Daily
04/05/01
http://www.michigandaily.com/printme.php?uniqid=20010405e02
War is hell, and in this particular hell the goal is to kill the enemy. However in modern warfare every effort should be taken to minimize "collateral damage." A specific case of this is before the United States military establishment right now.
Since the Gulf War the U.S. military has employed depleted Uranium munitions. At first glance these appear to be "superior" armaments. Cheap and effective, their density and self-sharpening properties make them appear to be the "perfect" weapon. However depleted uranium strikes the enemy not once, but twice. Uranium, like most heavy metals, is terribly toxic. The military's zealous overkills in Iraq, the Balkans, and even Puerto Rico have been littered with highly toxic depleted uranium. An informational presentation will be taking place today in room 1040 of the Dana Building at 7:30 p.m. While many of the alleged dangers of depleted uranium remain in contention, education is always helpful.
While the radiological dangers of depleted uranium are less than natural uranium they still remain a concern, and may possibly be linked to Gulf War Syndrome. Depleted uranium remains as toxic as mercury, yet the U.S. military has relentlessly shelled the hills of Kosovo and the countryside of Iraq with this substance. As much as a two-thirds increase in the cancer rate among Iraqis may be due to the use of depleted uranium in the Gulf War. Even if, as the Defense Department claims, depleted uranium offers insignificant radiological threat its chemical toxicity remains.
While uranium evokes fears of radiation depleted uranium is more dangerous in terms of chemical toxicity. The potential nuclear threat of depleted uranium is dwarfed by the chemical threat. But a chemical analysis of depleted uranium turns up a shocking reality. If depleted uranium were administered to an individual with a teaspoon, its chemical toxicity would kill more people than it could as a low grade nuclear bomb.
The dangers inherent to depleted uranium: Kidney damage, liver failure, etc. are significant enough to civilian populations that this hazardous material should be restricted if not outright banned. As the U.S. enjoys a military superiority of immense magnitude these munitions are not necessary and serve only as cost effective tank killers. The toll they take in human life clearly warrants both more research into the long-term effects of depleted uranium exposure and a moratorium on their use and manufacture. Rather than risk the lives of civilian children, military service personal and unknown environmental problems the Defense Department should take responsibility and take measures to avoid the "collateral damage" inherent to depleted uranium.
-------
BRIDGES TO PALESTINE
presents "Depleted Uranium in Iraq"
Thursday, April 05, 2001
by Damacio A. Lopez,
Executive Director of IDUST
Widdi Reception Hall,
Brooklyn, New York
March 22, 2001 <www.i-dust.org>
P.O. Box 1688, Bernalillo, New Mexico 87004 USA
The International Depleted Uranium Study Team (IDUST) is a Non-governmental organization of over 150 researchers, activists, soldiers and scientists from over 30 countries demanding an immediate stop to the use of depleted uranium (DU) in military weapons. The United States (US) military has admitted to using an overall total of 315 tons of DU solid-core ammunition fired from air and ground units during the Gulf War in Iraq and Kuwait.
What is Depleted Uranium?
DU is the waste product left after natural uranium has gone through the enrichment process to separate the fissionable isotope U-235, which is used as fuel in nuclear reactors and to make nuclear weapons. The waste product "depleted uranium" or DU as it is sometimes called is a highly toxic heavy metal with a radioactive half-life of four and one-half billion years and has 60% the radioactivity of natural uranium which is pure uranium.
Health Hazards of Depleted Uranium
Military strategists claim that, the appeal of DU in weapons is its heavy weight and pyrophoric qualities, which cause it to burn like a cutting torch through steel when a DU penetrator strikes a hard target such as an armored tank. It is the pyrophoric quality that makes this material so devastating, the burning of DU creates radioactive dust of respirable size and thus it can be inhaled or ingested. Once in the body this radioactive and toxic material can have short and long term health effects, such as kidney problems, birth defects, neurological problems, cancers and death.
A 1991 report by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (AEC) stated that the tank ammunition alone used in Iraq during the Gulf war would contain over 50,000 pounds of DU solid-core ammunition and this was enough radioactive material to cause 500,000 potential deaths. Extensive health studies have been conducted by Iraqi medical scientists on DU health effects on soldiers and civilians, these studies have revealed an alarming increase of radiation related diseases since 1991, cancers have risen throughout the country from five to ten time higher then before the Gulf War. These health studies and environmental studies are available for peer review from IDUST. Over 1,000 tomahawk cruse missiles which have been reported to contain DU have been used on Iraq since 1991. Recalculation of how much DU has been used against Iraq needs to be done since DU has been used in other weapons against Iraq.
Where Did it All Begin?
On October 30, 1943 the U.S. War Department proposed the "Use of Radioactive Materials as a Military Weapon, this 1974 declassified document to Brigadier General L. R. Groves emphasized two objectives against enemy personal.
"1) As a terrain contaminating material, the radioactive product would be spread on the ground and would affect personnel.
2) As a gas warfare instrument, the material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicle, or aerial bombs. In this form it would be inhaled by personnel". The objective being to irradiate the "enemy" forces, the general population, flora and fauna. Today DU is been used as ammunition, casing for bombs, shielding on tanks, counter weights/nose cone and ground penatrators on missiles, fragments in cluster bombs, fragments in anti-personnel mines and in other weapons. The objective of the General Grove letter of 1943 has come to fruition.
Europe
During my DU presentations in Europe this past winter many people would ask, "How is it possible that 70% of Americans polled agree with the most recent United States and United Kingdom bombing of Iraq?" My answer to them was; Many Americans believe that life is just a matter of personnel survival in a meaningless and unfriendly world, so it makes perfect sense to them to focus all their energy at living as comfortably as possible and seeing to it that their children get the same opportunity, regardless of what happens to others as a result. On the other hand, it is worth remembering that the 30% who disagree with the bombing is a substantial margin; and that this minority might become a majority were it not for the negative influence of the mass media which keeps people misinformed on this issue.
William Blum author of, "Killing Hope", says in respond to the same question, "It's the same reason the great majority of them support almost any foreign adventure of their government they've been taught very carefully since childhood that their government means well in their dealings with other countries, that our intentions are honorable, etc. It's the same with any other population --Americans aren't necessarily more brain washable and wrapped up in their personal lives than other people, but in any society, the powers-that-be can inculcate the majority with almost any beliefs they want. It is easier for them to do it in the US because the daily press and TV are less independent than in other countries. Just look at the British press -- almost every day they carry stories which question US actions abroad, but which don't make the US media."
Radiation Readings South of Basra, Iraq
On January 17, 2001, air exposure measurements were taken in southern Iraq, some 150 km south of Basra on the DMZ road to Saudi Arabia. Readings of a 30mm intact projectile found in the field recorded exposure rates of 2,100-2,450 counts/minute while background exposure rates of 7-21 counts/minute were measured in six control areas away from the destroyed targets where the projectile was found. (See Appendix A for the Complete Report.)
The study team to Basra consisted of myself (See Appendix E Measurements in Iraq Desert); and Ramsay Clark, former US Attorney General and founder of the International Action Center (IAC).This new evidence suggests that DU projectiles may have contained at least traces of enriched uranium waste which contain the isotope U-236 which is not found in depleted uranium, nuclear waste also contains plutonium which is 200,000 times more radioactive than uranium and the radio toxicity is one million times higher. Laboratory tests of the projectile found in Iraq must be made before further conclusions can be drawn. A recent United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) study in Kosovo found traces of enriched uranium waste in the fragments of 30mm projectiles.
In Peace News July 26, 1995, "Britain & Israel's Bombs" by Mike Holderness. in reference to 40 tons of DU sold by Britain to Israel, "It is produced as a by-product of uranium enriched or by reprocessing spent fuel from a reactor". Five months later in the Life Magazine issue of November, 1995, "Did exposure to depleted uranium cause illness" again describing DU, "Gulf War: shells jacketed with depleted uranium, a waste product from nuclear reactors". Is it possible that the waste streams from the enrichment process and nuclear reactors have been mixed and called "depleted uranium"?
What is Next?
DU is on the way out, e.g., the navy has stopped ordering DU ammunition and will be using tungsten. Reparation, medical care to civilians and soldiers and clean-up of contaminated countries must begin immediately. The following is a listing of countries now believed to possess weapons containing DU or have been contaminated by them: Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bahrain, Bolivia, Bosnia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Oman, Portugal, Panama, Pakistan, Poland, Puerto Rico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, South Korea, Sudan, Taiwan, Turkey, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States and Yugoslavia.
DU is the suspected cause of the deaths of many soldiers who have served in the Balkan wars. This DU issue threatens the stability of NATO. Weapons containing DU are considered illegal under international laws governing weapons of war. Weapons must meet these four criteria under existing international humanitarian and human rights law in armed conflict;
1) weapons must be able to be limited in effect to the field of battle (the territorial limitation),
2) weapons must be limited in effect to the time period of the armed conflict (the temporal limitation),
3) weapons must not be unduly inhumane (the humanity limitation),
4) weapons must not unduly damage the environment (the environmental limitation).
Weapons that contain DU are inherently illegal under this criteria. A resolution on weapons of mass destruction which includes DU is now before the United Nations Human Rights Sub-commission in Geneva Switzerland.
What Can People Do?
Ask your political representative and environment department to help implement clean-up plans, epidemiological studies and put a stop the testing and development of DU in your area. Ask your public television station to show more independent coverage of the DU issue. Ask them to show documentaries such as "Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq" by John Pilger and the French documentary, "The Invisible War: Depleted Uranium and the Politics of Radiation" by Martin Meissonni. See Appendix B for address
The issue of whether one's country has weapons containing DU can be approached from two directions: by asking about both cause and effect. "Cause" means asking whether your country's military possesses munitions that contain DU. And if they do possess them, "Effect" means asking whether they are testing them on weapon ranges that they control. DU can be detected on these firing ranges by soil and water tests and with radiation instruments. Also, are there increased incidence of cancers and other radiation and heavy metals health effects in the local populations?
1 Ask the military if they possess munitions that contain DU? Ask weapons manufacturers if they produce weapons containing DU? Send a copy of your requests to your local representatives and the media.
2 Try approaching old friends from the armed forces.
3 Use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
4 Take soil and water samples and other material (e.g. portable parts of tanks used as targets, projectiles and fragments) from practice ranges, and battlefields, take soil samples from areas hit by missiles and other weapons such as cluster bombs.
5. Seek out epidemiologists for help. 6. Seek out laboratory backups, geologists and other scientists who will test and analyze soil and water samples and locate radiation instruments that detect alpha radiation. See Appendix C for description of the German made MR 9511 ABX-Alert.
Appendix A. Complete Report
On January 17, 2001, 20 air exposure measurements were taken in southern Iraq, some 150 km south of Basra on the DMZ road to Saudi Arabia. Findings are listed below:
1. In Study Area 1, six readings of entry and exit holes on destroyed armored tanks were taken. Exposure rates of 60-120 counts/minute were recorded.
2. In Study Area 2, four readings of entry and exit holes on destroyed armored tanks were taken. Exposure rates of 500-1,945 counts/minute were recorded.
3. Four readings of a single 30mm intact projectile were taken. Exposure rates of 2,100-2,450 counts/minute were recorded.
4. Background exposure rates of 7-21 counts/minute were measured in six control areas away from the destroyed targets.
These results indicate the presence of both low and high level radiological pollution:
Low level: radioactive waste of DU (U-238), which is a by-product/waste of the enrichment process that recover the U-235 for nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons.
High level: enriched uranium waste from nuclear reactors where U-235 is used also contains U-236, and plutonium which are not found in DU.
US Air Force A-10 aircraft fired 940,000 30mm rounds of DU during combat in Iraq in 1991. When a DU penetrator strikes a target, up to 70% of the penetrator oxidizes into fumes and cigarette ash-like dust. The US military has admitted to using an overall total of 315 tons of DU for solid-core ammunition used during the Gulf War.
The radiation instrument used was a German-made hand-held MR 9511 ABX-Alert, manufactured by Muller Lehrtechnik. Registers alpha, beta and gamma radiation.
Appendix B Addresses
"Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq" by John Pilger P.O. Box 149 Oley, PA 19647 USA Ph #1-800-543-3764 E-mail <Bull Frog Films.org>.
"The Invisible War: Depleted Uranium and the Politics of Radiation" by Martin Meissonni -.80 Rue De La Croix - Nivert - 75015 Paris - Tel. 01 40 45 47 00 E-mail <sales.dpf@capatv.com>
About the author; Damacio A. Lopez is the Executive Director of the International Depleted Uranium Study Team (IDUST). He has researched depleted uranium issues since 1985 and had authored and Co-authored many respected works, including; "Friendly Fire, the Link Between Depleted Uranium Munitions and Human Health Risk," 1994, "Uranium Battlefields Home and Abroad: Depleted Uranium Use by the U.S. Department of Defense." 1993 and "Progress on the Persian Gulf War Illness - Reality and Hypotheses," 1995, published by the International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology.
-------- missile defense
Nations resist Bush's harder line
Unilateral tilt to US foreign policy has raised the ire of leaders abroad and may create more challenges for Bush.
Christian Science Monitor
THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2001
By Peter Grier (grierp@csps.com) and Francine Kiefer (kieferf@csps.com)
Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTONIt now seems possible that the first months of the Bush presidency could be defined not by tax cuts, but by an issue that received little attention during the campaign: foreign policy.
The spy-plane standoff with China is surely the most acute, and delicate, overseas problem the administration faces. Its whirlwind onset likely reminded George W. Bush that the world has a way of barging into the Oval Office and intruding on a chief executive's time - a lesson Bill Clinton learned with early crises in Somalia and Haiti.
But the China situation is far from the only foreign-policy pothole to jar the Bush team's early going. From Stockholm to Seoul, the administration's assertive style has raised other governments' ire.
Europe is infuriated by President Bush's retreat on limiting carbon-dioxide emissions (see story). Palestinians profess shock at his refusal to plunge into Middle East peacemaking. Virtually nobody has kind words for US missile defense.
"A number of countries are concerned that this administration, while not isolationist, is unilateralist," says Alex Lennon, editor of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' journal Washington Quarterly.
Not that the rest of the world should be surprised by the actions of the new leader of what used to be called "the free world." Mr. Bush barely mentioned foreign policy during his stump speeches, but to the extent that he did, he's pretty much following what he outlined in the campaign.
That is, he promised to restore American strength and adopt a more realist view of the world. The implication was that the Clinton administration was a bunch of hand-wringers who let other countries interfere in core American interests.
The message on missile defense, for instance, has consistently been that the rest of the world will come around when they see that the US is proceeding down that path no matter what they think. Whether that approach will work in the end remains to be seen, but some countries - notably China - have at least grudgingly moved to open the subject for discussion.
Other Bush positions that have been interpreted as a hardening of US attitudes include the administration's review of the Clinton policy of engagement with North Korea, and its proposals to reduce funding for some of the US programs that pay for nuclear security and fissile-materials reductions in Russia.
One of the clearest explications of the Bush team's approach came during the president's press conference last week. The reason the US pulled out of the Kyoto global-warming treaty process, said Bush, was to protect the American economy.
His message to the rest of the globe: Deal with it.
Predictably, this stance has inflamed Europeans. America produces a quarter of the greenhouse-gas emissions in the world, and without active US participation, the future of the Kyoto treaty is in question.
"A fatal mistake," said German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. "A serious unilateral act," said French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. "America the Horrible," said a columnist in Britain's left-leaning Guardian newspaper.
The Bush administration's predecessors judge that the new team has greatly altered America's role in the world. Their argument: Acting in a more multilateral fashion does not necessarily mean that US interests become secondary. It means that US interests are defined in a different, more broad manner.
"Foreign policy does not stop at ... our borders. It's about more than self-protection," said Sandy Berger, former Clinton national security adviser, at a breakfast with reporters.
Nontraditional issues - such as global warming and the rise of AIDS in Africa - are genuine threats to world stability, and thus US interests, argued Mr. Berger. If the US withdraws from a leadership role on such issues, its place will be filled by others. Europe, for instance, might have very different ideas about how to limit North Korea's nuclear ambitions, he argued.
"We should not be divesting American power and influence," Berger said.
Administration defenders say, among other things, that the world is already very different than it was in the 1990s. Big powers such as Europe, China, and Russia are again on the ascent.
The hardening of relations with old cold-war foes, and the Bush team's professed reluctance to be involved in the Balkans and other peacekeeping operations, thus represents a more "normal" kind of diplomacy, in this view.
The administration's tough talk is meant to send a negotiating message: We won't get pushed around.
"Their view is, they have to deal with major powers and they're going to concentrate less on smaller things," says Thomas Henriksen, a foreign-affairs expert at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University.
-------- new zealand
Alert: New Zealand's defence changes need support
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001
"Alyn Ware" <alynw@attglobal.net>
Dear Friends,
When the Labour Government came into office in 1984, it began a re-orientation of defence policy away from New Zealand's uncritical participation in a nuclear alliance and towards a more independent peacemaking approach. However, this did not get very far before Labour was swept from office by the National Party, which maintained close defence relationships with the US and Australia, and also with UK and Canada.
Now, the current Labour/Alliance government, has initiated a new set of defence reforms emphasising a move away from offensive strike capability and toward peacekeeping and territorial defence.
There is a massive orchestrated campaign to prevent such changes being implemented, and so far our media are giving prominent attention to those defence "experts" and "concerned citizens" warning of the dire consequences of abandoning our allies and throwing our defence down the drain.
Attached is more information on this, including an appeal for overseas people (especially from our alliance countries US, Australia, UK and Canada) to support the government's plans, and a sample letter.
Yours Alyn Ware
Planned defence changes in New Zealand need international support
Big changes to New Zealand's defence policies are currently being discussed by the New Zealand Government. If the changes succeed, it will be a useful example to other countries of less militaristic policies being adopted by a traditional US ally. The change of direction is being opposed by the military bureaucracy and by the US and Australian governments. There is an orchestrated campaign of criticism to try to stop the changes. Positive support for the new policies from other countries, especially the US, would be very helpful at this time.
Despite the nuclear-free policy, New Zealand's defence forces have continued to be oriented to contribute to United States military operations. "Interoperability" and the ability to be integrated into US coalition forces has been the priority for the New Zealand defence chiefs. This orientation dates from the Second World War and still today is strongly part of conservative military culture.
But there has been a quite different current in defence thinking. During the last decade the New Zealand Defence Force has been used increasingly in UN peacekeeping operations around the world. There has been a growing struggle over defence priorities between the defence chiefs (who give priority to being equipped and training for Gulf War-type US alliance roles) and an interesting mixture of people who support re-orienting the New Zealand military into a peacekeeping and South Pacific resource protection force. This second group includes peace movement people, some prominent Army people and, importantly, the Prime Minister Helen Clark.
The current re-orientation of defence is being driven by the Prime Minister. As a junior MP, she worked closely with the peace movement and played a prominent role in the early 1980s in achieving New Zealand's nuclear free policies. At that time she also developed strong views about defence and foreign policy, but it has not been until now that she has been in a position to attempt to make changes.
One of the first acts by her new government (elected in late 1999) was to cancel a purchase of F-16 fighters from the US, which had been bought by the previous government. The Prime Minister is now considering an option to relinquish New Zealand's entire strike aircraft force. In addition, in the middle of last year, her government refused to approve a long-planned purchase of $600 million new anti-submarine and coalition war-fighting equipment for long-range Orion surveillance aircraft (New Zealand Orions, for instance, went to the Gulf to work with US Navy Orions locating targets for jets and cruise missiles). Helen Clark is part of a bitter debate with pro-military people here at present as she argues for eliminating the (Cold War) anti-submarine capabilities of the New Zealand defence force. Thus the two main offensive, alliance-oriented components of the Air Force may well be on the way out.
In the near future the government must make a decision concerning the Navy, which urgently wants a new frigate to replace an aging one. Prior to the change of government, New Zealand's frigates worked regularly with the US Navy in the Persian Gulf enforcing the sanctions against Iraq. Again, Helen Clark has recently stated publicly that she does not support any new frigates and that her officials are investigating replacement by a fleet of new low-tech ocean surveillance ships. Thus, the naval combat force, the heart of the navy, is also being reconsidered. At the same time the government is redirecting the defence funding into peacekeeping-oriented Army projects.
Our news media is currently full of alarmist criticisms of these moves by conservative defence people and their political allies in Australia and the US. It is being claimed that New Zealand is not only leaving itself undefended but disappointing its allies. There is a major orchestrated campaign against Helen Clark.
Media is giving prominent attention, for example, to a letter by seven former defence chiefs which directly challenges the government's new priorities. The letter criticises the government's new direction as "a reliance on hope" rather than military preparedness, reminiscent of the 1938-39 period which "led to the loss of thousands of New Zealanders" in World War II. The letter also argues that we are letting our allies down - "All of our friends and neighbours think it wisest to be prepared for a greater level of risk."
It would be very helpful at this time to have other voices from overseas being heard commenting on the change in direction here. For instance, US people could comment on the real security threats in the 21st Century (environment degradation, poverty, internal conflicts, economic instability...) and that New Zealand's defense changes appear consistent with meeting these threats. It would also be useful to hear from prominent US thinkers and analysts who do not support the dangerous directions the US military is taking, and who believe that allies like New Zealand should not tie their military into future US "coalition" wars and militarisitic policies and practices.
Equally, it would help if overseas people complimented the positive role that New Zealand peacekeepers play around the world (for instance currently in East Timor), which does far more for international peace and security than New Zealand's traditional role: adding another flag to US military operations in places like Vietnam and Iraq. A small country like New Zealand can be much more important in peacekeeping-type roles; which means well trained and equipped peacekeepers should have priority over alliance contributions such as strike aircraft, surveillance aircraft and frigates.
Overseas contributions could include letters to newspapers, arranging for specialists to make statements, send articles or even visit New Zealand and letters of support directly to the Rt. Hon. Helen Clark (address: Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand). Any inputs from people titled "military expert/analyst/researcher etc" would also be very useful to counter the barrage coming from the other side. Also, any journalists who want to write articles about the change in direction of New Zealand defence policy would help by spreading the news, plus such articles could usefully sent to New Zealand to demonstrate (hopefully) sympathetic overseas interest.
Editors of major New Zealand publications:
New Zealand Herald letters@herald.co.nz Sunday Star-Times editor@star-times.co.nz
The Listener editor@listener.co.nz Dominion letters@dominion.co.nz
Evening Post editor@evpost.co.nz Christchurch Press editorial@press.co.nz
For more information contact:
The Peace Foundation (Wellington Office)
PO Box 23257, Cable Car Lane, Wellington, Aotearoa - New Zealand
Phone (64) 4 499-3443. Fax 499-5858
Email: alynw@attglobal.net
-------- treaties
Bush risks new row by quitting ABM pact
By Toby Harnden in Washington
5 April 2001
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=004056872326379&rtmo=lvAzA7Ht&atmo=rrrrrrrq &pg=/et/01/4/5/wspy605.html
PRESIDENT BUSH is planning to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty despite the insistence of China, Russia and Europe that it remains a crucial pillar of global security. The final decision, likely to spark controversy in Moscow, Beijing and among America's allies, is due to be taken within weeks. A source close to the Pentagon, said: "I have no doubt we will do it." Senator Jon Kyl, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the Bush administration was "poised" to withdraw.
"The treaty is an anachronism of the Cold War that prevents us dealing effectively with the threats of the 21st century." Mr Bush wants to proceed with a missile defence programme to counter the potential nuclear threat from countries such as North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Libya, but the ABM treaty would prevent this.
Among senior figures thought to have backed pulling out of the treaty are Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser, and Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary. Withdrawal from the ABM treaty would be the latest example of Mr Bush's desire to follow what aides say is a foreign policy of "new realism" that refuses to be "romantic" about Russia or to accept conventional wisdom about international agreements.
He has defined Russia as a "strategic competitor", rather than a "strategic partner" as Bill Clinton had described it, and vowed to treat countries such as China and North Korea on the basis of their actions. Mr Rumsfeld has said that the ABM treaty, signed by the then superpowers, was "ancient history" and described support for it as "Cold War thinking".
Henry Kissinger, who as Richard Nixon's Secretary of State negotiated the treaty, has said it should be set aside. Mr Clinton decided to develop a missile defence system within the terms of the ABM treaty, which allowed America and the Soviet Union to each site one land-based missile system on its territory.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia announced that it had taken over all its treaty commitments. The treaty provides for one side to withdraw from it after giving six months' notice. A senior Bush administration source said the ABM treaty was so restrictive that "almost thinking about anything puts you outside it" and space or sea-based systems were prohibited.
The treaty had "served its purpose" and he believed America's allies would accept that. He said: "Reasonable people will find a way to reach reasonable conclusions." Another Republican source said: "The ABM treaty will be treated as the dead letter it is, after appropriate consultation with our allies."
Last year, President Jiang Zemin of China and President Putin said in a joint statement that it was "of vital importance to maintain and strictly observe ABM". Col General Leonid Ivashov, a senior Russian official, said last month that American withdrawal from the treaty would "cause competition between the creators of strategic defensive and offensive systems".
He said: "If the US leaves the treaty, Russia will certainly take measures to protect its security."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Federal Government Should Abandon Current Nuclear Cleanup Program
Environmental Expert Proposes Turning 'Waste' Sites into 'Wilderness' Areas
COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government
Contact: Director of Media Relations (202) 331-1010
email: pr@cei.org Issue Area(s)
http://www.cei.org/WasteIndex.asp Solid Waste
http://www.cei.org/FedLandsIndex.asp Federal Lands Wildlife
http://www.cei.org/WildMarineIndex.asp
Washington, DC, March 20, 2001-The federal government spends around $6 billion a year to clean up Department of Energy nuclear sites from World War II and the Cold War, but a Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute says the program wastes taxpayers' money and has the potential to hurt the environment.
In his newly released research paper From Waste to Wilderness: Maintaining Biodiversity on Nuclear-Bomb-Building Sites, Dr. Robert Nelson is proposing a new approach that would successfully convert these waste sites into ecologically sound wilderness areas and save billions of tax dollars at the same time. For more than fifty years, the government has restricted access to nuclear weapons sites because of public safety and health concerns, and now many of those areas have become places where endangered species and other wildlife and plants are thriving.
"The current government attempts to clean up these areas overlook the environmental value of their rare ecologies. It is time for a new form of stewardship strategy, to take the necessary steps to protect Americans from any actual threats posed by radioactive waste, but also to set as a policy priority the conservation of these DOE sites for their rich ecological diversity," said Dr. Nelson.
Spending billions of dollars on environmental cleanup is not necessarily good for the environment, argues Dr. Nelson, and he points to the Exxon Valdez case as an example. After the oil tanker spilled more than 10 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989, Exxon launched a massive cleanup that cost about $2 billion. But the process, which involved the spraying of intense jets of hot water and oil detergents, ended up doing significant damage to the shoreline ecology. Since then, many analysts have agreed it would have been better to leave nature to do the job alone.
To avoid situations like that, Dr. Nelson suggests a new "win-win" approach for the cleanup of nuclear waste sites that includes: recognizing the high ecological value of these sites, minimizing actual risk to offsite human population, recognizing that long-term cleanup requires technological advance, and continuing stewardship of DOE sites to conserve ecological value and protect public health.
Click here for a copy of From Waste to Wilderness.
http://www.cei.org/MonoReader.asp?ID=1411
-----
A RETURN TO NUCLEAR MADNESS?
The Psychotic Attempt to Bring Back Atomic Energy
By Harvey Wasserman
Thu, 5 Apr 2001
From: nonukeshw@aol.com
The California's deregulatory meltdown will likely cost its ratepayers some $60 billion, for which they will get virtually nothing in return.
The 1996 law that threw the state into chaos was written by the utilities now claiming bankruptcy. It has allowed them to launder more than $20 billion to their parent companies, with no accountability. Though they spent $40 million to defeat a 1998 statewide green-sponsored referendum that would have repealed this madness, the power companies and their media minions continue to blame the public and the environmental movement for the mess. Another $20-40 billion has been stolen by Enron, Reliant and other gas companies close to George Bush, who manipulated power supplies while federal regulatory agencies and California's Democratic Governor Gray Davis did nothing.
The economic and ecological shock waves of this tragedy will reverberate for decades. But for pure psychotic fantasy, none can exceed its use as a pretext to build more nuclear power plants.
For weeks now the corporate media has filled with "too cheap to meter" bombast. Pompous talk show bloviators have spun reactors as an "overlooked" oasis of energy. Most recently, the right-wing WEEKLY STANDARD has carried a massive, profoundly inaccurate tome on the alleged need for a nuclear revival.
But lets look at some practical realities.
To begin with, the crisis in California was actually CAUSED by atomic power. The deregulatory impulse first came from big industrial users and gas companies who meant to undercut the state's utilities, which couldn't compete because of their huge reactor investments.
The utilities countered by whining to a bought state legislature that their reactors required a bail out. So deregulation came with $28.5 billion in "stranded costs" tagged on for those bum nukes. Thus far more than $20 billion has been taken from ratepayers and bagged off to parent corporations.
And now, those nukes have suddenly become "economic" in the eyes of the same media that supported their being bailed out. But that very media somehow missed the February 3 fire that knocked out San Onofre Unit Three, near Los Angeles, causing untold millions in damage. A full report is due one of these days from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, from which we may or may not learn what actually happened. We do know that in an instant, fully a quarter of the state's reactor capacity disappeared, bringing down the capacity to power more than a million homes.
As we saw at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, no other technology can do so much damage so instantaneously.
The green community bitterly opposed reactors at both San Onofre and Diablo Canyon, demanding the billions spent there be used instead for solar power, wind, efficiency and conservation. Had their advice been followed, California would now be energy self-sufficient.
Indeed, as early as 1952, the Truman Administration's Paley Commission asked the US to build itself a solar future, predicting 15 million sun-heated homes by 1975. But Dwight Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program intervened the next year. More than a trillion dollars has since been squandered on atomic power, for which we now receive a paltry 20% of our electricity.
In the late 1970s the safe energy movement again pushed for massive investments in renewables and efficiency. This time the Reagan Administration sent a booming wind and solar industry packing to Denmark, Germany, Japan and Israel.
At 2.5 cents/kilowatt-hour, wind is now the cheapest and fastest-to-build form of new electric power generation, with capacity growing worldwide at 25%/year. In 2000 Germany alone installed some 1300 megawatts, more than what's generated by any single US nuke.
Between the Rockies and the Mississippi, as well as offshore and in hundreds of eastern locations, the US has more than enough wind potential to generate its entire electrical supply more cheaply and more quickly than any other source. Photovoltaic cells, which convert sunlight directly to electricity, are more expensive. But with a large-scale industrial infrastructure, they offer the secure promise of clean energy independence. And increased efficiency---we still waste half of what we burn---can save energy far more cheaply than we can generate it with any new source.
But in the face of all that, the hugely financed nuclear power industry persists.
So lets look at some practical realities. Building any new nuke anywhere in the United States would take a minimum of five years. Even with a site approved tomorrow, and zero public opposition, the physical act of getting a new reactor on line could in fact take up to a decade.
In the interim, wind power will even further outstrip atomic power. Photovoltaics will also pull way ahead.
Strangely, much of the nuclear hype has been on a new technology called "Pebble Bed Reactors." The rhetoric is familiar: inherently safe, too cheap to meter, no environmental impact. But no such operating reactors exist today. There was one pebble bed prototype in Germany. It's now shut. Another may be built in South Africa, but that will take five years.
The much-vaunted "breeder" technology, meant to produce more fuel than it used, is a certified failure, with dead reactors in Britain, Germany and Japan standing as mute (but radioactive) testimony.
Meanwhile, some 500 less exotic "light water" reactors have been built worldwide since the 1950s. By downplaying the technology on which it's relied for a half-century in favor of an untested new design, what is the industry trying to tell us?
Right now it's boasting about alleged low operating costs and high efficiencies. But with utility deregulation has come the abandonment of nuclear safety standards. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission exists only as a rubber stamp for license extensions on decaying nukes that cry out for retirement. With official approval, staff and maintenance are being slashed. Today's reactor industry is a runaway train, flying down a steep incline with no brakes, setting speed records along the way, but headed for a predictable end.
Yet even without factoring in unknown future costs for radioactive waste management, health impacts and the inevitable meltdowns, increased efficiency and conservation are cheaper. So is wind power. And photovoltaics will join them long before the first "new generation" reactor can come on line, no matter which breed of this failed technology gets the nod.
A combination of these renewables and efficiencies would allow communities and individual homes and businesses to control their own power supply, independent of the oil, gas and utility companies. Which is the real reason for this nuclear diversion, just as it was fifty years ago.
Harvey Wasserman is author of THE LAST ENERGY WAR: THE BATTLE OVER UTILITY DEREGULATION (Seven Stories Press: 1-800-596-7437); he is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service.
---
Nuclear workers' compensation program shouldn't move, Strickland says
From: "vcolley" <vcolley@earthlink.net>
Thursday, April 5, 2001
Jonathan Riskind Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON -- The decision on which federal department should run the nuclear workers' compensation program would be taken out of the Bush administration's hands under legislation introduced yesterday.
Reps. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, and Edward Whitfield, R-Ky., are among nine House members co-sponsoring the proposal to mandate keeping the compensation program under the auspices of the U.S. Labor Department.
"People are dying while they wait for this compensation,'' Strickland said, referring to the fact that the program is to take effect July 31. "Moving this program to another department will delay it for many months.''
Bipartisan congressional pressure appears to have caused the White House to delay making a decision about whether to shift the program to the Justice Department, Capitol Hill sources said.
The Justice Department reportedly has weighed in on the matter, saying that the compensation program is best left with the Labor Department, the sources said.
They said the Justice Department's stance was communicated in a recent letter to the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Asked to comment, a Justice Department official deferred to the budget office, while a budget office spokesman said it was up to the Justice Department to comment. Neither confirmed nor denied that the letter had been sent.
However, Strickland said that during congressional hearings last year, a Justice official said the Justice Department is "not really the one equipped to make determinations based on workers' compensation.''
The compensation program that was passed last fall grants $150,000 lump-sum payments and health care to potentially thousands of Cold War-era nuclear workers who were made ill by exposure to radiation. Several hundred workers at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon could be included in the program.
Proponents were angered several weeks ago when Labor Secretary Elaine Chao asked the White House Office of Management and Budget to take the program off her hands and give it to Justice. Doing so entails reversing an executive order issued by President Clinton.
Strickland, Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, and other lawmakers from states that housed components of the atomic defense program said the intent of the legislation was to have the Labor Department operate the program. That department already runs numerous workers' compensation programs and is best equipped to run this one, proponents said.
Strickland said he hopes the legislation requiring that the program be run by the Labor Department wouldn't be needed because the White House would back off from shifting the program.
Last week, the budget office circulated a draft executive order moving the program to the Justice Department, and some lawmakers and staffers had expected a formal decision to be announced by now. The delay might mean the White House is rethinking the matter, they said.
jriskind@dispatch.com
---
Bill would order Chao to handle ill workers
Oak Ridger
Thursday, April 5, 2001
by Katherine Rizzo The Associated Press
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/040501/stt_0405010008.html
WASHINGTON -- A dispute over how to distribute benefits to sick nuclear workers escalated Wednesday when House members, including three from Tennessee, introduced legislation ordering Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to take on the task.
"We must stay on track for the sake of the workers who have already become ill while serving our country," said Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky. He sponsored the bill with a bipartisan group of lawmakers from states with weapons plants or beryllium factories.
"We can't afford delay," said Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn. "It won't do a sick worker any good to have benefits come after they're dead."
The lawmakers also are working on legislation that would expand the program by giving extra money to workers who got sick while relatively young.
Legislation offering full compensation for lost wages is expected to be ready in a few weeks. Meantime, the bipartisan group said it wanted to focus on a jurisdictional decision facing the White House. Chao asked that the program be placed in the Justice Department, which advocates for the workers say is not equipped to promptly handle compensation claims.
"We will not let the (Labor Department) shirk its responsibility to these sick workers," said Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio, who like Whitfield has a uranium processing plant in his district.
He was a co-sponsor of the bill, along with Wamp; Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.; Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.; Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; John Duncan and Van Hilleary, both R-Tenn.; and Mark Udall, D-Colo.
Chao says compensation -- $150,000 plus lifetime medical benefits to workers whose health was ruined by Cold War-era exposure to radiation, silica or beryllium -- would move more quickly if the Justice Department processes the claims.
She says that department has expertise with radiation exposure victims, because it runs a program that gives one-time payments to people who lived downwind of nuclear test blasts and to uranium miners who dug ore without radiation protection.
In the weeks since Chao's request became known, the White House has been bombarded with phone calls and letters from Capitol Hill. Some legislative heavyweights back Chao, but a larger number of lawmakers have pressed to put the new program in the Labor Department.
The White House said it would have no comment Wednesday.
Backing Chao are the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary committees, and the chairman of the House committee that oversees the Labor Department.
In the other camp are the chairmen of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and the Senate committee that oversees the Energy Department, which is in charge of the nuclear weapons complex.
Those lawmakers say they want to avoid delays and want their constituents to be able to take advantage of the Labor Department's appeals process for unsuccessful claims.
The Labor Department already handles claims from federal workers with injuries or occupational illnesses, including chronic beryllium disease.
The department said it gets more than 160,000 worker compensation claims each year, and processes 92 percent of them within 90 days.
The Justice Department said its staff takes an average of 193 days to process the requests of the "downwinders" and 274 days to process benefit requests from uranium miners, though some miners have said they waited years for verdicts on their claims.
The government is supposed to be ready July 31 to begin taking applications for the new benefit program.
It is for workers who contracted cancer or lung disease because of exposure while on the payrolls of private companies that did work for the bomb program. Some worked on federal property, others at factories that had government contracts.
The Energy Department preliminarily identified 317 sites in 37 states where exposed workers might qualify for benefits.
---
More on worker exposure issue
Oak Ridger
Thursday, April 5, 2001
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/040501/opE_0405010025.html
To The Oak Ridger:
I would like to share some material from the newsletter, Protecting Human Subjects, published by the Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research.
The following segment entitled "ABCs of Workplace Health Research" is by Paul Brandt-Rauf of Columbia University:
"It has been suggested that workers may be the 'miner's canary' for the rest of society. On an ordinary day in some workplaces, they may be exposed to potentially toxic substances.
"Only when adverse reactions are noted does society initiate a formal investigation of the substance's toxicity. In this way, workers may appear to be 'experimental subjects' testing chemicals previously untried on humans.
"This is analogous to biomedical research, but without the usual independent review that balances risks and benefits to the 'research subjects' and ensures informed and voluntary prior consent by the 'research subjects.'
"Counter-arguments suggest that the economic structure of employment already addresses the risk/benefit and consent considerations.
"Society compensates hazardous work with 'hazard pay,' directly increasing the benefits to those who assume the risk. Furthermore, to the extent that risks are known, right-to-know mechanisms provide the worker with the information necessary for an informed consent."
However Brandt-Rauf goes on to say:
"It seems doubtful that many workplace situations would satisfy the close scrutiny required of an Investigational Review Board (IRB).
"Since our society has apparently decided that those fostering our biomedical progress as human research subjects deserve a high level of ethical scrutiny and protection, serious consideration should be given before denying this level of protection to those who foster our economic progress: the workers."
I found this material interesting as I am a chemical engineer who has spent my entire career trying to find or create a challenging job that does not involve being exposed to chemicals or radiation (or doing things that I believe are unethical simply to earn a company more money).
I concur with Brandt-Rauf's conclusion that treatment of workers deserves serious consideration.
However, keep in mind it was not long ago when workers did not have the "right-to-know" and did not necessarily realize their high wages were "hazard pay."
In fact, many workers still don't take advantage of this right (particularly at small, essentially unregulated companies) because of fear of retribution.
Private industry and government have historically placed workers in harm's way without informed consent and with no obligation for follow-up to determine long-term health impacts from exposures to former workers.
Therefore, it is practically impossible to hold these entities financially responsible when a former worker becomes ill and is unable to earn a living due to long-ago exposures.
Is it not time for companies and governments to finally acknowledge that workers are not disposable and face the fact a responsible solution must be found to deal with long-term health monitoring and access to health care and other assistance for those made ill from working with toxins (or living with someone who does)?
The problem of long-term health impacts of workplace and other exposures from the previous decades will continue to haunt this country for many decades to come.
When are we going to bite the bullet and do something about these issues, which are everyone's problem -- not just those who are sick today. Any of us may be one of the sick tomorrow from some long-ago exposure that we did not understand or have control over.
Susan Arnold Kaplan Solway
--------
NPPs Linked To Increased Childhood Cancers,
China Looks To Expand Nuclear Power
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>
Thu, 5 Apr 2001
RPHP Site: http://www.radiation.org
- "Concentrations of radioactive Strontium-90 in 86 Dade County baby teeth tested by RPHP have been rising since the early 1980s. The current level is equal to that of the late 1950s, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union conducted large-scale nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere."
Radiation and Public Health Project
Press Release Contact: Jerry Brown, Ph.D., (305) 321-5612 Jay Gould, Ph.D., (212) 496-6787 March 28, 2001 Joseph Mangano, MPH, MBA, (718) 857-9825 Janette Sherman, M.D., (703) 329-8223
RADIATION FROM NUCLEAR REACTORS LINKED TO INCREASING CHILDHOOD CANCER IN SOUTH FLORIDA
Actor Alec Baldwin sends letters to 10,000 South Florida families requesting donations of baby teeth to the "Tooth Fairy Project"
Miami, Florida - On March 28 - the 22nd anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident -- the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) released a Special Report on the South Florida Baby Teeth Study: "Environmental Radiation from Nuclear Reactors and Increasing Children's Cancer in Southeastern Florida" at a Community Forum on the South Florida "Tooth Fairy Project" at Florida International University in Miami, Florida (see Media Advisory for details).
Dr. Ernest Sternglass, RPHP Chief Scientist, and Professor Emeritus of Radiation Physics, University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine, presented the Report findings and stated, "This recent evidence suggests that radioactive chemicals emitted from the Turkey Point and St. Lucie nuclear power plants are one cause of rising cancer rates in South Florida." The RPHP Southeastern Florida Report also found that:
- "From 1970-87, the Turkey Point and St. Lucie nuclear reactors emitted 10.39 trillion picocuries of radioactivity into the air," according to Brookhaven National Laboratory reports.
- "Concentrations of radioactive Strontium-90 in 86 Dade County baby teeth tested by RPHP have been rising since the early 1980s. The current level is equal to that of the late 1950s, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union conducted large-scale nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere."
- "Dade County and other southeastern Florida baby teeth have the highest levels of radioactive Strontium-90, a known carcinogen, than anywhere in the U.S. where baby teeth have been studied. In addition, the area also has a rate of childhood cancer that is considerably higher than the U.S. average."
- "From the early 1980s to the early 1990s, cancer incidence in children under 10 rose 35.2% in five southeastern Florida counties, compared to a 10.8% rise in the U.S. Children are especially sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of radioactivity. These five counties are: Broward, Dade, Martin, Palm Beach and St. Lucie."
- "In Dade County, childhood cancer rises after radioactivity levels in precipitation rise, and declines after levels drop. This is strong evidence that exposure to radioactivity is one cause of cancer in southeastern Florida."
The report recommended that: "Information on the radiation-cancer link should be considered by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's environmental review of utility applications to renew and extend the licenses of aging nuclear power plants in Florida and across the U.S."
Joseph Mangano, National Coordinator, RPHP, also announced that actor Alec Baldwin is sending letters to 10,000 South Florida families living in Miami-Dade and St. Lucie counties, asking for donations of baby teeth to the RPHP "Tooth Fairy Project." The Project hopes to collect and test 1,000 Florida teeth for levels of Strontium-90, a radioactive chemical and known carcinogen released into the environment by nuclear weapons testing and the operation of nuclear power plants. For information and baby teeth mailing envelopes, people can call RPHP toll free at 800-582-3716, or visit the RPHP web site at: www.radiation.org.
The Report includes the current findings of the RPHP Baby Teeth Study on 1352 U.S. baby teeth that have been analyzed for levels of radioactive Strontium-90, including 86 teeth from Miami-Dade County and a total of 121 Florida teeth.
Scientific reports based on the early findings of the RPHP Baby Teeth Study have been published, in 2000, in several peer-reviewed medical and environmental journals, including The International Journal of Health Services, Archives of Environmental Health, European Journal of Oncology, and Envr. Epidemiology and Toxicology.
RPHP director, Jay Gould, Ph.D. said, "These findings indicate that Americans continued to absorb radiation for years after all atmospheric nuclear testing ended in 1980 and the last underground tests occurred in 1992. They suggest that new and additional releases of radioactive Strontium-90 have been entering the human environment during the 1980s and 1990s, probably coming from nuclear reactors."
RPHP Research Associated, Janette Sherman, M.D., noted, "Investigating a possible environmental radiation-cancer link is especially urgent given that Strontium-90 is a known carcinogen and a marker for other shorter-lived fission products, and simply should not be present at all in our children's teeth."
The South Florida Baby Teeth Study is supported by grants from Applica, Inc., a Miami Lakes based manufacturer of home appliances and by the Health Foundation of South Florida, which was established in 1993 as a not-for-profit charity, funding medical research, education and primary health care initiatives. The Foundation has awarded over $37 million in grants for programs supporting the underserved within the South Florida community.
Alec Baldwin
Dear Parents:
I am writing you as someone concerned that high cancer rates may be influenced by radioactive emissions from nuclear power plants.
I became personally involved with this issue after meeting families in Long Island, New York, whose children had developed and, in some cases, died from rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer - a cancer whose cause has been linked to radiation exposure. These families are living at "ground zero" of America's cancer epidemic. For them, the American dream has become a nightmare.
One reason behind high cancer rates may be radioactive leaks and releases from nuclear power reactors. These releases get into the air, drinking water, and food, and enter the human body (see information on reverse side). But the U.S. government does not measure just how much radioactivity gets into the body, or whether it is harmful.
In South Florida, cancer diagnosed in children under five years old went up 42% in the past 15 years, compared to only 8% in the United States. Emissions from the St. Lucie and Turkey Point nuclear reactors may be behind this trend.
To document a possible radiation/cancer connection, the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) needs only one of the baby teeth that your child has lost. RPHP is collecting baby teeth as part of a national, scientific study to measure levels of radioactive Strontium-90 in these teeth. So please help. Every tooth is a clue!
I know that cancer is an overwhelming issue to confront. Yet, we have already spent $25 billion on a "War on Cancer" without any significant decline in America's cancer rates. It is only through public education, supported by solid scientific research, that we will be able to create a safe environment and healthy future for our children.
Thank you in advance for supporting the "Tooth Fairy Project."
Yours sincerely, Alec Baldwin
-------
Nuclear consolidation predicted to continue
Commentary & Analysis from Platts
Washington (Nucleonics Week)
5Apr2001
It's likely a dozen of the largest utilities will end up owning or operating all US plants within the next five to seven years, according to an NAC Worldwide Consulting report. The report noted that more than 25,200 megawatts were transferred in 2000 through mergers, purchases, and the formation of the Nuclear Management Co., a consortium of four upper Midwest utilities owning seven units. The 25,200-MW figure represents 26% of the total U.S. nuclear generating apacity, the report said. Dominion has just closed on its purchase of the Millstone station and Constellation Nuclear expects to complete its acquisition of Nine Mile Point this year. The Vermont Yankee station will be back on the auction block shortly, and the sale of Seabrook could get under way within weeks, though a new owner is not expected to take over the plant until 2002. NAC's report said the sale of two California plants are now off the table because of the energy shortages. "Discussions prevalent in early 2000 about possible sales of Diablo Canyon and San Onofre after completion of accelerated depreciation of said plants in 2001 were but a faint memory by year's end." The report repeats the conventional wisdom that single units will be the "most likely acquisition candidates." It also said prices would not likely slip to the rock bottom prices of the early nuclear plant sale days. "Current strong operating performance and competition among multiple potential buyers should keep prices strong in 2001, yet still favorable when compared with those of fossil units," NAC said. Other analysts noted divestitures are slowing as the California situation slows deregulation. Many states are losing enthusiasm for sales and are looking instead to ensure power reliability.-- Jenny Weil, Washington (jenny_weil@mgh.com)
-------
PG&E files for Chapter 11 reorganization
Washington (Nuclear News Flashes)
5Apr2001
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) filed for reorganization under CHAPTER 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code today in San Francisco bankruptcy court. The California utility, which owns and operates Diablo Canyon, said it was taking this action "in light of its unreimbursed energy costs which are now increasing by more than $300-million per month, continuing CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission) decisions that economically disadvantage the company, and the now unmistakable fact that negotiations with Gov. Gray Davis and his representatives are going nowhere." PG&E has accumulated roughly $9-billion in undercollections since June because the cost of power it bought on the state wholesale power market was significantly higher than the revenues from its state-set electric rates. PG&E said it would use its existing resources to continue operating its business during bankruptcy, including paying vendors and suppliers in full for goods and services received after the filing. "The utility intends to continue normal electric and gas transmission and distribution functions during the Chapter 11 process," the company said in a press statement. PG&E Chairman Robert Glynn Jr. said the company's objective is to "move through the Chapter 11 reorganization process as quickly as possible without disruption to our operations or inconvenience to our customers."
-------- california
WHY NUKES ARE NOT THE ANSWER
Thu, 5 Apr 2001
Climate Crisis Action
by harvey wasserman
From COLUMBUS ALIVE (please circulate)
A RETURN TO NUCLEAR MADNESS?
The Psychotic Attempt to Bring Back Atomic Energy By Harvey Wasserman
The California's deregulatory meltdown will likely cost its ratepayers some $60 billion, for which they will get virtually nothing in return.
The 1996 law that threw the state into chaos was written by the utilities now claiming bankruptcy. It has allowed them to launder more than $20 billion to their parent companies, with no accountability. Though they spent $40 million to defeat a 1998 statewide green-sponsored referendum that would have repealed this madness, the power companies and their media minions continue to blame the public and the environmental movement for the mess. Another $20-40 billion has been stolen by Enron, Reliant and other gas companies close to George Bush, who manipulated power supplies while federal regulatory agencies and California's Democratic Governor Gray Davis did nothing.
The economic and ecological shock waves of this tragedy will reverberate for decades. But for pure psychotic fantasy, none can exceed its use as a pretext to build more nuclear power plants.
For weeks now the corporate media has filled with "too cheap to meter" bombast. Pompous talk show bloviators have spun reactors as an "overlooked" oasis of energy. Most recently, the right-wing WEEKLY STANDARD has carried a massive, profoundly inaccurate tome on the alleged need for a nuclear revival.
But lets look at some practical realities.
To begin with, the crisis in California was actually CAUSED by atomic power. The deregulatory impulse first came from big industrial users and gas companies who meant to undercut the state's utilities, which couldn't compete because of their huge reactor investments.
The utilities countered by whining to a bought state legislature that their reactors required a bail out. So deregulation came with $28.5 billion in "stranded costs" tagged on for those bum nukes. Thus far more than $20 billion has been taken from ratepayers and bagged off to parent corporations.
And now, those nukes have suddenly become "economic" in the eyes of the same media that supported their being bailed out. But that very media somehow missed the February 3 fire that knocked out San Onofre Unit Three, near Los Angeles, causing untold millions in damage. A full report is due one of these days from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, from which we may or may not learn what actually happened. We do know that in an instant, fully a quarter of the state's reactor capacity disappeared, bringing down the capacity to power more than a million homes.
As we saw at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, no other technology can do so much damage so instantaneously.
The green community bitterly opposed reactors at both San Onofre and Diablo Canyon, demanding the billions spent there be used instead for solar power, wind, efficiency and conservation. Had their advice been followed, California would now be energy self-sufficient.
Indeed, as early as 1952, the Truman Administration's Paley Commission asked the US to build itself a solar future, predicting 15 million sun-heated homes by 1975. But Dwight Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program intervened the next year. More than a trillion dollars has since been squandered on atomic power, for which we now receive a paltry 20% of our electricity.
In the late 1970s the safe energy movement again pushed for massive investments in renewables and efficiency. This time the Reagan Administration sent a booming wind and solar industry packing to Denmark, Germany, Japan and Israel.
At 2.5 cents/kilowatt-hour, wind is now the cheapest and fastest-to-build form of new electric power generation, with capacity growing worldwide at 25%/year. In 2000 Germany alone installed some 1300 megawatts, more than what's generated by any single US nuke.
Between the Rockies and the Mississippi, as well as offshore and in hundreds of eastern locations, the US has more than enough wind potential to generate its entire electrical supply more cheaply and more quickly than any other source. Photovoltaic cells, which convert sunlight directly to electricity, are more expensive. But with a large-scale industrial infrastructure, they offer the secure promise of clean energy independence. And increased efficiency---we still waste half of what we burn---can save energy far more cheaply than we can generate it with any new source.
But in the face of all that, the hugely financed nuclear power industry persists.
So lets look at some practical realities. Building any new nuke anywhere in the United States would take a minimum of five years. Even with a site approved tomorrow, and zero public opposition, the physical act of getting a new reactor on line could in fact take up to a decade.
In the interim, wind power will even further outstrip atomic power. Photovoltaics will also pull way ahead.
Strangely, much of the nuclear hype has been on a new technology called "Pebble Bed Reactors." The rhetoric is familiar: inherently safe, too cheap to meter, no environmental impact. But no such operating reactors exist today. There was one pebble bed prototype in Germany. It's now shut. Another may be built in South Africa, but that will take five years.
The much-vaunted "breeder" technology, meant to produce more fuel than it used, is a certified failure, with dead reactors in Britain, Germany and Japan standing as mute (but radioactive) testimony.
Meanwhile, some 500 less exotic "light water" reactors have been built worldwide since the 1950s. By downplaying the technology on which it's relied for a half-century in favor of an untested new design, what is the industry trying to tell us?
Right now it's boasting about alleged low operating costs and high efficiencies. But with utility deregulation has come the abandonment of nuclear safety standards. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission exists only as a rubber stamp for license extensions on decaying nukes that cry out for retirement. With official approval, staff and maintenance are being slashed. Today's reactor industry is a runaway train, flying down a steep incline with no brakes, setting speed records along the way, but headed for a predictable end.
Yet even without factoring in unknown future costs for radioactive waste management, health impacts and the inevitable meltdowns, increased efficiency and conservation are cheaper. So is wind power. And photovoltaics will join them long before the first "new generation" reactor can come on line, no matter which breed of this failed technology gets the nod.
A combination of these renewables and efficiencies would allow communities and individual homes and businesses to control their own power supply, independent of the oil, gas and utility companies. Which is the real reason for this nuclear diversion, just as it was fifty years ago.
Harvey Wasserman is author of THE LAST ENERGY WAR: THE BATTLE OVER UTILITY DEREGULATION (Seven Stories Press: 1-800-596-7437); he is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service.
---
Rancho Seco Project Suffers Setback
Yahoo news
Thursday April 05
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/kcra/20010404/lo/351869_1.html
A major project at Rancho Seco involving the transfer of several hundred nuclear fuel rods has been set back after the discovery of a faulty seal.
Since Rancho Seco, in southern Sacramento County, closed in 1989, 493 fuel rods that carry uranium pellets have sat in water in the plant's fuel building.
SMUD crews are now working around the clock to pull the rods out of the water -- so-called wet storage -- and into stainless steel containers, which will be stored in concrete.
A seal that slipped out of place in one of those steel containers has caused SMUD crews to undo the work they had accomplished in the last three days. Officials estimated a total setback of four or five days in the project, which is expected to last nine months.
Dry storage is somewhat safer, SMUD officials said, but the primary reason for the transfer is to save money. SMUD officials said that they will save between $8 million and $10 million a year if the rods can be stored outside, unguarded, rather than inside the plant.
-------- washington
Alarm forces evacuation at Hanford's PFP
Hanford News
Thu, Apr 5, 2001
By The Associated Press
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/0405-2.html
An alarm indicating a possible radiation release forced the evacuation of more than 400 workers from the Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Hanford nuclear reservation on Thursday.
All of the workers had been screened less than two hours after the incident, and none showed any evidence of contamination, said Erik Olds, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy.
"At this time, there is no evidence that a criticality has occurred," he said.
But until crews can get inside the building and survey it, "we can't conclusively say it was a false alarm. We have to treat this like an emergency," Olds said.
Surveys conducted along the perimeter of the building, in the 200 West Area in the center of the 560-square-mile reservation, showed no indication of a radioactive release, he said.
The alarm may have been triggered by an interruption of power to a radiation detector in the building, or a conduit to the monitor may have been disturbed, setting off the alarm at about 2:45 p.m., he said.
The building was placed in a lockdown state, and all 400-plus workers were evacuated to 50 predetermined sites for speedy evaluation, Olds said.
Nothing out of the ordinary was being done at the PFP when the alarm sounded, he said. Workers there have been working to stabilize and convert to safer forms more than four tons of plutonium for storage and disposal.
Under certain conditions, plutonium pieces arranged in a certain way can "go critical" - shooting out bursts of radiation that could be fatal from several feet away.
From 1949 to 1990, the Plutonium Finishing Plant took plutonium nitrate liquids from other Hanford chemical processing plants and converted those solutions into hand-size plutonium buttons.
The buttons were shipped to other DOE sites to be fashioned into atomic bomb components.
Hanford was established in 1943 as part of the top secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb during World War II. Plutonium created at Hanford was used in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
The PFP was revamped for the stabilization work.
In May 1997, 35 gallons of hydroxylamine nitrate and nitric acid in a vat exploded at the PFP. The chemicals had been mixed in a water-diluted solution for a training exercise four years earlier, and 200 gallons were left in a tank.
The water eventually evaporated and the originally safe solution became volatile.
The explosion blew the top off the tank. It broke a pipe and caused water to flood downstairs, flushing tiny amounts of plutonium residue outside.
Fumes were spewed outdoors and were inhaled by at least nine workers.
---
Hastings seeks reprieve for FFTF
Hanford News
Thu, Apr 5, 2001
By Annette Cary Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/0405.html
U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., asked Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on Wednesday for a one-year suspension of the Clinton administration's decision to dismantle Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility.
That year would allow a review of new information on the reactor's potential uses and a formal request for proposals for financial commitments from private companies interested in operating the reactor or purchasing products it produces.
"I also requested that Secretary Abraham personally meet this month with local leaders and national experts on FFTF's potential," Hastings said after he and other members of the House Rules Committee spent an hour with Abraham.
A coalition of Tri-City area government and private agencies led by Benton County is taking a similar tact.
It has spent $10,000 of $101,000 committed to the project to hire former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton to encourage the Bush administration to reconsider the FFTF decision. Gorton served in the Senate with Abraham, also a former Republican senator, before both were defeated in 2000.
The coalition also is concerned the Clinton administration said the reactor should be shut down because it had not received enough definite commitments from private companies, federal agencies and other countries interested in research to justify restarting the reactor.
"No formal request for proposal was ever issued to judge the worldwide interest in this unique facility," Hastings wrote in a letter he handed to Abraham. "It's not clear to me how the department arrived at such a conclusion without having formally asked for specific proposals to operate the reactor."
Hastings also argued that granting the reactor a reprieve would make financial sense in the short term.
"Moving forward with decommissioning will have severe impacts on the department's budget as additional funds will be necessary to move forward with deactivation," Hastings wrote.
Supporters would like the reactor, one of the government's largest and most modern, restarted to make isotopes to meet a growing demand in medicine and for other nonmilitary uses, such as testing fuels for new nuclear reactors.
Future energy needs must be met in part by nuclear energy, but to increase nuclear power production, the United States will need to test fuels for new types of nuclear reactors being designed, according to Hastings' office. Other research to support the current generation of commercial nuclear power plants also would be reduced.
In addition, Hastings is arguing that demand for medical isotopes being used in new ways to treat cancer and other diseases has been underestimated by DOE, which is responsible for ensuring the nation has an adequate supply.
The Clinton administration said need could be met by reactors in Idaho and Tennessee. But Hastings is questioning the ability of the Idaho reactor, now doing fuels and materials testing for the Navy, to take on new missions. The Tennessee reactor is currently shut down because of a potential tritium leak and safety system review.
FFTF also could play a role in a DOE project to determine whether a new way to deal with nuclear waste, accelerator transmutation, is feasible. FFTF would be ideal for testing of the fuel concept, but instead that would be done in France, according to a briefing paper from Hastings' office.
"I recognize that suspending the formal record of decision is difficult, but a review of new information and FFTF's potential to produce life-saving nuclear isotopes is a fair and reasonable step to take," Hastings wrote to Abraham. "The haste with which the record of decision was rushed to completion before President Clinton's term expired warrants an assessment of FFTF that is based on fact and reality, not political or ideological motivation."
-------- MILITARY
Japanese history text irks Beijing, Seoul
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/5/01
World Scene
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200145213348.htm
SEOUL - A new Japanese textbook obscures Japan's colonial-era atrocities and endangers good relations, South Korea and China said in formal complaints to Tokyo yesterday.
The history textbook calls World War II "the Great East Asian War" as the Japanese referred to it at the time, and stresses the damage Japan suffered while limiting references to Japan's brutality.
Critics of the middle-school textbook say it justifies Japan's invasion of Asia in the early 20th century and minimizes atrocities such as the 1937 Nanking massacre. Historians say the Japanese army slaughtered at least 150,000 civilians during the occupation of the Chinese city.
South Korea's foreign minister, Han Seung-soo, met Japanese Ambassador Terusuke Terada to file a formal protest about the textbook.
-------- burma/myanmar
Senators Urge Bush to Maintain Myanmar Sanctions
Yahoo News
Thursday April 5
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010405/pl/myanmar_usa_dc_1.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of 35 senators is urging President Bush to maintain sanctions against Myanmar to encourage continued dialogue between the Southeast Asian nation's military government and the democratic opposition.
The senators said, in a letter to Bush, they are convinced that U.S. sanctions imposed in 1997 helped prompt the Myanmar government to open talks with pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
``While it's too soon to determine if these talks will produce a plan for national reconciliation, we believe any change in sanctions pressure could remove the incentive for the regime to negotiate, said the letter, made public on Wednesday.
Senior members of the ruling military in Myanmar, formerly Burma, held secret talks with Suu Kyi raising hopes that the country's political stalemate could be finally broken. The National League for Democracy, which Suu Kyi leads, won elections by a landslide in 1990 but the military never let it govern.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was released from six years of house arrest in 1995 but has had limited movement since September after angering the government by trying to travel outside Yangon.
U.S. sanctions against Myanmar include the suspension of assistance programs, a ban on sales of military items, suspension of Myanmar's access to favorable tariff rates and opposition to multilateral lending.
The United States has also banned new U.S. investment in the country and has banned visas for senior Burmese officials.
-------- drug war
Stringent measures Tour de France unveils tough anti-doping measures
CNN
Thursday April 05, 2001
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/cycling/news/2001/04/05/tour_doping/
PARIS (AP) -- The organizers of the Tour de France on Thursday unveiled a set of stringent anti-doping measures they hope will help to shake the specter of drug use from this year's race.
"The long-term survival of the sport depends on us," Patrice Clerc, one of the Tour's organizers, said at a news conference.
For the first time, the 180 riders in the famed race will undergo tests, organized by the International Cycling Union, or UCI, two days before the Tour's start in Dunkirk, northern France, on July 7.
Blood samples will be taken from the riders and rushed on a special plane to the UCI's doping laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland, where they will be analyzed within 24 hours.
The results will be transmitted to medical officials from the nine cycling teams and to UCI authorities. Any riders showing signs of doping will be declared unfit for the race. Urine samples will then be taken, and positive results will be sanctioned.
Until now, riders were only required to provide a blood sample 15 days before the start of the race.
"It's a guarantee of transparency," said Jean-Marie Leblanc, director of the race, which draws some 15 million spectators along its route.
"It is to show all those who watch the Tour de France ... that the 180 riders were checked at the last moment. That they started clean," he told reporters.
As well as introducing this pre-race test, daily controls will be reinforced during the grueling 20-stage Tour.
Each day, 10 riders will be tested, including the stage winner and the top three riders in the standings. Last year, only the stage leader, the first-ranked rider, and two randomly chosen cyclists were tested.
A new UCI test for the banned performance-enhancer EPO will also be used during the race. The test involves taking a urine sample from riders after competition.
Unveiling the test in Geneva last Friday, the UCI said that "a positive urine test for EPO will constitute proof of EPO use." Until last year, it was impossible to detect EPO, or erythropoetin, which builds endurance by boosting the production of oxygen-rich red blood cells.
UCI is the first sporting federation to rely solely on a urine test, which was developed at the French national doping laboratory.
In 1998, the Tour de France's image was severely tarnished by a doping scandal, which broke when the Festina cycling team was expelled after a stash of products, including EPO, was found in a team car.
A French trial that grew out of the scandal led to a series of frank testimonies about the use of drugs in the world of cycling, and to the conviction of eight people.
The winner of the 1999 and 2000 Tours, American Lance Armstrong, and his U.S. Postal Service team are currently the subject of a French judicial investigation into whether the squad used banned substances during last year's race. Armstrong has repeatedly denied taking illegal substances.
Riders this year will also have to sign an ethical code, which calls on cyclists to accept the rules of fair competition and renounce all forms of cheating.
"All cyclists ... are obliged to respect this fundamental ethical code. Otherwise, they risk dragging the sport into perversion and decadence," reads the document that riders will be given. Cyclists who do not sign the code will be barred.
The 180 cyclists will also be given a 30-minute talk before the race by a biologist, a doctor and Leblanc to outline the facts about doping products and their effects.
---
Ruling in smugglers' case goes to appeal court
Montreal Gazette
Thursday 5 April 2001
PAUL CHERRY The Gazette
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/010405/5038173.html
The Quebec Court of Appeal will decide whether a judge erred in ruling that evidence filed against a father-son team of Mafia drug smugglers was inadmissible.
The two men face possible extradition to the United States.
A panel of three judges yesterday heard prosecutor Andre Morin argue there was sufficient proof filed on Pierino Divito, 63, and his 35-year-old son Michael for Superior Court Justice Rejean Paul to hear the extradition case.
A Florida court has charged both with conspiring to "possess with intent to distribute" 300 kilograms of cocaine. Both face at least 30 years in prison if convicted under tough American sentencing guidelines.
The father and son are currently serving lesser sentences in a Montreal prison after they were tied to a significantly larger shipment seized in Nova Scotia. Noted as one of the largest drug busts ever made in Canada, the shipment was worth an estimated $3 billion and Pierino Divito was to be paid $3 million if the delivery was successful.
The extradition order has been on hold since 1998, when Paul turned the case over to the appeal court. A key point is whether a questionable affidavit from a witness who later recanted was admissible.
At the start of yesterday's hearing Vincent Chiara said his clients requested he turn their case over to lawyer Franco Iezzoni sometime in February. Such a transfer would have postponed the hearing for months.
Judges Reject Request
But the three judges rejected the request and were critical of the attempted switch. Justice Marc Beauregard in particular suggested the Divitos made the switch merely to delay their possible extradition.
During a break in the hearing Chiara and his clients agreed he would continue to represent them. However, he declined to make an oral presentation, resting his case on arguments filed in writing.
Father and son are serving sentences of 18 years and 12 years, respectively, at the Montreal prison since being convicted in 1996 in New Brunswick, where they were arrested.
When the elder Divito suffered a heart attack shortly after he was arrested, Divito's first lawyer cited his poor health as one of the reasons the extradition order is being fought.
Yesterday, Chiara said his clients were willing to take their case to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
The National Parole Board has already rejected Michael Divito's request for day parole.
"You were close to your father who was the leader of the group and you replaced him from time to time," the author of the 1997 parole report noted.
The parole board denied Pierino Divito's request for day parole a year later. "It has been alleged that you and your son had the reputation of working by the use of threats and intimidation," a parole board official wrote.
"The Divito organization was in business internationally with contacts in France, Spain, Columbia and Venezuela."
Both father and son were alleged to be part of the Rizzuto crime family, reputed by police to be the largest Mafia clan in Montreal. Pierino Divito was first connected to the Mafia during a 1976 commission on organized crime.
---
Tonnes of pot found in T-shirt shipment
Montreal Gazette
Thursday 5 April 2001
FRANCOIS SHALOM The Gazette
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/010405/5037878.html
How a shipment of T-shirts made by a Montreal company came to be accompanied by tonnes of marijuana has police investigators in several Caribbean countries scratching their heads.
The police are baffled by how the Miami-bound shipment, which originated at the Barbados factory of Montreal-based Gildan Activewear Inc., took on the extra cargo.
The marijuana - 10 to 30 tonnes, according to police - was discovered when the shipment was stopped in Jamaica in February.
The incident has left company officials shaken. They have decided to close the assembly facility in Barbados and lay off 50 employees.
'Unjust, Unfair'
David Simmons, acting prime minister of Barbados, told local newspapers the shutdown of the factory in Warrens, St. Michael, was "utterly unjust and unfair" and warned against scapegoating the employees.
The Barbadian government was advised of the incident only on March 6, Simmons said, 26 days after the discovery.
What happened exactly and who is to blame are in dispute, but company officials and Barbados police agree on this much:
- The company packed a container of T-shirts at the factory and sent it to the port of Bridgetown, the country's capital, on Feb. 1.
- The container sat overnight on the dock in a well-lit area and in plain sight of security.
- The following day, it was loaded on to the ship Seaboard Toronto for a trip to Miami via Trinidad, Venezuela and Jamaica.
- The container seal was apparently unbroken.
Graham Sutherland, vice-president (finance) for Gildan Activewear SRL, the company's Barbados subsidiary, said police in Barbados are satisfied - for now - that the drugs were not inserted in Barbados but rather in Jamaica.
"This is the fifth or sixth container we've shipped from that facility over the last several months, and this is the first time this has happened to us," Sutherland said.
"So between Point A (Bridgetown) and Point B (Miami), the container was seized and found to have some drugs on it."
Laurence Sellyn, Gildan's chief financial officer, said it was between 10 and 30 tonnes of marijuana but could not estimate its street value.
"Police and government officials have suggested that they're quite confident it did not happen in the port," he said.
Sellyn, who called the incident "a small local thing blown up," said the company was advised "on or about" Feb. 16 that Jamaican police had found the illegal drugs in two containers, one from Gildan and another from a second Barbadian firm that he could not identify.
Port-authority officials did not return calls.
Sutherland and Sellyn said the firm conducted its own probe, but Sellyn could not specify how. "I imagine the 50 employees were interviewed," he said.
Gildan has other plants in Honduras and Mexico. But Sutherland said that after meeting with the port authority, police and government officials in Barbados, they moved to shut the Warrens plant.
"We decided that after sealing and dropping off a container, we felt we were not in a position to ensure its secure passage right to Miami and all points in between," Sutherland said.
The Honduras and Mexico plants are much bigger and warrant a large security operation, said Sutherland. But the Barbados plant made only 100,000 dozen T-shirts a year - out of a company total of 18.5 million dozen annually - and its size did not justify spending a lot of resources on surveillance.
"To my knowledge, this never happened at one of our other plants," Sutherland said.
Workers will receive "comfortably in excess of the legal minimum" in severance pay, Sutherland said.
He added that "a fraction" of the drugs was found in the Gildan container and that the bulk was in the other one, but he could not be more specific.
The plant's shutdown will not entail a writeoff because the space will eventually be used to house Gildan's expanding sales force, Sutherland said.
That international sales unit employs about 40 people.
The sewing plant, where workers stitched together all the T-shirt parts, opened last summer and was an investment of about $1.5 million, Sellyn said.
Sgt. Caroline Blackman-Alleyne, in charge of the Interpol office for the Barbadian police, said from Bridgetown that she is waiting for information from Jamaican police before commenting.
---
Ashcroft spells out agenda pushing social responsibility
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
4/5/01
Jerry Seper THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200145224925.htm
Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday outlined what he called a "clear agenda to make America a more secure and safe place," including strict enforcement of existing gun and drug laws and a commitment to every person's civil rights.
In a politely-received speech to an audience of more than 400 at the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) annual convention here, Mr. Ashcroft said Americans should not have to "move to a safer place to secure their safety, when we can do it by enforcing the laws."
The attorney general said that there is a "clear link" between drugs and violence, and that Justice Department lawyers are working to identify problems and actions that can be addressed now to combat gun violence and drug abuse. He said such things have had "a devastating cost to our economy and to our culture."
Mr. Ashcroft, challenged by Democrats during the confirmation process on civil rights, abortion, gun control, race and homosexuals, told the editors he was vigorously committed to enforcing civil rights, particularly voting rights, and he would ensure that no one is "denied or defrauded" of their rights.
"All members of the culture have to understand that the law can reach them if they violate the law. And when people think about the law as being a category in which certain individuals are favored, we have a very serious problem, because the law - instead of becoming a friend to all - is an agency that favors some," he said.
He also suggested that the media could play a better role in combating violent crime and gently urged the industry to show some restraint in its use and reporting of violence.
He said newspapers were in "a position to help this country in a special way."
"It does not mean we abolish or abandon or otherwise impair the First Amendment of the Constitution," he said. "It does mean to us, though, that we ought to think carefully about who we are as a culture and society and how we ought to respond. The idea of responsibility for people is a concept that needs to be elevated in our consciousness."
"If I were one to believe that the only solutions were governmental, I might be willing to trade First Amendment rights to improve the culture," he said. "Frankly, I don't think trading our First Amendment rights is a way to improve culture. Everyone has to take a role. We make the world a liveable place not because the law tells us to, but because we choose to."
Mr. Ashcroft used violent video games and the recent rash of school shootings to make his point.
He said those responsible for the shootings in Kentucky and Colorado had watched violent video games, and that one of them, Michael Carneal in West Paducah, Ky., learned how to aim his weapon from the games.
"I'm not here to say we shouldn't have video games. I'm here to say we are poorly situated to deny that these kinds of settings have an impact on what we do," he said. "We live in a culture of violence, and it's going to take more than government to address it. Everyone has to have a role."
He urged video manufacturers and parents to be responsible in making the games available to their children.He also said newspapers could be more careful how they report the incidents, adding that "enormous media coverage occurs" each time a school shooting takes place.
"I have to wonder how much news coverage plays into the copycat incidents," he said, calling for the editors to accept an "era of responsibility."
"Frankly, if you try to just stack up enough laws to remediate the absence of any restraint in people and by the culture, you'll find yourself in a police state with a great need for police," he said. "But if the culture can be responsible, you don't need nearly as many laws and you find yourself in a survivable community where people respect one another."
-------- u.s.
Osprey hydraulic system cited as cause of crash
USA Today
04/05/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-05-osprey.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - A hydraulics system failure compounded by software problems caused a V-22 Osprey aircraft to crash in December, killing four Marines, the corps said in a report Thursday. The corps acknowledged it had been aware since June 1999 of a problem that could damage the hydraulic line that failed.
"The aircrew reacted immediately and correctly to the in-flight emergency, as they were trained to do," Maj. Gen. Martin Berndt, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, told a Pentagon news conference. "We consider them to be without fault in this tragedy."
Berndt said the report recommended - and Marine Corps headquarters concurs - that there be a "possible redesign of the hydraulic system" in the V-22 to prevent failures like the one in the December crash.
It also recommended a review of the entire computer software on the V-22 to identify design deficiencies that "may exist," he said.The crash was one of two fatal Osprey crashes last year that killed 23 Marines and put the fate of the controversial, multibillion-dollar aircraft program in jeopardy.
A wire bundle had rubbed against a hydraulic line feeding both the primary and backup hydraulic systems to the left engine, chafing it and eventually allowing the line to rupture, Berndt said.
"The investigation cites a number of reports dating back to June 1999, which describe chafing of hydraulic lines by wire bundles within the (engines) of the V-22," he told a news conference earlier Thursday at Camp LeJeune, N.C.
The Marines had said in January that they were nearly certain the Dec. 11 crash was caused by a failure of the hydraulics system, which enables the pilot to control the direction of the aircraft.
Berndt said that varying degrees of chafing were found on all eight remaining Ospreys during an inspection after the December crash.
The investigators recommend reviewing the entire computer flight control system and associated software, and the placement of hydraulic lines and wire bundles within the engine, he said.
The Osprey is unique in its ability to take off like a helicopter, rotate its propellers 90 degrees and fly like an airplane.
Another Osprey crash killed 19 servicemen in Marana, Ariz., in April 2000. The fleet has been grounded since the December crash in Onslow County, near Jacksonville.
In the North Carolina crash, Berndt said investigators found the hydraulic system began to malfunction after the plane made a series of left-hand turns.
As the plane's airspeed slowed and the engines began to move automatically from airplane to helicopter mode, the hydraulic line ruptured, Berndt said.
The flight control computer sensed the problem and stopped the rotation of the engines. A reset button lit up and the crew, as instructed, pressed it.
"This action started a chain of unpredicted and uncontrollable events that caused alternating deceleration and acceleration of the aircraft," until it stalled and then crashed nose-first, Berndt said.
It took 30 seconds after the hydraulic failure for the plane to hit the ground. During the last 20 seconds, the computer reset program was activated as many as eight to 10 times, Berndt said.
That, along with the hydraulic failure, caused the engines' rotors to change their pitch rapidly and dramatically, sending the airplane out of control.
"The air crew reacted immediately and correctly to the in-flight emergency as they were trained to do," Berndt said. "We consider them to be without fault in this tragedy."
The defense secretary appointed an independent panel to review the program after the latest crash. The accident report's release comes as the panel, headed by retired Marine Gen. John R. Dailey, is preparing its findings and recommendations, which could decide the fate of the Osprey.
The Marine Corps wants to buy 360 Ospreys to replace its fleet of aging CH-46 and CH-53 transport helicopters. They are made by Textron's Bell Helicopters unit and Boeing Co.
Pilots who helped investigate the North Carolina crash said the problems with the hydraulic system and computer were a design flaw that had been known for months but ignored, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
They told the Post the problems could have been detected by more rigorous testing, and slipped by because the Marine Corps wanted to win Pentagon funding for full production of the plane.
---
Pentagon cancels beret statement
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/5/01
Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20014523152.htm
The Pentagon abruptly canceled a press conference yesterday at which an official planned to offer justification for the military's purchase of millions of U.S. Army black berets from Third World countries, including communist China.
Officials said the announcement was put off to avoid the awkwardness of appearing to condone made-in-China berets while Beijing holds 24 American servicemen and women as hostages.
China has refused U.S. demands to release the 21 men and three women who were aboard the Navy EP-3E aircraft. The surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter collided, forcing the EP-3E to land Sunday on Hainan Island.
Two officials told The Washington Times that a Pentagon review found that the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) acted "properly" in bypassing a federal "buy America" law to meet the Army's rush demand for berets.
The sources said that Allen Beckett, acting undersecretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness, outlined the review's conclusion in a March 23 letter to the DLA.
The Pentagon inquiry was supervised by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz after President Bush ordered a review of the Army's decision to outfit all soldiers in the black berets traditionally worn only by Rangers.
The Pentagon had wanted to make the announcement prior to officials testifying today at a scheduled hearing before the House Small Business Committee. The committee last night decided to cancel that hearing as well, said a congressional source, who said it was done at the request of the White House. The committee has been examining why the Pentagon bypassed federal law and purchased the berets overseas. It was slated to hear from Gen. Eric Shinseki, Army chief of staff, and Lt. Gen. Henry Glisson, Defense Logistics Agency director.
China-made uniform components are offensive to some active-duty personnel as well as members of Congress. They view the regime as a future military adversary with a poor record on human rights.
More than 75 House members signed a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld protesting the foreign purchase of berets. Other legislators, including Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi sent letters complaining of the decision to take the black beret from elite Army Rangers and giving it to every Army soldier.
Under the 60-year-old Berry Amendment military uniforms must be made of 100 percent American components and produced in American factories, subject to waiver in an emergency.
The pressing "emergency" in this case was that Gen. Shinseki set a deadline of June 14, the Army's birthday, for almost every soldier to wear a black beret. He announced the new policy in October, saying the black beret would symbolize the Army's transformation to a lighter, more agile force for the 21st century.
The logistics agency, the purchasing arm for the military services, concluded it could not meet the June 14 deadline without awarding contracts to foreign companies that operate Third World factories. Only one U.S. company produces berets to Army specifications.
The China plant, operated by a British company, is due to produce 618,000 berets. Of those, 244,000 have been delivered and distributed to Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers. Another 100,000 are in shipment. The plant is due to deliver the last beret by May 30.
In all, the Army plans to buy nearly 4 million berets for $35 million.
U.S. apparel makers are upset over the foreign contracts, saying they could have put forth competitive bids if the Army did not set such an "arbitrary" deadline.
Special operations soldiers and ex-Army Rangers strongly protested Gen. Shinseki's decision. They complained that the universal beret policy destroyed the uniqueness of blacks berets worn for decades by the Rangers, a small special operations unit known for daring behind-the-lines action in battle.
The opposition became so intense that the president asked Mr. Rumsfeld to review the decision. Mr. Rumsfeld then appointed Mr. Wolfowitz to conduct the review.
One aspect of the dispute was settled last month. Mr. Wolfowitz and Gen. Shinseki appeared at a joint Pentagon press conference to announce that the Rangers would switch from black to tan berets, thereby keeping a unique uniform designation. Airborne and Special Forces soldiers will still wear their maroon and green berets respectively.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Europe's view: a self-centered US
Bush's environmental policy tops a list of European concerns about changing US values.
Christian Science Monitor
THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2001
By Peter Ford (fordp@csps.com) Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/05/fp6s1-csm.shtml
PARIS - Of all the policy pronouncements from Washington recently that surprised or unnerved Europeans, one phrase struck fear into their hearts.
It came from President Bush's lips, as he explained last week that he was rejecting an international treaty to curb global warming because he fears it would harm the US economy. "First things first are the people who live in America," he said.
With that blunt statement, Mr. Bush swept away assumptions that have underpinned America's relations with its European allies for the past six decades.
"It looks like total unilateralism, saying 'we don't care at all what is happening in the rest of the world'," says Michaela Hönicke, a specialist on transatlantic relations at the German Foreign Policy Society in Berlin.
On Wednesday, European Union leaders called Bush's abandonment of the Kyoto treaty "completely wrong."
The Texan president heads an administration that seems especially foreign to European leaders who are accustomed to sharing values more closely with their most powerful friend.
"I see a potential decoupling between us, not over traditional foreign policy values, but on more fundamental sociocultural values," warns Dominique Moïsi, an analyst at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris. "We resent not what America does, but what America has become, if it is truly represented by the Bush administration."
It is Bush's decision to abandon the Kyoto protocol on climate change that has provoked the deepest shock and condemnation. To Europeans, it appears that Washington is selfishly shirking America's responsibility as the world's biggest carbon-dioxide polluter.
Other incidents over the past 10 weeks have also threatened to widen the gap between the US and Europe.
Washington's expulsion of 50 Russian diplomats on spy charges raised the specter of the cold war and caused unease in European capitals, where politicians prefer to be more understanding of the wounded giant on their border.
The president's lack of enthusiasm for South Korea's "sunshine policy" of reconciliation with North Korea has disappointed European diplomats, who hope that policy will defuse tensions in East Asia.
The new administration has signaled its determination to press ahead with a missile-defense shield in the face of European misgivings about the project's viability and political implications.
Some senior US officials, such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have voiced hostility to European plans for an autonomous defense force that would give some military muscle to back up the continent's economic might.
Europeans have also been struck by signs that Washington does not plan to take the sort of "hands on" approach to world trouble spots that became Bill Clinton's hallmark. Politicians in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, for example, cannot expect such active US mediation efforts, and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil has indicated Washington would be less ready to help with financial bailouts such as those that rescued Mexico and parts of Asia.
Analysts here caution, however, that with many second-tier administration jobs (and lower) still unfilled, US policy is not set in stone. "But we certainly have a first impression that is pretty sobering," says Guillaume Parmentier, director of the Paris-based French Institute on the United States. "People realize that this administration is going to be more self-centered."
That may not be a bad thing, Mr. Parmentier suggests: "The fact that they are raising all sorts of outcries all over the world may give us a better opportunity for real discussion" about foreign policy.
Other observers fear that Washington's new view of the world may drive a wedge between the US and its European allies. "The very rhetoric that the president chooses is so devoid of the idealism that has always been an important strain in US-European relations," worries Dr. Hönicke. "That makes me very sad."
At a deeper level, the administration's new direction could take Europe and the US down divergent paths, say some policy experts. From a European perspective, Washington's attitudes are "anachronistic, provincial, and arrogant," Mr. Moïsi says. The new US leadership "misses the essential flavor of the world in an age of globalization, interdependency, and universalism. It has a petty vision of national interests in a rather old-fashioned way."
A new generation of Europeans, less concerned with security issues now that the cold war is over, pays more attention to cultural questions. To many ordinary French people, for example, the death penalty - abolished throughout Europe - is the most objectionable aspect of American society. "There is a gap in values" that has led to "fundamental reflection over what we have in common," says Hönicke. Washington's apparent reluctance to engage itself abroad may offer Europe an opportunity to assert itself diplomatically. No senior US official visited Macedonia during the recent crisis there, while the European Union's top foreign-policy official, Javier Solana, went five times and led the political negotiations between ethnic-Slav and Albanian political parties that helped defuse the situation. Mr. Solana and two European colleagues plan to visit the Korean Peninsula next month, taking up the mediator role Washington seems to be ceding.
There are doubts, however, about how far Europe can take such initiatives. While Macedonia, in the Balkans, was a clear candidate for European ministrations, Korea is outside Europe's traditional zone of interest and influence. "Foreign policy starts with a statement and ends with implementation," says Parmentier. "If you don't have the means to implement what you say, your policy becomes declaratory, which is a dangerous path to go down."
Also, worries Hönicke, "there is quite a lot of strain and tension and misunderstanding in the transatlantic relationship, and that is not a good climate for one partner to step back and another to step in. That should be done in close cooperation."
European leaders recognize that the US is the world's only "hyperpower," to use French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine's term. "But it is such a historical irony," reflects Hönicke, "that at the moment when the United States is the unchallenged superpower, at the pinnacle of its economic, political, and military might and cultural influence around the world, they have this man as president."
---
Watching the 'sea' grass grow ... from space
Christian Science Monitor
THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2001
By Peter N. Spotts (pspotts@nasw.org)
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/05/fp14s1-csm.shtml
Quick quiz: Where does most of the photosynthesis on Earth occur?
A. At sea.
B. On land.
C. In your fridge's cheese bin.
Not long ago, many scientists might have picked B, notes Gene Carl Feldman, project manager for an orbiting imager, known as SeaWiFS. It's giving researchers amazing new views of the planet's biological activity.
Now, however, the 3-year-old imager is showing how critical ocean-dwelling phytoplankton are to the global carbon cycle. In the process, it's giving scientists a powerful new tool for tracking the impact of climate change.
From 1997 to 2000, a record El Niño began to relax its grip on climate. As La Niña's hand took over, the globe's greenery increased its carbon uptake from 111 billion tons to 117 billion tons, according to the satellite data. The change was most pronounced in the tropical Pacific.
Ocean circulation along the South American coast shifted, bringing more nutrients from the deep ocean to nourish plantlike phytoplankton at the surface.
The tropical Pacific shifted from a photosynthetic "desert similar to the Sahara, to a virtual rainforest, over the course of a few weeks," says Dr. Feldman, who works at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Md.
Land-based plants showed regional changes in response to the shift from El Niño to La Niña, he adds. But globally, land plants contributed little to the increased uptake.
"The powerhouse behind carbon fixation is in the oceans," says Michael Behrenfeld, an oceanographer at the GSFC and the lead author of a paper reporting the results in the current issue of the journal Science. Past satellite data suggested that 40 percent of the Earth's photosynthetic activity occurs in the oceans. SeaWiFS data suggest the figure is more like 50 percent, he says.
SeaWiFS is a high-tech version of a camera's light meter, Feldman explains. From an altitude of 705 kilometers (437 miles), the imager records the amount of light reflected from the oceans and land in eight "color" bands along the electromagnetic spectrum. "Based on some serious number crunching, you can relate color to the level of photosynthesis," he says.
Such data have been available for land activity for at least 20 years, the researchers say. But similar information on ocean "primary production" has been spotty in coverage and quality.
SeaWiFS has changed that. It gathers in one minute data that would take an oceanography vessel 10 years to gather. It also gathers information uniformly, allowing for more accurate accounting of the role plant life plays in the carbon cycle in each venue.
"One of the great uncertainties regarding climate change is how biology will respond," says Jorge Sarmiento, a Princeton University climate researcher, referring to the plant and microbial life that act as sinks for CO2. "These data are essential to projecting the future trajectory of CO2."
---
Fear of disease spurs airline fare cuts
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/5/01
Tom Ramstack THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/business/default-200145213610.htm
Airlines are beginning to drop their prices to European countries whose livestock are being ravaged by the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease.
Carriers that have not dropped their rates are planning to do so if the disease continues to frighten away travelers, the airlines and travel agents said.
"The combination of the [slowing] U.S. economy as well as the concern for the foot-and-mouth disease has created a slowing down of bookings in the last couple of weeks to Ireland and Europe generally," said Jack Foley, Aer Lingus' vice president of North American operations.
Last week, Aer Lingus, the Irish national airline, dropped its cheapest round-trip fare between Baltimore-Washington International Airport and Dublin or Shannon from $682 with tax to $452 with tax.
"Since we launched it last week, it's obviously had a good impact," said Mr. Foley. "We've seen our reservations go up by about 25 percent."
Foot-and-mouth disease, sometimes referred to as hoof-and-mouth disease, is caused by a virus that is harmless to humans but is devastating for cattle, swine and other cloven-hooved animals.
Officials at British Airways, which is offering its lowest round-trip fares between Washington Dulles International Airport and London for $451 with tax, say their fares might stay low instead of rising during the travel season that begins later this month. Normally, airlines increase fares in mid-April from their winter low and raise them again in June during the summer peak season.
Foot-and-mouth disease, however, is prompting would-be travelers to call the airline to ask about the risks or to change their travel plans away from rural areas.
"If in the next few weeks, the situation does not get any better, there might be all kinds of efforts to attract people," said John Lampl, British Airways spokesman.
Cheaper fares, more advertising and other marketing techniques might be used to make up for any drop in tourists, he said. "Those are things that various people are discussing right now," said Mr. Lampl.
He blamed much of the concern on misunderstandings and hysteria.
"We've had a lot of calls, definitely," said Mr. Lampl. "Our concern is to answer questions from passengers. The main thing is to educate people that foot-and-mouth disease is not transmissible to humans. Britain is open for business."
Some tourists are getting foot-and-mouth confused with mad cow disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, which is a deadly, brain-destroying illness.
British authorities say the tourism industry is losing about $140 million per week. That's expected to increase to a $350 million loss per week during the height of the tourism season in July and August.
While foot-and-mouth is not dangerous to the travelers, the outbreak is prompting British and Irish authorities to close popular tourist destinations, like Stonehenge, and country roads. Also, authorities are warning travelers not to visit farms with livestock or go near animals.
British officials reported yesterday that there have been signs of progress in stemming the spread of the disease, making it less likely that the country will have to vaccinate 180,000 cattle, Prime Minister Tony Blair's office said.
"I would say a lot of people are doing a wait-and-see, particularly if they are planning to go in May or June," said Jean West, British travel consultant for Uniglobe Democracy Travel's office in Northwest.
The foot-and-mouth outbreak can have only a modest effect on travel plans if the travelers schedule their trips around it, she said.
"Park authorities are advising people to avoid farmland and livestock," Mrs. West said. "If you stay on designated trails and don't go wandering off on your own, you're probably going to be OK."
So far, the only other countries with reported outbreaks are France and the Netherlands. Germany and Denmark are investigating possible outbreaks, as well.
Air France's cheapest round-trip flights between Dulles and Paris cost $446 with tax. KLM Royal Dutch Airline's cheapest round-trip fares between Dulles and Amsterdam are $425.
British Airways and many other airlines that travel to countries with foot-and-mouth disease are allowing travelers who already made reservations to change their travel dates or itineraries without the usual $100 to $150 change fee.
Northwest Airlines spokesman Doug Killian said the waivers came after some individual passengers, an estimated 200 in the past month, and groups requested delays in their travel to Britain because of concern about the outbreak.
Foot-and-mouth disease has been found in more than 1,000 sites in Britain. France, Ireland and the Netherlands have reported only a few cases. The United States and Japan have banned meat imports from all European Union countries in response to the outbreak.
A slew of ticket cancellations followed the cancellation of Ireland's traditional St. Patrick's Day celebrations as Irish officials tried to control the spread of the disease, Aer Lingus officials said.
Continental Airlines Inc. and Delta Air Lines, which compete with Aer Lingus on the Dublin and Shannon routes, said they had felt no impact from the outbreak in bookings or pricing.
"We selectively match prices on other airlines to stay competitive," a Continental spokesman said.
But travel agencies and specialists said the outbreak remained a concern for summer bookings.
"We have some cancellations. People are waiting to see what happens and if prices will go any lower," said Chris Accomando at Sceptre Tours, a Long Island, N.Y., tour company that specializes in Ireland.
The airlines are doing whatever they can to ward off customer fears.
Northwest Airlines Corp. has removed pork and lamb from its in-flight menu on U.S.-bound flights from Europe. It removed beef from its U.S.-bound flights from Europe last month.
United Airlines said it had previously removed beef and veal from meals on such flights.
"Following the mad cow disease, I think people are very nervous about this, not only with British meat but also European meat," said David Stempler, president of the Washington-based Air Travelers Association.
---
Kyoto cools
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Christopher C. Horner
Published 4/5/01
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010405-282370.htm
So, what´s all the fuss? Well, now we´ve gone and done it. Thanks to President George W. Bush, the United States has driven a stake in the effort to save the planet. Recently, EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman made clear that the United States will neither seek to implement, or even further pursue, the flawed Kyoto Protocol, or global warming treaty.
A hail of criticism has already ensued, so let´s assess the allegations of irresponsibility. The rich countries had agreed to this global warming treaty, and three years later it came time to determine what, exactly, was agreed. Nothing, as it turns out, thank goodness. At the recent series of annual meetings between countries to address this question, on those rare occasions that the Clinton-Gore State Department attempted to insert some modicum of reasonableness into the interpretation of Kyoto´s loose language the Europeans condemned the United States and expressed shock that there was bargaining going on at these negotiations.
Who needs this? Not one country facing any actual obligations under this energy suppression decree had ratified it, due in equal parts for fear of what it ultimately would say, and because there really is no good way to say it. Suffice it to point out that this past November an indignant French President Jacques Chirac demanded the United States get off its duff and ratify the treaty. Not that France has. Still, he thundered, it represents the first component of an "authentic global governance." This was not intended as an insult.
Sounds like a good treaty to kill. And maybe we owe those guys muttering about black helicopters an apology. Let´s face it, U.S. ratification was hopeless with Mr. Chirac´s analysis stuck to it like a Lyme-ridden tick. Bonner Cohen, a dean among critical writers on environmental policy, phrased it best: "By letting this particular cat out of the bag, the French president may have done the Kyoto Protocol more harm than the next cold blast of Arctic air. If there is one sure way to doom ratification of the global warming treaty in the U.S. Senate, it is to tie it to anything even remotely resembling "authentic global governance."
Of course, the press reliably parrots the energy-suppression left´s claims that all weather is now climate, which is now your fault for driving to 7-Eleven for a gallon of milk and refusing to sit on your neighbor´s lap on the way to work. This is the sum and substance of that latest among Man-as-agent-of-doom theories to roll down the Autobahn catastrophic man-made global warming.
Calamitous weather claims are the newest. Every summer is the hottest, every year the wettest and, alternately, driest; every snowstorm . . . you get the point. No sir, we´ve never quite seen weather like this, not in (pick a number of) years. Must be man-made. But, what caused that previous worst weather however many years ago? Did my Land Rover chase the dinosaurs into oblivion, too, and the alligators out of the lush tropics that were Canada? And how did we get that glacier to back off Nebraska? Asking such inconvenient questions is to place a "Kick Me" sign on one´s person in the climate community, where they brook no contrary opinion. No opinions, at all, actually. Just group-think and group-speak. The science, you see, is settled. So there is no need for a debate. Delving into that one too deeply with any of the enlightened here renders one an object of abuse.
That the science is settled, as the saying also goes in Washington, raises the question of how come each year´s appropriation request for the science is a lot more than the last? A true scientific debate might reasonably be considered condition precedent to enacting an energy suppression treaty, given that affordable energy is the key to lifting the world´s poor into prosperity. What skeptical scientists have tried for years to get through the smog of politically correct hand-wringing is actually, for the most part, not any particular theory, but a defense of science. Particularly, that science found in underlying studies, from which an hysterical United Nations "Summary for Policymakers" is purportedly drawn.
The problem with this stream of United Nations science, skeptics point out, is that the science, with identified authors and reviewers, does not say what the anonymously drafted Summary claims it says. Additionally, such skeptics often illustrate how this science starts with its answer, and struggles to get there. Unfortunately, this revised scientific method fails scrutiny, in large part because it is flagrantly rigged. That is, the acceptable scientific work was ruined, after the fact, by United Nations politicians inserting a presumption that all climate fluctuations occurring before the industrial revolution are natural, which they call variability, but all occurring afterward are officially man-made climate change.
"Whatever that is, it is not science," says Dr. Richard Courtney of the European Science and Environment Forum, and an expert peer-reviewer of the underlying work. Dr. Fred Singer of the University of Virginia and the Science and Environmental Policy Project, credibly demonstrates his make that the United Nations´ evidence that while the planet warmed from 1860 (the end of the "Little Ice Age") until 1940, it has failed to do so since. Other experts have debunked claims of increased storm activity, and other shibboleths of the movement. Clearly, this casts some doubt that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide (a necessary product of oxidizing carbon, or burning fossil fuels) will be the death of us all as the left ceaselessly lectures.
So why impose devastating caps on energy production, and therefore wealth creation and economic growth, on this basis? There is no good reason, it turns out. The only reason to pursue a carbon dioxide cap is the Kyoto Protocol. With both of those rash proposals now shelved with the advent of a new administration, cooler heads have indeed prevailed.
Christopher C. Horner is counsel for the Cooler Heads Coalition in Washington.
-------
Environmental backlash hits White House
USA Today
04/05/2001 - Updated 12:52 AM ET
By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-04-bushenviro.htm
WASHINGTON - Environmentalists are airing radio ads attacking President Bush's policies. Democrats in Congress are planning anti-Bush rallies on Earth Day later this month. Prominent leaders and scientific thinkers from Jimmy Carter to Stephen Hawking are urging Bush to address global warming.
Even late-night talk-show hosts, whose ability to influence public opinion is not lost on politicians, are getting into the act. "President Bush now is defending his weakening of his environmental policy," NBC "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno said recently in his opening monologue. "He spoke very casually about it today while eating a dolphin sandwich off of his new ivory desk."
But at the White House, the attacks are no laughing matter.
After a series of recent decisions on the environment that have sparked outrage worldwide, criticism is flowing in - and it's not just coming from Democrats and environmentalists. Some Republican lawmakers are concerned that Bush's decisions could jeopardize the GOP's slim control of Congress in next year's elections.
As a result, frustrated Bush aides are struggling to find ways to resuscitate the president's image.
On Earth Day, April 22, Bush will be in Canada at the Summit of the Americas. So aides plan to send him on the road before then to address his plans to improve the environment.
In coming weeks, "the president will be talking more about how he intends to improve the air we breathe and the water we drink," spokesman Dan Bartlett says.
Some Republicans want Bush to act fast to stem the criticism.
"I would hope they're burning the midnight oil trying to figure out how to recoup from the short-term damage they've suffered," says Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., a leading environmentalist in Congress. "If they don't do something, they're going to be hurting."
Each of Bush's decisions, on issues ranging from arsenic in drinking water to carbon-dioxide emissions, has angered environmentalists. Taken together, they have stunned and invigorated Bush's critics.
"I've been around a long time, and even though I disagree with people, I usually understand why they've done things," says Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. "What he has done is absolutely unbelievable."
Reid is among 14 Democratic senators who signed a letter to Bush criticizing his decision to walk away from the Kyoto Protocol, a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gases. And 57 House Democrats have sent a letter asking him to reconsider his decision not to force reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants.
Bush has argued that his decisions are good for the economy. He has said that requiring plants to limit carbon-dioxide emissions, for example, would be too expensive for the plants and would lead to higher prices for consumers during a growing energy crisis.
But Bush has had a hard time selling that position. And his aides are expressing frustration that his pro-environment decisions have been ignored.
One example: Bush decided not to repeal Clinton's creation of 19 additional national monuments. "That was a significant decision that has almost been taken for granted," Bartlett says.
The criticism and warnings aren't just coming from environmentalists who opposed Bush's election. In an open letter published this week in "Time" magazine, a diverse group of scientists and world leaders called on the president to develop a plan to reduce production of greenhouse gases. In addition to Carter and Hawking, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, retired TV anchor Walter Cronkite and philanthropist George Soros, among others signed the letter.
Some conservative analysts are warning that Bush has left himself and Republican lawmakers in Congress vulnerable to charges that the GOP is beholden to big business. Marshall Wittmann, a conservative analyst at the Hudson Institute, says GOP candidates could pay a price for Bush's actions in the 2002 elections. Democrats lost Congress in 1994 after President Clinton became mired in issues ranging from tax increases and health care reform to gays in the military.
The White House "should be concerned about the environment as a symbol, rather than as an issue," Wittmann says. "That's what Bush has to be worried about - the image of being dominated by corporate special interests."
Environmentalists are gearing up to make that point. The 650,000-member Sierra Club is running radio ads in nine states from Colorado to New Hampshire to attack Bush's environmental rollbacks. The ads also are intended to put pressure on Republican members of Congress.
"There's no question that the environment could seriously undermine Bush among swing voters in key states," says the Sierra Club's former political director, Daniel Weiss, now an environmental consultant. "There's no question that he is painting his party with an anti-environment brush. Whether or not that's going to cripple them 18 months from now (in the 2002 elections) is a little premature. But first impressions are hard to shake."
-------- spying
Bush expresses 'regret' for collision
President Bush answers questions Thursday at the annual convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington.
MSNBC
04/05/01
Jim Miklaszewski
MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
http://www.msnbc.com/news/553032.asp#BODY
WASHINGTON, April 5 - While stopping short of meeting Beijing's demand for an apology, President Bush on Thursday for the first time publicly expressed regret for the midair collision that triggered a diplomatic standoff over a U.S. Navy spy plane and its crew. The president's comments came as U.S. officials reported "encouraging signs" during intensive discussions aimed at securing the release of the plane's 24-member crew. Bush said China must act soon to avoid destabilizing relations between the countries.
ADDRESSING NEWSPAPER editors amid a flurry of diplomatic initiatives aimed at resolving the impasse, Bush said, "I regret that a Chinese pilot is missing and I regret that one of their planes was lost."
"We should not let this incident destabilize relations," he added.
But Bush also reiterated his previous statement that China must allow the crew members to return home.
"We are working all diplomatic channels. ... The Chinese have got to act and I hope they do so quickly," he said.
Bush declined further comment about intensive discussions between U.S. and Chinese officials aimed at securing the release of the crew.
The crew members have been under detention since Sunday's midair collision between a U.S. EP-3E surveillance plane and a Chinese jet fighter, which resulted in the U.S. plane making an emergency landing on China's Hainan Island and the Chinese jet crashing into the South China Sea.
Earlier, a Bush administration source told NBC News that "encouraging signs" developed in behind-the-scenes talks with China.
CHINA: INTERNATIONAL LAW VIOLATED
Indications of progress ran contrary to China's public comments.
China said Thursday that it was questioning the crew members, while asserting that the plane "violated international law," NBC's Ned Colt reported Thursday from Beijing.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi, who disclosed the questioning at a news conference, wouldn't say whether the 21 men and three women were considered spies or what penalties they might face.
"They have caused this air collision incident," Sun said. "It is fully natural for competent authorities in China to question them about this incident."
A Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, said the U.S. had no confirmation that the questioning was going on. But he played down the significance of such a move, saying it wouldn't be surprising that the Chinese would want to talk to the crew members as part of their accident investigation.
The public exchanges occurred amid increasingly intensive private "discussions" - administration officials resisted characterizing them as negotiations - aimed at freeing the crew and recovering the plane, which is outfitted with the latest in U.S. communications-interception technology.
The U.S. ambassador to China, Joseph Prueher, held several meetings with Chinese Foreign Ministry officials within the last day, the Bush administration source said. Based on those talks, the source added, "we are seeing encouraging signs." The source did not elaborate.
NEGOTIATORS 'HEAVILY ENGAGED'
China's ambassador to the United States, Yang Jiechi, said, "We have reached a diplomatic point where matters are heavily engaged," as he entered the State Department for his second meeting in two days with Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer used almost-identical words in a briefing for reporters: "The governments are heavily engaged and we will continue to monitor events."
Fleischer declined to provide specifics, saying negotiations were at a sensitive stage.
He said Armitage had "pressed again for access to the crew, the release of the crew" at the meeting with Yang.
Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also indicated progress was being made on NBC's "Today" show Thursday. "I think behind-the-scenes activities (to break the stalemate) may be more substantial than are apparent at the front," he said.
Despite the hints of optimism, Fleisher suggested for the first time publicly that trade ties with China could be damaged if the incident isn't resolved soon. He said Bush's support of free trade relations with China, an issue of enormous impact to the U.S. and Chinese economies, will depend on the outcome of the standoff.
Congress must vote this year on whether to maintain normal trade relations with China. Bush has supported the action in the past.
Fleischer had a similar step-at-a-time formulation for the administration's position on Beijing hosting the 2008 Olympic games.
At the same time, China appeared to dig in its heels in public comments on Thursday.
Sun, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, suggested in Beijing that U.S. diplomats wouldn't be allowed to see the crew again until the American government apologizes.
U.S. diplomats were allowed to meet for the first time with the crew late Tuesday, more than two days after the collision. The diplomats say China has not responded to requests for further meetings.
"If the U.S. side takes a cooperative approach, we will consider another visit," Sun said. Asked what China considered a "cooperative approach," he said, "The U.S. side should admit its mistakes, apologize and explain to the Chinese people. This is the first step."
MIXED REVIEWS FOR POWELL COMMENT
As Bush did on Thursday, Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday stopped short of the formal apology that China is demanding. "We regret the loss of life of that Chinese pilot, but now we need to move on," he said.
He reiterated U.S. concern and regret for the pilot's death in a letter to Beijing.
The Chinese gave the comment mixed reviews.
Sun said the government considered the expression of regret "a step in the right direction."
"We do not want to see U.S.-Chinese relations affected by this incident," he added.
But Yang, the Chinese ambassador, indicated in an interview on PBS' "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer," that China considered the condolences insufficient.
"They didn't even say they are sorry," he said. "We will have to wait and see what will be the further response from the American side. We would like to see a speedy settlement of this issue but the ball is not in our court."
ANTI-U.S. PROTESTS SQUELCHED?
China appeared to be keeping a lid on domestic protests against the United States. Armed police again detained several Chinese protesters outside the walled U.S. Embassy compound in Beijing on Thursday. Chinese police have also tightened security near the compound.
China's state-run media were restrained in their initial reporting of the incident, but they have become increasingly critical of the United States as the standoff continues.
On Thursday, the Xinhua News Agency said the pilot's wife expressed outrage at the U.S. plane's "hegemonist acts."
China and the United States disagree over whether the EP-3E was flying in international airspace when it collided with one of two Chinese F-8 fighters sent to track it. Such U.S. flights are meant to gather information on China's military by recording radio, radar and other signals.
The United States maintains that one of two Chinese fighter jets shadowing the spy plane clipped the larger craft's wing, causing the collision. Even though the plane landed in China without permission, it did so in a life-threatening emergency and therefore China had no right under international law to seize it, the United States says. U.S. military officials said they believe Chinese officials have boarded the plane and examined its equipment despite American objections.
NEW ACCOUNT OF ACCIDENT
Citing sources briefed by U.S. intelligence officials, the Washington Post reported in its Thursday editions that the collision occurred after a Chinese F-8 interceptor started to fly directly below the U.S. plane, which at the same time executed a banking maneuver to the left.
The account did not make clear who was to blame, but it seemed to explain Chinese charges that the American plane moved "suddenly" and thereby triggered the accident.
On "Today," Sen. Lugar said the Chinese pilot had challenged the American plane on previous occasions. Lugar said of the Chinese aviator: "It appears to me on this occasion he simply exceeded his grasp."
Former Defense Secretary William Cohen said the United States had previously protested the practices of Chinese interceptor pilots. "A very strong protest was lodged back in January (over) these fighter aircraft coming within a matter of feet of reconnaissance aircraft, thereby posing a danger to all concerned. That apparently is what happened here," Cohen said on CNN.
WashPost: Details of the midair collision
http://www.msnbc.com/news/554930.asp
WARNINGS FROM CONGRESS
Outraged by China's detention of the plane and its crew, the leaders of several congressional delegations due to visit China in coming days indicated Thursday that they would cancel the trips unless Beijing released the detained fliers.
On Wednesday, more than two dozen lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives proposed legislation that would revoke Beijing's trade benefits in the American market.
April 4 - NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports on the plane's 24 American crew members, who they are and what they do.
Republicans and Democrats scoffed at the suggestion Washington should apologize for the incident.
"I've got an apology for them. I'm sorry we ever passed PNTR (permanent normalized trade relations) and I'll do my best to take it back," said Rep. Thomas Tancredo, R-Colo.
Several lawmakers said the standoff also increased the chances Washington would sell high-tech weaponry to bolster Taiwan's defenses, including four destroyers equipped with Aegis radar systems.
"It's a done deal now," said one of China's most outspoken critics, California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.
Still unclear is how much the Chinese would be able to learn from the reconnaissance plane. In Tuesday's meeting with U.S. diplomats, the crew of the U.S. spy plane indicated they destroyed the intelligence-gathering equipment and data aboard the plane before it landed.
NBC News' Ned Colt in Beijing, Campbell Brown and Jim Miklaszewski in Washington, as well as The Associated Press and Reuters, contributed to this report.
---
China and US stand firm
Australian News Network
05apr01
By MICHAEL BEACH in New York
http://news.com.au/newspulse/pulseframe/0,4711,1865955^2,00.html
CHINA and the US are headed for an international crisis over the 24 aircrew held in China in the wake of the spy plane collision.
The stand-off reached crunch point yesterday as both countries' leaders refused to give ground.
US President George W. Bush increased his demands for China to release the US Navy EP-3E spy plane and its 24 detained crew members.
But Chinese President Jiang Zemin broke his silence to demand an apology from the US, saying it was totally to blame for the incident.
Reports yesterday said China was considering putting the crew on trial, as tension over the grounding and seizure of the aircraft grew.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the fate of the 21 men and three women, who have been interrogated repeatedly, would be decided after an investigation.
A conviction for murder or manslaughter is unlikely but should it come to that, the airmen would face 10 to 20 years in a labour camp.
Dramatic pictures of the damaged navy spy plane, at an airbase on the island of Hainan, were released by China's Xinhua News Agency.
The pictures showed the plane's left propeller broken and tears on the underside of its left wing caused by a mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter on Sunday. The collision happened about 95km south-east of Hainan, a popular tourist destination 650km west of Hong Kong.
US spy satellite photos revealed that the Chinese military have stripped the plane of its top secret electronic eavesdropping equipment.
The photos showed the plane's racks of computer hardware -- some destroyed by the crew before they made an emergency landing -- had been removed and laid out on the tarmac.
Defence sources said the plane fell several thousand feet before the pilot regained control. The confusion would not have allowed the crew enough time to destroy all its computers, containing classified information gathered on the spy mission.
Taiwanese military sources who monitored the cockpit exchanges said the spy plane was fired at and forced down by Chinese jets after it tried to fly away.
Sixty hours after the spy plane made an emergency landing, China allowed a US military attache to speak to the 24 crew for 40 minutes yesterday.
He reported they were safe and apparently being well treated.
The meeting with the crew took place at military barracks near Haikou, the capital of Hainan, a tropical island off China's southern coast.
"The entire crew is in good health," said Brigadier General Neal Sealock, the US embassy defence attache, one of two diplomats who visited the crew.
"They are being well taken care of. Our goal is to get them home as soon as possible," he said.
But there was no sign when they would be allowed to return home.
The Chinese laid down ground rules for the meeting, but the diplomats -- with Chinese officials in attendance -- were allowed to discuss the crew's health, the operations during the emergency landing, and standard procedures taken to protect intelligence, a senior US official in Washington said.
The Bush Administration believes the crew managed to destroy some of the intelligence information on the plane, the official said.
Mr Bush yesterday said any further delay in returning the 24 crew members or the plane could damage already unsettled Sino-US relations.
"This accident has the potential of undermining our hopes for a fruitful and productive relationship between our two countries," he said.
"To keep that from happening, our servicemen and women need to come home."
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhu Bangzao, claimed the EP-3E violated international law and intruded into Chinese airspace.
The US military says the EP-3E was on a routine surveillance mission in international airspace.
Mr Jiang called for an end to US surveillance flights off China's coast "so as to prevent similar accidents from happening again", Mr Zhu said.
China said its downed fighter pilot, Wang Wei, parachuted out after the collision and was still missing, despite a massive search. US officials say China did not respond to an offer to help search for the pilot.
Taiwanese military sources suggested the spy plane was collecting information on a Soviet-made Sovremenny-class destroyer, the most advanced fighting ship in the Chinese navy.
---
Staying cool with China
Christian Science Monitor
THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2001
OPINION By Jonathan D. Pollack
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/05/fp11s1-csm.shtml
NEWPORT, R.I. - Abruptly and unexpectedly, US-China relations are imperiled by events far removed from either nation's capital.
Sunday's mid-air collision of a US Navy EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft and a Chinese Naval Air Force fighter near Hainan Island was an accident waiting to happen. Chinese pilots, presumably with authorization from their military superiors, had been engaged in much closer pursuit of US intelligence-gathering aircraft in recent months, and US officials had repeatedly warned Chinese counterparts about the increased risks inherent in such conduct.
The warnings have come to naught, resulting in the death of one Chinese pilot and the emergency landing of the EP-3 at a Chinese naval air base on Hainan, with 24 US military personnel under the physical control of local authorities. Given the extensive damage to the American aircraft, the US personnel are fortunate to have escaped with their lives.
Neither country's leaders should take much solace that this accident did not involve the loss of far more lives. It has already engendered consequences for the perennially troubled Sino-American relationship that could prove very difficult to repair, at least in the near term. Less than three months into the George W. Bush presidency, the two countries confront the prospect of a major diplomatic row, one whose reverberations could set the tone for bilateral relations for years to come.
At time of writing, the Bush administration clearly hoped that a firm but respectful attitude in negotiations over release of the crew would soon bear fruit, though the prospects for the early return of the aircraft seemed far more problematic. The new foreign policy team recognizes that there can be no gain in stoking the aggrieved Chinese nationalism upon which Beijing leaders are only too prepared to rely. But the president's deportment has yet to be reciprocated by leaders in China, who may well be animated by domestic preoccupations far more pressing than an expeditious conclusion to the events in the South China Sea.
It seems incomprehensible that last Sunday's incident could indefinitely preoccupy the Chinese and US leaderships, thereby foreclosing the development of more productive ties. But political support for the bilateral relationship seems extraordinarily shallow in both countries. Despite the compelling incentives for cordial if not intimate relations between the United States and China over an array of international issues, the center of gravity in bilateral relations seems increasingly unsteady. With few leaders prepared to expend appreciable political capital on enhancing bilateral ties, senior officials are denied the creativity and flexibility essential under more stressful circumstances.
In the charged atmosphere of Beijing politics, it is often difficult to filter the signals from the noise. However, the Bush administration has no alternative but to conduct private and public relations with China in a forthright manner, while avoiding needless provocation of Beijing that feeds those forces in China who would welcome a severe estrangement in US-China ties.
Should the impasse persist, however, the administration will also face growing pressure to "do something," especially from members of Congress. Used judiciously, quiet reminders to Chinese interlocutors can underscore the potential risks to bilateral relations should the contretemps persist without satisfactory resolution, let alone deteriorate further.
But the events in the South China Sea can also have a chastening effect on the new administration. Upon entering office, President Bush pledged to devote his primary foreign policy efforts to reinvigorating relations with America's major allies, which he claimed had been neglected at the expense of the Clinton administration's efforts to cultivate ties with Russia and with China. By implication, the new foreign policy leadership sought to defer fuller consideration of relations with Moscow and with Beijing, and quite possibly relegate both to a lesser priority in US policy concerns.
Recent events, therefore, could well have an unanticipated if somewhat salutary effect. They have provided a sobering reminder to the new administration that it does not have the luxury of deferring development of a credible, sustainable China policy to a later date. Indeed, America's closest allies in Asia probably worry more about the consequences of a prolonged US-China estrangement for their own interests than any other issue in regional relations.
Both literally and figuratively, therefore, the new administration unexpectedly finds China on its radar screen. Though President Bush must now deal with US-China relations far sooner than he might have preferred, it is the reality he now confronts.
The immediacy of an early foreign policy crisis with China should be chastening to the new team, but the risks and dangers should be equally sobering to the Chinese. Dealing credibly and coolly with this incident presents both leaderships with the opportunity to develop meaningful rules of the road for the longer term, and will also underscore a shared stake in effective crisis management.
Failure to achieve satisfactory outcomes will entail even larger potential consequences. Even as China characterizes itself as the aggrieved party that must be compensated for last Sunday's events, the prospect of a deeper US-China estrangement ought to give both countries pause. Neither can afford to let events in the South China Sea determine its policies for the indefinite future.
• Jonathan D. Pollack is chairman of the Strategic Research Department of the Naval War College in Newport, R. I., where he also directs the college's Asia-Pacific Studies Group. The opinions expressed here are entirely his own, and should not be attributed to the Naval War College or the US government.
---
US-CHINA STANDOFF
Suspicion is a two-way mirror
Christian Science Monitor
THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2001
By Ann Scott Tyson Special correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/05/fp1s4-csm.shtml
ARLINGTON, VA. - Debbie Stevens brushes off her hands after building a shelf at a store in Pentagon City, and gives her prognosis for US-China relations.
"We're pretty much on a collision course," says the clerk, who comes from a military family. "We think in different ways. We grew up with different philosophies. Certainly, we're going to clash."
An ocean away in China, street corners and Internet chatrooms are brimming with anti-American sentiment unleashed by the loss of a Chinese fighter pilot and jet, which crashed after colliding with a US spy plane.
Jin Tao, a Beijing businesswoman in pinstripes, complains that the US is "rich and strong and wants to push others around." Postings on a popular Chinese website are more venomous. "Beat the American devils," says one.
As the brinkmanship over the military brush intensifies - with Beijing demanding an apology and the Bush administration refusing - the highly charged popular emotions that have long characterized America's interactions with China are once again on full display.
On both sides, deep feelings of nationalistic pride combine with old, mental scripts that Chinese and Americans seem to endlessly replay, constraining leaders as they seek a way out of the current diplomatic standoff.
"In China, there is a long story of victimization by the West, and the Western countries being aggressive toward China and ... bending it to their will," says Richard Madsen, author of "China and the American Dream." "This deep, lingering suspicion is always there, available to be amplified."
China's fear of foreign bullying dates at least as far back as the 19th-century Opium Wars and the forced opening of Chinese ports by Western powers - events that remain mainstays of Chinese Communist propaganda.
Today, China's wariness is focused squarely on the United States, as its emergence as the world's sole superpower has coincided with a series of diplomatic and military showdowns with Beijing over the past decade.
The American forced search in 1993 of a Chinese ship suspected of carrying poison gas, the 1996 dispatching of two US battle groups to the Taiwan Strait after China fired missiles off the island, the 1999 US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade - all created "a mental picture of military intimidation against the Chinese people," says David Lampton, author of a book on US-China relations titled "Same Bed, Different Dreams."
Americans, too, have their script on China. "Our stories on China go back to the cold-war era, to Red China - that still rings a lot of bells among a sector of the American public," says Mr. Madsen, a sociologist at the University of California at San Diego.
Today, many Americans "see China as the last remaining communist power, as sort of a piece of unfinished business for America," he says. "They would like to change China - sometimes this is connected to religious change, by missionaries - and, if not to change it, to fight it."
Such sentiments in America have grown in tandem with China's rising economic, technological, and political strength. Seating his last customers for the night, Max Sagastizado, manager of the Chevy Mexican Restaurant in Arlington, Va., explains his uneasiness about Beijing.
"Down in their hearts Chinese Communists have antagonism toward the United States," he says, as salsa music plays around him. "They want to exceed the US in nuclear technology. Then I think China will turn around and dominate Japan and other Asian countries to expand their power."
As US-China contacts have mushroomed and the breadth and complexity of the relationship has expanded vastly in the past two decades, frictions have arisen over issues such as ballooning trade deficits and persistent human rights violations.
For many Americans such as Ms. Stevens, images of Tiananmen Square, where China used troops and tanks to crush pro-democracy protests in 1989, remain vivid. "I was appalled by Tiananmen Square and what I've heard of the human rights abuses," says Stevens, who asked that her real name not be used.
Tiananmen, where hopes for democracy were raised and then brutally dashed, looms especially large in American minds. The US television audience for the event was astronomical, approaching the number who viewed the lunar landing, Mr. Lampton says.
Such deeply rooted attitudes play into the hands of hard-line political factions in Beijing and Washington, creating difficulties for moderate leaders who seek to steady the relationship. In Washington, conservative Republicans are pressing the Bush administration to adopt a tough stance toward China in the wake of the weaker Clinton administration.
In Beijing, anti-American attitudes are considered safer for officials amid the uncertainties surrounding the succession of President Jiang Zemin.
Nevertheless, there is a silver lining in the growing US-China codependence, mainly based on vital economic interests but also in shared strategic concerns. China is now America's fourth largest trading partner, and at least some Americans and Chinese recognize that, pragmatically, we have to get along.
Dennis Lok, a Hong Kong garment salesman in Beijing for a show, says he feels no ill will toward the US for the air incident. "The United States is no different from any other country. It wants to protect its interests," he says.
In a quiet neighborhood of Livingston, Mont., town commissioner Caron Cooper agrees. "We need to be friends," she says. "China is such an enormous market for American goods.... How can you ignore a market with well over a billion people?"
• Contributing to this report were staff writer Robert Marquand in Beijing and Todd Wilkinson in Bozeman, Mont.
---
US and China can still limit the damage from the crisis
WORLD INTERVIEW / KENNETH LIEBERTHAL
Christian Science Monitor
THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2001
By Robert Marquand Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/05/fp7s2-csm.shtml
BEIJING - Until January, Kenneth Lieberthal dealt with China from the vantage of the White House. As special assistant to former President Clinton, and senior director for Asia at the National Security Council, Dr. Lieberthal shaped policy and doused fires in US-China relations. He was dispatched by Mr. Clinton to Beijing in 1999 when Chinese leaders considered a military option with Taiwan. He was a chief implementer of the Clinton administration's policy of "strategic partnership" with China. Lieberthal, in Beijing for a conference, shared his views over the ongoing downed-aircraft episode with the Monitor.
Tensions between the US and China have escalated quickly.
Each side must recognize it is better to put this behind us with minimum damage, and not allow it to develop in a way that will be a significant disruptive issue. In a few days, the US public is going to start viewing the crew as hostages. Public opinion on both sides may start to mobilize. It starts linking to other issues, and becomes a source to be used by those on both sides who want to create trouble in the relationship.
You feel both sides have made mistakes.
Both sides took steps that left considerable flexibility; then both made mistakes.
I think President Bush's personal, public comment criticizing China ... greatly increased the pressure on Chinese President Jiang [Zemin] to show he could be equally tough. President Bush's comment was made well before the deadline the Chinese had for providing access to the crew.... We should want the Chinese to provide access as soon as humanly possible. But if they delay, they are still within their rights. We handled this in a way that nearly required President Jiang to take a tougher line.
What about the Chinese?
They portrayed this ... as a morality play with no shades of gray.... This new posture by China certainly gives Jiang Zemin greater control of the situation within China, by showing he is tough. But at the same time, he has set conditions that will be hard to meet.
I do not believe from what I know that the US is 100 percent responsible. I would be surprised if we accepted 100 percent responsibility for something that may have been ... a Chinese pilot's error. Without an investigation, you simply don't know....
That applies equally to Jiang Zemin, he doesn't know either. But he has declared a conclusion.... The Chinese have not told their own people that the US offered to assist in the search for the Chinese pilot. That the American ambassador expressed his concern for the fate of the Chinese pilot. Or that the landing of the American plane on Chinese territory was because the plane was so damaged it was not airworthy to get back to US base facilities. The average Chinese could get the impression that the US really doesn't care about the loss suffered by the Chinese side in this.
What should be done now?
Intensive private diplomacy. Both sides need agreement on two things. First, the bottom line - when does the US get the plane back, when is the crew released? What statements need to be made for getting this resolved? These are not things you can negotiate publicly....
Second, there must be agreement on what each side needs to do domestically in order to manage the issue. You have to work out both the substance and the packaging .... All of this assumes that each side wishes to limit the damage.
What's your characterization of the US role in the US-China relationship?
We have an interest in China joining the international community as a country that plays by the rules, accepts the rules, contributes wealth, and takes care of the roughly 20 percent of the world's people who live within its borders. That means a country where knowledge of weapons of mass destruction and means of delivery does not become a source of knowledge for rogue states and terrorist groups. We have a stake in helping China move in those directions. It is hard to have effective influence on those issues when you have a state of fundamental confrontation. China is not Luxembourg.
Are there more hawks in the current White House than there were in the previous administration?
This administration does contain a number of people at a policy level who have stressed in the past their view that America has dealt with China too leniently, too softly, and with too much trust. I think their view is wrong. If they don't handle China in a mature fashion, they will find they end up with a whole lot of trouble they didn't need, and with a lot fewer accomplishments than they expected.
Do China's recent actions confirm the opinion of the group that perceives China as a threat?
No matter what China does, it can be played as a threat.... At any given time, there is bad news coming out of here, and there is also good news coming out. People with different policy preferences pick the news they want to highlight, and run with it.
Regarding the potential sale of the Aegis radar system to Taiwan - why did you hold off?
We decided ... on the basis of our best judgment of what Taiwan needed and could use militarily; and also a recognition that Taiwan's security has a diplomatic as well as military component. During the course of the two Clinton administrations, we agreed to the sale of roughly $20 billion in military assistance to Taiwan. That is more than any country in the world, with the exception of Saudi Arabia. So the comment one sometimes hears from the new administration about the previous administration, that we neglected Taiwan's military needs, is simply absurd.
Our judgment was that the Aegis system was not necessary, it would not be available for many years anyway, it was not clear whether Taiwan's military could absorb it, and it would be diplomatically a setback. It would significantly raise tensions across the strait. So we did not reach a decision to forever deny the Aegis system, but a decision that last year there were things that made more sense to purchase.
---
Spies Like Us
ZDnet.com
April 5, 2001 2:44 PM PT
By Todd Spangler, Interactive Week
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/columns/0,4164,2705315,00.html
"You can hope that your staff are only surfing the Net for business use . . . or you can ensure it."
That's the rather ominous marketing pitch from SurfControl, one of the leading purveyors of Web-filtering software for businesses. The SurfWatch system - and similar products from Elron Software, Websense and others - can monitor and log each Web site network users visit. They're able to block access to specific sites a company deems inappropriate, as well as to predefined site categories. They provide sophisticated data-reporting tools that can red-flag individuals who are visiting an unusual number of nonbusiness-related Web sites.
Sound creepy? It's maybe even creepier once you realize that surveillance of employees' Internet activity is surprisingly common. According to the American Management Association, 54 percent of the 2,100 companies it surveyed last year said they monitor Internet usage in some way.
Personally, it's frightening to me to know that my company can check to see how much time and bandwidth I've spent checking on my bid for that Ricky Martin CD on eBay, and that if my company believes that's an abuse of its resources it could - within its rights, if I've been told that's an unacceptable use of the network - fire me.
But when I think about this issue from an Internet manager's viewpoint, I'm convinced that companies have the right to ensure their networks aren't being abused. Look, they're paying for the bandwidth, so they get to decide what to do with it.
The key, of course, is to prevent abuse in a way that won't cause employees to freak out. Here are some common-sense guidelines.
Develop a clear and consistent acceptable-use policy. "It's always critical to communicate with employees and explain why you're doing this," says Kelly Haggerty, vice president of product management at SurfControl. Outline the company's need to use bandwidth for business reasons and spell out the legal points, if applicable. Many Web-filtering vendors provide templates for the wording of such policies.
Don't overblock Web sites. There's nothing worse than blocking sites people need to get to for their jobs, says Jeff Smith, CEO of Cerberian, a Utah start-up that has developed a hosted Web-filtering service.
Give users a way to circumvent blocked sites. Some filtering tools allow blocked sites to be bypassed with a password.
If done properly, Web filtering should not be a Big Brother scare tactic. It's simply good business.
---
Beijing Steps Up its War of Word Over Air Collision
New York Times
April 5, 2001
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/05/world/05CHIN.html
BEIJING, April 4 - China hardened its position today on the midair collision of an American spy plane and a Chinese jet, with President Jiang Zemin personally insisting that China receive an official apology and the country's foreign minister accusing the United States of being wrong-headed and "arrogant."
As President Jiang left on a previously scheduled trip to Latin America, he said that "the United States should apologize to the Chinese for the incident and bear all responsibilities for the consequences of the incident," according to the official New China News Agency.
Later in the day, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan summoned the American ambassador to Beijing, Adm. Joseph W. Prueher, to his office for an official dressing-down. According to the news agency's account of the meeting, Mr. Tang said that the United States "has displayed an arrogant air, used lame arguments, confounded right and wrong and made groundless accusations against China." In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell issued a statement of regret over the loss of a Chinese pilot. [Page A10.]
Up to now, China's leaders have seemed eager to avoid an overtly hostile confrontation at a time when the country is preparing to enter the World Trade Organization and competing to play host to the 2008 Olympics. But that restraint seemed to vanish with today's escalating war of words, which seemed at least partly prompted by the widespread feeling here, in and out of government, that President Bush had been dismissive of China's concerns in his comments since the collision over the South China Sea on Sunday.
Even with today's heated atmosphere, it appeared that both governments were hoping to minimize the long-term fallout of the event and avoid the type of public outcry that occurred when NATO planes bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in May 1999 during the alliance's war against Yugoslavia.
Today, the American Embassy here would only confirm that Admiral Prueher had met with the foreign minister, but would not comment further.
In Washington, General Powell sent a letter to the Chinese outlining ways the two countries could solve the standoff. Otherwise, the United States has continued to insist that it would not apologize for the incident. Instead, President Bush and other American officials have demanded that the 24 Americans who were on board be returned promptly. They have also said that the plane, which they say enjoys "sovereign immunity" should not be boarded, even though American officials admit that Chinese officials have probably already done so.
On Sunday, the Chinese jet spiraled into the ocean and the pilot is still missing. The American reconnaissance aircraft, an EP-3E Aries II filled with sensitive surveillance equipment, made an emergency landing at the nearest airfield, on Hainan Island in southern China. The plane and its crew were immediately taken into Chinese custody.
For the first two days, Chinese officials and state news media made only a few subdued statements about the event - although they have said from the start that the American plane caused the accident by making a sudden turn. American military leaders have insisted that Chinese planes were tailing at an unsafe distance. The collision took place in international airspace about 65 miles outside China's territorial waters.
China's apparently hardening position seemed to reflect a growing sense of concern, even outrage, among many citizens here. "I feel choked with anger," said Shi Qi, a shop assistant in Beijing, reflecting an extreme but recurrent theme among youths here. "Our government should have shot down the plane. Jiang Zemin is too weak. If Grandpa Mao were still alive, the Americans would not dare to bully us."
Although Americans tend to view President Jiang as just another Communist leader, many Chinese - both in the military and outside it - view him as too Westernized and conciliatory toward the United States.
The public outrage probably results partly from the fact that Chinese newspapers have not yet fully published the American version of the events surrounding the collision, including its complaints that the Chinese fighter got far too close and that it was the responsibility of the fast and nimble Chinese jet to move out of the way, rather than the lumbering spy plane.
Many people here are not aware that the American plane also sustained damage and that American officials have said that its landing on Hainan Island was an emergency measure. The Chinese press has criticized the American plane for landing without permission and violating China's airspace and its "sovereignty" as it came down.
But even those who were fully aware of the American position - widely available on Internet sites and in chat rooms - said they were feeling that the new American president had let them down.
"How could Bush Junior just stand up like that and demand that China return the plane and the crew?" said Kang Xin, a retired editor, who said he believed that the initial collision was just an accident.
"Even though the U.S. is the only superpower in the world, Bush Junior should not talk to China in such a way," Mr. Kang said. "I don't think the Chinese government can back off unless the U.S. softens its stance, as the Chinese leaders have to take public opinion into account."
"He is not like his father, who knew how to deal with Deng Xiaoping, even after the Tiananmen Square incident," Mr. Kang said, referring to the Chinese military's suppression of pro-democracy student protesters in 1989. At the time, former President George Bush was highly critical of the crackdown. But he soon sent emissaries to Beijing and is now regarded here as a "friend of China." He has often come back to meet leaders and give highly paid speeches with the support of American business.
Still, there were signs today that the Chinese hoped to keep outrage over the incident under control.
President Jiang left as scheduled for his two-week trip, a move that at once bolstered confidence among American officials that the incident would pass, but also raised fears that it might be difficult to gain release of the crew in his absence.
News coverage has been carefully parsed, with all state newspapers relying heavily on coverage from the official news agency. As the tension escalated today, the stories did move from inside the newspaper to the front page and were occasionally accompanied by pictures of the downed plane - with headlines like "Evidence of Their Bullying."
But none of the coverage reached the sensationalism of the articles and editorials that followed the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade when China's newspapers went on a free-for-all, printing gory pictures and editorials of outrage. Today, some Chinese dismissed the angry rhetoric on both sides as normal behavior in the arena of international politics. "Neither side is behaving honorably, but both sides are behaving just like you'd expect great powers to act," an editor said. "Each side is trying to push the other and not loose face - but also not to go too far."
---
Powell Offers China Aides Outline for Standoff's End
New York Times
April 5, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER and JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/05/world/05PLAN.html
WASHINGTON, April 4 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell sent a letter tonight to China's senior foreign policy official, outlining ways that the two countries could resolve the standoff over the 24 American spy plane crew members held in China since Sunday.
A senior State Department official declined to outline the proposals, which were addressed to Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen, who met President Bush at the White House nearly two weeks ago, before the collision of the spy plane and a Chinese jet fighter over the South China Sea.
Hours earlier, in an effort to satisfy Chinese demands for an apology, General Powell issued a statement of regret over the loss of a Chinese pilot in that collision. But officials acknowledged that General Powell's statement was unlikely to be sufficient, and they met in session after session at the White House in search of other avenues to win the release of the crew members detained on Hainan Island.
In a flurry of negotiations, the American ambassador to China, Joseph Prueher, met with Chinese officials in Beijing, and late this afternoon China's new ambassador to the United States, Yang Jiechi, came to the State Department. It was there that General Powell delivered the letter addressed to Mr. Qian, who is traveling in Latin American with China's president, Jiang Zemin.
But after President Bush went before the cameras on Monday and Tuesday to demand the release of the crew members, the administration was trying a different tack today. White House officials said they wanted to lower the diplomatic temperature for a few days, in hopes that Chinese officials could conclude their "investigation" of the collision more quickly if they did not feel under public pressure.
Meanwhile, White House officials, led by the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, appeared to be reaching out to prominent individuals respected by the Chinese to reinforce their messages to Beijing. A congressional delegation scheduled to leave for Beijing this weekend was encouraged by the State Department to go ahead with the trip, even if it might be politically difficult for some members to be seen in the Chinese capital while American flyers were being held.
But when Mr. Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer, was asked today whether the China hands who could intervene with Beijing included the 41st president, George Bush, a former envoy to China, he said: "The president has asked me to keep any conversations he has with his father privileged, private." He said the same would be true about any conversation with Mr.Bush's predecessors, "whether they're father-son, or whether a president is talking to a predecessor of no relation."
The continued talks with the Chinese here and in Beijing and the carefully calibrated level of anti- American language emanating from the Chinese government gave some administration officials hope that the Chinese now are looking for a way to resolve the standoff.
They hoped General Powell could push that along today by expanding on President Bush's previous statement of "regret" - but not American responsibility - for the collision.
"We regret the Chinese plane did not get down safe and we regret the loss of the life of that Chinese pilot," he said this morning. "But now we need to move on, we need to bring this to a resolution and we're using every avenue available to us to talk to the Chinese side to exchange explanations and move on."
At the Pentagon, military officials said they have now concluded that the crew members successfully deleted top-secret codes and intelligence before Chinese boarded the plane on the island of Hainan, stripping it of much of its remaining intelligence-gathering hardware.
In the harrowing minutes after the collision, crew members also managed to jettison sensitive pieces of electronic equipment from the aircraft and into the South China Sea as they prepared to land, one senior official said.
At the State Department, a team was considering other avenues of solving the problem, from sending special envoys to proposing a Chinese-American commission that could set up procedures to deal with future incidents.
But several mysteries remained. One concerns the role of President Jiang Zemin, who left China on a tour of Latin America with Deputy Prime Minister Qian.
Some American officials speculated today that the crew could be returned during Mr. Jiang's travels, freeing the Chinese president of direct responsibility for the decision to release them. But others said they feared that such a major decision could not be made in his absence.
One top official still in Beijing is Prime Minister Zhu Rhongji, who negotiated China's efforts to enter the World Trade Organization.
The administration went out of its way today to keep the discourse here restrained, despite mounting pressure from conservative Republicans to take a hard line.
This morning at the White House, Mr. Powell met with senior national security aides, and this afternoon, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld had a lengthy meeting with President Bush. Mr. Rumsfeld said today that the commander of American forces in the Pacific, Adm. Dennis C. Blair, had already made preparations to return the aircraft's crew "when that is made possible."
The most direct contact between the two sides took place in a meeting this morning in Beijing between the United States ambassador, Adm. Joseph Prueher, and the Chinese foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan. Then, late today, Ambassador Yang met the Deputy Secretary of State, Richard L. Armitage, who has emerged as the main go-between with the Chinese here.
The State Department seemed to suggest that some common ground was found in the stated desire of both sides to find out what happened. "We need to exchange explanations and have some better understanding of what happened," the spokesman said. Several Asian diplomats here interpreted those statements as a move toward creating a binational panel that would investigate the incident and come up with what one called "some rules of the road along the Chinese coast."
Another possibility was to try and get the Chinese to agree to resurrect a military maritime safety consultation group, which was first discussed in 1997 and could now be used as a vehicle for discussing how the accident happened.
Whether General Powell's statement of regret would be sufficient to meet the Chinese demand for an apology - which the administration publicly ruled out Tuesday - seemed one of the most difficult questions.
---
Hundreds of FBI leaders to take polygraph tests
USA Today
04/05/2001 - Updated 07:44 PM ET
By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-05-fbi.htm
WASHINGTON - FBI Director Louis Freeh and other top bureau leaders will take polygraph tests as part of a security crackdown that has followed the arrest of alleged spy Robert Hanssen, officials said Thursday. Freeh will answer standard questions about his access to classified information. Similar questions are being asked of hundreds of senior agents as the FBI investigates damage caused by Hanssen's alleged spying.
Freeh's participation is seen as a largely symbolic gesture aimed at encouraging hundreds of senior agents to willingly submit to the tests. Senior FBI agents often have resisted polygraph exams, also called lie detector tests, because of questions about the tests' accuracy.
"The director always includes himself in whatever policy applies to FBI employees," spokesman John Collingwood said. "He will exercise the same in regard to the expansion of the polygraph policy."
The polygraph testing was begun weeks after Hanssen was arrested in February. He was charged with passing more than 6,000 pages of classified information to Moscow.
Hanssen was never polygraphed during his career as an FBI counterintelligence officer.
Federal authorities allege that Hanssen's activities led to the deaths of two Russian agents who were supplying information to the United States.
Hanssen is expected to plead not guilty to the espionage charges. He is being held without bond. The 25-year veteran could face the death penalty.
After his arrest, congressional leaders urged federal law enforcement authorities to review all internal security procedures. They also strongly suggested that the bureau implement a lie detector program.
Among the most vocal opponents of periodic screening, the FBI Agents Association has re-examined its opposition after the arrest of Hanssen.
"The protection of special agents of the FBI from unfair and excessive personnel actions is among the chief responsibilities of the FBI Agents Association," President John Sennett said in a recent memo to the membership.
"That responsibility cannot cause us to ignore, however, the paramount obligation we all have to protect the national security of the United States," the memo said.
Officials have confirmed that agents are investigating Hanssen's alleged purchase of a car for a exotic dancer in Washington. That development was first reported Thursday in The Washington Post.
Hanssen is alleged to have brought the dancer to a Catholic church he regularly attended in a Virginia suburb of Washington. He was not, authorities say, involved in a romantic relationship with her.
---
China crisis may define Bush
USA Today
04/05/2001 - Updated 03:55 PM ET
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/acovthu.htm
WASHINGTON - If the dispute over the collision of two military aircraft above the South China Sea doesn't come to a swift end, it threatens to escalate from an international incident into a full-fledged crisis. That could be a turning point in U.S.-China relations and a defining moment for George W. Bush. At immediate stake is the fate of 24 detained crewmembers of the U.S. Navy spy plane that made an emergency landing on a Chinese military base Sunday after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet. But if the standoff isn't resolved soon, the repercussions also could affect tens of billions of dollars in commerce, Beijing's hopes of hosting the 2008 Olympics, a pending decision on what military hardware the United States will sell to Taiwan and Bush's standing as commander-in-chief.
The president's father ushered in a New World Order. But it's now his son - confronting his first major foreign policy challenge - who will help determine whether the world returns to a familiar old order: a Cold War dominated by two superpower adversaries.
The administration attempted Wednesday to resolve the impasse by issuing an "expression of regret" for the apparent loss of a Chinese pilot involved in the collision. But it wasn't clear whether the outreach would satisfy China.
U.S. officials feel increasing pressure to gain the release of the crewmembers, even if the sophisticated EP-3 intelligence-gathering aircraft has to be abandoned on the southern Chinese island of Hainan.
"If there's not some path out of this by the weekend, then I think the chances of this getting derailed into real trouble are there," says Doug Paal, president of the Asia-Pacific Policy Center and an outside adviser to the administration. "If it drags on, there will be nothing but negative consequences, and the Chinese know that very well."
So does Bush. His nightmare scenario would be an extended confrontation that turns the crewmembers into hostages, poisons relations with a nuclear superpower, fuels demands in Congress for a more drastic response and undermines the president's focus on priority campaign promises: a tax cut and education reform.
Tension travels both ways
On a personal level, if Bush appears weak in dealing with China, other foreign adversaries could be emboldened to challenge him. "The Chinese leadership is almost certainly using this incident to test President Bush," says retired Democratic representative Lee Hamilton, a former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "The whole world will be looking at the way he handles this."
If the crewmembers are released and the antagonists find a face-saving way out, Bush could burnish his foreign-policy credentials with many skeptics who express discomfort with his dearth of experience in international affairs.
For Chinese President Jiang Zemin, the politics of the standoff is personal, too. He is scheduled to step down as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party next year, and analysts believe he wants to retain power behind the scenes, as did legendary predecessor Deng Xiaoping. But Jiang will need the support of the military.
Some say his tough stance in demanding a U.S. apology for the collision is designed to curry favor with China's generals. "Keeping the military happy is something that Jiang Zemin has very carefully tried to do," says Jyrki Kallio, a China expert at the University of Helsinki.
Since the collision, the White House has carefully projected a business-as-usual image. On Monday, Bush touted his tax-cut plan to restaurant owners at the White House. On Tuesday, he visited the Boys & Girls Club in Wilmington, Del., to talk about education.
Spokesman Ari Fleischer downplays the standoff with Beijing as just one of several developments Bush was tracking Wednesday. "There's an agriculture issue" as the president meets with Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Fleischer says. "There's the House action (to repeal the estate tax), the Senate budget action (on the 2002 budget resolution), the Chinese situation, the phone calls that the president made to the leaders of Tunisia and Yemen. It's a busy day at the White House, as usual."
But behind the scenes, aides say, Bush's time and attention have been dominated all week by the standoff with China. Despite his oft-stated preference for an early bedtime, Bush spoke at length late Tuesday with Secretary of State Colin Powell. The president had a series of briefings Wednesday morning and then met with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the afternoon for their regular weekly session.
On Monday and again on Tuesday, Bush stepped before TV cameras to read carefully calibrated statements. The intent, aides say, was in part to demonstrate that Bush was comfortably in charge. Officials say his language was deliberately low-key. He set no deadlines and issued no ultimatums to give China time and space to step back from a confrontation.
However, there were still signs of his lack of ease on foreign affairs. In both appearances, Bush read a prepared statement, then walked away without answering reporters' questions. President Clinton typically would have responded.
Bush continues to be sensitive to suggestions that he is relying on the advice of his father, a seasoned China hand who reached out to Beijing when he was in the White House. The first President Bush served as U.S. envoy to China after President Nixon's breakthrough with the communist regime. The elder Bush presumably has crossed paths with Yang Jiechi, the current Chinese ambassador to the United States who was a special assistant to the Chinese ambassador in Washington in the early 1980s, when Bush was vice president.
Fleischer says the younger Bush instructed him to "keep any conversations he has with his father privileged, private." Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who talked with Bush about China during the president's visit to Wilmington, doesn't see a problem. Asked whether the president was conferring with his father, Biden laughs, "I hope so."
Bush's handling of the crisis is being watched carefully not only by politicians and analysts, but by U.S. military personnel. Many were avid supporters of his election after they bristled under the leadership of Clinton, whom they never respected as commander-in-chief.
In interviews and Internet chat rooms, some military men and women are expressing bitterness and growing alarm over the treatment of the surveillance plane's crew. One Navy officer with direct knowledge of the situation on Hainan says that most military people want diplomacy to work, but that they hope Bush will draw a clear line in the sand and force the Chinese to release the Americans.
A senior officer at the Pentagon says time is running out before he and others consider the crewmembers hostages.
China's challenge
Passions over the collision run high in China, too. That has added pressure on the Chinese government to take a hard line:
• China wants to signal to the world and its own citizens that it won't be bullied by the United States and a new administration that sees Beijing as a rival rather than a partner on the world stage.
• China wants to reinforce its warnings against a possible U.S. sale of sophisticated military systems this spring to Taiwan, the island democracy that China considers a breakaway province. Beijing's biggest worry is Taiwan's request for destroyers equipped with the Aegis radar that could help Taiwan protect itself from Chinese missiles.
At the same time, there are business pressures within both nations to avert a showdown. Beijing wants unrestricted trade, and U.S. businesses have been pushing for more than a decade to crack China's huge consumer market. Last year, U.S. companies had plans for $6 billion worth of investments in more than 2,000 projects inside China. Trade between the two nations has exploded to $116 billion last year from $20 billion a decade earlier.
Imposing trade sanctions would be one of Bush's first options if the standoff continues. He could also withdraw diplomats, halt military exchanges and cancel a state visit to Beijing this fall. He could even try to block China's goal of hosting the Olympics. "I still hope this situation can be quickly resolved and not have a negative impact on China-U.S. relations as a whole, including the Olympic bid," said Wang Wei, secretary-general of the Beijing Olympic bid committee.
Around the world, leaders are expressing growing concern about what will happen if the standoff isn't resolved soon. Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson said there was "a very worrisome escalation process going on." In Russia, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov told Reuters that good relations between Washington and Beijing are vital to regional stability.
Some China analysts say it's impossible to assess the lasting impact of the spy plane incident.
"You've got to have some perspective," says Robert Kapp of the U.S.-China Business Council. He notes that four months after the United States accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999, Clinton and Jiang shook hands at a meeting that helped conclude 15 years of negotiations on China's entry into the world trading system. He adds: "You can't discern the outer edges of a typhoon when you're sitting in it."
Contributing: Paul Wiseman in Hainan, China. Kathy Kiely, Jessica Lee, Laurence McQuillan, Mark Memmott, David Moniz, Barbara Slavin and William M. Welch in Washington.
---
Bush's foreign policy style irks allies
USA Today
04/05/2001 - Updated 08:53 PM ET
By Ellen Hale, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-05-bushstyle.htm
LONDON - A political cartoon in The Daily Telegraph, Britain's leading conservative newspaper, sums up the view from here: President Bush, struggling to keep Air Force One aloft, being buzzed by a flock of fighter jets labeled "China," "economic downturn," "capital punishment" and "Kyoto."
Elsewhere in the world, critics probably would add a few more symbolic attackers, including the Russian spy controversy, globalization, the national missile-defense shield, the Balkan war and even the bombing of Iraq.
Although by no means unanimous, there is criticism abroad that under the leadership of Bush, the United States is becoming increasingly overbearing and taking a unilateral approach to global issues that harks back to the days of the Cold War.
In a few short months, some observers say, the Bush administration has managed to upset many U.S. allies. The result is reflected in the silence by foreign leaders over the faceoff between the United States and China, and in widespread criticism abroad.
"It would seem the Bush people haven't started out by trying to win friends and influence people," says China analyst Michael Yahuda of the London School of Economics. Bush's dealings with other countries, Yahuda says, show a "lack of savoir-faire" along with "a degree of arrogance."
"There is a sense of concern about the ability of the new administration to deal with the rest of the world," says Vladimir Posner, a former spokesman for the Soviet Union's state-controlled media and now a political analyst in Moscow. There, leaders are still fuming over Washington's expulsion of Russian Embassy personnel after an FBI agent was charged with spying.
Ironically, most experts agree that the United States is not to blame for the confrontation with China over the downed spy plane.
"But after all the disdain Bush has shown, no one is rushing to help," Yahuda says.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not weighed in on the incident. Nor has British Prime Minister Tony Blair. And when French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin attacked Bush for his "unilateralist" foreign policy style, there was no defense of the United States by other nations.
The spat with China comes after a string of incidents that have offended or angered U.S. allies. Bush has been reviled for his renunciation last month of the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 treaty intended to curb global warming.
Many European nations also were offended by Bush's pronouncement that the United States would go forward with its planned missile-defense system. Critics say Bush officials are perceived as arrogant in the way they inform other countries about their decisions, instead of soliciting their counsel.
Many Mexicans are smarting over how Bush's summit with President Vicente Fox coincided with airstrikes on Iraq. "It's hard not to see it as a poke in the eye," says Peter Trubowitz of the Center for Economic Research and Instruction, an independent think tank in Mexico City.
Public, media and many foreign policy observers also blame Bush for a rash of other concerns, from heightened fear that globalization is running amok and the threatened loss of détente with North Korea to the potential start of a new cold war, this time with China.
"In less than 100 days, he has turned America into a pariah, made enemies of the entire world, his only friends the dirty polluters of the oil industry who put him there," columnist Polly Toynbee wrote in Britain's Guardian newspaper.
Fences need to be mended, agrees Yahuda, who says there is plenty of time to do so if Bush is willing to sit down and talk with fellow leaders and give them a warning before important positions are taken.
But, he cautions, "if the Bush administration treats this all with disdain, they will find it hard to call on their allies when they need them."
Contributing: Elliot Blair Smith in Mexico City, Steven Komarow in Moscow and Vivienne Walt in Paris
---
Bush says China must release U.S. crew
USA Today
4/05/2001 - Updated 07:09 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-05-chinapilot.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States and China intensified negotiations Thursday for the release of an American spy plane's crew, and U.S. officials said they were encouraged by the talks. President Bush, in a conciliatory gesture, expressed regret over the in-flight collision that triggered the tense standoff. "The Chinese have got to act," Bush said, "I hope they do so quickly."
China called the 24-person crew lawbreakers and said the servicemen and women would remain in China for questioning.
Both countries held firm to their opposing positions in public (AP) - China demanding an apology, Bush refusing to offer one - but sent encouraging signals in a diplomatic flurry. The administration's tone brightened as weary Bush advisers embraced the first notes of progress.
In Santiago, Chile, visiting Chinese President Jiang Zemin again said the United States should apologize for last weekend's collision. "I have visited many countries, and I see that when people have an accident, the two groups involved, the two parts, always say excuse me," Jiang said.
Several high-ranking government officials said the situation improved practically overnight, though they still had no assurances the crew of 21 men and three women would be released.
While most Americans slept, Bush's team worked on China time Thursday morning to open new channels of communications with Beijing. The talks continued as dawn made its way around the globe: Chinese Ambassador Yang Jiechi met with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in Washington; U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher met twice with Assistant Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong in China.
"We're having intensive discussions with the Chinese," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
Frustrated for days by the lack of talks, American diplomats were suddenly negotiating with Chinese counterparts over U.S. demands for the crew's release. "We're talking about what we want to talk about, which is release," said a senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. Navy EP-3E surveillance plane collided with a Chinese jet, forcing the American crew into an emergency landing on Hainan island in the South China Sea. The crew are being questioned and detained. The plane and its sensitive equipment are in China's hands.
The Chinese pilot, presumed dead, was blamed for the crash by Bush's allies in Congress. They called the pilot a "hot-dog" and accused him of buzzing the lumbering spy plane under standing orders by Beijing.
Bush was more conciliatory in a statement calculated to show sympathy without bowing to China's demands for an apology. "I regret that a Chinese pilot is missing, and I regret one of their airplanes is lost, and our prayers go out to the pilot, his family," Bush told the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
In using the word "regret," Bush followed the language used by Secretary of State Colin Powell and other U.S. officials Wednesday in hopes of softening China's stance.
China welcomed the American expressions but stuck with its demand for an apology, displaying the same mixture of encouragement and toughness Bush sought to show.
"The regret expressed by the U.S. side is a step in the right direction to solving this question," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi before Bush spoke. The next step, Sun said, is for the United States to "admit its mistakes and make a formal apology."
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer reiterated that no apology was forthcoming.
In another display of firmness, the spokesman suggested that Bush's support of free trade relations with China will depend on the outcome of the standoff. Bush himself told the newspaper editors that he backs China's wishes to join the World Trade Organization, but he added: "I'm hopeful that the current situation ends quickly."
On Capitol Hill, fans and foes of China's new normal trade status said Congress shouldn't rush to punish Beijing.
It was clear, though, there was limited patience for China's actions. "We're not without remedies, some of them harsh," said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala. "Every hour, every day that they keep these people against their will. Basically, they're hostages."
Powell privately briefed members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on developments late Thursday.
China kept the pressure on Bush by taking a tougher line against the servicemen. "The U.S. crew violated international law," Sun said.
"They have caused this air collision incident and they also entered illegally into China's airspace," he said. "It is fully natural for competent authorities in China to question them about this incident."
A senior U.S. official said the Chinese had questioned the American crew. The White House, perhaps hoping to avoid inflaming the Chinese, did not lodge a public protest.
China, too, seemed to want to rein in public anger over the incident. The government quashed a small protest outside the U.S. Embassy.
Rear Adm. Craig Quigley told reporters at the Pentagon that it was not possible to know how much sensitive information or equipment might have been lost to the Chinese until U.S. officials have had a chance to question the crew in detail.
At the White House, Bush and his advisers kept their remarks to a minimum. Behind the scenes, Armitage emerged as the main go-between with the Chinese in Washington.
Bush, who is usually asleep by 10 p.m., met well past his bedtime Wednesday night with Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
In his session with editors, Bush promised to use "all diplomatic channels" to get the crew members released, though advisers said he did not think the time was right to personally call Chinese leaders. "The message to the Chinese is we should not let this incident destabilize relations," Bush said.
---
Sources: Hanssen befriended stripper
USA Today
04/05/2001 - Updated 08:43 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-05-hanssen.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Robert Hanssen, the former FBI agent accused of spying for Moscow, spent at least $10,000 on a car for a local stripper and took her to church in what investigators believe was an effort to minister to her, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
Federal investigators are interviewing the woman and are looking into whether Hanssen also bought her an airplane ticket to Tokyo, the Post said, quoting unidentified law enforcement and intelligence sources.
Investigators are trying to reconstruct what happened to nearly $600,000 in cash and diamonds that Hanssen is alleged to have received for spying for Russia and the Soviet Union over a 15-year period.
The Post said investigators have evidence Hanssen befriended a dancer he met at a strip club in the early 1990s and accompanied her to services more than once at a Roman Catholic church he attended.
The investigators said there was no evidence of a sexual relationship between Hanssen and the woman, who was not identified. Instead, they speculated that Hanssen, who has been described as deeply conservative and religious, was attempting to convert her to the church.
Hanssen's attorney, Plato Cacheris, declined to discuss the issue, the Post reported. He said his client intends to plead innocent to the espionage charges, which could carry the death penalty.
The FBI has accused Hanssen, 56, a 25-year veteran agent and the father of six, with passing along to Soviet and later Russian agents 6,000 pages of documents on secret U.S. programs.
---
Chinese file spying charges against scholar
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/5/01
Christopher Bodeen ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-20014521522.htm
BEIJING - A U.S.-based political scientist whose detention caused a diplomatic uproar with Washington has been formally charged with spying, according to a human rights group.
The formal arrest of Gao Zhan appeared certain to add to already major strains on relations with Washington amid a standoff over a U.S. Navy plane and its crew being held on a Chinese island.
In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer yesterday described Mrs. Gao's situation as "an ongoing, separate matter" not linked to the dispute over the U.S. plane, which has been grounded on Hainan Island since colliding with a Chinese jet on Sunday.
"We continue to urge that [Mrs. Gao] be released on humanitarian grounds so she can be reunited with her family in the United States," Mr. Fleischer said.
Mrs. Gao's arrest sheet, given to her parents Tuesday by security agents, accuses her of "accepting money from a foreign intelligence agency and participating in espionage activities in China," New York-based Human Rights in China said.
Such a charge almost guarantees Mrs. Gao's conviction and a long sentence. China tries such security cases in secret and allows little chance for defendants to respond to the charges.
Mrs. Gao, an unpaid researcher at American University in Washington, was picked up at the Beijing airport Feb. 11 at the end of a family vacation. Her husband and 5-year-old son were held for 26 days before being allowed to return to the United States. U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, sharply criticized China for holding Mrs. Gao's son, an American citizen, and failing to notify the U.S. Embassy of his detention as required by treaty. They also have appealed for Mrs. Gao's release on humanitarian grounds.
Mrs. Gao's husband, Xue Donghua, has denied that his wife was a spy. She has visited rival Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, but Mr. Xue said the trip was purely academic.
Officials of the State Security Ministry refused to comment on the report.
The detentions of two other scholars with U.S. ties have been revealed in the past week - one of them an American citizen.
Mrs. Gao's arrest is "directly tied to the escalating tensions between the United States and China," said Liu Qing, president of Human Rights in China.
Mr. Liu, in a written statement, said Mrs. Gao and other detainees were being used as bargaining chips by China to advance political and economic interests.
Mr. Xue, quoted in Mr. Liu's statement, echoed those sentiments. He noted that Mrs. Gao went from being under investigation to being formally arrested just after the surveillance plane incident.
"My wife . . . has nothing to with the intelligence activities of any government. There is no reason for her to become a victim of U.S.-China relations," Mr. Xue said.
---
Incident increases likelihood of weapons sales to Taiwan
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/5/01
Bill Gertz and Dave Boyer THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200145225718.htm
China's aggressive tailing of EP-3E surveillance planes and the collision on Sunday with an F-8 interceptor are part of Beijing's larger effort to influence impending U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, including similar spy aircraft, defense officials said yesterday.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers outraged over the detention of 24 American military personnel on Hainan Island in southern China said yesterday that the crisis has galvanized congressional support for sales of advanced weapons to Taiwan.
Administration officials privately said the crisis has hardened President Bush's position on the issue. As a result of the detention of Americans who made an emergency landing after the collision, Mr. Bush is more likely to approve sales of advanced missile destroyers equipped with Aegis battle management system, diesel submarines, Patriot PAC-3 missile systems and P-3 surveillance aircraft like the one now being held by the Chinese military.
"It is no secret the P-3 with similar capabilities has been requested by Taiwan," said a military official. "That sale is going to be granted."
At the White House, National Security Council spokeswoman Mary Ellen Countryman said the incident and the arms sales are not connected. "The president believes in the Taiwan Relations Act and he will base his decision on the defensive needs of Taiwan," she said, referring to the 1979 law on weapons sales to the island.
Meanwhile, several House members introduced legislation to revoke China's favored trade status.
"There's been an act of piracy against an American aircraft," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California Republican. The 24 crew members "should be considered hostages being held by a hostile power."
Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the crisis "is bound to have some effect" on the pending sale of defensive military equipment to Taiwan. Some senators yesterday indicated renewed support for the United States to sell Aegis warships and Patriot missiles to Taiwan.
"I would be more inclined to make sure that Taiwan has the ability to defend itself, given this intransigence on the part of China," Mr. McCain said. "I would be much more inclined to support a larger package for Taiwan as a result of this crisis. I think the president would get more support."
A recent Senate staff report concluded Taiwan urgently needs advanced weaponry, including Aegis destroyers, to counter the growing military threat from China.
Mr. Bush will decide in the next several weeks whether to approve the Taiwan arms sales request, which includes some 30 weapons systems. A meeting between U.S. and Taiwanese officials is set for April 23.
China's government opposes all U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan.
Adm. Dennis Blair, who heads the U.S. Pacific Command, said in Hawaii on Sunday that the United States formally protested the Chinese interceptor flights.
"I must tell you that the intercepts by Chinese fighters over the past couple of months have become more aggressive to the point that we felt they were endangering the safety of the Chinese and American aircraft," Adm. Blair said.
Defense officials said the threatening encounter between a Chinese warship that aimed its fire control radar at a U.S. Navy surveillance ship March 24 was at first thought to be an isolated event, caused by a local Chinese commander acting independently, the officials said.
But after Sunday's midair collision between the EP-3, defense officials now say the activities are part of a pattern of aggressive actions by the Chinese military that are part of a larger political program.
"They are ratcheting up," a second official said of the Chinese military activities.
"It seems rather obvious that the message in this for Taiwan is, 'You may buy this aircraft, but don't think you'll be able to operate it,' " the defense official said. "Is there a message here for Taiwan? I'd say yes."
Sen. Robert C. Smith, New Hampshire Republican, said in an interview that the detention of the EP-3, if it continues, should prompt the administration to "approve the sale of Aegis systems . . . and P-3s" to Taiwan.
"The Chinese have decided to test the mettle of the president," Mr. Smith said.
If the aggressive tailing of U.S. surveillance flights continues, the U.S. military should provide fighter escort protection for the aircraft, said Mr. Smith, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"We know the Chinese have been buzzing our planes for the past several months," he said. "They've been getting so close you can see the faces of the Chinese [jet interceptor] pilots."
Mr. Smith said he is one of nine senators appointed to a new U.S. government commission to monitor Beijing's human rights abuses. "We now have 24 Americans that are being held as hostages in China on Hainan Island and an airplane the Chinese have ransacked," Mr. Smith said.
Mr. Rohrabacher and four other House members introduced a bill yesterday that would rescind the permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status granted to China last year. Several lawmakers also called for a boycott of travel to China, and they scoffed at China's demand for an apology over the midair collision.
"They want an apology? I've got an apology for them - I'm sorry we ever passed PNTR," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he "would be prepared to" support the sale of Patriot missiles to Taiwan.
The Chinese "must realize that this kind of gamesmanship is unacceptable and it's got to have adverse consequences for them in the long run," Mr. Sessions said. "We cannot reward this kind of irresponsible behavior."
Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told The Washington Times it was "inexplicable" that China has not agreed to return the U.S. personnel.
"They want an apology? I've got an apology for them - I'm sorry we ever passed PNTR," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican.
A spokesman for Rep. Spencer Bachus, Alabama Republican, said if China is not admitted to the World Trade Organization by June 3, Congress must approve a one-year extension of PNTR, a move which is now much less likely.
---
Surveillance plane on China's Hawaii
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/5/01
Calum MacLeod THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200145225222.htm
BEIJING - U.S. Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock was a man with a mission yesterday as he stormed through a Chinese department store in search of deodorant, shaving kits and underwear.
He shocked local shoppers by buying enough to protect, shave and clothe two dozen men and women. Under different circumstances, his shopping list may have stretched only to Hawaiian shirts.
The 24 U.S. Navy crew members, caught up in a diplomatic crisis, crash-landed on Sunday into a home away from home. If only they were granted leave from the location where they have been detained since their plane collided with a Chinese fighter, they would discover China's Hawaii boasts all the amenities any sailor could dream of.
The tropical paradise of Hainan Island compares favorably with Vietnam's infamous China Beach, just across the waters of the South China Sea, where U.S. Marines on leave once sought relief from the madness of war.
In recent years, millions of Chinese tourists have flocked south to Hainan, now home to 7.6 million people, to enjoy the sun-baked sand, surf and sex that have made the province one of China's hottest tourist destinations.
It has been a dramatic transformation for a remote outpost of the Chinese empire, once dubbed "the gate of hell." For centuries, criminals were exiled to Hainan to rot amid the "southern barbarians," as China's rulers affectionately dubbed their southern non-Han subjects.
Failed attempts to raise the status of this rural backwater include the efforts of the two Soong sisters from Hainan, Ching-ling and Mei-ling, who married Chinese leaders Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek.
Once Chiang fled mainland China in 1949 for Taiwan, the one Chinese island larger than Hainan, the latter became a national defense outpost for the Communist-led People's Liberation Army because of Hainan's strategic position in the South China Sea.
The heavy military presence proved a dead weight on the island's development, lifted in 1988 when Hainan won provincial status and dispensation as a Special Economic Zone to pursue carte blanche every loophole offered by China's experiment with capitalism.
Hainan soon garnered a reputation as a free-wheeling island where anything goes. Rampant smuggling, open prostitution and underground casinos brought many immigrants to fuel heady boom-bust cycles.
Four military bases remain, but the PLA also is cashing in on the tourist boom, as British businessman Patrick Horgan discovered last month on a diving holiday with his girlfriend in Sanya, close to the Lingshui airbase where the spy plane is grounded.
"We knew our dive company was under the military when we were driven into their barracks," said Mr. Horgan in Beijing.
"We changed into our wet suits right next door to a parade ground where guys in camouflage outfits were doing martial arts, with rifles in their hands."
It was an appropriate vista. For years, Hainan was known nationwide for its one major cultural inspiration, the gun-toting ballerinas of "The Red Detachment of Women," a revolutionary ballet in which a poor woman joins Communist guerrillas.
These days, local wags say poor country girls can join only the "Yellow Detachment of Women" - yellow is to the Chinese language what blue is to English.
Hainan's massed ranks of prostitutes, from the capital, Haikou, to Sanya's top beach, Yalong Bay, longer than Hawaii's longest beach, are stealing sex tourists from Thailand and the Philippines.
---
U.S. expresses regrets but not official apology
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/5/01
Bill Sammon THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20014523346.htm
The Bush administration expressed "regret" yesterday over the death of a Chinese fighter pilot, but stopped short of acquiescing to China's demand for a full apology as the tense standoff entered its fourth day.
The United States asked for a second meeting with its 24 servicemen and women, this time without the presence of Chinese military officials. There was no immediate reply from China, which continued to snub U.S. demands for prompt release of the Americans.
President Bush kept his silence on the issue yesterday, following two days in which he issued measured but firm calls for the Americans to be freed. The administration appeared to be trying to satisfy China with conciliatory talk about the lost Chinese pilot.
"We regret that the Chinese plane did not get down safely, and we regret the loss of the life of that Chinese pilot," said Secretary of State Colin Powell.
The Chinese appeared unmoved by the overture. The communist nation's state-run press stepped up criticism of America and the Chinese foreign minister accused the United States of "arrogance".
Chinese Ambassador Yang Jiechi blamed the Americans for Sunday's collision between the Chinese jet and a U.S. reconnaissance plane, offering an odd explanation of how the collision came about.
"The U.S. side actually broke the normal procedure and made a sudden turn," Mr. Yang said on CNN before Mr. Powell's remarks. "The airplane approached the Chinese side and caused the destruction of the Chinese airplane and the disappearance of the Chinese pilot.
"And then it had enough time for telecommunication to inform the Chinese side, but it didn't. And without China's permission, it intruded into China's airspace and then landed at a Chinese airfield."
A senior defense official told The Washington Times the crew appeared to have succeeded in destroying sensitive equipment on board the airplane before making the emergency landing.
However, he said, because of limited access to the crew, "we don't really have a clear picture of what happened."
Asked whether the United States had stopped surveillance flights of China, the official said: "We fly surveillance flights routinely and those occur very often."
Asked whether Mr. Bush is taking a sufficiently forceful stand against the Chinese, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said: "This is a sensitive time as these diplomatic events unfold.
"Because it is a sensitive time, there are moments in diplomacy, there are times in international relations where the less said, the most productive."
With the standoff now more than 100 hours old, there is growing concern that the 21 men and three women being detained on a Chinese island will soon be regarded as hostages.
"We need to move on," Mr. Powell said. "We need to bring this to a resolution, and we're using every avenue available to us to talk to the Chinese side, to exchange explanations and move on."
A senior State Department official told the Associated Press yesterday that Mr. Powell had sent a letter to Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen emphasizing the importance the United States attaches to the release of the 24 Americans.
He gave the letter to Mr. Yang for transmittal to Mr. Qian. Mr. Powell told the ambassador that the United States seeks full access to the crew and emphasized the need to resolve the issue, the senior official said, asking not to be identified.
The Chinese made clear they are not yet ready to resolve the issue. Asked how long the standoff will continue, Mr. Yang said: "I think maybe you should ask some of your countrymen how long it should go on.
"This is a very serious incident and the Chinese side has every right to carry out an investigation. So the crew members are in China because the investigation is going on."
Meanwhile, U.S. and Chinese officials held high-level meetings both in Washington and Beijing to resolve the standoff. U.S. officials stopped short of calling the crewmen prisoners, instead using the word detainees.
"We consider these people detained - they're clearly not free to go and we don't have free access to them," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. "We certainly would have liked to see them by now."
Instead of intensifying calls for release of the Americans, U.S. officials yesterday focused on soothing the Chinese. Though not apologizing, U.S. spokesmen acknowledged they have become more "sympathetic."
"As the fate of the Chinese pilot becomes clearer, we're saying probably more clearly that we understand and sympathize with the plight of the Chinese family and regret the loss of life," Mr. Boucher said. "So in some ways there's an evolution, but not a breakthrough."
U.S. officials were heartened that the Chinese have dropped their accusation, at least for now, that the collision had occurred over Chinese airspace. "It took place in an area very close to the airspace of China," Mr. Yang said. "Of course, airplanes can fly in that area on the high sea. They enjoy freedom."
The Chinese continued their claim to inspection rights to the American plane. "This airplane is your sovereign property if it's in the United States," Mr. Yang said. "But . . . it intruded into China's airspace and then landed in China. Of course, it's not a sovereign entity any more, according to international law. Of course, it has no immunity. Of course, China has the right to do all necessary investigation in connection with the incident."
The State Department disagreed. "We think quite clearly that international law provides that this kind of aircraft, state aircraft, carry with them sovereign immunity, including in circumstances like this," Mr. Boucher said.
The standoff was complicated further when China announced yesterday it was formally charging an American-based scholar with espionage. The Bush administration had been lobbying for the return of the scholar, who is a U.S. permanent resident and whose son and husband are U.S. citizens. She has been detained by the Chinese for weeks.
• Bill Gertz contributed to this report.
--------
Some Camera to Watch Over You
Wired
Apr. 5, 2001 PDT
by Julia Scheeres
mailto:jscheeres@wired.com
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,42794,00.html
If Scott Fry had his way, video surveillance would be as ubiquitous in the United States as it is in Britain, where you can't stroll down certain streets without having your movements shadowed by a dozen cameras.
Fry is the president of Pedagog USA, a wireless application service provider that recently established a beachhead in California to promote its mobile surveillance systems on this side of the big puddle.
Pedagog's software enables video images to be transmitted over wireless networks to portable devices such as Palm Pilots or laptops for a fraction of the price of traditional closed circuit television (CCTV) systems.
The British government is so enthralled with the technology that it announced plans to increase the number of cameras in England to 2 million over the next three years, principally for law enforcement purposes.
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2001/03/11/stinwenws02016.html
Fry says it's high time that Americans jumped on the surveillance bandwagon.
"They're bloody everywhere in England," Fry said. "It's been working over there and we feel the technology has an application here as well. We're good at what we do and we're going after the markets."
Like CCTV, open circuit television cameras (OCTV) track subjects remotely by tilting, panning, zooming and in some cases, using infrared and motion-detection technology. But the new surveillance systems cost 70 percent less than CCTV systems because they don't require pricey cable installation and dedicated monitoring rooms, Fry said.
"Once it's installed, the system costs as much as it does to make a cell phone call," he said, adding that advances in wireless technology will bolster the market. "We're forecasting substantial growth. The faster the networks get, the faster we become and the more needed we are."
Fry suggested multiple applications for mobile video monitoring: Restaurant patrons could dial into their favorite eateries to check who's there and how busy the joint is; transportation agencies could use it to analyze traffic bottlenecks; paramedics could use it in ambulances to beam images of trauma victims to physicians for guidance.
But Pedagog's biggest market in the United States is probably the same as it is in England: law enforcement.
"If we can get a major law enforcement agency interested in doing a trial, we'd be set," Fry said.
In England, where the unblinking eyes of security cameras are as much a part of the landscape as Big Ben, police argue the systems are one of their best tools for controlling crime.
Although the British Home Office (U.S. equivalent of the Justice Department) surveys say that surveillance cameras are widely accepted by the general public, some analysts disagree.
Several studies by Jason Ditton, the director the Scottish Centre for Criminology and one of the few criminologists to research the effectiveness of CCTV, suggest that the cameras have neither the public support nor the crime-reducing power attributed to them.
Furthermore, Ditton's studies reveal that camera operators routinely show bias by focusing on minorities, the homeless or young men in football jerseys.
The introduction of the cameras into British society was gradual and deliberate, said Simon Davies, president of Privacy International.
"There has been a very astute engineering exercise to introduce CCTV into all levels of society," Davies said. "It has nothing to do with crime control, it has everything to do with politics."
English authorities have used a few widely publicized cases to convince the population that the systems are necessary for their safety. Perhaps the best known -- and most horrific -- case is that of two-year-old James Bulger.
James was abducted in 1993 from a shopping center in Northern England by two 10-year-olds who led the boy to a railway yard and bludgeoned him to death. A video camera captured footage of the toddler being led away, hand-in-hand with one of his attackers. The haunting image was broadcast repeatedly on the nightly news, Davies said.
"The cameras were no assistance in stopping the crime, but the images were repeated so often that the average citizen linked cameras to stopping the murder of babies," Davies said. "They believed that if we have enough cameras and the cameras are better, next time we could have stopped this horrible crime. It's a hysteria here."
Nevertheless, in the decade following James' death, the British government has spent an estimated $350 million installing 300,000 cameras around the country, making it the world leader in video surveillance use.
"These systems are used more and more to police public morals and public order," Davies, including "anti-social" behavior such as littering, drunkenness, evading meters and underage smoking.
Some boroughs have even linked the cameras to face recognition technology, so passersby can be automatically scanned and compared with known criminals.
The only legislation regulating images taken by the cameras is the Data Protection Act, which allows citizens to get copies of video footage taken by the police, Davies said.
One person who has taken advantage of the Act is British comedian Mark Thomas.
Thomas, a strident opponent of surveillance, has performed Irish jigs in front of the cameras, then forced the camera operators to perform the expensive task of pixelating out third parties and giving him a copy of the tape. He's even launched a competition for the most creative film obtained under the Data Protection Act.
But efforts to fire up the citizenry about privacy violations on a large scale have failed, causing one advocacy group to throw in the towel.
"Big Brother has won, we have lost the fight for CCTV regulation, and the Campaign and this website will soon be retired," states the homepage of Watching Them, Watching Us.
Based on his company's experience in England, Pedagog's Fry isn't too concerned about opposition to the technology in the United States.
"Some people think it's an invasion of privacy, but my question is what about the civil liberties of the people being offended?" Fry said. "They have civil liberties and this equipment can protect them."
-------- activists
Sign-on to letter
Irradiation of school lunches
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>
Thu, 5 Apr 2001
Apologies for cross postings.
Dear Fellow Anti-Food Irradiation Campaigners,
Today the Bush administration indicated that the government will likely purchase irradiated meat for schools. Please sign-on to this letter to Ann Veneman, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, indicating this is unacceptable. Please send your name and organization to Jessica Vallette Revere, jvrevere@citizen.org, by Wednesday, April 11.
Thanks for all of your hard work and continued support.
Sincerely,
Jessica Vallette Revere Public Citizen Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program Food Irradiation Campaign 202-454-5174 www.citizen.org/cmep
April 5, 2001
Honorable Ann Veneman, Secretary U.S. Department of Agriculture 14th Street and Independence Avenue, S.W. Washington, DC 20250
Dear Secretary Veneman:
We, the undersigned, are writing to oppose any action taken by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to allow the purchase of irradiated beef for the National School Lunch Program, and approving the use of irradiation to treat meat that is used in that program.
We strongly urge you to reverse your position for the following reasons:
· Notwithstanding the approval granted by the Food and Drug Administration and by your department, food irradiation has not been proven to be safe for human consumption. The Food and Drug Administration failed to follow its own protocol for approving irradiation as a food additive in accordance with 21 CFR 170.20 and 170.22. Until the FDA completes its work on this technology, no further approval should be granted by any U.S. government agency on the use of irradiation.
· The World Health Organization is currently conducting studies on the harmful effects of 2-DCB, a chemical that is formed when meat is irradiated. There has been at least one study conducted by German scientists that has shown that this chemical can cause significant DNA damage in rats (citation of German study). Until these studies are completed, the U.S. government should cease its approval of irradiation.
· Irradiating food causes it to lose key vitamins and vital enzymes, such as vitamins A, B1, C, K, and E.
· Current labeling regulations do not require restaurants, hospitals or schools to inform consumers that food that they have prepared has been irradiated. Students and parents will not be informed that the meat prepared in school cafeterias has been irradiated unless the school personnel take the initiative to inform them of this fact. Your action is putting school districts in the unenviable position of deceiving parents and students by not informing them that meats in the school lunch program have been irradiated. They have a right to know what is being fed to them.
· Your proposed action fails to address the need for improved sanitary conditions in slaughtering and processing facilities, and in the handling of food within school cafeterias. It is a placebo. Irradiating food will not make it safer if the conditions under which it is slaughtered, processed and prepared is unsanitary.
Your proposed actions are irresponsible. Instead of ensuring that the food we feed consumers, and in particular, our children is safe and wholesome, you seem to be more interested in increasing industry profits and making it easier for it to shirk its responsibility to consumers. Your action is a bail-out of the food irradiation industry that is facing a skeptical consuming public about the safety of its products. We strongly urge you to reverse your position on this important public health issue.
Sincerely,
Your Group
COMMUNITY NUTRITION INSTITUTE FARM SANCTUARY GLOBAL RESOURCE ACTION CENTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT (GRACE) HUMANE FARMING ASSOCIATION NATIONAL CATHOLIC RURAL LIFE CONFERENCE ORGANIC CONSUMER ASSOCIATION PUBLIC CITIZEN' CRITICAL MASS ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT PROGRAM STANDING FOR TRUTH ABOUT RADIATION (STAR)
------
Ka Hsaw Wa (6 p.m. @ AU on April 11, 2001)
From: Sapna Chhatpar <schhatpar@findjustice.com>
Thu, 5 Apr 2001 10:42:20 -0400
"Announcement"
Great Advocate Series: Prominent Human Rights Activist from Burma Will Come to American University to Discuss Efforts to Free His Country from Military Rule
When: Wednesday, April 11th, 2001, 6:00 PM
Where: Kay Spiritual Life Center American University 4400 Massachusetts Ave, NW Washington, DC 20016
What: A prominent human rights and environmental activist from Burma will come to American University as he travels on a nationwide speaking tour educating US citizens about the horrific abuses occurring in Burma, where a brutal military dictatorship has ruled since 1962. Ka Hsaw Wa, recipient of the Reebok Human Rights Award, the Goldman Environmental Prize, and the Conde Nast Environmental Prize, will share his compelling life story with American University students and tell them what they can do to support Burma¹s pro-democracy movement.
For most of its modern history following independence from Britain, a military dictatorship has ruled the Southeast Asian country of Burma. The army generals controlling the country during that time kept the nation isolated from the rest of the world and harshly repressed the country's ethnic minorities. In 1988 a popular "people's power" movement sought to depose the dictatorship in a peaceful rebellion. Elections were held in 1990, and pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi and her party won the vote in a landslide.
But then a refashioned military junta smashed the pro-democracy movement. Troops fired on crowds of peaceful protesters; thousands died. During the last decade the people of Burma (renamed Myanmar by the military dictators) have suffered abuse, torture, imprisonment, rape and forced labor at the hands of a regime regarded as among the most repressive in the world. Freedom of association and expression are prohibited, and Aung San Suu Kyi has spent much of the last 10 years under house arrest.
Ka Hsaw Wa, a member of Burma's Karen ethnic group, participated in the student protests in the capital, Rangoon. At the age of 18 police arrested him and them tortured him for three days in an effort to locate other pro-democracy advocates. Realizing that his life was in danger, he fled the capital to the Thai border, where he planned to join the resistance to the military junta. But then Ka Hsaw Wa realized he could play a more important role by documenting human rights abuses committed by the military and sharing his evidence with the international media.
Until 1994, Ka Hsaw Wa was primarily concerned with human rights abuses. He then began to understand that many of Burma's human rights abuses were committed to protect the interests of multinational oil companies operating in the country, and he started to document environmental destruction in Burma. In 1995 he cofounded EarthRights International and began to gather evidence of the destruction caused by the Yadana natural gas pipeline in southern Burma, owned by Unocal and the French oil firm TotalFinaElf. Ka Hsaw Wa's opposition to the pipeline was instrumental in raising awareness about the destructive role of oil companies in Burma.
Ka Hsaw Wa now divides his time between the US and Thailand, where he teaches non-violent resistance and human rights abuse documentation.
Sponsored by the University Chaplain's Office, the Office of Community Action and Social Justice and the AU Free Burma Coalition. For more info, call 202-885-3333.
-------
Protest IMF on Monday!
Thu, 05 Apr 2001 00:43:33 -0400
From: Ayca Cubukcu <ac96@cornell.edu>
WHO: Michel Camdessus, Executive Director of the IMF 1985-2000
WHEN: Monday, April 9, 2001, 8 pm.
To lecture at Cornell University, Statler Aud.,
PROTEST: Outside Statler Aud, 7:30 to 8:00 pm, before the lecture
WHY: The tenure of Camdessus corresponds to increasingly aggressive stand taken by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) against the peoples of the Third World. Under Camdessus rule, the IMF has literally impoverished millions of people around the world, culminating in thousands of protests by millions of people across the globe, from Bolivia to North Korea, Indonesia to Turkey, Colombia to Kenya, Argentina to Washington D.C. Camdessus is also responsible for establishing close working relations between the IMF and World Bank. Please see below for more info on the IMF.
WHAT: Come to stand, cheer and sing in solidarity with people around the world whose dignity as human beings has been disrespected by the IMF under Camdessus directorship for the last 15 years.
ALSO: Camdessus will be participating at a panel discussion with five Cornell students. There will be an hour reserved for question & answer. Some Sharks will be on this panel. Come for support. Tuesday, April 10, 4-6 pm, HEC Aud, Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University
MORE INFO: on the logistics of the protest or the IMF, call The Cobbler at 256 1197.
The Gatekeeper
The IMF has unprecedented power over these vulnerable countries and is often referred to as the 'Gatekeeper' because it determines whether to open or shut the 'gate' between a borrowing government and its creditors. Unless the IMF gives its 'seal of approval', signifying that a government's policies are 'adequate', the government may be unable to access credit and attract foreign investment. The only way these countries have been able to gain the IMF's 'seal of approval' is by introducing a package of reforms called a Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). These reforms often involve the following common elements:
• Reducing government expenditure, by making public-sector redundancies, freezing salaries, and making cuts in health, education and social welfare services;
• The privatisation of state-run industries, leading to massive lay-offs with no social security provision and the loss of inefficient services to remote or poor areas;
• Currency devaluation and export promotion, leading to the soaring cost of imports, land use changed for cash crops, and reliance on international commodity markets;
• Raising interest rates to tackle inflation, putting small companies out of business;
• Removal of price controls, leading to rapid price rises for basic goods and services.
In 1999, these notorious SAPs underwent a transformation following criticism of their content and undemocratic nature. At the Annual Meetings in 1999, the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF), responsible for providing loans to up to 80 countries, was renamed the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF). In addition, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), which must be drawn up in consultation with civil society, were introduced to meet fears that governments lacked 'ownership' of SAPs. But early evidence suggests that PRGF conditions are almost identical to the old ESAF conditions, and that PRSPs will closely resemble SAPs. The names may have changed but the economics has stayed the same.
For countries outside the remit of the PRGF, the IMF remains as inflexible as ever. Loans from the IMF are always conditional on the implementation of structural reforms, and countries seeking the IMF's international 'seal of approval' are always 'encouraged' to continue with SAP-style policies.
All these policies hurt the poor. Developing countries have few choices - either implement policies ill-suited to their country or risk economic isolation. Most governments, seeking to retain power and be accepted internationally, choose the IMF over their own people.
Demolishing democracy
One of the objectives of IMF and World Bank conditions is to leave economies well governed and increase stability. Instead, SAPs have undermined the ability of democratic governments to set their own priorities and policy objectives; instead, they often rush through economic reforms without adequate legislative or democratic processes. While governments are held responsible for the social and economic upheaval which results, the IMF and World Bank escape largely unscathed.
These institutions have little accountability to any electorate, and remain forever at arm's length. At best, they offer advice to the governments 'to continue building the necessary political support for reforms', and at worst distance themselves completely from failed programmes, blaming inadequate political will or corruption.
SAPs, which cut back the role of the state, ignore the basic function of governments - to provide social services to their citizens. If governments are unable to provide these services because of budget cuts or debt servicing, governments lose their legitimacy in the eyes of their citizens.
It would be wrong to suggest that developing countries have no responsibility. Some have embraced the proposals willingly, others have been guilty of corruption. But our point is that civil society's attempt to democratise their own governments is made substantially more difficult, if not impossible, by the imposition of IMF conditions. There is no room for flexibility in negotiations with the IMF.
This is compounded by the current revamp which seeks to dress SAPs up in the rhetoric of PRSPs, which could make matters much worse. The policies will stay the same, but instead of being explicitly prescribed by the IMF, they will be covertly pushed on government officials by 'IMF advisors'. In the long run, PRSPs will only help the IMF pass the buck when things go wrong.
When democracy is undermined and governments are unable to act in the interests of their electorate, one of the only channels left is for citizens to demonstrate. Civil unrest, demonstrations and strikes should indicate to governments, law-makers and the international community that policies are not working.
------
NYC Citigroup Action!
Thu, 05 Apr 2001
"Terra Lawson-Remer" <thelionessrampant@hotmail.com>
NEW ORLEANS STYLE FUNERAL PROCESSION LED BY REVERAND BILLY AND A MARCHING BAND
Wednesday, April 11, 11:30am-1pm
Sick to death of a corporate global economy that puts profits ahead of the environment, democracy, workers, human rights, justice and local communities?
Sick to death of undemocratic Free Trade agreements like NAFTA, WTO and FTAA being rammed down your throat?
DON'T MOURN, ORGANIZE!!!
APRIL 11 GLOBAL SHOWDOWN THE PEOPLE vs CITIGROUP
11:30am, meet outside of Hunter College subway stop, 68th and Lexington
12:00pm, begin procession to Citibank branches at Park and 57th and Park and 54th
1:00pm, wrap-up ending at Citigroup headquarters at 53rd and Lexington
Go for the jugular of the corporate global economy - and take on the world's most destructive bank - CITIGROUP.
SCENARIO
New Orleans style funeral procession led by Reverand Billy and marching Band. Citi-CEO Sandy Weill pallbearers carry a casket bearing the Earth (the planet and her people). The crowd carries red umbrellas and noise makers and instruments and some are trees and plants and orangutans. As we approach each Citi branch, the mood is somber. Speakers rally the crowd, the cry "don't mourn, organize!" shifts the energy to a jubilant frenzy as we dance away and celebrate. We end at the headquarters, where Citi officials refuse to come out and put the last nail in the coffin of mother earth, and so we liberate the planet, and in a ritualistic procession the crowd, one by one, deposits their red umbrellas into the casket and we end in a fierce rendition of Dancing on the Graves of Multinational Corporations, led by the Radical Cheerleaders.
The grand finale of black balloon popping punctuates the end.
JOIN US!
PLAYBILL:
SPEAKERS
Inner City Press/Community on the Move Rainforest Action Network Prison Moratorium Project National Organization of Women Students from NYU, other schools
PROPS
red umbrellas (provided) costumes: plants, trees, animals, other noisemakers instruments black balloons
From Redwoods to Redlining, Prisons to Pollution, Citi is there. Demand that Citi go BEYOND THE BOTTOM LINE to stop investing in the destruction of the environment and communities around the world.
- Beka Economopoulos Rainforest Action Network East Coast Grassroots Organizer http://www.ran.org 888-840-6416 office 917-560-3609 cell
-------
Mass Action Prep Guide
Thu, 05 Apr 2001
From: "Terra Lawson-Remer" <thelionessrampant@hotmail.com>
Are you going to Quebec or Buffalo or San Diego to protest the FTAA?
Are you planning on engaging in mass direct action protest against Citigroup, Starbucks, Staples, the FTAA or global corporate capitalism in any form this April?
If so, you may have no clue what you are getting into, especially if the scenario involves mass street actions. GET YOUR AFFINITY GROUP PREPARED! Know what to bring and how to organize yourself. Read below to prepare your affinity group for DIRECT ACTION PROTEST IN THE STREETS THIS APRIL. This guide is also attached in MS Word. See you in the streets.
PREPARATION GUIDE FOR MASS ACTION PROTESTS
Guide 001~~~~~Packing List
Personal:
1. sleeping bag 2. mess kit/mug 3. small bills, coins (transportation, phone calls) 4. bandanna (at least two) 5. flashlight 6. water bottle-- with squirt top (nalgenes, though hip, are useless) 7. WRIST WATCH 8. good footgear can you run? heavy shoes are known to hurt others during moments of rapid motion in crowds or direct action scenes 9. weather-appropriate clothes, layers, pack light in the clothes arena. 10. medication
<optional>
11. gas mask 12. goggles 13. pocket knife (do not take on action)
Affinity Group:
1. Direct Action first aid kit (see medical packing list, Guide 002) 2. Toilet Paper (a great gift to hosts, its always the first to go) 3. common cooking supplies (pots pans, food, coolers) 4. tent(s) optional 5. Locks for your BICYCLES, kryptonite U-locks, and cord locks (for keeping your bikes safe) 6. One or two (ugh) cell phones 7. video cam for legal observation
Thoughts: As we get closer to the actual date, and the details of where your AG will stay, and what you'll be doing with yourselves clear up, be sure to sit down and brainstorm all the possible materials you'll need to stay safe and effective.
Guide 002~~~~~ Forming an Affinity Group Disclaimer: There are folks who get paid to lead workshops on the intricacies of Affinity Groups (seek them out!). Just like the wooden frame of a house does not make a "home", following these rough outlines of forming an Affinity Group, won't make ya'll effective without time for bonding, and developing a good sense everyone's working styles, issues, etc. Ps. I am NOT a professional.
1. What is an Affinity Group?
Basically, it's a tight group of people joined by a common interest (affinity...) and political strategy, its non-hierarchical, often uses consensus based decision-making, and strict adherence to nonviolence. Usually ranges from 5-15 people, with 11 being just about perfect. Going over 15 is difficult, people's voices get drowned out, it's hard to meet everyone's needs, etc.
2. Why use 'em? (Can't i just hold a sign and holler?....) Affinity group organizing was developed to facilitate direct action and mass protests without disempowering the individual experience. Typically, in mass protest scenarios we face issues surrounding lack of internal communication among activists, the possibility of being injured or arrested, etc. Affinity groups often will form into clusters, for instance in Seattle, I participated in a cluster of three affinity groups from my home town, Eugene, there were about 50 of us total. Within our cluster, there was one designated spoke (some groups rotated spokes) from each AG, and from the whole cluster there were one or two designated spokes. The Cluster Spoke would attend Spokes Council meetings where other cluster spokes would meet with some of the people bottom-lining the overall protest and together, they would all represent the different interest levels and abilities of their clusters and AGs. Affinity group organizing is meant to ensure that communication is relayed to everyone, and everyone has a voice in the decision making and planning. Also, as you will see, Affinity groups are structured to make sure everyone is safe and effective in their direct action endeavors.
Roles in the Affinity Group:
(Note: you might make up extra roles for your group, but they don't need to be rigid, and not everyone has to have one)
Medic: responsible for the first aid, medications, and precautionary steps to keep group safe during action. See Guide 002 for Direct Action first aid kit, and medical concerns. Really helpful if medic knows CPR, knows how to treat shock, you get the idea.
Arrestees: hmm.... they got the glamour, but seriously, it's the support that makes a good action fly. Can you imagine chaining yourself to some cement block with nazi cops closing in and spraying gas every which way and then boom! You're on your own? Now that's scary. I love support.
Arrestable Support (medic included!): Support folks to be near Arrestees during action, sometimes they will have the ability to help you unlock, other times they will form soft blockades around folks who are immobile. Either way, they are VITAL to the efficacy of an action. They are often the eyes, ears, and legs of those who are immobile, providing a much higher sense of security during stressful times. Often carry cell phones.
Camera: sometimes doubles as legal observer, films all goings on with police. Risks arrest by being close to the action. WARNING: POLICE HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO CONFISCATE VIDEOS AND USE THEM AGAINST ACTIVISTS. Your AG should weigh the pros and cons of a camera person. Its great to have a co-camera person who can grab the film, video, etc. and run like hell in confrontational situations.
Legal observer: records cop badge numbers should be familiar with legal risks and pre-established legal networks for the action ahead of time. Often risks arrest due to proximity.
Jail Support: networks a lot with Legal observer, has each member's personal info, list of media to contact, calling cards!, cell phone or phone that s/he can be reached when arrested folks call out from jail. See upcoming Guide 004 ~~Legal Defense Form. Jail support should have all this info, and be prepared to eat it if they come in contact with a cop. Therefore this is a non-arrestable role.
Facilitator: sets agendas for each group meeting, well versed in consensus-based decision-making, watches vibes of group (Direct Action is often stressful).
AG Spoke: goes to cluster and/or Spokes Council meetings, has a good sense of the levels of experience, and commitment within the AG. Communicates the group's desires clearly. Often gets highly involved in strategic action planning. Continuously communicates with group, acts as a rep of the whole group.
Timekeeper: keeps time during meetings. In Seattle, we asked ours to be responsible for keeping track of the schedules during a convergence (ex: at 12pm is the Nonviolence training, 2:30 is our AG meeting, 4pm is the Spokes Council, etc.) and to be responsible for charting out transportation, maps of the city, etc.
Other roles....
Housing/food coordinator
Peacekeeper
Recon-responsible for checking out the action site ahead of time
Topics to go over with your AG before you leave town:
1. Direct Action experience levels 2. Levels of interest in arrest, support roles 3. Housing 4. Food 5. Transportation (to the area, and within the area) 6. Medical issues 7. Legal issues (prior arrests?!) 8. Fill out legal defense form (Guide 004) 9. Name for your group! 10. Fears, hopes surrounding DA
Its ok if your group is unsure about its commitment levels until you arrive in Cincy and scope out the plans. Its also ok if no one in your group wants to be arrested! Some groups are purely art and performance or support oriented. It is unadvisable to have a group of more than 70% arrestees.
Guide 003~~~~~ First Aid/Medical Issues
On treating pepper spray and tear gas: this packet cannot give you what you need. PLEASE! Send one or two or eight members of your affinity group to the medical trainings on the ground. There are awesome folks working on this stuff across the continent and they are getting better with every mass action: work with them and use their skills rather than relying on a packet to cover you. (edited 11/10/00) So: the first tip for every AG is to send someone to the medical trainings! The second tip, in case of pepper spray, tear gas or other injury in a mass style street action is to yell: "MEDIC!!" and get someone to you who has been trained in dealing with washing off and out chemicals. A very simple thing we can suggest here is to wear a gas mask (make sure the filter is not of asbestos) or a large bandanna soaked in apple cider vinegar (it helps reduce your chemical intake).
Medications
Every AG should have a serious discussion about individuals taking prescription medications. Everyone in your group should be aware of your medical conditions. IF you are taking meds, always carry 1-2 days worth of meds on you at all times. Also, medication poses difficulties 1) your name is on the bottle, if you are arrested this will prevent you from participating in jail solidarity, and if you cross your name off, they can get you for carrying illegal drugs, or not even give you your meds at all.
2) folks with medical conditions put their compatriots at risk when they engage in Civil Disobedience. Sometimes we have to assess our strengths and realize that we can be helpful without being arrested or arrestable.
Clothes
· Long sleeves and pants will help protect from nasty chemicals in the air as well as nasty experiences with cops and pavement
· Pure plastic on the other hand, like rainpaints, are excellent. Don't wear your nice yuppie camping gear brand name shit. It'll get fucked up and stink. Besides, they're all mostly synthetic. Face it, none of us are gonna look pretty.
During the Action:
Its nice for your first aid person to carry PowerBars or Cliff Bars or some high-energy snack Think about going to the bathroom. Some folks wear diapers if they know they'll be unable to visit a restroom for HOURS, some folks bring piss jugs, etc.
Guide 004~~~~~ Legal-ese
[Disclaimer: I'm not even going to pretend I'm a lawyer]
ACTIVIST LEGAL DEFENSE FORM (see back page of this packet for the actual questions) (Every single member of your group should fill this out and give it to the jail support/legal coordinator ahead of time. ANYONE could get arrested)
If questioned by investigators, your reference person needs to be prepared to state that you are not a "high flight risk". Your reference person needs to verify in a letter of recommendation that you are a responsible, forthright person; that you are a hard worker, pay your bills, are a registered voter, are an active participant in the community, are not leaving the area and are committed to making your court dates.
Things to Think about: (Discuss with your AG)
1. Does your employer/professor/housemate/mom/partner/family ghost need to be notified if you are arrested/held up for a few days? Make sure your support folks know this.
2. Do your pets or children need to be taken care of if you are delayed in DC?
3. Have you/your AG made bail arrangements?
4. Do you/your AG have an atty. lined up to defend you? (we're still working on a legal team for Cincy....)
a. Is your AG Legal Coordinator familiar with the legal system set up for this action? Is your LC familiar with the National Lawyer's Guild (web site)?
5. Have you had your LEGAL SOLIDARITY and JAIL SOLIDARITY and NONVIOLENCE and DIRECT ACTION trainings? (Count, 4 major trainings) this can be done in Cincy. If ya'll aren't trained, get to town early and TRAIN. Jail Solidarity covers issues like giving your real name (or NOT!) when getting arrested, what to do if they torture your fellow prisoners, or even try to separate you, how to group bargain, etc. god please go.
6. Is your AG committed to verbal and physical nonviolence?
7. When arrested, do you plan on cooperating or practicing non-cooperation?
8. Has anyone been fingerprinted or arrested before? Have a record?
Practicing a Security Culture:
1. Pick an action name. Everyone in your AG should get used to calling you by your action name so that there will be no slip ups. There will be government agents hanging out with us there. Don't kid yourself.
2. Don't name your AG or Cluster based on where you are actually from. In Seattle we named our cluster the Eugene Cluster. We decided later that was stupid. (ie "oh yeah the Eugene Cluster is responsible for blockading the entrance to the big important high security space"....ouch)
3. Don't carry info (like the legal defense form) about group members or yourself on you unless its in your underpants and you're not getting arrested. It's suggested to not carry ID on you in the days leading up to the action. Certainly not during an action.
4. Watch your emails and phone calls. Assume phones and phone lines are tapped. Emails are permanent - they never disappear. I'm pretty sure it's a felony to plan an action. ooops!
5. Planning an action? Great, keep it under your hat. You are possibly committing a felony. Don't brag for heaven's sake. And don't tell anyone who isn't physically involved. Even then, only tell people what they HAVE to know. Read Brian Glick's thin pamphlet "War at Home"
6. I have seen with my own two eyes individuals who appear out of nowhere during group actions or planning (where new faces are apt to be found) that I don't recognize but seem friendly and concerned, and they said things like "Hey everyone! We have to get out of the street, there's a fire truck coming! We gotta help them out!" NO FIRE TRUCK EVER APPEARED. Or things in a planning session "hey, maybe we should stay clear of that alley, there's bums and vagrants" YEAH, RIGHT, AND THEN THE COPS USED THAT ALLEY TO SNEAK UP ON US. Be nice to people, but cover your ass and be reasonably paranoid.
7. In Seattle people tried to take my picture during planning sessions, TV cameras came in to film people making puppets. Maybe they really were media. But I wasn't stupid enough to get caught on film. A VALID PHOTOJOURNALIST WILL GET YOUR PERMISSION. WATCH PEOPLE WITH CAMERAS.
8. Finally, we love being in the newspapers on the morning after, but I advise to NOT give your name to the friendly NY Times, etc. reporter. Get yourself a sound bite. "I choose to remain nameless in solidarity with the millions of people who cannot be here today" - your mama will still recognize your face, never fear.
Reasonable paranoia. That's the name of the game.
Guide 005~~~~~ Food and Housing
Housing
Things to consider-is there a bathroom? Is there running water? is there a place to cook things? Refrigerate food? (If so, you're lucky!) Be nice to your hosts if you are staying in a house, etc. Bring toilet paper.
Food
How many days will you be in town? How many people are in your AG? How poor are you? How vegan are you? If ya'll want to share food while there, here's an idea:
sit down with your group and brainstorm how much food you'll need, what would be useful (ie doesn't rot, very filling...), what resources you have (Joe has a pound of rice in his garage, Mary is friends with the baker down the street). Then go through the phone book and your minds and make a list of prospective food donors (or "cash for food" donors). Write a letter for them, most stores need a document for their taxes to prove they donated food, ask nicely and focus on the educational -- Teach-In vs. the locking yourself to police officers part. Food Not Bombs will be providing small vegan meals for free out of the Drop-In center BUT there are lots'o people going to this event. Could you feed that many? Yeah, neither can FNB. Actually, if you can pick up extra bulk food, bring it to them to hand out to your activist family. Don't depend on this food source. Too many already are. Now, you've got food, but where will you cook it, and what will you cook it with? That varies with each group depending on where they are staying of course. But do think about bringing versatile cooking materials. We were big fans of bagels in Seattle. Not only is it likely to find a bagel store willing to give you a huge sack of old bagels, but they are portable, filling, don't rot, and go with everything! Remember: the cost of living in any city is expensive! And you'll be very busy planning and organizing in DC, with not much time to go out a buy food. Ps: the healthy, well fed activist runs faster.
Guide 006~~~~~ During the Action
At the Site/Morning of:
· Non-arrest support should have info about every AG member in a safe place.
· Know the boundaries of the arrest and non-arrest areas
· Non-arrest support holds $, keys, ID, (DO NOT CARRY ID), etc.
· Bring food for yourself and others (and hugs) · Bring a paper and pen for keeping track of police badge numbers, etc
· Wear baggy long sleeves and pants. it will
a) protect your skin from pepper fog !!
b) protect your skin from the cement, cords, chains, cops
· Wear plastic outer layers. it will
a) protect from your clothes absorbing gasses and chemicals
b) protect from rain.....it is November.....then again...global climate change.....
· Do not wear contacts; have your glasses on (what are those strings used to hang glasses by your neck called?!) Bring protective eye gear like goggles or masks if you are so inclined.
So the Cops are closing in:
· Once arrests begin, write down each individuals name, the time and nature of the arrest, the activity of the person arrested, and the treatment of the arresting officer (badge numbers!).
· At least one support person for your AG should try to stay at the place of arrest until all the CDers in your group are arrested. At least one should go to where those being arrested are being taken (research ahead of time!) as soon as the first person is arrested.
· Medic on hand to rinse eyes and help those being gassed, etc. while they are immobile.
· Being immobile is a very vulnerable feeling; support can help by giving reports on surrounding action, hugs, water, etc.
· Remember, cops can't make deals, only judges make deals. DON'T trust a cop on the street making promises, or trying to convince you of things.
ARRESTEES MUST BE TRAINED IN NONVIOLENCE. DO IT. THESE GUIDES DON'T EVEN START TO COVER NECESSARY BEHAVIORS DURING ARREST, ETC.
But there are two things I want to go over:
1. Pain Compliance. The Police use Pain Compliance as a way of trying to make you unlock, stand up, shut up, blink, walk, etc. This is a technique where they hurt you using increasing amounts of pressure (like twisting your arm increasingly until it may break). While pain compliance is being used on you: narrate in a loud, clear voice (so that everyone around you can hear). Example: OW!! YOU ARE TWISTING MY ARM, THAT IS HURTING ME SO MUCH OW!!! YOU ARE BREAKING MY ARM! YOU JUST BROKE MY ARM! Not only does this provide information for the people nearby who may be documenting the situation, but it also tends to make that connection between you and the cop. its been known to work, but it won't save your arm.....or leg....or wrist...or finger....
2. Getting cut out of a lock:
The police are required to keep you safe while they take use their special equipment to cut you out. You can ask for and demand protective gear, to have tarps laid over you (to shield from chips), goggles, etc. They are not allowed to be careless with your physical person unless applying specific pain tactics.
Creating a space during Chaos:
Protest is going to be stressful. Keeping calm is an invaluable skill. With large crowds and high possibility of police violence, the possibility for stampeding, rioting is especially pronounced. STAY CALM, THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK. THE TENDENCY IN THIS SITUATION WILL BE TO ANNOUNCE UNCONFIRMED RUMORS TO THE CROWD. (ie: "The action four blocks away has been gassed and beaten, the cops are closing in, President Clinton has announced amnesty for all protestors...etc...")
1. Support folks, your #1 priority is keeping your lockdowns/immobile folks safe. There will be thousands and thousands of people milling around literally, and they will gravitate towards areas where there is an occupied space. If you feel the crowd is getting tense you can:
a) Start to form a circle of people around your lockdowns, step a good yard away from the site and link arms or hold hands with other support. Next, invite people milling around (there will be TONS) to join you. People will help - if you ask.
b) Another option to calm a tense situation is to chant in unison, PLEASE SIT DOWN, PLEASE SIT DOWN. We will probably get gassed in Cincy. When the cops prepare to fire on a crowd, it is sometimes most effective to just sit down, curl up, and take it. There are more of us than them. As a sitting mass of humans taking up many city blocks, we are much harder to panic or herd. A standing, milling crowd is much more volatile and easier for the police to manipulate.
c) Sing. Chant. Engage the crowd in solidarity experiences. It is calming, grounding, and unifying.
d) An excellent way to communicate with a large crowd is one of these two ways (even better than bullhorn, i promise!) -- stand on a tall object and yell at the crowd "Please repeat after me!" until they collectively yell "please repeat after me" back at you. Then yell your info at them in bite sized pieces Ex: "there are 16 people chained to this platform" and they yell that back, then you say "please respect their safety" etc. always end with "Thank you" so they know you're done. Not only does this get everyone's attention, but broadcasts your message much further than any wimpy bullhorn could ever do. A similar method is to have one person originate a message (in bite sized pieces) surrounded by four or so folks facing all directions who collectively chant the info in a similar "repeat after me" scenario.
2. We are, not to be dramatic, waging a brief war. That is, think of the experience tactically. We are going to attempt to converge on, and occupy space in a public demonstration. The police are going to use violence to prevent us from taking space. We advance as a bloc, they retreat, vice versa. This is not as simple as holding a sign and hollering. That is why it is essential to get your nonviolence training.
3. Go to Nonviolence/Direct Action training they will "prepare" you for how to behave while being arrested, being in jail, working in a mob, etc and cover much more ground than these few tips in this guide.
4. We are going to have an amazing and powerful experience.
the end.
ACTIVIST LEGAL DEFENSE FORM
(every single member of your group should fill this out and give it to the jail support/legal coordinator. ANYONE could get arrested)
Name: Action Name: Affinity Group: Attorney: Attorney's Phone:
Support/ Reference Person (your outside contact person, friend, family member..):
Name: Phone: Your Driver's License #: State on License: Social Security #: Date of Birth: Age: Medical Insurance info: (name of company, policy number, anything you can copy off that card!) Current home phone: Housemate to contact: Current Address: How long there: Previous address you lived at: How long there: Workplace (current/former) w/ phone/address: How long worked there: Workplace contact person:
Personal needs: (medications, religious, dietary, allergies..)
Favorite snack (a thought for support folks to get....)
For students: Phone numbers/email of professors: (to let 'em know you won't be in class) (on back if needed)
------
Lawyers shun summit
Prosecutors say they're being used to control protest
Montreal Gazette
WILLIAM MARSDEN The Gazette
Thursday 5 April 2001
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/010405/5037875.html
Quebec prosecutors are threatening to quit a special eight-member team set up by the provincial government to prosecute protesters arrested at the Summit of the Americas this month.
They are objecting to what they claim is political interference with the judiciary on the part of summit organizers.
One prosecutor has already left the team, and others are expected to follow.
Prosecutors say provincial Justice Minister Paul Begin has directed them to delay all bail hearings of arrested protesters for the maximum three full days allowed by law, as a way of keeping them off the street for the duration of the summit, April 20-22.
"This is political interference, and we should not stand for it," said one prosecutor who did not wish to be named. "It's a plan of battle to hold them in jail. We will not accept these directives."
The Criminal Code allows bail hearings to be delayed for a maximum of three "clear days" between the day of the arrest and the day of the hearing. This means that protesters could find themselves behind bars for five days.
Normally, defendants are processed within 24 hours of their arrest. Often they are released the same day from a police station with a promise to appear in court.
The prosecutors also say they do not want to prosecute people who are protesting against repressive governments represented at the summit.
The Quebec government has built a concrete and chain-link fence around a large section of the Old City where the summit is to take place. About 25,000 protesters are expected to show up.
Jails have been cleared and thousands of police officers from the Montreal Urban Community force, the RCMP and the Surete du Quebec are being brought in for security.
Prosecutors say they have been told not to subpoena police as witnesses during the week of the summit because they won't be available.
Prosecutors noted that the Criminal Code allows them to seek publication bans on bail hearings. One prosecutor said he believes that after the five days of incarceration, charges will simply be dropped in most cases.
He said the provincial government is just using the judiciary to keep protesters off the streets.
Montreal prosecutors plan to make public within the next few days a letter of solidarity with the protesters, one prosecutor said.
Prosecutors are negotiating with the province for better salary and working conditions.
Quebec prosecutors work in extremely difficult conditions. Most do not have computers. Eighty-five prosecutors in Montreal share four secretaries. While Begin, as justice minister, is paid $14,496 more than his Ontario counterpart, Quebec prosecutors are paid about half as much as Ontario prosecutors.
Since The Gazette reported on the poor conditions last month, Begin has promised to get the prosecutors computers. But he refuses to connect them to the Internet because, he claims, it's too expensive. That means they won't have access to online jurisprudence.
Prosecutors complain that they have no time to prepare files and have to plea-bargain more than 90 per cent of their cases.
Summit of the Americas
- Where: Quebec City
- When: April 20-22
- The purpose: More than 9,000 delegates from 34 countries in North, South and Central America, members of the Organization of American States, will meet as part of the continuing process of trying to unite the economies of the Western Hemisphere - except for Cuba's - in a single free-trade agreement, the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
- The opposition: As many as 25,000 demonstrators are expected to descend on Quebec City to protest against the FTAA, which they say will serve the interests of richer countries and multinational corporations at the expense of human rights, the environment and the poor.
- Security: More than 6,000 police officers from across Canada will be on duty during the summit, hoping to prevent the chaos and violence that have marred similar meetings.
Coming in The Gazette
- Protest then and now: a look at how the activists who oppose globalization are like - and unlike - the people who tried to change the world in the 1960s.
- On the scene at the pre-summit meeting of international trade ministers and international business in Buenos Aires this weekend.
- April 14: a special edition of The Review takes an in-depth look at the issues of globalization, pro and con, by Peter Hadekel and Alexander Norris.
- April 17-23: comprehensive coverage of the momentous events taking place in Quebec City - both inside and outside the security perimeter.
---
Turks protest in wake of fuel-price boost
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/5/01
World Scene
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200145213348.htm
ANKARA, Turkey - Thousands of people took to the streets yesterday protesting Turkey's economic crisis after news that fuel prices had been raised by 20 percent.
Several thousand small-business owners and workers gathered spontaneously in Ankara to vent their frustration at the crisis, and television pictures showed angry people held back by police near the prime minister's office.
Economy Minister Kemal Dervis was quoted yesterday as saying the Turkish government would have good news for markets next week and he urged people to have confidence in the lira.
-------
City Council OKs laws intended to discourage violence at ADB meeting
Honolulu Star Bulletin
Thursday, April 5, 2001
Star-Bulletin staffhttp://www.starbulletin.com/2001/04/05/news/story9.html
The City Council approved a number of bills yesterday intended to provide security in the event of protests stemming from the Asian Development Bank's board of governors meeting in Honolulu May 7-11.
The bills would ban "possession with intent to use" any device capable of emitting an "obnoxious substance;" prohibit the wearing of a mask or disguise "in order to conceal oneself while perpetrating a crime or to escape lawful detention or custody;" and allow police to arrest people "who deposit any glass, nail, tack, can or other substance that is likely to injure any person, animal or vehicle on a highway."
Those who oppose the ADB's policies say the measures create an intimidating climate for those who may wish to protest the conference.
The Council also approved a resolution accepting $518,000 from the Hawaii Tourism Authority that will allow police to purchase equipment related to security precautions related to the convention.
The City Council also approved:
>> A $612,000 settlement of the sexual harassment lawsuit of police outreach worker Sharon Black against retired Assistant Chief Joseph Aveiro.
>> A zoning change allowing for a 20-acre shopping center at the edge of the Royal Kunia subdivision.
>> A reorganization plan for itself that strips beleaguered Councilwoman Rene Mansho of her chair of the Public Works Committee and Council representative to the Hawaii State Association of Counties.
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!