------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Planes Banned Near Nuclear Plants
Norway urges UK to curb Sellafield emissions
German Stade nuclear plant in temporary shut-down
Pakistan rejects use of N-weapons by US
Officials Wary About Soviet Arsenal
Doomed Crewman's Note Found in Bottle Aboard Kursk
Analysis: Threat from weapon stockpiles
Ukraine fulfills pledge to give up nuclear arsenal
Ukraine: Last Missile Silo Destroyed
Planes banned from flying near nuclear plants
INEEL, CONTRACTORS SETTLE ON ASBESTOS AND CFC VIOLATIONS
KENTUCKY NUKE WORKERS WERE ENDANGERED
Atomic Trains Grounded
HELP NEEDED IN ANALYZING RAD LEVELS IN BABY BOOMER TEETH

MILITARY
U.S. kills al Qaeda leaders in raids, but top brass alive
Afghan opposition maps out offensive
Taliban transforms Afghanistan for total war
What Does Dr. Weeks Believe?
Majority want bombing pause
More Corporate War Profiteering
GROUND BROKEN FOR NEW CHEMICAL LAB
Coca Invades Colombia's Coffee Fields
Contaminated Afghan heroin caused death of 18 addicts
Saddam Says U.S. Should Not Win War in Afghanistan
Hamas wins converts as talks fail
Tokyo acts to avoid limits on military
Nigerian Army Said to Massacre Hundreds of Civilians
Christians hunker down in Pakistan
Pressure To Curtail War Grows
Aid agencies help to rid child soldiers of war's scars
UN Chief Presses Taliban on Supplies
U.N. Chief Wants Early End to War
Lawmakers offer their own strategies for war effort
U.S. Considers Afghan Ground Base
Feds probe Northrop in defense fraud case
Northrop Grumman Accused of Fraud
Lockheed Officials Briefed on Fighter
Backyard terrorism

OTHER
Message from Robert Redford on Energy Security
White House sees support for bigger oil reserve
New Species Enters Debate on Arctic Oil
U.S. Offers Lesson on How to Tell Cluster Bombs From Food Packs
POST-CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA
Ashcroft issues new terror warning
Cookbook for mass murder

ACTIVISTS
Last chance to sign on!
Protesters urge World Bank to halt oil funding
Dissenters Find Colleges Less Tolerant of Discord Following Attacks
Americans Starting to Doubt War
Survey Shows Doubts Stirring on Terror War
Which products make life more sustainable?
Please consider signing this
5,000 marchers in S.F. protest military actions



-------- NUCLEAR

Planes Banned Near Nuclear Plants

Tue, Oct 30
By JONATHAN D. SALANT,
Associated Press Writer
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/011030/17/attacks-private-planes

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily banned private planes from flying near nuclear power plants after Attorney General John Ashcroft warned of possible new terrorist attacks.

The FAA on Tuesday imposed the restrictions "for reasons of national security." The ban on flying within 11 miles of 86 nuclear plants and other nuclear sites such as the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico expires Nov. 7.

Also in response to Ashcroft's warning, Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta told his department's administrators to make sure that the trucking, aviation, railroad, shipping and other industries maintained high levels of security.

The ban on private flights near nuclear power plants will force nearby small airports to close, said Warren Morningstar, a spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

"A small, general-aviation aircraft is not a significant risk to a nuclear facility," Morningstar said. "On the other hand, we also have to accept that there are serious national security threats, and we will do our best to protect the nation and keep people safe."

Commercial airplanes, which fly at higher altitudes, will not be affected. Nor will the ban apply to medical, law enforcement, rescue and firefighting operations when authorized by air traffic controllers.

The FAA also announced restrictions on private planes because of the World Series. Only pilots who file flight plans with the FAA will be allowed to fly within 34 miles of John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. The restrictions will be in effect from 6:45 p.m. to 2 a.m. EST during all World Series games played at Yankee Stadium.

Bans remain in effect on all private planes within 20 miles of Kennedy Airport or Reagan Washington National Airport. In Boston, New York and Washington, all private pilots must file flight plans with the FAA.

Blimps, news helicopters and banner-towing planes remain grounded in 30 metropolitan areas.

-------- europe

Norway urges UK to curb Sellafield emissions

Erik Brynhildsbakken,
30/10/2001
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13023

OSLO - Norway's Environment Minister Boerge Brende said yesterday he had asked his British counterpart to halt emissions from the UK's nuclear reprocessing plant near Sellafield, traced as far as the Arctic Barents Sea.

Brende met UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Margaret Beckett and Environment Minister Michael Meacher in Luxembourg earlier yesterday to demand emissions from the state-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) facility are processed ashore and not discharged into the Irish Sea.

"What came out of the meeting was that the British government would consider the Sellafield emissions again before Christmas," Brende told Reuters.

"It was a constructive but tough meeting."

Brende said traces of the radioactive compound technetium-99, known to stem from Sellafield, had been discovered along the entire Norwegian coastline and as far as the Arctic areas.

"We are not happy about Sellafield and understand fully the strong Irish reactions against Sellafield as the site is only a few miles away from their border," Brende said.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern promised earlier in the month to pursue "every legal avenue" to halt the commissioning of a mixed oxide (MOX) plant in Cumbria, northwest England.

Ireland has long called for the closure of Sellafield.

A spokesman for Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said ministers were considering whether to accept the UK environment agency's proposal to leave limits on technetium emissions unchanged.

"Ministers (Beckett and Meacher) are considering whether to intervene," he said.

Brende, who took office a week ago as a centre-right coalition came to power after winning a general election on September 10, said Norway was currently exploring possibilities for a lawsuit against British authorities over Sellafield.

"I have asked the Foreign Ministry to evaluate the legal aspects of these emissions for Norway," Brende said.

Brende said British authorities should have an obligation to choose the most environmentally friendly way of dealing with the discharge from Sellafield.

"Environmental considerations should weigh heavier than short-term economic considerations," he said.

Brende said he would meet again with British authorities before Christmas.

Britain first established nuclear facilities at Sellafield, formerly called Windscale, in the 1940s, and the world's first commercial nuclear power station was opened there in 1956.

Research has shown lobsters and other shellfish in the North Sea and in the Irish sea have high levels of technetium-99.

-------- germany

German Stade nuclear plant in temporary shut-down

30/10/2001
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13032/story.htm

FRANKFURT - The 740 megawatt (MW) Stade nuclear power plant in northern German has been temporarily closed since Saturday, Oct 27, operator E.ON energy said in a statement.

The statement, issued on Sunday, said an irregularity had been found within one of four steam tube systems.

The fault could not be checked properly while the plant was on-line, it said.

Safety monitoring authorities in the state of Lower Saxony, where the plant is situated, had been informed.

E.ON was not immediately available for further comment yesterday morning.

-------- india/pakistan

Pakistan rejects use of N-weapons by US

The News International
Tuesday October 30, 2001-- Sha^aban 12,1422 A.H
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2001-daily/30-10-2001/main/main6.htm

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Monday firmly rejected "even the thought" of using nuclear weapons by the US inside Afghanistan. This was said by spokesman of Foreign Office during a press briefing.

When asked to comment on reports that US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld has not ruled out the option of using nuclear weapons, spokesman Riaz Mohammed Khan said: "We firmly reject even the thought of using nuclear weapons inside Afghanistan tactically or otherwise and we firmly and categorically reject this." He explained that when Rumsfeld was asked this question he had simply asked: "Who told you?"

When asked about the visit of US Chief of Central Command (CENTCOM) General Tommy Franks, the spokesman replied that he could not provide any details about the meeting between General Frank and President Pervez Musharraf except that, "they discussed the situation relating to Afghanistan".

The spokesman said that the US was keeping its options open while Pakistan had suggested that military operations should be stopped in the holy month of Ramazan. When asked about the Afghan ambassador's announcement that they are asking Pakistanis not to cross over into Afghanistan as ground operations have not yet started, the spokesman said: "We would not want any Pakistani going into Afghanistan and we have also asked Taliban not to allow any Pakistani there for the purpose of military training or otherwise."

About the blockade of Karakorum Highway by pro-Taliban tribals, the spokesman said the road blockade has not much impact as there is no tourism during winter and confirmed that food supplies were normal. But he said that this blockage was damaging Pakistan as it did not help any cause. "No Pakistani can do harm to Pakistan and the property of the people," he added.

The spokesman said that UN Secretary-General's special representative for Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi on Monday held first round of discussions with Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar. Another meeting with Musharraf will take place today, he said.

"There was complete agreement that all Afghans, all neighbours of Afghanistan, international community and the UN itself work together to preserve the territorial integrity of Afghanistan," he said.

Describing the meeting as preliminary, Foreign Office Spokesman Riaz Muhammad Khan told newsmen that the initiative by the UN Secretary General and the UN for promoting a process which can lead to the formation of a government of national reconciliation came under discussion.

It was also agreed upon that there should be a home grown government in Afghanistan without any outside influence and the outsiders should help in facilitating the promotion of a broad based government there, he said.

The Spokesman said they also took note of the various processes which have been going on, including the meetings in Rome and Peshawar as well as some meetings taking place in Cyprus. He clarified that no specific ideas were discussed during the meeting. The spokesman said Brahimi will also call on the President General Pervez Musharraf.

The spokesman also said that French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine and Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou would arrive in Pakistan on November 1. APP adds: To a question about German Chancellor Schroeder's proposal of dialogue between India and Pakistan, the spokesman said Pakistan has no hesitation in resumption of a dialogue with India.

The spokesman confirmed that the visit of President General Pervez Musharraf to New York, in all possibility, would take place but details of his visit were still being finalized. About the possibility of Musharraf-Vajpayee meeting in New York, the spokesman said: "How the programme would be worked out and whether meeting can be arranged is still not decided."

To a question, the spokesman said he has no information about any visit of former king Zahir Shah to Islamabad. The spokesman said the possibility of foreign hand in Sunday's incident of killings in Bahawalpur could not be ruled out. "The objective of this act can only be to create unrest and instability in Pakistan," the spokesman observed.

While expressing extreme concern over the reports that Indian troops had besieged a mosque in Panzam area of Chadora in Badgam and the killing of 22 Kashmiris in various part of the held Valley, the spokesman said: "This is state terrorism and conclusive proof that the Indian forces are engaged in a deliberate campaign of mayhem and murder in Indian Occupied Kashmir, particularly since the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States."

-------- russia

Officials Wary About Soviet Arsenal

October 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Soviet-Arsenal.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States has spent as much as $5 billion since 1991 to help secure the former Soviet Union's vast nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal, but U.S. officials say they still can't account for all the weapons.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the United States should be very concerned that some of these Soviet weapons of mass destruction may have slipped into the wrong hands, said Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind.

``That is the worst-case scenario,'' he said. ``That is the one thing we must make certain did not happen.''

Lugar co-authored legislation a decade ago that launched the U.S. effort to safeguard the Soviet arsenal during the political, economic and social chaos that surrounded the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Since then, he said, roughly half the Soviet nuclear warheads have been destroyed.

The secure disposal of the materials that those weapons use for nuclear explosions -- plutonium and highly enriched uranium -- is still difficult, he said, and the progress of securing the chemical and biological stockpiles has proceeded far more slowly than the destruction program.

The United States has upgraded security systems that cover about one-third of the almost 700 tons of weapons-grade nuclear material identified as at risk of theft or diversion from Russia, according to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

Restrictions imposed by Russia have kept the U.S. Department of Energy from installing security systems at about 100 buildings that contain hundreds of metric tons of nuclear material, according to a February GAO report. The report cites a wide-open gate at one Russian nuclear facility.

Ken Alibek, a former top scientist in the Soviet biological weapons program who came to the United States in 1992, said economically struggling Soviet weapons scientists pose the greatest threat.

Finding raw materials for biological weapons is easy because each country has its own pathogenic microorganisms, Alibek said, but such materials are worthless without the ability to transform them into weapons.

``In the field of biological weapons, the real threat is knowledge,'' he said.

The State and Defense departments have programs to put Soviet weapons scientists to work on beneficial research to reduce the risk they will be recruited by terrorists or smaller nations out to develop mass-destruction armaments.

Alibek said the money from those programs doesn't always go to the right people in the biological weapons area. Hundreds of bioweapons scientists have received not a penny.

In addition, he said, security remains lax at some Soviet facilities that work with deadly biological agents.

Chris Kessler, spokesman for the State Department's nonproliferation bureau, said the agency ``has no reason to believe that Russia or any Central Asian country has been the source of anthrax or any other pathogen'' used in the mail attacks in the United States. He declined to elaborate, citing the ongoing investigation.

Former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said U.S. programs to support Soviet weapons scientists are a good start but are insufficient given the magnitude of the problem. An international effort is needed, he said.

``Now, hopefully, the warming of relationships between the U.S. and Russia will enhance cooperation,'' he said, ``but you still cannot prevent a hungry Russian scientist who cares about feeding his family from defecting for the right price to Iraq, Iran, North Korea or even'' Osama bin Laden.

Former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., who authored the Soviet nonproliferation legislation with Lugar, said Americans are safer than they were during the 40 to 50 years that the threat of a Cold War-driven nuclear holocaust hung over their heads.

Still, he said, the United States cannot be sure some weapons and expertise have not leaked out of the former Soviet Union.

``We'll never be sure, and we'll never be absolutely safe,'' said Nunn, who now heads the Nuclear Threat Initiative foundation.

--------

Doomed Crewman's Note Found in Bottle Aboard Kursk

Yahoo News
By Natalia Andreassen
Reuters
Tuesday October 30 1:32 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011030/wl/russia_kursk_dc_9.html

MURMANSK, Russia - Investigators scouring Russia's Kursk submarine found a note Tuesday from a doomed crewman, scrawled in darkness in the ill-fated vessel's last hours and stuffed inside a water bottle, officials said.

The message is the third found on board the nuclear-powered Kursk, 14 months after two unexplained explosions sank one of the Russian navy's most modern submarines in the icy waters of the Barents Sea, killing all 118 crew.

The first notes, discovered last year when 12 bodies were pulled from the Arctic deep, revealed that crew members who survived the initial blasts knew they were about to die.

Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov said the latest message was written by senior non-commissioned officer Oleg Borisov. He said the note was personal.

``A farewell note from a sailor has been found,'' Ustinov, who heads the teams of investigators on board the Kursk, told a news conference.

``I will not read the note to you as it gives us no new information and its contents are purely personal,'' he said, adding the message was found inside a plastic mineral water bottle.

Ustinov said workers had recovered the bodies of 49 servicemen as they made their way through the dank and mangled interior of the submarine, now in a dry-dock in the Arctic port of Roslyakovo.

Salvage divers pulled the bodies of 12 servicemen from the wreck a year ago while it lay on the Arctic seabed, but halted the rescue operation when it was deemed too dangerous.

RADIATION LEAK FEARS

Local residents had said they feared radiation leaks and the possible detonation of missiles still aboard as the Kursk was being pulled into dry-dock.

But officials have recorded no abnormal radiation levels and the Russian navy has ruled out any detonation of the Kursk's 22 cruise missiles, which have a range of 300 miles and the power to destroy an aircraft carrier.

Navy commander Vladimir Kuroyedov said Tuesday eight live missiles had been extracted from the vessel's starboard side.

He said that all compartments of the ship were now being inspected after investigators had completed their search of the ship. The vessel's bow, heavily damaged in the accident, remains on the Arctic seabed and is to be raised next year.

President Vladimir Putin, criticized for remaining on holiday as attempts to rescue the crew proved fruitless, promised angry relatives the submarine would be lifted whatever the cost and the bodies handed over for proper burial.

The exact cause of the accident remains unclear.

Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, heading the government probe into the disaster, said Monday the vessel sank after one of the submarine's torpedoes exploded, leaving open the possibility that the ship collided with an unspecified object.

Investigators say the cause of the accident will be found only when the bow section is brought to the surface.

-------

Analysis: Threat from weapon stockpiles
Work to destroy missiles is behind schedule

BBC News
By Tom Housden,
Tuesday, 30 October, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1628000/1628486.stm

Over the last decade, America is thought to have spent several billion dollars on securing the former Soviet Union's vast arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

But some of the weapons stocks remain unaccounted for.

The 11 September attacks and anthrax outbreaks have rekindled fears that some may have fallen into the wrong hands.

Ten years ago the Nunn-Lugar agreement was drawn up as part of a series of US-Russian initiatives aimed at safeguarding weapons of mass destruction amid the political chaos and instability which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But Republican Senator Richard Lugar, who co-authored the legislation, admits that work to secure the biological and chemical stockpiles remains far from complete, while the safe disposal of nuclear weapons material is difficult.

There is also concern that impoverished or disaffected Russian scientists may decide to export their knowledge - and may not be too scrupulous about who they work for.

Complacency

Prior to the 11 September attacks on America, US backing for the schemes seemed to be waning amid a backdrop of disorganisation and growing mutual distrust.

Siegfried Heckler, former director of the US Los Alamos National Laboratory, recently warned that work to safeguard and eliminate weapons of mass destruction was being undermined by inertia and complacency.

"Nothing really serious has happened, but a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's nuclear complex is largely intact, vastly oversized and overstaffed," he told the International Herald and Tribune.

Ex-Soviet republics are thought to have 7-800 tons of enriched uranium remaining from its Cold War stockpiles, with an additional 150-200 tons of enriched plutonium.

Although making large-scale nuclear weapons requires a high degree of expertise, there are fears that terrorists could scrape together sufficient supplies of radioactive material to produce a small and crude, yet devastating bomb.

These so-called dirty bombs could be manufactured by simply wrapping small amounts of radioactive material in conventional explosives.

Renewed impetus

In March this year the Bush administration delayed an initiative drawn up by the Clinton government aimed at destroying plutonium stocks and helping Russian scientists find new jobs or careers.

Now there is renewed impetus for another effort. Senator Lugar said he hopes that this year funding will be boosted for the arms reduction and control initiatives.

The US recently upgraded security at storage facilities thought to be most vulnerable to theft, but further monitoring has been restricted by the Russian Energy Department.

The US recently agreed with Uzbekistan that weapons-grade anthrax spores dumped on the island of Vozrozhdeniye in the Aral Sea will be removed and destroyed.

Vozrozhdeniye - the world's largest burial site of weapons-grade anthrax - served as a Russian biological and chemical warfare test site for more than 60 years.

Clean-up

The island was reputedly used for testing tularaemia, Q-fever, brucellosis, glanders and plague during the 1970s.

It is believed that military laboratories also tested typhus, botulinum toxin, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, smallpox, and microbial strains with high virulence and resistance to ultraviolet rays or heat.

The facility was abandoned in 1992, but a survey by US scientists in 1997 found that anthrax remained infectious in six out of 11 burial sites.

Clearing up Vozrozhdeniye is becoming more urgent given that the Aral Sea is shrinking each year. The island will soon be accessible by land.

The US is also to assist with funding improvements to security at germ warfare research and storage facilities elsewhere in Uzbekistan.

It has also been predicted that the US Congress will also now pass a long-awaited $35m contribution towards a $200m plant to destroy Soviet chemical weapons.

-------- ukraine

Ukraine fulfills pledge to give up nuclear arsenal

USA TODAY
10/30/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/10/30/ukraine.htm

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukraine destroyed its last nuclear missile silo on Tuesday, fulfilling a pledge to give up the vast nuclear arsenal it inherited after the breakup of the former Soviet Union.

The silo was blown up at a military range in the southern Mykolaiv region near Pervomaisk, according to the Interfax news agency. The U.S.-Ukrainian Cooperative Threat Reduction Program oversaw the destruction.

A team of U.S. and Ukrainian officials joined three schoolchildren in turning six keys to detonate the explosives that blew up the silo, the last of 46 to be dismantled.

"So far, Ukraine confirmed its commitment to secure peace and stability, and made a significant contribution to strengthening the international regime of arms nonproliferation," said Serhiy Borodenkov, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.

The land beneath the silo will be cleaned and converted for agricultural use, officials said.

Ukraine inherited the world's third-largest nuclear stockpile with the 1991 Soviet collapse, including 130 SS-19 missiles, 46 SS-24 missiles and dozens of strategic bombers. The country later renounced nuclear weapons and transferred all missiles and its 1,300 nuclear warheads to Russia. After processing, the nuclear materials from the warheads were brought back to Ukraine as nuclear fuel for power plants.

In 1997, Ukraine and the United States signed a treaty on American assistance in dismantling 38 Tu-160s and Tu-95s bombers and more than 480 Kh-55 air-launched cruise missiles. The last two bombers were dismantled in February.

The United States initiated the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program in 1991 to reduce the nuclear capability of former Soviet Union nations.

All work under the disarmament program is scheduled to be completed by Dec. 4.

--------

Ukraine: Last Missile Silo Destroyed, Nation 'Nuclear Free'

30 October 2001
RFE/RL
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/10/301030085757.asp

Pervomaisk, Ukraine; -- Ukraine military officials today destroyed the country's last remaining nuclear missile silo, the final step in its nuclear disarmament plan.

Ukrainian and U.S. civilians triggered explosives in the silo, in an international ceremony which, according to one U.S. official, marked Ukraine as "totally nuclear free."

In the Soviet era, over 170 missile silos in Ukraine were positioned to fire atomic weapons on Western Europe and North America. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited the Soviet weapons, but soon began delivering them to Russia in exchange for economic aid, completing the exchange in the late 1990s. Ukraine began dismantling its weapons infrastructure under the START-1 treaty in 1994.

U.S. ceremony representative John Connell said that the U.S. would continue to financially support weapons reduction in Ukraine, providing funds to repair damage to regions used for nuclear purposes.

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

Planes banned from flying near nuclear plants

USA TODAY
10/30/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/oct01/2001-10-30-nuke-plant.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily banned private planes from flying near nuclear power plants after Attorney General John Ashcroft warned of possible new terrorist attacks.

The FAA on Tuesday imposed the restrictions "for reasons of national security." The ban on flying within 11 miles of 86 nuclear plants and other nuclear sites such as the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico expires Nov. 7.

Also in response to Ashcroft's warning, Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta told his department's administrators to make sure that the trucking, aviation, railroad, shipping and other industries maintained high levels of security.

The ban on private flights near nuclear power plants will force nearby small airports to close, said Warren Morningstar, a spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

"A small, general-aviation aircraft is not a significant risk to a nuclear facility," Morningstar said. "On the other hand, we also have to accept that there are serious national security threats, and we will do our best to protect the nation and keep people safe."

Commercial airplanes, which fly at higher altitudes, will not be affected. Nor will the ban apply to medical, law enforcement, rescue and firefighting operations when authorized by air traffic controllers.

The FAA also announced restrictions on private planes because of the World Series. Only pilots who file flight plans with the FAA will be allowed to fly within 34 miles of John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. The restrictions will be in effect from 6:45 p.m. to 2 a.m. EST during all World Series games played at Yankee Stadium.

Bans remain in effect on all private planes within 20 miles of Kennedy Airport or Reagan Washington National Airport. In Boston, New York and Washington, all private pilots must file flight plans with the FAA.

Blimps, news helicopters and banner-towing planes remain grounded in 30 metropolitan areas.

-------- idaho

INEEL, CONTRACTORS SETTLE ON ASBESTOS AND CFC VIOLATIONS

October 30, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-30-09.html

BOISE, Idaho, Contractors for the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) have paid more than $160,000 in penalties for violating federal asbestos and chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) emissions laws.

Lockheed Martin Idaho Technologies Company (LMITCO) was the management and operating contractor at INEEL until October 1, 1999, when the company was replaced by Bechtel BWXT Idaho, LLC (BBWI). The asbestos violations were discovered in October of 1999 when EPA conducted an unannounced inspection of asbestos abatement and demolition work at the site. The violations include:

. failure to remove all regulated asbestos containing material before demolition

. failure to strip all regulated material from large facility components

. failure to adequately wet and keep wet regulated material

. failure to prevent visible emissions

. other violations involving marking vehicles, disposing of material, and including correct information in their notification.

Inhalation of asbestos fibers can cause lung cancer and other lung diseases. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed regulations for renovation and demolition projects to prevent release of asbestos fibers into the environment, protect workers and protect the public.

The CFC violations were discovered when a Bechtel employee notified EPA of the loss of 300 pounds of refrigerant from a cooling system at the INEEL. The refrigerant leak was first discovered in July 1999 and had not yet been fixed.

In reviewing more than 1,500 pages of Bechtel records, the EPA found numerous violations of record keeping and leak repair requirements.

Scientists have concluded that CFCs damage the stratospheric ozone layer, which already is depleted over Antarctica, and, to a lesser extent, over North America, Europe and other populated areas. This layer of gas screens individuals from the sun's powerful and harmful ultraviolet radiation, which can lead to sunburn, cataracts and skin cancer. Increased radiation also can damage important food crops and marine ecosystems.

When allowed to escape into the air, the CFC molecule breaks apart releasing chlorine, which then attacks the earth's protective ozone layer, located in the upper atmosphere 30 miles above the earth's surface. A single chlorine atom can destroy more than 100,000 ozone molecules.

-------- kentucky

KENTUCKY NUKE WORKERS WERE ENDANGERED

By Dennis Daily
United Press International
10/30/2001 0:22 AM
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=29102001-092210-3059r

A new report in the Louisville Courier-Journal confirms that a man who was hired by a Paducah, Ky., nuclear plant to protect uranium workers from excessive radioactivity failed to do so. The report says the inspector knew as far back as the 1960s that levels in the plant were way above acceptable limits.

The publication claims that the inspector discovered high levels of dangerous chemicals in urine samples taken from workers but thought at the time they were not a cause for alarm.

The information was gleaned from a deposition filed in an ongoing $10 billion lawsuit against the plant's former operators. In the fall of 1999 former Sec. of Energy Bill Richardson went to Paducah to make a formal apology to surviving workers.

-------- us nuc waste

Atomic Trains Grounded

By Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn
October 30, 2001
http://www.counterpunch.org/atomictrain.html

For years environmentalists have warned that shipping high-level nuclear waste across the country on rails or highways was a program fraught with peril. They pointed to the near certainty that eventually a train would derail or a truck would crash, spilling radioactive material into streams, fields or cities. They warned that the US was embarking on a path that would inevitably led to "a kind of mobile Chernobyl." They even pointed to the possibility that the nuke trains made an inviting target for terrorists, who could turn the locomotives into a high-speed radioactive weapon that could be derailed in the heart of several of the nation's largest cities, putting the lives of millions at risk.

These concerns were dismissed as the ravings of anti-nuke Cassandras by the Department of Energy and, to a large extent, the national press corps. Indeed, the atomic boosters had become so confident of their scheme that they were poised to greenlight the largest rail shipment of nuclear waste in US history for a 2,000 mile journey from New York to Idaho. Then came 9/11 and suddenly the anti-nuke organizers didn't seem so hysterical after all.

The Department of Energy's nuke train plan came to grinding to a halt, marking yet another salutory reappraisal of US environmental policy following the terrrorist attacks of September 11. The atomic waste train was scheduled to carry 125 highly radioactive nuclear fuel assemblies from West Valley, New York through ten states to Idaho. The move has now been postponed until at least April 1, 2002

"Actions speak louder than words, so although DOE will not admit it publicly, it's clear the West Valley shipment was suspended due to terrorism and security concerns," said Kevin Kamps of Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS). "We're relieved DOE has recognized the extreme danger this proposed shipment would have created and chose instead to suspend the shipment. But the threat such shipments pose is not going to go away in a few months. Proposals for shipping tens of thousands of high-level radioactive waste containers by train and truck through 43 States past the homes of 50 million Americans to national dumpsites in Utah and Nevada must be re-examined in light of the potential for terrorist attacks."

The twin 20 foot-long, dumbbell-shaped metallic atomic waste containers were scheduled to leave DOE's West Valley Demonstration Project near Buffalo as early as mid-September. But due to concerns about additional potential terrorist attacks, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham suspended DOE nuclear waste and materials shipments the day after 9/11, capitulating to concerns that environmentalists and anti-nuke groups had been raising for years.

Even so the DOE's suspensions were only temporary. By the end of September, the Department began raising the possibility that the West Valley shipment might still roll by Halloween. Because metal gaskets on the two containers have not been certified for cold weather conditions, DOE had agreed to deliver the shipment to its Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory no later than Oct. 31 in order to avoid encountering freezing temperatures.

Then on October 7, the DOE reinstituted its suspension of nuclear waste shipments, citing concerns of potential reprisal attacks in response to the initiation of U.S. military action in Afghanistan that day. Despite this, DOE's West Valley site director Alice Williams told the Buffalo News on Oct. 16 that the nuclear train might still roll by the end of the month despite on-going national terrorist threats. However, the very next day, orders were sent to Williams from DOE headquarters in Washington explicitly suspending the shipment until next spring, according to an Oct. 19 Buffalo News article. The two containers will now be off-loaded from the on-site railcars, where they sat outdoors since May, and will spend the winter inside the West Valley facility.

"Energy Secretary Abraham's decision to halt this high-level nuclear waste shipment, not once, not twice, but three times clearly shows that the Energy Department itself acknowledges atomic waste trains like this one are potential terrorist targets," said Tim Rinne, State Coordinator of Nebraskans for Peace.

"Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI have warned about additional terrorist attacks. Trucking firms and railroads have been put on highest alert against attacks upon hazardous and radiological shipments. Recently, airports around the Three Mile Island nuclear plant were shut down due to a terrorist threat. The DOE shipment ban should be extended indefinitely, and expanded to cover commercial high-level nuclear waste shipments as well," said Kay Drey of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment.

Despite the current shipment ban, Energy Secretary Abraham appears ready to approve the national high-level atomic waste dumpsite targeted at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. DOE closed its public comment period on the Yucca proposal Oct. 19, and has announced Abraham will make his recommendation to President Bush by the end of the year or early next year.

In recent days, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission publicly announced its "concurrence" with DOE's Yucca Mountain siting guidelines, and in recent weeks finalized its own Yucca licensing regulations. At the same time, the NRC is reviewing a nuclear power industry license application to "temporarily store" all currently-existing irradiated fuel at the Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation in Utah, which would launch 200 high-level atomic waste trains per year throughout the country as early as 2004.

"It is hypocritical for DOE to put the brakes on the West Valley shipment while rushing ahead to give its thumbs up to Yucca Mountain," said Dave Ritter, policy analyst at Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "Approval of the Yucca Mountain repository proposal would launch tens of thousands of high-level atomic waste trucks and trains onto our roads and rails. Inadequately addressing potential terrorist threats to such shipments is rash, irresponsible, and reckless."

DOE studies show that 50 million Americans in 45 States live within a half mile of projected highway and train routes to Yucca Mountain.

Critics also point to an Aug. 27, 1998 letter written by Abraham, then a U.S. Senator from Michigan, to then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson regarding plutonium shipments. In the letter, Abraham wrote "I am sure you will agree that the ramifications of an accident are too serious to consider anything less than the very best emergency response preparedness.".

"Just as police and firefighters were on the front line of the 9/11 attacks, so would emergency responders be called upon to protect our communities in the event of an atomic waste transport accident or terrorist attack upon a shipment," said Chris Williams, executive director of Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana. "They need to be thoroughly trained and well equipped to deal with radiation emergencies, and not caught off-guard as our government agencies have been by the bio-terrorism attacks."

Greens want the NRC to address terrorist threats to atomic waste transport containers. Commercial high-level atomic waste shipments, such as those to Carolina Power and Light's Shearon Harris reactor storage pools in North Carolina, have continued to roll despite the DOE ban.

In a Sept. 21 response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission admitted that "the capacity of shipping casks to withstand such a [large aircraft] crash has not been analyzed."

In June 1999 the State of Nevada filed a "Petition for Rulemaking" to the NRC, charging that safeguards against terrorist attacks on high-level radioactive waste shipments were woefully inadequate or non-existent. Nine state governments and the Western Governors Association endorsed the petition. Despite officially agreeing to act on the petition in Sept. 1999, the NRC has yet to do so.

"Large scale movement of radioactive waste on the roads and rails would create tens of thousands of potential targets, in virtually any scenario a terrorist might choose, whether major metropolitan areas, suburbs, or the agricultural heartland, near schools, hospitals, or water supplies," said Corey Conn of Illinois-based Nuclear Energy Information Service.

-------- us nuc other

HELP NEEDED IN ANALYZING RAD LEVELS IN BABY BOOMER TEETH

FROM DR GOULD & RPHP
Tue, 30 Oct 2001
MOTHERSALERT HOME PAGE:
http://www.mothersalert.org

Please dissemenate this message as widely as you can to all oppossed to nuclear dangers and interested in public health and science:

Dear Friend
October 30, 2001

The non-profit Radiation and Public Health Project, now conducting the Tooth Fairy Study, has just been given a priceless gift from Washington University in St. Louis, in the form of 85,000 fully identified baby boomer baby teeth, left over from the first study of strontium-90 (Sr90) levels in baby teeth that began in St. Louis in 1958. They will help us ascertain the true health effects of atmospheric nuclear tests on the 80 million American baby boomers born in the years 1945-65, and explore the relation of high exposure levels to health effects such as early diagnoses of cancer.

We have had considerable media coverage (including BBC TV) of the fact that for about 3000 children born since 1980 we have found about 1000 with Sr90 levels as high as those found in the late 1950's in the first baby teeth study. That study demonstrated that there had been a 50-fold increase in the Sr90 baby teeth levels of children born in 1964 over children born in 1950. This helped President Kennedy decide to terminate above-ground nuclear tests after asking Dr. E.J. Sternglass (now our scientific director) to address Congress on radiation-induced childhood cancer in 1963.

The modern scintillation counters we are using, unlike those used 40 years ago, can measure the small amounts of radioactivity in a single tooth. For each baby boomer tooth not used in the St. Louis study we have index cards with the birth name, date and place of birth, along with parent names clipped to a baby tooth. We have found that for only $10 per name we can use Internet databases to get current addresses of these baby boomers (now in their forties) and query them by mail on their medical histories since birth with a positive return rate of 50 percent. Thus for a sum as small as $50,000 we think that we can get such histories for as many as 3000 baby boomers, which may be sufficient to prove that baby boomers were born in the worst time in history.

For example we may discover that the percentage of young women diagnosed with breast cancer significantly exceeds the percentage expected based on women born before the nuclear age began. We would have similar information on all rare childhood diseases like asthma, learning problems, leukemia, etc.

We will then have enough evidence of the true damage to baby boomers born in those bomb test years to approach large foundations for funds to test the Sr90 level for each of the 3000 baby boomer questionnaires. We will then know the precise medical significance of each above-average Sr90 level in a child born at any time and place.

A tax-deductible contribution to the Radiation and Public Health Project of $1000 would pay for analyzing 50 detailed questionnaires; $100 for 5 such requests; $20 for one. If this message can be forwarded to all those who share our concerns about reactor emissions, we hope to get enough contributions, both large and as small as $20, to convince some large foundation of the importance of what we are doing. All tax-deductible checks should be sent to RPHP Box 330, Unionville NY 10988. For more information on the Tooth Fairy project visit our web site (www.radiation.org).

Cordially Jay M. Gould, RPHP Director

(jaymgould@aol.com"


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

U.S. kills al Qaeda leaders in raids, but top brass alive

October 30, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011030-82854010.htm

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that U.S. forces have killed some al Qaeda leaders in three weeks of bombing, but that the top leaders remain at large.

"There's no question but that Taliban and al Qaeda people, military, have been killed," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "We've seen enough intelligence to know that we've damaged and destroyed a number of tanks, a number of artillery pieces, a number of armored personnel carriers, and a number of troops. Are there leaders mixed in there? Yes. At what level? Who knows."

The leaders include middle- to upper-level leaders, he said.

"But to our knowledge, none of the very top six, eight, 10 people have been included in that number," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon.

Mr. Rumsfeld also said no U.S. military personnel had been captured by the Taliban and that it is not likely any other Americans are being held.

A Taliban official in Pakistan claimed yesterday to have captured a number of Americans.

A defense official said there have been no Americans taken prisoner in Afghanistan since the bombing began earlier this month.

The defense secretary said in a television interview Sunday that the underground hide-outs of the terrorists are major targets of the bombing. "There's no question that we have been systematically working on the caves, and on the tunnels, and on their openings, and we've had some success," he said.

Mr. Rumsfeld summed up the military component of the Bush administration's war against terrorism by saying the bombing and missile strikes are making steady progress.

Taliban air defenses have been depleted enough for U.S. forces to provide ammunition and other supplies to anti-Taliban forces, Mr. Rumsfeld said.

The Northern Alliance and other Taliban foes have asked the Pentagon for ammunition. "We then try to find the ammunition that fits their weapons, and then we take it in," Mr. Rumsfeld said, noting that the ground forces have had trouble reaching the dropped ammo and getting it to their weapons.

The campaign against terrorism will be long and involve some 40 to 50 nations where al Qaeda is believed to have cells, he said.

"Our goal is not to reduce or simply contain terrorist acts, but our goal is to deal with it comprehensively," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "And we do not intend to stop until we've rooted out terrorist networks and put them out of business, not just in the case of the Taliban and the al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but other networks as well."

"As we've said from the start of the campaign, this will not happen overnight," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "It is a marathon, not a sprint. It will be years, not weeks or months."

The defense secretary's remarks come amid some criticism that the war is not going as planned and that civilian casualties are mounting.

Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, also said the military campaign is on track. "We're pretty much on our plan. And we are in the driver's seat. We are proceeding at our pace; we are not proceeding at the Taliban's pace or al Qaeda's pace. We can control that, and we are controlling it in a way that I think is right along with our plan that we set out, that Central Command set out, some time ago."

Meanwhile, Gen. Tommy Franks, commander in chief of the Central Command, arrived in Islamabad, Pakistan, yesterday for talks with President Pervez Musharraf.

Pakistan is providing major support for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan through refueling and emergency-landing facilities and by allowing overflights.

The support has come despite opposition from some Islamic radicals in Pakistan.

The battle against terrorists will take "constant pressure" along a broad front of activities, including military, intelligence, diplomatic and financial activities, Mr. Rumsfeld said. "It is something, as we've said, that is more akin to draining the swamp, bit by bit, than it is to some sort of a major massed land battle or sea battle or air battle."

Gen. Myers said the current conflict is unlike past wars in the Persian Gulf and Kosovo. "Any expectations based on them made by pundits are not really relevant to this plan and our asymmetric warfare on terrorism," Gen. Myers said.

"Of course, we've got some visible forms of this, that comes in the form of air strikes, and are advancing toward providing the basis for other efforts, both visible and some invisible. And we'll proceed at a time and place of our choosing."

Gen. Myers said U.S. operations over the past weekend included attacks on caves and tunnels used by al Qaeda terrorists, and bombing of Taliban military facilities and vehicles.

On Sunday, 65 U.S. warplanes attacked six targets in areas around Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul. The targets included terrorist and Taliban "command-and-control elements," Taliban air-defense sites and military forces in barracks and in the field, Gen. Myers said.

Other strikes included moving targets in the "engagement zones" set up around the country to hit targets of opportunity.

Mr. Rumsfeld said the current conflict was thrust upon the United States. "And we love liberty and we need to do whatever it will take to defend it," he said. "We know that victory will not come without a cost. War is ugly. It causes misery and suffering and death, and we see that every day. And brave people give their lives for this cause, and, needless to say, innocent bystanders can be caught in cross fire."

He said "there are instances where in fact there are unintended effects of this conflict, and ordnance ends up where it should not, and we all know that, and that's true of every conflict."

"Let's be clear; no nation in human history has done more to avoid civilian casualties than the United States has in this conflict," he said. "Every single day, in the midst of war, Americans risk their lives to deliver humanitarian assistance and alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people. We did not start the war; the terrorists started it when they attacked the United States, murdering more than 5,000 innocent Americans."

--------

Afghan opposition maps out offensive

October 30, 2001
By Kathy Gannon
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011030-78733350.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan - Frustrated by weeks of U.S. bombings that have failed to budge Taliban front lines, Afghanistan's opposition forces plotted what they said yesterday would be a major push on a vital Taliban-held northern stronghold.

In Pakistan, Islamic militants caused scattered disorder across the Afghan border regions, blockading the fabled Silk Road and seizing part of a town to protest their government's support for U.S.-led strikes on Afghanistan.

Afghan opposition commanders met for five hours in Northern Alliance-held territory on Sunday to sketch out a major offensive on Mazar-e-Sharif, opposition spokesman Ashraf Nadeem said in a telephone interview.

The commanders also talked of joint offensives on the surrounding provinces of Balkh and Samangan, Mr. Nadeem said.

He said the meeting was attended by longtime figures in the opposition's long-stalled struggle: Uzbek leader Rashid Dostum, Shi'ite Muslim leader Mohammed Mohaqik and Atta Mohammed, commander of forces loyal to deposed Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Capturing Mazar-e-Sharif would open crucial supply lines from Uzbekistan for Afghanistan's poorly armed opposition - allowing in fresh stocks of ammunition, troops and equipment before winter, weeks away, hampers fighting.

Yesterday, Mr. Nadeem said he had reports the Taliban had reinforced defenses in Balkh and Samangan provinces near Mazar-e-Sharif with 2,000 more troops.

Moving forward would take heavy U.S. air support, he said. "For the new operation, when it happens, we will need American help," the opposition spokesman said.

Meanwhile, the supreme leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, warned the United States that it will learn a "tougher lesson" in Afghanistan than the Soviet Union did.

Mullah Omar told the Algerian newspaper El Youm that once U.S. troops are on the ground, the Americans will lose their technological edge.

"We will never welcome them with flowers," he said. "They will receive a tougher lesson than that of their Soviet predecessors."

In Pakistan, the Frontier Constabulary negotiated with pro-Taliban militants throughout the day, exhorting them to stand down from seven segments of the Karakoram Highway - Pakistan's paved portion of the Silk Road - and, separately, retreat from the remote town of Chilas.

They apparently refused. Officials in the north said the 750-mile Karakoram Highway remained blocked last night with boulders and small land mines in seven locations.

Witnesses reached by telephone said women in Bisham, one Karakoram town, demonstrated against the militants yesterday, saying the road closure prevented them from getting water and grass for cattle and wood for burning. They also said they were uncomfortable in the presence of male outsiders.

In Chilas, hundreds of armed pro-Taliban Pakistanis reportedly seized some local government offices and occupied an abandoned airstrip. Maj. Fazal Durrani, chief secretary for the northern areas, said the town's government and schools still were operating.

Farooq Khan, a Chilas resident, said the protesters also took over gas stations. "Only those with chits issued by local clerics are allowed to buy gas," Mr. Khan said by telephone.

Further details weren't immediately available because of the remoteness of the region, which is dominated by ethnic Pashtuns. The Taliban are also predominantly Pashtun.

But both groups are taking the actions to oppose Pakistan's support of U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan. They say President Pervez Musharraf's government is betraying the nation - and Islam - by turning its back on Pakistan's neighbor.

Hundreds of Pakistani fighters have crossed into eastern Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban against any American ground attack. Many more are said to be waiting in border villages, answering the call of Sufi Mohammed, an Islamic cleric.

The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan expressed appreciation yesterday to Pakistanis who want to help the Islamic militia. But Abdul Salam Zaeef said the time had not yet come.

"We have to turn down their requests because the ground battles have not started," he said. "At this stage, with only air assaults in Afghanistan, there is no need and there is great danger in them being in Afghanistan."

--------

Taliban transforms Afghanistan for total war
Religious fervor is high, schools are empty, and rural areas under watch.

Christian Science Monitor
By Philip Smucker (with a former Kabul Times writer reporting from inside Afghanistan
The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1030/p1s2-wosc.html

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN - At the dilapidated Zarnigar hotel in downtown Kabul these days, a friendly new mullah greets guests. He is tall, has a long, well-groomed beard, a pistol on his waist, and a smile on his face. When children come begging, he hands them rupees. When bombs fall outside, he leads the prayers.

"May Allah give Islam victory around the world - in Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, and Chechnya, but especially today in Afghanistan," he prays in the cramped lobby, where blackened walls are carved with the names of guests. "May God drown the Americans in the ocean of his anger and destruction."

The Taliban has totally transformed the territories it controls since the start of US-led airstrikes and prepared for all-out war. Schools are empty (some people have fled, see story ), and students have been sent to the front lines. Senior officials have been assigned to lead the country in prayer or monitor dissent in the provinces. Almost every Taliban and every citizen is carrying out a war-related duty. Public administration is now almost entirely devoted to the war effort.

And the supreme leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, warned the US that it will learn a "tougher lesson" in Afghanistan than the Soviet Union did. Mr. Omar told the Algerian newspaper El Youm that Taliban forces had not yet begun the "real war against the Americans because of their technological power." Once the ground war begins, he said, America will lose its edge.

Kabul's Hotel Zarnigar

Back inside the Zarnigar, a senior education ministry official, Haji Rahmat Ullah explains over tea: "Out of our 30,000 education employees across the country, we have less than a few hundred still performing their usual duties. All of our teachers have gone off to the front lines with their madrassah [religious school] pupils. Many of them have been dispatched to the border areas with Uzbekistan and Pakistan.

"The military situation may be under control, but the normal administration of this country has been put aside," he says. He explains that the country's Shura Council, the top religious body, has advised many other officials to head out into the provinces "to keep an eye out for uprisings against the government."

Analysts in neighboring Pakistan say that the Afghan approach to war means total commitment to the cause. Most Afghans have already committed everything they have to the war effort - down to their last rupee.

"Afghanistan is, no doubt, a very weak nation in terms of resources and equipment - things you would ordinarily consider crucial to a war effort," says Wagar Alishah, a history professor at Peshawar University. "But, you see, the Afghans have other things that are required to fight a war. They have willpower and courage backed by religious fervor. Once an Afghan has decided that they are fighting for a just cause, they will pursue it at any cost."

Judging from reports coming from the front lines in recent days, most Taliban warriors, assisted by their foreign, mostly Arab and Pakistani counterparts, are convinced of their cause. In recent days, US Defense Department officials have begun to talk in terms of the Taliban's rugged tenacity, as opposed to earlier descriptions of them as a weak fighting force on the brink of quick collapse.

It is not possible to determine how much of the Taliban's battle against the world's lone superpower is driven by fervor and how much of it is inspired by fear. Dissent is not tolerated, and death by hanging or firing squad is the usual punishment for so-called "traitors."

Still, Afghanistan's transformation into a state of total war is evident from observations and interviews inside the country conducted by a former reporter for the Kabul Times in recent days.

Before the US jets started swooping down on Kabul more than three weeks ago, morality police were assigned to take attendance at most of the city's leading mosques. Too many absentees by one individual meant certain punishment - anything from a public flogging to being locked in a stinking public toilet.

Now, the rules have been rethought to save civilians from coming under direct fire from US aircraft. The idea is to pray wherever you are - whether in the Zarnigar Hotel or, if you are a soldier, right there on the front lines.

Professor Wagar, like several other analysts contacted in Pakistan, says that the "political minders" have less to worry about after three weeks of war than they did three days into it. "With the mounting civilian casualties, it has become less likely that anyone will go against the tide," he says. "For Afghans, as during other invasions throughout history, this has become a war against those enemies that are killing their brethren."

Pakistanis prepare to help

Even ethnic Pashtuns, from the Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan, where blood ties outweigh borderlines in time of war, see it that way as well. Thousands of "jihadis" wielding axes, rifles, and rockets have massed on the border with Afghanistan in recent days and are planning to enter the fray.

The large numbers of fresh volunteers could well alter the military equation on the front lines north of Kabul - and possibly squelch a much-anticipated offensive by the US-backed Northern Alliance.

But yesterday, the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan told them not to go - yet. "If they go, there will be a lot of congestion and the probability of mass casualties will be higher. If they are needed, then we will tell them," Abdul Salam Zaeef told reporters.

As he leaps up on a truck headed toward Afghanistan, Atta Ullah, a Pakistani college student, clutched his father's aging machine gun: "I'm not going to wait until the British and American ground forces arrive to start killing kafirs [infidels] and defending my Afghan brothers."

Beyond even fervor and fear, there is a long tradition of warfare in Afghanistan. Anyone who fails to stand against a foreign invader is chastised.

Tradition of war

This tradition was on display several days ago at a checkpoint east of Kabul, where Taliban fighters were beating on upside-down water barrels and singing: "If you are not/not martyred in the Maiwand battlefield/Then Allah is saving you as a shame for the all nation to see."

The song, made famous during the Anglo-Afghan wars, goes hand-in-hand with the legend about the young lady who first sang it. The singer, Malalai, had seized a falling Afghan flag as her terrified countrymen fled a British charge. By shaming the soldiers with her song, Malalai is said to have turned the tide of battle in Afghanistan's favor.

The Taliban authorities are invoking this same concept of "shame" in the latest war against infidels. At a funeral for a young boy killed by the explosion of an ammunition dump in a dusty village on the outskirts of Kabul, a professor of Islamic theology warns the mourners of their fate should they shirk their duty.

"Those who run from this bombardment, will not be included in those who make it to paradise," he says.

No one appears to dissent, as the congregation shouts: "Allahu Akhbar!"

-------- biological weapons

What Does Dr. Weeks Believe?

Tue, October 30, 2001
Subject: NewsMax.com Special Alert
MoneyNews.com

NewsMax.com has just released a special audiotape featuring Dr. Byron Weeks.
A bio-warfare expert, Dr. Byron Weeks is a retired Air Force colonel.

His frightening conclusion:

The U.S. is extremely vulnerable to biological attack. Subsequent attacks could be as devastating to us as a nuclear attack.

Let me emphasize that Dr. Weeks is no alarmist.

He has been practicing medicine for five decades and has had a distinguished military career that includes holding several senior medical military posts, including serving as hospital commander at several NATO hospitals.

Most importantly, he has over two decades of experience with biological and chemical warfare.

He doesn't rush to conclusions, nor does he "sugar-coat" his remarks. He simply tells it like it is.

As regular NewsMax.com readers will remember, it was Dr. Weeks who first said the current antibiotic stockpile was not sufficient.

It was Dr. Weeks who first claimed the current letter attacks employed "weaponized" anthrax -- as numerous officials and "experts" tried to claim, falsely, otherwise.

Dr. Weeks rarely gives interviews, but has agreed to produce, with NewsMax.com, a special audiotape called "Bio-Threat." It reveals the facts about the biological threat now upon us.

You can get "Bio-Threat" by clicking here: https://www.newsmaxstore.com/offtherecord/

Here are just some of the crucial points Dr. Weeks covers in "Bio-Threat":

Is the planned increase in the stockpile of antibiotics sufficient to protect ordinary Americans? Dr. Weeks says NO - the current government stockpile is just a "drop in the bucket."

You may remember that just weeks ago HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson claimed that our stockpile was sufficient. Now he and other government officials have done a complete about-face and now want to increase the stockpile fivefold. But Dr. Weeks insists that even this increase of the stockpile is also insufficient.

Has the anthrax being sent by mail been "weaponized"? Over a week ago, Dr. Weeks said it had been, despite strong official denials. Again Dr. Weeks has been proven right, and officials have reversed themselves. What does the "weaponized" anthrax reveal?

Dr. Weeks believes that the weaponized anthrax indicates the people behind these attacks are capable of much more significant attacks and could have easily killed tens of thousands, or more, if they had chosen to do so.

How does the death of postal employees expose our vulnerability? Dr. Weeks says the fact that officials didn't test postal employees who came into contact with anthrax-laden letters shows "just how ignorant" the CDC and other public health officials are about the threat facing us.

Should the government downplay the threat of biological attack? Dr. Weeks believes the current attacks are just "Step 1 ... a mild warning." It is more serious than the government says, and should not be downplayed.

Why didn't the terrorists deploy the anthrax in ways that would have killed more Americans? Dr. Weeks thinks the current attacks are meant to harm the economy and to "probe" our systems.

Dr. Weeks says the current attacks have all the fingerprints of a nation-state. He believes these attacks are extremely sophisticated and are intended to test our response and resources before a much larger attack.

Have we responded properly? Dr. Weeks says the comparatively mild anthrax attacks that have occurred so far are desensitizing us to much worse biological attacks and sapping our will to fight back effectively. He believes that only a fierce response to such attacks can prevent future ones. Instead, officials are confused and unsure of how to respond.

There is much, much more Dr. Weeks reveals in "Bio-Threat."

You can hear Dr. Weeks by getting "Bio-Threat": https://www.newsmaxstore.com/offtherecord/

He is shocked, based on his military and medical experience, to see so much disinformation being fed to the public by the major media. Most of their claims about the anthrax attacks have been dead wrong - including claims that the anthrax used in the postal attacks could not be disseminated or aerosolized easily. In fact, he says, it could have been easily aerosolized.

Some of the information Dr. Weeks presents affects you and your family. He discusses which families should and which should not stockpile Cipro and other antibiotics now. Dr. Weeks disagrees with officials who say without qualification that members of the public should not prepare for a biological attack or should not have access to antibiotics.

If the public had the full facts, they would be much better prepared for what may lie ahead. Anthrax is just the tip of the iceberg.

He notes that there are much more dangerous bio-agents - such as smallpox, plague and botulism.

Dr. Weeks calls smallpox "the ideal bio-weapon" and explains the devastating effect an outbreak would have on the lives and economy of the U.S.

Dr. Weeks believes that the U.S. government should begin immediate vaccinations of the public - and not wait to simply stockpile the vaccine as officials have proposed.

Dr. Weeks also believes that the greatest threat of a biological attack may be the panic and fear it might cause, along with disruption to the economy and food supplies.

He is baffled that the government has not encouraged people to engage in basic emergency planning, to make sure they have enough food and water for several weeks.

Dr. Weeks may not be right on every position he holds, but his views should be heard by all Americans so that they may make better, informed decisions for themselves and their families.

Dr. Weeks' tape "Bio-Threat" is available exclusively through NewsMax.com. I urge you to get your copy immediately. NewsMax is offering Dr. Weeks' tape as part of our effort to bring NewsMax to television. You can help NewsMax do that and get your copy of "Bio-Threat" by joining up for our new "Off-the-Record Club."

-------- britain

Majority want bombing pause
Exclusive poll shows support for war cooling
54% say halt attacks and allow aid convoys into Afghanistan

The Guardian
Alan Travis
Tuesday October 30, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,583288,00.html

British public support for the war against the Taliban has dropped by 12 points in the past fortnight and a majority now believe there should be a pause in the bombing to allow aid convoys into Afghanistan.

The sharp drop in support revealed by today's Guardian/ICM poll confirms Tony Blair's fears that the reality of modern warfare and reports of mounting civilian casualties have already led to a wobble in British support.

It provides clear evidence that there has been a significant change in the mood of the country towards the war and explains why ministers have spent the last weekend trying to shore up public opinion and why the prime minister is to appeal to the nation to "keep its nerve" in a major speech today.

Although the prime minister will take comfort from the fact that nearly two-thirds say they approve of military action, the prime minister will be alarmed by details of the survey, which show that support among women has slumped by 17 points from 68% to 51%. Only a bare majority of women now approve of military action against the Taliban.

It is a similar picture among older voters, with support among the over 65s dropping from 71% to just 54% in the past fortnight. The slide in support for military action is least marked amongst men, where backing for the war has fallen by only six points from 80% to 74%, and among the young, down from 73% to 64%.

But it should be noted that while positive support for the war has cooled somewhat, this has not necessarily translated into anti-war feeling.

Those opposed to military action have risen by only four points in the last fortnight from 16% to 20%. The largest growth has been among humanitarian sceptics, with don't knows rising by eight points to 18%.

This is shown most clearly by the clear majority who agree with the statement that there should be a pause in the bombing campaign against the Taliban to allow aid convoys to go into Afghanistan.

A majority of 54% believe this should happen, with 29% saying that the bombing campaign should continue without pause.

When viewed against the 62% support for military action, this suggests that the clear motive behind those who back the calls for a pause in the bombing is humanitarian rather than outright anti-war reasons.

Among women there is overwhelming support for a pause (59% to 19%) but opinion among men is closer, with 49% in favour of a pause and 40% opposed.

Further evidence that it is a humanitarian inspired wobble in public opinion rather than outright opposition to the war is shown by the results to the question on attitudes towards sending British troops into Afghanistan to take part in the fighting on the ground. Some 57% backed the decision announced on Friday for a small force of British commandos to be sent to Afghanistan.

Some 29% disapproved of this decision, showing that there is only a small gap in British public opinion between attitudes to the bombing campaign and to use of British troops on the grounds.

A final question about public confidence in the government's ability to deal with a major outbreak of anthrax, smallpox or other public health threat, produced mixed results. A substantial minority, 44%, replied they were either not very confident (29%) or not at all confident (15%) that the government could cope.

A bare majority, 51%, said they were either very confident (12%) or fairly confident (39%) that the authorities could deal with it effectively.

ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,000 adults aged over 18 by telephone between October 26 and 28. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults.

-------- business

More Corporate War Profiteering

Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 From: "Molly Johnson" <mollypj@yahoo.com>

The only way we, the people, will ever take control of this country is by making ourselves heard!!! This is easy, easy, easy! Read this through, then click on the link and follow the directions. Make yourself heard!!

Molly

In this time of national crisis, amid calls for sacrifice, I'm truly troubled by some of the choices of the Republican party leadership. Here's their idea of an economic stimulus package:

$1.4 billion for IBM $833 million for General Motors $671 million for General Electric $572 million for Chevron Texaco $254 million for Enron

This is war profiteering, and it's simply wrong. Yet the House has just approved it, on a virtual party line vote, ending the recent spirit of bipartisan cooperation in Congress.

Will you please join me in speaking up, before the Senate acts? Go to:
http://www.moveon.org/warprofiteering/

While our nation was reeling from the Anthrax threat, the House voted to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax on corporations. This law normally requires hugely profitable companies to pay at least some tax, no matter how many loopholes they can find. Its repeal would allow many companies to pay zero U.S. income tax in perpetuity - a loss of more than $12 billion in revenue next year alone.

The repeal is retroactive, so companies would get rebates of all the Alternative Minimum Tax they've paid for the last 15 years. The numbers above are a sampling of these rebates.

The House also voted to allow corporations to store their profits overseas as a tax shelter. That's right - this "stimulus" would actually take money _out_ of the U.S. economy. It's backwards.

The right approach to stimulus is to put more money in the hands of everyday people who need it most - by expanding unemployment insurance, for example. People living marginally will spend it quickly on consumer goods, so it circulates through the economy, benefiting everyone.

Helping people would make economic sense. Giving billions in tax breaks to America's biggest corporations doesn't.

The Senate is considering this issue now. Please speak up with me at:
http://www.moveon.org/warprofiteering/

Thank you. We've got to stick together on this.

-------- chemical weapons

GROUND BROKEN FOR NEW CHEMICAL LAB

By Dennis Daily
United Press International
10/30/2001
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=29102001-092210-3059r

Amid all the terror threats going around, the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas has broken ground for a new lab that will, in essence, serve as a quality control check point in the production of chemical weapons.

Two congressmen were on hand when ground was broken for the building, to be called the Chemical Defense Quality Evaluation Facility.

The publication Arkansas Business says that the cost of the new processing plant will be in excess of $14 million. Additionally, a special lab to test filters will be constructed on an adjacent site.

-------- drug war

Coca Invades Colombia's Coffee Fields
Falling Prices Push Farmers to Plant Illegal Crops, Threatening U.S. Drug War

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 30, 2001; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8560-2001Oct29.html

PUERTO VENUS, Colombia -- Coffee shrubs the color of army fatigues cover the hills above this village, which is set in a deep valley cut by the River Samana. But near the peaks, the bright green stripes of another crop can be seen between the coffee, spelling trouble for Colombia's most renowned industry and the United States' drug war.

No one here will claim the brilliant fields of coca, the key ingredient in cocaine. But farmers acknowledge that some among them have yanked up coffee plants in the past year and replaced them with crops that have a more profitable and reliable, if illegal, market. Along mountain roads, pickup trucks with beds filled with coca seedlings now pass buses stuffed with burlap sacks of coffee.

"Coffee has been fundamental to our economy," said a storeowner in this village of 1,000, about 90 miles northwest of the capital, Bogota. "We all rely on it. But right now a coffee farmer can't even pay for the basics. Coca is new to us here, so we don't know what it will bring. So far it has been only a grain of salt for our economy."

What is squeezing the coffee farmers are the caprices of economic globalization. Years of good growing weather worldwide and a rising number of countries planting the beans have increased supplies and sent world prices tumbling. As income flowing back to villages like this falls, farmers find themselves pushed away from Colombia's most renowned crop toward its most notorious.

The coffee crisis, as it is called here, has helped create a countrywide recession. Unemployment is near 20 percent, and higher in the countryside where war and scant public resources make poverty nearly inescapable. That, in turn, has given the country's various armed groups -- Marxist rebels on one side, a counter-guerrilla paramilitary force on the other -- a larger pool of idle young men and women from which to fill their ranks. Recruiting has never been easier.

It is all bad news for the United States' $1.3 billion contribution to the anti-drug program known as Plan Colombia.

Part of that mostly military package pays coca farmers to uproot their crops in favor of legal ones, an "alternative development" strategy unfolding slowly far to the south where drug crops are most bountiful. But here in rugged southeastern Antioquia and across its river border in Caldas province, the switch is working in reverse.

It would be a reach to say that Juan Valdez, the iconic Colombian coffee farmer of television advertising, has turned to drugs. Although hard numbers are impossible to come by, evidence and informed estimates suggest that only about 1,000 of the country's 560,000 coffee farms have scrapped coffee plants in favor of coca or opium poppies. But just about all coffee farmers wonder how they are going to survive at the current prices.

Archangel Cifuentes, picking beans in the town of Chinchina one recent morning, said his weekly salary had fallen from $50 to half that within a year. "Even with a good crop, the prices are so low we make nothing," he said, his hands darting from the bright red beans to the yellow bucket around his waist. "You Americans have to drink a lot more."

The switch is occurring mostly on the remote edges of the country's coffee heartland, where there is little state presence. Most of those who have changed over maintain tiny illegal plots alongside larger coffee fields in hopes that prices will rise again.

But international counter-narcotics officials here warn that things are likely to get worse. Klaus Nyholm, head of the U.N. Drug Control program in Colombia, said opium poppies are appearing on what was once traditional coffee land in the mountains of southwestern Tolima and southern Huila provinces.

In the old days, Nyholm said, "Colombian hearts would beat faster at the sight of a coffee bush. Now we are going to have to start looking at alternatives within the coffee zone itself. But people are going to have to accept that legal alternatives to coffee may never yield as much money as coca, although they will not have the violence that goes with the drug trade. There is no magic solution."

Coffee beans arrived here with proselytizing Jesuit priests almost three centuries ago. Like oil in the Middle East, coffee was the fuel for much of Colombia's economic and political development.

Roads and railroads were built to move coffee from the cool slopes of Antioquia and its southern neighbors to the Pacific coast, where ports were built to ship it out. Coffee proceeds financed the development of such other exports as bananas, cotton and sugar, not to mention rural schools and health clinics. Colombia's coffee belt became one of the richest and most stable regions of the country.

Production was dominated by small farms, in contrast to other Latin American and Caribbean countries where large plantations controlled the growing of such commodities as sugar and pineapples. Today, 96 percent of the country's coffee farmers tend plots smaller than seven acres. These farmers were the model for Juan Valdez.

The broad participation in the nation's chief industry helped foster democratic participation in politics, as well. It was the driving force behind Colombia's decentralized system of government, one that was once widely admired but recently has shown weakness in dealing with a civil conflict that thrives on proceeds from drug crops.

The bonanza years of the 1960s and 1970s, when shrewdly marketed Colombian coffee traded on commodities markets near $3 a pound, have ended in a supply glut. Colombian coffee now sells for about 62 cents a pound on the New York commodities exchange, generating just 10 percent of the country's legal export income. It once accounted for more than half.

A big reason for the glut is Vietnam. With the soil and altitude in which coffee shrubs thrive, it was a major exporter before the Vietnam War and reentered the world market in about 1980. Today, it is exporting more coffee than Colombia, and though its beans are generally of a lower quality than Colombia's, they are helping drag down prices. A pound of Vietnamese coffee sells for about 16 cents.

"Vietnam is dumping," said Jorge Cardenas, head of the National Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers, using a term that meansselling on world markets at prices that are illegally low under trade law. He said Colombia's labor regulations make it impossible to produce coffee for less than 50 cents a pound. "We cannot compete," he said.

To export Colombian coffee, a farmer or company must receive federation approval. Only 30 companies have that stamp, and together they control 70 percent of all coffee exports. The remaining 30 percent is controlled by the federation, which keeps a portion of its revenues for social development and has channeled about $1 billion over the past decadeinto building schools, clinics and roads in coffee-growing regions.

Cardenas said the rules ensure that Colombian coffee sells for more than other types overseas, even during a crisis, but that allowing any farmer to sell abroad would "confuse the markets and lessen quality."

Maria Teresa Londono, who owns a small factory that husks and sorts coffee beans in Chinchina, blames the federation for the current crisis. "They are killing us with paperwork," said Londono, whose father was the first coffee buyer in Chinchina. "If the rules are not changed to allow us to sell directly to the buyer, I don't know what is going to happen to this industry."

The federation and international development groups are trying to encourage Colombian farmers to go "up market" and grow gourmet beans that will fetch higher prices. But here on the distant margins of coffee country, many farmers are simply getting out of the business.

Moving northeast from Manizales, the capital of Caldas province and one of the world's most fertile coffee regions, abandoned coffee farms abound. Pasture covers hillsides that for decades had been coffee land, and prime coffee farms are rented out for parties and weekend getaways to help the owners make ends meet.

Rural banks, long the chief source of loans in farming areas, have stopped lending to an industry in which it costs $15 to produce a 27.5-pound bag of coffee that sells abroad for $12.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's main rebel group, controls much of this region, although farmers say the guerrillas are not profiting from the new crops as they do in other areas. But local officials fear that the social unrest that has traditionally accompanied falling standards of living will sharply increase in the months ahead, fueling guerrilla recruitment in the region.

In the town of Pensilvania, in eastern Caldas, Mayor Jose Oscar Gonzales said coffee has been uprooted in favor of coca in the nearby towns of El Verdal, Playa Rica, Pueblo Nuevo and La Ceba. In all, he said, about 440 acres of coca have replaced coffee. The plots are tiny -- 1,000 to 2,000 plants each, enough to cover only a fraction of an acre.

But Gonzales predicted that the 100 or so farmers who have made the change to coca, which can be harvested three times a year to coffee's one, are just the vanguard. "This isn't pressure from the guerrillas," he said. "This is poverty. Look, coca brings in 10 times the amount as coffee right now. This is the heart of the crisis."

--------

Contaminated Afghan heroin caused death of 18 addicts

By Paul Kelbie
Scotland Correspondent
30 October 2001
Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=102220

A bacterium last seen among the wounded of the trenches in the First World War was responsible for killing up to 40 heroin addicts across Britain.

At the opening yesterday of a fatal accident inquiry into the deaths of 18 victims in Glasgow last year, a microbiologist identified the bacterium, clostridium novyi, as the probable cause after samples were taken from two users who survived the illness.

More than 100 people who injected contaminated heroin from Afghanistan into their muscles were infected by the bacterium which caused severe ulcers or abscesses.

Those who died from the outbreak suffered multiple organ failure.

Dr Penelope Reading, a consultant microbiologist at Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow, told the inquiry at Glasgow Sheriff Court how staff at her hospital first became aware of a possible bacteria outbreak among drug users in May last year after two known heroin users, Morag Conlan, 24, and Joan McGlinchey, 32, both from Glasgow, were admitted to hospital with similar symptoms within days of each other.

"By the time we had acted on this a third patient had been admitted showing very similar symptoms," Dr Reading said. She said specialists at the hospital became concerned when the patients failed to respond to measures known to help treat heroin users.Doctors initially feared the illness was anthrax but ruled out the possibility after tests.

However, the inquiry was told that a police investigation, led by Detective Superintendent Stephen Heath, of Strathclyde Police drug squad, had identified the heroin as being of Afghan origin.

By the time the police became involved in the inquiry 10 of the 18 people had already died and 11 other people were showing similar symptoms. A number of similar cases were also discovered in north-west England and around Dublin.

Mr Heath told the inquiry it was 98 per cent certain that the heroin had been produced in Afghanistan under very primitive and unhygienic conditions.

-------- iraq

Saddam Says U.S. Should Not Win War in Afghanistan

October 30, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-iraq-saddam.html?searchpv=reuters

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - President Saddam Hussein of Iraq urged the world on Tuesday to prevent the United States winning its war in Afghanistan, while his son's newspaper expressed fear that Washington and London would attack Iraq in November.

``The world now needs to abort the aggressive U.S. schemes, including its aggression on the Afghan people, which must stop. It must not allow the U.S. to be victorious,'' Saddam said.

He made the statement in an open letter to the West, his third since the September 11 attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon near Washington.

The world would not be saved ``from the deep abyss it is being push into by the U.S.'' if the United States achieved victory in Afghanistan, Saddam wrote.

The United States and Britain began military strikes on Afghanistan three weeks ago after the ruling Taliban refused to surrender Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the U.S. attacks.

Iraq's most influential newspaper warned simultaneously that Washington and London might switch their ``war against terrorism'' from Afghanistan to Iraq when the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins in mid-November.

``Perhaps they may suspend their operation in Afghanistan because of winter and they may commit new aggression against Iraq starting with the beginning of Ramadan,'' Babel said in a rare frontpage editorial.

U.S. and British officials have said operations may not be restricted to Afghanistan in future but have avoided saying that Iraq or any other specific countries could become targets.

U.S. SOURCE OF ANTHRAX

Saddam noted reports that the United States could be the source of anthrax bacteria plaguing the United States and urged Washington to get rid of all its weapons of mass destruction. Other countries including Israel should follow suit.

``We have heard in the news, recently, that American officials think that the source of anthrax is probably the U.S. itself. Hence...they should be busy in eliminating the weapons of mass destruction in the U.S. first,'' Saddam said.

``It goes without saying that the West, including the United States, are the ones who first built weapons of mass destruction including nuclear, biological and chemical weapons,'' he added.

He said Iraq would join the world in signing a ``binding agreement to get rid of the burden and the threat of the weapons of mass destruction.

``When the U.S. is really willing to disarm itself of these weapons, we do not think that anyone of a sound mind would stay out of the framework of such a practical plan,'' Saddam added.

The United States, which led a multinational force that drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 1991, says Iraq has been developing weapons of mass destruction since U.N. weapons inspectors left the country in 1998.

Baghdad has denied any link to the spread of anthrax in the United States.

Western officials say Iraq and the former Soviet Union both produced weapons-grade anthrax in the past, but U.S. officials have said they knew of no clear link between Iraq and the release of the killer bacteria in the United States.

-------- israel

Hamas wins converts as talks fail
In battle for the hearts and minds of Palestinians, Arafat's Fatah wing is losing out to militant rivals.

Christian Science Monitor
October 30, 2001
By Ilene Prusher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1030/p6s1-wome.html

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP - Abdul Aziz Rantissi's mobile phone rings on the couch where he sits, barefoot, as a heavy rain raps his living room windows.

Friends and colleagues are calling the senior leader of the political wing of Hamas, the Islamic militant group, to see if he has heard about the two Palestinian gunmen who opened fire in downtown Hadera, a city along the northern Israeli coast, killing four Israelis.

"I am very happy," says Mr. Rantissi, as a few gunmen on guard downstairs file into his apartment and flick on the television. The picture is snowy with static, but Rantissi squints and reads the headlines in Hebrew at the bottom of the screen: four dead, 10 injured.

Scores of Palestinians were killed by Israeli military attacks in the aftermath of the Oct. 17 assassination of Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi by Palestinian militants, he points out. "[Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon killed 50 Palestinians in the past week. Is it right to ask us to shut up?" he says heatedly.

The attack, it later turns out, is not the work of Hamas. Islamic Jihad, another militant group, takes responsibility. The two gunmen were also members of the Palestinian Authority police, the Israeli army says, further blurring the line between who is leading the intifada against Israel and who is supposed to be in charge of cooling it down.

In the eyes of Hamas and other Islamic militants, however, things are clear: no cooling down, no cease-fire.

It's an outlook that is gaining in popularity. Over the course of the increasingly violent conflict that began 13 months ago and has taken the lives of 730 Palestinians and 191 Israelis, polls show that more Palestinians are looking to Hamas as the group that represents how they want to deal with Israel.

Outside observers have long pointed to Hamas's social-welfare services as a key method for attracting supporters. But Hamas leaders argue that it is their long-standing refusal to talk compromise and their violent attacks on Israel that have convinced more Palestinians that Hamas has been "right" all along.

"Now the Palestinians are trusting us more than ever before," says Rantissi, a physician who has spent time in Israeli and Palestinian jails. "Hamas declared from the beginning that the choice of negotiations is a failure, and that shows the failure of the Palestinian Authority and success of Hamas. We made a choice against negotiations because it will lead to nowhere. Palestinian land will not be liberated except by weapons."

Founded in December 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the group's spiritual leader, Hamas rejects negotiations with Israel and shuns territorial compromise. In addition to its military wing, which uses suicide bombers, the group considers itself a political and social movement whose goal is a Palestinian state based on Islamic law.

Here in Gaza City, a place that looked like a bustling and burgeoning third-world city just over a year ago, the streets are nearly empty. The road that leads to Erez Checkpoint, once filled with workers going to or returning from Israel and trucks bringing goods, is now deserted. Some 60 percent of Palestinians here are out of work, and the suffering is palpable. Amid that deprivation, Islamic militant groups have gained more support, while Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction has lost it.

According to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, Fatah's support has dropped from 37 to 29 percent since the Camp David talks collapsed in July 2000, while support for the Islamists increased from 17 to 27 percent. The poll also found that 46 percent of Palestinians desire an Islamic state after the establishment of a Palestinian state.

There are, indeed, regional implications in the rising popularity of Hamas. Satellite feed of the intifada violence has arguably helped it have a broader impact on the Middle East and Islamic world than almost any other period of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Viewers have watched the bloodshed round-the-clock on satellite channels such as Qatari-run Al-Jazeera. That, some experts say, helps account for an apparent increase in funding for Palestinian Islamists, particularly in the oil-rich Gulf states.

And in neighboring Egypt, the government has been investigating a group of suspected Islamic militants. A lawyer who represents some of them and other political sources in Cairo say that the group was involved in raising money "for the intifada" in mosques and university campuses. Although it's not clear whether they were collecting money for Hamas, for many Muslims, the group enjoys higher regard than Arafat's Fatah or his Palestinian Authority (PA).

"Unlike the PA which is usually accused of being inefficient and corrupt, Hamas is known to be of clean conduct," says Prof. Ziad Abu Amar, a member of the Palestinian legislative council and an expert on Hamas. "Muslims are obliged to perform zakkat [giving charity] and for them, they wouldn't find any better direction than to send that money to Hamas, who will both help the poor and fight Israel."

The question of funding has become such a sensitive topic in the wake of Sept. 11 and the hunt for Al Qaeda's benefactors that Hamas officials decline to discuss who supports them or what kind of services they offer the public.

Hamas is growing resentful of what it sees as US pressure on Arab countries to ensure donations to the Palestinians go to the PA, not Islamic groups, says Ismail Abu Shenab, another senior Hamas official in Gaza. Hamas has pulled back from official association with various Islamic institutions and charities here because, observers say, it fears that Arafat will be pressured to close them down. The West is beginning to paint all Islamic institutions as dangerous, says Mr. Abu Shenab.

"This misunderstanding of Hamas makes people angry about what the [US] intelligence services are trying to do. Islam asks us to take care of our neighbors," he says. "There are many attacks on these institutions from the Israeli government, and they want to destroy them and are inciting Americans to make these institutions the enemy. They are pressuring us to surrender."

Mid-sentence, the electricity in Abu Shenab's home flickers out for the second time.

-------- japan

Tokyo acts to avoid limits on military

October 30, 2001
By Hans Greimel
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011030-14721234.htm

TOKYO - Japan yesterday abandoned limits on the use of its military observed since World War II, passing hotly debated legislation to allow its forces to support the war on terrorism.

The speedy approval of legislation - just 25 days after it was introduced - reflects Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's desire to avoid the criticism that befell Japan during the 1991 Gulf war. Tokyo was slammed for its "checkbook diplomacy" of offering mostly monetary support to the international coalition fighting Iraq.

Mr. Koizumi championed the legislation as a way for Japan to make a meaningful contribution to the campaign against Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks, and yet stay within the confines of the nation's pacifist constitution.

"We now need to implement our response based on this law as soon as possible," Mr. Koizumi said in a statement after the law was passed.

"The government views the fight against terrorism as a challenge of its own."

Japanese officials are scheduled to meet with U.S. diplomats and defense officials on Thursday to assess how Japan can help. Mr. Koizumi's Cabinet must then approve the plan. Officials also will go to Pakistan to assess the situation.

A Japanese press report suggested the Defense Ministry is considering sending four warships to the Indian Ocean as early as mid-November. While stressing that Japan is mustering support as fast as it can, Mr. Koizumi's spokesman Tsutomu Himeno declined to comment on equipment or timetables.

"There is probably a bigger role for Japanese forces in eventual peacekeeping operations," said Shigenori Okazaki, a political analyst with UBS Warburg.

-------- nigeria

Nigerian Army Said to Massacre Hundreds of Civilians

New York Times
October 30, 2001
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/30/international/africa/30NIGE.html?searchpv=nytToday

GBEJI, Nigeria, Oct. 28 - The Nigerian soldiers said they had come in peace, the residents of this small village recalled. The soldiers arrived, around 1 p.m. last Monday, in four armored vehicles and five trucks, and asked the men to gather at three spots on the main street.

The soldiers told the men to lie down, and ordered the women and children to leave.

"Then the commander ordered, `Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!" said Peter Mbaveluior, 30, a businessman here. "Prrrrrr!"

For the next hour, the soldiers gunned down men, and set fire to bodies and houses, the villagers said. Mr. Mbaveluior showed a reporter a list of 66 names he and others had been able to confirm as dead. Still missing were 38 men.

What happened here - and, according to local and state government officials, in at least 15 other remote villages and towns in the eastern state of Benue last week - is not fully clear yet. But what is plain is that the violence amounted to the worst violations by the military since Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and its biggest oil producer, ended nearly 16 years of military rule in 1999 and voted in a civilian government.

The attacks, coming at a time of widespread ethnic and religious violence, raised the issue of whether President Olusegun Obasanjo - himself a former military ruler - has full control over the army, which has had a long history of staging coups in Nigeria's four decades of independence.

The army, which has denied carrying out the attacks, was apparently retaliating for the killing of 19 soldiers this month in the area.

During a visit here, as well as to a nearby village called Vaase and a town called Zaki-Biam, dozens of villagers all said that Nigerian soldiers had made targets of them. All three communities bore the scars of military attacks: hundreds of simple one-story houses and stores burned down, cement walls crushed, roofs caved in, walls pocked with bullet holes. In Zaki-Biam's main market, only a couple dozen shops out of hundreds were still standing amid the rubble. Four bodies, apparently of men with no local relatives, lay on the ground, three vultures feasting on one of them.

In an interview in Makurdi, the sleepy state capital, Gov. George Akume said a "conservative estimate" was that the soldiers had killed 500 people.

President Obasanjo finally commented over the weekend, seeming to suggest on state television that the soldiers had acted in self-defense.

"Whatever they are taught to do or not to do, soldiers fight in self-defense," he said, adding that he was not "justifying any killing."

In late 1999, Mr. Obasanjo ordered hundreds of troops to Odi, a town in the Niger Delta, after 12 police officers were killed. The soldiers flattened Odi and killed many civilians. Later, Mr. Obasanjo expressed regret.

In Odi and in last week's incidents, it is not known who gave orders to kill civilians. Mr. Obasanjo served as Nigeria's military ruler in the late 1970's, and human rights violations were widespread, as they were during all the years of military dictatorship.

Since becoming an elected president in May 1999, Mr. Obasanjo has become one of Africa's most respected statesmen; as a key American ally in Africa, he has visited the White House several times.

"We are in shock and disbelief," Governor Akume said. "How could this happen with a democratic government that respects human rights, the people, and operates within the Constitution and laws of this country?"

In a strange twist, one target was Lieut. Gen. Victor Malu, who was the army's chief of staff until recently. Soldiers attacked the retired general's house in the area and killed three of his relatives.

"There is no other organization in the country that could have done this," General Malu said in a telephone interview from his house in Lagos. "Only the army has the tanks, the armored vehicles and the arms to do this. I cannot believe it was spontaneous. It must have been very carefully planned. How can you kill innocent civilians, farmers carrying yam on their heads? Can you mistake a yam tuber for a missile?"

Asked whether the army could have planned the attacks without President Obasanjo's knowledge, General Malu said: "To some extent, I can say yes. I don't think that this could have happened in a military government."

Ethnic and religious clashes have spread to almost every corner of this country, and some Nigerians are even saying that there has not been such rampant violence since the Biafra civil war in the 1960's. As Nigeria has emerged from one of the most ruinous and repressive military regimes in African history, long-simmering ethnic and religious feuds have exploded, fed by deepening poverty and often by ambitious politicians.

In this part of Nigeria, called the food basket of the country for its rich soil, conflict over farmland and political power has long pitted the Tiv ethnic group against the Jukuns in a neighboring state. In recent weeks, soldiers were deployed as peacekeepers, but the Tiv maintained that the soldiers favored their rivals.

On Oct. 12, the bodies of 19 soldiers were discovered, murdered, according to the army, by a Tiv militia. The governor said the soldiers were mistaken for Jukun militiamen disguised as soldiers. The villages attacked last week were all Tiv communities.

In Zaki-Biam, a dozen people stood outside the destroyed buildings of the local government.

"We want out of the Federal Republic of Nigeria," said Joseph Gaji, 34, an agricultural specialist. "Why should we be part of a federal government that cannot build anything for us, only destroy?"

Soldiers arrived in Zaki-Biam on Oct. 19, three days before the killings in Gbeji village. Town residents were nervous, given the killings of the 19 soldiers a week earlier, but Andrew Iornen, 42, said most were reassured when the soldiers said they had come to preserve peace.

Then, a day after the attack on Gbeji, Zaki-Biam began hearing of what had happened to the village. But it was too late. People had started on their regular business. Shortly before noon, residents said, a reinforcement of tanks and soldiers arrived. Soldiers ravaged the market. Some looted, stealing motorcycles, furniture and even yam, residents said. The local government estimates that 40 people were killed.

Now, soldiers have left the area of the attacks, although they are still stationed on the road close to Makurdi. Soldiers at many checkpoints could be seen shaking down 20 Naira bills, or 15 cents, from people fleeing the devastated areas.

Of all the villages, Gbeji, by all accounts, was the worst hit.

Many houses had been burned or smashed down. An acrid smell still filled the air. Freshly dug graves dotted the village. Flies swarmed above one mass grave after hungry dogs had unearthed the remains.

Rose Mzor, a woman in her 40's, said she had lost her husband and 20- year-old son, Emanuel, who was shot and burned beyond recognition. Her husband, Iwamde, was recognizable because of his pink robe. She buried him in front of her gutted house.

Rose Mzor said she ignored the soldiers' warning to women to leave. "I saw soldiers take the fuel that some boys were selling in jerrycans and spray fuel on the buildings," she said. "Then I saw the soldiers shooting. They shot the men and put some bodies in a pile and burned them. My son's body was burned in that pile."

Ierhemba Tsengu, a 32-year-old merchant, said he was in one of the three groups of men. The soldiers watching his group of about 100, he said, all wore regular uniforms. But a private had painted in white on the back of his uniform: "Operation No Living Thing."

"They told us to lie down and then started shooting," Mr. Tsengu recalled. "I ran away and hid in the bush. I saw so many killed."

Another survivor from that group, Kareka Nyanshima, 18, had a similar reaction. He lay down as ordered by the soldiers, but bolted at the first opportunity.

"When I saw the soldier with `Operation No Living Thing' on his back, I got afraid," he said. "So I ran for my life."

-------- pakistan

Christians hunker down in Pakistan

October 30, 2001
By Willis Witter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011030-16064684.htm

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - St. John's Catholic Church locked its steel gates for the first time yesterday and five city policemen, armed with AK-47 assault rifles, moved into the church compound.

One day after unknown gunmen sprayed a Sunday church service with automatic weapons fire, killing 16, the Rev. Yaqub Shahzad fears that life will never be the same for the 15,000 Christians in Peshawar, a city of 4 million.

"Already after the American bombing we've been living [in] fear," he said. "Now, this fear has risen to new heights."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher described the slaughter as "awful" while noting that Pakistan has increased security at churches and promised a thorough investigation.

"We strongly condemn the terrorist murders," he told reporters. "We hope that the perpetrators are brought rapidly to justice."

In Islamabad, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf also condemned the attack, saying, "Islam condemns terrorism of every kind, and no Muslim can be involved in such a terrorist act."

And in the southeastern town of Bahawalpur, more than 300 miles away, St. Dominic's Church buried its dead.

Women, many of them survivors of Sunday's massacre, wept over white shrouded coffins, each with a simple cross painted in red.

"Those who have killed our people, they do not belong to any religion," mourner Malik Dad Masih told the Associated Press. "No religion says that innocent people should be killed."

The attack on a Protestant congregation that was borrowing St. Dominic's Roman Catholic Church was the first massacre in the history of Pakistan's small Christian community.

Fourteen worshippers, their minister and a Muslim police officer guarding the church were slain by gunmen who shouted, "Graveyard of Christians - Pakistan and Afghanistan," and "This is just a start."

"They had no mercy for the children. They had no mercy for the women. They could see that small children were being hit by bullets, but they kept firing," said Shamoon Masih, 34, a worshipper who carried several children out of the church after the attack before passing out from his wounds.

There was no claim of responsibility, but intelligence officials told AP that members of a banned Islamic group were under suspicion.

Pope John Paul II called the killings an "evil act" and a "tragic act of intolerance" and offered prayers to the victims' families.

In a Muslim nation where it is illegal to convert to any religion other than Islam, Christians all are descended from families that were converted by missionaries three and four generations ago.

They comprise a separate castelike class, living in cramped urban ghettos separated from Muslim neighborhoods by high brick walls.

"They think we are Americans or Europeans. They don't make the distinction that we are Pakistanis," Father Yaqub said.

On the other side of Peshawar lies a neighborhood of parishioners in which families with five and six children crowd into tenements of one-room brick homes along a maze of narrow dirt alleys.

"At this stage, things are still peaceful," said Hafiz Bibi, 25, a housewife. "But we worry about the future. Now we have to worry about our lives."

"We live in constant fear," said Makhan Masih, 50, a local government clerk.

As they spoke, a woman a few houses away finished baking bread on top of a kerosene stove. The neighborhood Catholic elementary school let out and the tiny path between the houses filled up with children, seemingly unaffected by Sunday's events.

But for their parents, it was clear that the entire community feels suddenly under siege.

"It may happen to us as well," said Samson Sharif, 26, another government clerk.

The unspoken fear is that the raging hatred of America will somehow become entangled with Christianity.

Since the United States began bombing Afghanistan Oct. 7 in a bid to crush Osama bin Laden and his terror network that is believed responsible for the suicide attacks on America, militants have taken over downtown streets in Peshawar with almost daily demonstrations.

Yesterday was no exception, with a militant student group rallying several thousand children and teen-age boys.

"Listen, Osama. We are with you. The only solution to America is holy war," crooned one speaker, putting his poem to song. His lyrics hung in the air amidst the ear-splitting roar of the crowd as it yelled, "Death to America. Long live Osama."

Back at St. John's church, Father Yaqub said he is especially worried about Fridays, the Muslim day of rest - a day when anti-American demonstrators typically mass following afternoon prayers.

"The Muslims march through the city, and I'm afraid we could be attacked," he said.

Yesterday morning, he set aside a room at the church compound, a room overlooking the steel gate, where the five policemen could live while on duty 24 hours a day.

"I told the police it was not enough. We need at least a dozen men here," Father Yaqub said.

Muslim rage has also hit his flock in other ways.

"Because of their fear, people have already stopped going out to work in jobs like sweeping office floors, working in restaurants or as servants for rich people," Father Yaqub said. "Now, they are coming here because they can't eat."

The church is already feeding more than 100 neighborhood people, including children from destitute families, with monthly supplies of staples such as flour, sugar and cooking oil.

Since Sept. 11, another 40 families - at least 300 people - have applied to the church for food, a number he expects to rise as the full effect of Sunday's massacre hits.

--------

Pressure To Curtail War Grows
Pakistani Leader Urges Pause for Ramadan

By Vernon Loeb and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 30, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8830-2001Oct29.html

Pressure on the United States to radically curtail the war in Afghanistan grew yesterday as Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, asked for a bombing pause during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that begins next month. Britain's defense secretary said a pause is under serious consideration.

In the clearest signal to date of Pakistan's unease over the U.S.-led air campaign, Musharraf told Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the U.S. commander overseeing the war, in Islamabad that the Pentagon needed to rethink its bombing campaign after 22 days of airstrikes. Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the campaign, cited civilian casualties and a lack of tangible success, according to Pakistani officials.

But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, reiterated his opposition to a bombing pause during Ramadan, saying that Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia and the al Qaeda terrorist network it shelters "are unlikely to take holiday."

"Given the fact that they have killed thousands of Americans and people from 50 or 60 other countries, and given the fact that they have sworn to continue such attacks, we have an obligation to defend the American people," Rumsfeld said. He noted that "there have been any number of conflicts between Muslim countries, and between Muslim countries and non-Muslim countries, throughout Ramadan."

British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon told reporters in London that a bombing pause is under consideration. "That is something we are looking at very seriously," he said.

Hoon added, however, that British and American military officials do not want to give the Taliban and al Qaeda time to regroup, "knowing that they will not face military action during the course of Ramadan."

Seventy carrier-based strike aircraft, six long-range bombers and Air Force F-15E fighter bombers flew airstrikes over Afghanistan yesterday, concentrating on Taliban troops north of Kabul, the capital, and around Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan, defense officials said.

Haron Amin, a spokesman for the opposition Northern Alliance in Washington, said the U.S. military has told forces with the rebel coalition that it is time for them to attack Mazar-e Sharif, a strategic crossroads city. "There has been communication on the ground, and [American forces] have asked us to move on Mazar," Amin said. "To operate out of Mazar would help a lot of things to go forward."

Rumsfeld announced that U.S. aircraft have begun dropping ammunition to forces of the Northern Alliance, a coalition of rebel groups dominated by ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks that controls a swath of territory in northern Afghanistan.

Expressing satisfaction with the results of the air campaign as it entered its fourth week, Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that U.S. aircraft have devastated Taliban air defenses and killed Taliban and al Qaeda troops.

"We are in the driver seat," Myers said. "We are proceeding at our pace. We are not proceeding at the Taliban's pace or al Qaeda's pace. We can control that. And we are controlling it in a way that I think is right along with our plan that we set out."

Rumsfeld said he took no exception to recent statements by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) about the need for U.S. ground forces, and hinted that the establishment of U.S. bases in Afghanistan is being considered.

USA Today reported yesterday that military setbacks in Afghanistan had led the Pentagon to aggressively consider the creation of a forward base in Afghanistan for U.S. troops.

But a senior military planner with knowledge of the discussion said establishing a U.S. base inside Afghanistan is unlikely right now, mainly for political reasons. "We don't want to be caught at this point with the appearance of Americans holding ground," he said.

The official added that most of the pressure for establishing such a base was coming from the Northern Alliance. Putting some sort of semi-permanent base in northern Afghanistan is an eventual possibility, he said, but it is equally possible that the United States might set up a series of temporary forward bases at which Special Forces units could land, refuel and strike out on quick raids deep inside Afghanistan.

A source in contact with Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan said a forward base for American forces, possibly in the Panjshir Valley, was being considered to improve the guidance of bombs and missiles and thereby reduce the number of unintended civilian casualties.

Establishing and protecting a base around an airfield in an environment lacking most basic necessities is a basic mission of the 10th Mountain Division, said retired Maj. Gen. Lawson Magruder III, a former commander of that Army unit. There are more than 1,000 troops from the 10th Mountain at a base in southern Uzbekistan, just across the border from the Northern Alliance-controlled area where U.S. military planners could conceivably establish a base.

"It's a mission they are certainly capable of, and train for an awful lot," said Magruder, who oversaw similar missions with the 10th Mountain in Somalia in 1993.

But he also said that because the 10th Mountain is a light infantry unit, it probably would need to have some other units assigned to it to have the protection and mobility it would need. He said those likely would be armored units and truck companies.

In their meeting in Islamabad yesterday, Musharraf was blunt with Franks, telling the head of the U.S. Central Command that the Pakistani public is growing impatient with the bombing efforts and the unintended civilian casualties and that a Ramadan pause was needed, Pakistani officials said.

This sentiment, the officials quoted Musharraf as saying, increases the potential for unrest in the overwhelmingly Muslim country. "I think the bombing of Afghanistan during Ramadan would certainly aggravate feelings everywhere in the Islamic world," Mohammed Riaz Khan, spokesman for Pakistan's foreign ministry, told BBC radio.

The White House announced yesterday that President Bush will meet Musharraf on Nov. 10 when both will be in New York attending the U.N. General Assembly meeting.

Anthony H. Cordesman, a former Pentagon official and military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said a bombing pause would help the Taliban resupply and disperse its assets at a time when the radical Islamic militia could be most vulnerable, with winter approaching.

"What you're really saying is, the United States steps out of the war for 28 days, or however long Ramadan lasts this year, and the rest of the war goes on under optimal conditions for the Taliban," Cordesman said.

He said one alternative to a full pause would be to stop bombing Afghanistan's population centers and concentrate only on Taliban forces in the field. Another alternative, he said, would be to shift the bombing away from Kabul and Kandahar, the Taliban's southern stronghold, and concentrate on Mazar-e Sharif in the north and Herat in the west. Both those cities are under siege by opposition forces.

Such a strategy would go some way toward alleviating Pakistan's concern about civilian casualties among Pashtuns, which are Afghanistan's largest ethnic group and also make up a substantial minority in Pakistan. Most Pashtuns in Afghanistan live in the southern part of the country.

Correspondent Molly Moore in Islamabad and staff writer Marc Kaufman in Washington contributed to this report.

-------- sierra leone

Aid agencies help to rid child soldiers of war's scars
Child protection groups in Sierra Leone believe that thousands of children were branded by rebel armies.

Christian Science Monitor
By Danna Harman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
October 30, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1030/p7s2-woaf.html

BAFODIA VILLAGE, SIERRA LEONE - It's a hot evening in Bafodia village. A handful of children sit around the Mango trees, drenched in sweat, half-heartedly humming tunes as they slap away the mosquitoes.

All of them are shirtless in the heat, except two. Kaiadicu Kamara wears a turtleneck. Alfred Mansaray itches at his wool sweater. They are hiding the scars of war, scars which inflict a special kind of shame.

During Sierra Leone's brutal 10-year civil war, which left 50,000 people dead and countless maimed, some 5,000 children were abducted into service by the rebel armies. With last year's cease-fire and waves of rebels surrendering weapons, aid workers are seeing first-hand that some of the former child soldiers were branded by the rebel army.

Using razors, broken glass, knives, an odd iron or needle, rebel groups would carve "RUF," the initials of the Revolutionary United Front, or other groups, onto the chests, arms, and even foreheads of the children - some as young as 9 - to make sure they wouldn't escape.

Rabih Torbay, West Africa director of the L.A.-based International Medical Corps (IMC), first heard about these brandings from one of the nurses working for his agency in Sierra Leone.

"She told me she had come across a kid who had these scars on his body. The kid had tried to remove them with caustic soda because he was so embarrassed," says Mr. Torbay. "We realized it was as much a psychological problem as a medical one ... and we wanted to help."

Last month, IMC launched a six-month pilot program to remove some of these brandings. With funding from USAID and UNICEF, and a budget of $150,000, IMC brought in a plastic surgeon to perform operations in Lungi hospital, near Freetown.

So far, 120 children have signed up for the procedure. But staff from IMC, UNICEF, and other child protection agencies predict that as more areas of the country open up to aid workers, hundreds if not thousands more children will line up.

The operations are only part of widespread child rehabilitation efforts going on in postwar Sierra Leone. As rebels disarm, and the interior becomes safer, child protection agencies are fanning out across the country to set up transition camps for these often traumatized young combatants.

Many of the child soldiers were given hard drugs and forced to carry out the worst of the war's atrocities: amputations on people in their own communities or even families.

"These children are terrified that they will be rejected when they return home," says Maurice Ellie, a child demobilization officer at the nongovernmental organization Caritas, which runs demobilization camps in northeast Sierra Leone. "We tell them there can be forgiveness."

"These children burned down shops and houses, and the attitude toward them is 'Why should I help,' " says Martha Lansana, a project officer for Action Aid who helps ex-combatant children return to school or find apprenticeships. "We are trying to change that. But if the children have the name of the rebel group tattooed to their bodies, it makes it all that much harder for anyone to forget."

A step closer to healing

"I am ashamed to go to town," says 16-year-old Kamara. "I am ashamed to wear short shirts. I am ashamed to wash with the others. My parents are ashamed... I tried to remove my shame by scrubbing it with leaves and herbs, but it did not come out."

Kamara spent three years with the RUF, only returning home in May when the cease-fire began. "I was for cooking. I was for laundry. I was for sex," she explains. "We walked 10 to 15 miles a day, and I was also to guard the looted property and arms. We were given a lot of drugs - marijuana, cocaine."

A year after her abduction, Kamara tried running away. She was caught and pinned down by two men. "They performed the operation with a razor blade," she says, carving "RUF" crookedly across her chest.

Young Alfred Mansaray had not heard of the operations in Lungi for removing scars, but his eyes light up when told about them.

"I was branded because they said I would run away, and now I can't even run away from my own self. Evil is with me all the time, imprinted on my body," he says, speaking slowly but without hesitation.

Words like these have moved aid workers to act.

"I had meetings with the parents and the social workers. I was telling them that removing the scars does not remove the past," says Cresenzo D'Onofrio, IMC's plastic surgeon. "But now I think it is I who will have learned something. I understand now that I am giving the children clearer dreams. If I can delete the letters, I can help. It is impossible to change past, true, but we can still make the future easier."

-------- u.n.

UN Chief Presses Taliban on Supplies

October 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-UN-Refugees.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- The head of the U.N. refugee agency urged Afghanistan's ruling Taliban on Tuesday to return looted U.N. property and safeguard what is left of U.N. humanitarian operations in that country.

Ruud Lubbers, a former Dutch prime minister who is the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, made the demands in a meeting Tuesday with the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef. It was the first meeting between the Taliban and a senior international official since the U.S.-led bombing of Afghanistan started Oct. 7.

The meeting was spurred in part by looting and armed attacks on U.N. offices and other international humanitarian operations since the U.S. military campaign started. Aid groups blame the Taliban and other armed bands.

After local aid workers were beaten, the United Nations directed Afghan staffers last week to give up trying to defend U.N. property.

Lubbers ticked off his points to the Taliban in a news conference beforehand: ``Don't loot our property is the first. Respect our people -- don't threaten them and let them do our work. And thirdly ... don't destroy our network.''

In the meeting, the U.N. refugee chief asked that the Taliban respect U.N. staffers, property and programs, refugee agency spokesman Peter Kessler said.

Lubbers also asked for the return of stolen assets, including vehicles. Taliban reportedly have been seeing riding in commandeered white-and-blue U.N. vehicles in some cities.

Lubbers stressed to Zaeef the need for safe access for aid workers, Kessler said.

In response, Zaeef pledged to do his best to see that U.N. workers and property are protected, Kessler said.

Zaeef and Lubbers also agreed on the importance of providing food and help to civilians within Afghanistan -- thereby stemming the flow of refugees to surrounding countries.

The United Nations still has about 170 Afghan workers on the job in Afghanistan after international staffers pulled out, according to Lubbers.

Lubbers is touring the region trying to lessen the hardships of the comparatively few refugees who've made it out of Afghanistan and the many more weathering out the U.S. airstrikes inside.

Neighboring Iran and Pakistan already hold millions of Afghan refugees from two previous decades of conflict there -- and both have closed their borders to more.

In an earlier meeting Tuesday, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf urged that as much as possible be done for displaced Afghans within Afghanistan itself, Lubbers said.

Without ruling that out, Lubbers outlined the difficulties of running a U.N. camp inside Afghanistan -- including guarding male refugees from forced conscription by the Taliban or the anti-Taliban forces, and keeping any camps from becoming hiding places for combatants.

Musharraf did sanction camps of up to 300,000 capacity within Pakistan for those most in need of temporary protection, including the elderly, children separated from their parents and fighting-age men in danger of being forced into the battle, he said.

Lubbers was to ask Iran to take in more refugees when he travels there Wednesday.

He declined to back an appeal by Oxfam International and other international aid groups for a pause in bombing so workers can rush winter food supplies to Afghan's needy.

``I don't think it will help to say, 'Let's break for two days or two weeks,'' he said.

--------

U.N. Chief Wants Early End to War

Excite News
Tuesday Oct. 30, 2001. (AP)
By EDITH M. LEDERER,
Associated Press Writer
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/011030/18/news-attacks-un

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed on Tuesday for a quick end to the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan to allow the United Nations to begin sending food into the country before winter.

Annan said he wasn't talking about a bombing pause to ease humanitarian relief efforts.

"What I am saying is that we would want to see this whole military operation ended as soon as possible, particularly the air action, so that we can begin to move in our supplies," he told reporters.

The United States has said that it, too, wants an early end to the military action but not before it wipes out terror camps associated with Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

The United States contends the fundamentalist Islamic Taliban regime that runs Afghanistan is harboring bin Laden and his al-Qaida group.

The secretary-general said the United Nations was getting "quite a bit" of food into the country despite the military operations.

"I think that is a credit to the courage of our staff, and also to the truck drivers who are prepared to take the risks," he said.

Last week, Carolyn McAskie, a U.N. deputy coordinator of humanitarian relief, said the United Nations was getting "about 50 percent of our needs" into Afghanistan.

Even so, Annan said, ending the military action quickly is crucial to the humanitarian effort.

"I think what is important from our point of view is that we need to see the operation ended as soon as possible so that we can step up our humanitarian effort, get in as much food as we can, and prepare for the winter," he said.

Annan's special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, is in Pakistan for talks to promote the establishment of a broad-based government in Afghanistan.

Whether the Taliban is represented in a future government "is a decision for the Afghans to make," the secretary-general said.

Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, is also "talking to all concerned" about U.N. relief efforts and a possible future U.N. role in Afghanistan.

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

Lawmakers offer their own strategies for war effort

October 30, 2001
By Dave Boyer
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011030-392240.htm

Lawmakers already are second-guessing the 3-week-old military campaign in Afghanistan, prompting colleagues yesterday to caution against running a war from the halls of Congress.

"I don't want to be calling plays from the bleachers here," said Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat. "I think you need to let people do what they do best, and I have a lot of confidence in" Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

On a Sunday talk show, Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, said the Pentagon is not using air power to its best effect. Mr. McCain, a Navy pilot in Vietnam, also predicted that U.S. commanders will need to deploy a "very, very significant" number of ground forces in Afghanistan. Mr. Dodd echoed some of his criticism on the same show.

Sen. Larry E. Craig, Idaho Republican, said of his colleagues' penchant for Monday-morning quarterbacking: "My guess is the war will go on for a longer period of time, and at some point there will be numerous secretaries of defense."

But several lawmakers dismissed the suggestion that such criticism would lead to the same atmosphere as there was late in the Vietnam War, when politicians were accused of meddling in the military operation.

"Vietnam taught us a lesson we will never forget," Mr. Craig said.

Mr. Rumsfeld said yesterday there is "nothing wrong with Senator McCain or anyone else offering their views." But he reiterated that the war will be long, difficult and not always public.

"It is not for anyone in a position of responsibility to be speculating about what we might do next," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "In terms of the American people, I sense that there's a good deal of patience and understanding of the difficulty of the task."

Even before the military campaign began, the administration warned that the operation would be lengthy and would ultimately involve action in several nations where terrorists operate. Yet three weeks into the war in Afghanistan, and lawmakers and some media outlets are already criticizing the campaign for failing to make progress in its objectives.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott said yesterday that his colleagues are still united in support of the military campaign.

"This is an unprecedented war in modern history against an enemy that may take years to fully bring to justice," said Mr. Lott, Mississippi Republican. "President Bush successfully rallied the nation and the world to a sustained war against terrorism, and our confidence with the White House and our armed forces remains steadfast."

Mr. McCain is not alone in his critique of the war to date. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said last week that the United States could look like a "high-tech bully" if the bombing did not end soon.

Even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, an analyst for Fox News, last week criticized "the rope-a-dope we're currently playing in Afghanistan."

"We should destroy the Taliban as rapidly as possible," Mr. Gingrich said. "I, frankly, am mystified that we have the capacity in the north to destroy the Taliban forces in the front lines, and we're not using it. And I do not understand the strategy of being slow in blocking the defeat of the Taliban by not applying our power."

Mr. Dodd said lawmakers are trying to walk a fine line between speaking freely and interfering with the operation of the war.

"Everyone's entitled to an opinion, certainly, I respect that," Mr. Dodd said. "But I have a very high degree of confidence that [the military commanders] know what they're doing. In my view, it's a matter that's better left to them to do. That's what they're charged with doing."

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, yesterday rebuffed suggestions that the Pentagon needs advice from pundits or politicians in carrying out the war effort.

"I want to emphasize that our operations are on track with the commander-in-chief of Central Command's overall campaign plan," Gen. Myers said. "I'm not going to get into details about that plan, but I'll point out that once again, the models from previous campaigns, like Allied Force and Desert Storm and any expectations based on them made by pundits, are not really relevant to this plan and our asymmetric warfare on terrorism. And we'll proceed at a time and place of our choosing."

Several lawmakers said yesterday that open debate on an action as serious as war is only natural in a free, democratic society.

"I'm not surprised that this process develops critics along the way," Mr. Craig said.

--------

U.S. Considers Afghan Ground Base

October 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Military.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Future U.S. commando raids or other ground fighting against Taliban and al-Qaida troops might be based from an airfield inside Afghanistan, defense officials said.

Meanwhile, in the air campaign, U.S. planes swept through the skies over the front lines north of the Afghan capital throughout the day Tuesday. A huge explosion at front lines about 25 miles north of Kabul sent a mushroom cloud at least 1,000 feet high. The origin was not clear, since there were no airplanes overhead.

And Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. operation in Afghanistan, met Tuesday with officials in Uzbekistan, where about 1,000 soldiers with the Army's 10th Mountain Division have been deployed at an air base at 90 miles from the northern Afghan border.

On Monday, Pentagon officials said setting up a U.S. base at an Afghan airfield is one of several possibilities the Defense Department is considering.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said when the bombing began Oct. 7 that air power alone would be insufficient in Afghanistan, and special operations forces would play a key role in the campaign to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.

Troops on the ground probably will be needed to deal with bin Laden and other leaders of his al-Qaida terror network, but past wars in Afghanistan -- notably the former Soviet Union's failure after 10 years of fighting -- have shown the high cost of a conventional large-scale ground invasion.

Bombers were continuing Tuesday to try to hit al-Qaida and Taliban troop positions and troops on the move as well as target caves from which they they operate, said Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke. The Pentagon has been hitting caves with ``bunker buster'' bombs that penetrate concrete, and Rumsfeld has said they also are trying to smash entrances and exits to the caves.

Tuesday's plan was pretty much a continuation of Monday's bombing -- much the same kind of targets and same areas but with a few more flyovers. That is, bombers planned 95 sorties Tuesday compared to Monday's 89, Clarke said.

Rumsfeld Monday was asked about a USA Today report that said U.S. forces may soon establish a forward base in Afghanistan that would support 200 to 300 commandos. The newspaper, quoting an unidentified defense official, said the base might be in northern Afghanistan.

``You're asking if we're considering doing something additional in various ways,'' Rumsfeld said. ``Needless to say, that's our job -- to consider much different things, and we do.'' He said he had nothing to announce.

Rumsfeld said American airstrikes have killed some leaders of the ruling Taliban military and al-Qaida, but not the top ones.

``There's no question but that the Taliban and al-Qaida people, military, have been killed,'' Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference. ``To our knowledge, none of the very top six, eight, 10 people have been included in that.''

Asked about reports that the Taliban had arrested Americans in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said, ``There have been no American military captured. Whether someone else may have been ... I don't think so.''

Rumsfeld also cast doubt on whether the United States would heed some of its Muslim allies' request to wrap up the Afghanistan campaign before the Muslims' holy month of Ramadan.

``The Taliban and al-Qaida are unlikely to take a holiday,'' Rumsfeld said.

British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon has said a pause in air strikes was under consideration. And Islamabad's daily newspaper The News said that in a meeting with Pakistan officials, Franks offered ``some assurances'' that bombing during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan could be stopped or limited to Taliban targets away from civilian areas.

Rumsfeld rejected suggestions that the military effort in Afghanistan, now in its fourth week, has bogged down.

``This will not happen overnight,'' he said. ``It is a marathon, not a sprint. It will be years, not weeks or months.''

Franks said the same thing in Uzbekistan Tuesday.

``We want to conduct this operation on our timeline, and I think we are on the timeline,'' he said.

--------

Feds probe Northrop in defense fraud case
Prosecutors say firm's overbilling costly, systematic

Chicago Tribune
By Thomas A. Corfman
October 30, 2001
http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0110300253oct30.story?coll=chi%2Dnewsnationworld%2Dhed

Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation of the Rolling Meadows facility of defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. in connection with alleged fraud of more than $100 million.

In court papers, some filed under seal, the U.S attorney's office in Chicago alleges that Northrop systematically overcharged the Defense Department for radar jammers and other high-tech devices used in warplanes such as the B-1 bomber, the F-15 fighter and the B-2 Stealth bomber. The government also alleges that Northrop executives knew of the overcharging and covered it up.

Northrop is a key government contractor whose controversial Stealth bomber is an important part of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and the most expensive aircraft ever made at $2.2 billion apiece.

The overbilling allegations were originally included in a civil complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago 12 years ago by two former Northrop employees. The two employees, who worked in the 1980s at the company's defense systems division in Rolling Meadows, said they had firsthand knowledge of the overcharging.

One plaintiff, James Holzrichter, a former auditor, said that Northrop billed the government for parts that were returned to their makers as defective and then charged the government again when those parts were replaced.

The company also routinely charged the government for employees' idle time, said Rex Robinson, an engineer. And Northrop regularly built testing equipment based on outmoded or incomplete specifications, so that the government could be charged again to rebuild it, Robinson said.

Northrop has denied the allegations and has fought the whistle-blowers' lawsuit, which has yet to go to trial. A company spokesman would not comment for this article.

The criminal investigation was disclosed in connection with a motion by the U.S. attorney's office in June to take over the civil case. U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Guzman granted the motion Oct. 12.

The criminal probe goes beyond the original allegations, including evidence that "this civil action was obstructed," according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Linda Wawzenski.

This is the second time that government lawyers have looked into these allegations. In the late 1980s, federal prosecutors opened a criminal investigation, but no charges were brought and the U.S. attorney's office declined to join the civil case at that time.

Court documents tell a complicated story that involves arcane military acronyms, esoteric electronic devices, accounting intricacies and a little-known federal law that allows whistle-blowers to file lawsuits on behalf of the government.

The case against Northrop was originally filed under the False Claims Act, which allows whistle-blowers--employees with knowledge of alleged government contract fraud--to collect from 15 percent to 30 percent of any damages awarded the government.

It is rare for the government to take over a whistle-blower case, and possibly unprecedented for the government to take that step so many years after a case is filed. The U.S. attorney's office has said the change of strategy is due to evidence obtained during the hard-fought court case by the plaintiffs' lawyers, including Michael Behn of Chicago-based litigation boutique Futterman & Howard Ltd.

"In the cases that the Justice Department doesn't take over, the average recovery is a little bit higher than zero," said an expert in such cases, Steven Schooner, a professor at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. "There have been exceptions, and this is apparently a dramatic example where Justice re-evaluates its position."

The government's entry by no means guarantees success. For example, a civil jury in Los Angeles in 1996 handed federal prosecutors a stinging defeat in a case in which Northrop was charged with a multimillion-dollar fraud on the MX missile.

Yet in 1990, Northrop paid a then-record fine of $17 million for falsifying records on the cruise missile and Harrier aircraft.

In 2000, Northrop was the fifth-largest defense contractor in the country, with the Defense Department accounting for nearly 90 percent of its $7.6 billion net sales.

Earlier this year, Northrop acquired shipbuilder Litton Industries Inc. in a deal worth $3.8 billion. And last week, the Defense Department paved the way for Northrop to acquire Newport News Shipbuilding Inc. in a $2.1 billion transaction by backing the merger.

Problems with `the customer'

As Northrop grows, so may its problems with the government, which Northrop executives call "the customer."

The government is suing Northrop in another whistle-blower case in Los Angeles that seeks to recover $212 million in connection with defective Navy target drones. Northrop is fighting that case.

In the Chicago case, a turning point may have come in February 2000, when the plaintiffs lawyers filed affidavits from three former Northrop legal department employees and a former Northropconsultant who accused the company of concealing incriminating evidence.

The affidavits say Northrop employees, with the approval of top executives, destroyed documents or withheld them, either by falsely claiming that the documents were covered by the attorney-client privilege or by asserting that the documents were top secret when they were not.

After receiving court permission to take over the civil case, the government filed its own complaint.

The government's complaint alleges a widespread pattern of fraudulent activities that began in 1980 and netted the company more than $113 million. But the government also contends that the total amount of money lost is "substantially greater" because the deceptive practices involved other departments and continued after the lawsuit was filed.

U.S. says practices routine

"Northrop's fraud was institutionally embedded," Wawzenski contends in a confidential court memorandum in support of the government's motion to intervene. "Northrop was training its own managers to lie as a part of a corporate culture which encouraged defrauding the government."

The Tribune reviewed the memorandum, which is not part of the public record because it was filed under seal. The document outlines some of the government's evidence, including the allegation that Northrop trained its managers to manipulate the billing system, telling them "we can't tell the truth" to the government.

As an auditor, Holzrichter was responsible for checking the validity of reasons why parts had to be scrapped, according to the government's complaint.In 1989, according to the lawsuit, Holzrichter noticed that Northrop's records for a particular part showed that the number of parts scrapped exceeded the number purchased. The cost of scrapped parts was passed along to the government.

When told about the fraud, the manager of Northrop's quality assurance group at the time said, "Let sleeping dogs lie," according to the government's confidential memorandum.

The overcharging was partly the result of Northrop's computerized accounting system, which allowed the company to bill the government multiple times for the same part, the complaint says.

The U.S. attorney's office alleges in its complaint that Northrop engaged in a sophisticated coverup, adjusting its books and giving the Defense Department credit for some scrapped parts while concealing other fraudulent charges.

The accounting adjustments, known internally as the "Super Report," were criticized by an outside accounting firm, Arthur Young & Co. In a 1988 study, the firm said that the Super Report could lead to a government investigation for "possible False Claims violations," referring to the statute under which Robinson and Holzrichter later filed their lawsuit.

But earlier in the whistle-blowers' case, a magistrate judge held that the document was covered by the attorney-client privilege. Moreover, Northrop's attorneys, Chicago-based law firm Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon, contend that the substance of the report was disclosed in another report.

The U.S. attorney's office also says that Northrop has withheld evidence of fraud in the top-secret Stealth bomber project, wrongfully claiming that documents were classified.

But Northrop's attorneys have argued in court that the company is limited by its national security obligations.

Plaintiff Robinson worked on the Stealth bomber, designing equipment and procedures used to test its electronics. After he was hired in 1985, while waiting for security clearance, he was assigned for three months to what Northrop called the "holding tank," along with other employees who were without assignments, according to the complaint. Even though the employees in the holding tank had little or no work to do, all of their time was billed to the government, the complaint says.

Once Robinson started work on the Stealth bomber, he was told to build test equipment based on specifications that Northrop executives knew were outmoded or incomplete, the complaint says. As a result, the test equipment was repeatedly rebuilt at an additional, unnecessary cost, it says.

Both employees were fired

Robinson began giving information about Northrop's practices to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about one year before he was fired in May 1988, the complaint says.

That same year, Holzrichter apparently began cooperating with government investigators as well. When Northrop executives learned in May 1989 of Holzrichter's cooperation, he was harassed by co-workers and supervisors, the government's complaint says. One month later, he took a disability leave of absence because of stress, the complaint says, and eventually also was fired. Northrop denies that the employees' firings were related to their cooperation.

Both men now feel vindicated, although they have had to deal with periods of unemployment and even homelessness since the complaint was filed, said Behn, their attorney.

He added, "They have been fighting a long, hard battle."

---

Northrop Grumman Accused of Fraud

Yahoo News
Tuesday October 30
By MIKE ROBINSON,
Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011030/bs/northrop_investigation.html

CHICAGO (AP) - Northrop Grumman Corp. has been accused by the federal government of tens of millions of dollars of fraud in defense contracts, including one to produce top secret parts for the B-2 ``Stealth'' bomber.

The government said in civil court papers filed last week that the defense contractor produced bogus inventory records and other documents to hide the fact that it had inflated costs on contracts for producing radar jammers and other sophisticated electronic equipment.

The Chicago Tribune on Tuesday reported that federal prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation into the allegations.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Linda A. Wawzenski declined to comment about the Tribune report. An attorney for Northrop, Michael Dockterman, declined to comment, referring calls to a Northrop spokesman in Los Angeles. The spokesman did not immediately return a call Tuesday to The Associated Press.

The U.S. attorney's office in Chicago filed its civil lawsuit on behalf of two whistleblowers who say they were fired by the Los Angeles-based aircraft company in the late 1980s after contacting Defense Department criminal investigators and the FBI concerning fraud.

The electronic equipment allegedly involved in fraud represented components not only of the batwing B-2s now in action over Afghanistan but F-18 fighters and the B-1 and B-52 bombers, the government said.

The equipment is manufactured by a division of Northrop based in suburban Rolling Meadows, Ill.

The lawsuit says Northrop overcharged the government for the cost of parts that it had to scrap. It says whistleblower James H. Holzrichter discovered the problem in 1988 while reviewing computer printouts.

They showed that Northrop was charging the government for scrapping more parts than it had originally purchased, according to the lawsuit. It also says Northrop executives tried to fix the problem with a ``financial reconciliation'' program that involved bogus documents.

``Financial reconciliation was a scheme begun in late 1987 and continued at least through 1988 ... to defraud and mislead the United States,'' the lawsuit charges.

The lawsuit, assigned to U.S. District Judge Ronald A. Guzman, also says that whistleblower Rex A. Robinson told the government that Northrop billed the Defense Department for the time of employees who were waiting to be assigned to work.

Robinson said he was one of the employees, and that while he was in a ``holding tank'' he worked only about 50 percent of the time.

Under federal law, the whistleblowers can collect three times the amount of the fraud plus the fine applicable for the fraud if the allegations are proven.

---

Lockheed Officials Briefed on Fighter

Yahoo News
Tuesday October 30
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011030/bs/future_fighter_lockheed_1.html

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) - Pentagon representatives briefed Lockheed Martin Corp. officials Tuesday on their win of a potential $200 billion contract to build the military's next fighter jet.

The briefing was closed to the public, and Lockheed officials gave few details of the meeting at the defense contractor's Fort Worth plant where the planes would be built.

``We did learn from the Department of Defense today that we provided the best value for them, just as they stated Friday,'' said John Kent, a Lockheed spokesman.

Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Md., and its subcontractors beat a team led by Chicago-based Boeing Co. to win a $25 billion design and development contract. Air Force Secretary James G. Roche called Lockheed ``the clear winner'' but declined to elaborate.

Kent said Lockheed would not discuss Tuesday's meeting because it centered on proprietary design elements in Lockheed's fighter. He said Pentagon officials didn't request any changes in the plane's design or specifications.

During the 10-year development phase, Lockheed's Fort Worth-based aeronautics division will build 22 copies of the plane, 14 of which will be used in test flights and eight in ground tests, Kent said.

If the Pentagon goes ahead with production, the Air Force, Navy, Marines and British military are expected to order about 3,000 planes, with the first one ready for delivery in 2008. If other allies buy the plane, the contract could be worth even more than $200 billion.

Lawmakers in Missouri, where Boeing planned to do most of the Joint Strike Fighter work, are lobbying to force Lockheed to share some of the contract with Boeing.

Kent said the subject of sharing the work did not come up during Tuesday's briefing, which he indicated was a more technical review of the bidding.

-------

Backyard terrorism
The US has been training terrorists at a camp in Georgia for years - and it's still at it

By George Monbiot
Tuesday October 30, 2001
The Guardian, Manchester, UK
http://www.soaw.org/trainingterrorists.html

"If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents," George Bush announced on the day he began bombing Afghanistan, "they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril." I'm glad he said "any government", as there's one which, though it has yet to be identified as a sponsor of terrorism, requires his urgent attention.

For the past 55 years it has been running a terrorist training camp, whose victims massively outnumber the people killed by the attack on New York, the embassy bombings and the other atrocities laid, rightly or wrongly, at al-Qaida's door. The camp is called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or Whisc. It is based in Fort Benning, Georgia, and it is funded by Mr Bush's government.

Until January this year, Whisc was called the "School of the Americas", or SOA. Since 1946, SOA has trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers and policemen. Among its graduates are many of the continent's most notorious torturers, mass murderers, dictators and state terrorists. As hundreds of pages of documentation compiled by the pressure group SOA Watch show, Latin America has been ripped apart by its alumni.

In June this year, Colonel Byron Lima Estrada, once a student at the school, was convicted in Guatemala City of murdering Bishop Juan Gerardi in 1998. Gerardi was killed because he had helped to write a report on the atrocities committed by Guatemala's D-2, the military intelligence agency run by Lima Estrada with the help of two other SOA graduates. D-2 coordinated the "anti-insurgency" campaign which obliterated 448 Mayan Indian villages, and murdered tens of thousands of their people. Forty per cent of the cabinet ministers who served the genocidal regimes of Lucas Garcia, Rios Montt and Mejia Victores studied at the School of the Americas.

In 1993, the United Nations truth commission on El Salvador named the army officers who had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war. Two-thirds of them had been trained at the School of the Americas. Among them were Roberto D'Aubuisson, the leader of El Salvador's death squads; the men who killed Archbishop Oscar Romero; and 19 of the 26 soldiers who murdered the Jesuit priests in 1989. In Chile, the school's graduates ran both Augusto Pinochet's secret police and his three principal concentration camps. One of them helped to murder Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit in Washington DC in 1976.

Argentina's dictators Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri, Panama's Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos, Peru's Juan Velasco Alvarado and Ecuador's Guillermo Rodriguez all benefited from the school's instruction. So did the leader of the Grupo Colina death squad in Fujimori's Peru; four of the five officers who ran the infamous Battalion 3-16 in Honduras (which controlled the death squads there in the 1980s) and the commander responsible for the 1994 Ocosingo massacre in Mexico.

All this, the school's defenders insist, is ancient history. But SOA graduates are also involved in the dirty war now being waged, with US support, in Colombia. In 1999 the US State Department's report on human rights named two SOA graduates as the murderers of the peace commissioner, Alex Lopera. Last year, Human Rights Watch revealed that seven former pupils are running paramilitary groups there and have commissioned kidnappings, disappearances, murders and massacres. In February this year an SOA graduate in Colombia was convicted of complicity in the torture and killing of 30 peasants by paramilitaries. The school is now drawing more of its students from Colombia than from any other country.

The FBI defines terrorism as "violent acts... intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a government, or affect the conduct of a government", which is a precise description of the activities of SOA's graduates. But how can we be sure that their alma mater has had any part in this? Well, in 1996, the US government was forced to release seven of the school's training manuals. Among other top tips for terrorists, they recommended blackmail, torture, execution and the arrest of witnesses' relatives.

Last year, partly as a result of the campaign run by SOA Watch, several US congressmen tried to shut the school down. They were defeated by 10 votes. Instead, the House of Representatives voted to close it and then immediately reopen it under a different name. So, just as Windscale turned into Sellafield in the hope of parrying public memory, the School of the Americas washed its hands of the past by renaming itself Whisc. As the school's Colonel Mark Morgan informed the Department of Defense just before the vote in Congress: "Some of your bosses have told us that they can't support anything with the name 'School of the Americas' on it. Our proposal addresses this concern. It changes the name." Paul Coverdell, the Georgia senator who had fought to save the school, told the papers that the changes were "basically cosmetic".

But visit Whisc's website and you'll see that the School of the Americas has been all but excised from the record. Even the page marked "History" fails to mention it. Whisc's courses, it tells us, "cover a broad spectrum of relevant areas, such as operational planning for peace operations; disaster relief; civil-military operations; tactical planning and execution of counter drug operations".

Several pages describe its human rights initiatives. But, though they account for almost the entire training programme, combat and commando techniques, counter-insurgency and interrogation aren't mentioned. Nor is the fact that Whisc's "peace" and "human rights" options were also offered by SOA in the hope of appeasing Congress and preserving its budget: but hardly any of the students chose to take them.

We can't expect this terrorist training camp to reform itself: after all, it refuses even to acknowledge that it has a past, let alone to learn from it. So, given that the evidence linking the school to continuing atrocities in Latin America is rather stronger than the evidence linking the al-Qaida training camps to the attack on New York, what should we do about the "evil-doers" in Fort Benning, Georgia?

Well, we could urge our governments to apply full diplomatic pressure, and to seek the extradition of the school's commanders for trial on charges of complicity in crimes against humanity. Alternatively, we could demand that our governments attack the United States, bombing its military installations, cities and airports in the hope of overthrowing its unelected government and replacing it with a new administration overseen by the UN. In case this proposal proves unpopular with the American people, we could win their hearts and minds by dropping naan bread and dried curry in plastic bags stamped with the Afghan flag.

You object that this prescription is ridiculous, and I agree. But try as I might, I cannot see the moral difference between this course of action and the war now being waged in Afghanistan.

www.monbiot.com


-------- OTHER

-------- energy

Message from Robert Redford on Energy Security

Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001
From: Gene Messick <parkwatch@earthlink.net>

Understandably, we Americans feel an almost reflexive need for unanimity in trying times like these. As a nation, we are rightly consumed with responding to the terrorist attacks on September 11th. But, at some point -- and I think we're beginning to get there -- we need to take a long-term view even as we are reacting to the current crisis. Really important domestic issues facing us before all of this happened -- education, energy and the environment, health care -- still have the same dimension and consequence. But we have to recognize that it's much more difficult to discuss and debate them in the aftermath of Sept. 11th. Unfortunately, disagreement is sometimes characterized as unpatriotic during times such as these and open, thoughtful discourse is somewhat muted. The gravity of the current situation is not lost on any of us and we all want to do what's right to insure our national security.

A handful of determined U.S. senators, encouraged by the White House, are arguing that national security requires the Senate to rush a pro-oil energy bill into law. They have vowed to hold up normal Senate business and attach the bill to every piece of legislation that comes to the Senate floor. So far they have failed in what The Boston Globe is calling "oil opportunism." But with President Bush, himself, now calling for rushed passage of this disastrous bill, intense pressure is building on Senate leaders to succumb to the emotions of the moment. Using our national tragedy as an opportunity to advance the narrow interests of the oil lobby would not be in the best interest of the public. This bill, already passed by the House, would not only open the Arctic Refuge to oil rigs, it would also pave the way for energy companies to exploit and destroy pristine areas of Greater Yellowstone and other gems of our natural heritage. As important, it would do nothing to address energy security.

I'm asking for your immediate help in stopping this legislation. After reading my letter I hope you'll take action at http://www.savebiogems.org/arctic/index.asp?src=aa0110a and then forward this letter to your friends and colleagues.

Last spring, the Bush administration and some members of Congress said we had to pass the president's oil-friendly energy bill because we were facing the most serious energy crisis since 1973. But here we are, a mere six months later, and the energy crisis has vanished. Due to a slowing economy and falling demand, the prices for gasoline, natural gas and home heating oil have plunged. Meanwhile, the much-feared "summer of blackouts" in California never happened, largely because consumers and businesses made dramatic cuts in energy use by launching the most successful statewide conservation campaign in history.

With no energy crisis to scare us with, the administration and pro-oil senators are now promoting their "Drill the Arctic" plan under the guise of national security and energy independence. Don't buy it. It would take ten years to bring Arctic oil to market, and when it arrives it would never equal more than two percent -- a mere drop in the bucket -- of all the oil we consume each year. Our nation simply doesn't have enough oil to drill our way to energy independence or even to affect world oil prices.

We possess a mere 3 percent of the world's oil reserves, but we consume fully 25 percent of the world's oil supply. We could drill the Arctic Refuge, Greater Yellowstone, and every other wildland in America and we'd still be importing oil, still be paying worldwide prices for domestic oil, and still be vulnerable to wild gyrations in price and supply. As The Atlanta Constitution put it: "Burning through our tiny oil supply faster will not make our country more secure." I'd go further: increasing our dependence on oil, whether that oil comes from the Persian Gulf or the Arctic Refuge, practically guarantees national *insecurity*. And we know that it will bring more habitat destruction, more oil spills, more air pollution, and more global warming. The public health implications will be devastating.

If our nation wants to declare energy independence, then we have no choice but to reduce our appetite for oil. There's no other way. We need to rely on smarter and cleaner ways to power our economy. We have the technology right now to increase fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon. If we phased in that standard by 2012 we'd save 15 times more oil than the Arctic Refuge is likely to produce over 50 years. We could also give tax rebates for existing hybrid gas-electric vehicles that get as much as 60 mpg. We could invest in public transit. We could launch an "Apollo Project" to bring fuel cells and hydrogen fuel down to earth, allowing us to begin the mass production of vehicles that emit only water as a by-product. The list goes on and on.

In this climate of national trauma and war, it is up to us -- the people -- to ensure that reason prevails and our natural heritage survives intact. The preservation of irreplaceable wildlands like the Arctic Refuge and Greater Yellowstone is a core American value. I have never been more appreciative of the wisdom of that value than during these past few weeks. When we are filled with grief and unanswerable questions it is often nature that we turn to for refuge and comfort. In the sanctuary of a forest or the vastness of the desert or the silence of a grassland, we can touch a timeless force larger than ourselves and our all-too-human problems. This is where the healing begins. Those who would sell out this natural heritage -- this spiritual heritage -- would destroy a wellspring of American strength. What's worse, their rush to exploit the wildness that feeds our souls won't do a thing to solve our energy problems.

There are plenty of sensible and patriotic ways to guarantee our nation's energy security, but destroying the Arctic Refuge is not one of them. Please tell that to your senators. They urgently need to hear it because the pressure is on to move this pro-oil bill to a vote in the next few weeks. It will take you only a minute to send them an electronic message from NRDC's SaveBioGems website.

Go to http://www.savebiogems.org/arctic/index.asp?src=aa0110a

And please forward this message to your family and friends. Millions of Americans need to know about this cynical attempt to promote the interests of energy companies at the expense of everyone else.

Sincerely yours,
Robert Redford

----

White House sees support for bigger oil reserve

Tom Doggett,
30/10/2001
Reuters

WASHINGTON - There is broad support within the Bush administration to add more oil to the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve and give the U.S. economy a bigger cushion against a supply disruption, the chairman of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers said yesterday.

"This decision hasn't yet been made," the CEA's Glenn Hubbard said on C-SPAN cable network. "What we're trying to do is internally come to a best decision. But I think that there is a fair amount of support in many quarters for doing this."

The administration is considering a plan that would boost the reserve through either purchases by the government, or allowing energy firms to turn over a portion of the oil they drill on federal leases as royalty payments, or a combination of both, according to a U.S. government official.

Congress is pushing the administration to boost capacity of the reserve to 1 billion barrels and almost double the emergency stockpile's current volume of 545 million barrels. The reserve was set up in 1975 after the Arab oil embargo.

Imports account for close to 60 percent of American petroleum supplies, with U.S. oil production at a 50-year low, according to the Energy Department.

"It would be a nasty shock to the economy," should there be an oil supply disruption, said Hubbard. "Most markets aren't anticipating that at the moment ... but it's still something we're looking out for," he said.

U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said on Friday that the Bush administration's decision is "imminent" on whether to add more oil to the emergency stockpile.

"We're moving toward a decision, but there's clearly been a number of agencies (that) had to get their participation and their input in before that was finished," Abraham said.

White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said Monday that policy options on the reserve have yet to reach President George W. Bush's desk. "The secretary of energy is reviewing the question of whether to add to the SPR," she said.

Boosting the size of the stockpile would take out some of the extra oil supplies in the market, where petroleum demand has fallen dramatically after the Sept. 11 attacks and amid the slowing U.S. economy.

ADDING RESERVE OIL MAY SLOW PRICE DROP

Removing unneeded oil from the market and putting that in the reserve could curb the drop in crude prices, which may encourage OPEC to limit any oil production cuts.

OPEC is hoping a cut of about 1 million barrels per day would put the cartel's export prices back up to its target of $25 a barrel. The OPEC oil price last week was around $19.

It is unclear if the administration will announce its decision before OPEC meets Nov. 14 to review output policies.

Under one option being considered, oil royalty in-kind payments from energy firms could add about 100,000 barrels per day to the reserve, according to the U.S. government official.

For years, the oil industry has pushed the government to allow more royalty in-kind payments to boost the reserve.

However, some environmental groups and states oppose such a move, because the royalty revenue is used to help pay for educational and land conservation programs.

The Clinton administration had a royalty in-kind pilot program, and the idea was getting a fresh look from the Bush administration.

The White House energy task force, chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney, recommended back in May that the administration consider allowing energy companies to forgo making cash royalty payments on the oil drilled from federal leases in the Gulf of Mexico and instead turn over some of those barrels as royalty payments.

But using that process would take much longer to fill the reserve than buying the oil.

With oil prices low, Congress believes the White House has an opportunity to increase the reserve quickly and secure future U.S. oil supplies without a huge cost to taxpayers.

The House of Representatives passed a resolution earlier this month urging the administration to boost the reserve, and specifically buy oil from low-volume, so-called marginal well producers that each pump just a few barrels a day.

House lawmakers have said the administration could buy oil with some of the $40 billion emergency funds approved by Congress shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. If necessary, lawmakers said they could authorize another several billion dollars to buy the oil.

-------- environment

New Species Enters Debate on Arctic Oil
Polar Bear Agreement Cited by Drilling Foes

By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 30, 2001; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8697-2001Oct29.html

A federal environmental agency concluded in 1995 that oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge might violate an international agreement to protect polar bears, documents show.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, a biological agency in the Interior Department, warned in two internal reports that opening the refuge to development might put the United States out of compliance with the five-nation International Agreement for the Conservation of Polar Bears. But those reports never reached Congress, which is now debating the Alaska refuge's future.

Now America's global commitment to the polar bear, the world's largest land predator, could provide a new twist to the contentious dispute over oil in the Arctic. Environmental groups, who had been attacking Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton recently for giving Congress slanted and even erroneous data about caribou in the refuge, sought yesterday to link the polar bear accord to the Kyoto global-warming deal and other treaties opposed by President Bush.

"This is a classic Bush administration strategy of running roughshod over international agreements," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Norton spokesman Mark Pfeifle noted that nothing in the polar bear agreement specifically prohibits oil exploration. And he pledged that if the Senate approves drilling in the refuge, as the House did in August, the administration will work to minimize impacts on polar bears, caribou and any other wildlife.

"This bipartisan energy bill includes the most stringent environmental regulations ever required for domestic oil and gas production," Pfeifle said.

It is no secret that some polar bears forage, rest and enter dens to give birth in the Arctic refuge's coastal plain, the area where the administration hopes to drill. One of the 1995 Fish and Wildlife reports, titled "Habitat Conservation Strategy for Polar Bears in Alaska," noted that the Arctic refuge contains "the greatest concentration of denning polar bears in Alaska," with "the heaviest denning" in the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain.

Today, even Interior's Web site acknowledges that drilling could affect denning in the Arctic: "Because the highest densities of maternal land denning overlaps with potential oil and gas development in the [coastal plain], disturbance from exploration and development activities could cause den abandonment by pregnant females or females with newborn cubs."

But the long-running debate over oil in the Arctic -- pitting environmentalists who want the entire refuge to remain in a wilderness state against conservatives who want to promote economic growth and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil -- has largely ignored the international agreement to protect polar bears. Signed in 1973 by the United States, Canada, Norway, Denmark and the Soviet Union, it committed each nation to protect its key polar bear habitats, including denning areas.

In the "Habitat Conservation" report, which was given to The Washington Post by Suckling, a fierce drilling opponent, Fish and Wildlife noted that oil and gas development is banned on the refuge, and that "any change in the current status . . . may necessitate a legal evaluation on the U.S. compliance with the Polar Bear Agreement." It also said that any change "will require a thorough biological assessment of the proposal and an evaluation of whether it will result in greater than negligible impacts to polar bears."

Fish and Wildlife, an agency of biologists who tend to oppose drilling, also drafted a report to Congress analyzing U.S. compliance with the agreement. A separate 1996 report by the Marine Mammals Commission summarized one of its findings: "The Service believed that any change in the status of the [refuge] would necessitate reevaluation of U.S. compliance with the habitat mandates of the Agreement."

The report itself, however, was never made public, even though it was due five years ago. In a statement, acting Fish and Wildlife director Marshall Jones said it was not forwarded to Congress during the Clinton administration because it was "related to sensitive ongoing negotiations with Russia" about a separate bilateral polar bear treaty signed last year.

Suckling recently filed a public-records request seeking the report, but the Interior Department refused to release it. Suckling plans to file a lawsuit today.

"This is just one more delay tactic by an interest group that's focused on increasing its mailing list and its fundraising," Pfeifle complained.

To drilling proponents such as Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, the larger point is that there are now somewhere between 22,000 and 27,000 polar bears in the Arctic, and they seem to be doing just fine despite a fair amount of oil activity on the North Slope.

"The argument that drilling would actually imperil polar bear stocks is completely specious," said Murkowski spokesman Chuck Kleeschulte. "We think it's extremely unlikely, if not entirely impossible, that any polar bears would be harmed."

-------- human rights

U.S. Offers Lesson on How to Tell Cluster Bombs From Food Packs

By Deborah Zabarenko
Reuters
Tuesday, October 30, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8723-2001Oct29.html

U.S. radio broadcasts into Afghanistan now include a safety warning: Airdropped food parcels are square, unexploded cluster bombs are can-shaped, and both are yellow, so it is important to tell them apart.

"Attention people of Afghanistan!" the broadcasts in Persian and Pashto say. "As you may have heard, the Partnership of Nations is dropping yellow Humanitarian Daily Rations. The rations are square-shaped and are packaged in plastic. They are full of good nutritious, Halal food," prepared according to Islamic precepts.

"In areas far from where we are dropping food, we are dropping cluster bombs," the radio spots say, according to a transcript obtained yesterday.

"Although it is unlikely, it is possible that not every bomb will explode on impact. These bombs are a yellow color and are can-shaped. . . .

"Once again, we will not be using these bombs in areas near where we are dropping relief supplies. Please, please exercise caution when approaching unidentified yellow objects in areas that have been recently bombed."

Cluster bombs are meant to hit so-called soft targets, including people and vehicles. Cluster bombs can contain many bomblets that disperse as they drop, and it is these that might be mistaken for food packages. Bomblets that fail to explode on impact could well blow up if disturbed on the ground.

The ones mentioned in the radio spot are cylindrical, measuring about 2.5 inches by 6.5 inches, some with a yellow "tail" on top. Each Humanitarian Daily Ration (HDR) is approximately 7 inches by 13 inches.

The radio warning is a departure from other broadcasts in the area delivered in a U.S. operation named "Commando Solo."

Transcripts of these broadcasts released earlier by the Pentagon showed they were aimed at members of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, believed by Washington to be harboring Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda guerrillas.

"When you decide to surrender, approach United States forces with your hands in the air," an earlier radio message said. "Sling your weapons across your back, muzzle towards the ground. Remove your magazine and expel any rounds. Doing this is your only chance of survival."

As of yesterday, U.S. military planes had dropped some 960,000 HDR food packages on Afghanistan. The yellow-wrapped 2,000-calorie meatless bundles are a key propaganda component of President Bush's war against terrorism. His administration has stressed that the United States is not at war with the people of Afghanistan.

-------- police / prisoners

POST-CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA

Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001
From: The Progressive Review <news@prorev.com>

=== JEFF TAYLOR, REASON: It is now frighteningly clear that the anti-terrorism bill signed into law by President George Bush greatly expands police powers in ways the people who voted for it do not fully understand. The Justice Department is already rushing out guidelines to prosecutors on how to more fully deploy the FBI's "Carnivore" email-sniffing program or use the bill's new "sneak-and-peek" provisions to install a secret keyboard-logging device during a secret break-in at a target's home. Should those measures not prove efficient enough for the 21st century police state, the bureau has also floated plans to re-jigger the Net so that all mail traffic goes through a handful of easily sniffable servers. The practice of bullying service providers has already begun as ISPs are being told their assets could be seized as terrorist adjuncts unless they silence objectionable sites. So far Yahoo, Google, and other entities have complied with the government's data-wipe efforts.

MORE http://www.reason.com/re/current.html

=== NEIL A. LEWIS, NY TIMES: Justice Department officials said that the number of people who had been detained in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks had surpassed 1,000, and civil liberties advocates said the government's refusal to disclose the identities of those held and the charges against them raised the possibility [sic] of secret detentions . . . Mindy Tucker, a Justice Department spokeswoman, stressed that all of those arrested had had access to lawyers . . . A coalition of civil liberties groups said today that it would file a lawsuit against the government demanding that officials identify who has been arrested, what charges have been filed against them and where they are being held. "While certain aspects of the F.B.I. investigation into the terrorist attacks need to be secret, we do not live in a country where the government can keep secret who they arrest, where they are being held, or the charges against them," said Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies, one of several groups that called on the government today to give out more information. "The secret detention of more than 800 people over the past few weeks is frighteningly close to the practice of `disappearing' people in Latin America," she said in a statement. Gregory T. Nojeim, the legislative counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union, said today that he and a few others from his organization met on Friday with Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to ask for more information about those arrested. He said Mr. Mueller was largely unresponsive and provided no information. Ms. Tucker, the Justice Department spokeswoman, said those detained fell into three categories: a small number of material witnesses, about 180 people charged with immigration violations and, the largest group, those being held on federal, state or local criminal charges unrelated to the Sept. 11 attacks.

MORE http://nytimes.com/2001/10/30/national/30DETA.html

=== R.V. SCHEIDE, SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW: As I reached the checkpoint, I saw that the four guardsmen were deployed in exactly the same fashion as in Sacramento, behind the metal detectors. I removed the small digital camera from the right breast pocket of my leather jacket and took several photographs of the armed citizen-soldiers. I had just turned to head back to the gate when a loud voice boomed at me from the direction of the checkpoint.

"Hey you! What are you doing?"

A California National Guardsman, a big guy with a buzz-cut dressed head-to-toe in camouflage army fatigues, was moving rapidly toward me. I froze as he approached. He came so close it seemed impossible he wasn't touching me.

"Did you take my picture?" he asked angrily. "Did you take my picture?"

"I'm a journalist, working on a story about airport security," I told him.

"You can't take pictures here," he said.

"Says who?" I asked.

"Says me!" he barked.

He moved next to me, shoulder-to-shoulder, so he could view the camera's display screen. "You are going to show me the pictures you took, you are going to delete the pictures you took, and you are going to show me that they are deleted!" he breathed down my neck.

"This is a public space, I have every right to be here," I said. "There are no signs that say you can't take pictures here."

"Either you delete the photos, or I'm taking you to a room, and you can talk to my superiors. You can talk to the FBI."

IT GETS WORSE http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2001-10-25/cover.asp

-------- terrorism

Ashcroft issues new terror warning

October 30, 2001
By Jerry Seper and Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011030-619490.htm

Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday warned Americans of possible new terrorist strikes over the next few days, although he gave no information on the intended targets or how the attacks would be carried out.

"The administration has concluded, based on information developed, that there may be additional terrorist attacks within the United States and against U.S. interests over the next week," Mr. Ashcroft said at a late-afternoon press conference to announce that 18,000 police agencies had once again been placed on the "highest alert."

"The administration views this information as credible, but unfortunately it does not contain specific information as to the type of attack or specific targets," he said, adding that the warning "should be taken seriously." One official later said the warning was based on intelligence about Osama bin laden's al Qaeda network.

In another anti-terrorism move yesterday, President Bush announced the United States will crack down on student visas going to foreigners and will create a new task force, led by Mr. Ashcroft, to track international terrorists.

Presiding for the first time over a White House meeting of the Homeland Security Council, Mr. Bush said the "Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force" will focus on locating, detaining, prosecuting and deporting terrorists.

The president also issued a directive to institute tighter controls on student visas after reports that nine of the 19 hijackers who crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon legally entered the United States on visas - many of them to study here.

"We plan on making sure that if a person has applied for a student visa, they actually go to college or a university. And therefore we're going to start asking a lot of questions that heretofore have not been asked. We're going to tighten up the visa policy," Mr. Bush said. "Sometimes people come here with no intention to fulfill their purpose. And when we find those, they will be escorted out of the United States."

The president dodged a reporter's question about why the United States did not already monitor foreigners allowed into the country on student visas.

"Never did we realize then that people would take advantage of our generosity to the extent they have. Our job now is to find the evil ones and to bring them to justice," he said.

Yesterday's announcement marks a change of focus for the Bush administration.

Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush had been pushing to ease immigration rules to give "guest-worker" status to illegal Mexicans - as many as 3 million in the United States.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who joined the attorney general for the announcement of the alert, said the warning was based on what he called "new information" about possible attacks.

He also acknowledged that the information was "not specific as to intended target or intended method."

But one senior U.S. official later said the warning was based in part on intelligence that al Qaeda may be agitating to strike again in the aftermath of the U.S.-led bombings on Afghanistan.

"There certainly is intelligence that causes you to be concerned, and possibly that al Qaeda may be behind it," the official told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Both Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller said the attacks could come in the next week. Federal law-enforcement authorities have been privately concerned about an increase in anthrax letters nationwide and also about the possible use of car and truck bombs, although no specific threats have been identified.

It was the second time this month the FBI has made public its notice to law enforcement agencies to be on the highest state of alert in the wake of information about pending terrorist strikes.

A similar warning was issued Oct. 11, which said the FBI had "certain information" that additional attacks could occur within days. That was the same week a rash of anthrax-laced letters began to appear in Florida and later in New York and Washington, although the FBI has not determined if the warning and the anthrax letters were related.

Mr. Ashcroft, who canceled plans to attend a conference of police chiefs today in Toronto, told reporters the new warning was also made public because Americans are smart enough to "make good judgments" about what to do with the information.

He said citizens should be patient if they encounter additional security measures by state and local authorities, and he urged Americans "in the course of their normal activities to remain alert and to report unusual circumstances and inappropriate behavior to the appropriate authorities."

Mr. Ashcroft also said Tom Ridge, director of homeland security, has called governors across the country to discuss the heightened state of security and to tell them to "take appropriate precautions based upon security assessments" in their home states.

Mr. Mueller said the alert to law-enforcement agencies asking them to "remain extremely vigilant" gives the FBI additional manpower that could prevent another terrorist attack.

He was not sure that the Oct. 11 alert had prevented any strikes against U.S. targets, but he said "it may well have helped."

In announcing the crackdown on student visas, Mr. Bush stopped short of endorsing some congressional calls for a six-month moratorium on new foreign student visas until a system for tracking them can be implemented.

"We welcome legal immigrants," Mr. Bush said. "We welcome the process that encourages people to come to our country to visit, to study or to work."

Set to be up and running by Thursday, the task force will not only target aliens who may already be in America planning terrorist attacks, but also deal with immigration, according to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

"Obviously, on September 11 a group of alien terrorists got into our nation and attacked the Pentagon and World Trade Center. So obviously there's a need for tightening up," Mr. Fleischer said. "The president believes that the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force can do its best to prevent any future episodes."

Mr. Bush himself is putting on a brave face. Yesterday, he visited the State Department, where trace amounts of anthrax have been discovered among letters in its mailroom.

"Secret Service knew about that prior to the president going over there," Mr. Fleischer said. "It did not pose any problem for the president or his traveling party."

Meanwhile, the White House announced that the president will attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Nov. 10 and 11, where he will meet with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the anti-terrorism effort.

After their meeting, Mr. Bush will have dinner with Mr. Musharraf.

Said the White House: "Pakistan has strongly supported the United States in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. This meeting is an important step in President Bush's efforts to sustain a strong international coalition in the war against terrorism."

The annual gathering of world leaders, originally scheduled for Sept. 24 to Oct. 5, was postponed because of security difficulties in the wake of the terrorist attacks.

Mr. Bush will attend the General Assembly's debate, deliver a speech, attend a lunch hosted by Secretary-General Kofi Annan and meet separately with several world leaders.

--------

Cookbook for mass murder

December 30, 2001
The Sun-Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0112/30/world/world7.html

Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network has been investigating the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and tested chemical weapons on animals, according to a British newspaper.

Citing a range of documents uncovered in abandoned Al Qaeda homes in Kabul last month, The Times said that the network was looking into how to produce botulin poison in batches strong enough to kill 2,000 people.

Hundreds of pages, written in a mixture of Arabic, Urdu, Persian, English, Mandarin and Russian, were sent to British-based professional translators and to experts in weapons of mass destruction.

They prove, according to The Times, that Al Qaeda cells were examining materials for a low-grade nuclear device, had a high level of understanding of bomb-related electronic circuitry and were training activists to assassinate Middle East leaders deemed too pro-Western.

One document described how chemical weapons were tested on rabbits, once by cyanide gas and then by injecting a form of sodium. In both cases death followed in seconds.

Another document amounted to a recipe book for chemical and biological weapons such as botulism, ricin and cyanide.


-------- activists

Last chance to sign on!
Mandate for Securing America's Electricity Supply (with letter)

Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001
From: "Noel Petrie" <NPETRIE@citizen.org>

The release date for this group letter has been pushed back until Thursday. That means you have a few extra last minutes to sign your group on! Already more than 125 groups have endorsed this letter. To add your group added, please send an e-mail to Scott Denman sdenman@erols.com at the Safe Energy Communication Council including the name of your group, contact person and title/position, and the city and state where the group is based BY NOON ON WEDNESDAY.

U.S. organizations only, please.
Thanks.
Lisa Gue Public Citizen

Mandate for Securing America's Electricity Supply
Overview

As national, regional and local environmental and public interest organizations, we wish to express our profound sympathy for those affected by the terrible events of the past month. Now is the time for our country to put aside narrow and divisive interests and focus on protecting the safety of all who live in the United States.

Specifically, we recognize that nuclear power reactors pose an unacceptable threat to the security of the United States. Commercial reactors are extremely vulnerable to attack from both foreign and domestic terrorists. The sobering reality is that security of nuclear power facilities can be neither completely guaranteed nor perfectly realized.

Current security at U.S. nuclear reactors is unacceptable. Significant weaknesses in security were found at nearly one-half (47%) of U.S. commercial reactors tested in recent years. "'Significant' here means that a real attack would have put the nuclear reactor in jeopardy with the potential for core damage and a radiological release, i.e., an American Chernobyl," according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) security expert. Structurally, no commercial nuclear reactor is designed to withstand the impact that destroyed the World Trade Center buildings, according to the NRC and the International Atomic Energy Commission. An attack on these facilities by truck bomb or aerial assault, or any number of other scenarios could spread lethal radiation, rendering uninhabitable an area the size of Pennsylvania, according to an analysis by the Atomic Energy Commission (now the NRC) in 1964.

For these reasons, we call for the following actions to be taken by the appropriate authorities:

#1. All NRC licensees must demonstrate that their nuclear facilities are protected against radiological sabotage by meeting a significantly more comprehensive Design Basis Threat (DBT). This includes reactor operators currently holding an operating license and applicants for license extension or new construction.

A revised Design Basis Threat must both encompass currently analyzed threats from ground-based assault, and be broadened to include truck-bombs and aerial and water-borne attacks. Before receiving an operating license, a licensee must be able to demonstrate that it can guard against the revised Design Basis Threat so as to protect against core damage, a breach of reactor containment and/or damage to irradiated nuclear fuel. By definition, reactor designs that do not feature a reactor containment structure, such as the proposed Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR), must not be considered suitable for meeting any plausible Design Basis Threat. The upgraded DBT must be met through both enhanced physical security features and increased security force capabilities.

Recognizing that nuclear reactors will continue to be vulnerable targets for some time after they have permanently ceased operation (until the core has cooled and the radioactive waste has decayed) the nuclear waste that is stored must be protected from intentional air and other modes of attack. All permanent and temporary radioactive waste storage, disposal, treatment and transfer sites must meet the strengthened Design Basis Threat to protect against attacks that could have disastrous consequences.

#2. Congress must reject reauthorization of the Price Anderson Act, which limits the liability of the commercial nuclear industry. At a minimum, certain modifications must be made to the Price Anderson Act in light of the events of September 11 if Congress reauthorizes the Act. Any extension of indemnity to the operators of new or relicensed nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel cycle facilities should be made contingent upon the demonstrated ability of the licensee to protect against the revised Design Basis Threat outlined in point #1. In addition, the indemnification of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) contractors should exclude cases of contractor gross negligence or willful misconduct.

#3. Congress must indefinitely extend the moratorium on nuclear transport and expand it to cover all highly radioactive and radiotoxic waste and materials, including commercial shipments. On September 12 and again on October 7, Energy Secretary Abraham suspended DOE nuclear shipments, acknowledging that radiological shipments are potential terrorist targets. In the long term, government agencies should shift their focus from facilitation and encouragement of nuclear transport to minimizing the amount and frequency of radioactive shipments. U.S. delegates must advocate this position when participating in United Nations and other international fora that develop or recommend international transportation standards.

#4. Congress must indefinitely shelve current proposals for centralized storage of nuclear waste. Such storage would establish additional nuclear targets without meaningfully reducing the risk at operating nuclear power plants. In addition to the dangers of transporting radioactive materials, a centralized storage facility would itself be a difficult-to-secure target. Specifically, the proposals for nuclear waste storage facilities at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, and on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Utah, would irresponsibly create significant targets close to major population centers. Design proposals for both these facilities feature massive, exposed surface operations, which would establish potentially larger, highly vulnerable and more devastating targets for attack.

#5. Congress must mandate that utility-funded security operations be increased at existing nuclear reactors and maintained throughout plant life and the on-site storage of irradiated nuclear fuel. Current security at U.S. nuclear reactors is unacceptable. The NRC and the International Atomic Energy Agency have acknowledged that the containment buildings housing nuclear reactors are not designed to withstand an attack of the type and scale used against the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Since 1991, despite months of advanced warning and beefed up security forces, nearly half (47%) of U.S. nuclear power plants failed to repel small mock terrorist attacks conducted by the NRC. These exercises did not assess the full Design Basis Threat that NRC regulations require nuclear power plants to protect against. Moreover, these exercises failed to assess the ability of nuclear plants to defend against attacks by truck bomb, aerial, and water-borne assault, three likely scenarios that fall outside the current Design Basis Threat.

#6. Potassium iodide must be made easily accessible within a radius of 50 miles around all nuclear reactors. While it is not a panacea, the NRC already has approved this program in concept, but has been reluctant to initiate it lest the public grasp that nuclear reactors are fundamentally unsafe. An epidemic of preventable childhood thyroid cancer has ravaged children in the Chernobyl-affected regions of Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia simply because potassium iodide was not available in the aftermath of the reactor explosion and fire. The health of thousands of people is believed to have been saved in Poland, where potassium iodide was available following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

#7. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) must require the same or comparable security for general and commercial aviation and determine the practicality of instituting effective no-fly-zones over commercial nuclear power plants.

#8. All NRC licensees must provide a risk assessment of the survivability from terrorist attack on radiation containment and critical safety systems.

#9. The NRC must take significant federal enforcement action, including the suspension or revocation of operating licenses, when repeated licensee failure of upgraded NRC-led security performance evaluations occurs.

#10. All branches of government must ensure that the terrorist attacks do not result in the erosion of fundamental civil liberties. The hallmarks of our free society and our values are manifested and secured in the Bill of Rights. Therefore, it is essential that security programs and activities clearly differentiate between legitimate terrorist threats and the rights of the public to peacefully assemble, exercise free speech, organize and educate.

#11. The mixed oxide nuclear fuel (MOX) program must be eliminated immediately. Giving the green light to a proposed commercial plutonium fuel fabrication plant in South Carolina fosters the creation of a plutonium economy and increases the likelihood of a terrorist-created catastrophe. The manufacture of MOX fuel for use in commercial U.S. nuclear reactors, establishes not only more deadly terrorist targets at the plants themselves (due to the greater amount of plutonium in the MOX fuel than current reactor fuel), but also creates thousands of transports between the fabrication site and the reactors, vulnerable to sabotage or theft. Such a project puts the trigger component of nuclear weapons into the commercial sector where it cannot adequately be protected.

The NRC must refuse the licensing of the MOX plant and Duke Power must withdraw its reactors from the MOX program. Surplus weapons plutonium has no place as a commercial fuel and sends a dangerous message to the rest of the world that plutonium is a commodity, not a waste to be secured out of harm's way. The licensing of a plutonium fuel fabrication plant flies in the face of any government's avowal to protect its people from lethal attack or disaster.

#12. The U.S. must initiate an expedited phaseout of nuclear power, improve energy efficiency in all sectors of our economy and initiate a rapid transition to renewable electricity sources. Linked through the extensive and fragile electrical grid system, we recognize that nuclear power plants are one of the most vulnerable components of our electric power infrastructure and present the largest risk of catastrophic damage. As such, nuclear power poses an unacceptable risk to our society and environment.

The phaseout of nuclear power must take place within the context of a transition to a least-cost, environmentally sustainable national energy system, based on full exploitation of decentralized energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, available through existing technology. A distributed, sustainable energy system will provide numerous economic, public health and environmental benefits beyond reducing the terrorist threat to our nation's infrastructure. Such a transition will spur innovation and channel resources into more labor-intensive sectors of the economy, providing the nation with an engine for continued economic growth and job creation.

In conclusion, we believe that this is the direction we must take: We will either shift from our use of nuclear power to a new era of sustainable electricity production for our country, or we will remain vulnerable to our reactors and, very possibly, pay an unthinkable price. We can and must do better for our families, our country, our freedom and the planet.

Sincerely,

----

Protesters urge World Bank to halt oil funding

30/10/2001

BRUSSELS - Environmental group Friends of the Earth held a protest in Brussels yesterday against World Bank funding of oil, gas and mining projects in developing nations.

About 20 protesters, dressed in blue overalls and pretending to have a permit to start a gold mine in the city centre, briefly blocked an area outside a hotel where World Bank officials were meeting.

"World Bank clean up! Get out of oil, mining and gas," a banner said. No one was detained in the peaceful protest.

The group says World Bank projects including a copper mine in Peru, oil drilling in Chad and a pipeline across Cameroon will cause too much pollution and disrupt local societies.

"These projects will not help the World Bank's goal of eliminating poverty," Friends of the Earth repesentative Johan Frijns told a news conference. He said the World Bank should direct more of its lending to renewable energy like solar or wind power.

The World Bank meeting, including groups ranging from mining companies to environmentalists, was a first step in a review of its projects in oil, gas and mining. The review is due to come up with recommendations in late 2002.

--------

Dissenters Find Colleges Less Tolerant of Discord Following Attacks

By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 30, 2001; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8688-2001Oct29.html

Hijacked airliners had already plowed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon when University of New Mexico Professor Richard A. Berthold offered his freshman history class what he now calls an unfortunate attempt at humor.

"Anyone who would blow up the Pentagon would have my vote," Berthold, 55, told his class. Three hours later, with the World Trade Center reduced to rubble and firefighters desperately battling the Pentagon blaze, Berthold repeated his line to another class.

Rather than laughs, his comments triggered an overwhelmingly angry reaction that continues to reverberate despite his repeated apologies. Thousands of students, alumni and others -- some who knew people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks -- complained to university administrators. Students rallied for Berthold's removal. Several legislators and business leaders called for his job. Berthold also received death threats, causing him to stay off campus for a week.

The university, meanwhile, has launched an investigation likely to end in disciplinary action against the professor. "There are a lot of things you can't say with impunity, even on a college campus," said Provost Brian Foster.

Berthold is among a growing number of professors and other college staff members facing censure for making controversial comments or taking visibly symbolic positions in the weeks following the terrorist attacks. Supporters and opponents of U.S. policy have faced reprimands in the sensitive atmosphere that has prevailed since the attacks.

University officials say the reprimands are warranted, given the mood of the country and the special responsibility borne by professors. But free-speech advocates say the public rebukes are casting a chill over the sometimes raucous debate that has historically typified the nation's campuses.

"With the nation's attention focused on one topic as it is now, we can see that universities are no friends of free speech," said Thor L. Halvorssen, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which is dedicated to protecting free speech on college campuses. "Our campuses are being taken over by the tyranny of the touchy-feely."

At the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., a department head told a secretary to take down a flag she had hung in her office in honor of a friend who died on one of the hijacked airliners. The department head thought the display was inappropriate. Only after the matter made it into a local newspaper, triggering an angry public reaction, was the secretary allowed to fly another flag on her desk.

City University of New York faculty members who participated in a forum earlier this month where some speakers blamed U.S. foreign policy for the attacks were denounced by CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein for making "lame excuses" for the terrorists.

Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, was publicly upbraided by university President Larry R. Faulkner for publishing an op-ed piece that said the Sept. 11 attacks were no more despicable than "the massive acts of terrorism" committed by the United States in Iraq and elsewhere. Faulkner, while acknowledging Jensen's right to free speech, retorted in a letter that the outspoken professor has become a "fountain of undiluted foolishness on issues of public policy."

Jensen, a self-described activist who has tenure at the university, said the public rebuke had little effect on him. "But the question is how do students and junior faculty respond to such a public humiliation?" he said.

"If the climate of worry about the terrorist attacks means there can be no controversy on campus, it is a very unhealthy thing," said Ruth Flower, director of public policy for the American Association of University Professors. "There are some things here that harken back to McCarthyism. But this is different, because it is not the government telling the public what it can and cannot say. This is more a matter of public sentiment dictating behavior."

The Sept. 11 attacks and the ongoing war on terrorism have galvanized American public opinion as have few events in recent history. Polls have found overwhelming public support for the airstrikes in Afghanistan, and some free-speech advocates say the mood is squelching dissent.

Several writers of opinion pieces critical of President Bush's leadership or U.S. foreign policy have been roundly criticized or have even lost their jobs. Some advertisers and local television stations dropped ABC's "Politically Incorrect" after host Bill Maher referred to some past U.S. military actions as "cowardly."

College professors now worry that the new conformity is having a corrosive impact on campuses, eroding their historical place as hotbeds of debate and dissent. During the Vietnam War, college campuses were at the heart of the anti-war movement. But many speech advocates say campuses are now far less tolerant of controversy.

"Obviously, the current situation has people really on edge," said Harry A. Silverglate, author of "The Shadow University," a book that examines incursions on campus free speech. "But it seems now the place where you see the most obvious censorship is on college campuses -- the precise place where you would expect to see the least."

In an effort to promote campus diversity, two-thirds of the nation's colleges and universities have adopted speech codes, which generally prohibit language that offends people along racial, ethnic or gender lines. But the codes have proven difficult to enforce because of their inherent conflict with the First Amendment.

"What is the role of the university, to engage in therapy?" Halvorssen said. "Are they therapeutic institutions, or places where students get together, share ideas and, yes, insult each other and ultimately find their way?"

Still, many administrators and students say some speech limits are necessary to ensure that campuses remain welcoming and nurturing places to all students. Moreover, officials said, professors have a responsibility to stimulate debate as well as to be responsible mentors.

When Berthold made his comments to his morning classes at the University at New Mexico, "students were still wondering if Albuquerque would be a target," said Foster, the university provost. "There was an enormous amount of fear and puzzlement about this."

In a letter outlining its investigation, the university called Berthold's comment not a question of free speech but an ethical violation. The school said the professor failed to adhere to his role as an "intellectual" guide.

A week after the terrorist attacks, Ken Hearlson began his freshman American government class at Costa Mesa, Calif.'s Orange Coast College by wondering aloud how the Muslim world could condemn the terrorist attacks in New York but not the suicide bombings that regularly take place in Israel.

Hearlson said his intention was to spark a lively discussion among the 200 students in his class. But the discussion soon digressed into a heated debate between the professor and four Muslim students, who refused to equate Palestinian actions with terrorism.

The next day, the students complained to school administrators that Hearlson had singled them out as "terrorists" and "Nazis" -- which Hearlson denies.

"He is very biased against Muslim students and very open about it," said Salha Abdelmuti, a California native whose parents are of Middle Eastern descent. "The week after, everybody in the class had us in a circle after class and was yelling at us. Some of them were saying, 'Go back to your country.' I was getting pretty emotional. I just started crying."

After the students complained, Hearlson got a phone call from the university president, who told the professor that he would be put on leave with pay while the school investigates the incident.

"No due process. Nothing," said Hearlson, 57, who has taught at the school for 18 years. "Nobody has ever been hurt at that school by a debate, best I can tell. Students should hear things in a classroom that they may never hear again. If you disagree, you can stand up and do so as long as you don't commit violence."

But Orange Coast officials disagree. They said the terrorist attacks have created a special atmosphere that must be abided, even in the classroom.

"This is not an academic freedom issue. It is an issue of classroom comportment and how he treats students," said Jim Carnett, a college spokesman. "It is beyond the bounds of academic freedom. And with what's been occurring beyond the boundaries of our campus, you can't ignore that."

--------

Poll: Americans Starting to Doubt War

October 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Poll.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans are starting to have some doubts about the war on terror, says a new poll that suggests those with a great deal of confidence the government can protect citizens from attack dropping by half in the last month.

The CBS-New York Times poll indicated that 18 percent now have a ``great deal of confidence'' the government can protect its citizens, compared with 35 percent in late September. The poll comes as government officials warned Monday that Americans should be on alert for another terrorist attack that could come this week. No specifics were given.

The poll showed that people were about evenly split on whether the government is telling people what they need to know about anthrax -- an area where the government has received sharp criticism.

It also suggested that a majority, 53 percent, now think another terrorist attack is likely -- up from one-third a month ago. And a shrinking number think the war is going very well, down slightly to one-fourth of Americans.

The public still overwhelmingly approves of the job being done by President Bush -- 87 percent -- and four of five approve of his handling of the war on terrorism.

But undercurrents in the survey suggest for the first time a growing nervousness and unease about the anti-terror campaign. Only one-fourth now think the military will kill or capture Osama bin Laden, compared with almost four in 10 three weeks ago. Three in 10 think the international alliance will hold, compared with nearly half earlier this month.

But the poll suggests that the general outlook on the anti-terror campaign is still upbeat, with just over four in five saying the anti-terror campaign is going at least fairly well.

Americans' concerns about terrorism in their own communities has dropped in the last month -- from four in 10 then to a fourth now who worry about attacks where they live.

And support for the military attacks in Afghanistan remains very high -- with almost nine in 10 supporting them. A majority expected the war to last more than a year and say it will be worth it even if several thousand U.S. troops are lost.

The poll of 1,024 adults was taken Thursday through Sunday and has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Some other findings:

--The public's nervousness has dropped since the days after the terrorist attacks. One in five say they feel nervous now, compared with one-third after the attacks.

--A third of those polled said they are spending more time with family and friends since the attacks.

--More than half, 52 percent, favor having airport security staff hired and supervised by the federal government, while four in 10 say they should only be federally supervised. That issue is being debated by Congress.

--The ``rally effect'' that pushed up most measures of public opinion about the nation's direction appears to be receding a bit. Six in 10 now say the country is headed in the right direction, compared with seven in 10 soon after the attacks.

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THE POLL
Survey Shows Doubts Stirring on Terror War

October 30, 2001
By RICHARD L. BERKE and JANET ELDER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/30/national/30POLL.html?pagewanted=all

Americans for the first time are raising doubts about whether the nation can accomplish its objectives in fighting terrorism at home and abroad, including capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, saving the international alliance from unraveling and protecting people from future attacks, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll shows.

Despite threats about anthrax unfolding virtually every day and little discernible progress in the air campaign against the Taliban, Americans are still offering President Bush their overwhelming approval.

Mr. Bush's job approval rating, which soared after Sept. 11, stands firm at 87 percent. And Congress has an approval rating of 67 percent, the highest since the Times/CBS News Poll began asking about it in the 1970's.

Even so, after six weeks in which people were not inclined to critique aspects of the government's response, there are stirrings of discontent that extend both to how the nation is responding to domestic terrorism and to how it is handling the war.

The public is questioning whether the government is doing enough to forestall what it increasingly expects to be another terrorist attack in this country within months. Fifty-three percent say another attack is very likely, up from 46 percent two weeks ago and 36 percent two weeks before that. Most people say they expect the attack to be in the form of bioterrorism. These responses came before Attorney General John Ashcroft announced yesterday that new terrorist attacks were expected as soon as this week.

Yet more than half the public says the government in Washington has not done enough to prepare for a biological attack, and nor have state and local governments.

Nearly half of Americans say the government is withholding information they need to know about the recent anthrax cases. More than a quarter say public health officials are wrong in advising people not to ask their own doctors for Cipro, an antibiotic used in treating anthrax.

While security has been tightened at airports, leading to the now-common sight of long lines, Americans are still jumpy about flying. They want the federal government to take complete control of hiring and supervising all airport security personnel.

The nationwide telephone poll of 1,024 adults was conducted Thursday through Sunday. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Tom Cale, a poll respondent who sells cars in Fairmont, W.Va., is among those who support the nation's leaders but have nagging concerns.

"It's not that we don't have competent people in positions of authority," Mr. Cale, 50, said in a follow-up interview. "They just haven't written the book yet about the potential dangers that are out there."

Bracing for more terror, Mr. Cale said: "The next attack would be what you least suspect. It's going to be something that few people would see that would affect the most people, like sabotaging gas supply lines, or taking out two or three main power stations."

Joan Kautz, 49, a clerk for a rental car agency in Linden, N.J., said: "With the added security at the airport, bioterrorism is the only way to get in here. That's why they've used the mail, and even now the government is not protecting our postal workers."

In one of the most striking shifts, only 18 percent of Americans said they had a great deal of confidence that the government could protect them from terrorism; a month ago, 35 percent had such confidence. A majority, 58 percent, said they had a fair amount of confidence. The rest had little or no confidence.

Similarly, people feel that the government can protect them from anthrax and smallpox, but the degree of confidence is another matter. Only 15 percent have a great deal of confidence that the government can protect them from anthrax; 19 percent say the same about smallpox.

Beyond the efforts at home, Americans are not entirely satisfied with the military action in Afghanistan and seem less hopeful than they were before the bombing began. Although most respondents said the war was going well for the United States, the largest proportion - 58 percent - said it was going only somewhat well. Twenty-five percent said it was going very well, and 13 percent said the war was going badly.

Only 28 percent are very confident that the United States will capture or kill Mr. bin Laden, who is believed to be the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks. In a CBS News poll two weeks earlier, 38 percent said they were very confident.

"Osama bin Laden is like a ghost," said Eleanor Roth, 67, a retired receptionist from Dayton, Ohio. "I would rather him be captured than killed to avoid him being labeled a martyr. Maybe they will find him, but then again, many of these terrorists have been on the loose for years. And with all of our technology, it doesn't seem to make a difference."

James Oleszcsuk, 57, a longshoreman from Baltimore, was even less optimistic.

"It won't be easy getting bin Laden," Mr. Oleszcsuk said. "First it was weeks, then months, now years to get this guy. It makes me wonder what kind of intelligence reports the government is getting. You hear so many things, you don't know what to believe. The political implications of capturing him would be problematic with many of the Middle Eastern countries. I don't think it's going to happen."

In another sign of mounting uneasiness about the war, only 29 percent said they were very confident in the ability of the United States government to maintain the international alliance of countries that support the military campaign; two weeks ago, 46 percent were very confident.

The public is prepared for a long and bloody conflict in Afghanistan; a majority of Americans say they are willing to accept the deaths of several thousand American troops there. Eight out of 10 respondents said they thought the conflict would extend beyond Afghanistan into neighboring countries and other parts of the world.

"I wouldn't be surprised if this war took three to five years," said Judy Adams, 48, a homemaker from Jonesville, La. "We have fought for our country for over 200 years to keep our land and our families safe. If we don't stand behind our president and pull together as a nation, we're not going to see our land stand."

Americans continue to view Israel favorably while they back the establishment of a Palestinian homeland in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. About half the public views Saudi Arabia as a friend of the United States but not an ally.

There were signs of anxiety in the poll, perhaps because it was conducted at a time when developments have made people feel more vulnerable. In recent days, the Bush administration and leaders on Capitol Hill appeared to lack a coordinated message in responding to the anthrax threat.

Most Americans say they have been closely following the news about anthrax sent through the mail, and many have begun handling their own mail more cautiously.

The poll turned up mixed messages about the extent to which people are panicky. While they are concerned about whether the government can protect them, Americans are calm at home. Only a quarter say they are worried about terrorism in their own communities. While 20 percent of Americans say they are more on edge now than they were before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, few say they are having trouble sleeping or are experiencing a loss of income.

For all their misgivings about the government's capacity to protect them, the public remains steadfast behind its leaders. Most people say that Mr. Bush has clearly explained the goals of both the military action in Afghanistan and the war against terrorism in general.

Nearly 8 in 10 respondents approve of the way Mr. Bush is handling the war on terrorism; more than 6 in 10 approve his handling of the economy. Six in 10 Americans now say the country is moving in the right direction. Last June, well before the attacks, only 4 in 10 said the same thing.

The public's support for its leaders and government extends far beyond the White House. Over almost the last three decades, the job approval rating for Congress has never approached 67 percent, where it stands today.

The Watergate scandals first eroded the public's trust in government. For more than 27 years, people said they were more distrustful of government than trusting.

But in the aftermath of Sept. 11, people hold a different view. Now, more than half of Americans said they trusted the government to do what was right just about always or most of the time. In 1998, when the Times/CBS News Poll last asked the question, only 26 percent said they trusted the government.

Still, the poll found that the public was not prepared for a more activist government. Despite the high profile of many government agencies since Sept. 11, people still favored a smaller government with fewer services over a bigger government with more services, 52 percent to 43 percent.

Julie Hartfield, 22, a nursing assistant in Rochester, N.Y., said she did not know what to expect now.

"I feel like America was a little too sure of itself, thinking that no one could touch us," Ms. Hartfield said. "After the first anthrax outbreak, they should have made sure security was tight. Now there are outbreaks all over the place, and you wonder, `What's next?' "

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Which products make life more sustainable?

Wednesday, October 31, 2001
By Jerry Kay
http://enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/10/10312001/s_45416.asp

We ran this perspective last week and got many wonderful suggestions. But we'd like to hear more. Although as one savvy reader pointed out, environmentally speaking, it's best to try to avoid products as much as possible, sometimes we do have to break down and buy things. In our capitalist society, our purchase choices speak volumes. Therefore, it's important that we seek out the most sustainable products available.

Last weekend we attended the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, Calif. One thing the conference planners underscored is a belief that the solutions to our problems exist now. I agree with this belief.

While fundamental changes in lifestyle, economics, and politics are worthy of discussion and pursuit, the energy issues in California demonstrate that major changes can take place without major inconveniences. Estimates suggest that people in California have decreased their energy consumption by about 10 percent. They have done so without any draconian measures.

Often, certain products help us live more sustainably in regards to energy, transportation, health, education, home making, and construction. Please let us know which products you've found help you live more lightly upon the Earth. If you haven't yet shared your views on this topic or if you've thought of something else to share, please write us at earth@enn.com.

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Please consider signing this

October 30, 2001
From: Arjun Makhijani and Lisa Ledwidge
IEER <ieer@ieer.org>

Dear friends,

Below please find a "Public Declaration on Peace and Security" addressed to U.S. President Bush. Please add your personal and/or organizational endorsement to this call, urging him to comply with existing international agreements aimed at securing world peace. Also please circulate this call to others.

To sign on, send an email or reply to nsorensen@iatp.org on or before November 6 stating your name, organization if relevant, and country. We will send the signed Declaration to President Bush before his meeting with Russian President Putin on November 12. We also hope to influence the next Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention negotiations starting November 19.

The Declaration was launched on Friday, October 26, 2001 at a symposium on "War and Weapons" in Washington D.C. In this symposium, activists and experts on biological, nuclear and chemical weapons, land mines, small arms, military pollution, and the U.S.-sponsored Plan Colombia discussed the threats to humanity posed by weapons of mass destruction.

Thank you very much,

Chela Vazquez cvazquez@iatp.org (612) 870-3441

===

Public Declaration on Peace and Security
To the President of the United States

Mr. President,

Prior to September 11, the U.S. government had embarked on a unilateral course that frequently disregarded several peace and security treaties. In light of the horrific and tragic events in New York City, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania, the undersigned people and non-governmental organizations call upon the United States government to reverse actions that jeopardize international agreements to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) bans the development, production and stockpiling of biological and toxic weapons. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) places limits on the testing and deployment of defensive systems in order to prevent the stockpiling of nuclear weapons. Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) aims at the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) bans all nuclear weapon test explosions and all other nuclear explosions. We believe that U.S. adherence to these treaties would promote greater security and peace worldwide.

However, the United States government is undermining all four treaties by rejecting a Verification Protocol on the BTWC that was to be finalized in November in Geneva and by developing a large bioweapons research system that may be in violation of the BTWC; by developing missile defenses and seeking to withdraw from the ABM Treaty; by deploying modified bunker-busting nuclear weapons, conducting research aimed at making nuclear weapons more useable, and maintaining more than 2,000 nuclear warheads on high alert despite recently reaffirming a commitment to the NPT; and by refusing to ratify the CTBT. The U.S. also is researching space-based weapons and is resisting international efforts to ban the placement of weapons in outer space. These actions by the United States threaten peace and security globally by provoking the development of hostile weapons by other countries in an escalating arms race.

Therefore, we urge that:

1) The United States rely on multilateral negotiations and the existing body of international law and treaties to resolve international conflicts.

2) The United States, at the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention Review Conference beginning on November 19th, make an unqualified commitment to uphold Article I, which prohibits all development, acquisition, and stockpiling of biological agents for hostile purposes, and unequivocally endorse prompt completion of the draft BTWC Verification Protocol.

3) The United States abide by the terms of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

4) The United States meet its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, in particular Article VI that calls for complete nuclear disarmament, as unanimously confirmed by the International Court of Justice.

5) The United States maintain its nuclear testing moratorium and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

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5,000 marchers in S.F. protest military actions

BY MARILEE ENGE
San Jose Mercury News
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001
From: "radtimes" <resist@best.com>

Anti-war activists condemn U.S. policy in the Middle East and denounce President Bush's campaign against Afghanistan in retaliation for the Sept. 11 attacks.

As thousands of anti-war demonstrators marched past him on San Francisco's Market Street on Saturday, Larry DeSpain held his own private protest on the sidewalk.

``One, two, three, four. We don't want your racist war,'' the marchers chanted. They held signs that read, ``No racist scapegoating'' and ``Peace is patriotic.''

Standing near the cable car turnaround at Powell Street, DeSpain held a large American flag and yelled back at the marchers as they passed him.

``Shame on you,'' he shouted. ``Down with the Taliban regime.''

Two San Francisco police officers posted themselves in front of DeSpain to avert any confrontations.

So it went at one of the largest, and perhaps the most emotional, anti-war events to be held in the Bay Area since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. An estimated 5,000 people walked from the Ferry Building to the Civic Center, where speakers invoked government conspiracies and denounced U.S. military action in Afghanistan.

It was a classic San Francisco event, with aging hippies and college students, socialists, Christians and vegans, all calling for an end to the bombing. Turnout was smaller than the 20,000 that organizers had predicted, and few of the demonstrators were of Middle Eastern origin.

Many questioned President Bush's motives for attacking Afghanistan and said they wanted to see hard evidence of the involvement of Osama bin Laden and his network. They suggested the events of Sept. 11 were retribution for U.S. policies in Israel and Iraq.

``Why don't they tell us what proof they have?'' asked Malalai Arsalai, a 22-year-old student at De Anza College and member of the Muslim Student Association. ``If they're after one person, why would they kill thousands?''

Arsalai said her family fled war-torn Afghanistan when she was 4 months old. She calls herself a Muslim first and an American citizen second.

``I don't know exactly how to respond,'' to the terrorist attacks, she said. ``Maybe they should get the troops out of Saudi Arabia. Maybe they should stop supporting Israel. Maybe they should stop sanctions against Iraq.''

She passed out a flier that showed smoke billowing from the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11. ``Why?'' it asks. ``1,200,000 Dead Iraqis.''

But there were more-traditional calls for peace, including one by Father Louis Vitale, a Franciscan and pastor of St. Boniface Church in San Francisco.

``We've got to stop the hatred,'' he said. San Francisco's patron, St. Francis, helped change the Europe of his time when he refused to join the Crusades and fight against Islamic people, Vitale said. ``We're all meant to be brothers and sisters on this planet.''

The anti-war-protest protesters were less visible than those who demonstrated against a peace rally in Dolores Park on Sept. 30. Nevertheless, a handful waved flags and carried signs of support for the government.

Ira Spivack, who describes himself as a libertarian, argued that the peace rally was really a front for a leftist, socialist agenda. For a moment he listened to a Green Party member calling for a sensible energy policy and supporting a ballot measure that would create a municipal utility district in San Francisco.

``They are hijacking Sept. 11,'' he said, adding that a municipal utility district is not about what happened on Sept. 11. ``This is a Socialist rally masquerading as an anti-war rally.''

That was before the vegans joined the march. Down at Powell Street, a group opposed to eating animals and animal products was handing out leaflets. Sharie Lesniak wore orange plastic sneakers, a fuzzy frog backpack and a straw hat with a ``No Fur'' button. She said the group's views merge with the anti-war movement because violence against animals only begets violence against humans.

``Peace,'' she said, ``really starts on your plate.''


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