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NUCLEAR
Pakistan downplays CIA report on leaks of nuclear technology
Pakistan Downplays CIA Report on Leaks
Iran dug tunnel for military nuclear work - magazine
Credibility Can Only Be Lost Once
Iranian Minister Says Differences Remain
Iran, EU agree on uranium enrichment program freeze
Iran's Stealthy Nukes
Many types of isotopes
Palestinian security chief says infamous security unit to be dismantled
Our man in the US: Israel uses TV show to find its best spin doctor
Why Israel Really Fears Iranian Nukes
North Korea Reactor Plan Suspended Until 2005
CIA report cites N. Korean proliferation threat
IAEA finally drops S. Korea investigation
South Korea breathes sigh of relief over IAEA decision on nuclear tests
North Korea accuses US of waging psychological warfare
High time North Korea makes up its mind on nuclear talks: South Korea
Nuke Rep. Hobson's bill
Browns Ferry's Unit 3 back up
PSB recommends $85,000 fine for Vt. Yankee
MILITARY
U.S. military looks forward to hand over of bases
Afghanistan waits for tourists
Army sells off jets to public
Forecast Frosty for U.S.-Canadian Ties
Berne to fund Moscow chemical weapons destruction
I Am Become Death - The Destroyer Of The Worlds
U.S. Marines Mull Fallujah's Future
U.S. Sends in Secret Weapon: Saddam's Old Commandos
Seven Days of Hell
The Morality of Waging War on Iraq
U.S. to Skip Nairobi Conference on Land Mines
Bhutto's Husband Wants Fresh Election in Pakistan
Russia Criticized Over Dalai Lama Visa
Turmoil at CIA as Goss lays down the law
US commander warns Iran, others not to underestimate US military power
Navy project spurs questions
Congress threatens to cut aid in fight over criminal court
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Government whistleblowers reap hefty rewards
Afghanistan's Drugs
Colombia Drug Lords Join Paramilitaries to Seek Leniency
ACLU Says New Passports May Leak Personal Data
FAA Must Improve Oversight of Hazardous Materials, Report Says
POLITICS
EU reveals increase in aid fraud
Pentagon Panel: US Invasions Unite Extremists
Congress spending increase criticized
Bush Says World Is Watching Ukraine's Election Dispute
Ex-Soviet bloc states mull election
Opposition demands new Ukraine vote
OTHER
Flu Crisis Sparks Fresh Look at Vaccine Production
W.T.O. Authorizes Trade Sanctions Against the United States
ACTIVISTS
Habits hard to break for jailed nuns
Mary Kelly: Sentencing To Take Place Wednesday December 1st
Seven Activists Arrested in Sit-In At Former Homeless Shelter in SW DC
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan downplays CIA report on leaks of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya
The Associated Press
11/27/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-11-27-pakistan-nukes_x.htm
Abdul Qadeer Khan, who was considered a national hero for leading the development of Pakistan's nuclear deterrent against rival India, admitted in February to passing nuclear technology to other countries. He was pardoned by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who cited his service to the nation, but he is under virtual house arrest in Islamabad.
The CIA this week posted on its Web site an unclassified report to Congress, "Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions." It details reported efforts by Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria to obtain chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons technology.
"Iran's nuclear program received significant assistance in the past from the proliferation network headed by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan," the report said. "The A.Q. Khan network provided Iran with designs for Pakistan's older centrifuges as well as designs for more advanced and efficient models and components."
It said Libya had disclosed receiving similar assistance from Khan, head of Pakistan's nuclear program from the 1970s until 2001.
"Even in cases where states took action to stem such transfers, knowledgeable individuals or non-state purveyors of WMD- and missile-related materials and technology could act outside government constraints," the report said. "The exposure of the A.Q. Khan network and its role in supplying nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea illustrate one form of this threat."
The New York Times reported that the CIA disclosure indicates that bomb-making designs provided by Khan's network to Iran in the 1990s were more significant than Washington has previously disclosed.
It focused on the phrase "designs for more advanced and efficient models, and components," indicating that "components" refers to weapons components.
The Times pointed out that American officials have publicly referred only to the Khan network's role in supplying Iran with designs for older Pakistani centrifuges used to enrich uranium but that they also have suspected it provided a warhead design, too.
Citing a tape it obtained of a closed-door speech to a private group, the paper quoted former CIA director George J. Tenet as describing Khan as "at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden" because of his role in providing nuclear technology to other countries.
Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan criticized the Times report.
"The writer of the report has spun a strange web based on flimsy evidence, hearsay and snippets of conversations," Khan said Saturday. "The CIA report does not mention any 'designs for weapons or bomb-making components.' Weapons and bomb-making are the writer's own creative insertions.
"In the past year, Pakistan has conducted an inquiry to unearth an illicit network of international black-marketeers, dismantled it and shared the results of the inquiry transparently with the people of Pakistan," Khan said. "Pakistan has been cooperating with the IAEA and the international community to thwart international black-marketeers from proliferating sensitive nuclear technology."
-------- iran
Iran dug tunnel for military nuclear work - magazine
(Reuters)
Nov 27, 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=VN2XLWMSYC3KYCRBAEOCFFA?type=topNews&storyID=6933444
BERLIN - Iran is working on a secret nuclear programme for military purposes despite promising the European Union it would halt all activities related to uranium enrichment, the news magazine Der Spiegel said on Saturday.
The magazine said it had obtained documents from an unnamed intelligence agency showing that Iran had dug a secret tunnel near an Isfahan facility preparing raw uranium for enrichment, even though operations there had been stopped.
Iran, which has repeatedly denied trying to develop nuclear weapons, promised the European Union on Nov. 14 it would halt all activities related to uranium enrichment, a process that creates atomic fuel for power plants or weapons.
It then demanded an exemption for some 20 enrichment centrifuges for research purposes, a move Western diplomats argued could torpedo the whole deal. They said Iranian officials in Vienna dropped the demand on Friday, but were waiting for a final decision from Tehran.
Der Spiegel, in an advance release of a report due to appear on Monday, said the secret underground facility near Isfahan could soon be ready to produce large amounts of uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6). Centrifuges that spin at supersonic speed can produce enriched uranium from UF6.
The magazine said that according to the intelligence documents, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei personally issued a directive at the start of October to build the secret tunnel.
Diplomats say the Iranian attempt to exempt some centrifuges from the deal struck with the European Union was infuriating both the EU, which is offering Tehran a package of economic incentives in exchange for freezing enrichment activities, and Washington which is adamant Iran is trying to produce nuclear arms.
Oil-rich Iran says it wants nuclear power only to meet booming domestic demand for electricity.
--------
Credibility Can Only Be Lost Once
antiwar.com
by Charley Reese
November 27, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=4066
Credibility, like virginity, can only be lost once and never recovered. Hence, the problem the Bush administration has in dealing with Iran is that having been so wrong about Iraq, who can believe it now?
I recognize that a majority of Americans shrugged off going to war on false premises. The rest of the world is not so forgiving. The Bush administration's unprofessional, undiplomatic approach to the question of Iran's nuclear intentions sounds too much like the Iraqi dialogue. That dialogue consisted of American officials calling the Iraqis liars and the Iraqis denying they had weapons of mass destruction.
Now we're hearing the same childish dialogue directed at Iran. Iran insists it is not attempting to build nuclear weapons, and the United States replies with name-calling.
It's sad to say, but the Iranian government currently has more credibility than the Bush administration. All credibility was destroyed by the administration's militant insistence that it had "factual evidence" of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. "We know where they are," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said with his smug grin. Everybody from the president and the vice president to the national-security adviser to the secretary of state kept belligerently insisting that those weapons existed and scoffed at everyone who expressed any skepticism. And every one of them was 100 percent wrong.
So, I'm sorry, but merely saying that Iran intends to build nuclear weapons without a shred of proof just doesn't cut it. The Iranians might well be lying about their intentions, but the Bush administration has offered us no proof that they are. Two things favor the Iranian position. One is the Iranians' explanation for building nuclear plants. Their only export of real value is oil. They recognize that they have a limited supply of oil. So, rather using up their high-value export for domestic power, they decided to employ nuclear energy for their domestic use and thus stretch out their ability to export oil. That makes perfect sense.
Second, Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and Iran has repeatedly called for a nuclear-free Middle East. Guess who opposes that idea? The United States. Guess why? Israel is the only country in the Middle East that really does have nuclear weapons. Israel has also refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty and refuses to allow international inspections. And it is Israel that views Iran as a threat.
But in the perverted world of Washington, a Muslim country that has signed the non-proliferation treaty, which allows international inspections, and that has called for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East is the villain, while Israel, which refuses both the treaty and inspections and has actually built nuclear weapons, is the hero.
And you wonder why we have problems with the Muslim world.
Furthermore, the attempt by Israel to maintain a nuclear-weapons monopoly in the Middle East explains quite well why Iran has dispersed its nuclear facilities. The Iranians haven't forgotten that the Israelis bombed the nuclear reactor in Iraq, nor are they unaware that the Bush administration has agreed to sell Israel our biggest bunker-buster bombs.
In the meantime, Iran has agreed with Europeans to suspend its enrichment of uranium, an operation Iran has a legal right to perform.
If Israel attacks Iran, the Iranians, who have missiles capable of reaching Israel, will fire back. Then we will probably get into it, and if the Syrians have any sense, they will attack Israel, and, to use a quote from an old movie, "This situation is out of control."
"Out of control" is a phrase no rational person would ever want to apply to the Middle East. There are just too many possibilities, and all of them are bad.
Rather than repeat the bad handling of the Iraq situation, the Bush administration should be joining the Arabs and Iran in calling for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. But as John Wayne would say, "That'll be the day."
--------
Iranian Minister Says Differences Remain
Nov 27, 2004
Associated Press
By GEORGE JAHN
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=518&ncid=732&e=10&u=/ap/20041127/ap_on_re_eu/nuclear_agency
VIENNA, Austria - Iran's foreign minister dampened hopes Saturday of a quick end to a dispute over the scope of his country's freeze on nuclear technology, suggesting Tehran remained committed to exempting key equipment from such a suspension.
The squabble over Iran's interpretation of its deal with the European Union (news - web sites) to freeze all activities linked to uranium enrichment stalled an International Atomic Energy Agency board meeting, which was adjourned for the weekend.
That was meant to give time for Iran to consider approving a total freeze of the program, which can produce both low-grade nuclear fuel and weapons-grade material for the core of nuclear warheads, and for delegates to decide on further steps in policing Tehran's nuclear activities.
But in Tehran, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters that Iran still believed that it had a right to exempt about 20 centrifuges from the agreement, despite contrary views from the European Union.
Iran says it wants to run the centrifuges purely for research purposes, something Kharrazi insisted was not banned by a Nov. 7 agreement worked out with Germany, France and Britain on behalf of the European Union.
"The centrifuges will work under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision and will be for research purposes only," he told reporters.
The meeting was adjourned Friday to give time for a formal Iranian response, by letter to the IAEA, on whether Tehran accepts a full suspension that includes the 20 centrifuges.
As the board meeting awaited a formal Iranian response, France, Germany and Britain dangled both a carrot and a stick.
Moving to meet Iranian demands, a confidential draft resolution written by the European three, made available to The Associated Press on Saturday, weakened language on how any freeze would be monitored by the agency.
But an EU official told the AP that Tehran's refusal to drop demands to exempt equipment from the suspension could prompt a harsher resolution that could include the threat of U.N. Security Council action.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said work on such an "alternate" text had already begun, although he expressed hope it would not be needed.
Anticipating that Iran would honor the Nov. 7 deal on full suspension, the three European countries had drafted a relatively mild resolution that takes much of the heat off Iran after more than 18 months of IAEA scrutiny and diminishes the threat of referral to the Security Council.
But Iran came to Thursday's opening day of the meeting with demands that it be allowed to operate the 20 centrifuges - which spin gas into enriched uranium.
In comments to the AP before Kharrazi spoke, senior Iranian delegate Hossein Mousavian had suggested the dispute was close to being solved, describing the demand that the centrifuges be exempted as "not an important issue for Iran."
The newest version of the draft authorizes IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei to "pursue his investigations" into remaining suspicious aspects of Iran's nuclear activities over the past two decades.
But instead of mandating him to "report without delay" to the board if there are violations, it says only that he should "inform" board members of irregularities.
Kharrazi, however, suggested that even such language was too tough for Iran.
"There are still provisions in the resolution we don't agree with," he said
-----
Iran, EU agree on uranium enrichment program freeze
Haaretz
November 27, 2004
By Yossi Melman and Yoav Stern
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/506755.html
Reports emerging late Friday night from officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna indicate that the crisis surrounding Iran's nuclear program has been averted. Diplomatic sources in Vienna told Haaretz that negotiations between European Union representatives and Iran have yielded an agreement by Tehran to completely freeze all activities related to uranium enrichment.
Iran gave up a last-minute demand whereby the agreement would not apply to 20 centrifuges that it claims are intended for "research and development purposes."
The IAEA's board is expected to approve the understandings reached between the EU and Iran and to adopt an Iranian resolution according to which it freezes its uranium enrichment program.
Iranian spokesmen say that the agreement will expire within a few months while EU officials say the agreement will be in effect for a long time.
In return for Iran's pledge for a uranium freeze, Europe has committed to negotiating with Iran on providing advanced nuclear technology which would include low-grade enriched uranium that could aid in generating electricity.
The Europeans have also promised to begin negotiations with the Islamic republic on a trade agreement.
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said that Iran had suspended its uranium enrichment activities last Monday, in accordance with its agreement with the EU. The suspension, however, did not include the 20 centrifuges that is on the agenda in the latest round of talks.
IAEA inspectors were permitted to identify all structures, sites, and machinery that has been used for the uranium enrichment process except for the centrifuges.
Last week it was reported that Iran quickly moved to complete the first stage of uranium enrichment - where natural uranium is converted to gaseous uranium - prior to freezing the program.
According to diplomatic sources in Vienna, Iran has already managed to produce three and a half tons of gaseous uranium, an amount which enables the manufacturing of one-fourth of the 25 kilograms of enriched uranium required to produce an atomic bomb.
Iran to speed up missile program A defense source in Iran said that his country is accelerating its development of missiles capable of carrying atomic, biological, and chemical warheads.
The senior general was quoted Friday in the Arab-language paper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat as saying that five villages in the Kurdistan and Urumiya region near the Iraqi border were evacuated in the last month to make way for Iranian military testing of the improved Shihab-3.
The source also said that Iranian president Ali Khameini authorized a transfer of $1.5 billion of the country's oil revenues for its missile program.
--------
Iran's Stealthy Nukes
Antiwar.com
by Gordon Prather,
November 27, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=4061
Apparently President Bush believes he has been given another four years to subvert and/or replace the half-dozen or so regimes he deems to be either a threat to the "freedom" of its citizens or to our "national security."
Iran is at the top of his list.
How else to explain the concerted effort this week by the neo-crazies and their media sycophants to subvert the International Atomic Energy Agency's director general's report to the IAEA Board of Governors on the status of his two-year go-anywhere, see-anything inspection of Iran's nuclear programs.
Not coincidentally, someone ordered the release of an unclassified version of the report former CIA head George Tenet sent to Congress last year entitled "Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions, 1 July Through 31 December 2003."
The neo-crazies - in and out of government - are spinning last year's report as if it were this year's report and, hence, justification for regime change in Iran, if not a casus belli. Their media sycophants are being typically sycophantic.
Here's what Tenet had to say about Iran in last year's report.
"The United States remains convinced that Tehran has been pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program, in contradiction to its obligations as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)."
Notice that "Slam-Dunk" Tenet didn't tell Congress that he was convinced, or even that the intelligence community he headed at the time was convinced. No, "Slam-dunk" simply notes that "The United States" - presumably personified by President Bush - remains convinced. Tenet goes on to say,
"During 2003, Iran continued to pursue an indigenous nuclear fuel cycle, ostensibly for civilian purposes, but with clear weapons potential. International scrutiny and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections and safeguards will most likely prevent Tehran from using facilities declared to the IAEA directly for its weapons program as long as Tehran remains a party to the NPT."
So, a year ago, Tenet assessed that if Iran remained a NPT-signatory, Iran could probably not successfully exploit the "clear weapons potential" of its indigenous nuclear fuel cycle.
In October 2003, Iran had provided the IAEA what purported to be a complete and final disclosure of its nuclear program, committing itself to correct the failures and past breaches of its obligations under its existing IAEA Safeguards Agreement.
In November 2003, Iran agreed to cooperate with the IAEA in accordance with the provisions of the go-anywhere, see-anything Model Additional Protocol, and Iran signed such an additional protocol to its comprehensive safeguards agreement in December 2003.
Once the additional protocol is ratified, Iran will be required to declare its plans for the succeeding 10-year period for developing its nuclear fuel-cycle, as well as its current nuclear fuel cycle-related R&D activities, even those that do not involve "nuclear material."
Meanwhile, Iran decided to voluntarily suspend nuclear materials enrichment and reprocessing activities as a confidence-building measure - pursuant to a request by the IAEA Board of Governors in September 2003 - and invited the IAEA to verify this suspension.
The focus of the IAEA's work in Iran over the last two years included verifying the origin of the enriched-uranium contamination found at a number of locations; determining the extent of Iran's efforts to import, manufacture, and use centrifuges of both the P-1 and P-2 designs; and developing a comprehensive understanding of Iran's uranium enrichment program and related R&D.
Director General ElBaradei was able to report to the IAEA Board this year that he had reached the conclusion that all "nuclear material" in Iran had been properly accounted for, that none of it had been "diverted to prohibited activities," and that - subject to further investigations of the origin at the uranium-enrichment equipment Iran imported - he was inclined to decide all related issues in Iran's favor.
In a letter dated Nov. 14, 2004, Iran notified the IAEA secretariat that it had decided to continue and extend the voluntary suspension, making all nuclear materials enrichment-related and processing activities - including the conversion of yellowcake to uranium metal, tetrafluoride, and hexafluoride - subject to IAEA containment and surveillance measures.
ElBaradei - after conducting a two-year-long go-anywhere, see-anything inspection - reported to the IAEA Board of Governors last week that he has found no evidence as yet that Iran has a "clandestine nuclear weapons program."
Of course, that's what ElBaradei told the UN Security Council last year about Iraq. So the neo-crazies are spinning ElBaradei's report as justification for regime change in Iran, if not a casus belli.
-----
Many types of isotopes
November 27, 2004
WorldNetDaily.com
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41659
The neo-crazies - in and out of government - lied to you last year about Iraq's "nuclear programs," and this year they're lying to you about Iran's.
What constitutes lying? Well, either making an untrue statement with intent to deceive or deliberately creating a false impression.
The neo-crazies told you right up till the eve of President Bush's "pre-emptive strike" that Iraq had reconstituted - deep underground and widely dispersed - the uranium-enrichment facilities totally destroyed back in 1991. That was an untrue statement, made with intent to deceive you.
They also told you that a uranium-enrichment capability was a necessary and sufficient condition for Iraq to have nukes within a year or two. That was an untrue statement, made to create a false impression.
You see, if you want to make a gun-type nuke, a uranium-enrichment capability is certainly necessary. And, if you have two 60 pound sub-critical pieces of weapons-grade enriched-uranium, all you have to do to make a gun-type nuke is bang them together.
But if you want to make an enriched-uranium implosion-type nuke - which is what Saddam was attempting to make - a uranium-enrichment capability is by no means "sufficient."
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei had reported to the U.N. Security Council that, as of March 2003, there had been no attempt whatsoever to reconstitute Iraq's uranium-enrichment capability. Furthermore, the CIA's Iraq Survey Group spent a billion dollars in the year following the invasion, searching everywhere and interviewing all the "usual suspects."
Result? Not only was ElBaradei right about there being no reconstituted uranium-enrichment capability, but there had also been no attempt since 1991 to design or test the high-explosive system absolutely required for an implosion-type nuke.
Well, now the neo-crazies would have you believe that Iran has an underground, widely dispersed uranium-enrichment capability. And that uranium-enrichment capability is a sufficient condition for Iran to have nukes in a year or two.
But while the neo-crazies have been making that claim, Iran has been allowing ElBaradei to conduct in Iran the same sort of go-anywhere see-anything inspection he conducted in Iraq.
Result? ElBaradei has concluded that all "nuclear material" in Iran has been accounted for and has not been diverted to activities prohibited by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Hence, there is no Non-Proliferation Treaty issue for the IAEA Board to refer to the U.N. Security Council.
Furthermore, ElBaradei has found no evidence that Iran has yet introduced "nuclear material" into the uranium-enrichment facilities under construction.
That's important, because until "nuclear material" was actually introduced, Iran was under no obligation to report to the IAEA the construction of the gas centrifuge plants at Natanz.
Obligated or not, Iran has placed "all essential components of centrifuges as defined by the Agency" under IAEA seals, except for 20 sets of centrifuge components to be used "for R&D purposes." Even then, Iran also offered to provide the IAEA with access to that R&D program "if requested."
Well, the neo-crazies promptly went bonkers. They charged this R&D "exception" proved the Iranians had no intention of abiding by the agreement they made with Germany, France and Great Britain to "suspend" all uranium-enrichment related activities and that this latest Iranian perfidy had to immediately be brought before the U.N. Security Council for action.
But don't let those neo-crazy charges create a false impression.
You see, Iran also stated that "AEOI (the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran) is not intending to use nuclear materials in any of the tests associated with the said R&D."
Gas centrifuges are not used exclusively for uranium isotope separation. Cascades of gas centrifuges are used to separate - in kilogram quantities for commercial sale - the isotopes of zinc, tungsten, molybdenum, krypton, xenon, germanium, iron, sulfur, oxygen and carbon.
For example, large quantities of zinc-acetate-dihydrate are used as an additive in water-cooled water-moderated nuclear power plants - particularly those burning plutonium-uranium mixed-oxide [MOX] fuels - to reduce corrosion and cracking of key components. However, the use of naturally occurring zinc would result in increased radiation exposure to plant workers, because Zn-64 - constituting 48 percent by isotopic concentration in naturally occurring zinc - is transformed into radioactive Zn-65 in the reactor environment. Hence, the lucrative market for large quantities of "depleted" zinc-acetate-dihydrate wherein the Zn-64 isotopic concentration is reduced to less than 1 percent.
So, until IAEA-safeguarded "nuclear materials" are actually introduced into them, the origin of the centrifuges, the construction of cascades and the operation thereof is none of the IAEA's beeswax. And who knows? Maybe the Iranian's secret plan all along has been to take over the "depleted zinc" market.
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
-------- israel
Palestinian security chief says infamous security unit to be dismantled as part of security overhaul
Associated Press
IBRAHIM BARZAK
November 27, 2004
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/11/27/international1237EST0472.DTL
A top Palestinian official said Saturday he would dismantle an elite security unit accused of abuse and corruption in a first step toward overhauling the tangled network of Palestinian security forces.
Palestinian Preventive Security chief Brig. Gen. Rashid Abu Shbak also announced plans to merge the ruling Fatah party's myriad militant groups to make them more accountable for their actions and to end the gun chaos on Palestinian streets.
The United States has long demanded a major overhaul of the Palestinian security services, including disbanding many of the rival -- and in some cases warring -- forces, but faced stiff resistance from Yasser Arafat, who used the forces to maintain his hold on power.
Since Arafat's death Nov. 11, his successors have taken steps to restore confidence in the Palestinian leadership -- tainted by accusations of corruption under Arafat -- calling for elections to choose a new leader and promising to be more open and accountable.
As part of that effort, Shbak said Saturday he would abolish the Gaza Security and Protections unit -- nicknamed the "death squad" by Palestinians -- in the wake of accusations that some of its members abused their powers and used intimidation to rule the streets of Gaza.
"We are facing a new phase and we must say farewell to chaos and to all those who cause it in the Palestinian street," Shbak told reporters in Gaza City. "We must clear the air of past mistakes of the previous era."
The 70-person unit was formed more than a year ago to crack down on militant groups and track and arrest high-profile criminals in Gaza. But some members of the unit were accused of turning into criminals themselves, confiscating land, smuggling weapons and intimidating the general public with threats of violence.
Shbak also announced the creation of a committee within Fatah to work to merge its fragmented and decentralized armed militias, including the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militant group responsible for many suicide bombing attacks on Israelis.
"These groups must be brought under control and there must be a central leadership that can be held responsible for their actions," Shbak said.
The committee will pursue ways to bring these armed groups under control without interfering with their "principles of resistance," indicating Fatah had no intention of pushing them to end the 4-year-old armed uprising against Israel, he said.
Meanwhile, in the Balata refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus, about 1,000 Palestinians, including scores of armed, masked militants affiliated with Fatah, demonstrated for the continuation of the uprising.
The demonstrators also declared their support for Mahmoud Abbas, the new head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Fatah's candidate in Jan. 9 presidential elections.
Abbas, 69, is a pragmatist who has spoken out against the uprising and is believed to be the candidate favored by Israel and the United States.
The rally came a day after jailed Palestinian uprising leader Marwan Barghouti dropped his plans to run in the elections and endorsed Abbas.
Barghouti, 45, is the leader of the Fatah movement's young guard, which has been agitating for reform and a chance to capture leadership positions currently monopolized by older politicians.
Fatah has selected Abbas as its candidate and, in an effort to persuade Barghouti to drop his planned challenge, announced Friday it would hold long-delayed party elections in August, the first poll to fill the top party posts in 16 years.
"A whole generation within Fatah was marginalized, and now it will be able to be represented," said Mohammed Hourani, a young Fatah leader.
The announced elections, as well as fears that Barghouti's candidacy would split the Fatah vote and allow another candidate to win the presidential election, helped push Barghouti out of the race.
Barghouti is serving five life terms in an Israeli prison after being convicted of murder in attacks that killed four Israelis and a Greek monk.
Fatah officials Saturday called on the Palestinian leadership to hold parliamentary elections May 15, the anniversary of the day Israel declared its independence in 1948, considered a day of tragedy by the Palestinians.
Also, a 4-year-old girl, Shaima Abu Shammaleh, was in serious condition after Israeli soldiers shot her in the mouth as she stood in front of her home, witnesses and medical officials said. The army had no immediate comment.
------
Our man in the US: Israel uses TV show to find its best spin doctor
The Guardian
Conal Urquhart in Tel Aviv
November 27, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1360969,00.html
In some countries, reality television offers contestants fame and fortune. In Israel, the winner gets the equivalent of a job with the civil service.
The latest reality programme to catch the country's imagination is The Ambassador, in which 14 contestants compete at defending Israel's reputation abroad.
The winner will receive a year's contract at an agency set up in New York to promote the country in the United States.
The show's popularity and the prize it offers reflect, say academics, domestic confusion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how it is perceived around the world.
The 14 contestants must carry out a variety of diplomatic tasks in Washington, New York, France, Britain and Israel. The judges are a former spokesman for the Israeli army, a former head of the Shin Bet internal security agency and a television political correspondent.
The winner will be the person who best demonstrates the qualities of a professional advocate and presents Israel in the most positive light.
The format is based on The Apprentice, the show in which the tycoon Donald Trump sets aspiring job applicants tasks and then tells one at the end: "You're fired."
The first edition of The Ambassador featured a debate between the seven male and seven female contestants at the Cambridge University Union.
Appearing for the men, Tzvika Deutsch asked the audience how they would feel if a football game in Manchester was cancelled because the stadium was threatened with rocket fire from militants. "For the people of Manchester this would be a very bad joke. But for people in the Israeli city of Sderot this is the reality."
Ravit Shemtov, for the women, said Israel had offered the Palestinians many peace solutions but they had all been rejected. "Unfortunately, the Palestinian Authority has declined every opportunity the Israeli government offered them."
Under hostile questioning, one contestant, Ofra Bin Nun, was prompted into saying: "Israel has not taken anything from anyone." The audience groaned in response.
The judges ruled that Ms Bin Nun had made a major error and she became the first contestant to be expelled.
Candidates must strive to spin Israel's story most effectively and need not pay much attention to reality or the Palestinian point of view.
Nachman Shai, a judge on the programme and a former spokesman for the Israeli army, described advocacy as an ongoing war for the past and for the future.
Yoram Peri, a professor of politics and media at Tel Aviv University, said the series went to the heart of Israeli society and its emphasis on how it is perceived rather than what it does.
"The major concern in Israeli society is that we do not explain ourselves well. When we discuss the horrible things that happen in the West Bank, we don't talk about the issue but about how it will be seen.
"It's a fundamental issue in Israeli life. It explains the popularity of someone like Benjamin Netanyahu [finance minister and former prime minister]. It's not because he is a good ambassador, it's because he is good at PR."
Prof Peri added: "The programme reflects a major problem in Israeli society. We do not think we do anything wrong but we think we explain ourselves badly and that the international media is anti-semitic."
The Ambassadors highlighted Israel's real problem, the professor said, which was not one of advocacy but facing up to the true nature of its problems. "We are fighting two wars. One is a war against terrorism, which is legitimate, and the other is a war against Palestinian liberation, which is not," he said.
"Most Israelis cannot make the distinction and President Bush has added to that confusion by seeing only terrorism."
-----
Why Israel Really Fears Iranian Nukes
Tel Aviv's concern about an Iranian bomb is more likely political rather than military
Antiwar.com
by Roger Howard
November 27, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/howard.php?articleid=4065
Israel's leaders are apt to portray the prospect of an Iranian nuclear warhead in highly apocalyptic terms. Earlier this year, for example, Ariel Sharon was prepared to call Iran "the biggest danger to the existence of Israel" and warned that "Israel will not allow Iran to be equipped with a nuclear weapon."
But though the image of fanatical mullahs brandishing nuclear weapons is of course a terrifying one, and a reality that the outside world must of course try very hard to prevent, the real reasons for Israel's alarm are, on closer inspection, easy to misapprehend.
Tel Aviv's concern is not, for example, likely to be based on narrowly military considerations. If Israel's main installations at Dimona really do house a large arsenal of around 200 nuclear missiles, as most independent analysts believe, and of course it has such close relations with the world's biggest nuclear power, the United States, why would the Iranians dare to provoke the massive and devastating retaliation that any foolish nuclear move would inevitably provoke?
The same logic holds true about the supposed risk that hardliners in Tehran could pass nuclear materials into the hands of terrorist third parties whose fanaticism renders them immune to the mutually assured destruction their actions would invite. But don't the mullahs know that any such move could easily be traced back to Iran and would therefore prompt a similarly devastating response?
Nor would an Iranian bomb make any difference to the state of play on the ground between the Israeli Defense Forces and Tehran's supposed protégés in the Middle East such as the Lebanese militia Hizbollah. As Basil Liddell Hart once argued, a nuclear weapon will deter only nuclear blackmail but will make no difference to the behavior of conventional forces in the field. Consider, after all, how many nuclear states have been attacked by the conventional forces of the non-nuclear - America in Vietnam, Britain in the Falklands, and Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
It seems likely, then, that there are other, more convincing, reasons why Israel is concerned about an Iranian bomb. One possibility, for example, is that Tel Aviv is deeply concerned that such a development could potentially create deep splits in the U.S.-Israel alliance.
Consider, for example, what would happen if Tehran, having developed a warhead and withdrawn from the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, offered to reduce the size of or even eliminate its own nuclear arsenal in return for similar moves - all UN-monitored - by Tel Aviv.
This would be a typically calculating and manipulative ploy by an Iranian regime playing the Israeli card to bolster its support at home and in the Islamic world as a whole. But any such ploy by Tehran would also seek to divide the more moderate European governments from a U.S. administration that has consistently been far more skeptical of Iranian nuclear assurances.
This might prove an adept move by posing a very difficult dilemma for an administration anxious to eliminate Iran's nuclear capability but equally reluctant to pressure its key Middle Eastern ally.
Any subsequent U.S. diplomatic pressure on Tel Aviv would infuriate Israeli leaders, who have long considered their nuclear arsenal as their best deterrent against what they regard as a hostile and numerically vastly superior Arab world. On two occasions, during the wars of 1967 and 1973, IDF chiefs ordered the preparation of their nuclear missiles against enemy forces.
But because the Israelis have frequently fended off intense U.S. diplomatic pressure before now, this is probably not the real reason why Tel Aviv would fear any such Iranian move. More important, perhaps, is the possibility that it would pose awkward questions, or even a far-reaching debate, in Washington and amongst the American public in general about the cost to America of an unquestioning loyalty to Israel.
In short, the development of a nuclear bomb has not just obvious military implications; it also brings far-reaching political fallout of which Israeli chiefs must be very conscious.
-------- korea
North Korea Reactor Plan Suspended Until 2005
Associated Press
Saturday, November 27, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15337-2004Nov26?language=printer
NEW YORK, Nov. 26 -- An international consortium said Friday that it has extended for another year a freeze on a project to build two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea.
The four main partners in the New York-based Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization -- the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union -- had previously suspended the project for a year through Dec. 1, 2004.
The freeze will be extended until Dec. 1, 2005, the group said in a statement.
Reports from South Korea and Japan in recent months have said the United States sought to kill the program outright but could not persuade Seoul or Tokyo to adopt that stance. The two countries are heavily invested in the $4.6 billion light-water reactor program, which is about one-third complete.
The reactor projects were started after a 1994 deal in which North Korea agreed to dismantle its Russian-model heavy-water reactors producing plutonium.
In exchange, the international partners agreed to build two 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors, which do not produce large quantities of weapons-grade plutonium as a byproduct, and to send annual shipments of 500,000 tons of fuel oil to help North Korea ease its chronic power shortage.
The U.S.-funded deliveries of fuel oil were halted in 2002 after North Korea acknowledged that it also had a secret uranium-enrichment program that could produce weapons, in violation of the 1994 U.S.-North Korean accord and of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which North Korea signed in 1985.
----
CIA report cites N. Korean proliferation threat
November 27, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041126-111219-4624r.htm
North Korea threatened in secret talks to export nuclear weapons and to conduct a test blast, according to a CIA report made public this week.
"In late April 2003 during the Six-Party Talks in Beijing, North Korea privately threatened to 'transfer' or 'demonstrate' its nuclear weapons," the semiannual report on arms proliferation to Congress stated.
"North Korea repeated these threats at the Six-Party Talks in August 2003."
The CIA's description was the first official confirmation that the official North Korean statements were a threat. The disclosure also contradicted public comments on the matter by Bush administration spokesmen.
The North Korean threat to export nuclear arms and to test a nuclear device was first reported by The Washington Times of May 7, 2003.
The danger of North Korean nuclear transfers to other nations or entities is being taken seriously by the commander of U.S. military forces in South Korea, Army Gen. Leon J. LaPorte.
Gen. LaPorte said in a speech Nov. 17 that "there is concern that North Korea, in its desire for hard currency, would sell weapons-grade plutonium to some terrorist organizations."
The State Department, eager to continue dialogue with North Korea, has sought to play down the threats.
After a Chinese diplomat publicly repeated the North Korean threat in June, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters that comments by North Korean officials about wanting to conduct a nuclear test "were not phrased as a threat."
The CIA report notes the threats followed a December 2003 proposal by Pyongyang to freeze nuclear activities and hold off on exporting nuclear arms in exchange for rewards.
Administration officials said the threat was first made by North Korean official Li Gun during a meeting with James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, during a closed-door meeting in Beijing.
Mr. Li's comment was described at the time by one official as "clearly a threat."
Mr. Li told Mr. Kelly that the communist state would "export nuclear weapons, add to its current arsenal or test a nuclear device," the official said.
Mr. Li said the specific actions by North Korea on its nuclear program would be based on how the United States responded to its overtures.
Mr. Kelly later testified before Congress that he "strongly cautioned them against any escalation."
The six-party talks among China, the United States, North Korea, South Korea, Japan and Russia are stalled as a result of North Korea's refusal to return for the next round. U.S. officials said they hope the next meeting of the six nations' representatives will be in December or January.
A State Department official said yesterday that North Korea proposed in June that it would not make additional nuclear arms, will not test them and will not export them.
"We haven't been back [to the negotiating table] since June 25," said the official, explaining that the North Koreans said during the meetings that "elements" in North Korea are moving toward a nuclear test.
Also, North Korea has repeated that it will not export nuclear weapons if the United States meets its demands for rewards, the official said.
The CIA report said that North Korea continued development and production of ballistic missiles and that Pyongyang may be preparing for a flight test of its long-range Taepo Dong-2 missile. The missile is believed to be capable of "reaching parts of the United States with a nuclear-weapon-sized payload," the report says.
"North Korea has demonstrated a willingness to sell complete ballistic missile systems and components that have enabled other states to acquire longer-range capabilities earlier than would otherwise have been possible and to acquire the basis for domestic development efforts," according to the report.
The CIA also stated that China continued to supply missile-related goods to Pakistan and Iran.
However, the report states that "Chinese entities continued to work with Pakistan and Iran on ballistic missile-related projects during the second half of 2003."
The report adds: "Chinese entity assistance has helped Pakistan move toward domestic serial production of solid-propellant [short-range ballistic missiles] and has supported Pakistan's development of solid-propellant [medium-range ballistic missiles]."
China also supplied missile goods to Iran, Libya and North Korea, according to the report.
On other issues, the CIA report states that:
•Syria is developing a nuclear research center at Dayr Al Hajar and "we are monitoring Syrian nuclear intentions with concern."
•Syria's missile program received support from North Korea and Iran.
•Syria has chemical nerve agents and is developing more toxic and persistent nerve weapons.
•A Pakistani nuclear engineer, Bashir al-Din Mahmood, discussed nuclear weapons development with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and may have provided assistance to the terror group.
•Russia is playing a key role in building nuclear power reactors in Iran, China and India.
•Russian companies supplied missile equipment and know-how to Iran, India and China, and were instrumental in speeding up Iran's Shahab-3 medium-range missile.
•Russia has failed to tighten controls on exports of weapons and weapons-related goods.
•Iran bought dual-use military and commercial goods from Western European states, as did Pakistan and India, and North Korea sought uranium enrichment material from Western European states.
The European states were not identified, but other officials have said supplier nations include France and Germany.
The report also states there is "growing concern" among U.S. intelligence agencies that ingredients for weapons of mass destruction will continue to be sold by "nonstate actors."
--------
IAEA finally drops S. Korea investigation
November 27, 2004
(UPI)
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041127-073757-9581r.htm
Vienna, Austria, Nov. 27 -- The International Atomic Energy Agency, as expected, has ended its investigation into two once-unreported nuclear experiments by South Korea.
The IAEA investigations, which ended Friday in Vienna, centered on scientists' work to enrich small amounts of plutonium and uranium in 1982 and 2000, the Korea Times reported Saturday.
South Korea has acknowledged the tests, but insist they were isolated, unauthorized and unrepeated.
The two South Korean incidents have long appeared virtually trivial in relation to IAEA concerns about Iran's and North Korea's ongoing nuclear programs, officials said.
--------
South Korea breathes sigh of relief over IAEA decision on nuclear tests
SEOUL (AFP)
Nov 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041127062418.4wammeol.html
South Korea on Saturday breathed a collective sigh of relief after the UN atomic agency opted not to refer it to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions over its past nuclear experiments.
At a meeting on Friday in Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reproached South Korea for its undeclared nuclear experiments in which small amounts of weapons-grade nuclear material were produced.
Following a meeting of the 35-nation board of governors, the IAEA chided South Korea for breaching nuclear safeguards with the experiments, but allowed it to escape referral to the UN Security Council.
In a seven-point statement, it said "the quantities of nuclear material have not been significant and that to date there is no indication that the undeclared experiments have continued."
It said the IAEA's board of governors felt, as IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei has already said, that that "the failure of the ROK (Republic of Korea) to report these activities in accordance with its safeguards agreements is of serious concern."
However, the "Board welcomed the corrective actions taken by the ROK and the active cooperation it has provided to the agency," the IAEA said.
The foreign ministry here welcomed the statement.
"The government finds to its satisfaction the issue of the nuclear material experiments were objectively evaluated and properly dealt with in accordance with the nature of the case," it said in a statement.
"Consequently, suspicions such as those concerning the possibility of the government having condoned the experiments were cleared," it said.
"We are satisfied that the case has neither been referred to the UN Security Council nor have discussions on the case been put off to a next meeting of the IAEA governors," it said.
It said the government would strengthen control over nuclear-related activities to enhance transparency and would step up cooperation with the international community to prevent nuclear proliferation.
South Korea admitted in September that its scientists produced small amounts of plutonium in 1982 and enriched uranium in 2000 without informing the nuclear watchdog.
It said the tests were conducted without government authorization, had now stopped and were not designed to produce nuclear weapons.
However the revelations embarassed both Washington and Seoul which are trying to pressure North Korea to end its nuclear weapons drive.
South Korea's chief government delegate, Vice Foreign Minister Choi Young-jin, said in Vienna that controversy over the nation's nuclear material experiments has been fairly and properly evaluated and concluded by the IAEA.
"The government will extend full cooperation to the IAEA board's future confirmation efforts regarding (South Korea's) past nuclear material experiments," Choi said.
The ruling Uri Party also welcomed the IAEA statement as a "fair and balanced" assessment of the case.
"We hope that this decision will bring an end to suspicions raised at some corners of the international community that South Korea has ben carrying out nuclear tests for a military purpose," it said.
-----
North Korea accuses US of waging psychological warfare
SEOUL (AFP)
Nov 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041127081735.6klrz865.html
Stalinist North Korea accused the United States on Saturday of waging psychological warfare and said US hostility was obstructing efforts to settle the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula.
The official Minju Joson newspaper said Washington's attempt to topple its regime through psychological warfare and espionage "is nothing but a very foolish and despicable plot based on an anachronistic delusion."
The paper, in a commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, said the US is considering spending two million dollars a year to smuggle radios into North Korea "and increasing hours of false propaganda broadcasting against it."
It said the new CIA director Porter Goss also reportedly instructed his operatives to conduct "offensive intelligence activities" against the North.
"Their escalated anti-DPRK (North Korea) moves will result in nothing but completely checking the solution of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula and bedevilling the relations of stand-off between the DPRK and the U.S," it said.
Three rounds of six-party talks have taken place since the stand-off over North Korea's drive for nuclear weapons began in October 2002. The North boycotted a fourth round set for September, blaming what it deemed Washington's hostile policy.
South Korean media said Thursday that informal six-nation talks -- involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas -- may take place in mid-December in Beijing.
The confrontation began when Washington accused Pyongyang of running a secret uranium-enrichment program.
North Korea has denied running such a program. But it has demanded economic and diplomatic concessions in return for halting an older, plutonium-based nuclear arms program which was mothballed in 1994 but later restarted.
US President George W. Bush last month signed a law to promote human rights in North Korea. It provides four million dollars for expanding US radio broadcasts into the North.
-----
High time North Korea makes up its mind on nuclear talks: South Korea
VIENTIANE (AFP)
Nov 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041127153504.4w0chisl.html
South Korea said Saturday it was high time North Korea decided whether to return to six-nation nuclear talks as it was joined by China and Japan in hoping for a resumption of the dialogue by year-end.
"We have to exert diplomatic efforts to hold the next round of six-party talks hopefully by the end of this year," South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon told AFP amid preparations for an Asian summit in Laos next week.
"We have explained our position and I think that it is high time that the North Koreans make a strategic decision," he said.
Ban later discussed the simmering nuclear dispute with his counterparts from China and Japan, where the outlines of a new consensus on an end-of-year timeframe appeared to be emerging.
"All three agreed that North Korea should agree to resume the six-party talks as soon as possible, hopefully by the end of this year," said Hatsuhisa Takashima, a Japanese foreign ministry spokesman.
The remarks followed heightened speculation that the stalled six-party talks could resume soon.
South Korea's state-run KBS television network reported Friday informal six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear programme may take place between December 15 and 23 in Beijing.
"The point is that since the American presidential election is over, it is a fact that North Korea has to deal with the Bush administration for the coming four more years," said Takashima. "They have no other way."
Three rounds of six-party talks have taken place since the standoff over North Korea's drive for nuclear weapons began in October 2002. The North boycotted a fourth round set for September, blaming hostility from Washington.
One of the apparent reasons for Pyongyang's foot-dragging was its wish to await the outcome of the US presidential election.
The talks involve the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas.
When the foreign ministers of South Korea, China and Japan met Saturday, they agreed that a "stick-and-carrot" approach might be necessary to lure North Korea back to the negotiating table, Takashima said.
"The three countries will work hard together with the other parties to hold talks at an early date," Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said as he emerged from the discussions. "Our timetable is 'the sooner the better'."
China is believed to be the country with the most direct influence on North Korea, due to traditional political ties going back three generations combined with generous fuel and food aid.
But all parties should do their best to get it back to the negotiations, Japan's Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said.
"Each country has its own channel so that we will exercise our influence upon (North Korea)," he said. "China will do their best, I'm sure."
The South Korean foreign minister, Ban, said Seoul would prefer a high-level round of six-nation talks but failing that, lower-level talks would also be a possibility.
"We hope to have a formal meeting at the chief delegates' level, however we are flexible about the format of the meeting," he said, adding that "intensive diplomatic efforts" were under way.
The confrontation began in October 2002 when Washington accused Pyongyang of running a covert uranium-enrichment programme.
North Korea has since denied running such a programme. But it has demanded economic and diplomatic concessions in return for refreezing an older, plutonium-based nuclear arms programme mothballed in 1994.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
[ To reply - mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com ]
Nuke Rep. Hobson's bill
November 27, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20041126-085502-5675r.htm
Who would have believed that President Bush would have to allocate some of the political capital he accumulated from his 3.5 million-vote, 31-state re-election victory to change the mind of a single seven-term House Republican who has, virtually single-handedly, blocked the will of the White House, 95 percent of his House Republican colleagues and 98 percent of Senate Republicans? Yet that is precisely what Ohio Republican Rep. David Hobson is bent on doing. In fact, he has managed to prevail, so far, by exercising his will in the $388 billion omnibus spending bill adopted last Saturday. The fact that the issue at hand directly affects America's long-term nuclear-weapons policy makes Mr. Hobson's stand all the more unacceptable.
The policy Mr. Hobson has been pursuing is identical to the policy vigorously advocated in recent years by Ted Kennedy. It is also the nuclear-weapons policy supported by 2008 Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Because congressional and presidential elections are held to decide such matters, it is the will of the president and the overwhelming majority of Congress' majority party that must prevail, not Mr. Hobson's.
The issue involves research programs conducted by the Energy Department to evaluate the feasibility and desirability of developing two small nuclear warheads. One is the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator weapon, commonly known as a "bunker buster," which could be useful in destroying deeply buried weapons of mass destruction developed and/or hidden by rogue regimes or their stateless terrorist allies. The other program, the Stockpile Services Advanced Concepts Initiative, includes researching extremely low-yield nuclear weapons, commonly known as "mini-nukes," whose destructive power would be less than five kilotons.
It is important to emphasize that both are research programs. No decision has been made to deploy either weapon, and congressional approval would be necessary before any such deployment could take place.
Both research programs, which, if they were properly funded (which they have not been), could be completed in a few years. They have been debated and authorized since the Bush administration first began exploring the idea of adding them to the nation's nuclear arsenal in 2002. In May, 207 of 218 House Republicans voted to authorize the programs. In June, 50 of 51 Republican senators voted to defeat Mr. Kennedy's amendment that would have prohibited the use of $36 million to research the programs.
Unfortunately, Mr. Hobson's energy and water appropriations subcommittee deleted the research funding and redirected the money elsewhere. It was this decision that found its way into the omnibus spending bill. This wrong decision needs to be reversed promptly so that research can be resumed.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- ohio
Browns Ferry's Unit 3 back up
Reactor returned to service after Tuesday shutdown
November 27, 2004
Huntsville Times
By CHRISTOPHER BELL chrisb@htimes.com
http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/base/news/1101550589282651.xml
ATHENS - A reactor at Browns Ferry nuclear plant near Athens returned to service Thursday night, two days after it shut down unexpectedly, the Tennessee Valley Authority said.
A lightning strike might have caused the automatic shutdown of Unit 3 on Tuesday about 10 a.m. during a heavy thunderstorm, Roger Hannah, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Atlanta, said Friday.
Hannah said the "hot shutdown" was classified as an "unusual event," lowest of four emergency classifications for a nuclear plant. According to TVA, the shutdown of a steam-powered turbine led the reactor to automatically shut down.
-------- vermont
PSB recommends $85,000 fine for Vt. Yankee
The Associated Press
November 27, 2004
http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8862~2561315,00.html
BRATTLEBORO (AP) -- A hearing officer has recommended that Entergy Nuclear be fined $85,000 for beginning construction on a Vermont Yankee repair building without first getting state approval.
Hearing officer George Young wrote that Entergy's past business practices, and history of not following directives from state regulators, worked against the company.
"Entergy's past performance ... shows a pattern in which the company has not complied with its legal obligations," he wrote.
"Entergy knew or should have known that it could not commence site preparation without first receiving approval from the board," Young wrote. "The facts make clear that at least some of Entergy's management did understand the applicable law."
He added, "Even if no individual at Entergy had specific knowledge of both the legal requirements and the fact that site preparation may commence, there is no question that Entergy, an entity, is properly charged with knowledge of both."
Young said there were a few mitigating factors, and so he wasn't recommending the maximum fine of $100,000 allowed under Vermont law.
Young said he was proposing close to the maximum fine "to encourage Entergy to establish appropriate internal mechanisms to ensure compliance."
Entergy, as part of its site preparation, removed about 30 truckloads of soil from the Yankee nuclear reactor site in Vernon. But after a public outcry during a public hearing on the plan, it hauled the soil back to the plant and it was tested for possible radioactivity contamination.
There was none beyond normal background levels, the Department of Health determined.
Entergy eventually withdrew its application, and rebuilt the large electric turbine rotor in an old paper mill in Brattleboro.
According to the PSB process, all sides in the case have two weeks to respond to the proposed fine, and then the full board will make a decision.
Laurence Smith, spokesman for Entergy, said the company would decline comment until Dec. 7, when comments are due.
"It's under review," he said, noting the proposed fine was a "preliminary recommendation on an issue that is just over a year old."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. military looks forward to hand over of bases
November 27, 2004
By Anwar Iqbal
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041126-085504-8842r.htm
Hours after Congress approved $400 million for training and equipping the Afghan national army, U.S. military officials told reporters in Afghanistan that they hope to hand over their bases to Afghan troops one day.
The goal, expressed at a briefing last weekend by officers of the U.S. Army Reserve's 367th Engineer Battalion near Kabul, is shared by the international community, which is helping the United States raise a national army in Afghanistan.
"It's difficult, but definitely achievable," said one of the officers briefing journalists at the Bagram Air Base near Kabul.
Afghan officials concede that raising an army from the ruins of a war and civil strife that plagued their country for more than 20 years will not be easy, but they note that not too long ago Afghanistan had a professional army. The Afghan army, trained and equipped by the Soviets, disintegrated in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Last Saturday evening, Congress approved $400 million for Afghanistan's national army and $300 million in military assistance to neighboring Pakistan. The total, $700 million, was a $350 million increase over last year.
While the aid to Pakistan will bolster the Pakistani military engaged in fighting al Qaeda militants along the Afghan-Pakistan border, observers believe nothing will bring more stability to the region than to have a national army in Afghanistan.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai outlined plans for a 70,000-strong national army for his country while addressing a donors' conference in Germany in December 2002.
Mr. Karzai told the donors that he hoped the proposed army would "bring peace and stability to Afghanistan" and would be the "only legal army in the country."
He also looks forward to a time when the national army would be established and private militias, which control large parts of rural Afghanistan, would be disbanded.
Since then, Mr. Karzai has come a long way toward fulfilling his promise. The most difficult decision for him was to abandon his defense minister and senior vice president, Gen. Mohammed Fahim, when he announced his team for the October elections.
The move caused some observers to predict that Gen. Fahim, who heads the largest private militia in Afghanistan and enjoys the support of the Tajiks, the country's second largest ethnic group, would make it difficult for Mr. Karzai to win the election.
But contrary to these predictions, he did win the election with an impressive majority, even in Tajik areas.
Now, with assistance from the United States, France and Britain, the Afghan government has been developing the national army Mr. Karzai promised two years ago. The United States is also providing uniforms and basic equipment, while weapons have come from former Soviet bloc countries.
The Afghan government has undertaken a comprehensive plan to disband private militias. It offers cash and vocational training for members of the militias who volunteer to disarm.
At a recent briefing in Kabul, Mr. Karzai said he was confident that with the help of its allies, the Afghan government would raise a 70,000-man army by 2009.
Initially, the training program progressed slowly. By January 2003, just over 1,700 men in five battalions had completed the 10-week training course. But by the middle of this year, the Afghan national army (ANA) had 7,000 soldiers.
In July, the ANA contributed 1,000 soldiers to the U.S.-led Operation Warrior Sweep against the Taliban and al Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan. These were the first major combat operations for the new Afghan army.
In September, the ANA contributed a combat-support battalion, providing engineering, medical and scouting skills to the U.S.-led coalition forces.
Afghan officials said progress was slow because regional warlords were unwilling to disarm, and also because there was not enough international commitment to ensure rapid progress.
They also complained that the CIA continues to fund some local warlords to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda guerrillas hiding in their areas.
Afghan officials hope now that they have a respectable number of soldiers in the army, recruitment will increase as Afghans see the emergence of a national force.
Despite these encouraging developments, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtun, is still reluctant to join the army. Afghan officials, however, hope that Mr. Karzai's victory in the election, in which large numbers of Pashtuns voted for the president, will also help.
Mr. Karzai is also a Pashtun, and one of the reasons he distanced himself from Gen. Fahim was to dispel the notion that he depended on the non-Pashtun defense minister for staying in power.
Mr. Karzai had asked other regional commanders to contribute troops to the ANA so that an ethnically balanced force would be created. But two of the most powerful regional warlords - Abdul Rashid Dostum in the north and Ismail Khan in the west - refused to cooperate.
-------
Afghanistan waits for tourists
November 27, 2004
By Nathan Hodge
COX NEWS SERVICE
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041126-085506-1772r.htm
KABUL, Afghanistan - In the 1960s and 1970s, Afghanistan was part of the hippie trail, a magnet for stoned backpackers seeking nirvana. Well-heeled tourists also came to visit. Afghanistan's rugged terrain was ideal for mountaineering expeditions and hunting trips, and rich collectors could stock up on antiques and fine carpets.
Then came the Soviet invasion and its long occupation and war against guerillas, followed by the grim rule of the Taliban and, in 2001, the U.S. invasion following the September 11 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
Three years after an American-led coalition ousted the Taliban regime, the State Department still warns U.S. citizens against visiting Afghanistan. A low-level insurgency continues on the border with Pakistan, and rival warlords occasionally clash. Al Qaeda's chief, Osama bin Laden, remains at large, believed to be somewhere in the region.
Still, adventurous tourists are returning to this wild and exotic landscape.
It is not a vacation spot for the fainthearted.
Charles Clapham recently drove to Afghanistan from Bristol, England, in a 1961 Land Rover. After crossing Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India, he headed north to Afghanistan, planning to drive back to Europe through the former Soviet Union.
He stopped for a few days at a guest house in Kabul and spent a few days cycling around the capital. Contacted later by e-mail in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, where he was waiting for a visa to Uzbekistan, Mr. Clapham said he encountered no problems crossing the Torkham border post between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but saw few signs of other solo motorists on the same route.
According to the border register, "mine was the fourth foreign vehicle to cross the Torkham border this year," he said.
Hessamuddin Hamrah, president of the Afghan Tourism Organization, is confident that foreign visitors will come back. But since the fall of the Taliban, his agency has hosted only 35 tour groups, comprising 247 individuals from around the globe, mostly from Western Europe and Japan.
"We hope a lot of tourists will come," he said, "because it's really important to us for economic revival."
Admittedly, Afghanistan's reputation as a haven for terrorists - and as one of the most heavily mined places on the planet - has been a poor advertisement for tourism.
"The news they hear from Afghanistan is bad," Mr. Hamrah said. "But the security in Afghanistan now is not bad. ... We send groups out, they go there and come back very happy."
Lonely Planet, the bible of budget travelers, published a section on Afghanistan in the latest edition of its Central Asia guidebook - previous editions said simply: "Don't Go!" Other guidebooks plan to include information and advice about the country.
Haji Sefat Mir remembers the golden age of Afghanistan as a tourist destination. He recalls a day in 1968 when he worked as a guide for a wealthy European hunter, who dropped two wild rams with one shot at 150 yards.
They were in the Wakhan Corridor, a mountainous sliver of land in northeastern Afghanistan that extends to the border with China. His client, a member of the Rothschild banking family, was stalking the Marco Polo sheep, a sought-after trophy for big-game hunters. He was pleased with his day and gave his guide a watch and several hundred dollars.
Mr. Sefat Mir still has an outdoorsman's robust physique, but he last led a hunting expedition in 1978, a year before the Soviet invasion began two decades of ruinous war. During the Soviet-Afghan conflict, Mr. Sefat Mir fought with the mujahideen under the late, legendary Tadjik guerilla commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. With a tenuous peace taking hold in Afghanistan, he is hoping the government will resume the big-game hunts.
"Maybe next year," he said.
Entrepreneurs are also counting on a revival of Afghan tourism.
Volodymyr Yakovliev, general director of Mandryk & Co., a company based in Kiev, organizes "extreme tours" for newly wealthy Ukrainians. He recently visited the Afghan Tourism Organization to get approval for an expedition to Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold.
"These are people who are adrenaline addicts," he said of his clients. "They love the thrill of danger."
Mr. Yakovliev's next tour group is scheduled for early January - not the most hospitable time of year.
"It's mostly businessmen," he said. "They've already been on the beach a bunch of times, in Bulgaria or Turkey or wherever, and it's not interesting to them anymore."
For some of Mr. Yakovliev's clients, it's not their first trip to Afghanistan. Others are veterans of the Soviet-Afghan war, now returning for a nostalgic trip. Mr. Yakovliev said there had been a Soviet headquarters in Kandahar, "so we know the place very well."
Mr. Yakovliev, sporting impressive sideburns and a fedora, said Afghans harbor no ill will toward Ukrainians, despite the wartime experience.
"We're brothers, in the sense that we were occupied by one and the same country - Bolshevik Russia," he said. "As soon as I explain that to Afghans, they're my best friends."
Expatriates now working in Afghanistan visit weekend getaway spots. Bamiyan, the site of monumental Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban, is a favorite.
The Panjshir Valley, Mr. Massoud's base during the Soviet-Afghan war, is just a few hours' drive from Kabul.
Najibullah Rassa, a radio and television newscaster and native of the Panjshir, said the region's spectacular scenery makes it ideal for tourism.
"It's the best place for tourism in Afghanistan because it's close to Kabul," he said. "We have every kind of hunting, some very nice places to rest. And on the top of the mountains, we have natural streams and lakes."
But the region also has poor roads and no electricity.
"If we had an electrical terminal, we could build mountain cabins," Mr. Rassa said hopefully.
Encouraging tourists to return may not be as simple as running power lines. Continuing violence deters tourists - particularly after recent attacks aimed specifically at foreigners.
Shortly after the Oct. 9 presidential elections in Afghanistan, a suicide bomber hit Chicken Street, Kabul's main tourist thoroughfare. A young American woman and an Afghan girl were killed along with the attacker.
More recently, kidnappers from a group called the Jaish-e-Muslimeen, or Army of Muslims, claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of three U.N. workers in a residential district of Kabul. The hostages were released on Tuesday.
Still, Mr. Sefat Mir hopes the big-game hunters will return. That, of course, may alarm conservationists: The rare sheep are already threatened by poachers.
But if the government gives the go-ahead, Mr. Sefat Mir could be leading expeditions as early as next year. The license fee?
"Now, if the hunters come, they should pay $20,000," Mr. Sefat Mir said.
-------- business
Army sells off jets to public
27 nov 04
From correspondents in Buochs, Switzerland
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,11513973%255E1702,00.html
PRIVATE buyers have snapped up 13 old Mirage supersonic military jets - minus their weapons or engines - which were auctioned off by the Swiss army for a total of 521,000 Swiss francs ($577,000).
About 180 Swiss and foreign bidders, mainly collectors or flying enthusiasts, attended the sale at the Buochs military airbase in central Switzerland, the Swiss army said.
Three of the delta-wing French-made planes, dating back to 1965, were sold to foreign buyers.
Prices ranged from 23,000 to 60,000 Swiss francs ($25,000-$66,400) for a Mirage III RS reconnaisance aircraft painted deep black.
The Swiss army bought 61 Mirages until 1983 and some of the planes - which have since made way for sophisticated US-made F15 jet aircraft - were in operation until 2003.
-------- canada
Forecast Frosty for U.S.-Canadian Ties
Cultural Gap Between Neighbors Widens Even as Economies Grow Closer
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 27, 2004; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15409-2004Nov26?language=printer
TORONTO -- The weather won't be the only thing that's cool when President Bush visits neighboring Canada next week.
Longtime observers here say the societies in Canada and the United States are drifting further apart in values and outlook even as their economies become more closely intertwined. Politically, they say, the two countries' populations are more estranged than at any time in recent memory, and Canadians are becoming increasingly critical of their southern neighbors.
"In 1981 only 8 percent of Canadians had an unfavorable view of the United States. Now 45 percent have an unfavorable view," said Michael Adams, a veteran pollster and philosophical proponent of the view that the two societies are diverging. "There has never been that kind of lopsided skew."
Much of the antipathy here is focused on Bush. He will be met by demonstrations in Ottawa over issues ranging from U.S. involvement in Iraq to gay marriage, and the White House has declined an invitation to address Parliament, where Bush might be heckled.
Canadians, proudly polite and intensely politically correct, would be shocked to be described as anti-American. Yet the chill toward Washington often slips into general derision of Americans.
When Carolyn Parrish, a Liberal Party member of Parliament, said last year, "Damn Americans, I hate those bastards," she evoked cheers from many supporters. When she carried her anti-American tirade further this month, stomping on a Bush doll in a nationally televised satire show, she was ousted from the Liberals' parliamentary caucus as an embarrassment to the ruling party and Prime Minister Paul Martin. But radio talk shows and Web sites suggest that as many applauded her actions as condemned them.
"I say nice going. The U.S.A. has been walking over Canada and treating it like an annoying baby brother for too many years," wrote G.J. Davis, of Winnipeg, in a typical comment to the National Post's Web site.
Examples of those feelings are commonplace, as when a Toronto matron sniffs over fruit -- "Not bad, for American strawberries" -- or an audience full of Canadian dignitaries applauds the opening of an America-bashing opera by Canada's best-known author, Margaret Atwood.
The Canadian government is usually wary of offending its powerful neighbor, and official relations are likely to improve with Bush's visit. His administration is moving to eliminate a major irritant to relations with Canada: the 18-month-old ban imposed on Canadian beef because of mad cow disease. Martin will offer, in return, to send Canadian observers to help oversee the planned Jan. 30 Iraqi election, an olive branch intended to salve Washington's annoyance at Canada's rejection of the Iraq invasion.
But the public reaction to Bush is likely to be less accommodating.
"This is a nadir in terms of how the Canadian people view a president. George W. Bush probably ranks lowest on the scale in Canadian history, since the birth of Canada in 1867," said Lawrence Martin, author of the history, "The Presidents and Prime Ministers." He reconsidered: "Well, maybe just lowest in the last century. Ulysses Grant wanted to take over the country."
As the writer Martin documents, personal differences between U.S. and Canadian leaders have sometimes been profound -- and profane. But he and other analysts contend that the more fundamental shift among the publics of the two countries holds more importance. "Until the 1960s there was a great commonality of spirit. That is no longer the case. . . . Our values are going in a different direction than yours," he said.
That is evident in social issues. Canada's federal government is moving to decriminalize use of marijuana. Gay marriage is legal in three provinces, and gay partners of Canadian servicemen get spousal benefits. Abortion is considered a private issue. Capital punishment is banned. Religion is largely absent from politics here.
Adams argues that his long-term polling shows a growing alienation between Canadians and Americans on such basic matters as their approaches to life, their attitudes toward government, religion and authority, their standards of living and their resolution of conflicts.
"The divergence is not at the elite level. It's in the social values that motivate people in their everyday life," Adams, who laid out his findings in "Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values," said in an interview.
Those differences were exacerbated by the Iraq war, which Canada balked at, and by the unilateralist streak in the Bush administration's foreign policy that offended Canadian preferences for working with other countries, said Reginald Stuart, an expert on U.S.-Canada relations at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax. "Canadians have an almost genetic instinct for multinationalism and distrust the U.S. government."
In an opinion survey in April, 82 percent of Canadians said Bush "doesn't really know anything when it comes to Canadian issues." With the approach of the U.S. election, polls showed Canadians preferring John F. Kerry overwhelmingly. Dismay at the outcome was palpable.
Some Canadians think it has gone too far. "Canadians demonstrate a remarkable conviction of moral superiority," concluded the research firm EKOS, which conducted a recent poll and found that "Bushwhacking is emerging as our new national sport." Historian Michael Ignatieff, a Harvard professor and a Canadian favorite son, returned to Toronto last week and scolded Canadians for their condescending dismissal of Bush.
Canadian businessmen fret that strains in the relationship will disrupt U.S. trade, the lifeblood of Canada's economy. Canada sells 84 percent of its exports to the United States and buys 71 percent of its imports there.
"Canadians take for granted the continued access for goods and products in the United States," said Nelson Wiseman, a specialist in Canadian politics at the University of Toronto. "But on the cultural side, they can strut around proudly and smugly in the belief that Americans are culturally inferior. To be popular in this country, you can't be seen as a lackey of Americans."
-------- chemical weapons
Berne to fund Moscow chemical weapons destruction
Saturday November 27, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/nov2004-daily/27-11-2004/world/w8.htm
MOSCOW: Switzerland will provide funds to build two new sites for Russia to destroy its stockpiles of chemical weapons under agreements signed Friday during a visit to Moscow by Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey.
Berne is to pay Russia a total of 15 million Swiss francs (10 million euros, 13 million dollars) over the next five years under the accord signed during talks between Calmy-Rey and her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
The money will help Moscow buy equipment for two new sites in the Ural region, which will be built in 2005 and 2008 respectively, to add to the single plant currently functioning in the southwestern Saratov region.
Russia plans to build seven sites in all by 2009 to destroy an estimated 40,000 tonnes of weapons by 2012 under the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised countries' programme to get rid of chemical arsenals.
The G8 pledged in 2002 to raise 20 billion dollars over 10 years to prevent chemical or nuclear weapons held by Russia and other former states of the Soviet bloc falling into the hands of terrorists.
-------- iraq
I Am Become Death - The Destroyer Of The Worlds
November 27, 2004
Pakistan Tribune
http://www.paktribune.com/news/print.php?id=84915&PHPSESSID=73a38ae226635cffc29cb094a31d8b09
The crimson waters of the Euphrates are now emptying into the Persian Gulf the hopes and aspirations of innocent people whose lives were snuffed out on the orders of a man rewarded for his monumental crimes by his great nation.
Known as the "city of mosques" for its more than 200 mosques, Fallujah is also known for refusing to add Saddam's name to the call for prayers from its ancient minarets. It is located on the banks of river Euphrates, the largest river in Southwest Asia. The 1700 miles long Euphrates is linked with some of the most important events in olden history.
The city of Ur, found at its mouth, was the birthplace of Abraham. On its banks stood the city of Babylon. In the past, the army of Necho was defeated on its banks by Nebuchadnezzar. Cyrus the Younger and Crassus perished after crossing it. Alexander traversed it and continued his journey eastward. Presently, George Bush's forces are crossing and re-crossing it making its waters redder each time with the blood of Fallujah's citizens.
Fallujah has been laid waste. It has been bombed, re-bombed, its citizens gunned down, its structures devastated by powerful weapons. It is a hell on earth of crushed bodies, shattered buildings and the reek of death. In addition to the artillery and the warplanes dropping 500, 1000, and 2000-pound bombs, 70-ton Abrams Tanks and the murderous AC-130 Spectre gunship that can demolish a whole city block in less than a minute, the Marines had snipers crisscrossing the entire town firing at will at whatever moved outside the buildings. For those inside, the US troops were equipped with thermal sights capable of detecting body heat. Any such detection was eagerly assumed to indicate the presence of "insurgents" inviting a deadly salvo.
No body has an accurate idea of how many Iraqis-combatants and noncombatants-have been killed by the thousands of tons of explosives and bullets let loose upon the city. Mortuary teams collecting the dead rotting in the city streets are fighting the wandering dogs that are busy devouring their former masters. The hundreds buried beneath the rubble and debris will be dug out later. A US marine spokesman, Colonel Mike Regner, estimated 1,000 and 2,000 Iraqis dead. The world is awaiting the toll from more reliable sources with a wincing anticipation.
Eyewitnesses report human corpses littering the city's streets, nibbled at by starving canines. Parents have been forced to watch their wounded children die and then bury their bodies in their gardens. An Iraqi journalist, reporting in the city for the BBC and Reuters, said: "I have seen some strange things recently, such as stray dogs snatching bites out of bodies lying on the streets. Meanwhile, people forage in their gardens looking for something to eat. Those that have survived this far are looking gaunt. The opposite is happening to the dead-left where they fell, they are now bloated and rotting..."
Some images that did manage to filter through the layers of American censorship include scenes of the devastated landscape of the city; the bloodied and fly-covered corpses of young Iraqi men lying in the streets or heaped in rows amidst the debris; a headless body; women and children escaping with the few possessions they have left; mortuary teams collecting the dead; and Fallujah infants being treated for horrific injuries in Baghdad hospitals. US general John Sattler declared: "We have liberated the city of Fallujah."
The assault on Fallujah is a pure and simple Nazi-style collective punishment, not liberation. The city has been razed to the ground because its political, spiritual and tribal leaders, motivated by Iraqi patriotism and opposition to the presence of foreign troops in their country, organized a guerilla resistance to the US invasion.
The aim of the US assault is to make Fallujah a model to the rest of Iraq of what will happen to those thinking on similar lines. It is the leading thrust of an orgy of killing intended to crush and drive underground every voice of dissent and ensure that elections this coming January will throw up a weak-willed, pro-US toady regime. The American military is rumored to be planning similar attacks on scores of other Iraqi cities and towns.
Not a single major voice has been raised in the American media against the ongoing destruction of Fallujah. While much of the world recognizes something dreadful has occurred, the US press does not even bat an eyelash over the organized leveling of a city of 300,000 people. In none of the US media commentaries is there a single phrase of unease about the moral, or legal, questions involved in the attack on Fallujah. None have dared say it in as many words that the American military operation in the city is an unlawful act of aggression in an equally illegal, criminal, aggressive war.
The opposite is true in fact. Ralph Peters, the author of "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace." a rabid Neocon mouthpiece and revered by the ruling Neocons, in his prominently placed November 4 New York Post article wrote: "We need to demonstrate that the US military cannot be deterred or defeated. If that means widespread destruction, we must accept the price. Most of Fallujah's residents-those who wish to live in peace-have already fled. Those who remain have made their choice. We need to pursue the terrorists remorselessly...
"That means killing. While we strive to obey the internationally recognized laws of war (though our enemies do not), our goal should be to target the terrorists and insurgents so forcefully that few survive to raise their hands in surrender. We don't need more complaints about our treatment of prisoners from the global forces of appeasement. We need terrorists dead in the dust. And the world needs to see their corpses...
"Even if Fallujah has to go the way of Carthage, reduced to shards, the price will be worth it. We need to demonstrate our strength of will to the world, to show that there is only one possible result when madmen take on America."
Though the carnage carried out by Hitler's regime was on a different scale than that now being committed by the Bush administration, there are striking parallels. For the first time since the Wehrmacht swept through Europe, the world is witnessing a major imperialist power launching an unjustifiable war, placing an entire people under military occupation and carrying out acts of collective and visible punishment against civilian populace. The US media's wretched connivance in this deception is incredible, as incredible as the fact that this war, based on undeniable lies as it was, was sold to the American people as the gospel truth ordained by God.
To be honest, George Bush is not the first US president ordering the state's machinery to pulverize nations and peoples abroad. Even a hurried analysis of the American's government's conduct in the last century makes for a most damning indictment. Out of the US's past foreign policy woodwork, crawl out numerous invasions, bombings, overthrowing governments, suppressing movements for social change, assassinating political leaders, perverting elections, manipulating labor unions, manufacturing "news", selling blatant lies, death squads, torture, biological warfare, depleted uranium, drug trafficking, mercenaries ... you name it.
This terrorizing of nations and individuals by various US governments has been going on full bore since at least the late 1890s, when Americans obliterated a million Filipinos to keep them safe from the Spanish. 60 million Native Americans, the children of a lesser God, were exterminated by the orders of earlier administrations throughout the 19th century. The difference with past is that George Bush does it in the name of his God, a God far superior to any other and sanctioned fully by his coterie. Ironically, both George Bush and his nemesis, Osama Bin Laden, refer to God almost equal number of times in their public pronouncements.
The United States went into Afghanistan to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden. They killed 10,000 innocent Afghans but could not find their man. They went into Iraq to discover and eliminate Saddam's WMDs. They killed tens of thousands of Iraqis but found no WMD. They laid siege to the city of Fallujah to kill or capture Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. The city and its inhabitants have been blown to smithereens but there is no Zarqawi. Is it not only too convenient? Next when they want to attack Pakistan, or Iran, they simply have to say that Bin Laden is taking refuge there. Just like the next Iraqi city awaiting the fate of Fallujah will be the latest refuge of Zarqawi; the WMDs too could next fly to Syria or may be even Saudi Arabia. Is one imagining things here? Or is it that the US imperialism is indeed now riding full time on the back of gargantuan lies?
After granting George Bush a carte blanche to do what he likes the American citizens, of course, continue their daily lives oblivious to what is being done in their name. Between their work places and the nearest fast food joints, they just do not have enough time to check back on the activities of the man who is playing the Terminator in the name of God and in their name.
Those who do get to know a little are in a constant state of denial. One thing is sure though. Just like in post-war Germany where some even denied the holocaust. "We didn't know what was happening" is bound to become a cliché that will one day be used to ridicule Americans who claim ignorance of the atrocities committed by their administration in their name. Ironically, Khomeini died trying to get people to see America as "the great Satan," It took George W. Bush and his cohorts just four years to do exactly that, and not just in the eyes of the Muslim world.
As America sinks deeper into the heart of darkness, its thinking citizens need to jolt themselves out of their apathy. With each passing day their beloved America is scaling ever greater heights of hideous glories. The man in charge, George W. Bush, is actually living the throes of his apocalyptic dream of "I am become death-the destroyer of the worlds". He codenamed his destruction of Fallujah as "Operation Phantom Fury". But as the falsehood dies and gives way to truth, as all lies must one day, it will be the Iraqi dead that will form a legion of phantoms and would throng around Americans in a macabre dance to haunt them for decades. The fury of those phantoms will be hair raising.
Fallujah will enter history as the place where US imperialism carried out an offense of heinous proportions this November, a monstrous crime far beyond any possible forgiveness. The crimson waters of the Euphrates are now emptying into the Persian Gulf the hopes and aspirations of innocent people whose lives were snuffed out on the orders of a man rewarded for his monumental crimes by his great nation.
The Euphrates flows on.
Email : eagleeye@emirates.net.ae
--------
U.S. Marines Mull Fallujah's Future
Associated Press
By KATARINA KRATOVAC
Nov 27, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=5&u=/ap/20041127/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_cleaning_up_fallujah
FALLUJAH, Iraq - At first glance, the U.S. Marines saw nothing extraordinary about a baby crib in the corner of a bombed-out house in Fallujah. But when Lance Cpl. Nick Fenezia threw back the blankets, a Kalashnikov rifle and bulletproof vest lay on the tiny mattress.
"Man, did you have to be just another muj?" Fenezia mused of the baby's missing father, employing American shorthand for Iraq (news - web sites)'s insurgents - mujahedeen - or Muslim holy warriors. "Couldn't you have stopped shooting at us and watched your baby grow instead?"
U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to fight sporadic gunbattles with rebel holdouts as they clear Fallujah of weapons. On Friday, Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said only about half the buildings in the city had been cleared even though organized resistance has collapsed.
But as the battle calms, U.S. forces are reflecting on the fight, their often-unseen foes and the future of a city that lies in ruins.
Fenezia, of Red Bank, N.J., also turned up a bayonet, ammunition and a baby photo - all lying amid walls shattered by the Americans' devastating firepower.
A burst of gunfire rattled nearby in southern Fallujah, but the Marines shrugged it off.
"They have no idea what they are shooting at. It's just mental games they play. They know they've lost and there is no way out," says Lance Cpl. Brian Wyer, 21, of Chouteau, Okla. "This is nothing, not after the intense battle here."
Marine, Army and Iraqi troops opened their Fallujah assault Nov. 8 with massive artillery and air strikes pounding the city before tanks, armored vehicles and troops on foot pushed in from the north.
They battled for days with rebels who had been fortifying the city since April, when planners called off a Marine assault amid widespread outcry over reports of civilian casualties emanating from Fallujah's hospital, numbers U.S. officers called inflated.
The U.S. military says upward of 1,200 insurgents died in the latest offensive. More than 1,000 suspects were captured, and more than 50 U.S. forces along with eight Iraqis were killed.
Marines are now clearing weapons from the city on the banks of the Euphrates River and preparing for the return of civilians, who once numbered up to 300,000 by some tallies, though U.S. officers estimated that only 50,000 to 60,000 were in the city before the well-publicized attack.
Nationwide elections are scheduled for Jan. 30, but some Marine estimates say Fallujah may not be fully repopulated by then. And on Friday, leading Iraqi politicians called for a six-month delay in the voting because of violence in the country.
As the fight dies down, Marines are finally finding free time to reflect on the furious battle. The Americans wonder how Fallujah could have devolved into what officers say was a center from which rebels spread bombings, beheadings and attacks across Iraq.
Cpl. Perry Bessant, 21, says Marines are "like a detective agency, coming to investigate, to put the pieces together of what Fallujah was."
"It was a space for so many foreign fighters. I just can't believe the locals tolerated them," adds Bessant, from Mullins, S.C.
"Maybe they were terrified of them. Maybe I'd feel like that too if someone said they'd kill my family," replies Staff Sgt. Alexandros Pashos, 38, from New York City.
New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, Oklahoma: The Marines' homes are all a far piece from this central Iraq city in the middle of dusty plain, once dominated by Muslim men in red-checkered scarves and black masks who try to kill the American "infidel" invaders.
When Fallujans do return en masse, they will find many parts of their city in ruins, with bank buildings scorched, mosques bombed, shops destroyed, cars burned, doors to their homes forced open and their cupboards and drawers rifled by foreigners.
"It's going to be difficult putting Fallujah together again, but not impossible," said Pashos. "That is the saddest, to have it all come to this, all these people's homes destroyed."
But even before air and ground assault, Fallujah was poor by the Marines' standards, with many of its people living in mud-brick homes in tight, crowded neighborhoods.
"After we rebuild Fallujah, it will be a lot better place to live," said Wyer, the Oklahoman, "something that was worth our sacrifice."
-----
U.S. Sends in Secret Weapon: Saddam's Old Commandos
(Reuters)
Nov 27, 2004
By Alastair Macdonald
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=1TWUDIDSYI5YICRBAE0CFFA?type=worldNews&storyID=6933057&pageNumber=1
NEAR ISKANDARIYA, Iraq - Twenty months after toppling Saddam Hussein, U.S. troops still battling his followers in the heart of Iraq's old arms industry are hitting back with a new weapon -- ex-members of Saddam's special forces.
For five months, Iraqi police commandos have been based with U.S. Marines in charge of the region along the Euphrates river immediately south of Baghdad, which roadside bombs, ambushes and kidnaps have turned into a no-go area for outsiders and earned it the melodramatic description "triangle of death."
The performance of these police is a critical test of the ability of U.S. forces to hand security over to Iraqis in order to meet their goal of withdrawing while leaving Iraq stable. U.S. officers in the area say they are increasingly optimistic.
"The hardest fighters we have are the former special forces from Saddam's days," Colonel Ron Johnson, commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, told reporters late on Friday.
Praising their local knowledge and fighting skills, Johnson singled out one man who fought against him at Nassiriya, the hardest battle of last year's brief war against Saddam's army.
"If I could have an Iraqi security force guy who's honest, reliable and dependable, it's worth five Marines," he said.
"They're aggressive, they're tough," said Captain Tad Douglas after a raid in the town of Latifiya on Saturday in which the bulk of his force was an Iraqi police "SWAT team."
"Ninety-five percent of our intelligence is from the SWAT," he said of the local knowledge that saw nine people detained.
"We have been...living with them for five months. We've put a lot of time into working with them."
U.S. raids to capture or kill insurgents are now mounted almost exclusively alongside commandos from the Ministry of Interior and a SWAT team from the provincial capital Hilla.
"Our goal since September has been never to go anywhere on our own," said intelligence officer Major Clint Nussbaum. "This is police work, not finding a tank battalion in the desert."
IRAQI PRESENCE This week, Johnson has stepped up raids against insurgents in an operation code-named Plymouth Rock, hoping to maintain pressure on Sunni insurgents in the aftermath of their rout at Falluja, just upstream of his area. More than 100 people have been detained in four days in night-time raids on their homes.
Of Johnson's 5,000-strong force in the region, which was once the heart of Saddam's arms industry and base of the Medina armored division of the elite Republican Guard, some 2,000 are Iraqi, the rest made up of Marines and 850 British soldiers.
At the Marine camp near Iskandariya, 30 miles south of Baghdad, the Iraqis are a clear presence, wearing the khaki jumpsuits of Marine scouts and almost ubiquitous black mustaches. Like special forces troops anywhere they are less than forthcoming about their work.
None were comfortable speaking with a reporter.
Iraqi forces in other regions have had mixed success. This month, thousands of police in the northern city of Mosul fled or changed sides when Sunni Muslim insurgents took charge.
Johnson acknowledges the loyalties of some Iraqis in his force may be divided but says they "want to be on the winning side" and is confident that, in time, U.S.-led troops will end what he sees as limited and decentralized violence by at most a few thousand disgruntled Saddam supporters and local bandits.
Iraqi police here have stuck to their posts despite killings of comrades in bomb attacks and murders of off-duty officers: "They don't cut and run, despite their losses," Johnson said.
Citing intelligence that he says shows broad support for democracy, Johnson forecast local turnout of 45 percent or more at an election due on Jan. 30 -- despite probable violence.
Clearly exasperated by the "triangle of death" tag, he said: "I'm getting more optimistic every day."
-----
Seven Days of Hell
With fewer Western journalists covering the war-torn nation, the true grim picture of continued violence isn't getting out. Our correspondent reports on the last week.
Newsweek
By Rob Nordland
Nov. 27, 2004
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6594892/site/newsweek/
Nov. 27 - To a casual observer, the past week seemed to have been seven days of comparatively good news for the war in Iraq. Abu Musab al Zarqawi's No. 2 was captured in Mosul, while in Fallujah the victorious Marines were uncovering torture chambers and hostage prisons, bomb labs and mosque-based armories. The prime minister's kidnapped relatives were released. Major powers and Iraq's neighbors got together in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh and agreed to forgive 80 percent of Iraq's foreign debt, while supporting elections, which the government announced would take place Jan. 30, 2005, after weeks of speculation they might be delayed, as many rebellious Sunnis had demanded. "We feel we've broken their back and their spirit," said Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. "After Fallujah," added the Iraqi national security adviser, Qassim Daoud, "we saw terrorist activities, bombings, mines, reduce dramatically in Baghdad and elsewhere, clearly confirming our analysis that Fallujah was a safe haven for terrorists."
It was pretty good spin, but that's all it was. Partly it's as if the military gave a big dose of chemo to Fallujah, largely destroying the tumor, but sending fugitive cancer cells zinging around Iraq's lymphatic system. As insurgents fanned out, there were new flare-ups from one end of Iraq to another, even in places that had previously been quiet. Highways became even more dangerous than usual. During these seven days, at least 10 American soldiers were killed in action, and incomplete reports showed an average of 100 attacks on coalition forces daily-far more than the pre-Fallujah average. By Nov. 26, 117 American soldiers will have died in November, making it the second deadliest month of the war (after April 2004, when 140 coalition troops died). And by the end of this week, Iraqi elections looked more imperiled than ever.
Why then was the public perception, at least in the United States, dramatically different? Partly it's because there are fewer Western journalists here than at any time in the war so far, and most of them are either embedded with military units, or largely confined to assorted bunkers around the capital. (NEWSWEEK correspondents themselves have been either in the Green Zone or embedded since October.) Getting a broad view of the war has become harder than ever before; even investigating major incidents can be nearly impossible. For instance, two weeks ago 60 Iraqi police recruits reportedly were kidnapped from their hotel in Rutbah, in Anbar province, and to date no one has been able to confirm what became of them, because Rutbah is too dangerous to reach, even for Iraqi journalists. Compounding the problem, both Iraqi and coalition authorities often simply don't report much of what happens, while private contractors almost never reveal attacks on their reconstruction efforts, even when their foreign personnel are killed (although 190 such deaths have surfaced so far this year, it's a fraction of the probable total).
Here then is a necessarily incomplete, but nevertheless alarming chronicle of seven days in the war in Iraq, culled from interviews with Iraqis, foreign contractors and Western officials, wire services, confidential security and intelligence daily reports, and even military press releases.
Saturday, Nov. 20 is a particularly bad day. Mosul has been in an uproar ever since Nov. 11, three days after Fallujah's Operation Phantom Fury began; 3,200 of the 4,000 police have abandoned their posts in the country's third biggest city, and 1,200 American troops are still restoring an uneasy order. Today nine Iraqi soldiers are found, all shot in the head, seven of them also beheaded. And near Kirkuk in the north, an oil well is blown up, the sixth in 10 days. Insurgents in Ramadi, Fallujah's sister city, clash with American Marines, leaving nine Iraqis dead and five wounded.
Baghdad is even worse. A suicide car bomb blows up on the airport highway, wounding five American soldiers. Insurgents attack a police station in the Azamiyah district, and fight a pitched battle with U.S. troops. Another car bomb explodes on Sadoun Street, the main shopping thoroughfare, while in Amariyah, roadside bombs target Iraqi National Guardsmen. In all, according to official figures, 10 die in political violence in Baghdad today, while nine American soldiers are wounded and one killed.
Official figures don't count an Iraqi civil defense employee, shot to death in the Dora neighborhood today by four 18- to 20-year-old gunmen who don't even bother to cover their faces. "We'll be back," they tell a witness. "We have six more names to execute here." Only a few days before, on the same street, they'd shot a U.S. army translator as he walked his six-year-old son to school, and then shot the child too-the second such father-son execution in the neighborhood. Both fathers had received death threats ordering them to quit their jobs with the "infidels."
Sunday, Nov. 21. Long lines form at gasoline stations in the capital, the consequence mainly of an attack a week earlier on a major oil refinery north of Baghdad. There have also been repeated attacks on the power station at Bayji. In Ramadi, eight National Guardsmen are ambushed and killed. A rocket attack on the Green Zone, where American and Iraqi government officials are based, is launched from just across the river near the Palestine and Sheraton Hotels, where many foreign contractors and news agencies are housed. One American soldier is killed in Baghdad, but officials release no details. In Latifiyah, the notorious apex of the "triangle of death," an Iraqi reporter for Reuters is stopped at a checkpoint on Highway One, the country's main north-south artery. In broad daylight, 17 masked insurgents search every car in a long queue; at the one in front of the reporter, they find National Guard and police uniforms in the trunk, and make the three occupants get out of the car. "Take them over there and kill them," an insurgent orders, and the three are shot out of hand. The reporter persuades the insurgents that he works only for Arab media, and is allowed to go. Later he files his report anonymously.
Monday, Nov. 22. The streets of the capital look half-deserted, even long before the 10:30 pm curfew. Many worried parents are keeping their children home from school lately, after insurgents circulate flyers ordering all Baghdad schools to close-or else. Today, only a week after Baghdad International Airport reopened, a homemade bomb is found on a commercial airliner there; authorities do not reveal which carrier it is, but both Iraqi Airways and Royal Jordanian operate scheduled flights to Baghdad. "American citizens are encouraged to review their travel plans," an embassy warning says, "to determine whether travel on commercial carriers servicing Iraq is necessary at this time." There are, however, no alternative routes, with highways to the north (Bayji), west (Ramadi/Fallujah) and south (Latifiyah) all deemed by Western security companies as too dangerous for travel, except under heavily armed escort. In Anbar province, which includes Fallujah, two U.S. Marines are killed; no further details are released.
Up in Mosul, four more dead Iraqi soldiers or National Guardsmen are found. The Mosul police chief, Mohammed Kheiri Barhawi, is arrested carrying $600,000 in cash, accused of selling out to the insurgency. And a prominent Sunni cleric, Sheikh Feydhi Mohammed al-Feydhi, is assassinated.
Down in Latifiyah, Coalition forces raid a house and find 12 decapitated bodies, at least one of them an Iraqi National Guardsman. And in Basra, insurgents blow up the 42-inch pipeline feeding the oil export terminal, cutting off 750,000 barrels a day in exports.
In Baghdad, one American soldier is killed by a mortar strike. When nervous bodyguards for the Iraqi Minister of Interior open fire on a suspicious vehicle, the occupants turn out to be British private security operatives, who fire back and kill one Iraqi guard; in the parlance of the reports, this is known as a "blue on blue" incident, and it's become a common phenomenon on the jumpy streets. Jumpy with good reason; gunmen ambush a car carrying a top Ministry of Public Works official, Amal Abdul Hameed, killing her and three of her employees on the way to work.
In all, one private security firm tallies 94 attacks on government and Coalition workers during the 24-hour period ending today; 23 of these in Baghdad, 15 in central and western Iraq, 46 in northern Iraq, and 10 in the south. Fallujah in the west is indeed relatively quiet; insurgents have just gone everywhere else.
Tuesday, Nov. 23. Another prominent Sunni cleric, Sheikh Ghalib Zuhairi, is assassinated, this time in Muqdadiyah, north of Baghdad. Both he and the other victim were critics of the American presence, but apparently not critical enough; later Zarqawi issues a Web screed accusing Sunni clerics of being soft on the infidels. Kidnappings seem to have abated a bit, either because of Fallujah, or because nearly all foreigners are staying off the streets. Today that hiatus ends. Al Jazeera TV airs a videotape showing an American contractor of Lebanese extraction in captivity.
In Samarra, a roadside bomb goes off, killing one American soldier, and later a mortar is fired at the American base, and wounds several Iraqi children. Samarra is where the Coalition's current counteroffensive began, with Operation Baton Rouge on Oct. 4, a kind of dress rehearsal for Fallujah. The First Infantry Division's Task Force Danger quickly pronounced the city cleansed of the 100-200 foreign terrorists said to have taken over the streets, but incidents have continued ever since, often daily.
In Baghdad, Iraqi workers leaving the Green Zone by the 14th of July Bridge are fired on by gunmen, and a member of the government advisory body, the National Council, is assassinated; so are officials in Basra and in Kirkuk. And in the Abu Dshir neighborhood in south Baghdad, two men walk into the principal's office at the Ahahran Primary School, which has remained open, and shoot to death both the principal and his deputy.
Two big Iraqization announcements today. Election officials say that the Iraqi National Guard and the police will protect polling places on election day, instead of U.S. forces, who have made training their indigenous counterparts an urgent priority. And in the northern oil fields around Kirkuk, the government proudly announces, 2,000 Iraqi National Guardsmen today take over responsibility for oil pipeline security, a job previously handled by foreign security firms.
Wednesday, Nov. 24. With temperatures nearing freezing at night, stocks of kerosene in the capital disappear. Because of daily and prolonged electricity blackouts, most Iraqis use kerosene heaters to stay warm. Another suicide car bomb goes off on the airport highway, the 14th since Sept. 1 on that two-mile-long stretch of road; this time four Iraqis are killed and 43 wounded. Later, a foreign contractor is assassinated in an ambush on his car in Baghdad. Then in the Green Zone, an alert goes out that a suicide car is on the loose; it isn't found, but a nervous military convoy gets into a blue-on-blue shootout with a private security company that tries to pass it. No one acknowledges casualties, if there were any.
Coalition forces launch another anti-insurgent offensive, this one codenamed Operation Plymouth Rock, aimed at cleaning up Latifiyah and the triangle of death, which incidentally begins at the southern borders of Baghdad. While they're rounding up dozens of insurgents down there, Mosul remains restive, with gunmen trying unsuccessfully to assassinate both the deputy governor of the province, Kasro Ghuran, and police major general Rashid Flaih, in charge of a new anti-terrorist unit sent to work with American troops.
Thursday, Nov. 25. Another suicide car bomb goes off, this time in Samarra aimed at a police post; two Iraqi civilians die, and 15 are wounded, including six policemen. In Baghdad, an American diplomat, Jim Mollen, is shot to death driving his own, unarmored car out in the Red Zone; he's the second U.S. diplomat killed since the American embassy opened July 1. No explanation is given for why Mollen was outside the Green Zone with no security, a violation of embassy rules. Zarqawi's group later claims credit. Even the Green Zone isn't completely safe; rockets slam into a crowded tent camp there in mid-afternoon, killing four Nepalese Gurkha security guards employed by Global Risk Strategies, a British security firm that guards government facilities. Another 15 Gurkhas are wounded. Ansar al-Sunna, a terrorist group from Kurdistan, claims credit. In the north, two days into the job, the National Guard is unable to thwart a bombing that cripples the main pipeline from Kirkuk to the beleaguered Bayji power station.
Friday, Nov. 26. Even Fallujah appears far from pacified. Insurgents announce a counter-offensive, "with the aim of shattering the myth of the invincibility of the coalition forces," according to a statement published by Middle East Online. There is no way to verify those claims, but insurgents do kill two U.S. Marines with grenades during an attempted house search; the Marines kill three insurgents in return. In Mosul, 15 more bodies are found, bringing to 35 the total apparent murders of security forces there this week.
Most insurgent attacks are small, hit-and-run affairs, or remote-controlled and suicide bombings-but not always. In the previously calm town of Khalis, 37 miles north of Baghdad, a unit of 100 insurgents today attacks the two police stations and briefly takes over the city hall, Iraqi police say.
If the rest of the world hasn't been very alarmed by what's happening in post-Fallujah Iraq, some of its politicians certainly are. No one seriously thinks Iraqi forces who can't guard an oil pipe could possibly protect the country's thousands of polling places. In restive Anbar province, voter registration has all but stopped; nearly a fifth [90 out of 540] of the country's voter registration centers have in effect shut down, officials say, especially in Sunni areas where the insurgency is strongest. Friday a group of prominent Iraqi politicians, including the two main pro-American Kurdish parties, issue a statement calling on Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to delay elections for six months, to give a chance for order to be restored. Leading the effort is Adnan Pachachi, a pro-American Sunni politico.
Allawi rejected the demand on Saturday, but even some members of his own government have called for considering it. As one Sunni politician commented, "Look at it his way-he gets another six months as prime minister." But most Sunnis, the minority that long ruled Iraq, would much rather see Allawi in temporary power, than elections that give permanent control to the Shia, who make up 60 percent of the population and have long been disenfranchised. Far more important will be the reaction of the Shiites' most revered leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has already issued a fatwa making voting a religious obligation. The Shia have been so high on elections that even their firebrands, like Moqtada al-Sadr, have put down their weapons lately. If the government does give in and delay the elections, and Sistani objects, the unrest that follows will indeed make these last seven days seem tame.
-----
The Morality of Waging War on Iraq
By Li Tsze Sun
Al-Jazeerah,
November 27 ,2004
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/November/27%20o/The%20Morality%20of%20Waging%20War%20on%20Iraq%20By%20Li%20Tsze%20Sun.htm
On March 19, 2003, the United States of America launched its first series of air strikes on Baghdad. For the 22 days thereafter, a full-fledged war went on between the United States and Iraq. Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. The United States won the war, but is waging the war moral?
Let's assess the morality by utilizing a humanitarian moral system proposed by Scholars Jacques Thiroux and Rushworth Kidder based on the five principles of life, goodness, justice, unity, and honesty/truth telling.
The two major reasons for the Bush administration to wage war on Iraq are:
1. Iraq posed a threat to the United States and the world, and therefore the United States has a moral cause upholding the Principle of Goodness.
2. Saddam Hussein is a dictator oppressing his own people, and therefore the United States has a moral cause upholding the Principle of Goodness.
So the mission of the war was to save Iraq for democracy and secure long-lasting peace and security for the United States and the world by removing Saddam Hussein.
Let's first not challenge these two premises, assuming the Principle of Goodness is the moral cause for the war.
Principle of Life. A justification for a moral invasion can be that it is going to be limited in casualties. The initiating attacks on Iraq by the Bush administration can be moral on March19 , 2003 when the U.S. military bombed the building where Saddam was holding a meeting in Baghdad because the Principles of Goodness appeared to be supporting the act. Nevertheless, when the casualties on both sides were rising day by day when the war prolonged, the Principle of Life became conflicting more and more with the Principle of Goodness. By June 16, 2004, 952 coalition forces including 836 U.S. military were killed, and at least 5,134 U.S. troops had been wounded. For Iraq, between 4895 and 6370 Iraqi soldiers and resistance fighers were killed during major combat operations; between 9436 and 11,317 civilians had been killed and 40,000 Iraqis injured. The figures are still rising today after the handover of sovereignty. For this reason, it appears hard to morally justify the war from today's point of view.
Principle of Justice. Strictly speaking, according to the Just War Theory, this is not a just war because it violates at least one principle of just wars (although it started with a good cause)-the United States launched preemptive strikes on Iraq, whereas Iraq was defending itself. More importantly, it is not just for the U.S. military to use excessive or disproportionate force - so-called "shock and awe" bombing, for even a good cause. The U.S. military has used "smart bombs" or depleted uranium weapons that are likely to cause long-lasting harm to the people living on the land. It has had reckless disregard of civilian security and well being, including bombing hospitals; otherwise, civilian casualties would not have been as high as 50,000. All these are contributing to the greater immorality of the use of force.
Principle of Honesty/Truth Telling. The first reason of the Bush administration waging war on Iraq is that Iraq posed a threat to the United States and the world. It's because people believed that Bush was telling the truth that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). However, before the war (March 7, 2003), the Bush administration refused to accept the report by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), of which Han Blix was director of the arms inspection team in Iraq, that says the team found "no evidence" of WMD. Moreover, during the war, coalition forces had not found WMD. Furthermore, up to now, Saddam and his bad guys have not used WMD. As it is logical to believe that a threatened and cornered Saddam would have used WMD as the last resort to fight back, people should begin to doubt the honesty of Bush and his administration, which had repeatedly said that Iraq possesses WMD. This violation of the Principle of Honesty/Truth Telling reduces the goodness of the moral cause.
Moreover, Bush also claims a linkage between Saddam Hussein and al Qa'ida or terrorist organizations, which is another legitimate cause for the threat. However, CIA director George Tenet testified that there were no "pervasive indications" of Iraq-al Qa'id links. Besides, the U.S. Department of State had not included Iraq in the list of international terrorism of 2001 when it compiled the report Patterns of Global Terrorism in 2002. This again violates the Principle of Honesty/Truth Telling, and further reduces the goodness of the moral cause.
Principle of Unity. Bush seriously violated the Principle of Unity by unilaterally giving Iraq a 48-hour ultimatum under the objection of many representatives of UN members in the Security Council. The countries that opposed the war included France, Germany, China, Canada, Russia, Egypt, Jordan, and most Arab states including Saudi Arabia. When 82 percent of people wanted him to ask for UN approval before attacking Iraq, Bush went ahead on his own. He acted without tolerance, which is a decent respect for the right of other people to have ideas or at least a strong desirability of listening to different points of view and attempting to understand why. Such an act that shows no respect for others' views, no care for others' well-being, and no regard for others' values and importance is immoral unless the Principle of Goodness, as well as the Principles of Life and Justice are on the side of those waging war.
Principle of Goodness. Last but not the least, the moral cause for the U.S.-Iraqi War based on the Principle of Goodness can be subject to re-examination. Many people have no doubt that the political system under Saddam Hussein is far from a democracy in which the Iraqis can enjoy more freedom and happiness. They also have no doubt that Saddam Hussein is going to be a threat to neighboring countries if he possesses WMD. This was proved by his invasion of Kuwait more than a decade ago and ruthless killings of the Kurds. Nevertheless, peoples of the world have different abilities, potentials, feelings, and needs, and therefore are unique. The spirit of freedom and democracy, therefore, is to recognize and allow for this uniqueness, and the best way is to let them live out their lives they choose. Only such freedom, as John Stuart Mill said, could ensure the best ways of life.
As for Iraq's threat to United States and the world, it is only a possibility - a possibility which is greater or lesser depending on the degree of honesty of Bush and his administration. From hindsight that the U.S. military vanquished the Iraqi arms forces in virtually no time, it should be evident that the threat was not imminent. It was not imminent to Iraq's neighboring countries, not to mention to the United States of America, the only superpower in the world today, which is far away from Iraq.
It can therefore be concluded that waging war on Iraq is immoral.
Dr. Li Tsze Sun is an Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences United Arab Emirates University Associate Editor, Academic Exchange Quarterly, USA
(http://www.highered.org/AEQ/summ033.htm )
Earth, a planet hungry for peace
Apartheid Wall
The Israeli Land-Grab Apartheid Wall built inside the Palestinian territories, here separating Abu Dis from occupied East Jerusalem. (IPC, 7/4/04).
The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python.
-------- landmines
U.S. to Skip Nairobi Conference on Land Mines
By George Gedda
Associated Press
Saturday, November 27, 2004; Page A32
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15604-2004Nov26?language=printer
The United States will not attend a major review conference next week about a 1997 international treaty on land mines because of the cost of participation and disagreement with crucial elements of the pact.
In making the announcement yesterday, the State Department said the decision should not be seen as a sign of U.S. indifference to the problem of land mines.
"We share common cause with all those who seek to protect innocent civilians from indiscriminately used land mines," State Department spokesman J. Adam Ereli said.
The conference, starting Monday in Nairobi, will review compliance with the Ottawa Convention on anti-personnel mines. The pact, ratified by 143 countries, bans the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel mines and stipulates that mined areas be cleared within 10 years.
The United States, China and Russia are among 51 countries that have not ratified the treaty.
U.S. humanitarian demining programs have cost almost $1 billion over the past decade. Key target countries have been Iraq, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
Lincoln Bloomfield, the State Department's top official on land mines, said the administration decided it could not justify using tax dollars to support the Nairobi conference. The meeting, he said, "will have obviously a political platform that is not our policy."
Sending even an observer delegation to the conference would have required the United States to pick up 20 percent of the cost, consistent with a U.N. formula, Bloomfield told a small group of reporters.
Conference organizers estimated the U.S. cost at somewhat more than $100,000, a figure deemed unrealistically low by the State Department, another official said.
He said the United States would have had to pick up part of the cost for rental of the meeting site, translation services, catering, publications and subsidies for participation by some poor countries, the official said.
Bloomfield said one problem with the Ottawa Convention is that it would take all anti-personnel mines out of the hands of U.S. soldiers, even weapons with safety features that would deactivate them after a few hours or days.
That makes the land mine a weapon used only in wartime and not a hazard to civilians after a conflict, Bloomfield said. Absent such weaponry, U.S. or allied forces could be at risk in wartime, along with the civilian population that the forces were trying to protect, he said. At present, the United States does not maintain land mines anywhere in the world.
In February, President Bush backed away from a Clinton-era policy of giving up all anti-personnel mines by 2006, assuming the Pentagon could develop an alternative by that time. The new policy allows indefinite use of mines with deactivation features on the assumption they pose little threat to civilians.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), a leader in the fight to ban land mines, called the policy "a deeply disappointing step backward." Leahy was not available for comment yesterday on the administration's decision not to attend the Nairobi conference.
-------- pakistan / india
Bhutto's Husband Wants Fresh Election in Pakistan
Reuters
By Amir Zia
Nov 27, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=731&e=5&u=/nm/20041127/wl_nm/pakistan_zardari_dc
KARACHI (Reuters) - Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's husband said on Saturday only fresh elections and an end to military rule could lead to a rapprochement between Bhutto's party and President Pervez Musharraf.
"We want free and fair election ... and the return of the armed forces to barracks," said Asif Ali Zardari, who walked out of prison earlier this week after the Supreme Court granted him bail in a corruption case.
The sudden release of Zardari -- who languished in prison for eight years on corruption and criminal charges -- has raised speculation relations could be patched up between Musharraf and Bhutto's secular Pakistan Peoples' Party.
Musharraf, a staunch ally of the United States in the war on terror, is also the army chief.
Opposition parties want him to quit the military post, but Musharraf has indicated that would hurt Muslim Pakistan's efforts as a U.S. ally in its war on terror.
Analysts say Bhutto's party is close to Musharraf's agenda of a liberal Pakistan, supporting the anti-terrorism fight.
But Zardari said Musharraf's liberal stance was only to appease the West.
"You cannot evolve a liberal society through bayonet," he told Reuters in an interview.
But there was a need for a consensus among all political forces on the need to "demilitarize society" and end military intervention in politics, he said.
Pakistan has been ruled by the army most of the time since it gained independence from Britain in 1947, and the military has a history of manipulating political parties.
"I am not asking the people to come on to the streets," he said. "But they should hold on to this thought that there will be elections. He (Musharraf) will go. She (Bhutto) will come back. We will get democracy -- soon."
"PERSECUTED AND WRONGED"
Bhutto's party was ousted from power in Nov. 1996 on graft charges. She has lived in exile since 1999 to escape arrest, dividing her time between the United Arab Emirates and England.
When in power, Zardari was known as Mr Ten Percent for allegedly giving out state contracts in return for commission.
But Zardari said that was propaganda. "They wanted to weaken civil society," he said. "We were not doing anything and it has been proven during the test of time in eight years."
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the architect of the allegations, admitted that he committed a mistake, he said.
"We were persecuted and wronged. One person (Sharif) has apologized and I accepted his apology. I am waiting for the second (apology, from Musharraf)."
Zardari said he was happy in the role of "a little trouble shooter" for the party rather than a leader. "The entire party is looking at me not to lead them, but to assist her (Bhutto)."
"But she is a better boxer, she is a better politician and she is a better leader. " he said referring to his school days when he was dropped out of the boxing team.
"Why you should get the second choice?"
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia Criticized Over Dalai Lama Visa
Reuters
November 27, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16086-2004Nov27?language=printer
VIENTIANE, Nov 27 - China criticized Russia on Saturday over its decision to give the Dalai Lama a visa, the first Moscow has granted the Tibetan spiritual leader in a decade.
Russia, which has a million Buddhists, said on Friday it would give the Dalai Lama a visa but reassured Beijing it was not supporting his demands for Tibetan autonomy.
"The Dalai is not a common religious personage, but a separatist who engages in splittist activities," Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told reporters on the sidelines of a southeast Asian leaders meeting in the Laos capital.
"China opposes any country having official contacts with him. We do not condone any country allowing him to use their land to engage in separatist activities or sow discord in China's relations with any other country," he said.
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, leader of Russia's Buddhist region of Kalmykia, has invited the Dalai Lama every year since 1996 and threatened to take the government to court, saying its refusal to admit him is a violation of his people's religious rights.
The Russian foreign ministry has previously refused to grant him a visa, saying it could affect Russo-Chinese relations.
Russia made clear the visa did not imply any recognition of the Dalai Lama's desire for autonomy for Tibet, which became communist after Chinese troops entered in 1950. The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after an abortive uprising.
Interfax news agency quoted a source in Kalmykia as saying the Dalai Lama, winner of a Nobel Peace Prize, could arrive in regional capital Elista as early as Monday.
However, the trip might not go ahead at all because of the Dalai Lama's tight schedule, his spokesman said.
"There are logistic problems, so I can't confirm that the trip will take place," he said by phone from the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala, seat of the so-called Tibetan government-in-exile.
He said the Dalai Lama had to leave on the trip as early as Monday but the short-notice meant he could not travel on a commercial airliner and aides were trying to charter a plane.
"He has to be back by Wednesday at least as he has engagements fixed in southern India from Thursday," the spokesman said. "So if he can't leave on Monday he won't go."
Kalmyk Buddhists have long wanted the Dalai Lama to consecrate a new monastery to replace ones destroyed by the Soviet government, which deported the Kalmyk people to Siberia and Central Asia for allegedly helping the Germans in World War Two.
Russian Buddhists also live in the Siberian regions of Buryatia and Tuva. Ilyumzhinov has said he would expect 100,000 pilgrims to come to Kalmykia to see the Dalai Lama.
(Reporting by John Ruwitch, editing by Ed Cropley and Rahul Sharma; Reuters Messaging: edward.cropley.reuters.com+reuters.net; tel +66 2648 9722))
-------- spies
Turmoil at CIA as Goss lays down the law
The Associated Press
11/27/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-11-27-goss-lays-down-law_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - When former CIA Director George Tenet said his farewells at a two-hour ceremony this summer, a deputy noted that 40% of the agency's staff had worked for just one chief.
Since Porter Goss took over, at least five top officials have left the CIA.
It was a symbol of Tenet's endurance, seven years on the job, the second longest tenure of a director. It also was a mark of agency's growth during a hiring spree that began in 1998 and accelerated after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
With Tenet's successor, former Rep. Porter Goss, in charge and making changes, one of the longer periods of leadership stability in the CIA's 57-year history is ending.
In an e-mail this month, Goss told employees of his plans for new procedures, organization and senior personnel. He reminded them that the CIA is a "secret agency," indirectly addressing media leaks widely believed to have angered the White House. Goss also said he intends to clarify "beyond doubt the rules of the road."
At least five top officials already have left the CIA since Goss took over.
There are those who view Goss' early moves as a purge. They worry that the Florida Republican who led the House Intelligence Committee until August is bringing a partisan background to an agency that traditionally has tried to avoid politics.
Others see the transition as welcome change for an agency criticized for major intelligence failures, including missing clues before Sept. 11 and botching the prewar analysis on Iraq's weapons.
Former intelligence officials, both supportive and critical of Goss, say his situation is reminiscent of when Stansfield Turner took over the agency in 1977 or John Deutsch in 1995. Both made waves.
Deutsch inherited an embattled CIA, struggling with the Aldrich Ames spy scandal and disoriented by the dissolution of its antagonist, the Soviet Union. Deutsch brought with him aides from the Pentagon, many of whom managed to rub the CIA's establishment the wrong way.
Turner took over after a series of commissions found the CIA had kept files on U.S. citizens, directly plotted assassinations of heads of government and engaged in other abuses of power. The admiral brought in aides from the Navy, who some say were perceived as adversaries of the agency's career staff.
Goss has surrounded himself with close advisers from the House committee who have become embroiled in the recent turmoil at the CIA.
In an interview, Turner said Goss could not have come in without wanting to make changes.
While Turner gives Goss the benefit of the doubt, he questions how Goss and his aides are going about the transition.
"They seem to be a little ham-handed," Turner said. "That is, I think it would have been advisable for him and his team to take a little while and get to know the place."
To Richard Kerr, a former CIA deputy director who led the agency's internal review of the Iraq analysis for Tenet, "It has been a fairly rough transition so far."
Kerr and other officials are surprised about how public a series of high-profile retirements has been since Goss took over. Not all were happy partings, and it is unclear whether officials left voluntarily.
The undercover heads of the Europe and Far East divisions are stepping down.
The top two officials in the agency's Directorate of Operations, the clandestine service, left after conflicts with Goss' aides that came into the open when they were leaked to the media.
Goss' deputy director, John McLaughlin, who had been acting director, announced his retirement after a 32-year career. Goss has told agency employees he is working on recommending a replacement to President Bush.
On Wednesday, in an editorial in The Washington Post, McLaughlin urged "balance and thoughtfulness" in the discussion of intelligence changes. He said criticisms of the CIA as dysfunctional are "way out of line."
"Like the U.S. military, our nation's intelligence officers face daunting challenges now and for years to come," McLaughlin wrote. "Constructive criticism can help. Tirades and hyperbole will not."
Eugene Poteat, president of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, said much of the current situation stems from mistakes on Iraq intelligence estimates, which he said by nature are best guesses.
"If you look at it objectively from the outside, if John McLaughlin was part of the team that made the wrong analysis, maybe he should retire. Maybe that is what the president and Porter Goss thought," Poteat said.
Attention is turning to changes Goss will make at the agency's other leading section, the Directorate of Intelligence, which is headed by Jami Miscik. A friend and colleague of McLaughlin's, she was heavily involved in the Iraq analysis.
Goss' moves also are under scrutiny by Democratic lawmakers.
Some were dismayed by a line in Goss' recent e-mail to agency personnel that said the CIA's job is to "support the administration." The CIA said that should not be interpreted to mean support the administration politically, but rather support it with intelligence.
In a letter to Goss, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she feared the "politicization of our intelligence services."
-------- us
US commander warns Iran, others not to underestimate US military power
DOHA (AFP)
Nov 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041127134453.ko2mpxtj.html
A top US commander has warned Iran and other countries to never underestimate US air and naval power, discounting concerns that US forces are too tied down in Iraq to respond to challenges elsewhere.
"To deter a nation state you should never underestimate the air and naval power of the United States," General John Abizaid, the commander of US forces in the Middle East told AFP in a joint interview late Friday.
"Why the Iranians would want to move against us in an overt manner that would cause us to use our air or naval power against them would be beyond me. We have an incredible amount of power," he said.
Abizaid made the comment in response to questions about whether the United States, with the bulk of its ground forces tied down in Iraq, had the means to meet other contingencies such as a conflict with Iran.
The United States suspects Iran's nuclear programme is aimed at developing atomic weapons, but Tehran insists it is for civilian purposes only.
Abizaid pointed to the US-led assault on the former Iraqi rebel stronghold of Fallujah as an example of the overwhelming force that can be brought to bear by a relatively small ground force of some 10,000 troops backed by air strikes launched from US aircraft carriers in the Gulf.
"And so we can generate more military power per square inch than anybody else on earth, and everybody knows it," he said.
"If you ever even contemplate our nuclear capability, it should give everybody the clear understanding that there is no power than can match us militarily," he said, speaking as he flew to his headquarters here from Afghanistan.
Lawmakers from both US parties have pressed for increases in the size of the army, warning that US ground forces have been strained to breaking point by a longer, more violent struggle to pacify Iraq than anticipated.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has resisted calls for permanent increases in the size of the army, relying instead on temporary increases and a reorganization to squeeze more combat brigades from the existing force.
"The question is do you need to have a very, very large conventional land force to deal with the forseeable problems of the next 20 years?" said Abizaid.
"My answer is if the international community hangs together and there is not a bloc of nations for example that would come together in some way as to present a threat to the United States, we've got it about right," he said.
As it pursues a long war against Muslim extremism, the United States should rely on local forces to fight insurgents, he said.
"My view is that the way to win these wars, to win the insurgencies in both Afghanistan and Iraq, you need to build Afghan and Iraqi capacity, and in the long run the need for large numbers of American troops will come down," he said.
"So the priority has to be helping countries help themselves. After all, who better can go against the cellular structures in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, wherever you may find them, but the people that live there," he said.
Meanwhile, more troops are needed in Iraq through the January 30 elections, Abizaid acknowledged. However, no decisions have been reached on how many are required or where they will come from, he said. There are now about 138,000 US troops in Iraq.
Options under discussion range from extending tours of duty of more soldiers, speeding the arrival of others already scheduled to deploy to Iraq earlier next year, to bringing in extra troops from Europe or the United States for a short period.
"And of course one of the key things we have to understand is what the Iraqis are capable of doing or not capable of doing between now and the elections," Abizaid said.
"So the big question is what American plus Iraqi equation equals good enough security for the elections, and everybody needs to understand there is not going to be perfect security for the elections," he said.
--------
Navy project spurs questions
11/27/2004
Washington Post
By SPENCER S. HSU
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20041127/1015573.asp
WASHINGTON - Shortly after dawn on a recent morning, two dump trucks and a water tanker pulled up to a new, unmarked complex of buildings at East Potomac Park, the grassy peninsula near the Jefferson Memorial. The drivers got out of their vehicles, knocked at a gatehouse with blacked-out windows and waited for a security guard to emerge from behind a locked door.
A few minutes later, a panel of 10-foot-high security fence slid open, and the trucks disappeared inside, leaving the joggers and cyclists along the waterfront none the wiser about their mission.
What goes on beyond the fence is a mystery. The multiple-agency review normally required to erect anything on federal parkland did not apply to the beige, metal buildings. The Navy, which operates the site, calls the work a "utility assessment and upgrade" and volunteers nothing more.
"As a matter of policy, we can't go into the particulars," said Lt. Cmdr. Joseph A. Surette, a Navy spokesman.
Frederick J. Lindstrom, acting secretary of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, said discussing the matter would be illegal. He did say the Navy started the work without seeking review from the commission, which oversees the city's Potomac River parklands.
"Let's just say when they're finished, you'll be glad they've done what they've done," Lindstrom said.
Amid the secrecy, theories abound about the four-acre complex, which is dead center in a ring that includes the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, Reagan National Airport and the National War College.
Is it a sophisticated sensor station, guarding the 14th Street bridge and other Potomac River crossings? Is it an excavation point for underwater barriers to protect the Washington Channel and Potomac River from submarines? Is it a staging area for Navy Seabees securing underwater cables between the White House and the Pentagon, across the river?
Whatever the case, in a capital where concrete barriers and police roadblocks have been a common and often grating part of city life since Sept. 11, 2001, the Navy compound represents a more ambiguous side to security. It is visible and obscure, hidden in plain sight, billed as temporary but expected to last for years.
And it joins a network of things large and small erected to protect the capital. Wind and radiation tracking instruments sit atop the Federal Reserve. Biowarfare sensors sniff the air in front of the Smithsonian Institution. Anti-aircraft systems have been spotted on a rooftop next to the White House and on a Prince George's County riverbank, across the Potomac from Mount Vernon.
For its part, the Navy began work unobtrusively on the site about a year ago.
The Navy took over the National Park Service land without any announcement. When the agencies that oversee the Mall caught up with the project months later, the hangar-like structures, which cover an excavation area, were visible from nearby Interstate 395.
After inquiries, senior officials at the Fine Arts Commission and the National Capital Planning Commission were briefed about the security-sensitive project and sworn to silence.
Surette, the Navy spokesman, would not say whether the project is classified or had a name. Nor would he say how much it cost, how many people were on the job or why it was needed. He did say that work under the temporary structures would last about four years, that it complied with local and federal safety and environmental laws, and that it would have no impact on traffic.
Mall preservationists say they appreciate the Navy's assurances - as well as its efforts to protect the nation - but decry the lack of oversight and public meetings by watchdog agencies.
"What is going on?" asked Judy Scott Feldman, head of the National Coalition to Save Our Mall, a group of civic and professional organizations in Washington formed in 2000. "Why the Navy would be doing construction is a question. . . . And if the Navy is saying it's purely a construction project, then why is it a secret?"
-------- war crimes
Congress threatens to cut aid in fight over criminal court
The Guardian
Julian Borger
November 27, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1360967,00.html
The US Congress has launched a fresh attack on the international criminal court at The Hague, threatening to cut off development aid to countries who refuse to guarantee immunity from prosecution for Americans at the tribunal.
Washington has withheld about $50m (£26m) in military aid to more than 30 countries, such as Benin, Croatia, Ecuador and Mali, which refused to sign exemption deals.
But they and more than 40 other countries have resisted US demands on the grounds that immunity deals would clash with their domestic laws and international obligations.
The new provision, included in a budget bill due for a vote on December 8, would add pressure on recalcitrant countries by cutting off civil as well as military aid.
It would stop disbursements from the state department's $2.5bn Economic Support Fund aimed at alleviating poverty.
The measure could jeopardise $8.5m intended for Ireland and aimed at bolstering the Northern Irish peace process. But it would affect mainly developing countries such as Ecuador, Peru, South Africa and Caribbean countries.
"This is money that would go towards HIV/Aids prevention and education. It could make the ability of countries to resist this invasion of their national laws more difficult," said William Pace, the head of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, a network of non-governmental organisations.
The measure was introduced by a Republican congressman from Washington state, George Nethercutt, whose office did not return a call seeking comment yesterday.
Washington claims that 96 countries have signed immunity pacts, although some have been kept secret at the request of signatories concerned about the popular reaction at home. Meanwhile, 97 countries have ratified the ICC treaty.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Government whistleblowers reap hefty rewards
11/27/2004
The Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-11-27-whistleblowers_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Crime may not pay, but blowing the whistle on companies that swindle the government sure can.
Jim Alderson got $20 million in one settlement and split $100 million with another whistleblower in a related case, both involving Medicare fraud by the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain and a company it acquired.
Once facing a wrecked career and no pension, Alderson, 58, now owns houses in Plano, Texas, and Whitefish, Mont., drives a new Thunderbird and has established a charitable foundation with the money he received. While his pastures became greener after long legal battles, blowing the whistle was no easy ride into the sunset.
"You risk everything when you do it," he said.
Alderson is among the beneficiaries of a law passed nearly two decades ago that encourages whistleblowers to come forward by promising them up to a quarter of the money recovered by the government.
Since its inception, the False Claims Act has generated $12 billion for the federal treasury and more than $1 billion for hundreds of whistleblowers.
Whistleblowers have been at the root of federal fraud cases against many high-profile companies, including Tenet Hospital, Lockheed-Martin, TAP Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Boeing and KPMG-Peat Marwick.
Companies have been caught for many things, from selling defective parts for U.S. military aircraft to paying kickbacks to doctors for prescribing unneeded medicines and services and then overbilling Medicare and Medicaid.
"It's a very powerful law," said Patrick Burns, spokesman for Taxpayers Against Fraud, a consumer advocacy group. "You start pulling on a thread and a whole circus tent comes unraveled."
Another whistleblower protection law - the Sarbanes-Oxley Act - covers fraud against publicly traded companies and targets those that destroy records, commit securities fraud or fail to report fraud to investors. The law emerged after the corporate financial and accounting scandals of 2002.
Both laws protect whistleblowers from being fired, but the False Claims Act has triple damages and gives whistleblowers a reward.
Established during President Lincoln's time, the law was later gutted. But it was strengthened in 1986 to help identify contractors guilty of defrauding the government.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, took the lead in modernizing the law and credits whistleblowers for the success of the amendments.
"They are some of the greatest champions of the public's right to know," Grassley said. "Whistleblowers shed light on why something is wrong, and their insights can help hold the bad actors responsible, fix problems and achieve reforms."
Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said the False Claims Act has been "highly effective in ferreting out individuals and companies that commit fraud." Joe Gerstein and others blew the whistle on TAP Pharmaceutical Products Inc., which agreed to pay $875 million in 2001 to resolve criminal and civil charges in connection with its pricing and marketing of the cancer drug Lupron.
TAP offered Gerstein, of Weston, Mass., a former medical director of the Tuft's University health plan, a $20,000 unrestricted research grant to keep Lupron on the HMO's list of preferred drugs.
Instead, he wore a wire for the FBI to tape the bribe. Gerstein eventually filed a False Claims Act suit which resulted in a $17 million reward to him and Tufts.
"I was scandalized," Gerstein said of the bribe. "I had a strong motivation to expose these inducements."
Alderson became a whistleblower after he was fired from his accounting job. His wrongful termination lawsuit grew into False Claims lawsuits against Columbia/HCA and Quorum Health Group Inc. Columbia/HCA eventually paid $1.7 billion in fines and damages for overbilling the government.
His 13-year legal fight began shortly after Quorum was awarded a management contract with a small hospital in Whitefish, Mont., where he was chief financial officer. A higher-up told Alderson that Quorum kept two sets of records for Medicare reimbursements - one that would go to the government, the other marked "confidential."
Unwilling to adapt to such an accounting practice, Alderson was fired by the hospital in 1990.
Out of work and blackballed by the health care industry, he uprooted his family and moved 300 miles away, but kept pursuing his wrongful termination claim. As he dug deeper, he discovered widespread fraud.
The Justice Department got involved in 1998 and in two settlements since December 2000, the government has recovered $1.7 billion from HCA, formerly known as Columbia/HCA.
Alderson and fellow whistleblower John Schilling, a former reimbursement specialist for Columbia/HCA, split $100 million before lawyers' fees and taxes in one settlement and Alderson received about $20 million in another.
-------- drug war
Afghanistan's Drugs
Saturday, November 27, 2004
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15641-2004Nov26?language=printer
PRESIDENT BUSH visited Colombia on Monday to celebrate that nation's progress in the war on drugs. With the help of U.S. money and military equipment, the Colombians have attacked traffickers, extradited dozens of their leaders and fumigated thousands of acres of coca crops; the result is that coca cultivation has fallen by around two-fifths over the past three years. The Bush administration now hopes to repeat this success in Afghanistan. Last week it asked Congress to fund a $780 million offensive against Afghanistan's opium trade.
The Afghan challenge is tougher by some measures than the Colombian one. In the Colombian case, drug revenue amounts to about 3.5 percent of legal economic output; in Afghanistan the share is more than 50 percent. The opium trade has boomed since the fall of the Taliban regime three years ago, generating payments to farmers of $2.2 billion in 2002-03, 15 times more than in the two years leading up to the Taliban's departure. A determined counternarcotics offensive, particularly one that focuses on crop eradication, risks generating a backlash against the fragile democratic government.
It's a risk that must be taken, however. Drugs are a poisonous basis for development: The profits that flow to ordinary farmers are outweighed by those that enrich traffickers who buy off government officials, retain private armies and undermine the legitimate authority of the state. The more time goes by, the more traffickers are likely to entrench themselves, investing in extra processing factories and so capturing a larger share of the profits. There are signs that this is happening already: In 2002 traffickers captured half of opium revenue, with the other half going to farmers. In 2004 the traffickers' share is around four-fifths.
The United States must press ahead with its counternarcotics strategy before the traffickers' position grows even stronger. That means first and foremost targeting the traffickers and their protectors, who include prominent government figures as well as warlords with whom the United States has worked in tracking down Taliban and al Qaeda remnants. The hunt for terrorists must continue, but not at the expense of consolidating Afghanistan's emerging status as a narco-state.
----
Colombia Drug Lords Join Paramilitaries to Seek Leniency
By JUAN FORERO
November 27, 2004
NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/27/international/americas/27colombia.html?pagewanted=print&position=
SANTA FE DE RALITO, Colombia - Major drug traffickers have been dressing up in camouflage and presenting themselves as leaders of the paramilitary movement, in an effort to qualify for the same lenient treatment they suspect the government of Colombia may soon offer to longstanding paramilitary commanders to persuade them to disarm.
The traffickers' hope is to secure a sweetheart deal - including protection against extradition to the United States - from President Álvaro Uribe's government, according to experts, diplomats and people close to the paramilitaries. They say top drug dealers have paid up to $1 million to establish sham paramilitary units and claim membership in the movement.
The paramilitary commanders, for their part, have been accused in one government report of "franchising" their units to drug dealers.
The 15,000-member added this word: paramilitary organization, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, has also long profited from drugs and engaged in killings. So sorting out whom to negotiate with has become a major embarrassment for the government, especially as the first hardened fighters began demobilizing recently in the north.
"What is clear is there has been a revolving door where drug traffickers looking for impunity from international law, from extradition to the United States, have bought franchises in the paramilitaries," said a high-ranking official in Colombia's security services, who asked that his name not be used. "The negotiating table is not really run by Self-Defense Forces, but by traffickers who are using the table for themselves."
At least a half-dozen men who now say they are paramilitary commanders have played little or no role in the group's brutal war against Marxist rebels, a long campaign financed by landowners and cocaine money. Instead, the Colombian and American authorities say, their raison d'être has been to traffic in cocaine.
There is no guarantee that the paramilitaries, whether traffickers or not, will ever get a deal they will accept. That is still under negotiation. But the traffickers are willing, in effect, to bet millions on the off chance that a deal will be struck under which their property and assets will be validated and the threat of harsh jail sentences removed.
Mr. Uribe has made the disarmament of the paramilitaries a priority in his effort to pacify the country. He first proposed granting paramilitary commanders virtual amnesty despite their crimes, but lawmakers rejected that in favor of a bill requiring top commanders to serve up to 10 years in jail - still a far cry from the 40 they would get under existing law.
The Uribe administration, though, has expressed concerns over conditions in the bill, which is yet to be passed, that in return for lenient sentences, would require paramilitary commanders to ensure complete dismantling of their forces while turning over detailed information on the group, confessing to their crimes, helping with criminal investigations and providing reparations to victims.
"Unfortunately, the Uribe administration comes dangerously close to giving these commanders what they want but clearly don't deserve," said the Americas director for Human Rights Watch, José Miguel Vivanco, who met with Mr. Uribe to discuss the proposed law. "The possibility of a sweetheart deal is what brought these traffickers to the organization."
The paramilitary commanders gathered here in this town, at the center of a 142-square-mile government-created safe haven where they can negotiate free from threat of arrest, have not said officially what deal they will accept. But some have already sworn they will not spend a day in jail, much less 10 years.
They are also betting that the government will be flexible on extradition, as Mr. Uribe and his lead negotiator have signaled.
Since the talks began, the paramilitaries have repeatedly violated a self-imposed cease-fire and continued to send tons of cocaine to the United States, Colombian and American drug enforcement officials say. Meanwhile, they have methodically worked to whitewash their image, using public relations firms and sympathetic lawmakers to justify the group's heinous tactics.
In this rural region, largely free of rebels because of the paramilitaries, people praise the group and its commanders. Most just shrug when asked about the cocaine underworld.
But Colombian officials, diplomats and political analysts say a handful of suspected drug traffickers have entered the paramilitary organization since preliminary talks with the government began two years ago.
The others include Francisco Javier Zuluaga; Victor Mejía, a longtime trafficker from Cali who spent $1 million to buy a 150-man unit; and Juan Carlos Sierra, who was expelled from talks after Semana magazine outlined the longtime role he and other paramilitaries had played in the drug trade.
One trafficker wanted in the United States, Gabriel Puerta, went so far as to write a letter to paramilitary commanders here this year reminding them of their fruitful 18-year-old relationship. He requested membership in the group explicitly to protect himself from extradition.
"I don't want to arrive there like a fugitive, being a burden," Mr. Puerta said in a letter obtained by El Tiempo, Colombia's leading newspaper. "No, I'd like to arrive like a person with an identity, as I've always been to the Self-Defense Forces."
Mr. Puerta was captured by the authorities before he could join the paramilitary commanders in the safe haven, but his case is the exception. Another drug trafficker, Diego León Montoya, who is on the F.B.I.'s list of the world's 10 most wanted, is not taking part in the talks but operates freely in the Middle Magdalena region, where the paramilitaries have lockdown control.
"Since they all pay a fee, they are with the paramilitaries," said the high-ranking security official.
Political analysts and legislators who take part in the disarmament process point to yet another problem. Dozens of paramilitary units around the country are headed by men whose identities are unknown to the authorities, they say. Many of those commanders, midlevel leaders who hope to disarm one day, could be drug traffickers, not paramilitaries.
It has always been difficult to distinguish between drug traffickers and the paramilitaries, as the Uribe administration has acknowledged.
A confidential government report prepared last year in advance of disarmament negotiations noted that it was "impossible to differentiate between the Self-Defense Forces and drug trafficking organizations." The report also noted that the Self-Defense Forces were selling "franchises" to "some drug traffickers, who are paying millions of dollars for squads of men."
It also cited some leading underworld figures in the group, like Diego Fernando Murillo, who was once known as Don Berna in his days in Medellín's drug world but now prefers the alias Adolfo Paz, or Adolfo Peace. Mr. Murillo was indicted for drug trafficking earlier this year. Javier Montanes, a powerful commander and feared trafficker, was also named in the document, as was Miguel Arroyave, who was recently slain by his underlings.
Such charges infuriate Mr. Murillo, who in a long interview at a ranch outside Santa Fe de Ralito adamantly denied having ties with drug lords. He also denied repeated accusations that he once led a brutal team of assassins and, little by little, built alliances with paramilitary commanders who rely on such services.
"I've been smeared with dark propaganda," Mr. Murillo said. "All the people of the Self-Defense Forces I consider fighters for liberty and for a better country, not drug traffickers."
Asked about the newer commanders, Mr. Murillo said they "have for a long time been members of our organization."
"It's just that they used aliases," he explained. "They are people committed to this organization."
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
ACLU Says New Passports May Leak Personal Data
Saturday, November 27, 2004
Washington Post; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15652-2004Nov26.html
The Bush administration opposed the inclusion in new microchip-equipped passports of security measures that privacy advocates contended were needed to prevent identity theft, government snooping or a terrorist attack, State Department documents show.
The passports, scheduled to be issued by the end of 2005, could be read electronically from as far away as 30 feet, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the documents under a Freedom of Information Act request.
Though the passports would not include their own transmitters, they would have antennas to allow a reader to capture the data.
ACLU said the ability to remotely read personal data raises the possibility that passport holders would be vulnerable to identity theft. It also would allow government agents to find out covertly who was attending a political meeting or make it easier for terrorists to target Americans traveling abroad, the ACLU said.
Frank E. Moss, deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services, said the United States wants to ensure the safety and security of Americans traveling abroad.
All passports issued by the end of 2005 are expected to have a chip containing the owner's name and birth date, the issuing office, and a "biometric" identifier -- a photo of the owner's face.
----
FAA Must Improve Oversight of Hazardous Materials, Report Says
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 27, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15611-2004Nov26?language=printer
The Federal Aviation Administration needs to improve its oversight of air carriers and passengers who bring hazardous materials onto airplanes, according to a report released yesterday by the Department of Transportation's inspector general.
The report says the agency has generally improved its hazmat program since 1996, when an in-flight fire caused by mislabed chemical oxygen generators in the cargo area of ValuJet Flight 592 caused the plane to crash into the Florida Everglades, killing 110 passengers and crew members. But, the report found that the FAA levies inconsistent penalties against carriers that violate the rules and that it has failed to sufficiently address the threats of passengers who have hazardous materials in their luggage.
The agency's enforcement is "cumbersome, lengthy and sometimes ineffectual," the report said.
The FAA said it has already worked to improve the management of its caseload and enforcement actions. "The remarkable safety record over the last several years shows we have built a strong net to make sure shipping hazardous materials does not pose a threat to commercial aviation," said FAA spokesman Greg Martin. "A lot of work had already been underway before this report and should be completed this year."
From 1999 to 2003, the FAA investigated more than 11,000 hazmat cases and collected more than $35 million in civil penalties from air carriers. In September 2003, Emery Worldwide Airlines Inc. agreed to pay $6 million and pleaded guilty to 12 felony counts of violating rules governing safe transportation of hazardous materials.
However, the inspector general found that the FAA's enforcement actions take, on average, more than a year to complete and that most fines are settled with carriers, cargo companies and shippers for an average of 41 percent of the original penalty proposed by investigators. In one region, 25 percent of the cases were not pursued because the FAA could not complete them within a required two-year period.
After the terrorist attacks in 2001, the FAA and the Transportation Security Administration agreed to work together to limit threats from passengers. Under the plan, the TSA notifies the FAA of passengers who attempt to transport prohibited items such as fireworks, road flares, tear gas, pepper spray, flammable gas torches and household bleach. In the last six weeks of 2003, the TSA oversaw the removal of 8,312 pounds of hazardous material from 18 airports.
The inspector general said the FAA has no uniform methods to identify passengers who repeatedly violate the rules, or to put passengers "on notice" if they break the rules.
The FAA said it has had difficulty tracking passengers with hazardous materials because airlines will not disclose their addresses for privacy reasons. The agency said it plans to issue an advisory memo to airlines by May 31, 2006, clarifying its rules about reporting harmful cargo.
When asked why the FAA had planned to issue the memo at such a late date, FAA spokesman Martin said the majority of the agency's effort would focus on air carriers and shippers -- not passengers. "The resources need to be concentrated appropriately to the risk," he said.
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
EU reveals increase in aid fraud
BBC
Saturday, 27 November
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4047063.stm
The EU has revealed an increase in cases of serious abuse of its international aid project, losing it 1.5bn euros over the past year.
In its annual report, EU anti-fraud squad Olaf said incidents increased by 9% to 637 over a period of 12 months.
In some cases, European donors were being overcharged or funds were siphoned off for private or corporate benefit, the Olaf report said.
The 25-nation EU bloc is one of the world's largest aid donors.
But international aid was being dogged by "complex and well-organized" financial fraud, the report concluded.
In particular, it said, EU humanitarian and development aid to third world countries was being targeted.
"Such fraud takes an advantage of the lack of coordination in the monitoring and auditing activities between the various international donors," the report reads.
Detection improved
It cited several examples, including a water project in Lesotho where a local official responsible for awarding contracts stashed away over 3m euros in bribes in Swiss accounts.
In another project in Paraguay, it said 90% of the EU's money for a water supply project ended up illegally diverted to a bank account belonging to a foundation that had nothing to do with the development.
"Of the problems we detect, more and more are in the aid sector, where things have to be looked into more closely," Olaf director-general Franz-Hermann Bruener told reporters.
"All donors have systems of control, but we have to improve them."
The document - Olaf's fifth annual report - found that registered cases increased from 585 to 637 over the period of 1 July 2003 to 30 June 2004.
Mr Bruener said the rise was down to an improved detection rate.
"The increase in cases is partially because there is an increase in people telling us... It is a very promising sign," he said.
Additionally, dossiers on a series of financial scandals within the European Commission's statistical office Eurostat have been handed to judicial authorities in France and Luxembourg, he said.
Mr Bruener added that he expects the investigations to be completed within the next few months.
-------- propaganda wars
Pentagon Panel: US Invasions Unite Extremists
(Inter Press Service)
by Jim Lobe
November 27, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=4067
Al-Qaeda and radical Islamists are winning the propaganda war against the United States, says a high-level Pentagon panel, which concluded that Bush administration policies in the Middle East, its fundamental failure to understand the Muslim world, and a lack of imagination in using new communications technologies are responsible.
In a report [.pdf] concluded in September but only released this week, the Defense Science Board (DSB) called for a major overhaul of Washington's "public diplomacy" and "strategic communication" apparatus that would include much more money and the creation of a new independent agency to enlist the support of the private sector, researchers, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to promote U.S. messages to an increasingly hostile Islamic world.
"Strategic communication is a vital component of U.S. national security," stressed the 111-page report. "It is in crisis, and it must be transformed with a strength of purpose that matches our commitment to diplomacy, defense, intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security. ... Collaboration between government and the private sector on an unprecedented scale is imperative."
The document also called on U.S. policymakers to spend more time "listening" to their intended audience and use messages that "should seek to reduce, not increase, perceptions of arrogance, opportunism, and double standards."
The DSB, made up of private sector and academic experts appointed by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, normally confines its advice to scientific and technological matters. While it has no executive authority, its prominence, the generally hawkish cast of its membership and the urgent tone of the report will likely place its recommendations high on the agenda in President George W. Bush's second term.
The study is based on interviews with senior U.S. public-diplomacy, strategic-communication, and psychological-warfare officials and experts, more than a dozen studies by NGOs, such as the Council on Foreign Relations, public-opinion surveys, and internal government reports over the past three years.
All of them have shown a sharp plunge in U.S. standing throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds, particularly since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as virtually total failure of the United States to effectively reverse that view, in large part due to the perception among Muslims that Washington's policies are aimed at their submission.
As one task force headed by former President George H.W. Bush's top Middle East adviser, Edward Djerejian, concluded 13 months ago, "'Spin' and manipulative public relations and propaganda are not the answer. Foreign policy counts. ... Sugarcoating and fast talking are no solutions."
The DSB report also stresses that U.S. policies in the Mideast - notably Washington's support for Israel, the Iraq invasion, and its backing of autocratic leaders in the region - make it very difficult for Washington to persuade Muslims of its good intentions. The report, however, does not advise changing policies, which would be beyond its mandate.
The gap between Washington's rhetoric and its actions in the region, as perceived by Muslims, has contributed to a virtually total loss of credibility, argues the study.
"The larger goals of U.S. strategy depend on separating the vast majority of nonviolent Muslims from the radical-militant Islamist-jihadists," it argues. "But American efforts have not only failed in this respect: they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended" by essentially bearing out "the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars."
Thus, contrary to the mantra of the administration and its neoconservative advisers, asserts the report, "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states."
Moreover, "when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy," while "saying that 'freedom is the future of the Middle East' is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World," which, asserts the report, is not how Arabs see their situation at all.
On the contrary, it adds, the large majority yearn "to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends."
"In the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering," notes the document.
"The critical problem in American public diplomacy directed toward the Muslim world is not one of 'dissemination of information,' or even one of crafting and delivering the 'right' message," the report states.
"Rather, it is a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none - the United States today is without a working channel of communication to the world of Muslims and of Islam. Inevitably, therefore, whatever Americans do and say only serves the party that has both the message and the 'loud and clear' channel: the enemy."
Neoconservative and administration efforts to depict the "war on terrorism" that Bush launched after the 9/11 attacks as a war against "another totalitarian evil," as in the Cold War, have been a "strategic mistake," according to the report.
"In stark contrast to the Cold War, the United States today is not seeking to contain a threatening state-empire, but rather seeking to convert a broad movement within Islamic civilization to accept the value structure of western modernity - an agenda hidden within the official rubric of a 'war on terrorism.'"
"If we really want to see the Muslim world as a whole and the Arab-speaking world in particular move more toward our understanding of 'moderation' and 'tolerance,' we must reassure Muslims that this does not mean they must submit to the American way," argues the report.
To succeed, Washington must target those in the Islamic world "who support, or are likely to support, our views based on their own culture, traditions, and attitudes about such things as personal control, choice, and change," it adds.
"We believe the most 'movable' targets will be the so-called secularists of the Muslim world: businesspeople, scientists, non-religious educators, politicians or public administrators, musicians, artists, poets, writers, journalists, actors, and their audiences and admirers."
Key themes and messages that can persuade this group to back U.S. goals include: "respect for human dignity and individual rights; individual education and economic opportunity; and personal freedom, safety, and mobility," suggests the report, which also stresses developing new techniques for reaching that audience, including electronic mail, Internet chat rooms, video games, and interactive Internet games.
More traditional efforts, such as television broadcasts, person-to-person exchanges, the enlistment of celebrities in government public-diplomacy efforts, should also be expanded by injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into existing programs that have, says the report, become "anemic" since the Cold War.
The president should also establish a new deputy national security advisor for strategic communication post in the White House, as well as a "strategic communication committee" within the National Security Council (NSC) on which senior representatives from all relevant agencies should serve, it proposes.
Congress should also establish a Center for Strategic Communication modeled after the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) that, among other things, would act as a think tank devising new programs, such as a children's TV series in Arabic, to communicate core messages.
-------- us politics
Congress spending increase criticized
November 27, 2004
By Donald Lambro
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041126-111219-1578r.htm
The Republican Congress is getting flak for a 4 percent discretionary spending increase, fattened by a pork-stuffed omnibus appropriations bill that President Bush is expected to sign soon, as White House officials hint of tighter nondefense expenditures to come in next year's budget.
The temporarily stalled $388 billion catch-all spending bill that goes to Mr. Bush's desk sometime early next month will fund 13 departments and dozens of agencies for the rest of the 2004-05 fiscal year, resulting overall in lower nonmilitary, nonhomeland-defense spending increases than the president's previous budgets.
But critics point to $15.8 billion in pork-barrel spending that Mr. Bush did not seek - including 11,000 earmarked items like $350,000 for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland - and the failure to eliminate perceived wasteful, low-priority programs.
"This year's appropriations are 4.5 percent higher than last year and, sadly, this represents substantial progress," said Brian Riedl, chief budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation. "But even this amount does not include money for Iraq and Afghanistan, billions for hurricane relief and other spending classified as emergencies to evade budget caps.
"The best that Congress could do was to freeze many of the worst-performing programs in this bill; but there are billions of dollars in wasteful, unnecessary programs that should be eliminated in order to finance higher priority spending for defense and homeland security," Mr. Riedl said.
At the beginning of the year, Mr. Bush called for a 4 percent cap on nondefense funding and even Mr. Riedl, one of the president's severest spending critics, said, "I'll have to give credit where credit is due - freezing nondefense discretionary programs is better than the large increases they've received in recent years.
Paul Guessing, government affairs director of the National Taxpayers Union, said the bill "may not be an outright disaster compared to some of its all-too-numerous predecessors, but the legislation still has many drawbacks that earn it the title of 'debacle.' "
Administration budget officials said that while more remains to be done to reduce discretionary spending, this year's budget significantly has curtailed spending from previously higher levels that occurred during the president's first three years in office.
"Overall discretionary spending grew by only 4 percent in fiscal year 2005. That's all four of the appropriations bills that have been passed, plus the omnibus bill and defense and homeland-security spending," said Tad Kolton, spokesman for White House Budget Director Josh Bolten.
"The president said we are going to spend what it takes on defense and homeland security. If you take those two areas out of the equation and focus on the remaining part of the budget, then nondefense, nonhomeland-security discretionary spending grew by approximately 1 percent, which is half the rate of inflation and is among the lowest spending growth rates since the Republicans took over Congress in 1995," Mr. Kolton said.
But with his re-election behind him, administration insiders say Mr. Bush intends to tighten overall nondefense spending when he proposes his budget early next year for the 2006 fiscal period, which begins next October, targeting low-priority agencies and programs that do not work.
"The budget is shaping up but final decisions haven't been made," Mr. Kolton said. "We're going to continue to restrain the growth in spending. We're evaluating where the priorities are going to be next year and which programs are not producing results or are duplicative or redundant or simply are not priorities relative to other programs."
Other budget officials who did not want to talk on the record said that there was much that Mr. Bush did not like in the pending 1,000-page, omnibus spending bill, particularly the large number of pork-barrel spending provisions, but that he was willing to sign the measure in exchange for overall lower discretionary spending.
To keep to a 4 percent overall spending cap, congressional appropriators made spending cuts in a broad range of areas. For example, Small Business Administration loan subsidies were terminated, $303 million was cut from the nuclear waste facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev., and $612 million was carved out of the Environmental Protection Agency's budget.
But some of Mr. Bush's spending critics expressed increased hope that he will cut deeper in his future budgets.
"Bush has a good record of keeping campaign promises. In 2000, candidate Bush never promised to retrain spending but in 2004 he did and that may be the difference. The White House seems to be looking at budget savings for their fiscal 2006 proposal," Mr. Riedl said.
-------- voting
Bush Says World Is Watching Ukraine's Election Dispute
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 27, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15404-2004Nov26?language=printer
CRAWFORD, Tex., Nov. 26 -- President Bush on Friday used his first comments about the disputed presidential election in Ukraine to warn authorities that the world is watching, but he struck a more conciliatory tone than Secretary of State Colin L. Powell used earlier in the week.
Bush's comments appeared to allow for the possibility that the Moscow-backed candidate's victory will stand, despite charges of fraud, and that the administration will have to work with him instead of his Western-leaning opponent.
Bush ventured off his ranch, where he is spending Thanksgiving week, to eat a cheeseburger (all the way) and onion rings at a local hangout and to spend five minutes bantering with reporters about world crises. He was asked what the consequences would be if Ukrainian authorities did not submit to international pressure to reconsider the results, and whether Russian President Vladimir Putin had overstepped his bounds by saying Western nations should stay out of the election.
"There's just a lot of allegations of vote fraud that placed their election -- the validity of their elections in doubt," Bush said. "The international community is watching very carefully. People are paying very close attention to this, and hopefully it will be resolved in a way that brings credit and confidence to the Ukrainian government."
That was a more restrained line than Powell took Wednesday, when he said the United States cannot accept the result as legitimate, called for an investigation into evidence of fraud and abuse, and spoke of "consequences for our relationship" if the Ukrainian government did not act responsibly.
Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, supported by Putin, was declared the winner over Viktor Yushchenko, but amid street demonstrations, the country's highest court delayed the winner's inauguration until it could examine Yushchenko's complaint that the election was rigged.
The White House had also been harsher Tuesday in a written statement, issued in the name of deputy press secretary Claire Buchan, saying the United States was "deeply disturbed by extensive and credible indications of fraud committed in the Ukrainian presidential election" and calling on the government to "respect the will of the Ukrainian people."
On other topics during the short question-and-answer session, Bush disagreed with the call Friday by key Iraqi political parties for a six-month postponement of the election for national assembly members, which is scheduled for Jan. 30 and has been eagerly awaited by the White House as a sign democracy is taking hold.
"The Iraq election commission has scheduled elections in January, and I would hope they would go forward in January," Bush said.
Bush did not mention the bill stalled in Congress to create a national intelligence director and overhaul the nation's intelligence agencies, which House Republicans derailed last weekend. White House officials say that Bush still wants the bill passed by year's end, and insist that Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. has worked harder on the issue than any other before Congress.
But some Republican officials say Bush could have pushed more aggressively for it and contend that he could have muscled the rebellious Republicans if he wanted the bill badly enough. Administration officials said Bush will weigh in when his involvement will count most.
In a twist, Bush aides said Friday that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was wrong Wednesday when he said that the White House knew in advance about an Oct. 21 letter to Capitol Hill from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arguing that the intelligence bill would hurt the Pentagon.
Rumsfeld's comment was taken on Capitol Hill as an example of the mixed signals the White House has been sending about how thoroughly it supports the plan to change the way intelligence is gathered, reported and used.
"It's possible that Secretary Rumsfeld believed that we had been aware of the letter prior to its being sent," said a White House official who refused to be named to avoid being seen as castigating a Cabinet member. "However, the case is that we learned of it when it was sent to Congress."
Appearing chipper, Bush jumped out of his black Chevrolet Suburban, adorned on the sides with the presidential seal, and met reporters in the parking lot of the Coffee Station, a gas station and diner. First lady Laura Bush and her mother, Jenna Welch, went inside.
Moments before Bush arrived, his parents passed in a motorcade of their own, bound for the football game between the University of Texas and Texas A&M. Barbara Bush, the former first lady, appeared amused by the huge crowd of reporters and citizens lining the blocks surrounding the Coffee Station and cracked her window to say "Happy Thanksgiving" with a laugh. She and former president George H.W. Bush had been at the ranch, where the family had been celebrating the 23rd birthdays of twins Barbara and Jenna in addition to Thanksgiving.
Word that Bush is making one of his few-times-a-year trips to the Coffee Station spreads quickly and a line quickly forms for lunch -- so long on Friday that one man wanted to know if it was a line for lottery tickets. Instead, it was a line to get swept with a magnetometer.
----
Ex-Soviet bloc states mull election
BBC
27 November, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4047661.stm
Several countries in the former Soviet bloc have lined up behind Russia in endorsing the disputed result of Ukraine's presidential election.
A notable exception is Georgia, which on the first anniversary of its own "rose" revolution sees itself as having led where Ukraine now follows.
Moldova has also openly broken ranks by criticising the conduct of the polls.
Approval
Following the congratulatory message sent by Russian President Vladimir Putin to the pro-Moscow candidate Viktor Yanukovych, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko telephoned the latter to offer his own congratulations before the results had been declared.
Mr Lukashenko's press office said that during the conversation, "the president said he was completely confident that relations between Ukraine and Belarus will continue to develop as dynamically as they have done in the past".
The presidents of three Central Asian countries also added their voices.
"Your victory shows that the Ukrainian people have made a choice in favour of the unity of the nation, of democratic development and economic progress," Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev wrote in a letter to Mr Yanukovych.
Uzbek President Islam Karimov sent his "sincere congratulations" to Mr Yanukovych.
The UzReport.com web site quoted Mr Karimov as saying he was "deeply convinced that the acting Ukrainian prime minister's activity in the high post will serve to further strengthen the country's independence and the prosperity of its people".
Kyrgyz President Askar Askayev also sent a message to Mr Yanukovych expressing his satisfaction.
"On behalf of the Kyrgyz people, and from me personally, please accept congratulations on the occasion of your election to the high post of Ukrainian president," the message said.
The state-controlled media in Turkmenistan have yet to report the outcome of the polls.
Stability call
Two other CIS countries, Armenia and Azerbaijan, were more ambivalent, stressing that the most important thing was to preserve the unity and stability of Ukraine.
Armenian President Robert Kocharyan said that he had not favoured either candidate, but was prepared to congratulate whichever one the Ukrainian election commission decided was the winner.
"The sooner the tension subsides, the better," Armenia's Noyan Tapan news agency quoted him as saying.
A member of the Azerbaijani government also expressed concern that Ukraine could become destabilised.
Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov was quoted by the Azerbaijani news agency Turan as saying it was important to prevent the country from splitting into two.
Dissent
The message coming from Georgia was unashamedly pro-opposition. President Mikhail Saakashvili said he was proud that Georgian flags were being flown by Ukrainian opposition supporters in Kiev.
In November 2003, an alliance of opposition parties led by Mr Saakashvili challenged the results of parliamentary elections that initially declared the party of veteran leader Eduard Shevardnadze the winner.
"What is happening in Ukraine today clearly attests to the importance of Georgia's example for the rest of the world," he said in a statement broadcast by Georgia's Rustavi-2 TV.
Moldova also raised concerns over the conduct of the election.
The country's foreign ministry issued a statement saying that "basic democratic principles were distorted" and expressing regret that the poll "lacked the objective criteria necessary for their recognition by both the citizens of Ukraine and the international community".
BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
-----
Opposition demands new Ukraine vote
November 27, 2004
By Natalia A. Feduschak
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041126-114341-1705r.htm
KIEV - Opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko yesterday demanded a new presidential election be held after a face-to-face meeting with rival Viktor Yanukovych failed to resolve Ukraine's bitter weeklong political standoff.
Turning up the heat on the government-backed Mr. Yanukovych, Mr. Yushchenko told cheering supporters after the nearly three-hour meeting he opposed a proposal to refer charges of massive fraud in Sunday's election to the Supreme Court.
"We will only hold talks on staging a new vote," Mr. Yushchenko said.
Moments earlier, outgoing President Leonid Kuchma announced he would preside over a working group, including key European envoys who have converged on Kiev, to seek a solution to the crisis and head off growing fears of violence.
Massive streets protests and charges of fraud in the Nov. 21 vote have roiled this strategically placed country, the largest state to break from Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and put Moscow and Washington on a collision course over Ukraine's future.
In Crawford, Texas, President Bush warned yesterday the world "is watching very closely" as Ukraine tries to sort through the fraud charges.
U.S. and European Union officials contend that massive fraud marred the presidential runoff election, in which Mr. Yanukovych, the pro-Moscow prime minister, narrowly edged Mr. Yushchenko. Ukraine's Supreme Court ordered election officials not to publish the results until an appeal is heard on Monday.
Ukraine's parliament is also set to meet today to consider the disputed election and what to do next. Lawmakers cannot overturn last Sunday's vote, but could have an effect on the court hearing next week.
"There's just a lot of allegations of vote fraud that placed the result of the election in doubt," Mr. Bush said. "... People are paying very close attention to this and, hopefully, it will be resolved in a way that brings credit and confidence to the Ukrainian government."
Russian President Vladimir Putin all but endorsed Mr. Yanukovych before the vote and congratulated the prime minister on his apparent victory.
The Russian foreign ministry yesterday hinted it may support a re-run of the election, but Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov again questioned the motives of Western governments in the crisis.
"In some European capitals, there are some forces that are attempting to draw some new border lines across Europe," Mr. Lavrov said.
Mr. Yushchenko warned he would fight any stalling tactics by his opponent.
"If we see that Viktor Yanukovych is playing for time, we are going to take active measures," he told supporters. "If a decision isn't reached in one or two days, it means that Viktor Yanukovych doesn't hear you."
The challenger demanded a new election on Dec. 12, the creation of a new central election commission and equal access to the press for both candidates.
He urged his supporters to be steadfast and not leave Kiev's Independence Square, where hundreds of thousands have braved the bitter cold for five days to show their support. Demonstrations have taken place in other parts of the country, as well.
Mr. Yanukovych appeared for the first time in public before the three-hour meeting to address 5,000 of his supporters, some apparently intoxicated, who demonstrated outside Kiev's main train station.
He called the opposition's demonstrations "illegal and anti-constitutional."
"A constitutional coup is slowly taking place, which is being organized by [the opposition] with Mr. Yushchenko at its head," he told backers, many of whom were from his power base in Ukraine's Russian-speaking east. "All the actions that are happening today are against the law."
The country's sharp east-west division has sparked fears of a breakup of the country. In one worrying sign, deputies from the eastern Donetsk region called for a referendum to create an autonomous region.
Mr. Kuchma, in a television address after the inconclusive meeting, told the country, "We will without any doubt find a worthy way out of this complicated situation.
"We understand that we have but one Ukraine and if we fail to find a solution, the consequences will be most unfavorable," Mr. Kuchma said.
Yesterday's meeting in Kiev included European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus. Boris Gryzlov, speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament and Jan Kubis, the head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, also attended.
Ukraine's crisis has also divided neighboring states that also once were part of the Soviet Union.
Georgia's parliament yesterday voiced its support for the opposition, while Moldova said it does not recognize the results of the election. But Kazakhstan became the sixth country, after Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan, to support Mr. Yanukovych.
An increasing number of Ukraine's militia and police are siding with Mr. Yushchenko and the opposition forces in the streets.
One after another, uniformed officers are appearing before protesters on the main square, pledging their allegiance.
In a dramatic moment outside the presidential administration building, opposition deputy Taras Stetskiv took a hand drill to cut through the lock on a gate leading to the structure.
Two rows of riot police raised their clubs and shields.
"No one is going to march on you," Mr. Stetskiv said through a loudspeaker. "The gate is opened to the people."
Some police didn't even wait for their commander to give the order and lowered their shields.
-------- OTHER
-------- health
Flu Crisis Sparks Fresh Look at Vaccine Production
By Michael S. Rosenwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 27, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15336-2004Nov26?language=printer
For five decades, billions of arms have been injected with flu shots containing clear liquid drawn from 11-day-old fertilized chicken eggs. Companies inject the eggs with flu strains. The eggs become tiny incubators, brewing viruses that are then killed and bottled in vials. The nation's entire flu vaccine supply is produced that way, including the 48 million shots that Chiron Corp. can't sell this season because of manufacturing problems in England.
With a crisis sparked by the flu-shot shortage, federal health officials are eager for new, more flexible technologies that could produce a vaccine faster and more cheaply, enticing companies to enter a market that others have largely abandoned because of poor profits.
One idea is gaining traction: Instead of incubating the nation's entire vaccine supply in chicken eggs, regarded by many as an antiquated system too inflexible and time-consuming to respond to pandemics or vaccine shortages like this year's, federal health officials are encouraging several biotech companies to develop cell-based vaccines. Executives at Protein Sciences Corp. think they have just what experts are looking for: a process that grows vaccine in cells extracted from caterpillar ovaries. Before the flu crisis, the Meriden, Conn.-based company was ignored by investors. Not anymore.
"An investor called me and said, 'Hey, I know we haven't returned your calls like 20 times,' " said Daniel D. Adams, Protein Sciences' chief executive. "Is it too late to get in?"
Although health experts and industry leaders caution that research going on at Protein Sciences and other biotech companies may not cut the time and price to produce usable vaccine, they support such efforts as a possible solution to the nation's flu-fighting problem.
"You can't attract new companies to use a technology of the past," said Bill Pierce, spokesman for Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson. "There's a bit of a 'cool' factor at work here."
Cell culture vaccines are a twist on the chicken egg method of vaccine production. Instead of injecting viruses in eggs, scientists infect cells -- drawn from insects, African green monkeys, dogs, or human fetal retinas -- with flu strains or their components. Then they grow the virus using large fermenting vats in manufacturing plants that look like breweries.
"This really is the wave of the future," said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health and a vocal proponent of cell culture vaccines. He said he will soon ask Congress for $100 million to improve the nation's flu vaccine supply, including jump-starting more cell culture research.
"When you walk into a cell culture factory, you see gleaming stainless steel -- glass and steel and computers and very few people," said Noel Barrett, vice president of research and development at Baxter International Inc. of Deerfield, Ill., which has built a cell culture factory in the Czech Republic.
Walking into a chicken egg factory, by contrast, Barrett said, "You see lots of eggs, thousands and thousands of eggs, and lots of people, and you see that these factories are quite old."
Baxter hopes to sell its vaccine, PrefluCel, in Europe in 2006 and in the United States in 2008.
Protein Sciences, a privately held company with 39 employees, said its vaccine, FluBlok, is on track for approval by the Food and Drug Administration in 2007. The company recently began advanced human testing of FluBlok, which is produced from cloned flu strains that are grown in caterpillar cells.
The company says testing has shown that the vaccine is safe and that it may have fewer side effects than traditional flu shots and work better in the elderly. But the company acknowledged it has had trouble raising money, at least until the recent flurry of interest from investors.
Other companies experimenting with cell culture vaccines aren't nearly as far along. Vaxin Inc., a company with two dozen employees in Birmingham, Ala., is in preliminary human testing, as is ID Biomedical Corp. in Canada and the two major flu shot providers for the United States, Chiron Corp. and Aventis Pasteur.
Aventis and Vaxin are using cells developed by Crucell NV, a Dutch company. The cells derive from a single cell harvested from an 18-week-old fetus aborted in 1985, raising questions about how Americans would greet such a vaccine, given the debate over fetal stem cell research. Crucell chief executive Ronald Brus said the cell was harvested many years ago with permission from the woman who donated it. No more fetuses would be needed to sustain production, he said.
In any case, some experts and industry leaders caution that new technologies won't change the flu vaccine marketplace anytime soon, and perhaps not ever. Perfecting the technology is at least several years away. It won't make vaccine production cheaper. And it likely won't make production significantly faster. "It's more hype than reality," said Anthony F. Holler, chief executive of ID Biomedical, which sells millions of flu shots in Canada but also is dabbling in development of cell culture vaccines.
Producing the flu vaccine the way it's done now is very much a matter of time and patience. After acquiring millions of specially purified chicken eggs, companies need about six months to create and distribute the vaccines. The process takes too long to be of much help if an unexpected strain erupts or if, as happened this year, something goes awry with the current season's batch.
While Adams of Protein Sciences said his company's technology might allow it to manufacture several million doses in eight to 10 weeks, officials at the other companies developing cell culture vaccines said their production process, including checks for quality control, would take about five months, shaving perhaps a month off the traditional method.
"Cell culture has the potential to save a few weeks," said Michel De Wilde, executive vice president for research and development at Aventis. "You have to start up your fermenters. It still takes a lot of time, but maybe a little less time."
Cell culture vaccines may hold safety advantages. Unlike those produced in chicken eggs, some cell culture vaccines are not processed with chemicals that can cause rare side effects, and people with egg allergies won't have dangerous reactions to them. Also, cell cultures could produce vaccines for the deadly avian flu, which might kill the chicken embryo needed to develop vaccine in an egg.
The real plus, says Francis R. Cano, chairman and chief executive at Vaxin, is that his company, and the others, can start making additional vaccines to stem a pandemic or shortage without waiting for chickens to lay millions of eggs. Fauci agreed: "You can ramp up without waiting for all those eggs," he said.
But cell cultures won't change the fundamental reason so many companies say they have left the flu vaccine business: Profits are too slim. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies would rather make drugs people take every day, not just once a year. "Cell culture is not a salvation for the flu industry," said Scott Gottlieb, a physician and former senior policy adviser to the Food and Drug Administration.
Holler, the chief executive at ID Biomedical, said producing traditional flu shots generally costs about $2 per dose. He doesn't expect the cost to change much with cell cultures. The problem, said Holler and analysts, is that while prices have gone up some in recent years, the wholesale price for a flu shot is still $8 to $10. Consumers buy it for about $20.
Raising prices significantly is risky, too . Gottlieb said that was demonstrated last year by the dismal launch of FluMist, MedImmune Inc.'s nasal flu vaccine. With doses priced at about $46 wholesale, MedImmune sold just 450,000 and threw out millions of others. The Gaithersburg company slashed the price for FluMist in half this flu season while working to bring an improved version to market for 2007.
Fauci acknowledges the tricky economics of the flu business and says the government is working on "taking risk away for companies." The idea, he said, is to encourage wider vaccine use and eventually increase the number of people being immunized to 180 million from last year's 83 million. At the same time, the government is looking at a policy of annually buying unused doses or a flat amount upfront. But how large a quantity it would buy and for how much money are questions that have not been addressed.
Until there are solid incentives, Taunya Sell, an analyst for Ragen MacKenzie Group Inc. who covers ID Biomedical, said many companies will be skittish about jumping in. "If the profit margins are horrible, why would any company take that chance otherwise?" Sell said.
That's at least partly why flu vaccine companies have trouble raising money, Cano said. In six years, Vaxin has raised $14 million -- about $10 million in government grants and appropriations but only $4 million from investors, including two venture groups in Birmingham. Protein Sciences has spent about $10 million developing its vaccine but has raised little money from outside investors, Adams said. Instead, the company relies on upwards of $6 million a year in revenue from selling biological products to researchers.
Holler said ID Biomedical isn't banking on its the cell culture business. Instead, it's working on getting its flu shots into the U.S market and completing development of a nasal flu vaccine that, unlike FluMist, doesn't use a live virus.
Still, Cano of Vaxin and Adams at Protein Sciences like their companies' chances with cell culture vaccines now that attention is being paid. "Investors are more interested," Cano said. "The media are more interested." He has been contacted recently by local and national venture capital groups. Adams said he has had several investor meetings in recent weeks.
"It's just crazy here," he said. "I've been traveling more than George Bush."
Asked how much money the company has raised post-Chiron, though, Adams said: "We haven't raised any, but I think we're getting close."
-------- imf / world bank / wto (economics)
W.T.O. Authorizes Trade Sanctions Against the United States
By PAUL MELLER
November 27, 2004
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/27/business/worldbusiness/27trade.html?oref=login&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
RUSSELS, Nov. 26 - The World Trade Organization authorized the European Union, Canada and five other countries on Friday to impose about $150 million in trade sanctions on the United States in retaliation for an import duties law that has been ruled illegal.
"It's been approved," said Amina Mohamed, the Kenyan ambassador to the trade group and chairwoman of the organization's dispute settlement body, according to The Associated Press.
The sanctions would be aimed at a wide range of American exports, possibly including steel ball bearings, cod, shoes and apples. Most would be imposed by Japan and the European Union, which have been the hardest hit by the United States law.
Known as the Byrd amendment, after Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who proposed it in 2000, the law gives American companies the proceeds from duties levied on foreign rivals deemed to be dumping products in the United States at below-market prices.
Seven trading partners of the Unites States complained that this punished the importers twice: once with the levy and again by giving a financial lift to their American competitors. The other countries seeking sanctions are Mexico, Japan, India, South Korea and Brazil.
The W.T.O. ruled early last year that the Byrd amendment was illegal. The United States has since tried to avert sanctions by appealing the decision, but to no avail.
The office of the United States trade representative said on Friday that it was working to revamp the law. "We already notified the W.T.O. that we intend to comply with our international commitments," said a spokesman, Richard Mills. "We are working with Congress on these efforts."
But he added that the United States would take whatever action was necessary to defend the country against unfair competition from abroad. "These issues don't affect the United States' right to implement our trade laws to make sure Americans are treated fairly," Mr. Mills said.
Although the amounts involved in this trade dispute are modest compared with other recent cases, the W.T.O.'s decision about the Byrd amendment is unusual in that it involved several countries taking action against one.
It could set a trend in future disputes, said Lourdes Catrain, a trade lawyer and partner in the Brussels office of the law firm Hogan & Hartson.
"This is very significant; it sends a very important message to the United States," she said. "Its trading partners are getting tired of the way the United States behaves."
The European Union is expected to apply punitive duties worth about $80 million on American produce to compensate for the losses incurred by European companies punished under the Byrd amendment.
It has drawn up a list of 80 products that could be sanctioned. The list was adapted from one drawn up in a recent dispute about illegal American import tariffs on steel, and will be winnowed down.
The short list will not be drawn up until the European Union officially decides to impose the sanctions. That decision is expected to be made in early 2005, according to the new trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, who took office at the beginning of this week.
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Habits hard to break for jailed nuns
Resolve unswayed after '02 break-in at Colo. missile site
Rocky Mountain News
By Charlie Brennan
November 27, 2004
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3357992,00.html
Prison can breed surprising friendships.
Take, for example, anti-nuclear activist and Dominican nun Carol Gilbert and America's most famous fallen homemaker, Martha Stewart.
Gilbert is at the Federal Corrections Camp in Alderson, W.Va., serving 33 months for her April 2003 conviction on one count each of felony sabotage and destruction of government property.
Stewart started a five-month sentence Oct. 8 at the same facility for lying to investigators about the circumstances of a now notorious 2001 stock sale.
Recently, Gilbert, 57, and Stewart, 63, ended up at the same lunch table. The pacifist, who has taken a vow of poverty, and the multimillionaire, who was chauffeured to prison by her personal security team, enjoyed their meeting - given the circumstances.
"We're not talking about a tea party," said Gilbert's Denver attorney, Sue Tyburski. "We're talking about a big cafeteria setting with the terrible food."
Gilbert wrote briefly about meeting Stewart in a recent letter to Tyburski, who had handled her case at no charge.
"She said that Martha is getting the kid-gloves treatment from all the guards and that she's in great demand for people to visit with at lunchtime," Tyburski said.
Stewart, Gilbert told her lawyer, is writing a book about her prison experience.
"Sister Carol," Tyburski said, "rather than saying, 'I hope I make it into her book' - as a lot of the prisoners are saying - says, 'I hope she writes about the plights of all these other women who have received lengthy sentence under federal mandatory drug-sentencing laws.' Rather than worrying about herself, as usual, she's thinking about everyone else there."
Three nuns, three journeys
That Gilbert has had prison face time with perhaps the federal prison system's most famous inmate is possibly the biggest surprise to arise out of a journey by Gilbert and two other Dominican nuns through the federal justice system since their arrest on Oct. 6, 2002.
That is the day that Gilbert and Sisters Ardeth Platte and Jackie Hudson went to the N-8 Minuteman III missile site in rural northeastern Weld County on a mission to nonviolently and symbolically inspect, expose and disarm what they branded an illegal and immoral weapon of mass destruction.
Clad in white jumpsuits identifying the trio as a "citizens' weapons inspector team," they cut through a security fence, smeared crosses in their own blood on the silo lid, and tapped on the rails - on which the 110-ton cover would move in the event of a missile launch - with ball-peen hammers in a symbolic attempt to beat swords into plowshares.
All three women drew longer sentences than they had expected, with Gilbert serving 33 months, 70-year-old Hudson 30 months and 68-year-old Platte 41 months. They are scattered through the federal Bureau of Prisons, housed in minimum-security facilities from Connecticut to California.
Their resolve, and their belief in the cause for which they sacrificed their freedom, is unchanged.
Hudson, in the days and weeks after the nuns' July 25, 2003, sentencing, spent jail time in Teller and El Paso counties, then was flown in shackles from Pueblo to Montana to Seattle, Oklahoma City and California, strip- searched twice and forced to sleep on at least one concrete floor.
But in her most recent letter to friends and supporters, written from the Federal Correctional Institution at Victorville, Calif., her sign-off betrayed no sense of defeat or surrender.
"There is so much to challenge our complacency these days," wrote Hudson. "May we all use energies toward achieving a more loving world.
"Always grateful, I promise my prayers and good wishes to each of you. MAY THE NONVIOLENT REVOLUTION COME!"
And Gilbert, in her November dispatch from West Virginia, after noting the recent arrival of Stewart, wrote of the leveling effect of prison life.
"Everyone here has been stripped naked," Gilbert wrote. "We have been stripped of more than just our physical clothes, but also of titles and professions. We come in all shapes and sizes, ages, classes, races and countries.
"Getting to know a woman here is a bit like peeling an onion - layer by layer."
Strange bedfellows
Prison life has placed at least one of the women in the strange position of indirectly supporting the military machine whose mission they fundamentally oppose.
Through a federal program created by Congress to provide job training for inmates - and cheap labor to the government - Gilbert had reported to friends in October that the prison garment factory - which she said manufactured, among other things, the flight jacket worn by President Bush during his "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier landing early in the Iraq war - was about to be converted into a prison-operated telemarketing center.
The next month, however, Gilbert reported, "The women had started to dismantle the sewing machines, when they were abruptly told to reassemble the machines, as the factory would be open another three months to complete a 10,000 order for military flight jackets.
"No explanation was given."
Another insight into the alternate universe the sisters have stepped into is provided in this excerpt from Gilbert's October 2004 letter.
"This past month, I was stopped by a male guard going into the dining room because my pant legs were rolled up," wrote Gilbert, a lifetime pacifist. "He yelled, 'Stop! Put those pant legs down - that's gang dress.' "
"Meanwhile," her note continued, "some of the women wear very large pants hanging halfway down their posteriors and are never questioned. Some of the women said that if I'd dress like that in the dining room, they would give me a candy bar."
Platte wrote in her July letter about the resolution of a long- troublesome health problem.
"For those of you who have been following my yearlong need for eye surgery for the removal of a cataract, my intense pursuit for relief because of difficulty in negotiating stairs (no depth perception) and the strain in reading with the burden placed on one overworked eye, I have good news," she wrote.
The surgery was performed July 9. She subsequently noted to one supporter that she wished her "spiritual blindness" could be solved as easily as her physical blindness.
Platte - who is imprisoned in Danbury, Conn., and may not be released until shortly before Christmas 2005 - clearly sees her life as a steady striving for enlightenment.
"Waiting allows time for the spiritual growing, pondering and preparing," she wrote this month.
"These imply patience, alertness, renewal, soul-searching, being awake and attentive, spiritual regrouping, yearning and nourishing.
"Taking advantage of time, this moment, of standing with awesome wonder, of dwelling in the light, is what Advent (which begins on Nov. 28) is all about for me."
Sentences appealed
While the sisters never attempted to evade arrest or deny responsibility for the symbolic dawn mission they embarked on more than two years ago, they are appealing their sentences. That appeal was heard Oct. 1 in Denver before a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Their appeal is a three-part argument: that the sabotage charge represented an overbroad application of the definition of national defense; that the government did not prove sabotage; and that U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn erred in his jury instructions by not letting jurors consider whether the sisters had a good-faith belief that their actions were legal.
While a decision on their appeal could come at any time, the focus of each woman remains primarily on their own spiritual and political journeys, the ministries they can offer their fellow inmates - including Martha Stewart - and on the glimpses of the everyday world they can enjoy, even while they are without their freedom.
"The color of the trees on the mountains is spectacular this year," Gilbert wrote earlier this fall from West Virginia. "We are told it is because of the colder temperatures.
"The winter blue jays and woodpeckers are returning in all their grandeur, and the other morning, I heard a hooting owl.
"As we await word on the appeal (December or January), I wait patiently in hope of an unexpected release and continue to find much to keep me occupied until May 23, 2005" - her anticipated release date.
In her most recent dispatch, Platte said, "Our appeal decisions remain with the three 10th Circuit Court judges. We await their word with peace."
brennanc@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2742
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Mary Kelly: Sentencing To Take Place Wednesday December 1st
Nov 27 2004
Independent Media Centre
by Tommy Donnellan - Galway Alliance Against War
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=67681&type=feature
Mary recently published the below as a comment on a newswire article banners support Mary Kelly in Shop St., Galway I enclose comment from Ramsey Clark ex US Attorney General, who due to Judge Moran's adamant "opinion" that any evidence I brought forth relating to the US Military presence in Shannon or the war on Iraq was irrelevant, was not allowed testify at my trial. His evidence, plus that of Denis Halliday, ex Assistant General Secraetary of the UN, Dr Curtis Doebbler, Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon whistleblower, and Dr Siegwart Hosrt Guenter, the world's leading expert on Depleted Uranium, would have informed the jury greatly and put my action firmly in the context in which it was taken. Instead the jury were forced to see me as a vandal.
Dear Mary,
Your conviction is like the re-election of George W. Bush here - a cause for despair - to which we cannot yield. The Irish jury like the American voter was poorly informed and misinformed and that information largely controlled by government here/prosecutor and court there and the corporate owned media which serves economic power and glorifies war and other violence.
You performed a miracle under the circumstances in emboldening two jurors to vote for acquittal.
I am very concerned about your sentencing and must hope the Court can understand that a government that punishes people for acting, effectively and harming no living thing, on moral principle to prevent war will destroy itself.
Thanks for your courageous struggle.
Keep in touch. Ramsey
From the newswire (with minor editing): Banners Support Mary Kelly in Shop St., GalwayThe pedestrians of Shop St., Galway were leafleted by a diverse group of activists on Sat. Nov 27th 2004 in order to draw attention to the continuing saga of the case of peace campaigner, and direct action activist, Mary Kelly. Nick from the Galway Mary Kelly Support Group, Spanish Veronica from the Nunca Mais movement, me fein (Tommy Donellan) and Tony of the SWP.
Before the lashing rain forced us to wind-up the leafletting prematurely, a not inconsiderable number were handed out on the crowded street, eliciting warm support, except for vicious comments from two head bangers.
With the denouement of her long travail against the murdering Yanks and their contemptible apologists in this country happening in Limerick City this Wednesday, December 1st (when she is up for sentencing before Judge Moran with the possibility of a savage custodial sentence), we felt that Curtis Doebbler's thoughtful analysis of the provenance of the shameful jury verdict and pussy Moran's pusillanimity had to be disseminated and, as such, that was the content of todays leaflet.
With the jury exoneration of 'Robocop' Corcoran and this June's Referendum result, it is self-evident the collective Irish psyche/ethos is deeply twisted. We urge all activists and people of conscience to demonstrate their anger on the streets of Ireland on Wednesday when, as expected, the fuckers make a martyr out of her and put the frighteners on the Pitstops and all cutting edge activists. Activists in Galway and Limerick cities will certainly be doing their duty on the streets this Wednesday.
The International Human Rights lawyer, Professor Curtis Doebbler (University of Najaf, Palestine) on the Ennis trial of Mary:
It is often hard for a competitive and individualistic society to understand one who acts out of moral necessity to help others. Most individuals, judges and lawyers alike, confine their understanding of right and wrong to their narrow vision of the law. They neither appreciate the significance of their own acts nor the acts of others for society as a whole. Instead, they merely satisfy themselves with reiterating the status quo that they think is the best that they and society can achieve.
Banners Support Mary Kelly in Shop St., Galway Mary Kelly's actions disturbed this smug intellectual charade by showing that individuals can act in meaningful ways to change the world around them for the better. Rather than being confined by short-sighted legal traditions, her acts were based on respect for the most basic traditions of human dignity. Her attempt to stop an act that would lead to the death of others, a clear violation of international law, reflected her belief that we can do better as individuals and as society.
Ironically, this is the belief upon which our modern society has been based at least since the end of World War II, when governments agreed to respect some basic human rights of all individuals and some basic principles of international law.
Mary Kelly's actions and her attempted defence of these actions before Judge Carroll Moran in the Ennis courtroom, reflected the basic values of human dignity that were established by a consensus of our society more than half a century ago, to guide us into a future of peaceful coexistence.
Such ideals were too much for Judge Moran to grasp, instead, he retreated to the security of the status quo and rejected the possibility that an individual could act to improve the world. It was not surprising and not unexpected. It is, however, very disappointing to see that a senior judge lacked the courage and the foresight to follow the path set by so many courageous men and women - many of them fellow lawyers - who put our communal aspirations to paper so long ago. These aspirations have formed the basis of our rule of law ever since, but they are now being challenged by policies of lawlessness and violence.
banners support Mary Kelly in Shop St., GalwayThe silver lining,perhaps, is that both Mary Kelly's actions and her pro se defence remind us that everyone can defend the values of human dignity. No social or political podium or starched wig of legitimacy can distract from the basic natural right of every human being to act in the name of the most basic laws decreed by society and to defend their actions based on these laws.
Both Mary, and those observing her trials might be consoled by remembering that it has often been individuals like Mary who have kept humanity on course through such treacherous waters as we face today. And it is often after the worse wrecks that we most clearly reflect on the beacon of human dignity that guides us. After all, even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted without dissent by the majority of states in the international community and today largely a reflection of established customery international law, was only born from the ruins of the Second World War.
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Seven Activists Arrested in Sit-In At Former Homeless Shelter in SW DC
By Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 27, 2004; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15440-2004Nov26?language=printer
A standoff between police and protesters who staged a sit-in at a former homeless shelter in Southwest Washington ended yesterday with the arrests of seven people.
Activists with the group Mayday DC had occupied the former Randall Shelter at I and Half streets SW since Wednesday night, unofficially "reopening" it to the homeless. Since then, about 40 people had received housing, food and other necessities such as aspirin, said the protesters, who demanded that the city keep the building open as a shelter.
"The city government's policies seem to be to sweep the homeless out of sight," Jamie Loughner, 40, said yesterday afternoon as she stood inside the squat red-brick building and poked her head out a metal door's small broken window, before police moved in. Behind her were green cots and a table loaded with soda bottles and orange juice cartons, while above her activists sat on the roof near a spray-painted sheet reading, "Shelter Here! Now! Forever!"
Loughner was one of seven activists inside the building when police officers started making arrests about 5 p.m., said Kristan Markey, a spokesman for the group. Markey said that officers went up to the roof in a cherry picker and arrested the seven one by one.
Sgt. Joe Gentile, a D.C. police spokesman, said four women and three men were arrested by D.C. Protective Services, which protects District government property.
The seven were charged with unlawful entry and were held last night at the 1st Police District station, authorities said.
On Nov. 3, the D.C. Department of Human Services closed the facility, an overnight emergency shelter for men located in a former junior high school. The city plans to sell the building to the Corcoran Museum of Art and College of Art and Design for $6.2 million.
After the shelter's closing, city officials opened 150 beds for homeless men on the campus of St. Elizabeths Hospital in Southeast. They said yesterday that of the approximately 170 men at the Randall shelter, all but about 10 voluntarily started staying at the shelter at St. Elizabeths.
Debra A. Daniels, a spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services, said the shelter at the hospital is in a renovated space with new showers and room for the city to offer support services. Transportation has been provided to the men so they can travel between the shelter and downtown, she said.
"The Department of Human Services is working very, very hard on behalf of the mayor . . . to provide safe and decent shelter for the homeless," Daniels said.
But homeless advocates inside and outside the Randall building yesterday criticized the city for moving beds out of the downtown area, where the homeless often congregate and where many social services are located.
"We need to preserve the right to shelter downtown," said Jill Blankespoor, 28, a Mayday DC activist who took part in the sit-in.
The protesters appeared to have succeeded in throwing the future of the Randall building into question.
City officials said the deal with the Corcoran is not yet official, and a D.C. Council subcommittee plans to vote Monday on whether to declare the property no longer needed for government use. The deal cannot go forward until the subcommittee votes to declare the building surplus property, city officials said.
Two members of the three-member subcommittee, council members Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4) and Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), said they were willing to hear the protesters' concerns at the meeting Monday.
Fenty, who drove to the building yesterday to observe the sit-in, said he would like to see the Corcoran keep part of the building open as a shelter. "Either this stays as a shelter or a shelter opens around here," he said.
Graham said the closure of the Randall shelter has left Southwest without a men's shelter. "They couldn't have a more sympathetic panel," he said of the protesters.
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