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Rev. Moon, the Bushes & Donald Rumsfeld ^ Radioactive Consumed Items ^ Gorbachev


1) Stop Star Wars Petition

2) Rev. Moon, the Bushes & Donald Rumsfeld

3) U.S. Agencies Seek to Turn Radioactive Metals into Consumed Items

4) Bush 'Star Wars' Plan Will Put US-China On A Collision Course

5) Gorbachev: "Mr. Bush, The World Doesn't Want to Be American"

The following items are astonishing. Peace in Space is a boundary and an opportunity to extend peace everywhere. However, if we cross over that boundary and commit space to war, the destruction of life as we know it would be hastened, generating wealth (temporarily) for a few, and the vast majority would suffer horribly.

Please sign the Stop Star Wars Petition, item 1. Please join the efforts of Organizations and individuals opposing policies that jeopardize life. The following articles give much support for this appeal.

Also, please consider remaining vigilant and supportive during these final days of the Clinton Presidency. Keep encouraging him to grant Leonard Peltier an Executive Clemency pardon.

Visit http://www.FreePeltier.org for recent updates, including a testimony of a former BIA empoyee who worked on Pine Ridge during the "Reign of Terror." Besides calling the comment line 202-456-1111,0 weekdays, to urge Clemency, please, also send a prepared or your own fax, by visiting
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/usa/peltier/getInvolved.html

Justice and Peace in Space go hand in hand.

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1) Stop Star Wars Petition


To: President Bush and Congress

We, the undersigned, urge you to stop all plans to build, test and deploy the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system, and the space-based laser program -- the real Star Wars.

We are deeply concerned that the U.S. Space Command, in their goal to "control and dominate" space, is creating a costly and deadly new arms race in space. Once begun it will be virtually impossible to stop.

The United Nations Outer Space Treaty states that no nation should be allowed to put weapons into space and that space must be preserved for the benefit of all humankind.

We pledge to work to stop the bad seed of war, greed, and environmental contamination from being moved into the heavens.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

To View and Sign this Petition visit:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Jules/petition.html

To learn more about a Coalition of Organizations and Individuals to
STOP STAR WARS
Contact the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
http://www.space4peace.org
PO Box 90083; Gainesville, FL. 32607
Tel: (352)337-9274

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2) Rev. Moon, the Bushes & Donald Rumsfeld

Published Wednesday, January 3, 2001 in The Consortium News

Rev. Moon, the Bushes & Donald Rumsfeld
by Robert Parry

George W. Bush's choice of Donald Rumsfeld to be U.S. defense secretary could put an unintended spotlight on the role of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon - a Bush family benefactor - in funneling millions of dollars to communist North Korea in the 1990s as it was developing a missile and nuclear weapons program.

In 1998, Rumsfeld headed a special commission, appointed by the Republican-controlled Congress, that warned that North Korea had made substantial progress during the decade in building missiles that could pose a potential nuclear threat to Japan and parts of the United States.

"The extraordinary level of resources North Korea and Iran are now devoting to developing their own ballistic missile capabilities poses a substantial and immediate danger to the U.S., its vital interests and its allies," said the report by Rumsfeld's Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States.

"North Korea maintains an active WMD [weapons of mass destruction] program, including a nuclear weapon program. It is known that North Korea diverted material in the late 1980s for at least one or possibly two weapons," the report said.

Rumsfeld's alarming assessment of North Korea's war-making capabilities now is being cited by Republicans as a justification for investing billions of taxpayer dollars in an anti-missile defense system favored by Bush and Rumsfeld.

Yet, during the early-to-mid 1990s, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency was monitoring a series of clandestine payments from Sun Myung Moon's organization to the North Korean communist leaders who were overseeing the country's military strategies.

According to DIA documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Moon's payments to North Korean leaders included a $3 million "birthday present" to current communist leader Kim Jong Il and offshore payments amounting to "several tens of million dollars" to the previous communist dictator, Kim Il Sung.

For the complete story by Robert Parry visit:
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0103-07.htm
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3) U.S. Agencies Seek to Turn Radioactive Metals into Consumer Items

By Brian Hansen

WASHINGTON, DC, January 3, 2001 (ENS) - The manufacture of consumer products out of radioactively contaminated materials discarded from commercial nuclear power plants and government bomb factories could become a fact of American life. In an extraordinary move, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission today asked the National Academy of Sciences to sanction the controversial practice.

For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-03-15.html

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4) Bush 'Star Wars' Plan Will Put US-China On A Collision Course

Tuesday, January 2, 2001

Toronto Globe & Mail

Bush Risks Renewed Arms Race

by Miro Cernetig

BEIJING -- It seems a fine idea from Washington: Build an antimissile system to blow a distant enemy's nuclear and chemical weapons out of the sky, perhaps making the world's richest country impervious to a sneak missile attack.

But on the other side of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, where no country can yet match the development budget of the Pentagon's $65-billion (U.S.) defence scheme, President-elect George W. Bush's hope of building such a missile shield is guaranteed to shake the so-called nuclear balance that has held between nuclear powers since the Cold War. "There's no doubt that if Bush pushes ahead on this, Washington and Beijing will be on a collision course," said a Western diplomat in Beijing.

China's Communist regime, which analysts believe now controls about a dozen missiles capable of hitting North America on a good day, has already signalled that it will be forced to scale up its nuclear arsenal if Mr. Bush goes ahead with the missile-defence shield. Beijing has never attempted to compete with the United States or Russia in numbers of nuclear missiles, but an economically buoyant and increasingly nationalistic China has already said it would have no choice but to start.

To show they mean business, China's generals have been announcing tests of a longer-range missile system with more reliable workings that will improve the weapons' chances of hitting North American targets. Meanwhile, Russia and China are also warning Mr. Bush that if his administration moves ahead with the antimissile system, it will be a violation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, a cornerstone of the world's nuclear balance since the 1970s.

Over the weekend, Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov showed his country's concern by saying that Moscow will be seeking "serious dialogue" with Mr. Bush's administration to try to retain the ABM treaty. That would likely involve a stipulation from Moscow that Washington back off on its continental missile-defence shield. But those high-level warnings seem to be going unheeded by Mr. Bush. President Bill Clinton has retreated from a decision to expand funding for the so-called Star Wars system, named after the dream first backed by former Republican president Ronald Reagan during the 1980s, but Mr. Bush, who takes over on Jan. 21, seems to be pushing it to the top of his military agenda.

He has appointed a security team that is bullish on the shield, even though it is still unclear whether the system can ever work outside laboratory conditions.

In a surprise move that shows his determination, Mr. Bush nominated Donald Rumsfeld as his secretary of defence. Mr. Rumsfeld is a seasoned Cold War warrior who has been a staunch advocate of a missile-defence shield.

Mr. Rumsfeld's hawkish views are backed by Colin Powell, the retired general who is Mr. Bush's choice for secretary of state. Mr. Powell has called a missile shield "an essential part" of the new administration's defence strategy.

China's leaders have been largely silent on these developments. Beijing had success with a propaganda campaign aimed at persuading Mr. Clinton to take a slower approach on the idea, and expected more of the same if Vice-President Al Gore was elected.

But Mr. Bush's agenda is clearly more hawkish, and is expected to get a negative reaction from China after his inauguration.

"The Chinese will hate this. They will attack the Bush administration over missile defence in the days and in the years to come, and the hawks in the Chinese military will be using Mr. Bush's plan for antimissile defence to try and garner bigger budgets to build more missiles," said another Western diplomat in Beijing.

"This will be one of the major issues affecting Sino-U.S. relations in the next four years."

Particularly worrying to the Chinese is that the Pentagon is hoping to use the antimissile umbrella to build regional antimissile systems, known as theatre missile defence.

The Pentagon sees those systems as a way of defending its allies and U.S. troops outside North America from rogue states such as North Korea, but there are complications. Taiwan, the breakaway island democracy that China considers a wayward province and hopes to reabsorb, wants to be covered by the U.S. system to help defend against Chinese attacks. But Beijing angrily opposes the idea, having built up its coastal missile arsenal to ensure that it could successfully invade Taiwan if the island ever declares independence from China.

China believes that a theatre missile-defence shield would shake the Asian military balance, giving the United States too much influence.
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5) Gorbachev: "Mr. Bush, The World Doesn't Want to Be American"

Published on Saturday, Dec. 30, 2000 in the
International Herald Tribune

Mr. Bush, The World Doesn't Want to Be American

by Mikhail Gorbachev

MOSCOW - Dear Mr. Bush:

I am writing to you as a citizen of our planet and someone who beholds the last remaining superpower. Can there be any doubt that the United States plays a major role in guiding our world? Only a fool could disregard that fact. To acknowledge this is a given, even though American spokesmen are perhaps somewhat overly inclined to press the point home to the rest of the world.

For while America's role is acknowledged throughout the world, her claim to hegemony, not to say domination, is not similarly recognized. For this reason, I hope, Mr. Bush, as the new American president, that you will give up any illusion that the 21st century can, or even should, be the "American Century." Globalization is a given - but "American globalization" would be a mistake. In fact, it would be something devoid of meaning and even dangerous.

I would go even further and say it is time for America's electorate to be told the blunt truth: that the present situation of the United States, with a part of its population able to enjoy a life of extraordinary comfort and privilege, is not tenable as long as an enormous portion of the world lives in abject poverty, degradation and backwardness.

For 10 years, U.S. foreign policy has been formulated as if it were the policy of a victor in war, the Cold War. But at the highest reaches of U.S. policy-making no one has grasped the fact that this could not be the basis for formulating post-Cold War policy.

In fact, there has been no "pacification." On the contrary, there has been a heightening of inequalities, tension and hostility, with most of the last directed toward the United States.

Instead of seeing an increase in U.S. security, the end of the Cold War has seen a decline. It is not hard to imagine that, should the United States persist in its policies, the international situation will continue to deteriorate.

It is also difficult to believe that, under present circumstances, relations between the United States, on the one hand, and China, India and all the rest of the earth that lives in abject poverty, on the other, could develop in a positive direction. Nor is it possible, on the basis of its present posture, for the United States to establish effective, long-term cooperation with its traditional allies, Europe first and foremost.

Already we see numerous trade disputes, evidence of the conflicting interests separating the United States and the European Union. At the recent conference in The Hague, where the participants were supposed to come up with a common policy on limiting greenhouse effects, U.S. positions were far removed from those of all others. As a result, no decision was taken. This is clearly an example of a failure of "world governance."

From the standpoint of the Old World, the post-Cold War period ushered in hopes that now are faded. Over the past decade, the United States has continued to operate along an ideological track identical to the one it
followed during the Cold War.

Need an example? The expansion of NATO eastward, the handling of the Yugoslav crisis, the theory and practice of U.S. rearmament - including the utterly extravagant national missile defense system, which, in turn, is based on the bizarre notion of "rogue states."

Isn't it amazing that disarmament moved further during the last phase of the Cold War than during the period after its end? And isn't that because U.S. leadership has been unable to adjust to the new European reality? Europe is now a new, independent and powerful player on the world scene. To continue to regard it as a junior partner would be a mistake.

Europe's experience must serve as a lesson for future relations, but it can do so only if America and Europe build a genuine, equal partnership.

Finally, it is hardly a secret that relations between the United States and Russia have deteriorated over recent years. Responsibility for this must be shared between Russia and America.

The present leadership of Russia appears ready to cooperate with the United States in framing a new agenda for relations. But it is unclear what your orientation will be.

What we heard during the electoral campaign did not sound encouraging. If we truly want to build a new world order and further European unity, we have to recognize that this will not be possible without an active role for Russia. This recognition is the necessary basis for setting future Russian-American relations on the right path.

The world is complicated, it contains and expresses a variety of interests and cultures. Sooner or later, international policy, including that of the United States, will have to come to terms with that variety.
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The writer, the last president of the former Soviet Union, contributed this comment to the Washington Post.

Copyright © 2000 the International Herald Tribune
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