| Flyby News Home - Flyby News Archives - Casinni NoFlyby - Flyby Links |
Star Wars: Now or Never - Tooth Fairy Study Update - Vieques - Karl Grossman
During these next coming days and months, U.S. policy holders will make the decision to press forward for missile defense, or, they will choose to honor treaties, and keep space open for peace. The U.S. wants to use billions or trillions of dollars for a renewed "star wars" military space effort that would lead to a greater acceleration of the arms race for all weapons of mass destruction. This is suicide and we need to convince the U.S., especially those serving the U.S. Congress, that disarmament is in the national security interests, not breaking treaties for questionable military strategic advantages. The scuffles between China and the U.S. of late, reminds me of two teenage gangs going at each other at high speeds in a game of chicken. Obviously, it is reasonable to assume that the faster plane is more responsible for causing the accident than the slower plane. Yet., the U.S. could have been humble, acknowledging once again its fatal mistake for bombing the Chinese Embassy in Serbia, but no, this played into the Taiwan deal for big weapon contracts. The arms game is to get rich using fear incentives that can never really work.. The only thing is, with the nature of this game, time is growing short.
Please join the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and support their educational campaigns for peace in space and International Actions -- October 13, 2001. For more information, contact the Global Network
Also, call the Congressional Switchboard to reach your Representative
202-224-3121
ask their support to Stop Star Wars for Peace in Space
1) The Bush Star Wars Speech Next Tuesday
2) Russia, China and North Korea Respond to U.S. Missile Defense
3) Tooth Fairy Study Update
4) U.S. military detains protesters at Vieques
5) Tools for Raising Consciousness by Karl Grossman
**********************************************************************
1) The Bush Star Wars Speech Next Tuesday
Thursday April 26 6:55 PM ET
Bush Plans Missile Defense Speech
By RON FOURNIER, AP White House Correspondent
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush will explain his rationale for seeking a national missile defense system in a major address Tuesday, before sending diplomatic teams overseas to consult with wary American allies.
The speech, still being drafted at the White House, is expected to outline the president's view that a national missile defense system is part of a broad national security policy that could include reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, said three senior White House advisers who spoke on
condition of anonymity.
Many European allies and Russia oppose Bush's plan for a national missile defense system, saying it could spark an arms race. Bush hopes talk of reducing U.S. nuclear stockpiles will soften opposition in Europe and reassure Russia that missile defense is not a threat to Moscow.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told European allies during meetings in Germany in February that the administration would consult closely before committing to a missile defense. Those consultations will begin after Bush's speech, officials said.
Rumsfeld also offered to share missile defense technology to ensure the allies are protected as well.
Asked to preview the speech, the Bush advisers pointed to an address he delivered in May 2000 as a presidential candidate. In that appearance, Bush said he would slash America's nuclear arsenal to its ``lowest possible number consistent with our national security,'' regardless of whether Moscow went along.
Bush has offered no details about the size of the possible nuclear cuts or the cost of a missile defense system. He said at the time he was trying ``to demonstrate to Russia that we are no longer enemies.''
Russia's objections to a U.S. missile defense system date to the bleak days of the Cold War, when former President Reagan pushed for a space-based initiative. Bush has said he is willing to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to make room for the development of technology that could protect the United States against missile strikes from a growing number of nuclear threats.
The Russians have said they will put all arms control treaties on hold if the United States either violates or withdraws from the 1972 pact, which prohibits national missile defenses.
Bush said last year he would ask his defense secretary to review the United States' nuclear posture and determine how far the arsenal could be cut Rumsfeld is conducting that review now.
Former President Clinton and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed in 1997 that a START III accord would further reduce their nuclear arsenals to between 2,000 and 2,500 warheads, although recently the Russians have suggested going even lower, perhaps to 1,500.
Rumsfeld has a group of experts working behind closed doors to develop a detailed plan for achieving Bush's goals on missile defense.
In the meantime, the Pentagon has been proceeding on the land-based missile defense project that the Clinton administration was pursuing. A key test of the land-based system is expected to be held in early summer, although no announcements have been made.
When Bush entered office in January, the Pentagon's position was that even a rudimentary national missile defense could not be ready for use before 2006. Bush has not specified his preferred timetable.
Aides would not rule out the possibility that Bush will discuss the timetable or other questions left unanswered in last year's speech.
Military officers who have discussed the administration's defense priorities with Rumsfeld say he has made it clear that missile defense is priority No1.
Many in the military worry that the billions of dollars likely to be invested in missile defense will take away from programs they consider more important.
-
Pentagon reporter Bob Burns contributed to this story.
**********************************************************************
2) Russia, China and North Korea Respond to U.S. Missile Defense
[This news story was received from the Global Network 4/11/01]
By EDITH M. LEDERER
The Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Russia, China and North Korea attacked U.S. intentions to build a national missile defense system, warning that it would threaten international security and trigger a new arms race.
The three countries said in separate speeches to the U.N. Disarmament Commission that a U.S. missile defense system would also undermine the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans such systems.
U.S. officials did not speak at Tuesday's meeting.
In the harshest criticism, North Korea's U.N. Ambassador Li Hyong Chol accused the United States of ``unjustifiably'' branding the country "a rogue state'' and making claims about ``the nonexistent `missile threat' from us'' in order to justify building the missile system.
At a meeting last month with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung in Washington, President Bush said he was skeptical about North Korea and would not immediately resume talks to pressure the communist country to curb its missile program.
Li said the Bush administration's decision to establish a missile defense system makes ``crystal clear'' why it is evading the resolution of the missile issue with Pyongyang. He warned that as long as the United States ``continues picking on us,'' North Korea would have no choice but to take countermeasures.
``Even if this entails an arms race between North Korea and the U.S. and all other agreements are scrapped, we will have little to lose,'' he warned.
Chinese Ambassador Hu Xiaodi, who is based in Geneva, said a U.S. missile defense shield ``will severely hinder the international arms control and disarmament process and even trigger off a new round of (the) arms race.''
Once a shield is in place, he said, ``the country concerned will be more prone to act unilaterally and to use or threaten to use force in international affairs.
``That will consequently create more instability in the world,'' he added.
Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador Andrey Granovsky warned that destroying the ABM treaty ``owing to the U.S. plans to deploy a national missile defense system would seriously affect global stability and international security.''
Unless the ABM treaty is preserved, he said, Russia cannot move ahead on cutting its stockpile of nuclear weapons.
******************************************************************************
3) Tooth Fairy Study Update
Dr Jay M. Gould
Radiation and Public Health Project
Box 60
Unionville New York 10988
USA
Dear Friend,
As one who has expressed interest in our work in the past , you may be interested in the enclosed recent exchange of letters carried in The Nation magazine, which describes the remarkable success of our Tooth Fairy Study, and which was the subject of a BBC World news report on April 5, which
was seen by 90 million viewers worldwide. We have to date analyzed the radioactive strontium levels (called Sr90) in 1,500 baby teeth, mainly from those born in recent years near nuclear reactors. We have found that about half have levels far above the expected trace levels, in some cases 30 or 40 times higher!
When we have around 10,000 baby teeth we hope then to collect medical histories of each child to ascertain the degree to which children with high levels have had such childhood illnesses as asthma, learning disabilities, infections etc. We already have many teeth from kids with cancer. Our findings eventually may replicate the success of the first baby teeth study started by Dr. Barry Commoner in St. Louis in 1958. After collecting 60,000 teeth, that study found that Sr90 levels rose one-hundred fold from 1948 to 1963. In that year President Kennedy asked Dr. Ernest Sternglass to testify to Congress on radiation-induced childhood cancer, to accelerate the ratification of the ban on above-ground nuclear bomb tests. Dr. Sternglass, it should be noted, is the scientific director of our current baby teeth study.
We are now facing an embarrassment of riches. We are now getting baby teeth from all parts of the nation and now from England, Russia, Japan and even China too, because of the BBC report, as well as mailed appeals from Alec Baldwin and Christie Brinkley as concerned parents. We may reach our
goal of collecting 10,000 teeth within the next year or two. but the number of teeth received is growing so rapidly, we need to raise funds to pay for testing these teeth . Our hope is that individuals such as yourself will help us by sponsoring the testing of one or more teeth, at the cost of $50 per
tooth. If you feel that our study merits support, please send a check for $50 (or more) as a tax-deductible contribution to my address above. But this will work only if you can send this appeal to others who share our interest in eliminating nuclear pollution. If you can forward this message by Email write me at jaymgould@aol.com, and I will send this to you by e-mail. In this way we hope to have enough small donations to encourage foundations to fund completion of our study. The enclosed [following] letter exchange in the March 26th issue of The Nation illustrates the irony that our study is opposed by the federal government which has been measuring Sr90 levels in adult vertebrae each year since 1954 but inexplicably terminated these efforts in 1982.
Passionate appeals by local residents as well as Alec Baldwin and Christie Brinkley moved the New Jersey Legislature to approve a grant of $75,000 to analyze baby teeth from children living near the notoriously malfunctioning Oyster Creek reactor. Governor Christie Whitman (now EPA administrator) vetoed this tiny grant from a multi-billion dollar state budget. Similar grants of $60,000 from the legislatures of Suffolk and Westchester counties have yet to materialize. It is becoming clear that our primary resource will continue to be the support of individuals and foundations who are concerned that our health is threatened by nuclear reactor emissions, and who
want us to continue to establish strong scientific evidence of radioactive exposure by measuring Sr90levels in baby teeth. Also, please visit out website http://www.radiation.org
Sincerely, Jay M. Gould
-------------------------------------------------------------
Letters to The Nation ,March 26, 2001
NUCLEAR POWER & US
New York City
I would like to provide an update on some remarkable events that followed Joseph Mangano's epidemiological discovery that closing the Rancho Seco reactor in 1989 was followed by an enormous improvement in infant mortality and childhood cancer (Harvey Wasserman, "No Nukes--Better Health" Jan.29) Mangano has now found that mortality rates for all age groups in these areas have, since 1989, improved for all diseases mediated by the immune response. San Francisco, for example (only 70 miles from Rancho Seco) had in 1998 the lowest age-adjusted mortality rate of any large US county, with extraordinary declines since 1990 in all cancers, including breast and prostate, and in all infectious diseases. Even AIDS death rates by 1998 have declined to the level of 1979.As a result of local grassroots dissemination of these facts and a generous grant from the CEO of a large San Francisco company, Mangano may soon be able to offer clinical as well as epidemiological proof of the benefits of closing reactors. As national coordinator of our Tooth Fairy Project, which has been finding ominously high levels of bone-seeking radioactive strontium (Sr90) in the baby teeth of about 2000 children born in recent years that could not be the result of past superpower aboveground nuclear bomb tests, he may soon be able to ascertain the change, if any, in the ratios of Sr90 to calcium in the baby teeth of children born before and after reactor closings. The Nation readers can give us invaluable support by collecting baby teeth from anyone born in recent years, or even from baby boomers born as far back as the bomb test years of the 1950s, for we have found that they have the same incredibly high levels, after correction for the 29 year half life of Sr90, that prompted President Kennedy to terminate such aboveground tests in 1963. Please visit our website, www.radiation.org, and/or call 800 582 3716 for tooth envelopes.
JAY M. G0ULD
Radiation and Public Health Project Inc.
**********************************************************************
4) U.S. military detains protesters at Vieques
April 27, 2001
Web posted at: 3:23 p.m. EDT (1923 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/04/27/vieques.protests.02/index.html
VIEQUES, Puerto Rico (CNN) -- Protesters faced off with the U.S. military on Friday at a Navy bombing range on Puerto Rico's Vieques Island.
By midday, U.S. security forces had detained at least 13 people, including eight protesters who boated to a tiny island just offshore, forcing the Navy to stop its bombing minutes after it started.
The bombing, using "inert" bombs the Navy said would not explode, resumed after the eight were arrested. At least five more people were detained overnight when they were found on the practice range grounds.
The range, used for target practice since 1941, has been a battleground of a different sort since a civilian security guard was killed two years ago by an errant bomb.
Puerto Rico had sought a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to block the drills, but U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler rejected the arguments.
After the ruling, the Navy said it would again conduct training exercises at Vieques, and hundreds of protesters converged on San Juan, Puerto Rico, to signal their displeasure.
By Friday afternoon, dozens of protesters beat drums, sang and chanted as they marched in front of the gates. A line of security guards stood between them and the bombing range on the eastern end of Vieques Island.
Opponents confident of eventual win
Earlier on Friday, Navy A-4 bombers from the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Puerto Rico started bombing but stopped minutes later when the protesters were spotted on the island. Security forces were dispatched to remove them.
Two destroyers from the carrier's battle group launched ship-to-shore bombs after the protesters were taken into custody and removed to safety.
Opponents of the Navy's use of the island said they were not discouraged by the ruling that allowed the resumption of the bombing.
"We have a strong case, a difficult case, but a strong case. ... I'm confident we're going to prevail on the merits," said Eugene Gulland, an attorney representing the Puerto Rican government. He said Puerto Rico hopes to resolve the matter through talks with the Bush administration.
Kessler rejected arguments from attorneys for Puerto Rico that the coming exercise would inflict irreparable harm on people living near the range. The Department of Health and Human Services is studying whether the noise may be linked to some health problems in residents of Vieques.
Justice Department attorneys had argued the United States has the right to continue the drills while broader questions over noise are resolved.
Range used for 60 years
Last year, hundreds of demonstrators were arrested as they sought to block use of the bombing range, protesting the accidental bombing death of a civilian there. In April 1999, a Marine Corps jet inadvertently dropped two bombs off target, killing a civilian guard working on the bombing range.
The Pentagon says it needs the range for combat training for Navy and Marine pilots.
"We continue to say that the training down there is very, very important. Realistic training is one of the reasons that the United States military is as effective as it is around the world," said Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley. "And Vieques is a superb training range, the best in the entire Atlantic for the uses that the Navy and Marine Corps need to put it toward."
He added that the training there "is absolutely essential to the value and the realism and the preparedness of our military forces as they prepare to deploy forward."
CNN Producers Allison Flexner and Paul Courson and Correspondent John Zarrella contributed to this report.
Please Note:
CNN is running a poll today: Created: Fri Apr 27 11:13:34 EDT 2001
Should the U.S. end its bombing exercises on Puerto Rico's Vieques Island?
at around 5:30 P.M. the tally was:
Yes 44% 16530 votes
No 56% 20769 votes
Total: 37299 votes
To vote go to http://www.cnn.com
Scroll down to shaded area called: QUICK VOTE
This QuickVote is not scientific and reflects the opinions of only those Internet users who have chosen to participate. The results cannot be assumed to represent the opinions of Internet users in general, nor the public as a whole. The QuickVote sponsor is not responsible for content, functionality or the opinions expressed therein.
**********************************************************************
5) Tools for Raising Consciousness by Karl Grossman
Available on May 1, 2001 from EnviroVideo, Karl Grossman's new production "Star Wars Returns." This powerful 30-minute documentary reveals how the United States is moving to make space a new arena of war. It presents military documents declaring the U.S. intention to "control space" and from space "dominate" the world below. It exposes U.S. development programs now underway to produce space-based laser weapons. And, it shows how the George W. Bush administration and, especially, its Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is pushing ahead rapidly with Star Wars--that far more than "missile defense" is involved. It tells how, at the UN, because of the U.S. program for space warfare, a vote was recently held to reaffirm the Outer Space Treaty--the basic international law which sets aside space for "peaceful purposes." Some 163 nations voted yes. The U.S. abstained. Star Wars Returns explores the international opposition to Star Wars. It spotlights the strong challenge to Star Wars being made at the grassoots level worldwide by the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power In Space. (Available May 1, 2001)
For ordering and to learn more visit http://www.envriovideo.com .
Also, NEW BOOK AVAILABLE: Karl Grossman,* "Weapons in Space." Award winning investigative journalist, Karl Grossman documents the corporate forces behind Star Wars and their direct links to the Bush administration. The preface is written by Dr. Michio Kaku. To order contact the Global Network
*Karl Grossman is full professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury. He has specialized in investigative reporting for 35 years. He is an associate of the media watch group FAIR.
He is a principal of EnviroVideo, a New York-based company which produces news, interview programs and documentaries for television and the Web. Video documentaries he has written and hosted for EnviroVideo include "Nukes In Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens," "Nukes In Space 2: Unacceptable Risks," "Three Mile Island Revisited" and "The Push To Revive Nuclear Power," all of which have received video festival awards. His new video documentary, "Star Wars Returns," has just been released by EnviroVideo (1-800-ECO-TV46 or http://www.envirovideo.com).
His earlier books include "The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat To Our Planet," "Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed To Know About Nuclear Power," "Power Crazy," "The Poison Conspiracy" and "Nicaragua: America's New Vietnam?"
Journalism by Grossman on the nuclearization and weaponization of space have been included six times on Project Censored's annual lists of the ten most "under-reported," "best-censored" stories. Grossman is the recipient of the George Polk, James Aronson and John Peter Zenger Awards.
Grossman's postal address is: Box 1680, Sag Harbor, New York 11963.
His E-mail is: kgrossman@hamptons.com