World-News

FYI, and please share with others not yet on my new computer's list.

I wonder whether regulatory agencies should be advised to wait with their decisions on pending and near future applications of power lines and cell towers until the out come of the EMF Exposure Guidelines revision.

Comments?

Thanks, Hans.

Hans Karow
Coalition to Reduce Electropollution (CORE)
1215 Poplar Grove Road
PENTICTON, BC, V2A 8T6, CANADA
E-mail: hkarow@shaw.ca


-----Original Message-----
From: Gunde Ziegelberger
GZiegelberger@bfs.de
Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 8:08 AM
To: hans karow Subject:
Re: EMF exposure guidelines


Dear Mr. Karow,

thanks for contacting ICNIRP regarding your health concerns.

1. Yes, ICNIRP has began the process to revise the exposure guidelines for static and also for low frequency fields. As you might be aware, ICNIRP´s guidelines for limiting exposure to fields up to 300 GHz are based on the scientific knowledge of the years 1997/1998. Research has been going on since then and ICNIRP has issued an in depth review of the scientific evidence concerning the relevance of low frequency electric and magnetic fields for human health (2003). The WHO is going to publish an Environmental Health Criteria Document on this topic in 2006. In view of new resaerch data and their reviews, the ICNIRP guidelines will be revisited. The process will not be finalized before the end of the year.

2. and 3. I could not open the ppt. presentation by Dr. Havas, but according to the title I suggest, that it deals with the inconsistency between the known biophysical effects of low frequency fields and the results from experimental studies on one hand, and the epidemiologic results on childhood leukaemia on the other hand. Also this apparent conflict will be addressed during the revision process.

I hope, I could provide you with the information you have been looking for.


Sincerely,

Gunde Ziegelberger

Dr. Gunde Ziegelberger
ICNIRP Scientific Secretary
c/o Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz
Ingolstädter Landstr. 1
D-85764 Neuherberg/Oberschleißheim
E-Mail: G.Ziegelberger@icnirp.org
Tel.: ++49-1888-333-2142



hans karow wrote:


Dear Dr. Ziegelberger,

With regards of my questions (please see below) Dr. Ahlbom referred me to your office.

May I kindly ask to please respond to my three questions as stated below.


Thank, you!

Mit freundlichen Gruessen,

Hans Karow
1215 Poplar Grove Road
Penticton, BC, V2A 8T6, Canada
E-mail: hkarow@shaw.ca


From: Anders Ahlbom
anders.ahlbom@ki.se

Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2006 11:31 PM

To: 'hans karow'

Subject: SV: EMF exposure guidelines

To get the official ICNIRP view I suggest to contact the secretariat in Munich. Gunde Ziegelberg is the scientific secretary.


Best wishes,

Anders Ahlbom

Please note new e-mail below:

Anders Ahlbom
Office: + 46 8 5248 74 70; Mobile + 46 70 324 74 70
e-mail: anders.ahlbom@ki.se

_____

Från: hans karow
hkarow@shaw.ca

Skickat: den 1 april 2006 20:07

Till: 'Anders Ahlbom'

Kopia: Magda Havas

Ämne: EMF exposure guidelines


Dear Dr. Ahlbom,

1. During the oral hearing (as indicated below), while cross-examining industry consultant Dr. William Bailey/Exponent, New York, I learned that ICNIRP just had a meeting in Berlin/Germany.

Could you please inform, whether the exposure EMF guidelines will be reviewed in the near future and the guidelines possibly adjusted?

2. May I kindly ask you whether you agree with the statements presented by Dr. Magda Havas at a Hydro One Workshop on >EMFs, Markham Ontario, June 16, 2004, “ Electromagnetic Fields & Cancers: Children at risk with residential and school exposure to EMFs” source:
http://www.stop-emf.ca/hydroone/PresentationEMFHydro_files/frame.htm

If there is anything you do not agree with, could you please state where and why?

3. A particular question would be: do you agree with slide 12, “Exposure Guidelines vs Effects” ?

Thank you for taking the time to respond please,


Hans Karow.


Informant: Eileen O'Connor

--------

I have read nothing in this story to suggest the limits are to be revised downwards, in fact the questions were deliberatly dodged, indeed we know that Repacholi is more interested in refuting the effects of EMR and pointing the finger of blame as being psychological.

Phil Watts


From Mast Sanity/Mast Network

--------

Dear Dr. Gunde Ziegelberger,

This is a reminder about my email from the 12.4.06 with regard to the ICNIRP funding.

Thanks Iris.

----- ----- Original Message -----
From: Iris Atzmon
To: GZiegelberger@bfs.de
Cc: Hans Karow
Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 11:28 PM
Subject: Re: ICNIRP EMF exposure guidelines to be revised

Dear Dr. Gunde Ziegelberger:

I received the below interesting notice from Hans Karow in Cananda.

Since the ICNIRP is a central organiztion to public exposure to EMF-RF, I think the public has the right to know about the sources of the ICNIRP funding.

Who funds the ICNIRP?

Thank you very much in advance


Iris Atzmon

--------

Dear Gunde Ziegelberger

(please note that I put the references inside my text and then continue the text below the references, it is just for the convenience of the reader to see directly what I mean).

Thank you very much for your detailed answer. However, I find some contradictions inside your text. I don't know who funds IRPA, but I do know something about the WHO. In the ICNIRP sits a person from the WHO, who according to recent publication, receives from the cellular industry $150,000 a year + travel and meeting expenses. reference:

"We also know that he [Mike Repacholi] found a way to skirt the WHO rules that bar direct industry support -the mobile phone manufacturers have said that they provide him with $150,000 a year with additional money for meeting and travel expenses." http://www.microwavenews.com/fromthefield.html#whoottawa

Second, If the ICNIRP has contract with the WHO and you are now reviewing the EMF guidelines, it is relevant to note that the person who is in charge of the EMF- R at the WHO, invites the power industry for setting radiation exposure values. Reference: October 1, 2005 WHO and Electric Utilities: A Partnership on EMFs

http://www.microwavenews.com/fromthefield.html#partners

WHO Welcomes Electric Utility Industry To Key EMF Meeting, Bars the Press September 22, 2005

http://www.microwavenews.com/fromthefield.html#whoehc

and so to say that the funding doesn't come from the industry is not accurate beucause the WHO is not really a "firewall" between the ICNIRP and the industry.

Third, INTERPHONE researchers are funded by the industry and are at the same time at the ICNIRP - this can point to conflict of interest if we assume that the ICNIRP is indeed not industry-dependent. I am aware that the International Union against cancer is a firewall but I think it is more of a semantic thing, the funding comes from the industry no matter what firewalls are put for public image, and we all saw the consequence of this in two TV programmes:

This was on a TV programme at Friday night in Israel and an abstract was published in the newspaper Haaretz:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=631007

This was a TV programme in Canada http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/health/iarc/pageone.html

I am not writing this to bother you, but because we the citizens are exposed to radiation according to your decisions, and the above issue should not be taken lightly, I ask for your direct response for the above issue. I write many copies because I want to make sure that the maximum number of people are invloved in this - because if someone gets the smallest scratch from any conflict of interests which is responsible for public health & exposure - then it should be brought to anyone's attention. This is a VERY sensitive issue because it concerns 2 billion people, and every suspicion for fraud has huge consequences. Only yesterday we read in the newspaper that Disney company representaive said: "Disney has said that parents believe the benefits of being able to reach a child at any time are more important than any possible health risks'

Source: Daily Mail Date: 28/04/2006

Thanks in advance Iris.

----- Original Message -----
From: Gunde Ziegelberger GZiegelberger@bfs.de
To: Iris Atzmon atzmonh@bezeqint.net
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 9:51 AM
Subject: Re: ICNIRP


Dear Iris Atzmon,

Thank you for your interest in ICNIRP's work.

ICNIRP is a non-profit making organisation legally registered and controlled as such in Germany (i.e., eingetragener Verein, e.V). Its income derives from various sources with the exception of industry. The regular income that ICNIRP receives is an annual grant from IRPA. It also receives support from national governments, most notably from the German Environment Ministry for ICNIRP's Scientific Secretariat based in Munich. All other income is generated by the Commission through contract work (to the exclusion of any work for industry), organisation of scientific meetings and sales of its scientific publications. Currently, ICNIRP's contract income comes mainly from the WHO (to carry out scientific reviews on biological effects and health consequences of low and high frequency fields) and the European Commission.

We also regard this question as being of public interest and have therefore published this information on our website
( http://www.icnirp.org/what.htm ), which we invite you to visit for further details on the functioning of ICNIRP.

Sincerely, Gunde Ziegelberger

Dr. Gunde Ziegelberger ICNIRP Scientific Secretary c/o Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz Ingolstädter Landstr. 1 D-85764 Neuherberg/Oberschleißheim

E-Mail: G.Ziegelberger@icnirp.org
Tel.: ++49-1888-333-2142

--------

Dear Gunde:

On the 29.4.06 I sent you an email and requested your direct reponse with regard to the contect published in Microwave News. You didn't reply to me. I don't know how you view this, but to my understanding, as an organization that receives public importance and leads the international policy on EMF-R, the most ethical thing would be to adress this evidence urgently and not ignore it. Ethics is part of science isn't it?

You wrote me that ICNIRP is scientific and has no industry influence whatsoever, you also directed me to your website which presents the same thing. Then I presented you what everybody can read on MWN about bribe, about clear cooperation with the industry: 6 members of the ICNIRP are in the WHO task group meeting with the industry and with the person who is accused in bribe on the website- to set health standards- together. This is direct industry influence. I think you tried to mislead me, but not only me. You expect the public to relate to the ICNIRP as a scientific body. Activists write you politely questions, and give importance to your views on non-ionizing radiation, they feel commited to your guidance, but I don't see the same commitment from the ICNIRP to explain to to activists, to scientists, and others who are exposed according to your guidelines, about this contradiction.

Sincerely

Iris Atzmon.

--------

----- Original Message -----
From: Karine Chabrel
To: Iris Atzmon
Cc: Gunde Ziegelberger
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 12:02 PM
Subject: your request of information


Dear Iris Atzmon,

thank you for sending us further information published in the press
(Microwave News) about the World Health Organization. This information reached us also through the Microwave Newsletter, which we regularly receive. However, we regard checking the reliability and accuracy of any press release as being a matter outside of ICNIRP's scope but take note of the information.

You imply that the WHO and IARC are under industry influence. While ICNIRP is not qualified to control the functioning of any international public organization, it is extremely attentive to the correctness and independency of its partners. We are aware that both WHO and IARC follow extremely rigorous codes of behaviour, on which their international trust is based, that ICNIRP shares. As regards the behaviour of the Commission members, let me emphasize that ICNIRP is fully aware of its high responsibility, including the need of independency. Any possible conflict of interest must be openly declared and is discussed within and decided by the Commission.

Best regards,

Dr. Gunde Ziegelberger
Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz
Arbeitsgruppe Nichtionisierende Strahlung
Ingolstädter Landstr. 1
D-85764 Neuherberg/Oberschleißheim
E-Mail: GZiegelberger@BfS.de
Tel.: 01888/333-2142


Dear Dr. Gunde,

Thanks for your reply. You write that the MWN report is beyond the ICNIRP's scope, and that ICNIRP members are indepenent. But how can you say this - when the ICNIRP member himself is the one who is involved so much with the industry? It proves that you actually don't make sure of the independence of ICNIRP members: If you are really independent, why did you not publish a reservation from Repacholi's corruption? Instead, 6 ICNIRP members agreed to sit with the industry to form health standards. Don't you think it's a contradiction to what you wrote below? Do you not care about the negative publicity Microwave News gives you? it caused you a lot of damage in the public's eye. How is it that ICNIRP commission members, agreed to set standard with the industry: why did the ICNIRP not resist this biased process if they are independent?

For your information, I attach a new doctorat paper that was published recently. It documents that ICNIRP members cooperate with the WHO corruption.

Omega see "Conflict of Interest and Bias in Health Advisory Committees: A case study of the WHO’s EMF Task Group" under:
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/2310876/

I am not your advocate, but I think you are in a very dangerous route becuase people around here see what is going on, no matter how much you want to protect your organization, and I understand your interest to protect it, but it does not stand in the same line of what happens in reality. It damages your integrity as an organization but more as a person who is responsible to say certain things even when the facts speak differently.

I wish you best regards

Iris.


For your information, the israeli Env. ministry head of radiation department, Dr. Stelian Galberg, wrote that the WHO has collected 250 million dollars in 10 years for research funding on EMR. What exactly they did with the money is not clear. The israeil Env. ministry contributes $10,000 a year to the WHO. "The support received by ICNIRP from the International Radiation Protection Association, the World Health Organization, and the French, German, Korean, and Swiss Governments is gratefully acknowledged".

Iris Atzmon

--------

ICNIRP reviewing guidlines for exposure to EMR
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/1864548/

Review of ICNIRP EMF exposure guidelines
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/2253406/

WHO, EMF, Electromagnetic Radiation and Mobile Phones
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1194586/



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=ICNIRP
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=ICNIRP
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Ziegelberger
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Repacholi
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Repacholi

http://tinyurl.com/myaha



Iran Can Now Make Glowing Mickey Mouse Watches

The ability to slightly enrich uranium is not the same as the ability to build a bomb. For the latter, you need at least 80% enrichment, which in turn would require about 16,000 small centrifuges hooked up to cascade. Iran does not have 16,000 centrifuges. It seems to have 180. Iran is a good ten years away from having a bomb.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041206A.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/topics/Is+Iran+next/

http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org/about.asp?about=signon&lang=english

***PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY***

"Stop Corporate Globalization! - Another World is Possible"

This statement was crafted by the Our World Is Not For Sale (OWINFS) network - a worldwide network of organizations, activists and social movements fighting the trade and investment liberalizing aspects of the current model of corporate globalization. OWINFS is committed to a new, socially just and sustainable trading system.

This new statement is an updated version of the previous "WTO: Shrink or Sink" statement. It has already been signed by 160 Organisations and includes an overall critique of the current globalization model, showing the impacts of this model on workers, peasants, family farmers, fishers,migrants, women, indigenous peoples, the environment and natural resources etc. And also posing the vision of a global economy built on the principles of economic justice, genuine ecological sustainability, and democratic accountability, one which assert the interests of people over corporations.

Excerpt from the Statement: "...The choice before us is stark: either we accept the current corporate-centered global order and forfeit the welfare of succeeding generations and the future of the planet itself, or we take up the difficult challenge of moving toward a new system that puts at its heart the interests of people, communities, and the environment."

I encourage you to review the whole of this statement, and hope you will consider signing it. You can view the current list of signatories at http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org and can read the statement in English, Spanish, French and Italian.

HOW to sign on - It will take just 30 seconds of your time:

1. click "view Signatories".

2. click "sign-on" and give the name of your organisation, base, contact person and e mail address, DONE!

For further information please contact Margrete Strand Rangnes Margrete.Strand@SIERRACLUB.ORG


Sincerely

Carol Bergin
for the OWINFS New Statement working group


Informant: sarah p

From: Eileen O'Connor eileen@smokestackltd.co.uk
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 23:18:16 +0100
Subject: People are massacred in the Congo for the sake of coltan needed for mobile phones

Head of Justice and Peace from the Congo due to speak at a CAFOD conference in London.

Take a look at the enclosed CAFOD conference details, it might be worth thinking about attending this conference organised by CADFOD. One of the main speakers is the Head of Justice and Peace from the Congo. Remember people in the Congo are being massacred not only for gold but also for coltan, columbite-tantalite http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/tantalite which is a black tar-like mineral http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/mineral needed especially for mobile phones. Much of the world's supply of coltan comes from Democratic http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Democratic+Republic+of+the+Congo Republic of the Congo.

A recent UN Security Council report charged that a great deal of it is illegally mined and smuggled http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Smuggling out of Congo by armies from Uganda http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Uganda , Rwanda http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Rwanda , and Burundi http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Burundi , occupying the eastern region of Congo. One estimate has the Rwandan army making $250 million in 18 months from the sale of coltan.

For more information go to: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Coltan
..

http://www.cafod.org.uk/get_involved/campaigning/unearth_justice/conferences

Unearth Justice Conferences

Be in at the start of something big.

CAFOD is launching the Unearth Justice campaign at two conferences, where you can:

* Hear from CAFOD partners about how gold mining affects people and the environment in their countries.

* Quiz the experts at a Question Time session.

* Enjoy live music and drama

* Ground your campaigning in your faith with special liturgy.

* Take action to stop mining companies undermining the poor

The Conferences take place in:

* London on Saturday 13 May 2006
(Emmanuel Centre, 9-23 Marsham Street, London SW1P 3DW) or

* Bury on Saturday 20 May 2006
(Holy Cross Sixth Form College, Manchester Rd, Bury BL9 9BB)

Inspiring Speakers

Speakers will include Abbé Alfred Buju, Head of the Justice and Peace Commission at Caritas Bunia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pedro Landa, a director of Caritas Tegucigalpa in Honduras, and CAFOD Director Chris Bain.

Essentials

* Both days run from 11am - 3:45pm.

* Lunch will be available to buy, including vegetarian options.

* The conferences are suitable for those over 14. There will be special workshops for young people and students.

* There will be a crèche available for under 5s (booking essential).

To reserve yours, fill in the form at the foot of this page. (Online registrations are limited to a maximum of 20 people per party. If you require more places than this please call us on 020 7326 5692.)

Places are limited, so please only register if you are sure you can come. Places will be allocated on a 'first come first served' basis. We will confirm your registration by email, so please include a valid email address.

http://www.cafod.org.uk/get_involved/campaigning/unearth_justice/conferences#form#form Go to form

Campaigners in Wales

CAFOD Wales will be launching the 'Unearth Justice' campaign at the annual Pantasaph Family Day in north Wales on 13 May. If you live in Wales, please do join them! Call 01978 355 084 or email northwales@cafod.org.uk for more details.

--------

From Karen Barratt

Re: Independent 'Red Phone' article - I sent the following

Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 1:16 PM Subject: RED PHONE ALERT

Dear Martin

I saw your report on the Bono 'Red Phone' initiative and thought you might be interested in the following. I think everyone has to be suspicious when the telecom operators start offering to help with such moral crusades. They certainly are desperate to recoup some of the £23 billion licence money and getting everyone to ditch their current mobiles might give the struggling 3G market a shot in the arm.

Karen Barratt

The following is an extract from a longer article called "Hard Cell" in EC.

http://www.ethicalconsumer.org


"One of the most pressing mobile phone issues is that of coltan, much of which is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).. 80% of the world's supply of coltan is said to be found in the east of the country. It is a crucial ingredient used in mobile phones for its heat conducting properties. It is said to be incredibly difficult to ascertain whether or not coltan from the DRC has been mined illegally, since that part of the country is under the control of rebel troops. In recent years, approximately three million Congolese have died as a result of the war. Farmers are said to have been forced from their land to mine, while others have reportedly been forced into prostitution, fighting and child labour. Some studies of the crisis estimate that in north eastern Congo, 30% of children have abandoned school to mine for coltan. Gangs from neighbouring countries such as Rwanda, Uganda and Ximbabwe are also said to be heavily involved in the smuggling trade, and use the proceeds from sales of the mineral to fund weapon procurement and oppression. Some rarer species of gorillas and other animals are nearing extinction as their forests are destroyed to make mining easier or they are killed for meast to feed rebel soldiers and miners."

--------

On top of promoting the new red mobile, there was also a piece written by a Vodaphone consultant on how mobiles have made life in Africa so much better. I suppose people die of AIDS before they die of cancer, but this may change as they get more saturated with mobiles and masts.

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/analysis_and_features/article485092.ece

Andrea



From Mast Sanity/Mast Network

--------

Congo's tragedy: the war the world forgot

By Johann Hari

This is the story of the deadliest war since Adolf Hitler’s armies marched across Europe. It is a war that has not ended. But is also the story of a trail of blood that leads directly to you: to your remote control, to your mobile phone, to your laptop and to your diamond necklace.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13094.htm

--------

“The War The World Ignores”

The conflict in Congo has been called the world's largest forgotten war. Yet while millions have died since the start of the most recent violence in 1998, the country has been torn apart by resource exploitation and government repression for decades.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/07/1436229


From Information Clearing House

--------

BLOOD PHONES
http://www.willthomasonline.net/willthomasonline/Blood_Phones.html


Informant: Paul Doyon

--------

http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=coltan

12.04.06

Der Verfassungsrechtler Hans Herbert von Arnim hat die Tätigkeit des CDU-Bundestagsabgeordneten und früheren Unions-Fraktionschefs Friedrich Merz für die Ruhrkohle AG kritisiert. "Es hat mehr als ein Geschmäckle, wenn ein Abgeordneter zwei Herren dient", sagte Arnim dem "Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger". Hier müsse schon der Anschein vermieden werden. Das neue Abgeordnetengesetz sehe vor, dass die Abgeordnetentätigkeit im Mittelpunkt der Arbeit eines Parlamentariers stehen soll. "Dass Herr Merz gegen diesen Passus vor dem Bundesverfassungsgericht klagt, zeugt von großer Chuzpe", so Arnim.

Die ganze Nachricht im Internet: http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php?Nr=13376

FDP will tschechischen Außenminister im U-Ausschuss anhören (12.04.06)

Die FDP will im Parlamentarischen Untersuchungsausschuss zunächst die CIA-Gefangenenflüge und mutmaßliche Gefangenenlager in Europa untersuchen. Dazu seien bereits zwei mögliche "Befragungspersonen" benannt worden, sagte der Obmann der FDP-Fraktion, Max Stadler, am Mittwoch in Berlin. Dabei handele es sich um den tschechischen Außenminister Cyril Svoboda sowie den US-Journalisten Steven Grey. Dieser hatte in mehreren Zeitungen über seine Recherchen zu den Operationen der CIA in Europa berichtet. Beim tschechischen Außenminister gehe es um eine Anfrage der US-Regierung, in dem Land ein Gefangenenlager einzurichten.

Die ganze Nachricht im Internet: http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php?Nr=13373

MOBILE TELEPHONE CAN CAUSE CANCER
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/586356/

Children and mobile phones
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1063256/

The danger of chronic exposure to electromagnetic fields
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/409463/



http://www.buergerwelle.de/english_start.html

Für einen Augenblick wurde am Beispiel der Rütli-Schule der Zustand
dieser Gesellschaft offen gelegt, aber die Politik reagierte meist nur
reflexhaft regressiv.

http://www.telepolis.de/tp/r4/artikel/22/22448/1.html

I hope you have all heard of Bev Harris and her Black Box Voting web site. BBV has posted a warning about the Holt bill HB550. Please go to the following page for more info.

http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/23277.html

The story calls the bill's audit provision "flimsy." Please read it before you click on the petition; it may change your mind. Thanks.

Judy Erickson
member, OPCTJ

The first step for turnaround is to bring troops home

By Ramzy Baroud

The world is changing, yet the U.S. government refuses to abandon its old ways: militaristic, self-defeating and overbearing. Indeed, the U.S. must remold, not only its policies in the Middle East, but also its hegemonic policies throughout the world.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12686.htm

By Joan Chittister, OSB

The overall cost of the war in Iraq for the United States is already being estimated at at least a trillion dollars. But so far not a penny of it is specified for the children. Neither theirs nor ours.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12682.htm

Fordern Sie die Bundesregierung jetzt auf, am Käfigverbot festzuhalten und versenden Sie unsere neue Protestmail gegen Legebatterien unter http://www.huehner-retter.de

Zunächst bedankt sich das VIER PFOTEN Team herzlich für die bisherige Unterstützung. Mit Ihrer Hilfe stieg die Anzahl der Hühner-Retter in nur acht Wochen auf knapp 5000! Gemeinsam wurden bis heute insgesamt fast 100.000 Protestmails verschickt! Dieser Protest wurde nicht nur von den Medien wahrgenommen. Die Entscheidung über den Käfigausstieg wurde zunächst verschoben und der ursprüngliche Länder-Antrag mit noch schlechteren Vorgaben für die Hennenhaltung zurückgezogen. Trotzdem hat der Tierschutz am 7. April 2006 eine herbe Niederlage erlitten. Denn die Mehrheit der Länder hat im Bundesrat beschlossen, in Deutschland leicht vergrößerte Käfige unter dem beschönigenden Namen “Kleingruppenhaltung“ zuzulassen, die bis mindestens 2020 erlaubt sein sollen.

Nun bleibt noch eine kleine Chance, diesen fatalen Rückschritt aufzuhalten! Denn die Bundesregierung muss den Beschluss erst in Kraft setzen, damit er wirksam wird. Die ehemalige Verbraucherministerin Renate Künast hatte sich in den letzten Jahren allen Beschlüssen der Länder verweigert, die das Käfigverbot aushebeln sollten. Dies kann die neue Bundesregierung ebenfalls tun oder wenigstens einen Kompromiss vorschlagen.

Doch die Zeit drängt! Denn schon in den nächsten Tagen könnte Landwirtschaftsminister Horst Seehofer das Käfigverbot endgültig zurücknehmen. Deshalb ist schnellstens eine weitere Protestwelle nötig, um den Politikern der Bundesregierung klarzumachen, dass Sie sämtliche Käfigtypen ablehnen. Beteiligen Sie sich bitte noch einmal an unserer Protestaktion! Mit nur einem Mausklick unter http://www.huehner-retter.de/protest/ werden die neuen Protest-Mails an den zuständigen Bundesminister Horst Seehofer und an den stellvertretenden Vorsitzenden der SPD-Fraktion im Bundestag, Ulrich Kelber, versandt.

Bitte gewinnen Sie auch weitere Hühner-Retter! Leiten Sie unsere E-Card oder diesen Newsletter an Kollegen, Freunde und Bekannte weiter.

Beate Schüler VIER PFOTEN - Stiftung für Tierschutz

Tikkun
by Sheila Parks

04/11/06

Although much has been published on the Internet, the mainstream media have mostly chosen to ignore or dismiss the questions of fraud and error raised in relation to electronic voting machines. ... HCPB are an alternative to the current widespread and increasing use of electronic voting machines. ... It is time to make electronic voting machines a NIMBY (not in my back yard and not in anyone else's back yard either) issue. To begin a movement for HCPB, ordinary citizens, registered voters, must begin organizing door-to-door with their neighbors to petition their local election officers and demand HCPB in their city or town. Although organizing could also proceed on a state level, going municipality by municipality is a good way to start, depending on your state's laws.

http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/specials/article.2006-04-10.1693298872


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

A ROSTREVOR group campaigning against a mobile phone mast in the village says it is disappointed after learning that the original application for the mast dates back to 2003.

The Rostrevor Action Group Against Phone Masts (RAGAPM) was formed last month in opposition to an application from mobile phone company O2 for a mast on the Drumsesk Road.

Group member Adele Curran said: "The group has viewed the open file at the Planning Office and it has been determined that this application for a phone mast actually originated in 2003.

"The residents are very aggrieved that they were not informed by the planning department that there was a phone mast application in the system since then."

The action group has sent 150 letters of objections into the planning office and a door-to-door petition has gathered a further 100 letters.

The group has had several weekly meetings and has now established a monthly agenda; their first monthly meeting will take place on May 11 at 8pm in the Community Office in Bridge Street. All interested parties are welcome.

© Newry Democrat, 2006.

http://www.newrydemocrat.com/news/story.asp?j=5526

There were many factors that led to the sinking of the Titanic and the death of so many; most of them were caused by human ignorance.

The first was the rush to get the ship to its destination in order to gain reputation and financial success. Secondly the numbers of life boats were reduced to make the ship look more aesthetic. Thirdly the belief that the ship was unsinkable created a false sense of security which led to an imprudent attitude about how robust the ship was matched against the power of the ocean. Finally those on the ship were so absorbed with their personal affairs that the idea Titanic was sinking wasn't taken seriously until it was plainly obvious.

Why do I bring up these factors? Well there is a striking resemblance between the human ignorance that led to the sinking of the Titanic and the sinking of our whole existence owing to climate change. It seems that the first factor that led to the sinking of the Titanic was greed. In the same way, governments and corporations continue to put economic motives above the very thing that sustain us - the environment. As a consequence, we are heading speedily towards a metaphorical iceberg; (if there are any left) and our eyes have been firmly closed about this for some time. Secondly we are putting our own aesthetic values of materialism over the planets ability to cope; putting aesthetics over safety will always lead to failure.

Thirdly the belief that humanity is indestructible and that all the things we have created and accumulated are enduring, has given rise to a false sense of security. In the image of the Titanic, our fixed assumptions like the proclamation "Titanic is unsinkable", echoes the sentiment "The world will always be the same no matter how much we consume". Anything created by the mind of (hu)man is minute compared to the might created by nature. This was laid bare for all to see on that fateful night when the so-called mighty Titanic sank. The idea that climate change will radically affect the so-called mighty humanity within the first half of this century is inconceivable to most of us. We have all built a false sense of security about this sinking ship by clinging to our personal and collective presumptions which we take so much for granted. Unless we take intelligent action, question our presumptions and climb out of our compliancy, then the ship will surely sink.

Finally an obvious parallel is this - those people on the Titanic were so absorbed with their own personal affairs that they didnt open their eyes to see the reality until the very last moments. It is also the case that climate change is clearly the biggest threat to human existence and yet it still isnt taken seriously and given priority over everything else. It seems that we are ignoring the fact that it is already a reality and not just an abstract concept far away in the future. We continue to put our petty political, religious, social, economic and personal soap operas above the sinking ship that contains us all. Perhaps the most chilling thing about human ignorance is that while the Titanic was sinking, people only started to take action when it was too late. I wonder if the same human ignorance will take place in the advent of climate change as it progressively gets worse or have we learnt from our mistakes? Are we acting with greater intelligence? It appears that this is not the case since we are not seriously doing anything about it right now. It may not be too late for us just yet; however, the ship is already sinking.

By James

http://www.teamhumanity.com/jointheteam.asp

Dedicated to uniting all countries in peace and cooperation, for the good of all people.


Informant: politics128



An Open Letter to all people
http://www.teamhumanity.com/openletter.htm

--------

DECLARATION OF DEPENDENCE: A DECLARATION FOR HUMAN SURVIVAL
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/313445720

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0411-24.htm

--------

Now it is important more than ever to spread the word and ask other Americans to speak out against a nuclear attack. Please invite your friends, family and colleagues to sign the petition.

It is critical that we raise the alarm about reports that the Bush administration is planning a nuclear attack against Iran. A great country should never contemplate using nuclear weapons. If hundreds of thousands of Americans speak out in opposition to a nuclear attack immediately we can discredit the idea of a nuclear attack before it can take root. Will you spread the word? Please email your friends, family and colleagues about this urgent need for action.

Forward this link with your own note: http://political.moveon.org/dontnukeiran/

Thanks for all you do.

--The MoveOn.org Political Action Team

Here's a sample message to send to your friends:

Subject: Help stop nuclear war with Iran

Hi,

You may have seen reports in the news that the Bush administration may be planning a nuclear attack against Iran. This is alarming. A strong statement of opposition from the American public before that idea becomes credible is important. Please sign MoveOn.org's petition against nuclear attack and then alert your friends, family and colleagues by asking them to sign the petition.

http://political.moveon.org/dontnukeiran/

Thanks.


Informant: Martin Greenhut



http://freepage.twoday.net/topics/Is+Iran+next/
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=impeach

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction." The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, US intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041206Z.shtml

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/stair


Informant: Kev Hall



http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=impeach

NEIL PRESTON ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR NEIL.PRESTON@GRIMSBYTELEGRAPH.CO.UK

12:30 - 11 April 2006 "WE shall not be moved."

The contractors had unloaded their digger but had to stop and ring their bosses when they realised we were not going anywhere. That was the defiant cry from residents who today began a third morning of protests over the construction of a mobile phone mast.

Yesterday neighbours came out in force to prevent contractors erecting an 8m high mast on a grass verge at the junction of Carrington Drive and North Sea Lane, Humberston.

And they were planning to do the same today.

North East Lincolnshire Council gave the go-ahead for the Vodafone antennae last September and ever since, residents have been trying to fight the decision.

They brought out tables and chairs and held a sit-down protest on the grass verge where the mast is to be built.

Passing motorists pipped their horns in support.

Yesterday contract workers arrived to begin work but left after an hour when residents defiantly sat down on the grass and refused to budge.

Terry Barrs (67), of North Sea Lane, said: "The contractors came just after 10am to start their work.

"We noticed that they'd arrived, so all gathered together and sat on the grass.

"The contractors had unloaded their digger but had to stop and ring their bosses when they realised we were not going anywhere.

"Their bosses must have told them to pack up and go because they went and didn't come back all day.

"We are back out today as we believe the mast poses a health risk. We are going to fight it all the way."

Claire Kershaw, also of North Sea Lane, said: "I have two young children and my concerns are what damage it will do to them. For me it is not the sight of the mast that worries me, it is the health risk."

A petition was signed by more than 100 people and posted to Mono, the consultants for Vodafone, last year.

Peter Keeble (47), of North Sea Lane, added: "We will not give up on this."

Phil Wallis, development control manager for NELC, said: "Vodafone has had planning permission accepted by the Planning Committee so is entitled to erect the mast."

Scores of 02 masts to be removed.

Attached is a copy of letter from Joe Grant, General Secretary of the
Scottish Police Federation.

http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/scottish_police_federation_letter_from_janes_police_review_community.pdf
http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/airwave_article_from_janes_police_review_community.pdf


Eileen O'Connor

Please find attached a few pages from SKEWED which contain information about Fumento. These pages should be put into context by reading the rest of the book and Brave New World of Zero Risk.

http://tinyurl.com/hyf8j

It is quite worrying when you see people fighting old battles over again, we have to learn from history and from what research and writing has been done previously about these individuals and groups, otherwise we waste so much time.

SKEWED is available from the http://www.zero-risk.org site, at I think £9 as is Brave New World of Zero Risk, for £4.

Please find time over the holidays to read these important well researched books by Martin J Walker and do not allow history to be repeated.

Best wishes

Eileen O'Connor



Dr. Magda Havas has sent the following letter, which she has just submitted to the editor of the National Post of Canada in response to a bombastic and astonishingly inaccurate article by Michael Fumento recently printed in the Post.

One almost wonders whether Fumento is actually this ignorant, or is under hire.

Fumento's article follows Magda's letter, below. I suggest that those of us who are able take the time to share some research infomation with Mr. Fumento and the editor of the Post as well. I sincerely hope they both receive enough factual feedback and concentrated censure to make their ears burn, and discourage them from publishing such lies in the future.

The National Post editor: Mr. Fumento: fumento@pobox.com

Before you write Mr. F, you might like to read the scathing piece he wrote about Sam Epstein: http://www.fumento.com/epames.html#

Regards, Shivani


Magda's letter:

I just read Michael Fumento's article "Don't worry, Toronto: WI-FI won't kill you" [Apr 7/06] and I'm disturbed that a reporter can be so ignorant about the facts, biased, and arrogant to boot.

In this article Fumento criticizes and mocks everyone who has an opinion contrary to his own. Is this the type of reporter the National Post wants writing for them?

It's clear to me that Fumento knows nothing about science and hasn't read the research in this field because if he did he would realize that the list of biological effects, identified by Cindy Sage, are all based on published scientific papers.

We are inundating our world with radio frequency radiation without knowing what the long-term consequences are likely to be. Each time we use a cell phone, a cordless phone or other wireless communication device we are sending and receiving radio frequency radiation. A large Swedish study that was just published reported an increased incidence of malignant brain tumors for mobile phone users when the cumulative use was more than 2000 hours and this study includes the cordless phone many of us have in our homes.

In a 1999 report Health Canada stated that biological effects occur below the federal guidelines of Safety Code 6, which is based on heating and does not protect against non-thermal effects, like the increased permeability of the blood brain barrier. Despite this document, Health Canada has not yet established guidelines for non-thermal effects.

Wi-Fi is yet another layer of RF energy to which more and more people will be exposed. People who have become sensitive to this form of radiation will become sick. In Sweden there are more than 250,000 sufferers of electrohypersensitivity (EHS). I wonder how many we have in Canada and how many we will have in Toronto after the Wi-Fi becomes operational.

Ignoring the truth or mocking those who state it won't make it go away.

Dr. Magda Havas, Associate Professor Environmental Studies Trent University, Peterborough, ON.


Don't worry, Toronto: WI-FI won't kill you
National Post Fri 07 Apr 2006
Page: A20 Section: Issues & Ideas
Byline: Michael Fumento

Remember when microwave ovens caused cancer? Maybe that's before your time; but what about when power lines and electric blankets caused cancer, and computer terminals caused miscarriages and birth defects?

Then, of course, cellphones caused brain tumours. And now, predictably enough, "WiFi" network signals that allow laptop computers to connect to the Internet wirelessly have also become suspect.

All of these scares have two things in common. First, they involve invisible electromagnetic frequency (EMF) transmissions, something many of us find to be spooky -- like invisible creatures in movies. Second, they're all bogus: The angst these scares have caused has been entirely baseless.

WiFi (short for "wireless fidelity") is used in many ways. It's ubiquitous in coffee shops and is used in homes like mine to remotely connect several computers. But whole municipalities, with Philadelphia the biggest and probably soon to be followed by San Francisco, have begun blanketing large areas with transmitters. Anybody there will be able to just boot up and check e-mail or surf the Net.

But that's where the problem lies, say some. No sooner had Toronto Hydro Telecom announced plans in March to convert Canada's largest city into a giant WiFi "hotspot" by the end of the year, than cries of doom arose. "Why should we all become guinea pigs?" a letter to the Toronto Star demanded.

David Fancy, head of the SWEEP Initiative (Safe Wireless Electrical and Electromagnetic Policies), agrees. "I have never seen any actual peer-reviewed science, epidemiological studies done with human subjects over an extensive period of time, that suggests this is actually safe," he told Toronto's Metro. That could be because Fancy is a dramatic arts professor, and thus may know lots about drama (and melodrama), but little about science and EMF. Those who understand it, conversely, will tell you otherwise.

"Health Canada has assessed the ability of radio frequency fields to cause DNA damage and affect gene expression in human-derived brain cell cultures in four studies since 2000," says spokesman Paul Duchesne. "No negative effect was seen." He adds: "From all the studies we've seen, including those of the World Health Organization, nothing negative has been scientifically proven."

Duchesne notes that WiFi transmitters are little more than radio towers, and in the same category as garage door openers, cordless phones, baby monitors.

It seems the prime fount of the Toronto fear may be another ersatz EMF expert, President Fred Gilbert of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont. Previously, he was a zoology professor. That might come in handy in dealing with the occupants of rowdy fraternities, but isn't a good background for understanding radio frequencies.

Over the protests of his students, Gilbert has refused to allow campus-wide WiFi coverage, telling IT Business Canada, "While the jury's out on this one, I'm not going to put in place what is potential chronic exposure for our students."

So "chronic exposure" is inherently suspect -- as in chronic exposure to oxygen or to nutrition? Gilbert said his decision was based on a series of studies done for the California Department of Health Services and California Public Utilities Commission, examining EMF such as that generated by power lines or building wiring. But none of these studies found conclusive links to cancer, as Gilbert fears.

Rather, a key source of Gilbert's information, according to the publication Wi-Fi Planet, is Cindy Sage of Sage EMF Design in Santa Barbara, Calif. (She has praised his decision in a letter to the Globe and Mail.)

Not an unbiased source, Sage makes a living by detecting and then remediating "harmful" electromagnetic exposures. She has written and self-published a book, which encourages people into using her services. She was also a respondent to the San Francisco's request for comments on its proposed citywide WiFi network and (surprise!) advised against it.

Science be damned, Sage's Globe letter claimed radio frequency can cause "DNA breaks and chromosome aberrations, cell death including death of brain cells (neurons), increased free radical production, cell stress and premature aging, changes in brain function including memory loss, retarded learning, slower promotion in school and slower motor function and other performance impairment in children, headaches and fatigue, sleep disorders, neurodegenerative conditions, reduction in melatonin secretion and cancer."

Whew! It was probably only an oversight that she didn't include lycanthropy. In short, Gilbert is relying on someone who makes claims unsupported by evidence, and he lacks the ability to compare WiFi to its nearest neighbour, the radio. But then, so does Warren Bell, a board member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

In an interview for a bizarre article in Toronto's NOW magazine, he said WiFi wouldn't be the first time industrialized society has embarked on something that works well in the lab but not so well in the real world. As a result, he said, "we've got ourselves in a number of different corners, something we have subsequently come to regret."

Not the real world? Hello? The first radio broadcast was exactly a century ago. Remember those big wooden boxes that used to pump out Benny Goodman and Guy Lombardo? Me neither; before my time. But that's what we're talking about. If Benny Goodman didn't hurt your parents, WiFi won't hurt you.

In fact, in 2003, Fredericton became the first Canadian city to blanket its downtown with WiFi, and nobody has yet turned into a zombie or had his head explode. But Fredericton offers its WiFi for free, which has a tendency to dampen dissent. The nation as a whole has over 1,400 WiFi hotspots, while the United States has about
48,000, yet no epidemic related to Cindy Sage's parade of horribles appears to have broken out.

Still, one Toronto writer made an interesting suggestion. "If the health officials [go along with the fears] they will have to order the switching off of all radios, mobile phones, garage doors, microwave transmitters, ground all aircraft and return Toronto to the Middle Ages."

Neat! A giant outdoor medieval museum just north of the U.S. border! But I'll bet those darned obstinate Canucks will refuse to go along.

--------

Don't worry Toronto: WI-FI won't kill you?
http://omega-news.livejournal.com/213369.html

nlnews@archant.co.uk

12 April 2006

ARSENAL are on another collision course with residents over plans for 32 phone masts on the new Emirates Stadium.

Club bosses have given the go-ahead to mobile giants Orange, Vodaphone, O2, Hutchison and T-Mobile to put up masts in eight different positions on the roof of their new Ashburton Grove home.

The firms have now applied to Islington Council for planning permission for the controversial masts - causing uproar among people living close to the 60,000-seater ground.

Kirsten Teague, 36, who lives in Drayton Park and is recovering from M.E., said she was horrified when she opened the consultation letter alerting her to the plans.

"I was shocked because I'm aware of the adverse health implications of just one phone mast, let alone 32," she said. "I've got a compromised immune system and I'm really afraid for my own health and that of other residents.

"If readers want to help stop this from happening they should write to the council as soon as they can - this can only be stopped if the council say so."

Arsenal would only confirm that the applications have been submitted to the council for consideration.

But they have come under fire from residents' campaign group, Stadium Neighbours Action Group (Snag), whose members are still furious Arsenal were given the green light to park coaches in residential streets last month.

Snag's Chris Eisen, of Drayton Park, Holloway, said: "If they can't kill us with the coach fumes they are going to radiate us with phone masts. Why don't they just do compulsory orders on all us residents and bulldoze the whole area.

"The main problems associated with phone masts are leukaemia, brain haemorrhages and cancer. Mobile phone companies are trying to ensure themselves against claims but the insurance companies won't go anywhere near them.

"Arsenal will do anything for money and I'm sure the council will just roll over and let them."

A council spokesman said: "Our consultation is still on-going and no decision has been made on these planning applications.

"We know the issue can raise strong feelings in local communities - that's why all mast applications are carefully assessed for visual impact and must meet Government health guidelines. Wherever possible we seek to reduce the impact of masts on local people.

Copyright © 2006 Archant Regional. All rights reserved.

http://tinyurl.com/juw65

00:00, Apr 12 2006

A MOBILE phone mast earmarked for a Kidbrooke church tower will not go ahead because of nearby residents' health fears.

Technology giants 3G planned to install a mast at St James Church, Kidbrooke Park Road, which would have provided a £10,000-a-year rent revenue.

But angry neighbours who organised a petition and thought the mast would be a threat to health have forced the plans to be scrapped.

Rev Kim Hitch of St James said the church wasn't prepared to be a willing landlord any longer.

A meeting of the church's Parochial Church Council made the decision last week.

He said: "Financial considerations are not the be all and end all."

"We were concerned that people feel that the church is doing something horrible to them. We were hoping to improve disabled facilities with the money at St James, this work will be done."

Mr Hitch admitted the decision was a U-turn but insisted he thought the mast was not harmful.

"We still believe it is the best place for a mast," he said. "We are still persuaded there are no significant safety issues with the plans."

"I hope that some of the new friendships we have formed with residents will continue. Everyone is welcome at the church and I want residents to know that."

"If the gist of the complaint was a community divided and a community against its church then we can't allow that to happen."

"They probably felt the church was against them but that was never the case."

Concerned resident Martin McGlone was among hundreds of people who opposed the base station by signing the petition and taking part in protests.

He said: "Everyone is pleased with the news, especially parents.

"There was a lot of pressure on Kim and there was a lot of pressure put on him by his congregation."

Mr McGlone said the relationship between the church and the community would not get any worse now.

He added: "Kim's stock will have risen in the community, but that's a personal view."

Mr McGlone said he feared 3G could apply for planning permission to erect a mast in the street near the church tower.

No one at the electronic company was available for comment.

© owned by or licensed to Trinity Mirror Plc 2006

http://tinyurl.com/e9yoc

Könnte das Vogelgrippe-Virus nicht im Futtermittel der Nutztiere lauern?

Bundeslandwirtschaftsminister Horst Seehofer verschärfte Anfang März die Maßnahmen gegen die sich unaufhaltsam ausbreitende Geflügelpest. Sperrzonen gelten nun drei Kilometer im Umkreis um Fundstellen infizierter Wildvögel. Zehn Kilometer sind Beobachtungszonen. Katzen dürfen darin nicht mehr frei laufen, Hunde müssen an die Leine. Geflügelhaltungen können nur noch autorisierte Personen betreten, also die Betreiber selbst und der Tierarzt. Die Bevölkerung beunruhigt das alles noch mehr, auch wenn die Verbraucherschutzminister unablässig betonen, es handle sich bei der Vogelgrippe nur um eine Tierseuche. Eine erhöhte Gefährdung für die Menschen sei nicht gegeben. Die Maßnahmen drücken sichtlich anderes aus: Spezialtrupps der Bundeswehr zur Abwehr biologischer Waffen und das Einsammeln toter Vögel mit Hochsicherheitsspezialanzügen tragen nicht gerade zur Entwarnung bei. Lokale Behörden sehen sich zuerst nicht, dann aber doch völlig überfordert. Und über allem schwebt weiterhin das Rätsel, wie denn die Vogelgrippe wirklich verbreitet wird. (...)

hier weiterlesen: http://www.welt.de/data/2006/03/07/856037.html DIE WELT, 7. März 2006


Aus: impf-report Newsletter Nr. 12/2006

Pandemie-Impfstoff: Couchepin erteilt Berna Biotech Absage

(...) Am Freitag war die Frist für Offerten an den Bund zur Produktion eines künftigen Impfstoffs im Falle einer Grippe-Pandemie abgelaufen. Als einzige Firma mit Sitz in der Schweiz hat sich dabei auch die kürzlich vom niederländischen Unternehmen Crucell übernommene Berna Biotech beworben. Berna müsste zur Wiederaufnahme der Impfstoffproduktion zehn bis 15 Millionen Franken investieren und stellt die Bedingung, dass der Bund diese Kosten übernimmt.

Noch vor der Evaluation der Offerten erteilte der für das Geschäft zuständige Vorsteher des Eidgenössischen Departements des Innern (EDI) dem Unternehmen nun eine Absage. In einem Interview der "Neuen Zürcher Zeitung" (Samstagausgabe) sagte Couchepin: «Es ist unsinnig, mit staatlichen Mitteln eine ganze Industrie aufzubauen für einen ganz bestimmten Impfstoff, von dem man nicht einmal weiß, ob man ihn je benötigen wird.»(...)

ganzen Artikel lesen: http://www.baz.ch/news/index.cfm?ObjectID=C499212E-1422-0CEF-70A7208CAF7097C6 Basler Zeitung, 4. März 2006


Aus: impf-report Newsletter Nr. 12/2006

(engl.)

In den USA geht seit einigen Jahren der Einsatz von Quecksilber
(Thiomersal) als Konservierungsstoff in Impfstoffen zurück. Gleichzeitig scheinen auch die Autismuszahlen (Neuerkrankungen) zurückzugehen. Möglicherweise gibt es einen Zusammenhang

Hier nachlesen: http://www.jpands.org/vol11no1/geier.pdf

--> Quecksilber ist eines der 10 Top-Allergene: http://focus.msn.de/gesundheit/allergie/news/allergie-ausloeser_nid_25717.html FOCUS online, 3. März 2006



US-Regierung wusste seit Jahren vom Quecksilber-Risiko (engl.)

E-NEWS FROM THE NATIONAL VACCINE INFORMATION CENTER Vienna, Virginia http://www.nvic.org

NVIC-Newsletter vom 7. März 2006

Report: Government knew of autism link

By Jon Brodkin

Eight years before the U.S. government decided to remove mercury from most childhood vaccines, federal health officials were already receiving reports linking vaccinations to new cases of autism. Starting in 1991 after the government set up a database to record adverse reactions to vaccines, doctors, parents and others reported frightening responses to inoculations in children subsequently diagnosed with autism. (...)

hier weiterlesen: http://www.milforddailynews.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=87552 Milford Daily News, MA, Tuesday, March 7, 2006


Aus: impf-report Newsletter Nr. 12/2006

Barleben (dpa/sa) - Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel (CDU) hat die Pharmabranche als ein Aushängeschild der Wirtschaft in Deutschland bezeichnet. "Die Stärken Deutschlands sind im Pharmabereich", sagte Merkel am Donnerstag bei einem Besuch des Arzneimittelherstellers Salutas Pharma in Barleben bei Magdeburg. Die steigenden Kosten im Gesundheitswesen dürften nicht dazu führen, dass in Deutschland Arbeitsplätze in der Pharmabranche verloren gingen. (...)

ganzen Artikel lesen: http://www.impfkritik.de/forum/showthread.php?t=689 DPA, 2. März 2006

Kommentar: Die seit Jahren fortschreitende von den jeweiligen nationalen und übernationalen Behörden genehmigte Konzentration in der Pharmabranche schafft Stellenabbau (und Gewinne) ganz ohne dass man die Kostenexplosion im Gesundheitswesen bemühen müsste. Das sollte auch unsere hochverehrte Bundeskanzlerin wissen.


Aus: impf-report Newsletter Nr. 12/2006

Jean Francois Saluzzo ist Virologe. Ein bei der Weltgesundheitsorganisation gefragter Fachmann. Zur Zeit leitet er im Labor Sanofi Pasteur in Lyon die Entwicklung von Impfstoffen gegen neu entstehende Viruskrankheiten. Exklusiv für Euronews antwortete er auf Fragen, die sich nach dem Auffinden einer an Vogelgrippe verendeten Katze ergeben.

Jean Francois Saluzzo: Das ist ein ganz banales Phänomen. Es hat keinerlei Bedeutung hinsichtlich einer Übertragung auf den Menschen, sondern zeigt uns, wie wirksam in Europa die Überwachung ist. In China und Vietnam gibt es bekanntlich viele Katzen. Warum war dort von Vogelgrippe-Infektionen bei Katzen nicht schon früher die Rede? Ganz einfach weil die Überwachung in diesen Ländern unzureichend ist." (...)

ganzen Artikel lesen: http://www.euronews.net/create_html.php?page=detail_info&article=346740&lng=3 euronews.net , 1. März 2006

Kommentar (vom 4.3.06) Die Katzenhysterie wird von Herrn Saluzzo eindeutig relativiert. Andererseits widersprechen sich seine Aussagen und die anderer Experten, was die Übertragungsrolle der Zugvögel betrifft: Die einen sind sich wegen der Zugvögeln sicher. Die anderen versichern, es gäbe noch gar keine Beweise, sondern nur Hypothesen. Und dann die Geschichte mit Rügen: Derzeit kein Vogelzug, dafür aber seit Monaten Experimente mit dem Vogelgrippevirus in direkter Nachbarschaft auf der Insel Riems...



Traumziel Rügen - und wie ich es ganz genau wissen wollte

(...) Das Telefon klingelte, ich stellte mich vor und erklärte mein Anliegen. Offensichtlich kam mein Anruf nicht ungelegen, denn Herr Müller nahm sich sofort die Zeit, mir meine Fragen zu beantworten. Es waren dieselben, die ich Frau Schmidt gestellt hatte. Doch Herr Müller schien ganz woanders zu leben. Er erzählte mir, dass das Sterben der Schwäne zu dieser Jahreszeit wohl ganz normal sei. "Jedes Jahr sammeln sich die Tiere in der geschützten Bucht des Wieker Boddens und des Rassower Stroms um dort zu überwintern. Dabei sterben jedes Jahr zig Schwäne, die zum Teil auf dem Eis festfrieren und dort liegen bleiben, zum Teil auch im Wasser treiben." Das sei ganz unterschiedlich. "Nur dieses Jahr", so meinte er, "kommt auf jeden toten Schwan ein eigenes Fernsehteam. Normalerweise sind die Schwäne auch jedes Jahr im Winter gefüttert worden." Dieses Jahr sei das jedoch ausgeblieben. "Warum? Das wüsste ich auch gern." (...)

ganzen Artikel lesen: http://www.faktuell.de/Hintergrund/Background376.shtml faktuell.de , 26. Feb. 2006



Experte hält Katzen-Hausarrest für wirkungslos

Stuttgart (dpa) - Hausarrest für Katzen ist nach Meinung eines Experten kein geeignetes Mittel, die weitere Verbreitung der Vogelgrippe einzudämmen. "Eine Katze lässt sich nicht einsperren. Das wird von den Behörden zu eng gesehen", sagte Reinhard Böhm, Leiter des Instituts für Tierhygiene an der Uni Stuttgart-Hohenheim, in einem dpa-Gespräch. (...)

hier weiterlesen: http://www.mainpost.de/aaw/thema/art104,3458338.html?fCMS=37271f06fc8cf9d965a767e6da7c78ae Mainpost, 4. März 2006



Aus: impf-report Newsletter Nr. 12/2006

(engl.)

An einer Grundschule in den USA sind seit Januar über 40 Kinder an Windpocken erkrankt. Großes Rätselraten allenthalben, denn sie waren alle geimpft. Des Rätsels "Lösung": Das Varicella-Virus sei mutiert...

E-NEWS FROM THE NATIONAL VACCINE INFORMATION CENTER Vienna, Virginia http://www.nvic.org

BL Fisher Note: Vaccines provide temporary, qualitatively inferior immunity compared to immunity achieved after natural recovery from disease. And just as mass antibiotic use has put pressure on organisms to evolve into antibiotic resistant forms, mass vaccine use can put pressure on organisms to mutate into vaccine resistant forms. The live varicella zoster vaccine for chicken pox had difficulty getting FDA approval for many years because of its high failure rate (often 20 percent). NVIC opposed mandatory use of chicken pox vaccine when it was licensed in 1995 because 99.99 percent of all healthy children recovered from chicken pox without permanent effects and obtained a qualitatively superior immunity that was boosted throughout life by contact with young children with chicken pox. Because chicken pox has been removed from the childhood population through mass vaccination and no boosting is taking place to reinforce naturally acquired immunity, older children and adults are now vulnerable to shingles. There is an epidemic of shingles in America today. Drug companies are now developing a shingles vaccine to deal with the effects of mass use of chicken pox vaccine. Gary Goldman, Ph.D., an expert on chicken pox vaccine and shingles increases, has published several excellent articles on this topic in the medical journal, Vaccine, as well as in the medical journal he edits, Medical Veritas.

Chicken pox outbreak

Troy Elementary School nurse Sarah Black should probably go ahead and get a revolving door for her office. It would help with all the traffic coming in and out these days. TES is the midsts of the worst outbreak of chicken pox the school has faced in eight years - an outbreak made more surprising because most all the affected students have previously received chicken pox vaccinations. Black said she could hardly believe it when the first students started showing up in her office with the characteristic red, itchy spots. "I was in denial at first, I said this can't possibly be chicken pox," Black said. Oh, but was it ever chicken pox, and it has spread like wildfire. Since the first student was diagnosed in late January, over 40 students in every grade have come down with it.

ganzen Artikel lesen: http://www.troymessenger.com/articles/2006/02/26/news/newsssss01.txt Troy Messenger, AL, February 27, 2006


Aus: impf-report Newsletter Nr. 12/2006

(engl.)

E-NEWS FROM THE NATIONAL VACCINE INFORMATION CENTER Vienna, Virginia http://www.nvic.org

BL Fisher Note:

Over the years, newborns have suffered vaccine reactions and died. Although infants can suffer bleeding in the brain after being violently shaken, vaccine-induced brain inflammation can also cause bleeding in the brain. Whole cell pertussis vaccine was associated occasionally with bleeding in the brain. Methodologically sound clinical research to evaluate the biological mechanisms for vaccine injury and death, including risk factors for vaccine induced bleeding in the brain, should have been conducted long ago.

Researchers Say Criterion For Diagnosing Child Abuse Not Always Accurate

When it comes to looking for damage to the eyes to prove child abuse, new research shows that things aren't always as they seem, according to Patrick Lantz, M.D., a forensic pathologist from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

"Contrary to what many doctors have been taught, we found that number and location of hemorrhages of the eye's retina aren't always proof of child abuse," said Lantz, who reported the results today at the 58th annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Seattle. "Retinal hemorrhages occur more often than most doctors think are associated with a wide variety of conditions." (...)

hier weiterlesen: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-02/wfub-rsc021706.php Source: Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center Posted: February 26, 2006

Kommentar: Wie BL Fisher oben richtig anmerkt, können Symptome wie Gehirn- und Netzhautblutungen, die auf Gewalt gegen Kleinkinder
("Schütteltrauma") zurückgeführt werden können, auch durch Impfstoffe verursacht werden. Ein Zusammenhang, der von vielen Ärzten, wie die Erfahrung zeigt, nicht berücksichtigt wird. Die Folgen für die betroffenen Eltern können fatal sein: Kriminalisierung, Kindswegnahme, Verurteilung und Gefängnis, zerstörte Existenzen. Nur weil die Ärzte einen möglichen Zusammenhang mit vorausgegangenen Impfungen nicht prüften...


Aus: impf-report Newsletter Nr. 12/2006

Piep, piep, piiiep

von Kurt W. Zimmermann

Erst wenn sich das letzte Schweizer Huhn totgelacht hat, werdet ihr sehen, dass Horrormeldungen ansteckender sind als BSE, Sars und H5N1.

Natürlich ist es auch unsere Aufgabe, die Bevölkerung vor der Vogelgrippe zu warnen. Höre also, Bevölkerung, sei gewarnt, die Vogelgrippe wird fürchterlich wüten, vorausgesetzt, das Virus mutiert zu einem Virus, das von Mensch zu Mensch übertragbar ist, vorausgesetzt, das mutierte Virus findet dann den Weg von Bangkok nach Bümpliz, und wiederum vorausgesetzt, in Bümpliz haben sie den Schlüssel zum «Tamiflu»-Pflichtlager verhühnert.

Gut, die Bevölkerung ist damit gewarnt, und wir können uns der grundsätzlichen Frage zuwenden. Worin unterscheidet sich die Vogelgrippe in den Medien von Listerien, von Ebola, von Rinderwahnsinn und Sars?

Die Vogelgrippe ist publizistisch etwas schwieriger umzusetzen als ihre vier Vorgänger Listerien, Ebola, Rinderwahnsinn und Sars. Bei Listerien, Ebola, Rinderwahnsinn und Sars, die alle vier die Erdbevölkerung ebenfalls ausgerottet haben, griff jeweils die bewährte mediale Zangenbewegung. Man konnte die Bevölkerung, erstens, zünftig in Todesschrecken versetzen. Und man konnte dann, zweitens, der verschreckten Bevölkerung erklären, wie man dem Tod durch Listerien, Ebola, Rinderwahnsinn und Sars entgeht. Man konnte zum Beispiel davor warnen, Vacherin und Beefsteak Tatar zu verdrücken oder nach Hongkong und Kenia zu fliegen.

Bei der Vogelgrippe ist es komplexer. Man kann zwar auch diesmal die Bevölkerung in Schrecken versetzen. Aber man kann die Bevölkerung nicht darüber aufklären, wie sie der Vogelgrippe entgeht. Nicht nach Vietnam oder Korea zu fliegen hilft nichts, weil man sich dort gar keine Vogelgrippe holen kann. Keine Mistkratzerli mehr zu füttern hilft auch nichts, weil man sich dabei auch keine Vogelgrippe holen kann. (...)

ganzen Artikel lesen (sehr lesenswert!): http://www.zeit-fragen.ch/ARCHIV/ZF_135a/T02.HTM zeit-fragen.ch, Originalquelle: Weltwoche Nr. 43 vom 27. 10. 2005, http://www.weltwoche.ch


Aus: impf-report Newsletter Nr. 12/2006

Apotheken-Sprecher: Gesund leben schützt vor Vogelgrippe!

"(...) Grundsätzlich kann man sagen: Je stabiler die körperliche
Konstitution ist, umso weniger hat auch ein Virus eine Chance.
Insofern gilt, worauf wir überhaupt immer achten sollten: Mit viel
Bewegung, frischer Luft und gesunder Ernährung die Abwehrkräfte des
Körpers stärken. (...)"

ganzen Artikel lesen:
http://www.donau.de/SID_9ea71289bcacd4b8099989cd9fbc76b0/nachrichten/region/schwandorf/meldung.shtml?rubrik=mz&id=59961
Mittelbayerische Zeitung, 24. Feb. 2006


Aus: impf-report Newsletter Nr. 12/2006

Hersteller sind von der Wirksamkeit des Anti-Grippe-Mittels überzeugt - Experten sind skeptisch

"(...) Die Welt verlässt sich auf Tamiflu. Das ungebremste Vertrauen in den einstigen Ladenhüter ist erstaunlich. Haben Tamiflu und seine Verwandten doch erst kürzlich von Wissenschaftlern sehr schlechte Kritiken erhalten: "Wir konnten keine zuverlässigen Beweise für die Wirksamkeit von Neuraminidase- Hemmern gegen Vogelgrippeviren beim Menschen finden", so Tom Jefferson von der renommierten Cochrane Collaboration im Ärzteblatt "The Lancet".
(...)"

ganzen Artikel lesen: http://www.sonntagszeitung.ch/dyn/news/fokus/597280.html Sonntags Zeitung, 26. Febr. 2006

Kommentar: Na ja, sooo erstaunlich ist das "ungebremste Vertrauen" in Tamiflu gar nicht. Wenn man berücksichtigt, dass die mächtigste Regierung der Welt sich heftig ins Zeug legt, dass die Interessen des Herstellers gewahrt bleiben. Und Verteidigungsminister Rumsfeld ist einer der Hauptaktionäre von Tamiflu-Lizenzgeber GILEAD....



Tamiflu und Relenza: Die überschätzten Retter

Die Angst vor einer Vogelgrippe-Seuche unter Menschen hat Tamiflu und Relenza den Ruf von Rettern in der Not eingebracht. Doch die antiviralen Medikamente könnten den Ausbruch einer Pandemie nicht verhindern. Es ist nicht einmal sicher, ob sie überhaupt wirken würden. (...)

ganzen Artikel lesen: http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,403457,00.html SPIEGEL, 27. Februar 2006



Infektions-Experte kritisiert massenhafte Lagerung von Tamiflu

Schwerin (dpa/mv) - Der SPD-Bundestagsabgeordnete und Infektions- Experte Wolfgang Wodarg hat die massenhafte Lagerung von Grippe- Mitteln wie Tamiflu kritisiert. "Ich halte das für rausgeschmissenes Geld", sagte er der "Schweriner Volkszeitung" (Mittwoch). Es werde "ein Mittel in Mengen eingelagert, von dem wir gar nicht genau wissen, gegen welches Virus genau es am Ende helfen muss. (...)

hier weiterlesen:
http://www.krankenkassen.de/frameset.php?page=%2Fdpa.php%3Fid%3D50491
DPA, 01.03.2006


Aus: impf-report Newsletter Nr. 12/2006

Veranstaltungshinweise (Auswahl)

--> 21. April 2006 Tjado Galic, klass. Homöopath: "Kinderkrankheiten und Impfungen", 38179 Schwülper, Bürgerhaus, 20:00 Uhr Weitere Infos unter: http://www.ag-hochbegabtes-kind.de/Aktuelle_Termine/aktuelle_termine.html

--> 12. Mai 2006 Gautinger Impfsymposium Mit Dr. med. Klaus Hartmann, Angelika Kögel-Schauz, Dr. med. Johann Loibner, Dr. med. Georg Kneißl. Weitere Infos unter: http://www.homoeopathie-forum.de/seminare/semdetails.php?id=78&seite=ha&ort=m-gauting

--> Weitere Veranstaltungshinweise finden Sie unter: http://www.impfkritik.de/forum/showthread.php?t=251


Aus: impf-report Newsletter Nr. 12/2006

Nachstehende Online-Petition wurde bereits am 8. März eingereicht,
bisher jedoch wohl von niemandem im Internet bemerkt. Aber das kann
sich ja ändern:

http://itc.napier.ac.uk/e-Petition/bundestag/view_petition.asp?PetitionID=106


Aus: impf-report Newsletter Nr. 12/2006



Online-Petition hat bereits ca. 4.500 Unterstützter

Die am 12. April gestartete Online-Petition gegen eine möglicher- weise geplante Zwangsimpfung gegen die Vogelgrippe wird inzwischen von ca. 4.500 Menschen unterstützt.

Siehe auch: http://itc.napier.ac.uk/e-Petition/bundestag/view_petition.asp?PetitionID=106

Aus: impf-report Newsletter Nr. 15/2006


--------

Aufstallung: und fertig ist die Vogelgrippe
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/1823331/

Latest on Penally case. Many thanks again to all of those who sent objections to Pembs CC, and to David for providing the evidence to cast doubt on the recommendation to approve. The fight continues....

Amanda


Penally TETRA Decision Deferred

11 April 2006

No decision will be made on MMO2's application to erect a TETRA mast at Penally until after a site visit. PENALLY residents have been given a temporary reprieve in their battle against the erection of a TETRA mast in the village.

A packed public gallery at today's planning committeee meeting heard an impassioned plea by Penally Cllr, Carol Cavil, for the committee to visit the site before a decision is made.

This was seconded by Cllr Brian Hall who said that clearly an issue that caused such high public attendance should merit a site visit. The meeting then voted unanimously for a site visit.

Ann Dassen, spokeswoman for the Penally Against Tetra Action Group expressed relief regarding today’s vote.

“We are relieved obviously, because the county council have tried to put such a strong case to approve the mast which we truly can't understand and we have presented evidence to them which refutes half of what was said today.

“We are very grateful to members of planning committee for proposing to visit the site and see how close it is to the Harriet Davis Trust.

“The officer said that the site was used for telecommunications already in fact there's just a television mast and a small RNLI antenna.”

Telecommunications company MMO2 originally submitted an application to erect a mast in Penally last June.

The company appealed to the Welsh Assembly appointed Planning Inspectorate after the county council failed to make a decision on the initial application.

A public inquiry, that would have either allowed or dismissed MMO2’s application, was scheduled for May 9th.

After the landmark ruling on Uzmaston by the Planning Inspectorate last January the telecommunications giant submitted a parallel planning application for the Penally mast to Pembrokeshire County Council.

MMO2's application is particularly contentious, as the mast would be sited in close proximity to the Harriet Davis Holiday Trust. A charity that provides holidays for disabled children and their carers.

© Pembrokeshiretv.com All Rights Reserved.

http://www.pembrokeshiretv.com/content/templates/v6-article.asp?articleid=1814

The right to vote, as well as the principle of "one person, one vote," are cornerstones of our democracy. Equally fundamental is the assurance that each voter knows that her or his vote counts and is counted as intended. At this time in our history, many have lost confidence in our voting system.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041106L.shtml

Meinen Job gibt's billiger

Durch Produktionsverlagerungen in Niedriglohnländer werden innerhalb der nächsten Jahre Tausende deutscher Arbeitsplätze verloren gehen. Das bedeutet für viele Menschen verlorene Sicherheit, verletzter Stolz und für einige entwickelt sich daraus ein kompletter Neuanfang.

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFde/inhalt/17/0,1872,3922097,00.html

Weitere Informationen unter http://www.soga-nms.net

Jetzt neu auf unseren Seiten unter:
http://www.soga-nms.net/40884.html

Öffentliche Petitionen an den Bundestag!

Sie haben eine Beschwerde? Richten Sie diese an den Petionsausschuss im Bundestag. Jetzt direkt und im Internet: Öffentliche Petitionen im Bundestag
Auf diesen Seiten kann man sich Petitionen anschließen, sowie eigene Petitionen an den Bundestag richten. Dieses kann ein Mittel sein um Behörden bei rechtswidriger Handeln, zum Einlenken zu bewegen.

http://itc.napier.ac.uk/e-Petition/bundestag/

HLV INFO 45/AT

11-04-2006

Frankfurter Rundschau 8-04-05

Land hält Vertrag mit Siemens geheim

Konzerntochter übernimmt Management für Computerprojekt an Schulen/ Konkurrenten und Schulträger vermuten unlauteren Deal

Das hessische Prestigeprojekt Schule@ Zukunft zur Ausstattung der Schulen mit Computern wird künftig von einer Siemens-Tochter gemanagt. Es heißt, Siemens habe sich den Einstieg mit einer Werbekampagne für die CDU-Landesregierung erkauft.

Frankfurt · Wesentliche Teile des Vertrags zwischen dem Land Hessen und der Siemens-Tochter Siemens Business Services (SBS) über das Projektmanagement für Schule@Zukunft liegen im Kultusministerium unter Verschluss. Die Geheimhaltung geht so weit, dass die Landkreise und Städte als Träger von Schule@Zukunft - trotz intensiven Drängens - den Vertrag nur in Auszügen zur Kenntnis erhalten haben, unter dem Siegel der Vertraulichkeit.

Das geheimnistuerische Gebahren heizt die Gerüchteküche an. Siemens habe sich das Projektmanagement dadurch erkauft, dass es pünktlich zur Landtagswahl im Frühjahr 2008 eine aufwändige Werbekampagne für Schule@Zukunft finanzieren werde. Eine Kampagne, deren Strahlkraft sich positiv auf das Image der CDU-Landesregierung als Bildungsmotor auswirken werde, heißt es in Kreisen der Schulträger.

"Das Werk von Lobbyisten"

Ein mögliches Interesse von Siemens liegt auf der Hand: Der Markt ist für IT-Ausrüster lukrativ. Bis 2010 sollen in Hessen rund 100 Millionen Euro in die Ausstattung der Schulen mit Computern und Software investiert werden. SBS als Projektmanager von Schule@Zukunft hat Einblick in die Investitions- und Technologiepläne sämtlicher 33 hessischer Schulträger, sitzt zudem an den Schaltstellen bei der Organisation, Planung, Kontrolle und Weiterentwicklung des Projekts. So soll SBS die Schulträger bei der Fortschreibung ihrer Technologiepläne beraten und diese in Teilen steuern.

Man sei durch die Hintertür mit Siemens verheiratet worden, sagt Dietlinde Elies, Schuldezernentin im Kreis Gießen. Die Auftragsvergabe an SBS sei "das Werk von Lobbyisten". Auch Michael Reuter, Schuldezernent im Odenwaldkreis, geht davon aus, dass mit SBS der Siemens-Konzern selbst an die Schaltstellen hessischer Schulentwicklung gerückt ist. Alle Vertragsteile, fordert Rheingau-Taunus-Landrat Burkhard Albers, müssten offen gelegt werden, um zu sehen, was dort zwischen Landesregierung und Siemens geregelt sei. Siemens-Konkurrent Hewlett-Packard, in Hessen bislang gut im Geschäft, hat Ministerpräsident Roland Koch schriftlich um eine Erklärung für die Vergabe des Managements an SBS ersucht.

Siemens-Sprecher Rainer Jend, der auch für das Tochterunternehmen SBS zuständig ist, lehnte jede Stellungnahme ab. Es gebe, sagte er, "keinen vernünftigen Grund zum Misstrauen". Auch das hessische Kultusministerium wiegelt ab. SBS sei ein neutraler Dienstleister. Dass der Wettbewerb beeinträchtigt sein könnte, glaubt man dort nicht. Auf die Frage, warum man den Vertrag den Projektpartnern nicht in Gänze offen legen wolle, um Vermutungen über einen vermeintlichen Deal zwischen Landesregierung und Siemens die Grundlage zu entziehen, antwortet Ministeriumssprecherin Tatjana Schruttke: Alle "für die Schulträger relevanten Teile" seien offen gelegt, über Inhalte des Vertrages "können wir keine Auskunft geben".

Wenigstens die Sorgen der Schulträger über eine Verzerrung des Wettbewerbs könnten berechtigt sein: In Unna (Nordrhein-Westfalen) ist Siemens Partner beim Aufbau und Betrieb eines Schulnetzes zum computergestützten Lernen, an das sämtliche Bildungseinrichtungen der Stadt angeschlossen sind. Dieses "Unit21" genannte Projekt verspricht den Beteiligten grenzenlose Mobilität beim Lernen. Allen Eltern, Schülern und Lehrern wird dort für rund 1000 Euro ein auf die Anforderungen des Schulnetzes abgestimmtes Laptop zum Kauf angeboten. Hersteller: Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC), wie SBS ein Unternehmen des Siemens-Konzerns. Peter Hanack

http://www.fr-aktuell.de/ressorts/frankfurt_und_hessen/frankfurt_und_hessen/?cnt=843230&sid=ba819b2efac8bf6e866add8dca2ce1f4



FR 8-04-06

KOMMENTAR

Misstrauen

VON PETER HANACK

Den Vertrag zwischen Landesregierung und der Siemens-Tochter SBS über das Projektmanagement für Schule@Zukunft kennen nur jene, die ihn geschlossen haben. Rechtlich ist daran nichts auszusetzen. Warum aber tut das Kultusministerium so geheimnisvoll? Was steht in jenen Paragraphen, die niemand kennen darf?

Geheimnisse reizen zum Spekulieren. Befeuert werden diese Spekulationen durch die Nähe von SBS zum Mutterkonzern Siemens. Beide Unternehmen betreiben eine gemeinsame Website, die Rufnummern der hessischen SBS-Zentrale führen zum Siemens-Callcenter, der Siemens-Pressesprecher gibt auch für SBS Auskunft. Für eine strikte Trennung der Aufgabenbereiche, wie von Siemens und Kultusministerium beteuert, spricht dies nicht.

Sollte mit Siemens Business Services (SBS) tatsächlich Siemens an die Schaltstellen der IT-Entwicklung an hessischen Schulen gerückt sein, hätte der Konzern dadurch einen klaren Vorteil gegenüber Wettbewerbern erlangt. Das wäre zumindest unlauter. Auch hat sich SBS bislang nicht durch Kompetenz in Pädagogik für die Aufgabe im Management von Schule@Zukunft empfohlen.

Die Gerüchte, die sich um die Auftragsvergabe an SBS ranken, sind leicht auszuräumen. Das Kultusministerium muss lediglich das komplette Vertragswerk den kommunalen Schulträgern zugänglich zu machen. Wenn nötig, mit geschwärzten Zahlen und unter der Maßgabe strikter Vertraulichkeit. Dass dies so schwer fällt, macht misstrauisch.

http://www.fr-aktuell.de/ressorts/frankfurt_und_hessen/frankfurt_und_hessen/?cnt=843229



HLV Kommentar:

Abgesehen von der lobbyistischen Interessenwahrnehmung, aus welchen Gründen auch immer, wird natürlich auch in den Schulen die drahtlose Verbindung via WLAN eingeführt werden. Dies wird mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit, wie ja bereits auch schon für den Main-Kinzig-Kreis angedacht, erfolgen und zwar trotz vorliegender Studien (z.B. ECOLOG u. andere Hinweise mit bereits negativer praktischer Erfahrung und Studie von Prof. Dr. Gerstgrasser vom Erzherzog-Johann-Gymnasium Bad Aussee), welche sich ausdrücklich gegen WLAN in Schulen aussprechen, weil die belastenden Immissionswerte der Mikerowellenstrahlung ein deutliches Gesundheitsrisiko sind.

Man darf darauf gespannt sein, ob diese Fakten von den politisch Verantwortlichen berücksichtigt werden oder wie man befürchten muß, unsere Schüler und Schülerinnen Opfer des Lobbyismus werden.


Alfred Tittmann

--------

Schule und Mobilfunk
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/403986/

Common Dreams
by Fran Shor

04/10/06

Recent articles in the Daily Telegraph in England and the Washington Post and New Yorker reinforce the speculation that the Bush Administration will launch a military attack on Iran. Although leading Administration officials from Bush to Secretary of State Rice to UN Ambassador Bolton insist that they are pursuing a diplomatic route to preventing a nuclear Iran, the military 'option' remains at the core of the preemptive strikes consistently favored by this rogue Administration. Furthermore, while it may seem preposterous that this discredited right-wing cabal would undertake another military campaign while bogged down in a growing civil war in Iraq, both their previous actions and continual ideological orientation suggest that deliberative diplomacy is trumped by aggressive militarism. So, who, or what, will stop Bush's military attack on Iran?

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0410-24.htm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Asia Times
by Spengler

04/11/06

One hears not an encouraging word about US President George W Bush these days, even from Republican loyalists. Yet I believe that Bush will stage the strongest political comeback of any US politician since Abraham Lincoln won re-election in 1864 in the midst of the American Civil War. Two years ago I wrote that Bush would win a second term as president but live to regret it. Iraq's internal collapse and the president's poll numbers bear my forecast out. But Bush's Republicans will triumph in next November's congressional elections for the same reason that Bush beat Democratic challenger John Kerry in 2004. Americans rally around a wartime commander-in-chief, and Bush will have bombed Iranian nuclear installations by October. " [editor's note: I wouldn't be surprised if he's correct. What a stunning indictment of 'our national character' ... and intelligence - MLS]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD11Ak03.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

--------

The October Surprise

Gary Hart: "It should come as no surprise if the Bush administration undertakes a preemptive war against Iran sometime before the November election. Were these more normal times, this would be a stunning possibility, quickly dismissed by thoughtful people as dangerous, unprovoked, and out of keeping with our national character. But we do not live in normal times."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092506Z.shtml

Sunday Herald [UK]
by Neil Mackay

04/02/06

Imagine a world where wars are fought over the internet; where TV broadcasts and newspaper reports are designed by the military to confuse the population; and where a foreign armed power can shut down your computer, phone, radio or TV at will. In 2006, we are just about to enter such a world. This is the age of information warfare, and details of how this new military doctrine will affect everyone on the planet are contained in a report, entitled The Information Operations Roadmap, commissioned and approved by US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and seen by the Sunday Herald. ... Freedom of speech advocates are horrified at this new doctrine, but military planners and members of the intelligence community embrace the idea as a necessary development in modern combat...

http://www.sundayherald.com/54975


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

On 21 March, ten endangered wild Sumatran elephants were found by WWF chained to trees without food or water in central Riau, Indonesia. They had been captured after feeding on the crops of a nearby village. WWF has since provided food, water and emergency medical care to the elephants, but their fate remains uncertain.

Take action now and sign our petition to the Indonesian authorities
http://mail.panda.org/inxmail/url?vx40000gzli000tij3a3

Only three weeks earlier, six other elephants had been found dead in an illegal oil palm plantation in Riau, apparently poisoned in retaliation for feeding in the plantation.

These are the latest casualties in the escalating conflict between elephants and humans in central Sumatra, the direct result of uncontrolled and often illegal destruction of the elephants' forest habitat usually for oil palm and pulp.

Human-elephant conflict can be avoided if elephants are given enough room to live and if any conflict is professionally dealt with. Sadly, this is not happening in Riau.

We need your help to put an end to these conflicts. This is essential not just for Sumatra's elephants but also to safeguard the lives and livelihoods of the communities living alongside them.
http://mail.panda.org/inxmail/url?vx40000gzli000tij3a3

Thank you,

WWF International

--------

Why are biofuels, palm oil, fueling deforestation?
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/1885511/

Langfassung eines Interviews von Markus Griessermit Mag Wompel in der österreicherischen „MALMOE“ vom 07.04.2006
http://www.malmoe.org/artikel/widersprechen/1136


Aus: LabourNet, 11. April 2006

Nichtregierungsorganisationen fordern unternehmerische Verantwortung und politische Konsequenzen

„Im Vorfeld der diesjährigen Aktionärshauptversammlung der Daimler Chrysler AG am 12. April in Berlin fordern die im Aktionsbündnis Landmine.de zusammengeschlossenen Nichtregierungsorganisationen das Unternehmen auf, in Bezug auf die Nachhaltigkeit seiner Geschäftstätigkeit mehr unternehmerische Verantwortung zu entwickeln und sich nicht an Geschäften mit Landminen und Streumunition zu beteiligen…“ Presseerklärung des Aktionsbündnisses landmine.de vom 11.04.2006 http://www.landmine.de/de.titel/de.news/de.news.one/index.html?entry=de.news.0c40ec092a7c0000


Aus: LabourNet, 11. April 2006

Petition von Armin Kammrad vom 09.04.2006 an den Petitionsausschuss des Deutschen Bundestags http://www.labournet.de/diskussion/arbeit/realpolitik/zwang/rechtsbruch.html

Aus dem Text: "... Es ist also höchste Zeit durch gesetzliche Festlegungen wenigstens das Agieren im rechtsfreien Raum bei manchen ARGEN durch mehr Rechte für die davon Betroffenen zu stoppen. 5 Millionen (in Wahrheit wohl mindestens 7 Millionen) Arbeitslose dazu „aktivieren“ zu wollen, ihre Existenz, ihre Zukunft, ihr Streben nach Demokratie und Gerechtigkeit, einer destruktiven Wirtschaftsideologie zu opfern, wird sicher nicht funktionieren..."


Aus: LabourNet, 11. April 2006

Kinder unter 14 Jahren sollten nur in Ausnahmefällen mobil-telefonieren

Die unsichere Informationslage zur möglicherweise gesundheitsschädigenden Wirkung von Handy-Strahlung bereitet vielen Verbrauchern Kopfzerbrechen. Professor Rainer Frentzel-Beyme, Umweltmediziner an der Universität Bremen, beklagte kürzlich (wir berichteten http://de.internet.com/index.php?id=2042126 ) die enge Verbindung zwischen Mobilfunkkonzernen und dem Staat. Eine unabhängige Erforschung der Wirkung von Funkstrahlung sei daher nur schwer möglich und würde seit über zehn Jahren systematisch verzögert. Der persönliche Umgang mit der Technik könne das Gefahrenpotential durch die alltägliche Belastung durch elektromagnetische Felder jedoch auch beeinflussen. Darauf weist das Telekommunikationsmagazin 'Connect' (heutige Ausgabe) hin und gibt Tipps, wie Mobiltelefonierer die Strahlenbelastung senken können.

Handy-Nutzer sollten nicht länger als unbedingt nötig an Orten mit sehr schlechtem Empfang telefonieren. Der Grund: Ob in der Tiefgarage oder im Aufzug - überall, wo der Kontakt zum Funknetz fast schon verloren geht, muss das Handy Schwerstarbeit leisten, damit die Verbindung nicht abreißt. Die Sendeleistung - und so auch die Strahlung - wird dabei auf ein Maximum erhöht.

Zudem sollte nicht nur im Auto, sondern auch auf der Zugfahrt möglichst auf Handy-Telefonate verzichtet werden, da das Gerät aufgrund der hohen Geschwindigkeit kontinuierlich damit beschäftigt ist, sich bei der jeweils nächsten Basisstation anzumelden. Ein andauerndes Senden ist die Folge.

Um eine erhöhte Belastung durch Strahlung zu vermeiden, sollten Anwender keine stundenlangen Gespräche führen und das Handy nicht den ganzen Tag eingeschaltet am Körper tragen. Denn auch ohne Telefonat nimmt das Gerät periodisch Kontakt zum Funknetz auf. Da der Nachwuchs empfindlicher auf elektromagnetische Felder reagiert als Erwachsene, sollten Kinder unter 14 Jahren Handys nur in Ausnahmefällen benutzen.

Eine permanente und teilweise überflüssige Quelle elektromagnetischer Felder innerhalb der Wohnung sind Schnurlostelefone. Nicht nur, dass die Basisstation eines so genannten DECT-Telefons rund um die Uhr sendet, auch die im Handynetz erfolgreich eingesetzte Leistungsregulierung zwischen Endgerät und Basisstation fehlt bei vielen Schnurlostelefonen gänzlich. Aus diesem Grund hätten DECT-Telefone unter anderem nichts neben dem Bett oder im Kinderzimmer verloren. (as)

Ihre Meinung zum Thema...
http://de.internet.com/index.php?id=2042353#cm

[ Donnerstag, 06.04.2006, 13:56 ]

Copyright 2006 Jupitermedia Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

http://de.internet.com/index.php?id=2042353&section=Mobile

The Ir.Times journalist, Kathy Sheridan, bases her report on her own recent fact finding mission to this troubled region. And those facts she has unearthed are devastating. The images that accompany her article are equally horrifying but being unavailable on the online edition of the Irish Times, I can't send them along.

I am also forwarding you (attachment) the Cork based Chernobyl Children's Project International Rebuttal Statement to the IAEA'S Chernobly Forum's Report as I've sought and been given permission to publicise it.

http://tinyurl.com/zhpr5

Kathy Sheridan's final part of her series--her interview of Professor Yuri Bandazhevsky--points up very clearly just what can happen to the career of an eminent scientist from the area who exposes the truth about the health consequences of the radiation fallout, so I have placed that first. (I have also repeated it in its correct placement at the end of the series.)

Best, Imelda, Cork, Ireland


'To want more nuclear power rather than less is insane' Kathy Sheridan

In a tiny apartment in a grim Minsk tower block, a scientist garlanded with honours, a member of five academies of science, a prodigy once given his own university to run at the age of 34, places another jar of hamster foetuses on a cheap coffee table.

He holds the jar up to the light, where the skeletal structures are clearly visible through the flesh. He points out those with no eyes, or no brain, or under-developed brains, or no skull-bones. Dozens, strangely, have a cleft lip and palate. There are 200 in all, none of which appear to be normal.

The foetuses' mothers, he explains, had been injected with proportionate, comparatively "quite low" doses of caesium-137 (C137), a radioactive element which featured in vast amounts in the Chernobyl fallout. C137 has a nuclear half-life (the time it takes for half of it to radioactively decay away) of 30.07 years. Hamsters were chosen, he says, because they have a genetic print similar to humans and "because they're easier to feed, not as smelly as mice and you can keep them on the balcony". His wife, Galina, smiles fondly and murmurs wryly, "and he has lots more of them".

This, then, is what remains of Prof Yuri Bandazhevsky's professional and personal world. Within Belarus, colleagues who once lionised him now shun him. He is unemployable but has no permission to leave. In 2001, he was arrested at his medical institute in Gomel and jailed for eight years with hard labour, on trumped-up bribery charges. Amnesty International adopted him as a prisoner of conscience, but by the time he was released, in 2004, his health had been severely affected. His real crime was to go public on the effects of C137, after noting an alarming increase in heart and birth defects among children after Chernobyl.

The medical university he founded in Gomel in 1990 was in the heart of the most contaminated area and was therefore a natural laboratory for research into the effects of radiation.

"We proved that C137 is very dangerous - and most dangerous as an energetic killer of the body," he says. "The problem with C137 is you have no symptoms. So you just get some infection and you die and everyone will say you died from an infection. But, in fact, the immune system has been so weakened that you cannot fight it."

His thesis is that even low-level radiation is dangerous and that up to 24 years before Chernobyl, large parts of the world, including Europe, were already being contaminated with fallout from nuclear tests by China, the US, the Soviet Union and France. Russia, he adds, "was a nuclear dump". Pre-Chernobyl radiation maps, provided by French colleagues, bear this out. Chernobyl simply heaped on the agony and distributed it more widely.

The Chernobyl Forum report - which ascribed much of the population's morbidity to poverty, lifestyle diseases and mental health problems rather than radiation - is "an insult", he says.

"Can you imagine how the Belarussian people who live in those areas must feel, reading that? . . . Calling them drunkards, saying they don't want to work, that they're only waiting around for handouts. They are hard-working people. I'm not sure that any of those people who signed that report spent enough time trying to understand what is going on in that area. But I was there. My family was there. I saw the people, I worked with the people. I know the physical and psychological problems. I saw people not only dying from thyroid cancer, I saw other young people . . . So many of the doctors who worked on that research are dead."

He goes to a bookcase, laden with medals, and fishes out a small hardback book called Clinical and Experimental Aspects of the Effect of Incorporated Radionuclides Upon the Organism, by Yuri Bandazhevsky et al, dated Gomel 1995. The foreword was written by the Belarussian minister for health.

Another foreword, by AS Shaginyan, vice-president of the International Academy of Engineering and the Belarussian Academy of Engineering, takes a swipe at the scientists who skirted the issues in the early days and are now writing from their ivory towers.

"Regretfully," he writes, "the problems of the disaster have been and still remain the subject of political commercialism and career promotion. Even the belated manuscript by the Academician LA Ilyin, The Realities and Myths of Chernobyl, resembles an essay created in a cosy and quiet Moscow library room and written for self-exemption and self-redemption rather than to achieve a profound scientific result . . . The present manuscript is the first kernel of the objective scientific information on the radionuclides effect upon the organism."

Bandazhevsky's wife, Galina, also a scientist, is among the 15 contributors to the five-year study. But she too has paid a high personal price for her work, having had both her thyroid and her womb removed, due to cancers her husband attributes to the disaster.

Bandazhevsky looks at the growing nuclear bandwagon with horror.

"To want more nuclear power rather than less is insane," he says. "I wish I could show those people what I see in mortuaries here and the horror of what my experiments show."


[PART 1 OF 3]

THE IRISH TIMES, SAT, APR 08, 06

NEWS FEATURES

"HUMAN FALLOUT

Standing their ground: Lena Muzychernko (78) and husband Ivan (74), with their son Sasha (40), who refuse to leave Bartolomyeuka, a deserted village once populated by 1,000 people in the exclusion zone of Vetka district, Belarus Photograph: Bryan O'Brien

The huge devastated area around the remains of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor will never again be fit for human habitation, yet thousands of people are still working there. Kathy Sheridan enters the 'zone of alienation'.

In Chernobyl, nature has re-asserted her dominion. Free of man's interference for 20 years, wolves, bison, lynx and moose roam the fields and forests around the decommissioned reactors. Massive wild boar lumber along the roadside and sometimes on to the streets of Chernobyl town, excavating the orchards of empty homes. Families of elk wander the empty, rutted roads.

Sergei, our guide, remarks that spring here is very beautiful.

"Nature thrives," he says. "There is so much greenery . . . so many berries and mushrooms and wild flowers."

He talks about the fabulous size of the fish in the river and how the eagles have returned, "huge eagles, with wings spanning a metre to a metre and a half in the air". Later we hear that birds even nest inside the sarcophagus of the wrecked reactor.

But like a dark fairy tale, nothing here is as it seems. The bountiful berries and mushrooms are poisoned, soaked in radiation. Only a fool would eat the fat fish shimmering in the Pripyat River. The wild boar use their snouts as a hoe in the contaminated soil, making them the most radioactive of animals, shot and eaten at the poachers' peril. The wolves prey on the sickest animals, feeding on radiation.

Viktor, a former militia man once responsible for controlling entry into the so-called Exclusion Zone, tells us that when he and his mates found animal corpses in the forests, they used to perform "little experiments".

"When we cut them open, you'd find the liver was almost gone," he says.

The name of the zone, literally translated from Ukrainian, is "zone of alienation". About the size of Greater London, it is unfit for human habitation and will remain so forever.

Given a choice, Sergei himself would not be here. Like many of the 3,800 workers who earn a living in and around the reactor, he was forced here by high unemployment. Here, there is not only a job but a 20 per cent wage premium, commonly referred to as "coffin money".

For others, such as Julia Marusych, head of information in the visitors' centre, the attraction was the ready availability of an apartment in Slavutych, the company town built 50km away from Chernobyl after the catastrophe. A special train brings workers three times a day from Slavutych, crossing into Belarus and back into Ukraine. This train has no stops, no customs, no radiation checks, in sharp contrast to the interminable searches and questioning endured by ordinary visitors at Belarussian border crossings.

Marusych probably has one of the most unattractive roles in PR history. A former teacher, her job is to interpret the Chernobyl disaster for punch-drunk visitors fresh from stumbling through the eerily empty boulevards of Pripyat, Slavutych's predecessor, less than a kilometre away, the town abruptly abandoned by nearly 50,000 souls 20 years before; or from seeing how Chernobyl town, an ancient, once-lovely settlement, has been reduced to a radioactive research laboratory closed to all but a few scientists, shift-workers and wildlife.

But she pulls no punches. In a small viewing room overlooking the destroyed reactor, the only exhibit is a large model of No 4, which opens up like a sinister doll's house to reveal what lies inside the gunmetal grey monolith next door. The detail is precise, down to the tiny figurines of workers and piles of debris. The central, and largest, component, resembling a circular hairbrush with a deep handle, is the upper reactor plate, what Marusych calls "the technological channels".

"It weighed 2,000 tons, now it stands almost vertically," she says, demonstrating how it was lifted and turned on its side by the explosion. "Its position is not stable."

In fact, there is little that is stable in No 4. Where the model's floor-to-ceiling columns seem to be buckling, this is an alarmingly precise representation of what is happening inside the reactor. Shifts in metal plates mean that even the undamaged western wall is no longer stable.

"There is a threat of local collapse," Marusych says. Meanwhile, the immense "elephant's foot" of melted radioactive fuel below is cracking, emitting tonnes of radioactive dust.

"The chance of a spontaneous chain reaction inside is very low," Marusych adds, "but it is not zero."

For many of the workers in Chernobyl, the task is to maintain the other three decommissioned Chernobyl reactors, still with their nuclear fuel in place, still with their safety and cooling systems in operation, despite the closure of the last one in 2000. This process could take anything up to 150 years. The question of where to store the spent fuel will remain long beyond that.

But even more challenging is the task of stabilising reactor No 4. The desperate and heroic mission of the "stabilisation teams" is to prevent an even greater disaster than 1986. Ninety-seven per cent of the reactor's radioactive material remains inside the wreckage. To put that in context, the 3 per cent that escaped 20 years ago was enough to make a wasteland of parts of northern Ukraine and to contaminate 70 per cent of Belarus, a country with no nuclear plant of its own. Even now, 20 years on, no one knows for sure what secrets lie within the reactor. According to Marusych, only 25 per cent of the "inner rooms" are accessible; in the other 75 per cent, there is either restricted access or none.

The southern spent-fuel pool emits about 3,400 roentgens (units of ionizing radiation) per hour.

"It has no water inside . . . It is one of the most hazardous and least investigated rooms," says Marusych. Some 200 tonnes of fuel lie under the reactor rooms, "and they are the most hazardous and most inaccessible".

At the core, radiation levels are 300 million times greater than normal safety margins.

For workers in No 4, the daily "permitted" radiation dose is around 10 times the norm. Ordinary Ukrainian tradesmen such as welders and builders, contracted to work inside the reactor, sign agreements to work in "intense radiation". They wear special overalls, carry respirators and dosimeters and undergo medical tests before and after every 15-day spell of work. As well as radiation training, they undergo "psychological training".

"Not everyone is prepared for this kind of work," says a clearly sympathetic Marusych. "Conditions inside are very risky. People work in very small areas. The worker is given only 10 minutes to do his welding activity and is then replaced by another who has to be ready and psychologically prepared to carry out his activity in just 10 minutes."

Given the levels of radiation, a man might complete only one or two such sessions before reaching his maximum permitted daily radiation dose.

For workers on the roof of the so-called "sarcophagus", the allotted time is a minute. They must run. When the sarcophagus was built in 1986 to bury No 4 and contain its radiation, experts said it would have to outlast the Pyramids of Egypt, such was No 4's monstrous potency. Instead, massive openings have appeared in the roof, gaps that extend to about
100sq m, according to Marusych.

Rain floods in, damaging and corroding the concrete and metal inside, dropping on to irradiated fuel, before evaporating and rising again in the form of radioactive dust, coughing its lethal cloud on to prevailing winds. No one can say that Chernobyl is "over".

The story of what happened here 20 years ago is told on the centre's video. It ends with the message: "The Chernobyl problem is still unresolved."

A new shelter is finally on the drawing board, after years of argument about design and money.

"It's only a concept design," says Marusych.

It cannot even begin until the stabilisation phase is complete. Whenever it materialises - which could be 15 years - it will be the largest movable structure in the world at 100m high by 250m wide, assembled 200m from No 4 and slid into place. It should last for 100 years, they say.

What then? The message is clear. Man currently does not know enough to make this nuclear plant safe. The cream of international expertise can only try to make it sufficiently safe until our children or grandchildren find a solution. Maybe there is no solution. Maybe by then they will have learned to equal the vision of the pharaohs.

In the viewing room, it is difficult to tear one's eyes from the forbidding grey building next door. The flickering red numbers on the digital panel outside the viewing room window record the radiation levels around us. At between 1.1 and 1.2 milli-roentgens, we should hardly be worried, should we, someone asks tentatively. There are no false assurances. It's still about 100 times more than the average natural level of background radiation, says Marusych, who has been working in the plant since 1997.

Does she worry about her own health? She lowers her head for a long moment before answering slowly and carefully: "What I believe is that everybody should know exactly what the situation is where he works . . . especially those inside the sarcophagus."

At 4.30pm, workers stream out of the building and board the waiting buses for the station and the train home to Slavutych. Nearby stands an incongruous monumental sculpture of a beautiful youth, holding what we are told is a symbol of flame and energy. It was transplanted here from the town of Pripyat.

Ours is the only car on the road as we drive towards Pripyat, a kilometre away.

"Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Pripyat was conquered by the atom," said the narrator in the video.

Some compare it to an atomic-era Pompeii. But Pripyat was only 16 years standing when nuclear fallout forced its sudden abandonment - and not before nearly 50,000 men, women and children had been criminally exposed by Soviet authorities more intent on saving face than saving lives. In Kiev's Chernobyl Museum, a video shows one of the six weddings that took place in Pripyat on Saturday, April 26th, hours after the explosion.

The rusting hulk of a huge, yellow Ferris wheel still dominates the great square. It was due its inaugural spin a few days later on May Day 1986. The nursery school still has its little bed-frames lining the walls, small shoes, dolls, a class photograph album. Books are scattered on the library floor, some stamped April 26th, 1986. Rain now streams through the roof of the vast, marbled Palace of Culture while, backstage, enormous paintings of mighty political leaders and military men still wait to be raised in triumph in the great May Day parade.

We climb to the top of a 16-storey apartment block, where evidence of ordinary lives remains: piles of shoes, an old sofa, peeling murals. On the roof, a large wall-painting of a menacing male figure is as vibrant and disturbing as the day it was executed: cruel features, sinister eyes, mouth cast in shadow, dark jacket, red shirt and tie.

Above each block, crowning the buildings around the square, stand immense, electrified hammer-and-sickle signs, bringing to mind Shelley's lines : "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings/ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and tremble . . ." Now the only ones who tremble are the television crews. Some arrive dressed, head to toe, in full anti-nuclear/biological/chemical regalia, all the better to impress the folks back home.

Fifteen kilometres away, through silver birch and pine forests, past large snow- covered mounds signifying hurriedly buried homes, farm buildings and villages and a series of signs warning of radiation hot-spots, we reach the ancient town of Chernobyl.

Its lovely old painted wooden houses are derelict or, in a few cases, used for radiation experiments. Local administration buildings have been put to use as hostels for shift workers, mostly male, who pass the evenings in the gym or playing table tennis, missing girls and normality.

Alex Pyzhovsky, a 21-year-old physics student from Kiev is here to work on research involving mice and low-dose radiation. On his videophone, he grins boyishly at pictures of grossly deformed animals and foetuses.

"I never want to see a mouse again when I finish here," he says firmly.

He wants to open a shop.

Chernobyl's beautiful old synagogue, acquired long before 1986 by the Soviet police, still stands, a poignant place of pilgrimage for visiting Jews from Canada and the US. It is said that Jews were massacred here in Chernobyl, many of them buried alive.

Further along, the 500-year-old Orthodox Church of St Ilya has been gloriously restored, in an astonishing burst of hope, turquoise and gold. A locally born priest makes the 160km trip from Kiev every Saturday to conduct services.

At the edge of the virtually deserted town, near the war memorial to those who fell recapturing the town from the Germans in 1944, stands another more recent concrete monolith, dedicated "To Those Who Saved the World".

It is a monument to the heroic "liquidators", the firefighters, miners and ordinary working men who died or risked their lives in the battle to tame the raging reactor. By the end, they numbered around 600,000. In a design unloved by some, it nonetheless tries to convey the fragility of the earth and the awesome destructiveness of nuclear power, and carries the names of fallen liquidators, including those who had died by 1996, followed by another 200 in 2001. A large, empty space has been left for the many more to come.

A few kilometres away in Rozsokha village, a "nuclear graveyard" stands as another kind of memorial to the liquidators. This is where some 10,000 fiercely radioactive vehicles, including helicopters, fire engines, armoured personnel carriers, oil tankers and buses, were neatly parked and abandoned after the battle. Now parts are being removed for "recycling", according to our guide.

Meanwhile, poisoned cargo ships and boats, used to carry sand and cement from Belarus during the battle, lie rotting at Chernobyl port, several miles from town on the Pripyat River. Their radiation levels remain too high to be considered for recycling.

They should be buried, but the challenge for Ukraine is finding new burial sites where groundwater will not be contaminated. Anyway, there are other priorities. Twenty years on, more than 500 (more than half) of the burial sites used hurriedly for radioactive waste have still to be found, still less analysed. God alone knows what is entering the groundwater already.

That night, we stay at the state-run Chernobyl Hotel in the town, a cream-coloured pre-fab imported from Finland 20 years ago. A radiation dosimeter inside the door checks us out and declares us clean. The hotel is basic but clean and warm, and the welcome hot food is said to be "safe" (ie, brought in from Kiev). The bread rolls are even wittily disguised as porcupines, complete with peppercorns for eyes. There is no alcohol on offer despite the widespread belief that vodka is good for combatting radiation.

Upstairs, we pass a black-banded picture of Rima Kiselitsa, a 49-year-old mother and a popular, well-respected Chernobyl guide. Underneath is a spray of flowers and the message "we will never forget you". Rima died suddenly two weeks ago from a brain haemorrhage.

Like so much else, her untimely death may have nothing or everything to do with Chernobyl. Her daughter and colleagues doubtless find little reassurance or consolation there.

Chernobyl Factfile

At 1.23am on April 26th, 1986, in nuclear reactor No 4 in the Chernobyl complex, 80 miles north of Kiev, a series of control-room errors and safety violations, allied to fundamental design flaws, triggered several catastrophic hydrogen explosions, which exposed the core, blew the 1,000-tonne cover off the top of the reactor and killed 31 people instantly. The 800 tonnes of graphite in the core burned for 10 days in a radiological inferno.

Some 70 per cent of the radiation fell on neighbouring Belarus, a country with no nuclear power plants. Contaminants, including plutonium isotopes with a half-life of 24,360 years, were blown across the globe, depositing cloud-borne radioactive material in the lakes of Japan and the hill farms of Wales and Ireland. It was the greatest man-made disaster - the equivalent of 500 Hiroshima bombs.

Twenty years on, the level of fallout in human suffering is still debated. The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency and World Health Organisation say that only 50 deaths can be attributed to the disaster, that 4,000 people at most may eventually die from it, and that most of the illnesses among the five million people contaminated are down to poverty and lifestyle.

However, new research commissioned by European parliamentary groups, Greenpeace International and medical foundations suggest that half a million people have already died, that infant mortality has increased by 20 to 30 per cent and that among the 600,000 who took part in the clean-up, the rate of cancer deaths was nearly three times higher than the norm."

© The Irish Times


[PART 2 OF 3]

THE IRISH TIMES, MON, APRIL 10, 2006

Neglected inheritors of a toxic legacy The extent of the genetic damage caused by radiation can be seen in the suffering of children throughout the region, writes Kathy Sheridan in Chernobyl, in the second of a three-part series >> FULL TEXT

"NEGLECTED INHERITORS OF A TOXIC LEGACY

Poisoned life: eight-month-old Vlad, a patient in the intensive care unit of Gomel Children's Regional Hospital

The extent of the genetic damage caused by radiation can be seen in the suffering of children throughout the region, writes Kathy Sheridan in Chernobyl, in the second of a three-part series

Vyacheslav Klimovich is the director of what Belarussians call a "children's mental asylum", a place that, to many volunteers working for Adi Roche's Chernobyl charity, resonates with both horror and triumph. The radical renovation work, teacher training and modern equipment funded by the Children of Chernobyl Project International (CCPI) are slowly turning Vesnovo into a bright, enlightened haven. But for The Irish Times, on a tight schedule, it's fair to admit that it is no more than a stop on the long road between Minsk and Chernobyl, and the interview with the director no more than a courtesy call.

Then a casual question elicits the information that the dignified Klimovich was once a physics teacher. He knows enough about what lies in the soil around highly contaminated Vetka, his wife's birthplace, and around Gomel, their subsequent home in southern Belarus, to fear it.

He has a son aged 13, a child with no particular disease, he says slowly, "but he hasn't good health either. He is very weak and gets tired very quickly. He runs temperatures for no reason. We try to give him clean food and vitamins . . ."

Klimovich is so fearful of radiation that the couple have decided not to have a second child.

According to many Belarussian doctors and ordinary families to whom we talk, his description of his son's health and reasons for having an only child could apply to nearly every family in the Gomel region.

Klimovich's case is not dramatic, and his son's unexplained lethargy and temperature spikes will not feature in any statistic. But it's one reason why an eastern European cry of rage greeted last September's Chernobyl Forum report from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). It stated that only 50 deaths could be directly attributed to the disaster, that
4,000 at most would eventually die from it and that the majority of illnesses among the estimated five million contaminated in the former Soviet Union are attributable to growing poverty and unhealthy lifestyles.

Dr Michael Repacholi, manager of the WHO Radiation Programme, is quoted in the summary: "The sum total of the Chernobyl Forum is a reassuring message."

Another series of reports, however, are on the way, according to the Guardian newspaper, which will tell a radically different story. These are also from leading scientists and doctors and take into account 50 published scientific studies in estimates from researchers commissioned by European parliamentary groups, Greenpeace International, and medical foundations in Britain, Germany, Ukraine, Scandinavia and elsewhere.

The forthcoming estimates will suggest that at least 30,000 people are expected to die of cancers linked directly to severe radiation exposure in 1986 and that up to 500,000 may have already died in Ukraine alone. The deputy head of Ukraine's National Commission for Radiation Protection says: "We have found that infant mortality increased 20 to 30 per cent because of chronic exposure after the accident. All this information has been ignored by the IAEA and WHO. We sent it to them in March last year and again in June. They've not said why they haven't accepted it."

The IAEA report has attracted much criticism for its tendency to concentrate on numbers of deaths while virtually ignoring the incidence of morbidity, such as chronic illness and the ongoing suffering of those who have managed to survive life-threatening disease. For example, the report states that nine children have died from thyroid cancer and that 4,000 have been found to be affected, but notes that the survival rate is around 99 per cent. The livid "Belarus necklace", the scar which marks such victims for life, and their lifelong dependence on medication, rates no mention.

AE Okeanov, head of the cancer registry in Belarus for many years and now working at the Clinical Institute of Radiation Medicine and Endocrinology Research in Minsk, published work in the Swiss Medical Weekly in 2004, showing that cancerous "affections" (women undergoing mastectomies, for example) had increased by about 52 per cent in the Gomel region. The rate for the whole of Belarus was up by 40 per cent. His study also showed that the peak incidence rates of breast cancer had shifted to younger women between 45 and 49 years of age.

IN THE RIVNE region of Ukraine, 310 miles west of Chernobyl, doctors are also reporting an unusual rate of cancers and mutations.

"In the 30 hospitals of our region we find that up to 30 per cent of people who were in highly radiated areas have physical disorders, including heart and blood diseases, cancers and respiratory diseases," says Alexander Vewremchuk, of the Special Hospital for the Radiological Protection of the Population in Vilne. "Nearly one in three of all the newborn babies have deformities, mostly internal."

In Belarus, Dr Vyacheslav Izhakovsky, the chief doctor at the Gomel Regional Children's Hospital, which treats 12,000 children a year, says that, factoring in the plummeting birthrate, the hospital has seen the rate of genetic damage in newborns increase by 16 times since 1985.

"We're at a time when women who were aged between one and three in 1986 are giving birth . . . No more than 16 to 17 per cent of all newborn babies are completely healthy," he says. "The cause behind 60 per cent of these is the mother's sickness during pregnancy. Twenty years after Chernobyl, you have to take into consideration radiological problems. I and many doctors believe that 50 per cent of illness is rooted in ecological problems. But we can't prove it because we have no time to do research. I can tell you though, that the problems are only starting . . ."

Dr Irina Kolmanovich, the paediatrician who runs the newborns' intensive care unit, points to several babies with genetic problems. They include eight- month-old Vlad, who was born with damage to his muscle and nervous system. He can still move his legs and hands but no one is prepared to give a prognosis. Vlad lies opposite three-year-old Masha, who was born with a similar condition and mobility, but has been deteriorating steadily during her short life.

Vlad's mother is in the bracket of girls who were aged between one and three in 1986.

"It's all genetic," says Dr Kolmanovich, "You can read it when the damage is ecological."

In Gomel, in particular, people like Vyacheslav Klimovich drew their own conclusions by not risking a second child. Quite apart from a "demographic doomsday" being discussed by some researchers, the result can be unspeakably tragic. Lena Pogorelova, a maths teacher in Gomel, took the "risk" of having a child five years ago. She had always worried about what is called the "Chernobyl effect" and had heard about the low number of healthy newborns. She gave birth to Diana, now aged five, who seemed normal but slowly manifested enough symptoms to fill three handwritten pages, the main ones of which are cerebral palsy, a heart defect, eye problems and anaemia.

Diana is now confined to a special chair, is subject to terrifying convulsions and seizures, and is almost impossible to calm at any time. The only saviours for Pogorelova are her mother-in-law, who acts as carer while Pogorelova goes to work, and the hospice nurses of the CCPI.

Pogorelova's husband, a plasterer, finds work where he can, in a region where jobs are scarce, so Pogorelova's income is vital. But she can hardly find a minute even to prepare her lessons.

Diana remains the Pogorelovas' only child. Her mother sees no hope, no future.

She will not attribute Diana's condition to Chernobyl. She blames herself for being an "old" mother (35 when Diana was born). But she does believe that there is a sickness in the population. Many of her female teaching colleagues have unexplained spinal problems, for example. Sheobserves that children are much "weaker" now than before, that they get tired far more easily and that even psychologically there are changes.

"Radiation doesn't only affect the liver," she says."It affects different systems in the body and changes them, and we never know where it's going to strike."

THE OTHER CATEGORY which rails against the IAEA's Chernobyl Forum report is the "liquidators", the 600,000 heroes of the Soviet Union who battled the radioactive inferno in 1986, working in radioactive hot spots, clearing up the debris around the plant, disposing of vehicles, suppressing dust, demolishing villages and controlling the populations.

The forum summary asserts that "as of mid-2005, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster, almost all being highly exposed rescue workers, many who died within months of the accident but others who died as late as 2004".

Contrast this with what the deputy head of the National Commission for Radiation Protection in Ukraine told the Guardian: "[ Studies show] that
34,449 people who took part in the clean-up of Chernobyl have died in the years since the catastrophe. The deaths of these people from cancers was nearly three times as high as in the rest of the population."

Few dismiss out of the hand the forum's assertion that some illnesses in the population are attributable to growing poverty and unhealthy lifestyles or that under-reporting in previous years might be a factor in percentage increases.

"Of course there is some truth in this," says Dr Izhakovsky of Gomel Regional Children's Hospital. "We accept there has been a certain percentage of under-reporting but believe it is minor. And of course we have social problems now. But there is no huge gap between living conditions then and now, other than a small percentage.

"The disaster was a difficult situation for any republic, although Belarus was left facing all the problems and hadn't enough money. You can say it's just a socio-economic problem, but on the other hand we didn't have the money to deal with it. Go to Vetka and see what people are eating there, where radiation is three times higher than it should be. Traditionally, Belarussians go to the woods for food, and that food is not being checked for radiation. Fifty per cent of all the effects are environmental - you cannot get away from that."

"WHERE DID THE IAEA do its research?" he adds angrily, pointing out that no one consulted him, although he has been a doctor here since 1982. "Why don't they do some real research work?"

He castigates those responsible for keeping the people in ignorance in 1986, for not evacuating people quickly enough, for failing to give out iodine. The politicians thought they were gods, he says, but they couldn't "influence the chemical processes". And as for the academics who helped to hide information at the time and are now handing it over when it's too late: "Where were you back then?"

© The Irish Times


[PART 3 OF 3]

THE IRISH TIMES, TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 2006

"IS IT GOING TO HAPPEN AGAIN?

Staring into a void: graffiti on a rooftop in the empty city of Pripyat, Ukraine, evacuated permanently after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien

With Belarus planning a new nuclear plant just 25 miles from the zone contaminated by Chernobyl, Kathy Sheridan, in the last of a three-part series, looks at the 'nuclear renaissance' and, below, hears the views of a Belarussian scientist who refused to be silenced

Chernobyl is over. That is basically the message of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Chernobyl Forum, the British nuclear industry and the Belarussian government. People died, but not many; the industry made mistakes, but it's all part of the "historical legacy" which the industry has bravely put behind it - so the message goes.

And the whole affair has given the Belarussian government such insights into nuclear power that it plans to build its own plant just 25 miles from the contaminated zone, a plan which has attracted surprisingly little comment from western democracies. Belarus, after all, is "the last dictatorship in Europe", according to Condoleezza Rice, a place where independent voices have systematically been silenced.

If Iran is suspect, why not Belarus? Belarus is simply tapping into what is being called a "nuclear renaissance", an apt term given that it is being led by France, a country with 59 reactors rolling out nearly 80 per cent of its electricity. Its slick marketing and expertise has been given weight by prominent environmentalists such as Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, and James Lovelock, who have switched sides in the belief that nuclear plants could help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions while satisfying voracious energy demands.


Finland is building the first new reactor in western Europe since 1991. Italy and the Netherlands are talking about the option. With memories fading of the near-catastrophic partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania 27 years ago, the Bush administration has also felt able to make a pitch for nuclear energy.

Across the world, some 25 reactors are under construction according to Associated Press, adding to the network of 440 commercial nuclear power plants, spread out over 31 countries, that supply 16 per cent of the world's total electricity.

By contrast, Sweden and Germany are choosing to shut down their nuclear options. But just across the Irish Sea, the handsome €82 billion to be forked out by the British taxpayer, merely to write off the British nuclear industry's liabilities, has failed to dampen official ardour for nuclear power. With the last of Britain's nuclear power stations due for closure in 2035, Tony Blair has clearly signalled his wish to build a new generation of them.

In a scathing piece in this newspaper in February, the Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, recalled that Sellafield (aka Windscale) was the site of the world's first significant nuclear accident. The 1957 fire "marked an early example of the nuclear industry's reluctance to make information available to the public and to deal with issues in an open and transparent manner".

Between 1950 and 1976, there were 177 incidents grave enough to warrant investigation. In 1980, the UK safety regulator determined that safety at the site had deteriorated to a level which "should not have been allowed to develop, nor should it be permitted to occur again". In 1999, there was the notorious falsification of data at Sellafield's MOX Demonstration Facility.

Last year, at the Thorp plant, there was a leak of 83,000 litres of highly radioactive liquid from a tank into a concrete containment cell. A report on the incident referred to a failure by staff to act appropriately; a culture of complacency; failure to act on information; a prioritising of production over planned inspections; and ambiguous operating instructions.

It is worth remembering that the Soviet authorities only admitted to the Chernobyl disaster after the radiation was detected in Sweden.

The industry has still to produce a credible, environmentally sustainable solution to the problem of radioactive waste, which must be nursed for thousands of years.

MEANWHILE, THERE ARE many who question the current benign thinking on the effects of low-level radiation. Michael Meacher, the British MP who set up the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters, has pointed out that such thinking is based on "the known effects of external bomb-blast radiation [ie, Hiroshima], not on the less well- studied effects of swallowing radionuclides which then discharge radioactivity into key body organs".

As well as its own home-grown problems, Britain is still coping with the after-shock of Chernobyl. Emergency orders imposed in 1986 still apply to 375 farms in the UK, 355 of them in Wales. The British Department of Health has admitted that more than 200,000 sheep graze on land still poisoned by the fallout. No sheep can be moved out of these areas without a special licence. Those showing higher than permitted levels of radioactive caesium are marked with a special indelible dye and must spend months grazing on uncontaminated grass before they are declared fit for market.

David Ellwood, a Cumbrian farmer, told Britain's Independent that before taking sheep to auction, they take them off the fells and put them in the fields for a couple of weeks, "so readings are usually low. But the odd one gets a high reading if it comes straight in off the fell, and has to be slaughtered".

In the Republic, a spokesman for the Radiological Protection Institute (RPII) says that no farms are now or were ever restricted here, because our "management practices" are different from those in the UK. Here, sheep from the contaminated uplands are brought down to the lowlands for grazing before being sold and "as caesium-137 has a biological half-life of 10 days, the sheep excreted all this before going to the mart". In England, the spokesman says, "all sheep are sold straight from the uplands".

He also points out that sheep here are monitored in the marts rather than on the farms, so there is no need to restrict the farms. Now, Department of Agriculture vets use in vivo monitors on one sheep in every 10 going to marts.

There have been cases where flocks have failed the test and been returned to the lowlands "for maybe 10 days, but it would be a long time ago since that happened," he adds.

It's the RPII's view that the British "made a mistake of bringing in the restrictions". Farmers such as David Ellwood in Cumbria were told the emergency order could last about three weeks, but the agriculture officials were only guessing. According to the RPII, the UK is now "artificially stuck" with restriction orders and is unable to release the farms.

DATA FROM THE institute show that the two biggest contaminants in Irish foodstuffs in 1986 were iodine-131 and C137. While virtually all of the iodine had disappeared by the end of May that year, the C137 lingered much longer. During the first two weeks of May, the mean C137 concentration in milk was 120 becquerels per litre; it was September before this had declined to two becquerels per litre. According to the RPII, Ireland, "in line with most other European countries, adopted an intervention level for foodstuffs of 1,000 becquerels per kilogram as the level of contamination at which control measures would be considered. During the six months following the accident, this was only exceeded in one sample and so it was considered unnecessary to restrict the sale or consumption of foodstuffs produced within Ireland".

The institute estimates that Chernobyl resulted in "an approximate 3 per cent increase in radiation exposure to the average Irish person" in the following 12 months. It also estimates that in the 70 years following 1986, "approximately 18 fatal cancers are likely to occur in Ireland as a result of the accident. These cancer deaths will, however, be indistinguishable among the 450,000 cancers caused by other agents in the same period".


'TO WANT MORE NUCLEAR POWER RATHER THAN LESS IS INSANE' Kathy Sheridan

In a tiny apartment in a grim Minsk tower block, a scientist garlanded with honours, a member of five academies of science, a prodigy once given his own university to run at the age of 34, places another jar of hamster foetuses on a cheap coffee table.

He holds the jar up to the light, where the skeletal structures are clearly visible through the flesh. He points out those with no eyes, or no brain, or under-developed brains, or no skull-bones. Dozens, strangely, have a cleft lip and palate. There are 200 in all, none of which appear to be normal.

The foetuses' mothers, he explains, had been injected with proportionate, comparatively "quite low" doses of caesium-137 (C137), a radioactive element which featured in vast amounts in the Chernobyl fallout. C137 has a nuclear half-life (the time it takes for half of it to radioactively decay away) of 30.07 years. Hamsters were chosen, he says, because they have a genetic print similar to humans and "because they're easier to feed, not as smelly as mice and you can keep them on the balcony". His wife, Galina, smiles fondly and murmurs wryly, "and he has lots more of them".

This, then, is what remains of Prof Yuri Bandazhevsky's professional and personal world. Within Belarus, colleagues who once lionised him now shun him. He is unemployable but has no permission to leave. In 2001, he was arrested at his medical institute in Gomel and jailed for eight years with hard labour, on trumped-up bribery charges. Amnesty International adopted him as a prisoner of conscience, but by the time he was released, in 2004, his health had been severely affected. His real crime was to go public on the effects of C137, after noting an alarming increase in heart and birth defects among children after Chernobyl.

The medical university he founded in Gomel in 1990 was in the heart of the most contaminated area and was therefore a natural laboratory for research into the effects of radiation.

"We proved that C137 is very dangerous - and most dangerous as an energetic killer of the body," he says. "The problem with C137 is you have no symptoms. So you just get some infection and you die and everyone will say you died from an infection. But, in fact, the immune system has been so weakened that you cannot fight it."

His thesis is that even low-level radiation is dangerous and that up to 24 years before Chernobyl, large parts of the world, including Europe, were already being contaminated with fallout from nuclear tests by China, the US, the Soviet Union and France. Russia, he adds, "was a nuclear dump". Pre-Chernobyl radiation maps, provided by French colleagues, bear this out. Chernobyl simply heaped on the agony and distributed it more widely.

The Chernobyl Forum report - which ascribed much of the population's morbidity to poverty, lifestyle diseases and mental health problems rather than radiation - is "an insult", he says.

"Can you imagine how the Belarussian people who live in those areas must feel, reading that? . . . Calling them drunkards, saying they don't want to work, that they're only waiting around for handouts. They are hard-working people. I'm not sure that any of those people who signed that report spent enough time trying to understand what is going on in that area. But I was there. My family was there. I saw the people, I worked with the people. I know the physical and psychological problems. I saw people not only dying from thyroid cancer, I saw other young people . . . So many of the doctors who worked on that research are dead."

He goes to a bookcase, laden with medals, and fishes out a small hardback book called Clinical and Experimental Aspects of the Effect of Incorporated Radionuclides Upon the Organism, by Yuri Bandazhevsky et al, dated Gomel 1995. The foreword was written by the Belarussian minister for health.

Another foreword, by AS Shaginyan, vice-president of the International Academy of Engineering and the Belarussian Academy of Engineering, takes a swipe at the scientists who skirted the issues in the early days and are now writing from their ivory towers.

"Regretfully," he writes, "the problems of the disaster have been and still remain the subject of political commercialism and career promotion. Even the belated manuscript by the Academician LA Ilyin, The Realities and Myths of Chernobyl, resembles an essay created in a cosy and quiet Moscow library room and written for self-exemption and self-redemption rather than to achieve a profound scientific result . . . The present manuscript is the first kernel of the objective scientific information on the radionuclides effect upon the organism."

Bandazhevsky's wife, Galina, also a scientist, is among the 15 contributors to the five-year study. But she too has paid a high personal price for her work, having had both her thyroid and her womb removed, due to cancers her husband attributes to the disaster.

Bandazhevsky looks at the growing nuclear bandwagon with horror.

"To want more nuclear power rather than less is insane," he says. "I wish I could show those people what I see in mortuaries here and the horror of what my experiments show."

Series concluded.


IRISH EXAMINER, MONDAY, 10.04.2006

10/04/06 Chernobyl after-effects worse than admitted

By Ann Cahill, Europe Correspondent THE effects of Chernobyl were more far-reaching and deadly on western Europe, including Ireland, than had been previously admitted, a new report reveals.

Cancer deaths, other illnesses and the continuing effect on the food chain have been underestimated or ignored, says a study that urges more research.

It shows that almost half of Western Europe was contaminated following the accident in the nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986. This included 68% of the surface area of Ireland and 34% of Britain.

Cancer deaths in Ireland attributable to Chernobyl vary - from 370 in an OECD report looking at the first year after the accident to 1,800 according to a US government study considering the effects over 50 years.

The report suggests Ireland is particularly vulnerable because of its acid soil that holds onto and disperses dangerous radiation into the food chain, through sheep and goats especially.

About two-thirds of the collective dose of nuclear radiation was distributed to populations outside Belarus, Ukraine and Russia - more than ten times greater than official estimates.

This deadly fallout is causing between 30,000 and 60,000 cancer deaths, together with increases in eye cataracts and heart disease.

The cancer figures are up to 15 times greater than those published last year by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and World Health Organisation.

The Other Report on Chernobyl (TORCH) was commissioned by the European Greens and prepared by two British scientists, Ian Fairlie PhD and David Sumner DPhil.

They drew on existing findings by reputable bodies including the European Commission, the US Department of the Environment, and the British National Radiological Protection Board.

They are highly critical of the IAEA, saying it was not neutral and underestimated the effects of the accident. They point out that while the IAEA report suggested 9,000 cancer deaths, its press release put it at just 4,000.

They acknowledge it contained a great deal of important information and comprehensively examined the effects in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.

However, it was silent on the effects outside these countries where most of the fallout was deposited.

The IAEA quoted only that 2.3% of Europe’s surface area was contaminated by high levels of radiation and ignored that over 40% was contaminated with lower but significant levels.

There are contradictory reports on increases of thyroid cancer in the north of England and also in France. The scientists call for further work to establish the extent of thyroid cancer in all European countries."

--------

New Chernobyl Study Challenges IAEA Report on Chernobyl Consequences: Finds Death Toll Likely to be 30-60,000 http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/0411-02.htm



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Chernobyl

Bath Chronicle 10 April 2006

If you use your mobile that doesn't mean you can't campaign for the safe siting of masts.

If you care about your health and quality of life and/or if you have children, this is why you should be concerned about the proposed siting of three 3G masts by O2 in Kingsmead.

Mast Sanity ( http://www.mastsanity.org ), which campaigns for safer siting of masts, says this about 3G: "3G is the new internet and video phones launched in this country in March. There has been no specific research on either the new phones or the new masts. The only research that has been done is alarming. In 2003, Dutch government research showed that 3G base stations (masts) could cause a number of negative symptoms in people close by them.

"Symptoms included nauseousness, headaches and dizziness. What makes this report even more worrying is the fact that the study exposed people to radiation 30 times less powerful that some 3G masts, plus the study limited exposure to several minutes, not 24 hours of every single day."

Mast sanity is not worrying for nothing. Nationally, there are several problem areas known around 3G masts. Contrary to popular belief, the radiation from masts travels quite a distance and the worst sufferers within clusters of ill-health (including cancer) are generally found 100-300 metres away from installations.

Regardless of what you maybe told, masts such as these are being refused across the country.

However B &NES can only refuse if lots of local people object personally.

Inevitably, the siting of masts in highly residential areas is decided by a very small group of people - the planning services department.

The situation with local government only makes matters worse. For example, although the Bear Flat mast protesters won their case with B &NES - not to have a mast - this decision was appealed against by O2, and consequently Wendy Burden, planning inspector for the south west based in Bristol at John Prescott's office, agreed with O2 that it could indeed site the mast despite B &NES support of the Bear Flat group.

The Bear Flat group is still in the process of fighting on.

Don Foster has been actively campaigning for a 19-point change in planning laws to better regulate the 'wild west' mobile operators. So far, the Blair Government has rejected this. There are some very pro-active individuals and individual groups fighting masts in their areas, but what Bath and the people of Bath would benefit from is a group - a forum of long-term campaigners and concerned supporters - to meet several times a year. This would allow individuals to come to put strategies and therefore be more efficient and effective in opposing.

More and more 3G masts are being placed in residential areas - it is only a matter of time before your area receives a letter from O2/Vodafone etc wanting to put up a mast.

The evidence for long-term health risks is becoming too great to ignore.

If you are concerned and live or work around Kingsmead/Green Park/New King Street, in the first instance object strongly and vocally to B &NES planning services department about this mast.

Secondly, please get in touch with me, as I am wanting residents to attend a public meeting.

If you are already campaigning in your area and can offer practical advice and/or are interested in a long-term strategy group, please get in touch about making this happen!

Lastly, if you read this and are concerned about a mast near you - get organised (you also face property devaluation, for which O2 will not compensate! People move to get away from masts, not to them.)

You could be the difference between a mast going up or not - every single voice really does count. Mobile operators play on people saying nothing.

LARA VARGA
http://www.sitefinder.radio.gov.uk

A CONVERSATION WITH CLIMATE JOURNALIST ELIZABETH KOLBERT

By David Roberts
Grist Magazine
April 10, 2006

http://www.grist.org/cgi-bin/printthis.pl

Over the past year, a perfect storm of scientific studies, dire weather events, and media coverage lifted global warming onto the mainstream national agenda. No writing had more impact than a series of closely observed pieces in The New Yorker by journalist Elizabeth Kolbert, which have now been collected and expanded into a book: Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. (Read a review of the book: http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2006/03/09/hayes/index.html )

While most writing on climate change has relied on dry data and statistics, Kolbert's is vivid, technicolor reportage. She went on expeditions with some of the world's top climate scientists to Greenland, Iceland, and Alaska to witness the ongoing devastation firsthand. And she ventured to Washington, D.C. -- one place that's not changing quickly.

Though her writing is never hectoring or overtly ideological, what she found left her deeply alarmed. The book ends with these chilling words: "It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing."

I met with Kolbert just before she gave a presentation on climate change to several hundred people at Seattle's Town Hall. She professed an aversion to public speaking, and with her wiry, nervous energy, she did seem more suited to on-the-ground reporting. But as we talked, it was easy to see the passion and concern that has pushed this New York City journalist into the unlikely role of global-warming evangelist.


QUESTION: Tell me about your experiences with the scientific community. Why has the one group of people that's really taken climate change to heart not been able to break through the public's apathy?

ANSWER: The norms of science are such that they work against communicating alarm to the public. If you read [scientific] papers on global warming, or generally just talk to these guys, they will tell you, for instance, that discharge of ice into the Atlantic has doubled; but they will never say what the implications of this are -- why this is, you know, horrifyingly dangerous. Scientists speak a certain language, they tend to speak mainly to each other, and the norms are such that you're never supposed to go beyond the data. Their attitude is that the data speaks for itself.

Unfortunately, most people don't find those data very compelling. They don't know what the implications are. So you have one community speaking to itself and getting increasingly alarmed, and the rest of the world saying, well, the scientists haven't really figured it out yet.

And I would add that the norms of journalism also work against communicating this. So when you add those two together, you're in deep doo-doo.

QUESTION: Complaints about the "he-said, she-said" school of climate journalism are common. As someone who's seen the inside of The New York Times and The New Yorker, can you explain where it comes from? Surely reporters hear this constant litany of complaints about it. What enforces it?

ANSWER: On one hand there is a very, very clever campaign to turn this into a political issue, as opposed to a purely scientific issue. And I suppose there were once enough halfway credible people making the case against warming that journalists felt they had to go to them.

My hope is that you'll see that less and less. I think the message is getting out there that this is not a two-sided issue. Naomi Oreskes did a paper looking at the scientific literature http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2004/12/3/121810/470 , and there just is no debate. I hope that phenomenon will taper off, but it hasn't ended. I read the papers like everyone else, and I still see quotes from these thoroughly discredited people, and I honestly don't understand it myself at this point.

QUESTION: Why do you think there's this immense disconnect between the information available and the level of public outrage?

ANSWER: I grappled with that question, and I still do. Eventually I came to think there are three major reasons.

One is catastrophe overload. The end of the world has been going to come several times, and we're all still here. So it's: "Wake me up when the real end of the world is coming."

Then there's: "If this were really as bad as you say, I would feel it by now. There'd be water lapping at my first-floor windows." The problem is that the climate operates on a very long time lag, so if you wait until there's water lapping at your first-floor windows, you can be sure there's going to be water lapping at your second-floor windows. I don't think the message has gotten out: changes 30 or 40 years from now are already inevitable. There is warming in the pipeline already.

And then there is this question of what to do. People don't like to confront problems they don't have a clear answer to. And the answers here -- to the extent there are answers -- are very, very complicated. They're very hard. We know what causes people to be overweight, and we can't even stop that! And with global warming it's not as simple as "eat less, lose weight." It's "do a million things." As the mayor of Burlington, Vt., said to me, there's not one thing we have to do; there are hundreds and hundreds of things we have to do. And we have to do them on a global scale.

So that's pretty daunting to people. It's very much easier to pretend the problem doesn't exist.

QUESTION: Do you think a Kerry/Edwards administration would have done substantially different things?

ANSWER: The frightening thing is that we're in such a bad situation now, so many people in Congress have dug in their heels, I don't think anyone could say a Kerry/Edwards victory would have radically altered our path.

On the contrary, some people take a sort of "Nixon goes to China" attitude: if there's one person who could do something about this, it's George W. Bush.

QUESTION: What did you think of the energy section of the State of the Union speech -- the "oil addiction" phrase? Not exactly "Nixon goes to China," but perhaps "Nixon acknowledges China's existence."

ANSWER: "Nixon goes to Chinatown."

QUESTION: [Laughs.]

ANSWER: I thought they were nothing. It's nice to say we're addicted to foreign oil -- and we are -- but oil's only part of the problem. We're addicted to coal, too.

It's one thing to point out the problem, but it's a totally different one to find a solution. People were looking for it; he could have easily done it. He could have said, "We need to conserve, and we need to find new carbon-free sources of energy, and here's 20 or 30 billion dollars to start doing it." He didn't do that. Since he didn't put any money behind it, I don't think anyone can take it terribly seriously. That's how Washington works: No money, no commitment.

QUESTION: Do you think hard carbon-emission limits are inevitable? Are they the only real sign we're taking it seriously?

ANSWER: I do think they're inevitable. George Bush, in his heart of hearts, probably thinks they're inevitable. Christie Whitman told me they're inevitable. Everybody knows they're inevitable. The only question is how much damage we do between now and then. Unfortunately, the answer could be a tremendous amount.

Is that the only sign of commitment? Yes. Reducing "greenhouse-gas intensity," which is what we're doing now ... you know, the atmosphere doesn't care about greenhouse-gas intensity. It only cares about aggregate emissions.

There's some feeling on the right that the left is using global warming to achieve ulterior ends: slowing economic progress, redistributing wealth, etc.

You do find people who say the whole thing is a big lefty plot to destroy our way of life. I don't know how you respond to that.

It's very striking: When I went to Europe, I talked to the Dutch minister for the environment. In this country he would have been considered far left. He was a member of the Center Right party. His views were: obviously the industrialized world is going to have to cut its carbon emissions way, way down. The developing world is going to be using a lot more carbon, and how could we say they can't? After all, our own wealth is based on that.

You thought you were talking to a member of Greenpeace, but you were talking to a member of the Center Right ruling party in the Netherlands.

The politics are just so different over there. We have a level of political discourse here that's considered by a lot of the world to be just ... wacky.

QUESTION: Hard to argue with that. Do you think international pressure is having any effect on this government? Or that it might be having the opposite of the intended effect?

ANSWER: I think it's having no effect. The one moment you thought they might have to throw a little bone was the G8 last year, where Tony Blair, who had risked so much for this crew, was asking them to do something. And they did nothing.

On the other hand, I think the inverse is true as well: The fact that the U.S. has been so absurd on this issue -- so criminally negligent -- has made the Europeans ... there are a lot of people who say if George Bush hadn't withdrawn from Kyoto, Kyoto never would have been ratified. The Europeans were content to shuffle along indefinitely, but when he actually pulled the plug and said, "We're not participating," they stepped up to the plate and said, "We're going to do it." So in a weird sort of way his recalcitrance has unified them, and now they're committed to that path.

QUESTION: On the flip side, do you think the bottom-up pressure that seems to be building is going to do the trick?

ANSWER: I do think it's having an effect. There are some bills supposed to surface in Congress, and there's a sense that some Republicans who had opposed them might sign on to them. They're very watered-down things, but there's some movement. I think it's a combination of having taken 10 or 15 minutes to actually look at the science, and hearing from constituents.

Some of the religious groups are in there now; some of the business groups are in there now -- really, business is ahead of the Congress at this point. People these guys trust, and rely on, and who have always been supportive, are telling them we've got to do something. There might be something percolating up.

QUESTION: What's your assessment of the state of the climate-contrarian industry?

ANSWER: It's in deep, deep trouble. Even companies like Exxon, who had been big contributors, don't want to be seen anymore financing these things. They're all running ads about reducing their carbon emissions. They don't want the money trail to be traced to some of these wackos anymore.

QUESTION: So you think overt, socially acceptable climate denial is dead?

ANSWER: It's been reduced to guys you can count on one hand.

QUESTION: One of your recent New Yorker pieces was about the evolution of contrarian arguments http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060320ta_talk_kolbert . What's the 2006 model?

ANSWER: If you read the Wall Street Journal editorial page, you know where things are headed.

The new argument is: yes, there's more CO2 in the atmosphere, maybe it's global warming maybe it's not, but it really doesn't matter, because all these problems -- drought, flooding, hunger, starvation -- are the same old problems of poverty and natural disaster. We should just address those directly; we shouldn't spend all this money trying to reduce carbon emissions, because we could just funnel the money directly to the latest flood victims.

That argument sounds good in the very, very short term perhaps, but [global warming] doesn't stop. You're going to have a perpetually changing climate. It's actually kind of surprising to me, given the close nexus between this administration and the defense community: this has the potential to be so geopolitically destabilizing, you would think some of those guys would latch onto it as the next source of real turmoil in the world.


QUESTION: Climate change is such a distant, abstract issue, so slow-moving, with such a time lag, it's hard even for people who have an intellectual grasp of it to feel it viscerally. Has it gotten to your gut yet?

ANSWER: It has. It takes over your life, and it's not a happy development.

QUESTION: You have kids, right?

ANSWER: I have kids. And I have a hard time imagining their futures. That is very painful.

But even for me, do I imagine absolute disaster for the world during the course of their lifetimes? I'm not sure I do. I hold out hope we will avert that.

It's a heavy number as a parent. And it's a heavy number for kids. Kids are increasingly aware of it; my kids certainly are. It hangs over them. Of course, when I was growing up the threat of nuclear war hung over us. I suppose it's been a while since kids have grown up in a carefree world.

There's a dilemma of sorts: scientists feel uncomfortable with advocacy, journalists feel uncomfortable with advocacy, and advocates are ignored. Environmental groups have been marginalized, stereotyped as Chicken Littles.

We are absolutely crying out for political leadership.

But look at John McCain, somebody who has been pretty upfront on this issue. You can't say he's really been listened to. Arnold Schwarzenegger is out there sounding the alarm.

So what do we need? I really don't know. We need someone in a position of national leadership, [Sen.] James Inhofe [R-Okla.] or somebody, to stand up and say, "I have seen the light, I am convinced we need to do something." As I say, George Bush could have been that person.

QUESTION: One often hears -- at least inside environmentalism -- that things won't change on global warming until there is a something like a spiritual change, recapturing the values of mutual care and so on. I can't decide whether that's more or less depressing than the lack of a technical solution.

ANSWER: [Laughs.] I completely agree.

One guy in the book who I admire, he's very smart and sober-minded -- Dave Hawkins at NRDC -- gets up every day and thinks he's going to convince the Chinese and the Americans not to emit CO2. And you have to admire that. Is he kidding himself? I don't know. But thank God someone is doing that.

©2006. Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved.


Informant: NHNE

http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1767035/
http://tinyurl.com/pd9jq

Stichwort "Arme Staatsanwaltschaft Konstanz"
(siehe dazu unter Google)

Nachdem jemand in dem Internetforum http://f27.parsimony.net/forum67168/messages/13696.htm eine Diskussion mit mir angefangen hat, wollte ich heute dem Teilnehmer TR (Student/in?) antworten (siehe ganz unten), aber leider ging das nicht, mein Beitrag verschwand ganz einfach, und das bei zwei Versuchen hintereinander.

Werde ich jetzt aus der Diskussion ausgesperrt?

Kann vielleicht jemand mal versuchen, meine Antwort an TR auf dem Forum von "parsimony.net" unterzubringen?

Vielen Dank und herzlichen Gruß

Angelika Schrodt


Und hier mein verschwundener Text (aller guten Dinge sind drei...)

Liebe(r) TR,

Schauen Sie mal unter http://www.etzs.de, Rubrik Strafanzeige [ http://www.etzs.de/go/index.php?25_Strafverfahren?1?0 ]. Der beherzte Staatsanwalt hat ein Skalarwellen-Experimentiergerät der Firma INDEL GmbH kurzerhand zum Medizinprodukt umdefiniert, was notwendigerweise eine biologische Wirksamkeit von Skalarwellen voraussetzt. Technisch handelt es sich um einen Nachbei von Teslas Sender in Colorado Spring, nur mit viel viel kleinerer Leistung. Das Experimentiergerät arbeitet mit einer Leistung von 50mW (2V), also mit einer 50ig fach geringeren Leistung als ein Handy. Das Antennenrauschen im Nahfeld einer Antenne ist in jedem Lehrbuch der Hochfrequenztechnik erklärt.

Mit freundlichem Gruß

Angelika Schrodt

--------

Sehr geehrte Frau Dr. Schrodt,

Sie schreiben in http://www.iddd.de/umtsno/recht.htm#pu2 u. a.: "Die biologische Wirksamkeit der Skalarwellenstrahlen hatten Sie ja bereits juristisch anerkannt."

Bitte teilen Sie uns mit, wo und auf welche Weise diese Anerkennung stattgefunden haben soll.

Außerdem bitte ich Sie, den in der HF-Technik bekannten Begriff des Antennenrauschens zu erläutern und Ihre Erklärung in oben gennannter Quelle zu detailieren. Eine gute Quelle stellt z. B. [ http://www.lrt.mw.tu-muenchen.de/download/veranstaltungen/veranstaltungen_8/handouts/RT2_09_Data__Com_UW.pdf ] dar.


Vielen Dank

TR

Apr 10 2006

Paul Maunder, South Wales Echo


A MOBILE phone giant's plan to build a 38ft mast just yards away from Wales' biggest school has sparked a protest among local residents.

Residents have begun collecting a petition in a bid to stop T-Mobile building a mast next to Tesco Extra in Manor Way, Whitchurch, Cardiff, which also borders Rhiwbina.

The site lies just yards away from Whitchurch High (Lower) School's playing fields, on the opposite side of Manor Way.

Retired physiotherapist Maureen Hedley-Clarke, who lives with husband Peter, 72, in Manor Way, a few doors away from the planned mast, said: "I'm absolutely appalled.

"I'm not only concerned about the risks to my health but to the hundreds of children who pass by here every day.

"There are a lot of unknown cancers around and we're not aware of how young people are getting these cancers.

"There has not been enough long term study into the risks that these masts pose.

"It will also be a terrible eyesore."

Elias Carou, 64, from Lon-y-Parc, Rhiwbina, said: "My two granddaughters will attend Whitchurch High in the future, and I'm worried about the health risks of this mast.

"It can only be 50 yards or so away from the playing fields."

Matthew Dawes, 23, of Heol-y-Nant, Rhiwbina, said: "The mast will not only be an eyesore but also a health risk near to one of the biggest schools in Britain.

"We've already got three masts in this area, and no one has been having problems with their reception."

Coun Jayne Cowan, local ward member for Rhiwbina, said: "Manor Way is one of the busiest roads in Cardiff and T-Mobile want to stick this monstrosity there.

"We don't think any more masts should be put around here because of the potential health risks, and this particular mast will be put up exceptionally close to the school.

"We believe phone companies like T-Mobile should be sharing existing masts as much as possible."

A T-Mobile spokeswoman said: "We appreciate that residents do have health and safety concerns but we do adhere to the strict guidelines of the World Health Organisation.

Omega read "Base Stations, operating within strict national and international Guidelines, do not present a Health Risk?" under: http://omega.twoday.net/stories/771911/

"We are satisfied that there are no health risks to local residents or children.

Omega this is not true. See under:
http://omega.twoday.net/topics/Wissenschaft+zu+Mobilfunk/
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Cancer+Cluster
http://www.buergerwelle.de/body_science.html

"Wherever possible we do try to mast share.

"However, we also need to advance and improve the current T-Mobile network."

Cardiff council confirmed it has not yet received a planning application from T-Mobile.

Members of the public will have the chance to have their say on the mast at a meeting at the Mason's Arms Public House in Tyn-y-Parc Road, Rhiwbina, between 7.30pm and 9pm tomorrow.

© owned by or licensed to Trinity Mirror Plc 2006

http://tinyurl.com/ppq79

"Exzellente Regierungskontakte": USA planen angeblich Atomwaffen-Einsatz gegen den Iran (10.04.06)

Wie die "Tagesschau" unter Berufung auf die US-Zeitschrift "The New Yorker" berichtete, hat die US-Regierung mit der Detail-Planung eines Krieges gegen den Iran begonnen. Die Planungen sollen angeblich auch den Einsatz von Atomwaffen umfassen. Im Visier seien vor allem Nuklearanlagen, schreibe der Journalist Seymour Hersh, der sich auf einen Ex-Pentagon- Experten berufe. Dem Bericht des Magazins "New Yorker" zufolge laufen inzwischen konkrete, angeblich sogar "hektische" Planungen für Militärschläge gegen Ziele im Iran, auch mit nuklearen Bomben. Autor des Artikels sei der preisgekrönte Enthüllungsjournalist Seymour Hersh, der unter anderem als erster über den Folterskandal im Abu-Ghraib-Gefängnis von Bagdad berichtet habe. Er stehe im Ruf, exzellente Kontakte zu führenden Mitarbeitern der Regierung zu haben, berichtete die Tagesschau. Angesichts der exzellenten Kontakte stellt sich die Frage, ob der Bericht eine "Enthüllung" von tatsächlichen Planungen darstellt oder ob er möglicherweise im Interesse der US-Regierung liegt und über den Journalisten gezielt lanciert wurde.

Die ganze Nachricht im Internet: http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php?Nr=13349