April 2005

Peace & Justice

LIVERMORE LAB: Will a biological weapons lab join nuclear weapons research?

Edited from Citizen’s Watch, newsletter of Tri-Valley CAREs by MYRTLE OSNER

Loulena Miles, staff attorney of Tri-Valley CAREs, recently testified in Geneva, Switzerland at a meeting of diplomats discussing the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). She addressed her comments directly to the nuclear weapons states, calling upon them to geographically separate advanced bio-defense research from classified nuclear weapons research. Tri-Valley CAREs is concerned that nuclear weapons-states will not agree to allow full international inspection of biological facilities if they are housed at nuclear weapons labs.

Tri-Valley CAREs raised concerns about possible siting of biological weapons research within the Livermore and Los Alamos Labs where nuclear weapons research has been performed for many years. Based in Livermore, Tri-Valley CAREs is the premier watchdog of Livermore Labs nuclear weapons research facilities.

Unlike many Bio-safety Level-3 labs, BSL-3, the Livermore facility will focus its research on agents that have historically been associated with bio-warfare programs, including live anthrax, plague and dozens of other potentially deadly pathogens. It was approved by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2002.

Tri-Valley Cares and Nuclear Watch of New Mexico have filed a lawsuit to prevent the facility from operating without a thorough environmental and non-proliferation review.

“We want to ensure that a new bio-warfare agent program is not put into place at a U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons lab without the benefit of public debate within the U.S. and throughout the international community, about the wisdom of locating this research along with nuclear weapons research,” said staff attorney Loulena Miles, of Tri-Valley CAREs.

Tri-Valley Cares and Nuclear Watch of New Mexico have filed a lawsuit to prevent the facilities from operating without a thorough environmental and non-proliferation review.

The 1975 Biological Weapons Convention, with 153 member states, bans the development, production, and stockpiling of biological agents. The U.S. has indicated that it is unable to support a proposed protocol that would have given the treaty the investigation and inspection powers necessary for enforcement. Ms. Miles spoke to increase pressure on the US to reverse the plans for siting, as described above.

Another article in the same issue of Citizen’s Watch details bio-Lab accidents, which have gone un- or under-reported around the world, including Fort Detrick, Md (anthrax), Children’s Hospital Lab, Oakland (anthrax), Boston (tularemia), Singapore and Taipei.

ACTION: For the full articles, or to subscribe to Citizen’s Watch, newsletter of Tri-Valley Cares, go to www.trivalleycares.org

Peace Camp 2005 

Mark your calendar for Peace Camp: June 24-26. For 21 years the Modesto Peace/Life Center has hosted a weekend in the High Sierra for people of all ages with good fellowship, lively discussions, the best camp food imaginable. Relaxing, refreshing, even invigorating. 

ACTION: To help plan, phone Ken Schroeder at 526-2303.

Modesto Peace/Life Center Board 

At the Modesto Peace/Life Center annual meeting on February 16, 2005, John Lucas and John Frailing were reelected to two-year terms on the Board of Directors, Lee Miller is taking a sabbatical from the Board, and Karen Lee and Michael Napp resigned from the Board during the past year. Current Board members are: Beth Au, Jim Costello, John Frailing, Tracy Herbeck, John Lucas, Lee Miller, Dan Onorato, Norma Ovrahim, David Rockwell, Shelley Scribner, and Ruben Villalobos.

Peace Makers Conference: Foundations For a Warless Future

A Peace Makers Conference: Foundations For a Warless Future will be held on April 8th, 9th and 10^th, hosted by the Peace & Justice Center of Sonoma County.

The focus of this year’s conference is to provide organizers with the tools they need in order to create “Political Will” in their communities as well as to address the problems created by war and social injustice.

Workshops are constructed to provide tools for participants on three levels of impact: Regional, National and International.

Check-in and a buffet will be held Friday evening at the Peace and Justice Center, 467 Sebastopol Avenue, Santa Rosa as will Sunday’s continental breakfast and organizers’ roundtable. Late registration, late check-in and Saturday’s conference sessions will be held at Finley Community Center, 2060 West College Avenue, Santa Rosa.

Registration is on a first come, first served basis. Deadline was March 25^th. However, late registrations will be accepted, but session availability cannot be guaranteed. The $40.00 fee includes: workshops, Friday night dinner, Saturday continental breakfast, lunch and community networking dinner as well as Sunday continental breakfast.

WHERE YOUR INCOME TAX MONEY REALLY GOES: War and Its Costs

Fear and loathing in Ceres

BY FRED HERMAN

The banter was more than an hour along, and a sizable delegation of Hispanics had already walked out, when Ceres Police Chief Art de Werk dotted the i's and crossed the t's on the bottom line:

Nothing in his forces' response to the "gang problem" - which includes sweeps and raids on young people of Latino ancestry, whom he said comprise about 85 percent of Ceres area gang membership - would change.

He had a duty (to god and) the people of Ceres, he said, to continue as he had been doing:

"I don't care how many hits we take. We have a job to do."

He "stands by our efforts to protect" the citizenry, he said earlier, before a score of people angry about ground rules for debate set by the Justice Department's Community Relations Service stalked out.

Nothing that de Werk, focal point of a group of panelists - civic officials, educators, a priest - told 200-plus people in the Modesto Adventist Academy Gym on March 2 eased the simmering tensions.

And to this writer - red ACLU, UUSC, "question authority" and "stop torture" pins adorning his gang blue sweatshirt - it brought back a time 67 years earlier when a Nazi storm trooper in jack boots, brown shirt and swastika armband, stopped him outside his Danzig home and asked, "Are you Jewish?"

The public forum was designed to pour oil on waters troubled by a January 9 double homicide, a police sergeant and a Marine lance corporal who apparently panicked at the prospect of returning to Iraq. Only the next day did the spin from above change and the dead marine was painted as a gang member.

No one noted at any point in the evening that without the White House's pointless American invasion of Iraq, both Cpl. Raya and Sgt. Stevenson would be alive today.

But then the Ceres participants were clearly divided into two camps, for want of a less simplistic label The Establishment and the victimized, many of whom left grumbling "this is not a community meeting."

Ground rules for the evening included requiring all questions to be submitted in writing - and meticulously screened by people who culled out the non-creampuffs.

That included the likes of "what can we the people do to improve cultural sensitivity?' There were loud complaints from the back of the hall that “their” questions about police tactics went unused.

Mine wasn't read: "You have a dozen 'study questions' in two languages about self-worth and adequate role models," I wrote, "but not one mention of police policies and procedures. Are there any?"

An ACLU pal's similar question was ignored. Journalistic accuracy demands noting that in the last hour of "discussion," tacked on to the 90 minutes we were promised, some questions were taken from the floor.

A former state legislator seated next to me called the proceedings "a waste of time." I agreed, suggesting that it was using a band-aid on a broken arm, an aspirin for a malignancy. The major issue, the sweeping of civil liberties under a carpet of blue, was simply ignored.

Further "workshops" were scheduled, with De Werk sticking to his equating of Hispanic gangs with 9/11 "terrorists." But no one voiced any optimism that the problem would soon be solved.

A start, it seems to me, might be prosecuting crimes (murder, robbery, rape, tax evasion, embezzlement) and not the people with whom one associates ... or their tattoos.

"Gangs"

By FRED HERMAN

Recently I asked a Modesto Bee writer who cited "documented" gang members how this documentation is obtained. I obviously should have begun by asking what is a gang?

Who is a gang member?

For inclusion as a gang member in the statewide Cal-Gangs database, a person must meet two or more of the following criteria:

• Admit to gang membership.

ME: Okay, I admit membership in the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County, Stanislaus ACLU chapter board, the local American Contract Bridge League board and the Wednesday morning Coffee Road kaffee klatch group. Does that make me a gangster?

• Be arrested alone or with known gang members for offenses consistent with gang activity.

ME: This sounds like guilt by association. I thought we dealt with that in Joe McCarthy's day. I presume this includes not only robbery/rape/shootings, but  all drug and prostitution offenses.

• Be identified as a gang member by a reliable informant-source.

ME: Ah, like the state initiative we defeated in the '60s that suggested anyone labeled a communist by law enforcement is deemed to “be” a communist. How reliable do courts say informants must be?

• Be seen affiliating with documented gang members.

ME: Guilt by association again, with the caveat that if you're seen with a wolf, you must “be” a wolf.

• Be seen displaying gang symbols-hand signs.

ME: I presume this includes anyone wearing red, blue or Oakland Raiders sweatshirts. Would the label "gang symbols" hold up in a court of law?

• Be known to frequent gang areas.

ME: Like Hispanic neighborhoods? How are these areas identified? Are there signs, like city limits?

• Wear gang dress, having gang paraphernalia, or having gang tattoos.