The Associated Press reports Sarah Palin charged the state of Alaska for some of her children’s travel expenses since she became governor. (PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES)
FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:
We’re learning more and more about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin… You know the Republican Vice Presidential candidate who is running on a platform of reform.
First there’s the investigation into whether Governor Palin abused the power of her office in order to fire the former Public Safety Commissioner of Alaska.
Now we learn the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 on Governor Palin’s wardrobe, hair and makeup shortly after John McCain named her to be his running mate. This included a 75-thousand dollar shopping spree in Minneapolis and more than $4,000 on hair and make-up in September alone.
But here’s the topper. The Associated Press reports Sarah Palin charged the state of Alaska for some of her children’s travel expenses since she became governor. More than $21,000 worth of airfares and hotels all on the Alaska taxpayers’ dime. The AP reports Palin altered the expense reports to indicate her children were on “official business.”
The kids weren’t even invited to some of these events they were flown too.
How do you present yourself as any kind of candidate of reform when the sleazy practices you employ put you in the same category as every other sleazy, opportunistic politician that has preceded you?
Here’s my question to you: Should Sarah Palin reimburse Alaska taxpayers for her kids’ travel and entertainment expenses?
Interested to know which ones made it on air? Lauren writes:
She should repay the taxpayers of Alaska. This kind of “entitled” behavior is what I expect from entrenched politicians, not a maverick reformer. Many of us moms have to travel for our jobs, but no one I know gets reimbursed for family members who tag along. Even if she did not violate Alaska tax laws, her behavior was highly unethical.
LaVerne from Los Angeles, California writes:
Yes, Sarah Palin should reimburse the Alaska tax payers for her family’s travel expenses. She wants everyone to think that she is just like every day people yet the McCain campaign spends $150,000 on clothes for her and her family. How many everyday people shop at Nieman Marcus and Saks? Then they stage a political stunt by just dropping in to Wal-mart to pick up Pampers for her baby.
John writes: Too late. Palin can apologize and reimburse all she wants. We’ve already seen what kind of a “reformer” she is.
Barrows writes:
Let me remind you that Gov. Palin informed us with glee that she was someone who would fight against the misuse of government funds by officials. Well, I’d like to know how she defines misuse, because clearly she has her own definition for a lot of terms.
Jack from Washington, D.C. writes:
I gotta tell you, Jack, this reform she’s claiming got me all confused and worked up. This lady is running around in a frenzy criticizing Obama for tax cuts to the middle class when she’s the first one to spend taxpayers’ money on her family. How hypocritical is that?
Christine from Edmeston, New York writes:
So she took the money out of the Alaskan taxpayers’ pockets for her own use. What’s the problem? Hey, Joe the Plumber, Look! It’s Sarah Palin showing you what “distributing the wealth” really means.
Buki writes:
How can someone who calls herself a reformer spend $150,000 or so on wardrobe in 2 months? That’s my household income for 4 years.
Navajo Council Delegate Rex Lee Jim reviews legislation Oct. 21, day two of the Navajo Nation Council’s fall session.Photo by Joshua Lavar Butler/Navajo Nation Office of the Speaker
LAS CRUCES, N.M. — As of Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama has yet another tribal endorsement — the Navajo Nation.
“I am honored to receive the endorsement of the Navajo Nation,” Obama said in a statement. “I look forward to partnering with Indian tribes, including the Navajo Nation, on a government-to-government basis, to address the special challenges facing tribes today, including access to affordable health care, economic development, energy independence, and education. Joe Biden and I look forward to working with the Navajo Nation and all of Indian Country to bring about the change we need.”
The 88-member Navajo council voted 59-21 in its fall legislative session to endorse Obama. The Navajo Nation joins more than 100 tribal leaders, tribal organizations and tribes that have endorsed Sens. Obama and Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
“I hear the message of Sen. Obama in respecting the treaty between the U.S. and the Navajo,” said Navajo Nation Council Delegate Leonard Tsosie. “[There is] a Native unity in endorsing Obama.”
Navajo have a large presence in McCain’s home state of Arizona
The Navajo Nation has more than 250,000 tribal members and is the largest federally recognized tribe. The Navajo reservation also is the largest, located in three states: southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico.
The Navajo suffer problems in the areas of water rights, law enforcement, Indian health care, economic development and job availability, like most tribes. The Navajo Council discussed these issues for nearly two hours before deciding which candidate could help them the most, according to a Navajo Nation Council statement.
“Our needs are enormous,” said Hope MacDonald-Lone Tree, Navajo councilwoman. “The last several years have been hard on Navajo and across Indian Country.”
She voted in favor of the endorsement and believes Obama will be a voice for Natives and will tend to the people’s needs, she said.
Sen. John McCain, whose home state is Arizona in which the Navajo Nation has a big presence, said in his Native American policy that he will uphold the federal government’s trust responsibility and consult closely with tribes if he is elected president. Obama made the same promise but went one step further by announcing a White House-level Native American policy adviser.
Those who opposed endorsement had variety of reasons
As for the 21 Navajo council delegates who voted against the endorsement, MacDonald-Lone Tree said they have their own reasons for doing so; whether it be against Obama or against an endorsement of any candidate.
“I respect their vote,” MacDonald-Lone Tree said.
Navajo council delegate Pete Atcitty said the Navajo people, as individuals, can make up their own minds and vote for whomever they want to. States do not endorse candidates and people within a sovereign nation can endorse whom they want. The endorsement makes it sound as if the Navajo people are “predictable,” he said.
“I strongly believe the Navajo voters can cast their votes on their own,” Atcitty said.
Andi Murphy, Navajo, is a student at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. A graduate of the Freedom Forum’s 2007 American Indian Journalism Institute, Murphy interned as a reporter at The Daily Times in Farmington, N.M., and, last summer, at the Great Falls Tribune in Montana.
As you have probably heard me mention on more than a few occasions now, in 2007 the United Nations passed a document known as the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Of the states of the world, only the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand voted against the non-binding resolution. Not all that surprising given that all four states are historically colonial-settler states that were established by white European colonists on Indigenous land. All four are also currently involved in long-standing disputes with the Indigenous peoples over land and sovereignty.
In all four of these states, including Canada, the history is one of colonial states that were built on the theft and occupation of Indigenous lands and the extermination of the peoples populating them, by disease, warfare and cultural domination. To this day the Canadian state continues to benefit from its unjustly acquired assets. In order to defend itself and its unjust state oppression, the Canadian government has equipped with an ultra-security state apparatus. Canada has more often than not used these repressive and suppressive anti-terrorist and security measures to strike hardest, and most often, against those people who the most to gain by assaulting Canada’s ingrained injustice and state terror, namely aboriginal nations and their legitimate struggle for their ancestral lands, and for their dignity.
Though the Canadian state has been essentially at war with the Indigenous peoples of the land since the first colonists arrived, the Oka Rebellion of 1990 reignited much of the militancy of the Indian movement that had been lost in the wake of the collapse of the Red Power movement in the 1960s and 1970s. When the Mohawks of Quebec stood with arms against further encroachment onto their sacred and ancestral lands (to build a golf-course of all things) it fulfilled the saying by Mao that “a single spark can start a prairie fire” as it ignited an upswing in radial militancy by the Indian nations of Canada. This can be seen in the recent cases of Indigenous protests in Ontario in opposition to state authorized resource extraction on Indian lands. The Indians of the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation, despite having legitimate demands for sovereignty and decision-making power over their own traditional lands, their warriors and protesters have seen incarceration by the state, most notably Robert Lovelace and the KI-6 , all of whom have received harsh fines and 6 months in jail for peacefully protesting against mineral exploration on the lands of KI and Ardoch Algonquin First Nation (AAFN). We also cannot forget the ongoing Caledonia land dispute that is happening in Southwest Ontario (about an hour from Waterloo, where I am located) between the Indians of the Six Nations Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the developers of the Douglas Creek Estates, which is part of a larger land dispute over the entire Grand River Valley.
Out in Western Canada, the province of British Columbia was one that was settled and colonized by Euro-Canadians without treaties between the indigenous inhabitants and settlers. The result has been that B.C. has become a hotbed of Indigenous militancy because a large swaths of the province remain unceded, and many of the indigenous peoples have never surrendered their claim of sovereignty over these lands. In the southern interior of the province, the Secwepemc people have been involved in a long standing struggle with the Sun Peaks mega ski resort northeast of Kamloops. Back in 2004, in the months of August and September, some 200 Indians and their supporters rallied against the expansion of the ski resort. The result was that the B.C. Supreme Court granted Sun Peaks a court injunction that excluded the Indian people from using 846 hectares of their own traditional territory, and on September 21st that year, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police went in and dismantled their camp, arresting three Indigenous protesters. This is just one example of many of the continued denial of Indian sovereignty by the colonial-settler state. It is an injustice and a violation of the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples, however, many attempts by First Nations peoples to redress the injustices committed against them by the state have been met with state, police, and at times military repression (as was the case in Oka).
On the territory of the Tyendinaga Mohawks we have witnessed a sweeping crack down their community members in an attempt to retard and deflect attempts by the community to establish a real resistance to the further development of the Culbertson Tract, a long standing land claim of the Tyendinaga Mohawks. In order to shut down all resistence within the Mohawk nation to development of their traditional lands, the Federal Government of Canada has dumped millions of tax payer dollars into police actions, and the RCMP have stated government intentions to “fight contraband in three Mohawk communities (including Tyendinaga), which he [Stockwell Day] said is funding organized crime and possibly even terrorists.” The charge of “terrorism” has a history of being used to justify extreme violations of human rights by both settler governments in Canada and the U.S. against racially profiled communities they deem threats to the security of the colonial, capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal state. The allegation that Mohawks are harbouring, or are themselves, terrorists is a dangerous and racist one, but it is not a new tactic by the government in Ottaw, as it was used against the Mohawk Warrior Society following their heroic stand against the state at Oka.
Across all of Northern Turtle Island (Canada) the upcoming Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics has come to be seen by many in Indian country as a real and serious threat to the Indigenous people and lands of not just British Colombia, but in the whole of Canada. Indigenous resistance to Olympic development on unceded Coast Salish and other lands has been criminalized in order to ensure prospective Olympic tourists and investors that they, and their investments, will be safe. A notorious example of this was the punishment of Indian Warrior Harriet Nahanee, a Pedachat elder that found herself sentenced to provincial jail for contempt of court for playing a part in the Sea-to-Sky highway expansion protest at Eagleridge bluffs. Later she passed away as a result of pneumonia and resulting complications at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver on Feb. 24th, one month after her sentence. It is suspected by many in Indian country that Nahanee’s condition became worsened during her incarceration at the Surrey Pre-Trial centre. However, as can and should be expected, Solicitor-General John Les denied any government responsibility in her death and has refused requests from the community for an inquiry.
As of July of 2008, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the KI and AAFN, upholding their right to be consulted regarding any development on their traditional land. The ruling, relevant to the cases mentioned above where court injunctions were used to quell and criminalize indigenous dissent, made a clear statement that private parties must not seek court injunctions as a first response to prevent protest action of First Nations with legitimate aboriginal rights. However, despite this victory in the state’s court system for the KI and AAFN, it remains for the colonial governments to interpret the court ruling.
US State Department and BIA attempt to cover up their crimes, interrupt Lipan Apache testimony on border abuse, during hearing of Organization of American States
By Brenda Norrell http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
WASHINGTON — As Lipan Apache Margo Tamez delivered powerful testimony on the US government’s human rights violations at the Texas/Mexico border before the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, members of the US State Department and BIA interrupted to cover up their crimes.
After introducing herself in the Apache language, Tamez described how her family’s land is being seized without consent or consultation for the US/Mexico border wall. Tamez said the lands of her people would be divided and result in relocation, especially for the elderly. Tamez said their place of prayer is on the other side of the border. She described what is happening to Indian people all along the border, in this new wave of genocide of Indian cultures and ceremonies along the border.
During the hearing today, Oct. 22, members of the Texas border delegation, a working group based at the University of Texas, pointed out how the poor are affected the most by the border wall, while the playgrounds of the rich, such as a golf course, are avoided. They also pointed out that Homeland Security had voided all federal laws, including environmental laws and laws protecting American Indian cultural and burial places. Traditional communities of the Tigua in Texas and Kumeyaay in California also have members living on both sides of the border and the border wall cuts through their traditional territories.
Interrupting Tamez, US State Department and BIA officials attempted to cover up the violations of human rights, with a lengthy, empty verbal tap dance.
The representative from the BIA, Nina Siquieros, Tohono O’odham, attempted to paint a rosy picture of the Arizona border wall, but she did not reveal the testimony of Tohono O’odham Ned Norris to a Congressional committee in April. At that time, Norris testified that Homeland Security and Boeing had violated all federal laws. Norris said the border wall construction had human bones in heavy machinery tracks.
The Commission was not told of the O’odham ancestors’ remains that were dug up and removed in secret on Tohono O’odham land, by the contractor Boeing while building the border wall.
During the US government’s attempt to coverup the crimes, there was no opportunity for the Tohono O’odham opposing the wall, such as Ofelia Rivas, founder of the O’odham Voice Against the Wall, to speak. There was no voice of those doing humanitarian work, including Mike Wilson, Tohono O’odham, to speak for the dead.
Tamez, in conclusion, pointed out that Chairman Norris had opposed the border wall and came to Texas to support the Lipan Apache. Tamez also said the Indigenous Alliance without Borders has brought together Indigenous Peoples from all along the border, from California to Texas, who oppose the border wall and the violations of human rights resulting.
Although the US State Department claimed the border wall was necessary to keep terrorists out of the country, one member of the human rights commission questioned what would keep a terrorist from coming through the hole in the wall at the Texas golf course.
“They don’t attack when you have a golf course?” he asked the State Department, who didn’t respond at the time.
Watch the video of the hearing: http://www.oas.org/OASpage/videosondemand/home_eng/videos_query.asp?sCodigo=08-0341
Photo: Eloisa Tamez and daughter Margo Tamez on family’s land on Texas border. Photo Arnoldo Garcia.
From Colombia, the indigenous groups in the Cauca department have made an international SOS to call attention on their plight. On their website, cric-colombia.orgthey explain how they have been protesting the human rights abuses they have been victim of, represented by the murder of one of their community leaders by hit men and the death threats on other regional and community leaders and spokespeople. They have requested a public audience with the Government Officials, and have been protesting since October 12, demanding the protection of their human rights and making the government live up to the promises of the signed treaties of the past. However, it is said that armed government forces, have shot live ammunition at the protesters, leaving 2 dead and more than 60 indigenous members injured. On this blog post on the indigenous community site they show pictures of the protest and the injuries some have sustained as well as the list of those injured up to October 14th. On October 15th, the armed forces opened fire once again on the protesters, killing one and leaving 39 injured. They have also blocked the roads and ambulances can’t get in to help those who are hurt and needing assistance. (Links in Spanish unless otherwise noted)
la fuerza publica entró disparando con armas de largo alcance y ya hay 3 heridos mas de gravedad. la fuerza militar entro ya al territorio de dialogo y negociación.
Se solicita de manera urgente que organismos internacionales frenen esta violencia. tambien a los pueblos inigenas que refuercen el personal que esta siendo atacado.
The armed forces came in shooting with long range weapons and there are already 3 other persons seriously injured. The military forces have barged into the territory of dialogue and negotiation.We urgently request international organizations to stop this violence. Also for the indigenous communities to get more people to back those who have been attacked.
The indigenous community has been sending emails and posting on their website[es] updates on the situation.
The following video was posted last week by user nasacin, including cellphone and video camera images from the manifestations, clips showing shot indigenous community members, a soldier speaking about the differences between the Mob Control ESMAD and the armed forces, stating that the armed forces are to keep the peace, and the ESMAD is the one in charge of defusing violent situations. However, when asked who it is that is shooting with rifles, the soldier doesn’t answer.
Blogger Alejandro Peláez last week wrote of how foreign media is reporting on the indigenous protests, but local media hadn’t published anything at all:
Las noticias son hechos, y para escribir sobre hechos toca salir del escritorio, entrevistar personas, buscar en archivos, viajar al monte . Las masacres, por ejemplo, son hechos. Pero en este país los medios cubren este tipo de hechos con diez años de diferencia y ahí ya no son noticia, son historia. En este momento, como lo cuenta AdamIsacson (sí, un gringo sentando en Washington D.C.), hay serios disturbios en el Cauca y El Tiempo ni lo anota. Tal vez presenten una crónica completísima dentro de diez años. Chévere.
News is facts, and to write about facts you have to get out from behind your desk, interview people, search the archives, head out into the mountains. Massacres, for example, are facts. But in this country the media covers this type of events with a 10 year difference when they are no longer a news story, but history. In this moment, as Adam Isacson (yes, a gringo sitting in Washington D.C.) reports, there are serious disturbances in the Cauca, and El Tiempo doesn’t even have a note on it. Maybe they’ll present a full chronicle of it in ten years. Great.
In Gacetilla Colombiana, a Digg style application for Colombian news, posters have been linking foreign news as an alternative for those who are under the “media blackout” on this event, in particular to a major foreign news chain’s video [en] where a citizen media recording shows what could be an armed but hooded person dressed in green with a rifle going moving through the mob squad and shooting at the indigenous protesters as the members of the mob squad move to let him pass. In the blog “Lets Change the World”, Decio Machado posts the email chain sent out by the Indigenous groups, the means through which most Colombians have found out about the crisis. The Selvas.org blog also posts updates on the situation, how indigenous groups are all marching towards a main city called Cali and blocking the Panamerican Highway and other roads with 10 000 people, including cane pickers, farmers women and children.
In the national blogging award winner Tienen Huevo blog, they write outraged at the fact that at the same time there is an ethnocide going on in the streets of Colombia, trying to reach Cali, while a fashion and makeup expo is taking place, with people more concentrated on clothing and fashion shows than the indigenous situation.
The government has responded to the accusations of opening fire on the indigenous protesters by saying that they have orders not to shoot, so it must’ve been an inside job, someone infiltrated from the indigenous communities among the police in order to cause panic and bad feeling. Bacteria Opina blog has a caricature of the situation where two indigenous protesters comment that in spite of marching with “indigenous malice”, a phrase used to determine the ability to make do with whatever is doled out their way, the government is accusing them of being an “indigenous milicia”. The government has issued statements saying that these indigenous protests are infiltrated by guerrillas and are terrorist activities, statements the indigenous communities refute absolutely on their blog.
These other videos online on YouTube show the indigenous community’s past struggles, this is the first of the multipart series:
Federico Ruiz posts a play-by-play ping-pong match style summary of events up until Saturday:
los indígenas decretan un paro, el gobierno lo declara ilegal, los indígenas se toman la panamericana, el gobierno manda a una fuerza especial antimotines de la policía para que desbloqueen las carreteras, más indígenas se suman a las movilizaciones, el procurador de la nación dice que va a los diálogos, el presidente dice que está muy ocupado para ir a resolver el problema, los de la policía intentan desbloquear la carretera a las malas, los indígenas dicen que no se van porque les tienen que arreglar sus problemas y cumplirles los compromisos que les habían hecho hace como 15 años y que están en ese link que es una “carta abierta al presidente”, entre tanto en las protestas matan a un indígena y hieren como a 10 según las informaciones de El Tiempo, pero que en realidad no son 10 sino 90 según lo dicen los indígenas, y los de la policía dicen que en la manifestación o en el paro hay infiltrados de la guerrilla, los indígenas dicen que no, y justo luego los indígenas descubren que si hay un infiltrado pero que justamente es policía y que tenía unos panfletos de las farc y unas armas para encochinar a los indígenas, y por si fuera poco, justo llega el defensor regional del pueblo, o sea un representante del gobierno, y dice que “la Fuerza Pública se ha excedido en el uso de las armas de fuego”.
The indigenous groups decree a strike, the government declares it is illegal, the indians take the panamerican, the government sends a a special force of riot police to unblock the highways, more indians join the marches, the nation’s procurer states they are going to dialogue about this, the president says he is too busy to go solve the problem, the police tries to unblock the road the “bad” way, the indians say they are not leaving because the government has to keep their promise to solve their issues as stated in a 15 year old treaty, that there is an open letter to the president, meanwhile in the protest an aboriginal is killed and 10 are injured according to El Tiempo [ed note. national newspaper], but really they aren’t 10 but 90 according to the indigenous organizations, the police state that in the march and strike there are people infiltrated from the guerrilla, the indigenous people say there aren’t, and just then the indians discober that there IS someone infiltrated, but that he is from the police force and had some FARC (Colombian Armed Forces) pamphlets and weapons to incriminate the natives, and if it weren’t enough, the regional defender for the people, a government representative, comes and says that the “Armed Forces have exceeded themselves in the use of fire weapons”.
EDITED to add:
The organization who sent in the recording of the hooded shooter among the mob squad team have uploaded it online with other images of the protests. The images of the shooter amongst the mob squad, shooting at protesters starts at 1:44. They also add images of President Uribe calling military leaders to ask about the murders of the protesters, to which the military replied it was a shrapnel wounds from a pipe bomb and wasn’t a bullet injury.The indigenous people are also shown with segments of a handmade grenade full of metal pieces and ball bearings they claim the armed forces are using against them.
Howard Zinn says small differences matter, but a powerful social movement needed for real change
This a pivotal presidential election that finds America mired in two wars abroad, floundering through an economic crisis and digging itself deeper into debt every day, all during a time when global credibility is at an all-time low.
A person who wants a bold change in the way United States is going is not going to find them represented by either democratic or republican candidate. There are certain moments in history when even a small difference between the candidates may be crucial.
The Real News spoke to Howard Zinn, an American historian, political scientist, social critic, activist and playwright. He is best known as author of the bestseller ‘A People’s History of the United States’.
Zinn states ” We have gone through an insufferable 8 years with the Bush administration, probably the worst administration in history. In this situation we are desperate for a change. So even though Obama doesn’t represent any fundamental change he creates an opening for a possibility of change. That is why I am voting for Obama. That is why I suggest to people that they vote for him. But I also suggest that Obama will not fulfill that potential for change unless he is enveloped by a social movement, which is angry enough, powerful enough, insistent enough, that he fills his abstract phrases about change with some real content.”
New Mexico Church Violated Federal Tax Law With Pro-Republican Sign, Says Americans United
Church-State Watchdog Group Asks IRS to Investigate Rock Christian Fellowship for Tax Law Violations
WASHINGTON – October 22 – A New Mexico church violated federal tax law by posting a sign encouraging voters to support Republican candidates over Democratic ones, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has told the Internal Revenue Service.
Rock Christian Fellowship in Espanola has posted two large photos on its building. One depicts an aborted fetus and has underneath it three last names of Democratic candidates: Obama, Udall and Lujan. (Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate for president, Tom Udall is a candidate for U.S. Senate and Ben Ray Lujan is a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives.)
The other photo is of a healthy baby and has below it three last names of Republican candidates: McCain, Pearce and East. (John McCain is the GOP candidate for president, while Steve Pearce is a candidate for Senate and Dan East is a candidate for the U.S. House.)
The photo of the healthy baby is headlined “Life.” Below the display are the words “YOU WILL DECIDE.”
“Churches are permitted to speak out on issues, but this stunt goes far beyond that,” remarked the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “This church is telling people how to vote. That’s not its job and it is a violation of federal tax law to boot.”
In a letter to the IRS sent today, Americans United says the display clearly sends the message that one set of candidates favors death and the other favors life and that voters are expected to choose the slate that favors life.
In the letter, AU notes that the pastor of the church, Michael Naranjo, has admitted that this is his goal. He told the Santa Fe New Mexican that his purpose is “educating on who stands pro-life and who is pro-death.”
Naranjo is also aware that his actions may be a violation of the law. He told the newspaper, “I’d rather lose my 501(c)(3) than lose my soul.”
AU points out that the IRS has stated that tax-exempt groups “must avoid any issue advocacy that functions as political campaign intervention.” Rock Christian Fellowship’s display fails that test, AU says.
Enough processed uranium to make six nuclear weapons was secretly transported thousands of miles by truck, rail and ship on a monthlong trip from a research reactor in Budapest, Hungary, to a facility in Russia so it could be more closely protected against theft, U.S. officials revealed Wednesday.
The shipment, conducted under tight secrecy and security, included a three-week trip by cargo ship through the Mediterranean, up the English Channel and the North Sea to Russia’s Arctic seaport of Murmansk, the only port Russia allows for handling nuclear material.
The 13 radiation-proof casks, each weighing 17,000 pounds, arrived by rail at the secure nuclear material facility at Mayak in Siberia on Wednesday, carrying 341 pounds of weapons-usable uranium, said Kenneth Baker, a National Nuclear Security Administration official who oversaw the complex project.
It is the largest recovery to date of highly enriched uranium provided either by the former Soviet Union or the United States under a program, begun in the 1950s, aimed at spreading the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The two countries have been working to return the spent fuel from reactors around the world because at many of the facilities, including the one in Budapest, security is lax, raising the possibility of the material being stolen by terrorists.
“It was a big shipment, the biggest one we’ve ever done,” Baker said in an interview with The Associated Press hours after he received word that the shipment had arrived at its final destination in Russia. “It was basically enough to make six nuclear weapons.”
Under the U.S.-Russian program, the NNSA, which is part of the Energy Department, has completed 15 recoveries of U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium from research reactors in more than a dozen countries since 2005. The agency also was involved in three earlier shipments of Russian-origin highly enriched uranium that were removed from the Czech Republic, Latvia and Bulgaria and returned to Russia.
But the project targeting the 341 pounds of highly radioactive used fuel from the Budapest research reactor was particularly complex and challenging, said Baker, the NNSA’s assistant deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation.
It began at 3 a.m. in Budapest in late September and ended early Wednesday, Washington time, at the nuclear facility at Mayak in Russian Siberia. In between the shipment moved without notice aboard truck and rail to the port of Koper in Slovenia and then by special cargo ship through the ocean shipping lanes that encircle Europe, always staying in international waters at least 12 miles from shore, according to Baker.
The unusual roundabout route was needed because “we couldn’t ship it through Ukraine” even though that would have been a more direct route to Russia, Baker said.
So in the early hours in late September, the 13 casks were secretly loaded onto trucks at the Budapest facility and taken to the city’s train station, where it was transported onto a special train — one cask per car — for an eight-hour trip to the port of Koper in Slovenia on the Adriatic Sea.
The shipments then moved through the Mediterranean, through the Strait of Gibraltar, up the Atlantic and into the English Channel, the North and Norwegian seas and then on to Murmansk by Saturday. From there the shipment was loaded on a train for the long trip to Siberia.
“It was the most complicated trip we’ve ever taken by far,” said Baker, who oversaw the loading and early part of the shipment but did not accompany the shipment after it went to sea, instead returning to Washington.
Early Wednesday, he received notice that the shipment had arrived at Mayak, where security is far tighter than in Budapest.
In Budapest “they had a fence and a guard,” said Baker, although some security improvements have been made with U.S. help over the past year. Still, Baker added, “you don’t want to leave it there.”
The Hungarian reactor now is being converted to use low-enriched uranium that can’t be used in a weapon and won’t be a potential terrorist target.
So far, including the shipment from Budapest, 1,685 pounds of Russian-origin uranium has been retrieved from 11 countries. But there are still a significant number of reactors that have either U.S. or Russian highly enriched uranium, including some with security far less than what is desirable, according to nuclear nonproliferation activists
Most of the nation has nowhere to send its low-level nuclear waste. It can’t stop producing this waste. It’s necessary for diagnosing and treating cancer and other diseases, and for research. But because there is no-where to send the waste, it piles up in hospitals, other medical facilities and research centers.
It’s an illustration of our nation’s inability to deal realistically with nuclear issues.
Most of this waste used to be sent to South Carolina to the Barnwell Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility. It was the first such facility in the country when it began receiving radioactive waste in 1971. It is just one of three in the nation today.
On July 1, a new policy took effect: The Barnwell facility takes waste only from South Carolina, Connecticut and New Jersey.
The problem isn’t South Carolina’s fault. States were supposed to build their own low-level-nuclear-waste facilities or form compacts to handle the waste. In 2002, Florida joined three other Southern states suing North Carolina for its failure to build a low-level waste facility there. The matter is still in litigation.
The same process has been repeated all over the nation. States have been unable to build low-level-waste sites because citizens oppose them. But those citizens still want tests for breast cancer and radiation therapy for their brain tumors. The result is unsafe storage of nuclear waste within population centers. …
This editorial appeared in a recent edition of The Ledger in Lakeland, Fla.
WASHINGTON — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday got the ball rolling for license hearings on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
The commission voted to issue a formal notice for hearings on the Department of Energy’s application to build out the Yucca site, including a waste-handling complex and tunnels that would hold 77,000 tons of radioactive material.
The notice is largely a formality that sets up a process for interested parties to intervene in the case.
But once it is published in the Federal Register in the next several days, the notice will start a 60-day clock ticking for the state of Nevada and other parties to file challenges to the project.
The challenges will be heard in courtroom-style sessions that could commence next March, according to a schedule the commission announced. Most of the sessions, which would be run by administrative judges, will be held in Las Vegas.
The NRC effort to dissect the DOE’s 8,600-page construction application, is scheduled to take three-four years.
Nevada officials have notified the NRC they might file between 250 and 500 “contentions” to the DOE license application, challenging various aspects of the Yucca project.
While that could be the largest number ever filed in a government nuclear proceeding, it is expected that many of them will be pared back or rejected for formal arguments, with the focus limited to a smaller number of key issues.
Stumble It!
