Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 8. september 2005 / Timeline September 8, 2005
Version 3.57. September 2005, 9. September 2005
09/08/2005
Call for Papers, The Gentler Sex. Responses of the womens
movement to the First World War 1914-1919
Deadline: 2005-02-15
Thursday 8 and Friday 9 September 2005,
Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, Senate House, Malet
Street, London WC1E 7HU
Organisers: Ms Ingrid Sharp, Department of German, University of
Leeds
i.e.sharp@leeds.ac.uk and
Dr Alison Fell, Department of European Languages and Cultures,
Lancaster Univesity.
Contact: igrs@sas.ac.uk
URL: www.sas.ac.uk/igrs
09/08/2005
CONTRACTS from the United States
Department of Defense
Rockwell Collins, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is being awarded a
$33,586,496 cost-plus award-fee contract. This award is for the
System Development and Demonstration Completion, Low Rate Initial
Production, and Production and Deployment of the KG-3X
Cryptographic Modernization Program. KG-3X units are used in the
Minimum Essential Emergency Communications Network and the Fixed
Submarine Broadcast System for strategic transmission of Emergency
Action Messages. The program entails box replacements, card set
replacements, and reprogramming of 862 units. Of these, 385 units
will require organic service reprogramming. The contracted industry
effort will be for between 392 and 477 units. The location of
performance is Rockwell Collins, Richardson, Texas. At this time,
$14,900,000 of the funds has been obligated. This work will be
complete by September 2007. Solicitation began June 2005 and
negotiations were completed August 2005. The Headquarters
Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., is the
contracting activity (FA8722-04-C-0004, P00012).
09/08/2005
Citizen Letter to Base Closure Commission: No Future Use of
Chemical Weapons Incinerators
Chemical Weapons Working Group
Thursday, September 8, 2005
http://www.cwwg.org/pr_09.07.05bracletter.html
Members of the Chemical Weapons Working Group yesterday expressed
their views to the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission
on the Commission's most recent recommendations for use or closure
of bases where chemical weapons are now being destroyed: future use
of chemical weapons incinerators is unacceptable.
On August 25th, the BRAC Commission voted to keep open the Deseret
Chemical Depot in Utah, to study whether or not the base - and the
chemical weapons incinerator housed there -- could be used to
destroy other military weapons. Local and federal elected officials
from Utah support the measure, saying that extending the mission of
the incinerator would make good economic and environmental
sense.
However Jason Groenewold, with HEAL Utah in Salt Lake City said,
"There is nothing 'environmentally-friendly' about incineration,
and any short-lived economic gain to Utah would be wiped out by the
environmental and health threats posed by this technology. We in
Utah have already sacrificed enough for our government's military
experiments and weapons production."
A letter to the BRAC Commission from the CWWG noted that the U.S.
Army's promised to dismantle the incinerators after the chemical
weapons are destroyed, but that the government is now stepping away
from that promise. The groups urge the Commission to consider
investments in safe, non-incineration technologies for destruction
of old military wastes rather than using dangerous
incinerators.
Craig Williams, Director of the CWWG, said the groups oppose
incineration as much now as they did when the Army first proposed
the chemical weapons incinerator plan. "Now that the incinerators
are operating it might seem appealing to elected officials and
developers to keep them open, after chemical demilitarization has
been completed," Williams said. "But the long-term effects of
incinerator emissions on public health can be devastating. It is
bad enough that the Army turned down the opportunity to use safer
technologies at Utah, Alabama, Oregon and Arkansas, but it is crazy
to think about using the incinerators for other wastes, too."
Hermiston, Oregon resident Karyn Jones, whose group GASP is a
watchdog on the Oregon chemical weapons incinerator, agreed. "Even
though Umatilla was on the BRAC list, and even though our elected
officials support the base's closure, I want to make sure that
incinerator is never used for burning other wastes," she said.
"Congress and the Army promised to dismantle the incinerators after
the chemical weapons were destroyed, and they need to keep that
promise in each of our communities."
The letter to the BRAC Commission was sent on Global Day of Action
against Waste and Incineration, convened by an international
environmental and public health alliance called the Global Alliance
for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA). Studies have shown that waste
incinerators are cancer factories, generating hundreds of pollutant
releases such as dioxins and heavy metals that cause a variety of
health problems, including cancer, reproductive and developmental
disorders, and immune system dysfunction. In fact, governments have
agreed under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic
Pollutants (POPs) to work for the continuing minimization and
ultimate elimination of dioxins and other POP-byproducts of
incineration, so as to protect public health and the
environment.
Rufus Kinney, of Families Concerned About Nerve Gas Incineration in
Alabama said, "There are hundreds and hundreds of people living
near the Anniston incinerator who didn't want the incinerator in
the first place. But I doubt that even among people who support the
incinerator, few if any would want it to be used to destroy wastes
trucked in from other places." Kinney said he has heard rumors that
local elected officials want to use the incinerators for wastes in
addition to chemical weapons, but hopes that residents in the
Anniston area will be spared that burden.
Evelyn Yates, from Pine Bluff, Arkansas compared the success of
safer, non-incineration technologies with the dangers of
incineration. "At the Pine Bluff Arsenal we have an incinerator to
burn stockpiled chemical weapons, but we also have non-incineration
technologies working to destroy other military weapons and wastes.
The military clearly has the capability to do better than
incineration, and the government as a whole needs to support these
safer methods."
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