North Korea destroys nuclear reactor tower

North Korea destroys nuclear reactor tower

YONGBYON, North Korea (AP) — North Korea destroyed the most visible symbol of its nuclear weapons program Friday, blasting apart the cooling tower at its main atomic reactor in a sign of its commitment to stop making plutonium for atomic bombs.

An explosion at the base of the cylindrical structure sent the tower collapsing into debris and dust that billowed into blue skies at 5:10 p.m. local time as journalists and diplomats looked on, according to footage filmed at the site by international video news agency Associated Press Television News.

The demolition of the 60-foot-tall cooling tower at the North’s main reactor complex is a response to U.S. concessions after the North delivered a declaration Thursday of its nuclear programs to be dismantled.

“This is a very important step in the disablement process and I think it puts us in a good position to move into the next phase,” said Sung Kim, the U.S. State Department’s top expert on the Koreas who attended the demolition.

After the tower’s tumble to the ground, Kim shook hands with Ri Yong Ho, director of safeguards at North Korea’s Academy of Atomic Energy Research, who was the most senior Pyongyang official present.

“The demolition of the cooling tower is proof that the six-party talks have proceeded a step further,” Ri said, referring to the nuclear negotiations.

The tower destruction was not mentioned by the North’s media or shown on state TV broadcasts.

In the North Korean government’s first reaction to the developments this week, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry welcomed Washington’s decision to take the country off the U.S. trade and sanctions blacklists.

“The U.S. measure should lead to a complete and all-out withdrawal of its hostile policy toward (the North) so that the denuclearization process can proceed smoothly,” the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The symbolic tower explosion came just 20 months after Pyongyang shocked the world by detonating a nuclear bomb in an underground test to confirm its status as an atomic power. The nuclear blast spurred an about-face in the U.S. hard-line policy against Pyongyang, leading to the North’s first steps to scale back its nuclear weapons development since the reactor became operational in 1986.

Last year, the North switched off the reactor at Yongbyon, some 60 miles north of the capital of Pyongyang, and it already has begun disabling the facility under the watch of U.S. experts so that it cannot easily be restarted.

The destruction of the cooling tower, which carries off waste heat to the atmosphere, is another step forward but not the most technically significant, because it is a simple piece of equipment that would be easy to rebuild.

Still, the demolition offers the most photogenic moment yet in the disarmament negotiations that have dragged on for more than five years and suffered repeated deadlocks and delays.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the tower’s destruction would mark a step toward disablement, something that has been ongoing for many months to prevent the North from making more plutonium for bombs.

“It is important to get North Korea out of the plutonium business, but that will not be the end of the story,” she said in Kyoto, Japan, on the sidelines of a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized countries.

North Korea’s nuclear declaration, which was delivered six months later than the country promised and has not yet been released publicly, is said to only give the overall figure for how much plutonium was produced at Yongbyon — but no details of bombs that may have been made.

Experts believe the North has produced up to 110 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium, enough for as many as 10 nuclear bombs.

The declaration was being distributed Friday by China, the chair of the arms talks, to the other countries involved, U.S. envoy Christopher Hill said.

“We’ll have to study it very carefully and then we’ll have to work on verification,” Hill said in Kyoto.

The declaration does not address the North’s alleged uranium enrichment program or suspicions of its nuclear proliferation to other countries, such as Syria.

Associated Press writers Jae-soon Chang and Burt Herman in Seoul, South Korea and Matthew Lee in Kyoto, Japan contributed to this report.

Kristol: Bush might bomb Iran if he thinks Obama will win (Fox News)

New World Record Human Peace Sign/ Make Youtube Videos for Peace

Going for the Guinness World Record

A crowd at the Ithaca Festival forms a peace symbol in Stewart Park in Ithaca, N.Y., in an attempt to enter the Guinness World Records for the world’s largest human peace sign Sunday afternoon June 22, 2008. Some 5,814 people joined the effort. The previous largest human peace sign was made by 2,500 people at the University of Michigan.
(Eric Stewart/The Ithaca Journal/AP Photo)

STAND UP for WORLD PEACE

Trevor Dougherty has created a YouTube video calling for peace. His video asks others to reply to his video with other peace videos, so that the message of peace can be spread throughout the internet.

McCain Says Bringing Troops Home Is “Not Too Important”

Give Peace a Chance– John Lennon

Tyrannosaurus Debt

Bush policies limit next president’s options ( Reuters June 20, 2008 )

Washington War Mongering Monsters

Be very very afraid!

A People’s History Comes Alive On the Stage

By Chip Gibbons

 

  The Culture Project in New York is currently putting on Rebel Voices, a new play based on Howard Zinn’s Voices of A People’s History of America.    Not living in New York myself I miss out on a lot of exciting things. However, I recently happened to have the privilege of seeing a preview of the play the night before it opened (thanks to good timing and luck I happened to be in the city on that night)

      America has a rich history of dissent, one that is often ignored by mainstream versions of history. Zinn, on the other hand, has made a career of documenting American’s tradition of protest and nowhere is this history captured with more spirit than in Rebel Voices. The play consists of a permanent cast of six and a revolving cast of guest, including Danny Glover, Staceyann Chin, and Zinn himself, reading famous speeches, petitions, letters, etc. If one has ever thumbed through Voices of A People’s History he/she knows how the pieces Zinn selected are not only well-written, but both inspiring and informative. Each of the actors dix an incredible job at bringing to life the selections which include works by Frederick Douglas, Malcolm X, Sojourner Truth, Eugene Debs, and more.. However, if one is expecting an elaborate stage set and props, I must warn you the stage itself is very minimalist consisting only of the actors and stools, however, the actors do move around a bit. This setting does not in anyone take anything away from the play, as it is the readings that are the focus..

     The play contains many antiwar speeches, including Eugene Debs’ infamous Canton, Ohio speech. For those of you not familiar with your history, during Word War I the Espionage and Sedition Acts made it illegal to speak out against the war, as President Woodrow Wilson believed “dissent, in time of war, was a significant threat to morale.”

     A wide-ranged of people were prosecuted under this act from anarchist Emma Goldman to members of the radical labor union Industrial Workers of the World, but the group that was hit the hardest was the Socialist Party of America, America’s largest third party at the time.

     On June 16, 1918 the party’s forbearer and perennial Presidential candidate, Eugene Debs, was in Canton, Ohio to visit three Socialist who had been imprisoned for speaking out against World War I. After his visit, Debs went across the street where he gave on of the greatest antiwar speeches of all-times, one that would earn him a 10-year prison sentence (he would later have his sentence commuted and invited to the White House for lunch—by a Republican president).

     What terrible thing did Eugene Debs say? It went a something like this:

Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. [Applause.] The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another’s throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose–especially their lives.

Another great historical commentary on war comes from the North Star, the paper of escaped slave turned abolitionist Frederick Douglas. In 1848 the North Star, in reponse the Mexican-American war, stated that people of peace had no party, as one party (the Democrats) had started the war and another party (the Whigs) funded it. The more things change…

The North Star and Debs are joined by contemporary peace activist, such as Cindy Sheehan and Camilo Mejia. The performance also includes a soldiers testimony about the My Lai Massacre as well as a first hand account of the bombing of Hiroshima intermingled with a US Government Report on the bombing (which stated that it was most likely that Japan would of surrendered regardless of the use of atomic weaponry).

Voices against war are not the only historical acts of protest included in the play, as voices from the abolitionist, civil rights, women’s rights, labor, and gay rights movements are also heard. Although the subject mater of their speeches can often be weighty and depressing, their victories are inspiring.

Whenever one becomes weary about the future of American, just remember at one point we had slavery, segregation and women (or even those who did not own property) could not vote. That’s no longer the case, because of activist who worked tirelessly against seemingly impossible odds. We still have a long way to go, but we’ve also come along way.

 Click Here for More Info 

Help Support Peace Action in the Peace Primary!

The Ploughshares Foundation will be sponsoring a “peace primary” with 12 organizations. Individuals can vote for an organization by donating to them through their peace primary page. Each dollar donated counts as one vote. The minimum an individual can donate is $10 (ten votes) and the maximum is $1,000 (one thousand votes). In addition to getting to keep the money raised through “voting,” the organization with the most votes will receive a $100,000 grant from the Ploughshares Foundation. Voting does not begin until September 1, 2007 so if you are interested in supporting Peace Action in the Peace Primary more information on how to vote will be posted shortly.

 

Bush’s “War Czar” Believes a Military Draft is “Worth Considering”

From Democracynow.org

U.S. War Czar: Return of Military Draft Is Worth Considering

Here in this country, the White House’s new war czar Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute has said it is worth considering returning to a military draft.

Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute: “I think it makes sense to certainly consider it, and I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table, but ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation’s security by one means or another.”

Lt. General Lute made the comments in an interview with National Public Radio. President Bush picked Lute in mid-May as a deputy national security adviser with responsibility for ensuring efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are coordinated with policymakers in Washington.