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December 2006  News Bulletin Archive     

The WAND News Bulletin is posted on the web site monthly.
When it appears, WAND sends out a condensed version via email. If you would like to receive these email Bulletins, please let us know.

From WAND's illustrious history: Coretta Scott King (r) at a WAND/WiLL National Conference...

WAND is turning 25! It's a great time to be celebrating Women | Power | Peace!

Please join the celebration: Click here for more information. Thanks!


Table of Contents | Click to move to content within the Bulletin.

Capitol Hill Update

Federal Budget Watch

Women's Voices

Nuclear Notes

Iraq Updates

News from WiLL

Faith in Action

Notable National Events

Ideas, Visions, and Resources for a Better World

Jobs and Opportunities

In the Field: WAND Chapter/Partner News & Events


Capitol Hill Update, December 2006

WAND Public Policy Director Marie Rietmann urges you to enjoy the holiday season with your community of choice...

Happy Holidays from all of us at WAND!

 

Bolton resigns as UN ambassador

December 4, W accepted John Bolton's resignation as ambassador to the UN. It was good news on many levels: he's gone, first of all. But also, this may signal that W and the administration understand the message from the November election: Change course. (Of course, the reaction to the Iraq Study Group Report seems to disprove that theory.)

From the Washington Post:

"Bolton recast the role of ambassador to the United Nations, a post traditionally filled by prominent Americans who helped explain the organization to Washington. Instead, Bolton relished the role of the body's chief critic, playing down its achievements and regaling congressional committees with its failings."

From the New York Times:

Mr. Chafee, who lost his Senate seat in last month’s elections, perhaps best captured the political reality that has engulfed Mr. Bolton since he took office in a recess appointment last year.

“The American people have spoken out against the president’s agenda on a number of fronts, and presumably one of those is on foreign policy,” Mr. Chafee said last month.

From the Bolton's mouth:

"There is no such thing as the United Nations. United States makes the U.N. work when it wants it to work. If the U.N. Secretariat building in New York lost 10 stories, it would not make a bit of difference."


U.N. Ambassador Bolton Won't Stay
Bush Wary of Battle With Democrats
By Peter Baker and Glenn Kessler | Washington Post | Full article, click here. December 5, 2006

President Bush surrendered to congressional foes yesterday in his fight to install John R. Bolton as permanent ambassador to the United Nations, a harbinger of how the political world has changed since Democrats captured both houses of Congress.

Bush circumvented Senate opposition last year, sending Bolton to the United Nations on a recess appointment, and administration lawyers in recent weeks had developed options to keep him there after that appointment expires this month. But officials said Bolton and the White House decided against provoking an early confrontation with Democrats as they take over Congress next month.


FEDERAL BUDGET WATCH


Even though Congress is hightailing it out of town for the Holiday recess, you might want to send a message about some of these things. We thank an activist in Oregon for alerting us to the story about federal libraries; you can always make your own email action about these things...

Click here to use the WAND Take Action Center.


Message to West Point
by Bill Moyers | November 15, 2006 by TomPaine.com
This is an excerpt of an excerpt. This is an important speech by a smart man at a critical moment in our history. We invite you to read more. Here is just a bit that relates to WAND's specific mission.

The Bargain

The Armed Services are no longer stepchildren in budgetary terms. Appropriations for defense and defense-related activities (like veterans’ care, pensions, and debt service) remind us that the costs of war continue long after the fighting ends. Objections to ever-swelling defensive expenditures are, except in rare cases, a greased slide to political suicide. It should be troublesome to you as professional soldiers that elevation to the pantheon of untouchable icons —right there alongside motherhood, apple pie and the flag—permits a great deal of political lip service to replace genuine efforts to improve the lives and working conditions—in combat and out—of those who serve.

Let me cut closer to the bone. The chickenhawks in Washington, who at this very moment are busily defending you against supposed “insults” or betrayals by the opponents of the war in Iraq, are likewise those who have cut budgets for medical and psychiatric care; who have been so skimpy and late with pay and with provision of necessities that military families in the United States have had to apply for food stamps; who sent the men and women whom you may soon be commanding into Iraq understrength, underequipped, and unprepared for dealing with a kind of war fought in streets and homes full of civilians against enemies undistinguishable from non-combatants; who have time and again broken promises to the civilian National Guardsmen bearing much of the burden by canceling their redeployment orders and extending their tours.

You may or may not agree on the justice and necessity of the war itself, but I hope that you will agree that flattery and adulation are no substitute for genuine support. Much of the money that could be directed to that support has gone into high-tech weapons systems that were supposed to produce a new, mobile, compact “professional” army that could easily defeat the armies of any other two nations combined, but is useless in a war against nationalist or religious guerrilla uprisings that, like it or not, have some support, coerced or otherwise, among the local population. We learned this lesson in Vietnam, only to see it forgotten or ignored by the time this administration invaded Iraq, creating the conditions for a savage sectarian and civil war with our soldiers trapped in the middle, unable to discern civilian from combatant, where it is impossible to kill your enemy faster than rage makes new ones.

And who has been the real beneficiary of creating this high-tech army called to fight a war conceived and commissioned and cheered on by politicians and pundits not one of whom ever entered a combat zone? One of your boys answered that: Dwight Eisenhower, class of 1915, who told us that the real winners of the anything at any price philosophy would be “the military-industrial complex.”...

Please read more, it's worth it...


Federal library budgets facing ax
By Tim Reiterman| Los Angeles Times | Full article, click here.
December 10, 2006

...When he learned that federal officials were planning to close the library, Mather was stunned.

"It is completely absurd," he said. "The library is a national treasure. It is probably the single strongest library for space science and engineering in the universe."

Mather is one of thousands of people who critics say could lose access to research materials as the government closes and downsizes libraries that house collections vital to scientific investigation and the enforcement of environmental laws.

Across the country, a half dozen federal libraries are closed or closing. Others have reduced staffing, hours of operation, public access or subscriptions...

Officials say the cutbacks have been driven by tight budgets, declining patronage and rising demand for online services. And they say leaner operations will improve efficiency while maintaining essential functions. "We are trying to improve access and . . . . do more with a little less money," said Linda Travers, acting assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Environmental Information.

Although hundreds of federal libraries remain open, critics say the downsizing, especially at the EPA, demonstrates the Bush administration's indifference to transparent government and to scientific solutions to many of the country's most pressing problems.


Congress's Inaction Threatens Funding
Avoiding Spending Bills, Hill Causes Crunch
By Jonathan Weisman and Lori Montgomery
Washington Post | December 17, 2006 | Full article, click here.

The Republican-controlled Congress's decision to adjourn a week ago before completing many of the spending bills that finance the federal government will reverberate in ways large and small, such as understaffed U.S. attorney's offices, delayed renovations at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut and a scuttled global nuclear energy exchange.

Republican leaders left behind just enough spending authority to keep the government operating through mid-February, less than halfway through the 2007 fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Democrats have signaled that when they take control of Congress in January they will extend that funding authority for the remainder of the year based largely on the previous year's spending levels, which will result in many cuts in programs...

The collapse of the budget process was a long time coming, with roots stretching back to the Republican revolution of 1994. But this year, the system finally buckled under the weight of the president's austere spending recommendations, a difficult election year and the Republican leadership's efforts to placate both its most ardent conservatives and its endangered moderates.

Congress was able to pass only two of its 11 annual spending bills, those that fund defense and homeland security. Republicans punted spending measures for virtually every one of the government's domestic programs to the Democrats who assume control Jan. 4. Then last week, Democrats announced they would punt, too. A joint House-Senate resolution -- rather than carefully tailored spending bills -- will keep the government open through the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30, largely at last year's levels.

The consequences will be substantial...

WOMEN'S VOICES

Notes from the WAND News Bulletin editor
When it comes down to it, finding and taking a seat at a table of real power takes a lot of effort, time, and skill.

As the dust from the 2006 election settles, we're delighted to see some great women seeing their years of effort pay off at last.

WAND/WiLL WOMEN TAKING THEIR SEATS AT THE COMMITTEE TABLES OF POWER

Congresswomen elected November 7 who will serve on key committees WAND works with (partial list as of Dec. 14):

  • Senate Armed Services Committee: Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
  • House Armed Services Committee: Nancy Boyda (D-KS), Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
  • House Rules Committee: Kathy Castor (D-FL) and Betty Sutton (D-OH) are expected to join our friend Louise McIntosh Slaughter (D-NY) who will chair this Committee.
  • In addition, the following WAND/WiLL Women were named to the House Appropriations Committee: Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL).

The final count: New women Members elected to 110th Congress
House
Michelle Bachmann (MN-6)
Nancy Boyda (KS-2)
Kathy Castor (FL-11)
Yvette Clarke (NY-11)
Mary Fallin (OK-5)
Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-8)
Kirsten Gillebrand (NY-20)
Mazie Hirono (HI-2)

Carol Shea-Porter (NH-1)
Betty Sutton (OH-13)

Senate
Amy Klobuchar (MN)
Claire McCaskill (MO)

(All are Democrats, except Michelle Bachmann and Mary Fallin)

Pelosi's House Diplomacy
By David S. Broder | Washington Post | December 17, 2006 | Full article, click here.

...Pelosi has been thinking for a long time about how she would manage the House, if she ever got the chance. Two years ago, she and others in the Democratic leadership sent Hastert a letter outlining changes in House rules and procedures that would end some of the flagrant abuses of the legislative process that have taken place. The letter said that Democrats would live by the same new rules if and when they were the majority.

That was repeated a year ago, and Pelosi says it stands today.

It means, among other things, an end to congressional rides on corporate planes, a block on the revolving door between congressional staff jobs and lobbying shops, and a process that will make it harder to slip in special-interest earmarks.

It also means a radical overhaul of House rules -- a strict time limit on roll calls to prevent prolonged arm-twisting of reluctant members, and a requirement that conference committees work in the open and include minority party members.

After a decade of bitter partisanship that has all but crippled efforts to deal with major national problems, Pelosi is determined to try to return the House to what it was in an earlier era -- "where you debated ideas and listened to each other's arguments."

Activist fights for better world
[Illai Kenney lives in Atlanta and is a member of STAND!]
Richard Allen Greene travels to Atlanta, Georgia to meet a 17-year-old relishing the challenge of holding corporations to account.

Full article, click here.

...In 2002, she was the youngest delegate at the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

Illai was struck by the resilience of people hit by Katrina. Seeing extremes of wealth and poverty there "made connections click" for her about global responsibility.

"On one side of the street it looked like suburban America, and on the other side, a shantytown would have been a step up - if you had running water, you were rich."

She says young people can be just as effective fighting for such causes as adults.

"People wonder how I can have any influence given that I can't vote. But I can go to elected officials with 300 signatures of people who can vote or will be able to the next time they're running for office."

And kids have buying power, too, she observes. "We could get a lot of companies to look at us if we say we won't buy their products. That's how things were done in the civil rights movement."

'Whose problem is it?'

She is briefly taken aback by the question of why a teenager in the suburbs of Atlanta should spend her time fighting for people living in India, Mississippi or South Africa.

Then she replies with a question of her own. "If it's not my problem, whose problem is it? I know kids who have never been out of the Atlanta area. I've been all over the world. I would feel like I am taking for granted what I have been given if I don't try to have an impact."


Post-Election Polls: Men Were Angry At Bush, Women Wanted Change
By Ellen Goodman | November 24, 2006 | Full article, click here.

Women are more united than divided. They tend to see connections between people not unlike those -- pumpkin or pecan pie eaters, octogenarians or toddlers -- who assemble around their own family tables. No matter how much we read about the infamous mommy wars, women also concur on the need for help in balancing work and family.

So for many, the biggest concern still is healthcare. As Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz [a WAND/WiLL woman!] of Florida, one of the new breed of young moms in Congress, says, "I don't want the next generation of moms hand-wringing over how to deal with the sniffles and waiting until it turns into pneumonia.''

It's past time to make healthcare available to all kids.

As for education, especially early education and child care? The desire to truly "leave no child behind'' tops terrorism on the female list. And for women who share a family-table view of the world, economic security includes the increasingly elusive retirement security.

Democrats won't have much time to prove that the "sea change" on Capitol Hill changes enough. Nor does Speaker-elect Pelosi. The good news from one of the post-election surveys is that voters are three times more likely to see female politicians as trustworthy. The bad news is that only 21 percent of all voters see even female politicians as trustworthy.


NUCLEAR NOTES

Notes from the WAND News Bulletin editor
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the political water...

So much good news. And then. So much bad news on the nuclear front! The India deal, the Reliable Replacement Warheads, North Korea, Iran...

I'm trying not to be terrified into paralysis by all this. But how have we lost our respect for the fact that these things could wipe. out. civilization?


WAND urges: No new bomb plant | 12/06
Complex 2030, developed by the National Nuclear Security Administration, includes the construction of new facilities to manufacture plutonium warheads, to conduct nuclear weapons research and development, and to consolidate nuclear materials... Our nation needs to kick the bomb habit and switch to protecting the environment from our nation’s deadly nuclear waste inventory and stockpiles of weapons-grade nuclear materials.


Bush OKs nuke deal with India despite inspection history
December 18, 2006 | Full article, click here.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Monday signed a civilian nuclear deal with India, allowing fuel and know-how to be shipped to the world's largest democracy even though it has not submitted to full international inspections.

"The bill will help keep America safe by paving the way for India to join the global effort to stop the spread of nuclear weapons," Bush said.

The bill carves out an exemption in U.S. law to allow civilian nuclear trade with India in exchange for Indian safeguards and inspections at its 14 civilian nuclear plants. Eight military plants, however, would remain off-limits.

"This is an important achievement for the whole world. After 30 years outside the system, India will now operate its civilian nuclear energy program under internationally accepted guidelines and the world is going to be safer as a result," Bush said in a bill-signing ceremony at the White House.

Critics have said the measure undermines efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and technology and could spark a nuclear arms race in Asia by boosting India's atomic arsenal. India still refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The measure passed Congress with bipartisan support, but critics complain the deal undermines efforts to prevent states like Iran and North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, a senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the pact, in effect, shreds the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

"This is a sad day in the history of efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and materials around the world," he said. "The bill that President Bush has signed today may well become the death warrant to the international nuclear nonproliferation regime."


Annan fears world paralysis on nuclear arms threat
By Irwin Arieff | Full article, click here.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 28 (Reuters) - "Mutually assured paralysis" has replaced "mutually assured destruction" as the greatest nuclear threat as world leaders fail to act decisively to promote disarmament and stem proliferation, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned on Tuesday.

While governments are coming together to address many global threats, "the one area where there is a total lack of any common strategy is the one that may well present the greatest danger of all -- the area of nuclear weapons," Annan said in a lecture at Princeton University.

"We are asleep at the controls of a fast-moving aircraft. Unless we wake up and take control, the outcome is all too predictable," he said.


Green groups challenge proposal seeking two new reactors
GREG BLUESTEIN | Full article, click here. | Associated Press
ATLANTA - Environmental advocacy groups filed a request Monday to block a proposed expansion of nuclear reactors in eastern Georgia, saying the plan could have a devastating impact on rural communities near the plant.

The groups asked the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reject the proposed expansion of nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle, which would nearly double the plant's output of 2,340 megawatts.

"Investing in new nuclear reactors here in Georgia is a big mistake," said Sara Barczak of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "This will only make our communities more vulnerable."

Other groups filing the request were Atlanta Women's Action for New Directions, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, the Center for a Sustainable Coast and Savannah Riverkeeper.


U.S. to defend space with military force
By Bill Gertz | THE WASHINGTON TIMES | Full article, click here.
December 14, 2006

The United States will use military force in space to protect satellites and other space systems from attack by hostile states or terrorists, the Bush administration's senior arms-control official said yesterday.
Robert Joseph, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said in a speech outlining a new White House space policy that free access to space is a "vital" U.S. interest and that the Bush administration opposes new agreements that would limit U.S. space defenses.


A Missile Defense System Is Taking Shape in Alaska
By WILLIAM YARDLEY | December 10, 2006
New York Times | Full article, click here.

Four years after President Bush ordered a limited missile defense system to be built and nearly a quarter century after Ronald Reagan first proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, this sub-Arctic outpost, once a cold war training site and still a cold-weather training site, is where progress on the long-embattled missile system is perhaps most evident, military officials say.

...Even as questions persist about capability, the missile defense program is pushing forward at a cost of at least $9 billion a year. About a third of that goes to the kind of operation that is based at Fort Greely, called Ground-Based Midcourse Defense, which is intended to shoot down enemy missiles while they travel through space. Vandenberg Air Force Base in California also houses two interceptors, but military experts say Fort Greely is better situated to interrupt the likely flight path of a missile from Asia or the Middle East.


No more new nukes, please
By Travis Sharp |Topeka Capital- Journal | Full article, click here.

The Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC), a group of senior officials from the Pentagon and the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, has announced that it is moving forward with the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, a proposal that aims to build the next generation of U.S. nuclear weapons.

The council didn't even seem to notice that one of its major justifications for the RRW program-a fear that the plutonium "pits" that trigger nuclear weapons were becoming unstable-was completely rejected two days earlier by JASON, a prestigious scientific advisory group. On November 29, JASON released a report stating that the pits remain dependable for at least 100 years. The previous estimate of pit life expectancy was only 45 years, and the oldest pit in the current U.S. nuclear stockpile is 30 years old.

If we have 70 years until plutonium warheads become undependable, why are we in such a hurry to build new ones? After all, the current stockpile is based on 50 years of research with more than 1,000 underground nuclear tests and is regularly deemed "safe and reliable" by nuclear experts.


23 National Religious Organizations Oppose Plan to Build New Nuclear Weapons Plant
Full document, click here.

Twenty-three national religious organizations will file a formal public comment Thursday opposing Bush administration plans to spend over $150 billion in taxpayer funds to update the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and build a new nuclear bomb plant that is unneeded and unwise, the Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers) announced today. “While we come from separate religious traditions, we speak with one voice to say that we oppose the construction of a new nuclear weapons complex,” declares a coalition of national Catholic, Jewish, Orthodox Christian, and Protestant groups.

“The U.S. cannot call on other nations to stop the production of new nuclear weapons while American scientists are spending billions to develop a new generation of deadly nuclear bombs,” declare the religious groups in a written comment submitted to the Energy Department at a public hearing in Washington, DC.


Panel Seeks Consensus On U.S. Nuclear Arsenal
By Walter Pincus | Washington Post | December 16, 2006 | Full article, click here. 

A prestigious Defense Department advisory panel has determined there is no national agreement on what the nation needs in the way of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War period.

In a recently released declassified version of a report on U.S. nuclear capabilities completed earlier this year, the Defense Science Board reported that its task force on the subject concluded "there is a need for a national consensus on the nature and role of nuclear weapons, as well as a new approach to sustaining a reliable, safe,