Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow CP&L nuclear waste expansion

Statement of NC WARN

Durham, North Carolina, Dec. 21-- In a curious move, even by nuclear industry standards, the staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) today overruled its own Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) by granting approval to a controversial high-level waste expansion by Carolina Power & Light (CP&L). The ruling allows CP&L to begin using two additional cooling pools at the Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant as soon as it can complete construction and other preparations. Orange County indicated that it would appeal to the full NRC commission to seek a suspension of the approval.

NRC’s move astounded observers because the ASLB is ordinarily considered the approval arm of the federal agency, and has allowed a legal challenge by Orange County to proceed based on concerns about increased risks of severe nuclear accidents. Following a December 7 legal session in Raleigh, the ASLB is currently considering whether to allow safety hearings and an environmental impact study, which the county argues are required by federal law. The NRC staff ignored that legal process in granting the license amendment today.

“CP&L stomped its foot, pounded on the table -- and got exactly what it wanted,” said NC WARN director Jim Warren. NC WARN charged last Monday that CP&L’s attorney threatened the ASLB judges on December 7 by warning repeatedly that Congress is looking over their shoulders. “The NRC has again gone the extra mile to protect its industry allies -- this time by subverting the actions of its own licensing board!”

Critics across the nation have long complained that the NRC and the rules it follows are heavily rigged in the industry’s favor.

NC WARN added that CP&L was getting more desperate because it had wanted to begin the project more than a year ago and is running very low on space in the two existing pools at Harris.

Orange County Commission Chair Steve Halkiotis said, “I’m very disappointed but not surprised because of the NRC’s past track record and connection to the industry.” He added that Orange County had previously approved an appeal to the full NRC board in the event of an adverse decision by the ASLB.

Diane Curran, an attorney representing Orange County, said, “It’s outrageous that the NRC did this when an environmental contention is pending before the ASLB. By issuing an approval before the case is resolved, they’re thumbing their nose at the county and at the process which is supposed to ensure the protection of the public.” She said the NRC ruling could prejudice the ASLB’s decision regarding the environmental study, because federal doctrine would allow CP&L to claim that, since it’s now spending money to complete the pools, it should be allowed to continue.

The NRC’s own advisory board recently warned of serious uncertainties regarding storage of the highly irradiated nuclear rods in cooling pools. Experts for Orange County argue that CP&L’s plan would substantially increase the risk of a major waste accident. Dr. Gordon Thompson estimates a 1 in 2,000 chance over 30 years, of one class of waste pool accident. Union of Concerned Scientists recently learned that loss of waste pool cooling at two nuclear plants in the US went undetected for 48 hours, with temperatures rising to damaging levels.

Warren added, “This would be entirely unbelievable if we weren’t dealing with the NRC. One branch of the agency considering the technical aspects of the expansion, and another branch of pro-industry hacks leap-frogging over the ASLB to do exactly what CP&L wants.”

Source: NC WARN: nc-warn@pobox.com

Locks changed in midnight raid at Pacifica’s station WBAI in New York

WBAI supporters rallied outside of the stations'
offices in New York City.

New York, New York, Dec. 23-- The Pacifica National Board is raising the heat in its attempts to corporatize WBAI “Free Speech” radio (99.5 FM), control the radical political content of the programs, and eviscerate any semblance of “home rule.”

Bessie Walsh, Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation, was reportedly assisted by Utrice Leid in changing the locks at the station last night at midnight.Valerie Van Isler, the Station Manager, was arbitrarily fired by the National Board as of December 31, and this morning Bernard White, the Program Director and host of the popular “Morning Show” was fired along with Sharan Louise Harper. Bernard reports that he received a letter at 7am Saturday morning stating that if he showed up at the station he would be arrested.

Last year, a prolonged battle at Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley was followed by reporter Dennis Bernstein’s being dragged off the air and out of the station by a goon squad hired by the National Board with listener contributions.

Many reporters for Pacifica National News have been on strike for a year, now, following the firing of National News Director Dan Coughlin, who dared to air controversial news reports. The fight to remove Couglin was spearheaded by anti-Mumia journalist Marc Cooper. Over the last few months, Amy Goodman’s award-winning “Democracy Now” show has been facing censorship and attempts to control its political content.

In recent weeks, programmers and listeners have been working together in targeting National Board members such as John Murdock, an attorney with the union-busting law firm Epstein-Becker-Green. Two large demonstrations outside their offices on Park Avenue in Manhattan demanded Murdock’s resignation.

While Murdock sits on the Pacifica National Board, his law firm (Epstein-Becker) was hired by Bessie Walsh to represent the Board in the three pending lawsuits against them. Walsh appointed him without discussion or formal approval by the governing board, and Murdock was placed as head of the governance committee, and put in charge of rewriting the bylaws to cement into place the self-coup that has occurred on the national level. Also on Murdock’s list of “achievements” is his current attempt to place on the Pacifica National Board Francesco Rocciolo, Vice President at Citibank for International, European, Middle Eastern and African Private Banking.

This is the direction Bessie Walsh and the National Board are taking, following in the footsteps of Pacifica Board members involved in the takeover of the Berkeley station.

While there have been many problems with the way station manager Valerie Van Isler has run the station for Pacifica, WBAI supporters maintain that it is up to them to deal with them, not what they call a pro-banker national board. WBAI supporters say that their struggle is about self-determination, the right of the listeners and producers to run our own corporate-free station, to have the kind of programming local listeners want, and to structure the station democratically.

This latest move is part of a long pattern of top-down tactics by Pacifica to seize control of all five stations of the network, and strip them of much of their radical content. Most recently, the attack had come in the form of concerted harassment against Amy Goodman, including months of Pacifica management’s strong challenges to the specific ideological content of Democracy Now’s programs (and before that, the content of the Pacifica National News under Dan Coughlin’s directorship) — about Mumia Abu Jamal, police brutality, Lori Berenson in Peru, etc. That’s the type of hard-hitting programming that’s at risk with the National Board takeover.

In Berkeley, California, last year, Pacifica attempted a similar effort to replace local control of another station (KPFA) with control by the National Board. That effort resulted in a major backlash — involving countless demonstrations (one of them drawing 10,000 people), acts of civil disobedience, petitions, phone and letter campaigns, lawsuits, press conferences and many other tactics that finally won back local control of the station.

Source: Micro Radio Network: microradio@lists.tao.ca

Harlem march for Mumia

By Steve Bloom

New York, New York, Dec. 9-- More than a thousand people participated in a march and rally in Harlem, New York City, today demanding a new trial for US political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and his release from prison.

December 9 is the 19th anniversary of the shooting, in Philadelphia, PA, of police officer Daniel Faulkner — the act for which former Black Panther Abu-Jamal was convicted and sentenced to death. The date is a traditional one for the Mumia movement and is usually marked by demonstrations in Philadelphia. This year two factors dictated the change to New York: 1) Plans for a major demonstration on the following day, December 10, in support of Leonard Peltier and 2) the difficulty in arranging a large indoor meeting space in Philadelphia. International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal (ICFFMAJ, tha main national defense committee) reports that due to political pressures in that city they were having difficulty arranging for an adequate venue.

As a result ICFFMAJ teamed up with the New York Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition plus community activists in Harlem to commemorate this year’s anniversary. The main part of the program was organized teach-in style, to help activists become more familiar with the legal issues, the facts of the case, and the social context in which the trial took place. Talks by knowledgable individuals such as Leonard Weinglass (Mumia’s lead attorney), Rosemari Mealy (of WBAI radio in New York and a former member with Mumia of the Philadelphia Black Panther Party), Sam Jordan (previously of Amnesty International (AI) and now on the staff of Congresswoman Maxine Waters), and Safiya Bukhari (a former political prisoner and cochair of the NY Free Mumia Coalition) were interspersed with film clips of the 1997 international tribunal on Mumia’s case, a ballistics expert, one of the witnesses in the original trial (Veronica Jones), and even former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo.

Weinglass spoke of the strength Mumia exhibits as he enters his 20th year of incarceration under the most inhuman conditions. In Pennsylvania, he noted, death-row inmates are held in a state of of sensory depravation. They are not allowed to touch another human being, not even their wives and children. There is always a thick glass kept between them and their visitors. Pennsylvania authorities claim that these conditions are necessary, but even in Texas, the state with the largest population on death row, condemed prisoners are allowed to embrace their families. There have been three executions in Pennsylvania which took place because the condemned asked their attorneys to stop all appeals when they could no longer cope with the conditions under which they were being forced to exist.

Jordan spoke about the independent investigation which AI undertook on Mumia’s case. The conclusion reached: His trial represented “a violation of minimal standards” of justice in a capital case. “The interests of justice would be served by granting a new trial to Mumia Abu-Jamal.”

Another feature of the rally was the appearance of an international delegation, which included Julia Wright, daughter of the author Richard Wright and head of ICFFMAJ in France; the mayor of Bobiny, France; Mereille Mendes-France, the daughter of Franz Fanon; and Roland Biozah, chair of the People of Color Caucus of the British Labor Party.

One new development in Mumia’s case revolves around four Amicus Curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs which were filed with Federal District Court Judge William Yohn, in whose hands Mumia’s appeal now rests. The groups which filed these briefs were the NAACP, the ACLU, 22 members of the British Parliament, and the Chicana/Chicano Studies Foundation. Each contended that any decision reached in relation to Mumia’s request for a new trial had broader social implications which affect them or their constituencies. The Judge should, therefore, consider a series of additional legal issues not raised directly in Mumia’s petition to the court.

However, in a move that surprised many Judge Yohn said he would not read or consider them, asserting that they did not contribute anything new of substance and that to do so would merely delay the appeals process. Two of the groups have now filed a petition with the Federal Court of Appeals, asking that Judge Yohn be directed to take their legal arguments into account. As a result the proceedings in Yohn’s court cannot move forward until a decision on this matter is reached. It is Yohn’s refusal to read the briefs that has most directly resulted in the present delay. (The texts of these Amicus briefs are available online. Go to www.freemumia.com, the website of the New York Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition.)

It was more than a year ago, on October 15, 1999 that Mumia’s attorneys filed his appeal for a new trial with the Federal District Court. The next legal steps will take place when Yohn sets a date for an initial court hearing in the case. At that hearing he will listen to oral arguments from attorneys on both sides. Mumia will be present in the court and plans are underway to mobilize his supporters to be both inside and outside the courtroom. Most likely the date for this hearing will not be known until a week to ten days before it takes place.

One of the key issues which Judge Yohn must decide is whether he will allow new evidence to be introduced into the record as part of the appeals process. He is not legally required to do so, but may at his discretion. If he prefers he could simply decide to review written transcripts of state proceedings.

Mumia is requesting an evidentiary hearing because there is so much crucial testimony that was excluded from the written record by trial Judge Albert Sabo (who also presided over Mumia’s initial appeal). Judge Yohn’s courtroom is the last place where this evidence can be introduced, and if he says “no” to a hearing none of it will be introduced. Later federal appeals to higher courts will be based strictly on the written transcripts, and that’s why Yohn’s decision on this matter is so crucial. It is no exaggeration, then, to say that the fate of Mumia Abu-Jamal may well depend on the public outcry that is raised in the time before Yohn makes this determination.

Supporters are being urged to continue organizing political activities around the case. Demonstrations are planned for the Presidential Inauguration in Washington, DC on January 20. A major national activists conference is planned, also in Washington (with a companion conference on the west coast) for February 24, where the next steps in Mumia’s defense will be projected.

In a related development, one of the leaders of the national campaign around Mumia, Clark Kissinger, was sentenced to 90 days in jail by a Federal Judge in Pennsylvania. The jail term stems from a probationary sentence handed down to Kissinger as a result of the sit-in for Mumia at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia on July 3, 1998. Most of the activists arrested that day pled guilty and paid a fine. Kissinger and a handful of others pled not-guilty and demanded a trial. As a result, after they were found guilty, they were given extremely punitive conditions of probation, which included being forbidden to leave their home jurisdiction (New York in Kissinger’s case) without permission. Kissinger defied this provision by travelling to Philadelphia to give a speech during demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. At a hearing on December 6 Federal Judge Arnold C. Rapoport ordered him to serve the time in jail, after which the restrictive terms of his original probation will be reinstated. Kissinger is appealing the ruling, on the grounds that the original probation was illegal and a violation of his constitutional rights.

Financial contributions to Mumia’s political and legal defense are urgently needed. Make checks out to “International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal” (“ICFFMAJ”is OK.) On the memo line indicate whether the contribution is for “legal expenses” or “organizing.” Mail to: ICFFMAJ, P.O. Box 19709, Philadelphia, PA 19143.

Source: Against the Current: www.igc.apc.org/solidarity/indexATC.html