2/26/00
- Russian memoir says U.S. soldiers were imprisoned
in former Soviet Union
2/25/00
- Clinton announces funding boost for American
Indian programs
2/20/00
- New England forests may vanish
2/17
- U.S. Muslims ask publisher to pull children's
novel
- Texas utility threatens to shut down
power plant in Dominican Republic
2/6
- Good housing in short supply on Indian lands
2/4
- Unemployment in U.S. reaches 30-year low
Copyright © 2000 Nando Media
Copyright © 2000 Associated Press
By ROBERT BURNS
WASHINGTON (February 26, 2000 1:06 p.m. EST
http://www.nandotimes.com) - Pentagon investigators
say they have obtained the memoir of a Russian
emigre and former prisoner who claims that dozens
of American servicemen from World War II and the
Korean War were detained in Siberian labor camps
in the former Soviet Union.
The assertions, while not confirmed, appear to
support, and in some important respects
strengthen, a case the Pentagon has been building
for several years: U.S. servicemen in the 1940s and
1950s were silently swallowed up in the U.S.S.R.'s
brutal Gulag system of forced labor, never to be
heard from again.
"There has to be something to this," said Norman
Kass, who helped translate the unpublished
personal memoir from Russian and interviewed the
author on behalf of the Pentagon agency in charge
of prisoner of war and missing personnel affairs.
Kass said in an interview that the information fits a
pattern of anecdotal reports received during the
1990s that American servicemen were seen in
remote labor camps.
He is executive secretary of a U.S.-Russian
commission that has pursued the matter since
former President Boris Yeltsin disclosed in 1992 that
Soviet forces had taken a dozen U.S. airmen
captive in the 1950s after shooting down their
planes. The commission meets periodically, and its
staff has done extensive research and interviewed
Russian veterans.
The Kremlin has backtracked on Yeltsin's statement
and challenged U.S. officials to find proof. Armed
with the Russian emigre's memoir, the Pentagon
hopes to persuade the Russians to provide access
to archives at numerous former Siberian labor
camps where U.S. servicemen were said to have
been held.
"We're not expecting an easy time," Kass said.
When Kass disclosed the memoir's existence at a
meeting of the U.S.-Russian commission last
November, the Russians were skeptical but agreed
to study it, a U.S. summary of the proceedings
said.
The memoir is exceptional because it provides
names of individual servicemen.
For example, it identifies by name 22 men said to
have been held in late 1951 at the Kirovskij mining
camp near the Kamenka River in the sub-Arctic pine
forests of the Krasnoyarsk region. The memoir's
author cites secondhand accounts of area
residents seeing the prisoners, "wearing bare
threads and half-frozen," being led from the
Kirovskij camp along a road to an undetermined
destination - "a dead-end."
A witness described as the daughter of the
manager of a nearby town told the author that on
Christmas Day 1951 she saw "frostbitten prisoners
being led and driven like cattle by the NKVD," the
former Soviet internal security agency. "They did
not speak Russian. They only said `American,
American,' and `eat, eat.' They wanted food," the
author quoted the woman as recounting to him.
Kass said that although the events described by
the author have not been independently verified,
he believes the man is credible. Kass said the man's
identity and his present country of residence are
being kept secret for his protection, but there is no
question that he spent many years in the Gulag
network of forced labor camps. The man, now in his
late 70s, was exiled to Siberia and worked as a
permafrost engineer in the early 1950s near the
Kirovskij mining camp where the 22 Americans were
said to have been held.
The 22 names were provided by a woman who the
author said worked in the Kirovskij camp during the
winter of 1951-52. The author said she had the
men write their names on scraps of newspaper with
pieces of a pencil she sneaked into the camp's
toilets, then put the paper in a jar and buried it.
In the translation from Russian, only one of the 22
names can be matched with a missing American
servicemen. He is listed in Army casualty records as
Chan Jay Park Kim, a Hawaiian of Korean descent.
Kim was a private first class in the 24th Infantry
Division's 34th Infantry Regiment, captured by
North Korean forces on July 8, 1950. On that day,
the 34th Infantry collapsed in its defense of the
town of Ch'onan south of Seoul, giving the
advancing North Korean army entry to most of the
rest of southern Korea.
According to Pentagon records, fellow members of
the 34th Infantry who survived captivity in Korea
told Army debriefers that once he became a POW,
Kim tried to mask his ethnic background by using
the name George Leon. It is that name which
appears among the 22 on the list from the Soviet
labor camp.
Army casualty records list Kim as having died in
Korea in January 1951, but his body was not
recovered.
The author of the memoir says that he saw only
one American in the Gulag. That was in January
1953 at a camp called Rybak far above the Arctic
Circle, and a prisoner described as a demolition
expert appeared at a mining operation where the
author was dispatched to handle a technical
problem.
"He also openly identified himself as a citizen of the
United States of America, Allied Officer Dale," the
author wrote. He said he was not allowed to talk to
the man.
Another section of the memoir describes the fate of
10 members of a 12-man crew of a U.S. Air Force
B-29 reconnaissance plane, which was shot down
by Soviet forces over the Sea of Japan on June 13,
1952.
American search and rescue teams recovered no
remains from the plane, and in July 1956 the U.S.
government appealed to Moscow for information
about the crew. The State Department note said
an officer believed to have been a member of the
crew was seen in October 1953 in a Soviet hospital
north of the Siberian port of Magadan. The Soviets
replied that no American servicemen were on
Soviet territory.
The Russian emigre said that in the 1980s he was
told by an associate with extensive experience in
the far eastern reaches of Siberia that he had
learned the names of two of the captured B-29
fliers: "Bush and Moore."
The B-29's commander was Maj. Samuel Busch. A
crew member was Master Sgt. David L. Moore.
The memoir indicates that Busch and Moore were
killed - possibly beaten to death - in the Siberian
city of Khabarovsk, apparently a short time after
their capture. Eight surviving crew members were
put in solitary confinement in a prison in Svobodnyi,
a city northwest of Khabarovsk near the Chinese
border, it said.
Charlotte Busch Mitnik, a sister of Samuel Busch,
said in an interview that the memoir "reinforces
what I believe" happened to him and jibes with
unconfirmed rumors her family heard shortly after
her brother's capture.
Copyright © 2000 Nando Media
Copyright © 2000 Associated Press
By MATT KELLEY
WASHINGTON (February 25, 2000 3:42 p.m. EST
http://www.nandotimes.com) - President Clinton was
joined by American Indian tribal leaders at the
White House on Friday to announce his plan to
pump $1.2 billion more into federal Indian programs.
"There is no better time than now," he said.
"While some of today's tribes have found success in
our new economy, far too many have been caught
in the cycle of poverty and unemployment," said
Clinton, flanked by a dozen tribal leaders. "Too
many have suffered from government's failure to
invest proper resources in education, infrastructure
and health care."
Clinton's 2001 budget proposal would increase
overall spending on Indian programs by more than
12 percent to $9.4 billion. It would devote more
money to building and repairing reservation schools
and roads, enhancing law enforcement and
improving health care for the country's 2.4 million
American Indians.
Tribal leaders who met with Clinton said they
support the proposal as a good first step toward
reversing declines in safety and opportunity for
members of the 558 tribes in the United States.
"It's the first time in history that we've gotten such
(proposed) large increases in some areas," said
Kelsey Begaye, president of the Navajo Nation, the
country's largest tribe.
"It means a lot. Not just the math, but the meaning
and the policy behind it," said Brian Wallace,
chairman of the Washoe tribe of Nevada and
California.
Clinton cited a host of statistics that outline the
problems Indians face: one-third live in poverty,
they are twice as likely as other Americans to be
victims of violent crime, reservation unemployment
rates can reach as high as 70 percent.
"These facts are discouraging but clearly not
irreversible," Clinton said.
The tribal leaders said they would lobby Congress
to back the Clinton budget proposal.
"It's going to take a lot of action from Indian
Country to make sure the pressure's on," said
Susan Masten, chairwoman of California's Yurok
tribe and president of the National Congress of
American Indians.
By BBC News Online's Damian
Carrington in Washington DC
New England's forests, famous for
their glorious autumn displays, may
virtually disappear in the next century
as a result of climate change.
Steven McNulty, from
the US Department of
Agriculture Forest
Service, made the
forecast whilst revealing
some of the conclusions of the US
National Assessment on the impact
of climate change.
This was set up in 1997 and involves
dozens of working parties and
thousands of scientists and
interested parties. It will present its
draft report on all the impacts of
climate change in April and the report
will then be passed to the US
President.
Mr McNulty said 90% of the aspen,
maple and cedars would be driven
north by rising temperatures.
"It is actually already happening as
shown by the maple syrup industry
moving out of Vermont and into
Canada," he said.
Incoming species
The trees will be replaced by
hardwoods from the south, such as
oaks. But there could be barren areas
for a time, warned Mr McNulty. This
would occur if the incoming settlers
colonised more slowly than the dying
species disappeared.
However, Mr McNulty said: "Total US
national forest productivity over the
next century will significantly
increase," due to increases in
atmospheric carbon dioxide.
But ironically, this could lead to the
eventual deforestation of the
southern US, which currently provides
50% of the country's timber.
The reason, said Mr McNulty, was
that in next the 30 years productivity
may well rise in the south, again due
to increased CO2. But by the end of
that period, as temperatures rise and
the climate dries out, dense, dry
forests will be at much higher risk of
sweeping fires.
"We expect an increase in the area of
forest fire-burnt of 25 to 50% - the
south could even end up largely as
grassland savannah."
Snow systems
Another significant change in the US
forests is likely to be the complete
loss of the alpine forests in the
western US mountains. Rising
temperatures will drive them up the
slopes until they can survive no
longer.
According to Peter Gleick, from the
Pacific Institute for Studies in
Development, Environment and
Security, these mountain forest
changes will also be accompanied by
"very significant changes in the
hydrology of snow systems".
From the Sierra Nevada to the
Rockies, there will be more rain and
less snow and the snow season will
start later and end earlier, he said.
He added that this was already
happening in some basins.
"We are likely to get the worst of all
worlds - wet winters and dry
summers," Peter Gleick said.
Nando 2/17
U.S. Muslims ask publisher
to
pull children's novel
Copyright © 2000 Nando Media
Copyright © 2000 Associated Press
By ANJETTA McQUEEN
WASHINGTON (February 16, 2000 9:56 a.m. EST
http://www.nandotimes.com) - Abdul Wahab Alkebsi was
angered by "The Terrorist," a novel his 12-year-old
daughter brought home from school.
When he read the book written for middle schoolers
that describes an American student's attempt to
avenge her young brother's murder at the hands of
a Muslim girl, he became angry. Now an Islamic
advocacy group has demanded Scholastic Inc. stop
distributing the book, maintaining it contains
inaccurate, offensive and stereotypical references
to Muslims.
In the book, Laura, an American student at a
private school in London, seeks to avenge her
11-year-old brother's murder by 15-year-old
Jehran, a Muslim girl who is trying to escape from a
forced marriage to a 54-year-old man with three
other wives. She had sought the American boy's
U.S. passport as a means of escape.
"You get really skeptical when you see a title like
that," said Alkebsi, who oversees international
affairs for the Islamic Institute, a Washington think
tank.
Alkebsi of Potomac, Md., said the book was
extremely stressful for his seventh-grade daughter,
Zainab.
"It hurt my feelings and I was upset and scared
what people will think after reading about these
stereotypes," said the seventh-grader, who read
the book based on a reading list provided by her
teacher at the Earle B. Wood Middle School, in
suburban Rockville, Md.
The Montgomery County, Md., Public Schools did
not return calls seeking comment Tuesday.
Her father sent a copy of the book to the Council
on American-Islamic Relations, which argues the
novel gives children an unfair picture of Muslim
culture, particularly marriage customs. And the
group said it contains inaccurate, offensive and
stereotypical references to Muslims.
The group asked the book's publisher, Scholastic
Inc. - a company known for many successful books
for young people such as the highly acclaimed "The
Magic School Bus" - to stop distributing the
198-page novel, which was first released in 1997.
It is aimed at children 12 and older.
Judy Corman, senior vice president of the New
York-based publishing company, defended the
novel as an award-winning "work of fiction" and
said the publisher would not stop distribution to
schools around the country.
She said the book by Caroline B. Cooney, who has
written more than 60 novels for Scholastic, does
not stereotype Muslims and that they knew of only
one complaint - the one from the Washington
group.
"We do not believe in censorship," Corman said.
"We believe a parent has the right to say what
their children read. We do not believe that one
parent has the right to tell other people what to
read."
Corman said objections have been raised about a
variety of children's books from them and other
publishers, ranging from the popular "Harry Potter"
series about a boy who is learning to become a
wizard to the science fiction book "The Adventures
of Captain Underpants."
The Council on American-Islamic Relations on
Tuesday issued a statement urging Muslim parents
to monitor their children's reading lists and suggest
alternative titles.
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the
American-Islamic council said the group was
concerned because the book is intended as a
teaching aid. "What we have here is a situation
where impressionable students are assigned this
book," he said, adding that the group is not asking
book stores to remove the novel from shelves.
Corman could not immediately say how many of the
books have been distributed or how many schools
have placed it on reading lists.
Schools have a special responsibility to address
group stereotypes, said Helen Samhan, executive
vice president of the Arab American Institute, an
educational foundation based in Washington.
"The way Muslims are portrayed in schools can in a
sense undo some of these stereotypes that are so
prevalent in our popular culture," said Samhan, who
has helped write educational texts about Muslim
and Christian Arabs.
Nando 2/17
Texas utility threatens
to shut
down power plant in Dominican
Republic
Copyright © 2000 Nando Media
Copyright © 2000 Associated Press
By SUSANNAH A. NESMITH
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (February 17,
2000 7:32 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) -
Following weeks of power shortages that have
caused blackouts lasting up to eight hours a day,
the largest power generating company in the
Dominican Republic warned the government it could
shut down its plant.
Officials with the Houston-based Smith and Enron
said Thursday they would act if the government
does not pay its $29 million debt in nine days.
The state electricity superintendent, Marcus
Cochon, said the government would be able to pay
only a little more than a third of the $102 million
that it owes to Smith and Enron and another seven
companies.
"At this time, the government has only been able to
identify $40 million, but that's definite," Cochon
said. "That's about 3 percent of our annual national
budget. They have to understand that we can't
pay more than that in six months."
But Smith and Enron's executive director, Kevin
Manning, said he wrote to government officials
earlier this week advising them that the company
could shut down the plant for nonpayment.
"I hope next week to be back into negotiations with
the government to find a solution to this problem
without the need to suspend service in the plant,"
Manning said. "There's no way we want to take the
plant off-line."
Government officials said they are doing the best
they can to come up with the money. The
government paid $13 million this week and plans to
pay another $3 million next Wednesday.
Those that can afford it in Dominican Republic,
including large hotels and companies operating in a
duty-free zone, have built their own power plants
and never use the national grid, or have generators
running during power cuts.
2/6/00
Good housing in short supply
on
Indian lands
Copyright © 2000 Nando Media
Copyright © 2000 Associated Press
Census statistics
By MICHELLE RUSHLO
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (February 6, 2000 3:49 p.m.
EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - Wanda Segina and
her four young children moved to the capital of the
nation's largest American Indian nation and
promptly made one home improvement: They dug
an outhouse.
The family has no electricity, no running water and
no sewer. They cook over an open fire and bathe in
water hauled in by relatives. And though the trailer
the family shares has three bedrooms, they sleep in
one, huddling together in the cold winter nights.
"It's a living hell," said Segina, whose children
attend the local elementary school. "It's a disaster
for me as a mom."
Segina's living conditions are shared by thousands
on the 4.8 million-acre Navajo Nation, which
sprawls across portions of Arizona, New Mexico and
Utah, and throughout America's Indian
reservations, where housing is in desperately short
supply and often substandard.
The National American Indian Housing Council
estimates U.S. reservations need 200,000 houses
to alleviate overcrowding and replace inadequate
dwellings.
More than half of the Navajo Nation's 56,372 homes
lack complete plumbing and a large percentage still
use wood as the primary heating source, according
to 1990 census figures.
"The country is moving so rapidly, we're losing the
chance to catch up," said Navajo community
development director Benjamin Jones.
What keeps many American Indians from being able
to buy or live in adequate homes is a head-spinning
host of problems: high unemployment, few willing
lenders, almost no private land and bureaucratic
red tape.
Even basic knowledge about establishing good
credit and applying for mortgages can trip up many
would-be buyers, said Ernest Goatson, director of
the Navajo Housing Service Department.
"The (federal) housing program is more of a subsidy
program than a home-ownership program," he said.
"They see a house more as a giveaway."
Tradition can also prove a major obstacle to
modern housing, Jones said.
Navajos have historically lived far apart, with the
rugged northern Arizona hills separating their corn
crops and sheep from their neighbors. Their hogans
- round dwellings built from native trees - were
constructed by individual families.
"The way they saw their homes was spiritual, more
of a cathedral, not property," Jones said. Building a
home, he said, was a measure of manhood.
For Navajos like Segina, for whom traditional
dwellings are less important, money is an
insurmountable obstacle. Like Segina, roughly half
of the Navajo Nation's 151,105 residents are
unemployed.
The single mother's only sources of income are
child support and the odd auto-repair job, making it
almost impossible for her to raise the $6,000 it
would cost to connect her to the closest power
line and the $8,000 it would cost for a water
connection.
Instead, her children Maxine, Keevin, Marita and
Thurman do their homework by the daylight that
seeps through the living room window or by a
Coleman lantern at night. They drink canned milk
and eat canned meat.
Even Navajos with steady jobs face obstacles to
home ownership. Jones holds a position in Navajo
government roughly equivalent to a Cabinet post,
yet he lives in government housing he calls a
"stall."
"I'd be happy to buy a place if there was a place to
buy, but there's not," he said.
Indian reservations are generally made up of trust
land controlled by the federal government or family
allotments, which can have dozens or even
hundreds of owners. Such allotments create so
much red tape and uncertainty for lending
institutions that conventional mortgages are rarely
granted.
Between 1992 and 1996, just 90 conventional loans
were made in Indian country, and half of those
came from a tribally owned bank, said Christopher
Boesen, executive director of the National American
Indian Housing Council in Washington.
Reservations sorely lack private financing because
many lenders don't see reservations as viable home
loan markets, he said, forcing many Indians to live
in substandard housing.
"This is the land America has forgotten," said Scott
Bray, who works with the Navajo community
development division but is not a tribal member.
"America has forgotten about these people."
Copyright (C) 2000 Nando Media
Copyright (C) 2000 Associated Press
From Time to Time: Nando's in-depth look at the 20th century
By JEANNINE AVERSA
WASHINGTON (February 4, 2000 3:22 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com)
- America's historic economic
expansion propelled the unemployment rate to a 30-year low of 4 percent
in January. For many workers,
it means the best labor market they have seen since taking their first
job.
Trying to keep pace with the roaring economy, employers added a whopping
387,000 jobs to their
payrolls last month, the largest leap since September 1997, the Labor
Department reported Friday.
Usually January isn't a big month for hiring, but the better-than-normal
weather early in the month gave a
big boost to employment, particularly in construction and other fields
that tend to flourish when the
weather is good, economists said.
The dip in January's unemployment rate - down from December's 4.1 percent
- was the lowest jobless
rate since January 1970 when it stood at 3.9 percent.
"This is a very positive labor market for U.S. workers, particularly
those left behind by previous
expansions," said Jared Bernstein, an economist with the Economic Policy
Institute, a group funded in
part by labor. "It's delivering broad-based gains throughout the work
force. ... It's lifting the rowboats, not
just the yachts."
The unemployment rate for Hispanics fell to an all-time monthly low
of 5.6 percent in January, while the
rate for blacks rose to 8.2 percent, up from 7.9 percent the month
before.
On Tuesday, the economy entered 107 months of uninterrupted economic
growth, the longest expansion
in U.S. history, beating the old mark of 106 months set during the
1960s.
"Today's strong employment numbers confirm once and for all that this
is the longest economic
expansion in our history," President Clinton told reporters at the
White House. "The milestone is a credit
to the American people, to their hard work."
The Federal Reserve boosted interest rates Wednesday by a quarter of
a percentage point - the fourth
increase since June - to help ensure the expansion stays on track.
The Fed raised rates to slow the
red-hot economy and keep inflation under control.
Many analysts, citing continuing strong economic growth, expect additional
rate increases this year and
said Friday's report justifies such a move at the Fed's next meeting
in March.
"The economy still has plenty of momentum and more Fed tightening is
coming down the pike," said
Merrill Lynch's chief economist, Bruce Steinberg.
Wall Street, which has been volatile in recent sessions, offered a mixed
reaction to the report. The Dow
Jones was down about 6 points in midafternoon trading and the Nasdaq
was up over 55 points. Bond
prices slid as the yield on the bellwether 30-year Treasury rose to
6.21 percent from 6.13 percent late
Thursday.
January's big burst in hiring was helped by a huge and usual 116,000
new construction jobs - the biggest
gain in nearly 16 years - aided by mild weather. Heavy construction,
concrete, masonry and roofing
trades posted the largest increases.
Given that, some economists didn't believe the bigger-than-expected
387,000 total new jobs created in
January was a worrisome sign that the economy may be on the brink of
overheating. They expect the
next report to show jobs growth moderating.
Meanwhile, average hourly earnings, a key gauge of inflation pressures,
rose 0.4 percent to $13.50 in
January, the fastest pace since September. But some economists didn't
find the uptick troubling. In
December, wages grew by 0.3 percent.
"The 0.4 percent increase is not excessive," said Gary Thayer, chief
economist for A.G. Edwards &
Sons Inc. "Workers are seeing wage gains above inflation which stretches
their income. But wage gains
are not so high as to force companies to raise their prices."
While strong wage and job growth are good for workers, economists are
always looking for signs that the
combination could trigger inflation, fearing that employers trying
to attract scarce workers will lure them
with higher wages and benefits - increased costs that could drive up
consumer prices.
Jobs gains were so widespread that even manufacturing, which lost 248,000
jobs last year, added
13,000 jobs in January. The largest increases came from electrical
equipment and auto production.
Manufacturers are recovering from the effects of a global financial
crisis that struck in 1997, depressing
overseas' demand for U.S. goods.
The service sector, the driving force of job creation in the United
States, added 256,000 jobs in January
with landscaping firms, clothing stores and car dealerships all showing
gains.
Business services added 152,000 jobs, while 35,000 government jobs were
added, reflecting in part the
hiring of 11,000 federal census workers.