ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.

Kashmir Libre!

ETS!,

The situation with Pakistan and India would be best served in the short run if Kashmir were given independence. Unfortunately the U.N. and others have fallen for the trap of offering the Kashmiri peoples only the choice between the two states. If they were free and independant Kashmir would then act as a buffer and remove the biggest stumbling block to peace. Long term, however, hinges on our government getting out of the nuclear business and encouraging others to do so.

Those prospects look bleak, however, as the masses of Americans continue to be sheparded by big business and the American dream myth. However, as the class split grows, the day of reckoning will draw near. Hopefully without a nuclear sunset. Bless the Mother.

--Russell Marciniak-Bisesi, via e-mail

But Surprisingly Affordable

Dear Gang,

Enjoyed the article on nuclear abolition, but as an engineer I'd like to amplify a few points.

Production of nuclear material requires more technological wizardry than most human endeavors, and more monetary investment, too. Uranium, like gold and other heavy metals, requires quite a lot of effort to find and extract. Plus, it's dangerous, so materials-handling costs add considerably to the total.

Production of nuclear fissionable materials takes the trouble and expense to the next level. Separating Uranium-235 from the chemically-identical U-238 requires sophisticated and unique equipment. Any country which admits to possessing this equipment admits to a nuclear program. For those enamored of Plutonium bombs (or "Plutonium triggers", as we used to say downwind from Rocky Flats, Colorado), breeder reactors cost even more yet in terms of cash and talent. And then there's H-bombs, costlier still.

The tremendous expense and sheer scientific acumen required make possession of even this 50-year-old technology quite a hurdle for any country. (In the late 1960s, Britian's Labour Government seriously considered scrapping their whole nuclear program, citing cost and uselessness. Luckily, stupidity prevailed, and Britons now have waste of their very own.) Even for the richest country ever, the costs, cited in the article, prove (or should, anyway) prohibitive.

While this may explain the success of nuclear technology containment thus far, it also makes yet another argument for nuclear abolition. (Not as if we actually need another, of course.) We cannot "put the djinni back in the bottle," but we can stop paying for his stay outside.

(Just as an aside, nuclear materials do have some legitimate uses, such as in medicine. Those uses cost far less than weapons production, of course.)

Time to Split,

Tensor, Seattle

Watching the Dogs

ETS!,

While you're looking at the Seattle Weekly's media Watchdogs (John Hamer and Marianna Parks), why not check out their claim that they don't receive contributions from Tom Stewart any more? Their rent in Services Group of America's West Seattle building is subsidized--a fact they failed to include in their disclosure in a recent Seattle Weekly piece--but they have never specified a dollar amount of the subsidy. And given Stewart's track record, it wouldn't surprise me if Hamer and Parks get contributions from Stewart through a surrogate such as the Washington Institute for Policy Studies (which is just down the hall from the Watchdogs' office; until a few months ago, Hamer was a Vice President there).

Let me express the nature of this relationship mathematically: Services Group of America = SGA CEO Thomas Stewart = Washington Institute for Policy Studies = WIPS chairman John Carlson = Washington State GOP = Slade Gorton = Counterpoint. Hamer and Parks are trying to pull themselves out of the equation, pretending to be independent "journalists," but I don't buy it.

Not only should the "Watchdogs" reveal the amount of subsidies they are getting from all of their donors (direct and indirect, including in-kind donations such as office space and computers), they should release a complete list of all their corporate "clients." How much you wanna bet there's a lot of overlap between their clients and Slade Gorton's contributors (e.g., the timber industry)? How much you wanna bet that Hamer and Parks never single out any of their clients in their media criticism (e.g., they have never commented on the absence of stories about outrageous government handouts to timber companies used to subsdize construction of environmentally damaging logging roads)?

All of this is highly ironic given the Watchdogs' penchant for criticizing media types for failures to disclose conflicts of interest--real *and* perceived. Hypocrites!

--Name withheld, Seattle

Wastes Grate, Mess Killing

ETS!,

There is a medical waste burning incinerator located at the VA Hospital at the south end of Jefferson Park on Beacon Hill. The incinerator burns over a hundred tons of medical waste and regular garbage each year. Groups such as Physicians for Social Responsibility, Seattle Healthcare without Harm, Council on Environmental Justice, and the North Beacon Hill Council have come out strongly in favor of closing this facility immediately since it endangers the lives of those living near the incinerator.

Since Beacon Hill has one of the highest populations of children per capita the immediate closing of this facility is crucial. Please contact the VA Public Information Officer, Jeri Rowe, at 206-764-2435 or jeri.rowe@med.va.gov to protest the burning of medical waste in a residential neighborhood. Hospitals all over the country stopped this practice years ago and it's time right now to stop it in our community. Contacting your city, state, and federal representatives would also make sense if you care about the health of those who live and work on Beacon Hill and other areas.

There is also a webpage devoted to this issue with contact numbers for the organizations listed above at http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/commnty/beacon/VAincinerator.htm. If you would like to join a group that is forming to close the VA Incinerator, please contact me at woza1@aol.com or 206-722-2256. The VA Incinerator needs to be shut down. The time is now!

P.S. For more information on the VA Incinerator and who is working on this issue, please visit our website at: http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/commnty/beacon/VAincinerator.htm

--Albert Kaufman, Seattle

Recommended Reading

ETS!,

These web sites are a great example of how our tax dollars are helping to educate the children of America. You might find them amusing. If not, please don't hit me (I don't write these pages, I just spread the word).

Is spying fun? You bet! The CIA Kids' Page: http://www.odci.gov/cia/ciakids/.

Learn the answer to the immortal question "Do kids get sentenced to death row?", and maybe gain a deeper understanding of schoolyard shooters. The "Tennessee Department of Correction Kid's Fun Zone": http://www.state.tn.us/correction/kidsfaq.html.

Phil Kos, via e-mail

Help For John

ETS!,

It is rather ironic--but--if medical marijuana were legal in this state right now, it would really benefit school superintendent John Stanford in his chemothereapy treatments! Yes on I-692!

Barbara Tomlinson, Seattle