APF Reporter Vol. 15 #2

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	When Post-Cold War Worlds Collide: Chemical Weapons Destruction Meets Environmental Politics James Borg Richmond, KY-Across gently rolling grassland just east of Clark-Moores Middle School, the Lexington-Blue Grass Army Depot sprawls in sad tribute to a national security agenda that is no longer relevant.
	Tending the Dragon’s Fire: Shall We Bake, Steam or Baste Our Obsolete Chemical Weapons? James Borg From the air over the whitecaps of the central Pacific, Johnston Atoll looks like an aircraft carrier scuttled in a green lagoon. Two miles long and a half-mile wide, the concrete-and-coral island stands about six feet above sea level. Its dominant feature, an airfield, takes up nearly the entire length. Thirty years ago, this sparse and isolated speck provided the launching pad for America’s last atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. One high-altitude explosion lit up the night sky in Honolulu, 825 miles to the northeast.
	Bill Brock’s Global Visions Steven J. Dryden McDonnell Douglas, a $17 billion-a-year enterprise, was in trouble. True, it was the nation’s largest military contractor, making jet fighters, attack helicopters, and gigantic transport aircraft like the C-17. But with the Cold War winding down, the U.S. military budget was sure to be cut, reducing government purchases from McDonnell Douglas. In addition, the company’s management was in chaos, and inefficiency seemed to rule the factory floor.
Our Phone Records Were Seized By Margaret Engel and Joseph P Albright The letter from C&P Telephone looked like junk mail. A computer-generated label didn’t have room to fit our whole name, so someone wrote “ion” after “Alicia Patterson Foundat.” Inside was a form letter, ending “very truly yours” and signed by no one, containing the stunning news that four months earlier, without notification, C&P turned over the telephone records of our journalism foundation to the federal government.
	Loan Scams Michael Hudson Some days it seems like the phone at Annie Ruth Bennett’s house in southwest Atlanta won’t ever stop ringing. The callers want to sell her storm windows, debt–consolidation loans, burial plots. Her attorney says it’s all a scheme: They want to steal a piece of her home by getting her to take out a loan against its value.
	Standing Our Ground Dorothea Jackson There is a flat room-size rock that sticks out into a pool in Big Santeetlah Creek, which borders Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest in Graham County, N.C. The place is called Rattler’s Ford, a name that more likely came down from a Cherokee family that lived here than from a snake.
	Vigilante Economics: How Wall Street Shattered Tokyo and London gave Frankfurt Woe Gregory Millman In September 1992, the vision of united European nations sharing something like a common currency was swept away like a mirage by international currency traders who forced Britain’s withdrawal from the European exchange rate mechanism (ERM). With the economy of Britain already in recession, Prime Minister Major’s often-repeated commitment to British membership in the ERM meant sacrificing more jobs, more homes, more people on the altar of monetary stability. Currency speculators bet that the sacrifice would be too great to sustain. They won and won big.
	PROJECT RACHEL: Regretting Abortions Alissa Rubin “A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children…because they were no more.” Jeremiah, Chapter 31, Verse 15.
	How the Soviets Destroyed a Sea in Thirty Years James Rupert Muynak, Uzbekistan - In this frightened town, life has always meant fishing. Men’s faces are leathered by lifetimes on the Aral Sea; their arms thickened by the weight of countless nets hauled from the waters. The women’s hands are scarred from millions of the slices and chops that remove heads and fins from wet, rough fish at the cannery. In Muynak, there are boats and docks. There are anchors and chains. But there is no sea.