via Truthout.org:
Kansas Fight on Evolution Escalates
By Jodi Wilgoren
The New York Times
Friday 28 October 2005
Two leading science organizations have denied the Kansas Board of Education permission to use their copyrighted materials as part of the state's proposed new science standards because of the standards' critical approach to evolution.
The rebuke from the two groups, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association, comes less than two weeks before the board's expected adoption of the controversial new standards, which will serve as a template for statewide tests and thus have great influence on what is taught.
Kansas is one of a number of states and school districts where the teaching of evolution has lately come under assault. If adopted, its change in standards will be among the most aggressive challenges in the nation to biology's bedrock theory.
The copyright denial could delay adoption as the standards are rewritten but is unlikely to derail the board's conservative majority in its mission to require that challenges to Darwin's theories be taught in the state's classrooms.
In a joint statement yesterday, Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy, and Michael J. Padilla, president of the teachers' group, said: "Kansas students will not be well prepared for the rigors of higher education or the demands of an increasingly complex and technologically driven world if their science education is based on these standards. Instead, they will put the students of Kansas at a competitive disadvantage as they take their place in the world."
In the statement and in letters to the state board, the groups opposed the standards because they would single out evolution as a controversial theory and change the definition of science itself so that it is not restricted to the study of natural phenomena. A third organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, echoed those concerns in a news release supporting the copyright denial, saying, "Students are ill served by any effort in science classrooms to blur the distinction between science and other ways of knowing, including those concerned with the supernatural."
Though the complaints of the National Academy and the teachers' group focus on just a handful of references to evolution, their copyrighted material appears on almost all 100 pages of the standards, which are an overview of science subjects taught in kindergarten through high school. In Kansas, as in most states, local school districts decide on curriculums and choose textbooks, but the state standards guide those decisions.
"In some cases it's just a phrase, but in some cases it's extensive," Steve Case, the chairman of the board's standards-writing committee, said of the differences required by the copyright denial. "You try to keep the idea but change the wording around; the writing becomes horrifically bad."
Dr. Case, a research professor at the University of Kansas who opposes the proposed standards, said removing the copyrighted material could take several months. But Steve Abrams, the board's president and leader of its 6-to-4 conservative majority, said it could approve the standards on Nov. 8 as planned, with a caveat directing a copyright lawyer to edit out direct references to the groups' materials.
"The impact is minimal - it won't change the concepts," said Dr. Abrams, a veterinarian. "They obviously don't have copyrights on concepts."
The copyright skirmish is not a surprise: the two science groups took similar steps in 1999, when the Kansas board stripped the standards of virtually any reference to evolution, a move that was reversed when conservative members were ousted from office. (Critics of evolutionary theory regained a majority last year.)
ue Gamble, a board member who opposes the changes, acknowledged that the science groups' dissent would do little to halt the standards' adoption but said it could lead to a backlash.
"Nothing is going to stop these six members from doing what they're going to do," she said of the board's conservative majority, four of whom are up for re-election in 2006. "It won't make any difference, but I think it will make a difference next year in the election."
Wrap...
Friday, October 28, 2005
Bush hurts our military...deeply...
A military blogger in Iraq....
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Our Walk Through Life
What is the human condition? Here in Iraq we fight terrorists and insurgents. We give them names (haji, towel head, rag head) to peel away their humanity. We focus only on the horrible things that have happened so that we can bring ourselves to kill, but in doing so we too become changed.
No longer do we fit in when we get home. We become outsiders and misfits amongst our own families and distance ourselves as others too distance themselves from us.
Alone, it becomes easier with time to be that way. You can't let others know the things you have done because they would never understand and it would only serve to make us even more alone.
We must build as well; we become so proficient at building that we could be engineers. Walls are our specialty, so we build them thick and high around ourselves. These walls shut out all the pain and hurt we feel when others can't seem to understand why we are the way we are, or when they judge and condemn us as if they were God Himself. The walls don't just keep those things out, but they serve to keep so much in as well. All of it, the guilt, the pain, and the fears we have can be kept deep inside where nobody will have to see them except ourselves.
That is ok though, because from there we can learn one last and important skill, that of the beast tamer. Like a monster everything we keep inside locked away can take on a mind of its own creating even more pain. Some of us fall apart at this point, hitting the ground so hard that we decide we can not get up and so it ends.
The rest of us learn tricks to keep that beast inside so that nobody will ever have to see how much of a monster we have become. In doing so we can continue our walk through life. That is the soldier's cost of war, and it is ours to bear alone until the end.
Wrap...
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Our Walk Through Life
What is the human condition? Here in Iraq we fight terrorists and insurgents. We give them names (haji, towel head, rag head) to peel away their humanity. We focus only on the horrible things that have happened so that we can bring ourselves to kill, but in doing so we too become changed.
No longer do we fit in when we get home. We become outsiders and misfits amongst our own families and distance ourselves as others too distance themselves from us.
Alone, it becomes easier with time to be that way. You can't let others know the things you have done because they would never understand and it would only serve to make us even more alone.
We must build as well; we become so proficient at building that we could be engineers. Walls are our specialty, so we build them thick and high around ourselves. These walls shut out all the pain and hurt we feel when others can't seem to understand why we are the way we are, or when they judge and condemn us as if they were God Himself. The walls don't just keep those things out, but they serve to keep so much in as well. All of it, the guilt, the pain, and the fears we have can be kept deep inside where nobody will have to see them except ourselves.
That is ok though, because from there we can learn one last and important skill, that of the beast tamer. Like a monster everything we keep inside locked away can take on a mind of its own creating even more pain. Some of us fall apart at this point, hitting the ground so hard that we decide we can not get up and so it ends.
The rest of us learn tricks to keep that beast inside so that nobody will ever have to see how much of a monster we have become. In doing so we can continue our walk through life. That is the soldier's cost of war, and it is ours to bear alone until the end.
Wrap...
Now for Bush's War Crimes...
And because BushCo was so intent on going to war in Iraq, we also have this disgrace:
The Former Head of Abu Ghraib, Admits She Broke the Geneva Conventions :
Says the Blame "Goes All the Way to The Top"
By Democracy Now!
We all knew it was contrary to the Geneva Conventions. And we were told that this - these instructions were being given by Secretary Rumsfeld. Says Israeli working as an interrogator at the secret intelligence center in Baghdad.
Continued - Real Audio and Transcript: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10786.htm
Wrap...
The Former Head of Abu Ghraib, Admits She Broke the Geneva Conventions :
Says the Blame "Goes All the Way to The Top"
By Democracy Now!
We all knew it was contrary to the Geneva Conventions. And we were told that this - these instructions were being given by Secretary Rumsfeld. Says Israeli working as an interrogator at the secret intelligence center in Baghdad.
Continued - Real Audio and Transcript: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10786.htm
Wrap...
Kill that book!!!
From American Progress:
HEALTH CARE -- PhRMA COMES UP WITH A NEW SCARE TACTIC:
For years, PhRMA has lobbied Congress to deny Americans access to discounted prescription drugs from Canada "by warning that terrorists might poison the imports." These efforts weren't enough for PhRMA, which came up with a new idea to scare Americans away from Canada: a fictional thriller novel about "a group of shadowy terrorists conspires to murder thousands of Americans by poisoning the medicine they're importing from Canada to beat U.S. drug prices."
A PhRMA marketing executive then became "intimately involved" in monitoring the book's progress, much to the frustration of the publishing company. "She demanded that the terrorists be militant Muslims but that their motivation be greed, not politics. She insisted on lots of 'frilly female stuff...Harlequin Romance stuff,'" said Kenin Spivak, who helped write the book.
But in July, PhRMA suddenly informed the writers that the company "didn't like the book and was pulling out. [Spivak said] the group offered them $100,000 if they would agree never to speak ill of PhRMA or the drug industry for the rest of their lives. They refused."
Check your bookstores for "The Karasik Conspiracy," which will be out in December.
Wrap...
HEALTH CARE -- PhRMA COMES UP WITH A NEW SCARE TACTIC:
For years, PhRMA has lobbied Congress to deny Americans access to discounted prescription drugs from Canada "by warning that terrorists might poison the imports." These efforts weren't enough for PhRMA, which came up with a new idea to scare Americans away from Canada: a fictional thriller novel about "a group of shadowy terrorists conspires to murder thousands of Americans by poisoning the medicine they're importing from Canada to beat U.S. drug prices."
A PhRMA marketing executive then became "intimately involved" in monitoring the book's progress, much to the frustration of the publishing company. "She demanded that the terrorists be militant Muslims but that their motivation be greed, not politics. She insisted on lots of 'frilly female stuff...Harlequin Romance stuff,'" said Kenin Spivak, who helped write the book.
But in July, PhRMA suddenly informed the writers that the company "didn't like the book and was pulling out. [Spivak said] the group offered them $100,000 if they would agree never to speak ill of PhRMA or the drug industry for the rest of their lives. They refused."
Check your bookstores for "The Karasik Conspiracy," which will be out in December.
Wrap...
BushCo wants torture, insists on torture...
Degrading our soldiers and ourselves
Anne-Marie Slaughter
International Herald Tribune
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2005
America, be beautiful
O beautiful for pilgrim feet Whose stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!
That is the second verse of "America the Beautiful." Perhaps it should become the first. In a week in which the vice president is openly trying to convince a U.S. senator held captive and tortured by the North Vietnamese that CIA officials should be allowed to abuse detainees as they like, it is worth remembering that the rule of law is not just a "value," much less a luxury confined to more peaceful times.
It is both the fundamental safeguard of our liberty and a discipline linked, as the verse says, to our very soul as a nation.
This issue has largely been fought over in legal terms. Within the government, the trouble started with an opinion issued by the Office of Legal Counsel saying that existing federal law prohibiting torture did not apply to the president in wartime, because it unconstitutionally infringed on his powers as commander in chief.
The president himself declared that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees in the war on terror. And now the report of a military investigation by Lieutenant General Mark Schmidt and Brigadier General John Furlow says that the U.S. Army Field Manual allows virtually all the treatment of detainees that so horrified the nation and the world when we saw the actual pictures. Lynndie England's escapade leading a naked prisoner on a leash is specifically authorized.
And far worse has actually happened. Assault, water-boarding, threats to kill family members, even death.
Some of this treatment amounts to torture; some is "simply" cruel, abusive and degrading treatment. Both categories are prohibited by international law, and, as our soldiers have always believed, by U.S. law.
But, say the government lawyers, apparently not. Instead of consulting their training or their consciences, soldiers are to parse the fine print of a Field Manual, or at least its most recent interpretation.
The law is the safeguard of liberty, but only as long as it is not twisted beyond all recognition. After all, tyrants have their lawyers just as democracies do. Our founders looked to law as constraint, not as license; as a check on power, not authorization. The difference is a matter of honor, of values, of identity itself.
Understanding and embracing law as a check on our worst instincts, as individuals and as a nation, has a deeper purpose, a moral purpose.
When we ask our soldiers, many still in their teens, to degrade and abuse their fellow human beings, we are degrading them. We are removing the very moral constraints that they take pride in as patriots and that they have learned to live by as part of what it means not just to be a soldier, but to be a U.S. soldier.
That is what Senator John McCain means when he explains, as he did on the floor of the Senate several weeks ago, that when he was held captive in Hanoi, he and his fellow prisoners of war "knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or countenancing such mistreatment of them."
He was echoing none other than George Washington, who watched with his officers as British soldiers massacred Americans who had surrendered in New York. Later, when those same officers stood over British captives, the general told them to treat the captives "with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren."
"Confirm thy soul in self-control."
The soul of America as a nation depends not on the letter of the law, but on the deeper self-discipline to accept law and live by it as a statement of who we are and who we aspire to be.
Yet under President George W. Bush, who would describe himself as a deeply moral man, who indeed divides the world into good and evil, law has become a prop for power. Unless we as a nation, led by the Senate and by our retired military officers and young captains and cadets, rise up and insist on the constraints of law, America will no longer be so beautiful.
(Anne-Marie Slaughter is dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.)
Wrap...
Anne-Marie Slaughter
International Herald Tribune
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2005
America, be beautiful
O beautiful for pilgrim feet Whose stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!
That is the second verse of "America the Beautiful." Perhaps it should become the first. In a week in which the vice president is openly trying to convince a U.S. senator held captive and tortured by the North Vietnamese that CIA officials should be allowed to abuse detainees as they like, it is worth remembering that the rule of law is not just a "value," much less a luxury confined to more peaceful times.
It is both the fundamental safeguard of our liberty and a discipline linked, as the verse says, to our very soul as a nation.
This issue has largely been fought over in legal terms. Within the government, the trouble started with an opinion issued by the Office of Legal Counsel saying that existing federal law prohibiting torture did not apply to the president in wartime, because it unconstitutionally infringed on his powers as commander in chief.
The president himself declared that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees in the war on terror. And now the report of a military investigation by Lieutenant General Mark Schmidt and Brigadier General John Furlow says that the U.S. Army Field Manual allows virtually all the treatment of detainees that so horrified the nation and the world when we saw the actual pictures. Lynndie England's escapade leading a naked prisoner on a leash is specifically authorized.
And far worse has actually happened. Assault, water-boarding, threats to kill family members, even death.
Some of this treatment amounts to torture; some is "simply" cruel, abusive and degrading treatment. Both categories are prohibited by international law, and, as our soldiers have always believed, by U.S. law.
But, say the government lawyers, apparently not. Instead of consulting their training or their consciences, soldiers are to parse the fine print of a Field Manual, or at least its most recent interpretation.
The law is the safeguard of liberty, but only as long as it is not twisted beyond all recognition. After all, tyrants have their lawyers just as democracies do. Our founders looked to law as constraint, not as license; as a check on power, not authorization. The difference is a matter of honor, of values, of identity itself.
Understanding and embracing law as a check on our worst instincts, as individuals and as a nation, has a deeper purpose, a moral purpose.
When we ask our soldiers, many still in their teens, to degrade and abuse their fellow human beings, we are degrading them. We are removing the very moral constraints that they take pride in as patriots and that they have learned to live by as part of what it means not just to be a soldier, but to be a U.S. soldier.
That is what Senator John McCain means when he explains, as he did on the floor of the Senate several weeks ago, that when he was held captive in Hanoi, he and his fellow prisoners of war "knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or countenancing such mistreatment of them."
He was echoing none other than George Washington, who watched with his officers as British soldiers massacred Americans who had surrendered in New York. Later, when those same officers stood over British captives, the general told them to treat the captives "with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren."
"Confirm thy soul in self-control."
The soul of America as a nation depends not on the letter of the law, but on the deeper self-discipline to accept law and live by it as a statement of who we are and who we aspire to be.
Yet under President George W. Bush, who would describe himself as a deeply moral man, who indeed divides the world into good and evil, law has become a prop for power. Unless we as a nation, led by the Senate and by our retired military officers and young captains and cadets, rise up and insist on the constraints of law, America will no longer be so beautiful.
(Anne-Marie Slaughter is dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.)
Wrap...
Thursday, October 27, 2005
US firms kickback to Iraq in scams..
From ABC News:
U.N.: 2,200 Cos. Gave Iraq Illicit Funds
Last Updated:10-27-05 at 3:32PM
Investigators of the U.N. oil-for-food program issued a final report Thursday that accused more than 2,200 U.S. and foreign companies, and prominent politicians, of colluding with Saddam Hussein's regime to bilk the operation of $1.8 billion.
The 623-page document was a scathing indictment that exposed the global scope of a scam that allegedly involved such name-brand companies as DaimlerChrysler and Siemens AG, as well as a former French U.N. ambassador, a firebrand British politician and the president of Italy's Lombardi region.
It meticulously detailed how the $64 billion program became a cash cow for Saddam and more than half the companies participating in oil-for-food _ at the expense of regular Iraqis suffering under tough U.N. sanctions. It blamed shoddy U.N. management and the world's most powerful nations for allowing the corruption to go on for years.
"The corruption of the program by Saddam would not nearly have been so pervasive if there had been diligent management by the United Nations and its agencies," said Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman who led the investigation.Volcker and many nations said the report underscored the urgent need to reform the United Nations. Earlier reports in his investigation have already led to criminal inquiries and indictments in the United States, France, and Switzerland.The investigators found that companies and individuals from 66 countries paid illegal kickbacks using a variety of methods, and those paying illegal oil surcharges came from, or were registered in, 40 countries.
Most of the contracts went to Russian and French companies and individuals, who were rewarded for their governments' outspoken opposition to the sanctions. But the report found that even firms in countries supportive of the sanctions, such as the United States, found ways to manipulate the system illegally _ sometimes by using Russian firms as middlemen.
While most of the names of those individuals and companies were known, the extensive involvement of U.S. firms will be embarrassing to the United States government, which has been a leading critic of corruption in oil-for-food. The oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996-2003, allowed Iraq to sell limited and then unlimited quantities of oil provided most of the money went to buy humanitarian goods. It was launched to help ordinary Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
But Saddam, who could choose the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of humanitarian goods, corrupted the program by awarding contracts to _ and getting kickbacks from _ favored buyers. Volcker's $38 million investigation, which ran for about a year and a half, had earlier faulted U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, his deputy, Canada's Louise Frechette, and the Security Council for tolerating corruption and doing little to stop Saddam's manipulations.
The final report released Thursday detailed just how companies bilked the program. There were two main ways they did it: through surcharges paid for humanitarian contracts for spare parts, trucks, medical equipment and other supplies; and kickbacks for oil contracts. Most of the illicit income _ more than $1.5 billion _ came from the humanitarian contracts.
Among the companies that paid illegal surcharges were South Korea's Daewoo International and three subsidiaries of Siemens AG of Germany, as well as the Brussels, Belgium-based Volvo Construction Equipment.
On the oil side, contractors listed included Texas-based Bayoil and Coastal Corp., Russian oil giant Gazprom, and Lukoil Asia Pacific, a subsidiary of the Russian company Lukoil. The founder and former chairman of Coastal, Texas oil tycoon Oscar Wyatt, pleaded not guilty Thursday in New York to charges that he conspired to pay several million dollars in illegal kickbacks to Saddam's regime to win contracts through the program. U.S. District Judge Denny Chin set a June 20 trial date for the 81-year-old Wyatt, who was arrested last week. Volcker's report referred to Wyatt as a "longtime and loyal oil customer of Iraq," the lone exception to an Iraqi ban on selling oil to American companies.
Among the individuals targeted in the report, investigators found that Jean-Bernard Merrimee, France's former U.N. ambassador, received $165,725 in commissions from oil allocations awarded to him by the Iraqi regime. He is now under investigation in France. Merrimee "began receiving oil allocations that would ultimately total approximately 6 million barrels from the government of Iraq," the report said. He has denied wrongdoing.
Other so-called "political beneficiaries" included British lawmaker George Galloway; Roberto Formigoni, the president of the Lombardi region in Italy; and the Rev. Jean-Marie Benjamin, a priest who once worked as an assistant to the Vatican secretary of state and became an activist for lifting Iraqi sanctions.
Formigoni, in a statement, said he received "neither a drop of oil, nor a single cent." Galloway also denied the allegations, saying "I've never had a penny through oil deals and no one has produced a shred of evidence that I have." Benjamin has also denied any personal benefit from the program.Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who heads Russia's Liberal Democratic Party, and Alexander Voloshin, who at the time was chief of staff in the administration of Russia's president, were also named. Both have denied wrongdoing.
The report strongly criticizes the U.N. Secretariat and Security Council for failing to monitor the program and allowing the emergence of front companies and international trading concerns prepared to make illegal payments.
In a letter to Annan, the committee said its task had been to find mismanagement and evidence of corruption, and "unhappily, both were found and have been documented in great detail." The letter said responsibility should start with the U.N. Security Council, which is dominated by its five permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. "It was, as one past member of the council put it, a compact with the devil, and the devil had means of manipulating the program to his ends."
The United States said the report again showed the need for urgent reform of the United Nations. "I do think it does highlight that there are certain management practices within the U.N. that need reform," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "We're going to continue to urge and push for management reform at the United Nations.
In the report, Volcker's team gave several examples of just how companies and Saddam went about manipulating the program. German car manufacturer DaimlerChrysler's dealings were emblematic on a small scale. According to Volcker's team, DaimlerChrysler had oil-for-food contracts worth about $5.2 million to sell Iraq spare parts and vehicles. The contracts were paid out of a U.N. bank account funded by Iraqi oil sales, also administered by the U.N. One of those contracts was to sell Iraq's Oil Ministry a Mercedes armored van worth about $70,000. As a sweetener, a DaimlerChrysler agent signed a secret deal to give Iraq a $7,000 kickback _ 10 percent of the van's value. When the final contract for the van was submitted for U.N. approval, the price of the truck was inflated to include that amount. That meant that the U.N. fund ended up paying DaimlerChrysler for the kickback. DaimlerChrysler said it was aware of the report but declined to comment because of an ongoing investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department.
Wrap...
U.N.: 2,200 Cos. Gave Iraq Illicit Funds
Last Updated:10-27-05 at 3:32PM
Investigators of the U.N. oil-for-food program issued a final report Thursday that accused more than 2,200 U.S. and foreign companies, and prominent politicians, of colluding with Saddam Hussein's regime to bilk the operation of $1.8 billion.
The 623-page document was a scathing indictment that exposed the global scope of a scam that allegedly involved such name-brand companies as DaimlerChrysler and Siemens AG, as well as a former French U.N. ambassador, a firebrand British politician and the president of Italy's Lombardi region.
It meticulously detailed how the $64 billion program became a cash cow for Saddam and more than half the companies participating in oil-for-food _ at the expense of regular Iraqis suffering under tough U.N. sanctions. It blamed shoddy U.N. management and the world's most powerful nations for allowing the corruption to go on for years.
"The corruption of the program by Saddam would not nearly have been so pervasive if there had been diligent management by the United Nations and its agencies," said Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman who led the investigation.Volcker and many nations said the report underscored the urgent need to reform the United Nations. Earlier reports in his investigation have already led to criminal inquiries and indictments in the United States, France, and Switzerland.The investigators found that companies and individuals from 66 countries paid illegal kickbacks using a variety of methods, and those paying illegal oil surcharges came from, or were registered in, 40 countries.
Most of the contracts went to Russian and French companies and individuals, who were rewarded for their governments' outspoken opposition to the sanctions. But the report found that even firms in countries supportive of the sanctions, such as the United States, found ways to manipulate the system illegally _ sometimes by using Russian firms as middlemen.
While most of the names of those individuals and companies were known, the extensive involvement of U.S. firms will be embarrassing to the United States government, which has been a leading critic of corruption in oil-for-food. The oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996-2003, allowed Iraq to sell limited and then unlimited quantities of oil provided most of the money went to buy humanitarian goods. It was launched to help ordinary Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
But Saddam, who could choose the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of humanitarian goods, corrupted the program by awarding contracts to _ and getting kickbacks from _ favored buyers. Volcker's $38 million investigation, which ran for about a year and a half, had earlier faulted U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, his deputy, Canada's Louise Frechette, and the Security Council for tolerating corruption and doing little to stop Saddam's manipulations.
The final report released Thursday detailed just how companies bilked the program. There were two main ways they did it: through surcharges paid for humanitarian contracts for spare parts, trucks, medical equipment and other supplies; and kickbacks for oil contracts. Most of the illicit income _ more than $1.5 billion _ came from the humanitarian contracts.
Among the companies that paid illegal surcharges were South Korea's Daewoo International and three subsidiaries of Siemens AG of Germany, as well as the Brussels, Belgium-based Volvo Construction Equipment.
On the oil side, contractors listed included Texas-based Bayoil and Coastal Corp., Russian oil giant Gazprom, and Lukoil Asia Pacific, a subsidiary of the Russian company Lukoil. The founder and former chairman of Coastal, Texas oil tycoon Oscar Wyatt, pleaded not guilty Thursday in New York to charges that he conspired to pay several million dollars in illegal kickbacks to Saddam's regime to win contracts through the program. U.S. District Judge Denny Chin set a June 20 trial date for the 81-year-old Wyatt, who was arrested last week. Volcker's report referred to Wyatt as a "longtime and loyal oil customer of Iraq," the lone exception to an Iraqi ban on selling oil to American companies.
Among the individuals targeted in the report, investigators found that Jean-Bernard Merrimee, France's former U.N. ambassador, received $165,725 in commissions from oil allocations awarded to him by the Iraqi regime. He is now under investigation in France. Merrimee "began receiving oil allocations that would ultimately total approximately 6 million barrels from the government of Iraq," the report said. He has denied wrongdoing.
Other so-called "political beneficiaries" included British lawmaker George Galloway; Roberto Formigoni, the president of the Lombardi region in Italy; and the Rev. Jean-Marie Benjamin, a priest who once worked as an assistant to the Vatican secretary of state and became an activist for lifting Iraqi sanctions.
Formigoni, in a statement, said he received "neither a drop of oil, nor a single cent." Galloway also denied the allegations, saying "I've never had a penny through oil deals and no one has produced a shred of evidence that I have." Benjamin has also denied any personal benefit from the program.Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who heads Russia's Liberal Democratic Party, and Alexander Voloshin, who at the time was chief of staff in the administration of Russia's president, were also named. Both have denied wrongdoing.
The report strongly criticizes the U.N. Secretariat and Security Council for failing to monitor the program and allowing the emergence of front companies and international trading concerns prepared to make illegal payments.
In a letter to Annan, the committee said its task had been to find mismanagement and evidence of corruption, and "unhappily, both were found and have been documented in great detail." The letter said responsibility should start with the U.N. Security Council, which is dominated by its five permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. "It was, as one past member of the council put it, a compact with the devil, and the devil had means of manipulating the program to his ends."
The United States said the report again showed the need for urgent reform of the United Nations. "I do think it does highlight that there are certain management practices within the U.N. that need reform," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "We're going to continue to urge and push for management reform at the United Nations.
In the report, Volcker's team gave several examples of just how companies and Saddam went about manipulating the program. German car manufacturer DaimlerChrysler's dealings were emblematic on a small scale. According to Volcker's team, DaimlerChrysler had oil-for-food contracts worth about $5.2 million to sell Iraq spare parts and vehicles. The contracts were paid out of a U.N. bank account funded by Iraqi oil sales, also administered by the U.N. One of those contracts was to sell Iraq's Oil Ministry a Mercedes armored van worth about $70,000. As a sweetener, a DaimlerChrysler agent signed a secret deal to give Iraq a $7,000 kickback _ 10 percent of the van's value. When the final contract for the van was submitted for U.N. approval, the price of the truck was inflated to include that amount. That meant that the U.N. fund ended up paying DaimlerChrysler for the kickback. DaimlerChrysler said it was aware of the report but declined to comment because of an ongoing investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department.
Wrap...
Kudos to the Marriott Hotel folks!!!
The following information was released to the media October 26, 2005.
MARRIOTT AND RITZ-CARLTON AIRLIFT 239 GUESTS OUT OF CANCUN, MEXICO Arrange Special Air Transport for Guests to Atlanta and Mexico City
Marriott International and its subsidiary The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company,LLC, today arranged special air transportation out of Cancun, Mexico for 239 guests who were evacuated from The Ritz-Carlton, JW Marriott and CasaMagnaMarriott hotels.Guests traveled yesterday and today from shelters in Cancun to MeridaInternational Airport, before boarding private charter flights this evening to Mexico City and Atlanta.
Marriott International chartered two Mexicana Airbus 320 airplanes and provided the flights at no charge to the guests.Upon landing in Mexico City and Atlanta, guests will be met by Marriott and Ritz-Carlton staff and be offered overnight accommodations.
Following mandatory evacuation orders from local authorities, guests staying at Cancun Marriott and Ritz-Carlton properties during Hurricane Wilma were evacuated to shelters located further inland. Teams of Marriott andRitz-Carlton personnel took all necessary steps to ensure that guests were as safe and comfortable as possible in these temporary shelters.
As previously announced, The Ritz-Carlton, Cancun, JW Marriott Cancun Resort& Spa, and Casa Magna Marriott Cancun Resort will remain closed until December 31, 2005.
For property updates and hurricane related information visit www.marriott.com <file://www.marriott.com>.(Gordon Lambourne, Senior Vice President, Global Public Relations)
Wrap...
MARRIOTT AND RITZ-CARLTON AIRLIFT 239 GUESTS OUT OF CANCUN, MEXICO Arrange Special Air Transport for Guests to Atlanta and Mexico City
Marriott International and its subsidiary The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company,LLC, today arranged special air transportation out of Cancun, Mexico for 239 guests who were evacuated from The Ritz-Carlton, JW Marriott and CasaMagnaMarriott hotels.Guests traveled yesterday and today from shelters in Cancun to MeridaInternational Airport, before boarding private charter flights this evening to Mexico City and Atlanta.
Marriott International chartered two Mexicana Airbus 320 airplanes and provided the flights at no charge to the guests.Upon landing in Mexico City and Atlanta, guests will be met by Marriott and Ritz-Carlton staff and be offered overnight accommodations.
Following mandatory evacuation orders from local authorities, guests staying at Cancun Marriott and Ritz-Carlton properties during Hurricane Wilma were evacuated to shelters located further inland. Teams of Marriott andRitz-Carlton personnel took all necessary steps to ensure that guests were as safe and comfortable as possible in these temporary shelters.
As previously announced, The Ritz-Carlton, Cancun, JW Marriott Cancun Resort& Spa, and Casa Magna Marriott Cancun Resort will remain closed until December 31, 2005.
For property updates and hurricane related information visit www.marriott.com <file://www.marriott.com>.(Gordon Lambourne, Senior Vice President, Global Public Relations)
Wrap...
Phelps...Candidate for a strait jacket...
Inside The Church Of Hate
Fred Phelps peddles his hate from a church in Kansas. His followers picket the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq - because he says they died defending a "fag country". Should he be free to preach his poison?
View Full Screen
Download Windows Media Player
Wrap...
Fred Phelps peddles his hate from a church in Kansas. His followers picket the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq - because he says they died defending a "fag country". Should he be free to preach his poison?
View Full Screen
Download Windows Media Player
Wrap...
Plame...wheels within wheels...
From a commentor on Paul Begala's post at the TPM Cafe:
I think it's important to realize that the issue at stake is likely to be far more than a "retaliation outing".
Rumor has it that there is a far more serious reason for the Plame outing than "retaliation" - or at least retaliation against Joe Wilson.
The rumor is that Plame's CIA group was closing in on the people who forged the Niger documents - and they were shut down to protect the people we now are fairly sure were the forgers: Michael Ledeen, a couple CIA agents - and possibly all under the orders of Dick Cheney. The result of the shutdown supposedly compromised a hundred CIA undercover agents and interrupted a fairly successful WMD operation that was buying nuclear materials on the black market and thus removing them from that market.
The more serious rumor is that the Russian-Israeli Mafia was incensed at the success of Plame's operation, and using their Israeli connections to the neocons in the Pentagon and White House, got the operation shut down.
And THAT would be major treason against the United States.
And if the LeakGate investigation gets that far, it's "game over" for a lot of people around Bush.
Especially if what Sibel Edmonds, the FBI whistleblower, has said is true: that "senior elected government officials" are involved with Middle Eastern and Central Asian organized crime groups involved in drug and weapons smuggling.
Is it possible that we see here an overlap, not merely with the AIPAC spy scandal, but with the reasons why Edmonds was gagged in the name of "foreign relations" and "national security"?
Stay tuned.
Wrap...
I think it's important to realize that the issue at stake is likely to be far more than a "retaliation outing".
Rumor has it that there is a far more serious reason for the Plame outing than "retaliation" - or at least retaliation against Joe Wilson.
The rumor is that Plame's CIA group was closing in on the people who forged the Niger documents - and they were shut down to protect the people we now are fairly sure were the forgers: Michael Ledeen, a couple CIA agents - and possibly all under the orders of Dick Cheney. The result of the shutdown supposedly compromised a hundred CIA undercover agents and interrupted a fairly successful WMD operation that was buying nuclear materials on the black market and thus removing them from that market.
The more serious rumor is that the Russian-Israeli Mafia was incensed at the success of Plame's operation, and using their Israeli connections to the neocons in the Pentagon and White House, got the operation shut down.
And THAT would be major treason against the United States.
And if the LeakGate investigation gets that far, it's "game over" for a lot of people around Bush.
Especially if what Sibel Edmonds, the FBI whistleblower, has said is true: that "senior elected government officials" are involved with Middle Eastern and Central Asian organized crime groups involved in drug and weapons smuggling.
Is it possible that we see here an overlap, not merely with the AIPAC spy scandal, but with the reasons why Edmonds was gagged in the name of "foreign relations" and "national security"?
Stay tuned.
Wrap...
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Passports with chips...forget privacy...
Passports to get RFID chip implants
By Declan McCullagh, and Anne Broache,
CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News:
October 25, 2005, 12:12 PM PT
All U.S. passports will be implanted with remotely readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced.
Sweeping new State Department regulations issued Tuesday say that passports issued after that time will have tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as "fingerprints or iris scans."
Over the last year, opposition to the idea of implanting RFID chips in passports has grown amidst worries that identity thieves could snatch personal information out of the air simply by aiming a high-powered antenna at a person or a vehicle carrying a passport. Out of the 2,335 comments on the plan that were received by the State Department this year, 98.5 percent were negative. The objections mostly focused on security and privacy concerns.
But the Bush administration chose to go ahead with embedding 64KB chips in future passports, citing a desire to abide by "globally interoperable" standards devised by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency. Other nations, including the United Kingdom and Germany, have announced similar plans.
In regulations published Tuesday, the State Department claims it has addressed privacy concerns. The chipped passports "will not permit 'tracking' of individuals," the department said. "It will only permit governmental authorities to know that an individual has arrived at a port of entry--which governmental authorities already know from presentation of non-electronic passports--with greater assurance that the person who presents the passport is the legitimate holder of the passport."
To address Americans' concerns about ID theft, the Bush administration said the new passports will be outfitted with "antiskimming material" in the front cover to "mitigate" the threat of the information being surreptitiously scanned from afar. It's not clear, though, how well the technique will work against high-powered readers that have been demonstrated to read RFID chips from about 160 feet away.
"The shielding in the passport is a physical device that basically, when the passport cover is closed, it's very difficult to read the chip," a State Department official, who did not wish to be identified by name, said Tuesday. The official was unable to provide details about the material's composition. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which has been working to evaluate the chip's vulnerability to skimming, was unable to provide further information on Tuesday.
Privacy advocates told CNET News.com that the anti-skimming device was a decent start. But if the cover of the passport happens to be open, all bets are off, said Bill Scannell, a privacy advocate who founded the site RFIDkills.com. "They've built little baby radio stations into peoples' passports and covered it with concrete," he said, "but when the little hatch is open, you can still hear the music."
"It's better than nothing," Scannell went on, "but why take this risk?"
In addition, the passports will use "Basic Access Control," a reference to storing a pair of secret cryptographic keys in the chip inside. The concept is simple: The RFID chip disgorges its contents only after a reader successfully authenticates itself as being authorized to receive that information.
Computer scientists, however, have criticized that encryption method as flawed. In a recent paper (PDF here), RSA Laboratories' Ari Juels, and University of California's David Molnar and David Wagner, warned that the design of the encryption keys is insufficiently secure. They said that the use of a "single fixed key" for the lifetime of the e-passport creates a vulnerability.
The Bush administration could face an eventual legal challenge. A letter to the State Department from privacy groups (PDF here) says there is "no statutory authority" for the RFID passport because Congress has not authorized it.
"Our point is, whatever Congress may have meant in giving the State Department authority to issue passports was probably to issue passports that were like the old passports," said Lee Tien, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which co-authored the comments. "But at some point you are doing something that is significantly different, which should probably require some sort of additional congressional authorization. The argument is how broadly does that authority go, and honestly, it's something no one knows."
Wrap...
By Declan McCullagh, and Anne Broache,
CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News:
October 25, 2005, 12:12 PM PT
All U.S. passports will be implanted with remotely readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced.
Sweeping new State Department regulations issued Tuesday say that passports issued after that time will have tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as "fingerprints or iris scans."
Over the last year, opposition to the idea of implanting RFID chips in passports has grown amidst worries that identity thieves could snatch personal information out of the air simply by aiming a high-powered antenna at a person or a vehicle carrying a passport. Out of the 2,335 comments on the plan that were received by the State Department this year, 98.5 percent were negative. The objections mostly focused on security and privacy concerns.
But the Bush administration chose to go ahead with embedding 64KB chips in future passports, citing a desire to abide by "globally interoperable" standards devised by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency. Other nations, including the United Kingdom and Germany, have announced similar plans.
In regulations published Tuesday, the State Department claims it has addressed privacy concerns. The chipped passports "will not permit 'tracking' of individuals," the department said. "It will only permit governmental authorities to know that an individual has arrived at a port of entry--which governmental authorities already know from presentation of non-electronic passports--with greater assurance that the person who presents the passport is the legitimate holder of the passport."
To address Americans' concerns about ID theft, the Bush administration said the new passports will be outfitted with "antiskimming material" in the front cover to "mitigate" the threat of the information being surreptitiously scanned from afar. It's not clear, though, how well the technique will work against high-powered readers that have been demonstrated to read RFID chips from about 160 feet away.
"The shielding in the passport is a physical device that basically, when the passport cover is closed, it's very difficult to read the chip," a State Department official, who did not wish to be identified by name, said Tuesday. The official was unable to provide details about the material's composition. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which has been working to evaluate the chip's vulnerability to skimming, was unable to provide further information on Tuesday.
Privacy advocates told CNET News.com that the anti-skimming device was a decent start. But if the cover of the passport happens to be open, all bets are off, said Bill Scannell, a privacy advocate who founded the site RFIDkills.com. "They've built little baby radio stations into peoples' passports and covered it with concrete," he said, "but when the little hatch is open, you can still hear the music."
"It's better than nothing," Scannell went on, "but why take this risk?"
In addition, the passports will use "Basic Access Control," a reference to storing a pair of secret cryptographic keys in the chip inside. The concept is simple: The RFID chip disgorges its contents only after a reader successfully authenticates itself as being authorized to receive that information.
Computer scientists, however, have criticized that encryption method as flawed. In a recent paper (PDF here), RSA Laboratories' Ari Juels, and University of California's David Molnar and David Wagner, warned that the design of the encryption keys is insufficiently secure. They said that the use of a "single fixed key" for the lifetime of the e-passport creates a vulnerability.
The Bush administration could face an eventual legal challenge. A letter to the State Department from privacy groups (PDF here) says there is "no statutory authority" for the RFID passport because Congress has not authorized it.
"Our point is, whatever Congress may have meant in giving the State Department authority to issue passports was probably to issue passports that were like the old passports," said Lee Tien, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which co-authored the comments. "But at some point you are doing something that is significantly different, which should probably require some sort of additional congressional authorization. The argument is how broadly does that authority go, and honestly, it's something no one knows."
Wrap...
Books, Films, TV...all on the way...
From Publishers Lunch Weekly:
FICTION DEBUT:
Newsweek editor and daughter of financier Pete Peterson, Holly Peterson's THE MANNY, about a young mother struggling to keep up in Park Avenue circles who hires a male nanny, to Susan Kamil at Dial, by Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell Management.
UK rights to Lynne Drew and Maxine Hitchcock, in a pre-empt, by sub-agent Araminta Whitley at Lucas, Alexander, Whitley.
Film rights to Sony, in an outright purchase.
MYSTERY/CRIME:
Jennifer Carrell's INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES, a treasure hunt whose clues are codes and puzzles found in the writings of Shakespeare, to Mitch Hoffman at Dutton, by Noah Lukeman of Lukeman Literary Management (world).
[Note: Literary Agent Lukeman is going strong!]
P.D. Martin's BODY COUNT, the first in a series featuring an FBI profiler with psychic abilities, who's involved in a complex serial killer case, to Margaret Marbury at Mira, by Elaine Koster [world, except Australia (sold to Macmillan), Germany (sold to Rowohlt) and The Netherlands]. Chandler Crawford will be representing the Dutch rights on Elaine Koster's behalf.
SCI-FI/FANTASY:
DEAD WITCH WALKING author Kim Harrison's three new novels, about a sexy supernatural bounty hunter, to Diana Gill of Eos, by Richard Curtis of Richard Curtis Associates.rcurtis@curtisagency.comdiana.gill@harpercollins.com
UK:
Author of Swimmer, Bill Broady's ETERNITY IS TEMPORARY, a darkly comic tale of young love among the old people, to Philip Gwyn Jones at Portobello, in a nice deal, for publication in July 2006, by Annette Green at Annette Green Authors' Agency (world). Dutch rights to Ambo-Anthos, in a pre-empt.philip@portobellobooks.com david@marshallrights.co.uk
FILM:
Kathleen Jacobs' THE FRIDAY NIGHT KNITTING CLUB, to the Christine Peters Company (How Lose A Guy In 10 Days), in a major deal, in a pre-empt at the Frankfurt Book Fair, by Barbara J. Zitwer.bjzitwerag@aol.com
Rights to Frank Zappa's son Ahmet Zappa's children's picture book THE MONSTROUS MEMOIRS OF A MIGHTY MCFEARLESS, in which Minerva McFearless keeps a journal of the monsters she and her brother must defeat when they embark on a mission to save their father from the most diabolical creature in the universe, to Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, sold outright, by Helen Breitwieser at Cornerstone Literary and Jody Hotchkiss at Hotchkiss & Associates.hb@cornerstoneliterary.com
TV:
Newbery Medalist Louis Sachar's HOLES, to Margaret Loesch and Bruce Stein with Dan Angel at The Hatchery in partnership with Walden Media, for development and to be produced by Walden Media and the Walt Disney Company, for the 2006-2007 season.
Leslie Caine's DEATH BY INFERIOR DESIGN, the first in series featuring an interior-designer/sleuth, to Denise DiNovi and Kathy Kloves for ABC/Touchstone Television, by Michael Cendejas of the Lynn Pleshette Agency, for Nancy Yost at Lowenstein-Yost Associates. nancy@bookhaven.com macendejas@lynnpleshetteagency.com
BIOGRAPHY:
Contributor to the Telegraph Nicholas Wapshott's biographical account and analysis of the relationship between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, whose genuine affection for each other strengthened their political alliance and conservatism's future, to Bernadette Malone at Sentinel, by Kathy Robbins at The Robbins Office.Will.Weisser@us.penguingroup.com
BUSINESS/INVESTING/FINANCE:
Former Morgan Stanley insurance analyst Alice Schroder's THE SNOWBALL EFFECT: How Warren Buffet Collected Friends, Wisdom and Wealth, called "a biography of Warren's ideas," based on "thousands of hours" of interviews with Buffett and "access to his files, friends and associates" to distill lessons from one of the most successful investors ever, to Irwyn Applebaum at Bantam Dell, in a major deal, presumably at least for the $7 million being cited as the bid level earlier, for publication in 2008, by David Black at the David Black Literary Agency (NA).BBurg@randomhouse.com
Investment professionals Larry E. Swedroe and Joseph H. Hempen's THE ONLY GUIDE TO A WINNING BOND STRATEGY: The Way Smart Money Preserves Wealth Today, identifying and explaining the characteristics of every kind of fixed income investment, to Truman Talley at St. Martin's, in a very nice deal, by Sam Fleishman at Literary Artists Representatives (NA).LitArtists@aol.com
COOKING:
Graham Harding's A WINE MISCELLANY, factoids about wine, to Aliza Fogelson at Clarkson Potter, in a nice deal, at auction, by Jennifer Unter at RLR Associates, on behalf of Jane Judd (NA).Junter@rlrassociates.net
Chef Efisio Farris's PASSIONE DI SARDINIA: Stories and Recipes from Italy's Timeless Island, an exploration of Sardinia's culinary delights, island history, and landscape, to Christopher Steighner at Rizzoli, in a nice deal by Lisa Ekus of Lisa Ekus Public Relations.Lcecooks@LisaEkus.com
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Boston Globe columnist Thomas Oliphant's THE GANG THAT CAN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT, an examination of competence in conservatism over the last 30 years, including rhetoric versus actual results in health care, environment, fiscal policy, foreign policy, and more, to Thomas Dunne of Thomas Dunne Books, by Deborah Grosvenor at Grosvenor Literary Agency (world).deb@gliterary.com
[Pays to listen when Oliphant talks!]
Pulitzer Prize winners John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein's untitled account of the destruction of New Orleans, from the journalists who wrote a five-part Times-Picayune series "Washing Away" which accurately predicted the damage that ensued from Katrina (including the political ineptitude and urban chaos that followed the storm), a description of the destruction of New Orleans, along with a look at whether further catastrophic storms are in our future, to Geoff Shandler at Little, Brown, by Kris Dahl at ICM.heather.fain@twbg.com
Author of Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast Mike Tidwell's FUTURE WAVE: How Katrina is Coming to Every Coastal Town in America, warning that global warming and rising ocean levels will jeopardize all of our coastal areas in the coming decades, for publication in August 2006, Martin Beiser at Free Press by Jennifer Lyons at Lyons & Pande International (NA).
SCIENCE:
University of Chicago paleontologist Neil Shubin's YOUR INNER FISH: A journey through the 3.5 billion year history of your body, an evolutionary synthesis in the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould of expeditionary paleontology, developmental genetics, and genomics that answers such questions as "what do I look like on the inside and how did I get that way?" to Marty Asher for Knopf, and to Stefan McGrath at Penguin Press in the UK, both in pre-empts, by Katinka Matson at Brockman.
UK:
Arkady Babchenko's A SOLDIER'S WAR IN CHECHNYA, an account of life as an ordinary young soldier in Russia's Chechen wars, tracing a journey from innocence to experience, to Tasja Dorkofikis in her first acquisition for Portobello Books, in a nice deal, for publication in mid-2007, by Natasha Perova at GLAS Agency (world English).
tasja@portobellobooks.com
david@marshallrights.co.uk
perova@glas.msk.su
Wrap...
FICTION DEBUT:
Newsweek editor and daughter of financier Pete Peterson, Holly Peterson's THE MANNY, about a young mother struggling to keep up in Park Avenue circles who hires a male nanny, to Susan Kamil at Dial, by Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell Management.
UK rights to Lynne Drew and Maxine Hitchcock, in a pre-empt, by sub-agent Araminta Whitley at Lucas, Alexander, Whitley.
Film rights to Sony, in an outright purchase.
MYSTERY/CRIME:
Jennifer Carrell's INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES, a treasure hunt whose clues are codes and puzzles found in the writings of Shakespeare, to Mitch Hoffman at Dutton, by Noah Lukeman of Lukeman Literary Management (world).
[Note: Literary Agent Lukeman is going strong!]
P.D. Martin's BODY COUNT, the first in a series featuring an FBI profiler with psychic abilities, who's involved in a complex serial killer case, to Margaret Marbury at Mira, by Elaine Koster [world, except Australia (sold to Macmillan), Germany (sold to Rowohlt) and The Netherlands]. Chandler Crawford will be representing the Dutch rights on Elaine Koster's behalf.
SCI-FI/FANTASY:
DEAD WITCH WALKING author Kim Harrison's three new novels, about a sexy supernatural bounty hunter, to Diana Gill of Eos, by Richard Curtis of Richard Curtis Associates.rcurtis@curtisagency.comdiana.gill@harpercollins.com
UK:
Author of Swimmer, Bill Broady's ETERNITY IS TEMPORARY, a darkly comic tale of young love among the old people, to Philip Gwyn Jones at Portobello, in a nice deal, for publication in July 2006, by Annette Green at Annette Green Authors' Agency (world). Dutch rights to Ambo-Anthos, in a pre-empt.philip@portobellobooks.com david@marshallrights.co.uk
FILM:
Kathleen Jacobs' THE FRIDAY NIGHT KNITTING CLUB, to the Christine Peters Company (How Lose A Guy In 10 Days), in a major deal, in a pre-empt at the Frankfurt Book Fair, by Barbara J. Zitwer.bjzitwerag@aol.com
Rights to Frank Zappa's son Ahmet Zappa's children's picture book THE MONSTROUS MEMOIRS OF A MIGHTY MCFEARLESS, in which Minerva McFearless keeps a journal of the monsters she and her brother must defeat when they embark on a mission to save their father from the most diabolical creature in the universe, to Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, sold outright, by Helen Breitwieser at Cornerstone Literary and Jody Hotchkiss at Hotchkiss & Associates.hb@cornerstoneliterary.com
TV:
Newbery Medalist Louis Sachar's HOLES, to Margaret Loesch and Bruce Stein with Dan Angel at The Hatchery in partnership with Walden Media, for development and to be produced by Walden Media and the Walt Disney Company, for the 2006-2007 season.
Leslie Caine's DEATH BY INFERIOR DESIGN, the first in series featuring an interior-designer/sleuth, to Denise DiNovi and Kathy Kloves for ABC/Touchstone Television, by Michael Cendejas of the Lynn Pleshette Agency, for Nancy Yost at Lowenstein-Yost Associates. nancy@bookhaven.com macendejas@lynnpleshetteagency.com
BIOGRAPHY:
Contributor to the Telegraph Nicholas Wapshott's biographical account and analysis of the relationship between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, whose genuine affection for each other strengthened their political alliance and conservatism's future, to Bernadette Malone at Sentinel, by Kathy Robbins at The Robbins Office.Will.Weisser@us.penguingroup.com
BUSINESS/INVESTING/FINANCE:
Former Morgan Stanley insurance analyst Alice Schroder's THE SNOWBALL EFFECT: How Warren Buffet Collected Friends, Wisdom and Wealth, called "a biography of Warren's ideas," based on "thousands of hours" of interviews with Buffett and "access to his files, friends and associates" to distill lessons from one of the most successful investors ever, to Irwyn Applebaum at Bantam Dell, in a major deal, presumably at least for the $7 million being cited as the bid level earlier, for publication in 2008, by David Black at the David Black Literary Agency (NA).BBurg@randomhouse.com
Investment professionals Larry E. Swedroe and Joseph H. Hempen's THE ONLY GUIDE TO A WINNING BOND STRATEGY: The Way Smart Money Preserves Wealth Today, identifying and explaining the characteristics of every kind of fixed income investment, to Truman Talley at St. Martin's, in a very nice deal, by Sam Fleishman at Literary Artists Representatives (NA).LitArtists@aol.com
COOKING:
Graham Harding's A WINE MISCELLANY, factoids about wine, to Aliza Fogelson at Clarkson Potter, in a nice deal, at auction, by Jennifer Unter at RLR Associates, on behalf of Jane Judd (NA).Junter@rlrassociates.net
Chef Efisio Farris's PASSIONE DI SARDINIA: Stories and Recipes from Italy's Timeless Island, an exploration of Sardinia's culinary delights, island history, and landscape, to Christopher Steighner at Rizzoli, in a nice deal by Lisa Ekus of Lisa Ekus Public Relations.Lcecooks@LisaEkus.com
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Boston Globe columnist Thomas Oliphant's THE GANG THAT CAN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT, an examination of competence in conservatism over the last 30 years, including rhetoric versus actual results in health care, environment, fiscal policy, foreign policy, and more, to Thomas Dunne of Thomas Dunne Books, by Deborah Grosvenor at Grosvenor Literary Agency (world).deb@gliterary.com
[Pays to listen when Oliphant talks!]
Pulitzer Prize winners John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein's untitled account of the destruction of New Orleans, from the journalists who wrote a five-part Times-Picayune series "Washing Away" which accurately predicted the damage that ensued from Katrina (including the political ineptitude and urban chaos that followed the storm), a description of the destruction of New Orleans, along with a look at whether further catastrophic storms are in our future, to Geoff Shandler at Little, Brown, by Kris Dahl at ICM.heather.fain@twbg.com
Author of Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast Mike Tidwell's FUTURE WAVE: How Katrina is Coming to Every Coastal Town in America, warning that global warming and rising ocean levels will jeopardize all of our coastal areas in the coming decades, for publication in August 2006, Martin Beiser at Free Press by Jennifer Lyons at Lyons & Pande International (NA).
SCIENCE:
University of Chicago paleontologist Neil Shubin's YOUR INNER FISH: A journey through the 3.5 billion year history of your body, an evolutionary synthesis in the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould of expeditionary paleontology, developmental genetics, and genomics that answers such questions as "what do I look like on the inside and how did I get that way?" to Marty Asher for Knopf, and to Stefan McGrath at Penguin Press in the UK, both in pre-empts, by Katinka Matson at Brockman.
UK:
Arkady Babchenko's A SOLDIER'S WAR IN CHECHNYA, an account of life as an ordinary young soldier in Russia's Chechen wars, tracing a journey from innocence to experience, to Tasja Dorkofikis in her first acquisition for Portobello Books, in a nice deal, for publication in mid-2007, by Natasha Perova at GLAS Agency (world English).
tasja@portobellobooks.com
david@marshallrights.co.uk
perova@glas.msk.su
Wrap...
Niger forged docs on yellowcake....
http://warandpeace
via Raw Story:
October 26, 2005
Via Kevin Drum, Nur al-Cubicle has put online her translations of the Repubblica series:
Part I
Part II
Part III
Wrap...
via Raw Story:
October 26, 2005
Via Kevin Drum, Nur al-Cubicle has put online her translations of the Repubblica series:
Part I
Part II
Part III
Wrap...
A photographer talks about his photos....
From Information Clearing House:
Bitter Fruit: A photo essay on the soldiers killed in Iraq: A war without casualties? A war where only the evil get hurt?
http://www.magnuminmotion.com/bitterfruit/player.html
Wrap...
Bitter Fruit: A photo essay on the soldiers killed in Iraq: A war without casualties? A war where only the evil get hurt?
http://www.magnuminmotion.com/bitterfruit/player.html
Wrap...
No Golden Rule for BushCo...
From Information Clearing House:
What Reagan Started, Bush Is Finishing
By David Martin10/26/05 "ICH"
In recent weeks, every morning’s newspaper seems to carry another headline documenting the accelerating tailspin of George Bush’s administration into disastrous fiasco. Political pundits may attribute the ongoing self-immolation of George Bush to the general ineptitude of the Mayberry Machiavellis with whom he has surrounded himself. But there is another, more historically correct explanation for the current presidential unraveling: the disaster that is George Bush is the inevitable culmination of the “revolution” wrought by Ronald Reagan.
The Great Charlatan swept into office proclaiming that government was the problem. If only it got out of the way, the energy, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit of the private sector would be unleashed and a golden economic age would dawn. A rising tide of affluence would lift all boats, and we would all sail off into a rosy sunset.
Now after eight years of the Gipper, four years of Bush I, eight years of Republican Lite under Clinton, and five years of Shrub, we see the truth of the Reagan Revolution. The gradual withering away of the welfare and regulatory state has not unleashed the American entrepreneurial spirit. Rather, it has set loose the predatory greed of the 19th century robber barons, the class cannibalism of Social Darwinism, and the winner-take-all rapacity of laissez faire capitalism. The bright and shining “morning in America” that Reagan touted has turned into a cold, gray dusk as the sun rapidly sets on the American dream.
In the 25 years since Reagan was sworn into office, the middle class is shrinking and the gap between wealthy and poor is reaching Grand Canyon proportions. During this period the average after-tax income of the lowest fifth of Americans has increased by 5%, the middle fifth by 15%, and the top fifth by 48%. The income of the top 1% of Americans, in contrast, has more than doubled, growing from $298,900 to $631,700, an increase of 111%.1 The trickle down promised by supply-side economists has diminished to a slow drip.
The tax policies of George Bush have only exacerbated this problem. The combined effect of his tax cuts has been to reduce federal tax revenue to its lowest level as a share of the economy since 1950.2 The inevitable result is the return of Reaganesque tax deficits that Bill Clinton worked so hard to erase. George Bush is mortgaging our future, and the Chinese hold the note.
Reagan came into office promising to shrink government to keep it from stifling private initiative. He and his successors may not have been too successful in shrinking the size of the government, but they have certainly magnified its ineptitude. The government that once put a man on the moon now cannot deliver ice to the Gulf Coast. The American military that conducted a multi-front war to defeat the formidable powers of Germany and Japan cannot subdue shadowy car bombers in Iraq or the remnants of the Taliban in Afghanistan. A military logistical system that was able to supply its armies across two oceans somehow can’t coordinate the delivery of armored Humvees to troops stationed in Iraq or supply them with up to date bullet proof vests.
Privatization was another of Reagan’s sacred tenets. The theory was that privatizing services once provided by government would result in greater efficiencies at lower costs. The Iraq occupation was to be a textbook case for the miracle of privatization. First the American forces destroyed the Iraqi infrastructure (except for the oil industry), then the job of rebuilding was turned over to large, private, well-connected construction firms. Two years after the American invasion the Iraqis have only intermittent electrical service and inadequate water supplies. But the construction firms did prove efficient in at least one area: ripping off the American taxpayer. Billions of dollars have disappeared into the black hole of Iraq reconstruction, and contract administrators can only shrug and mumble about difficult circumstances.
The Bush administration may have fumbled relief efforts in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But it was well prepared to apply the lessons of Iraq reconstruction to the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast.
The Katrina clean up could have been one huge WPA project to help alleviate the widespread poverty so cruelly exposed by the monster storm. Instead George Bush rescinded wage and environmental regulations and turned the Gulf Coast into a free fire zone for crony capitalism.
The same well-connected, underperforming firms from Iraq were given the same no-bid, no oversight contracts in Louisiana and Mississippi. As a result, illegal immigrants are being paid at below minimum wage rates to do the work that should be done by displaced residents at Davis-Bacon wage rates. One can anticipate the importation of workers from Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan as New Orleans displacees are shuttled from one government trailer park to another.
Politicians and their supporters love to wax romantic about the legacy they leave behind. Here’s the Reagan/Bush legacy: failed wars, support of terrorists, environmental degradation, the income distribution of a banana republic, a credit rating a third world country would be ashamed of, falling health standards, the disappearance of guaranteed retirement pensions, and corporate malfeasance on an unprecedented scale.
George Bush loves to end his speeches with a request for God to bless the United States of America. What he really needs to ask is for God to save us.
David Martin -
>Notes1 Figures taken from Congressional Budget Office report, Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates: 1979 to 2002, March 2005.
2 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Tax Returns, A Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration’s Record on Cutting Taxes, April 23, 2004.
Wrap...
What Reagan Started, Bush Is Finishing
By David Martin10/26/05 "ICH"
In recent weeks, every morning’s newspaper seems to carry another headline documenting the accelerating tailspin of George Bush’s administration into disastrous fiasco. Political pundits may attribute the ongoing self-immolation of George Bush to the general ineptitude of the Mayberry Machiavellis with whom he has surrounded himself. But there is another, more historically correct explanation for the current presidential unraveling: the disaster that is George Bush is the inevitable culmination of the “revolution” wrought by Ronald Reagan.
The Great Charlatan swept into office proclaiming that government was the problem. If only it got out of the way, the energy, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit of the private sector would be unleashed and a golden economic age would dawn. A rising tide of affluence would lift all boats, and we would all sail off into a rosy sunset.
Now after eight years of the Gipper, four years of Bush I, eight years of Republican Lite under Clinton, and five years of Shrub, we see the truth of the Reagan Revolution. The gradual withering away of the welfare and regulatory state has not unleashed the American entrepreneurial spirit. Rather, it has set loose the predatory greed of the 19th century robber barons, the class cannibalism of Social Darwinism, and the winner-take-all rapacity of laissez faire capitalism. The bright and shining “morning in America” that Reagan touted has turned into a cold, gray dusk as the sun rapidly sets on the American dream.
In the 25 years since Reagan was sworn into office, the middle class is shrinking and the gap between wealthy and poor is reaching Grand Canyon proportions. During this period the average after-tax income of the lowest fifth of Americans has increased by 5%, the middle fifth by 15%, and the top fifth by 48%. The income of the top 1% of Americans, in contrast, has more than doubled, growing from $298,900 to $631,700, an increase of 111%.1 The trickle down promised by supply-side economists has diminished to a slow drip.
The tax policies of George Bush have only exacerbated this problem. The combined effect of his tax cuts has been to reduce federal tax revenue to its lowest level as a share of the economy since 1950.2 The inevitable result is the return of Reaganesque tax deficits that Bill Clinton worked so hard to erase. George Bush is mortgaging our future, and the Chinese hold the note.
Reagan came into office promising to shrink government to keep it from stifling private initiative. He and his successors may not have been too successful in shrinking the size of the government, but they have certainly magnified its ineptitude. The government that once put a man on the moon now cannot deliver ice to the Gulf Coast. The American military that conducted a multi-front war to defeat the formidable powers of Germany and Japan cannot subdue shadowy car bombers in Iraq or the remnants of the Taliban in Afghanistan. A military logistical system that was able to supply its armies across two oceans somehow can’t coordinate the delivery of armored Humvees to troops stationed in Iraq or supply them with up to date bullet proof vests.
Privatization was another of Reagan’s sacred tenets. The theory was that privatizing services once provided by government would result in greater efficiencies at lower costs. The Iraq occupation was to be a textbook case for the miracle of privatization. First the American forces destroyed the Iraqi infrastructure (except for the oil industry), then the job of rebuilding was turned over to large, private, well-connected construction firms. Two years after the American invasion the Iraqis have only intermittent electrical service and inadequate water supplies. But the construction firms did prove efficient in at least one area: ripping off the American taxpayer. Billions of dollars have disappeared into the black hole of Iraq reconstruction, and contract administrators can only shrug and mumble about difficult circumstances.
The Bush administration may have fumbled relief efforts in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But it was well prepared to apply the lessons of Iraq reconstruction to the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast.
The Katrina clean up could have been one huge WPA project to help alleviate the widespread poverty so cruelly exposed by the monster storm. Instead George Bush rescinded wage and environmental regulations and turned the Gulf Coast into a free fire zone for crony capitalism.
The same well-connected, underperforming firms from Iraq were given the same no-bid, no oversight contracts in Louisiana and Mississippi. As a result, illegal immigrants are being paid at below minimum wage rates to do the work that should be done by displaced residents at Davis-Bacon wage rates. One can anticipate the importation of workers from Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan as New Orleans displacees are shuttled from one government trailer park to another.
Politicians and their supporters love to wax romantic about the legacy they leave behind. Here’s the Reagan/Bush legacy: failed wars, support of terrorists, environmental degradation, the income distribution of a banana republic, a credit rating a third world country would be ashamed of, falling health standards, the disappearance of guaranteed retirement pensions, and corporate malfeasance on an unprecedented scale.
George Bush loves to end his speeches with a request for God to bless the United States of America. What he really needs to ask is for God to save us.
David Martin -
>Notes1 Figures taken from Congressional Budget Office report, Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates: 1979 to 2002, March 2005.
2 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Tax Returns, A Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration’s Record on Cutting Taxes, April 23, 2004.
Wrap...
Don't like 'em? Just kill 'em....
From American Progress:
JUSTICE -- LITTLE-NOTICED DEATH PENALTY EXPANSION:
The House version of the Patriot Act wants to make it easier to put people to death. Buried in the new House bill to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act are “several little-noticed provisions that would dramatically transform the federal death penalty system, allowing smaller juries to decide on executions and giving prosecutors the ability to try again if a jury deadlocks on sentencing.”
The bill would also triple the number of crimes that are eligible for the death penalty. The Senate version of the bill strips out the death penalty expansions; many Senate lawmakers charge the proposals “are extraneous to the Patriot Act and should not be approved without fuller debate.”
These House provisions are the brainchild of Rep. John Carter (R-TX), who "believes capital punishment is a deterrent for all kinds of crimes, including terrorism."
Wrap..
JUSTICE -- LITTLE-NOTICED DEATH PENALTY EXPANSION:
The House version of the Patriot Act wants to make it easier to put people to death. Buried in the new House bill to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act are “several little-noticed provisions that would dramatically transform the federal death penalty system, allowing smaller juries to decide on executions and giving prosecutors the ability to try again if a jury deadlocks on sentencing.”
The bill would also triple the number of crimes that are eligible for the death penalty. The Senate version of the bill strips out the death penalty expansions; many Senate lawmakers charge the proposals “are extraneous to the Patriot Act and should not be approved without fuller debate.”
These House provisions are the brainchild of Rep. John Carter (R-TX), who "believes capital punishment is a deterrent for all kinds of crimes, including terrorism."
Wrap..
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Making deals on books....
From Publishers Lunch:
Deal News
Among the 20 or so new ones: Seven figures for former Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe's political memoir; two WSJ reporters take on the government's failures during Katrina; a humorous take on intelligent design theory with THE GOSPEL OF THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER; seven figures for Mariah Stewart; a book on the Christa Worthington murder and upcoming trial; Ben Wattenberg's A NEO-CON'S TALE; and plenty more.
Wrap...
Deal News
Among the 20 or so new ones: Seven figures for former Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe's political memoir; two WSJ reporters take on the government's failures during Katrina; a humorous take on intelligent design theory with THE GOSPEL OF THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER; seven figures for Mariah Stewart; a book on the Christa Worthington murder and upcoming trial; Ben Wattenberg's A NEO-CON'S TALE; and plenty more.
Wrap...
Stratfor on bird flu scare...
From Strategic Forecasting, Inc., ie Stratfor:
Special Report: The Bird Flu and You Stratfor subscribers have been sending us a steady river of requests for our opinion on the bird flu situation.
Although we are not medical experts, among our sources are those who are. And here is what we have been able to conclude based on their input and our broader analysis of the bird flu threat: Calm down.
Now let us qualify that: Since December 2003, the H5N1 bird flu virus -- which has caused all the ruckus -- has been responsible for the documented infection of 121 people, 91 one of whom caught the virus in Vietnam. In all cases where information on the chain of infection has been confirmed, the virus was transmitted either by repeated close contact with fowl or via the ingestion of insufficiently cooked chicken products.
In not a single case has human-to-human communicability been confirmed. So long as that remains the case, there is no bird flu threat to the human population of places such as Vietnam at large, much less the United States.
The Politics of Genetics
An uncomfortable but undeniable fact is that there are a great many people and institutions in this world that have a vested interest in feeding the bird flu scare. Much like the "Y2K" bug that commanded public attention in 1999, bird flu is all you hear about. Comparisons to the 1918 Spanish influenza have produced death toll projections in excess of 360 million, evoking images of chaos in the streets.
One does not qualify for funding -- whether for academic research, medical development or contingency studies -- by postulating about best-case scenarios. The strategy is to show up front how bad things could get, and to scare your targeted benefactors into having you study the problem and manufacture solutions.
This hardly means that these people are evil, greedy or irresponsible (although, in the case of Y2K or when a health threat shuts down agricultural trade for years, one really tends to wonder). It simply means that fear is an effective way to spark interest and action. Current medical technology lacks the ability to cure -- or even reliably vaccinate against -- highly mutable viral infections; the best available medicines can only treat symptoms -- like Roche's Tamiflu, which is becoming as scarce as the oftentimes legendary red mercury -- or slow a virus' reproduction rate.
Is more research needed? Certainly. But are we on the brink of a cataclysmic outbreak? Certainly not.
A bird flu pandemic among the human population is broadly in the same category as a meteor strike. Of course it will happen sooner or later -- and when it does, watch out! But there is no -- absolutely no -- particular reason to fear a global flu pandemic this flu season.
This does not mean the laws of nature have changed since 1918; it simply means there is no way to predict when an animal virus will break into the human population in any particular year -- or even if it will at all. Yes, H5N1 does show a propensity to mutate; and, yes, sooner or later another domesticated animal disease will cross over into the human population (most common human diseases have such origins). But there is no scientifically plausible reason to expect such a crossover to be imminent.
But if you are trying to find something to worry about, you should at least worry about the right thing.
A virus can mutate in any host, and pound for pound, the mutations that are of most interest to humanity are obviously those that occur within a human host. That means that each person who catches H5N1 due to a close encounter of the bird kind in effect becomes a sort of laboratory that could foster a mutation and that could have characteristics that would allow H5N1 to be communicable to other humans. Without such a specific mutation, bird flu is a problem for turkeys, but not for the non-turkey farmers among us.
But we are talking about a grand total of 115 people catching the bug over the course of the past three years. That does not exactly produce great odds for a virus -- no matter how genetically mutable -- to evolve successfully into a human-communicable strain. And bear in mind that the first-ever human case of H5N1 was not in 2003 but in 1997. There is not anything fundamentally new in this year's bird flu scare.
A more likely vector, therefore, would be for H5N1 to leap into a species of animal that bears similarities to human immunology yet lives in quarters close enough to encourage viral spread -- and lacks the capacity to complete detailed questionnaires about family health history.
The most likely candidate is the pig. On many farms, birds and pigs regularly intermingle, allowing for cross-infection, and similar pig-human biology means that pigs serving in the role as mutation incubator are statistically more likely than the odd Vietnamese raw-chicken eater to generate a pandemic virus.
And once the virus mutates into a form that is pig-pig transferable, a human pandemic is only one short mutation away. Put another way, a bird flu pandemic among birds is manageable. A bird flu pandemic among pigs is not, and is nearly guaranteed to become a human pandemic.
Pandemics: Past and Future
What precisely is a pandemic? The short version is that it is an epidemic that is everywhere. Epidemics affect large numbers of people in a relatively contained region. Pandemics are in effect the same, but without the geographic limitations. In 1854 a cholera epidemic struck London. The European settling of the Americas brought disease pandemics to the Native Americans that nearly eliminated them as an ethnic classification.
In 1918 the influenza outbreak spread in two waves. The first hit in March, and was only marginally more dangerous than the flu outbreaks of the previous six years. But in the trenches of war-torn France, the virus mutated into a new, more virulent strain that swept back across the world, ultimately killing anywhere from 20 million to 100 million people. Some one in four Americans became infected -- nearly all in one horrid month in October, and some 550,000 -- about 0.5 percent of the total population -- succumbed. Playing that figure forward to today's population, theoretically 1.6 million Americans would die. Suddenly the fear makes a bit more sense, right?
Wrong. There are four major differences between the 1918 scenario and any new flu pandemic development:
First -- and this one could actually make the death toll higher -- is the virus itself.No one knows how lethal H5N1 (or any animal pathogen) would be if it adapted to human hosts. Not knowing that makes it impossible to reliably predict the as-yet-unmutated virus' mortality rate.
At this point, the mortality rate among infected humans is running right at about 50 percent, but that hardly means that is what it would look like if the virus became human-to-human communicable. Remember, the virus needs to mutate before it is a threat to humanity -- there is no reason to expect it to mutate just once. Also, in general, the more communicable a disease becomes the lower its mortality rate tends to be. A virus -- like all life forms -- has a vested interest in not wiping out its host population.
One of the features that made the 1918 panic so unnerving is the "W" nature of the mortality curve. For reasons unknown, the virus proved more effective than most at killing people in the prime of their lives -- those in the 15- to 44-year-old age brackets. While there is no reason to expect the next pandemic virus to not have such a feature, similarly there is no reason to expect the next pandemic virus to share that feature.
Second, 1918 was not exactly a "typical" year.
World War I, while coming to a close, was still raging. The war was unique in that it was fought largely in trenches, among the least sanitary of human habitats. Soldiers not only faced degrading health from their "quarters" in wartime, but even when they were not fighting at the front they were living in barracks. Such conditions ensured that they were: a) not in the best of health, and b) constantly exposed to whatever airborne diseases afflicted the rest of their unit. As such, the military circumstances and style of the war ensured that soldiers were not only extraordinarily susceptible to catching the flu, but also extraordinarily susceptible to dying of it.
Over half of U.S. war dead in World War I -- some 65,000 men -- were the result not of combat but of the flu pandemic. And it should be no surprise that in 1918, circulation of military personnel was the leading vector for infecting civilian populations the world over. Nevertheless, while the United States is obviously involved in a war in 2005, it is not involved in anything close to trench warfare, and the total percentage of the U.S. population involved in Iraq and Afghanistan -- 0.005 percent -- is middling compared to the 2.0 percent involvement in World War I.
Third, health and nutrition levels have radically changed in the past 87 years. Though fears of obesity and insufficient school lunch nutrition are all the rage in the media, no one would seriously postulate that overall American health today is in worse shape than it was in 1918. The healthier a person is going into a sickness, the better his or her chances are of emerging from it. Sometimes it really is just that simple.
Indeed, a huge consideration in any modern-day pandemic is availability of and access to medical care. Poorer people tend to live in closer quarters and are more likely to have occupations (military, services, construction, etc.) in which they regularly encounter large numbers of people. According to a 1931 study of the 1918 flu pandemic by the U.S. Public Health Service, the poor were about 20 percent to 30 percent more likely to contract the flu, and overall mortality rates of the "well-to-do" were less than half that of the "poor" and "very poor."
But the fourth factor, which will pull some of the strength out of any new pandemic, is even more basic than starting health: antibiotics. The 1918 pandemic virus was similar to the more standard influenza virus in that the majority of those who perished died not from the primary attack of the flu but from secondary infections -- typically bacteria or fungal -- that triggered pneumonia. While antibiotics are hardly a silver bullet and they are useless against viruses, they raise the simple possibility of treatment for bacterial or fungal illnesses. Penicillin -- the first commercialized antibiotic -- was not discovered until 1929, 11 years too late to help when panic gripped the world in 1918.
Wrap...
Special Report: The Bird Flu and You Stratfor subscribers have been sending us a steady river of requests for our opinion on the bird flu situation.
Although we are not medical experts, among our sources are those who are. And here is what we have been able to conclude based on their input and our broader analysis of the bird flu threat: Calm down.
Now let us qualify that: Since December 2003, the H5N1 bird flu virus -- which has caused all the ruckus -- has been responsible for the documented infection of 121 people, 91 one of whom caught the virus in Vietnam. In all cases where information on the chain of infection has been confirmed, the virus was transmitted either by repeated close contact with fowl or via the ingestion of insufficiently cooked chicken products.
In not a single case has human-to-human communicability been confirmed. So long as that remains the case, there is no bird flu threat to the human population of places such as Vietnam at large, much less the United States.
The Politics of Genetics
An uncomfortable but undeniable fact is that there are a great many people and institutions in this world that have a vested interest in feeding the bird flu scare. Much like the "Y2K" bug that commanded public attention in 1999, bird flu is all you hear about. Comparisons to the 1918 Spanish influenza have produced death toll projections in excess of 360 million, evoking images of chaos in the streets.
One does not qualify for funding -- whether for academic research, medical development or contingency studies -- by postulating about best-case scenarios. The strategy is to show up front how bad things could get, and to scare your targeted benefactors into having you study the problem and manufacture solutions.
This hardly means that these people are evil, greedy or irresponsible (although, in the case of Y2K or when a health threat shuts down agricultural trade for years, one really tends to wonder). It simply means that fear is an effective way to spark interest and action. Current medical technology lacks the ability to cure -- or even reliably vaccinate against -- highly mutable viral infections; the best available medicines can only treat symptoms -- like Roche's Tamiflu, which is becoming as scarce as the oftentimes legendary red mercury -- or slow a virus' reproduction rate.
Is more research needed? Certainly. But are we on the brink of a cataclysmic outbreak? Certainly not.
A bird flu pandemic among the human population is broadly in the same category as a meteor strike. Of course it will happen sooner or later -- and when it does, watch out! But there is no -- absolutely no -- particular reason to fear a global flu pandemic this flu season.
This does not mean the laws of nature have changed since 1918; it simply means there is no way to predict when an animal virus will break into the human population in any particular year -- or even if it will at all. Yes, H5N1 does show a propensity to mutate; and, yes, sooner or later another domesticated animal disease will cross over into the human population (most common human diseases have such origins). But there is no scientifically plausible reason to expect such a crossover to be imminent.
But if you are trying to find something to worry about, you should at least worry about the right thing.
A virus can mutate in any host, and pound for pound, the mutations that are of most interest to humanity are obviously those that occur within a human host. That means that each person who catches H5N1 due to a close encounter of the bird kind in effect becomes a sort of laboratory that could foster a mutation and that could have characteristics that would allow H5N1 to be communicable to other humans. Without such a specific mutation, bird flu is a problem for turkeys, but not for the non-turkey farmers among us.
But we are talking about a grand total of 115 people catching the bug over the course of the past three years. That does not exactly produce great odds for a virus -- no matter how genetically mutable -- to evolve successfully into a human-communicable strain. And bear in mind that the first-ever human case of H5N1 was not in 2003 but in 1997. There is not anything fundamentally new in this year's bird flu scare.
A more likely vector, therefore, would be for H5N1 to leap into a species of animal that bears similarities to human immunology yet lives in quarters close enough to encourage viral spread -- and lacks the capacity to complete detailed questionnaires about family health history.
The most likely candidate is the pig. On many farms, birds and pigs regularly intermingle, allowing for cross-infection, and similar pig-human biology means that pigs serving in the role as mutation incubator are statistically more likely than the odd Vietnamese raw-chicken eater to generate a pandemic virus.
And once the virus mutates into a form that is pig-pig transferable, a human pandemic is only one short mutation away. Put another way, a bird flu pandemic among birds is manageable. A bird flu pandemic among pigs is not, and is nearly guaranteed to become a human pandemic.
Pandemics: Past and Future
What precisely is a pandemic? The short version is that it is an epidemic that is everywhere. Epidemics affect large numbers of people in a relatively contained region. Pandemics are in effect the same, but without the geographic limitations. In 1854 a cholera epidemic struck London. The European settling of the Americas brought disease pandemics to the Native Americans that nearly eliminated them as an ethnic classification.
In 1918 the influenza outbreak spread in two waves. The first hit in March, and was only marginally more dangerous than the flu outbreaks of the previous six years. But in the trenches of war-torn France, the virus mutated into a new, more virulent strain that swept back across the world, ultimately killing anywhere from 20 million to 100 million people. Some one in four Americans became infected -- nearly all in one horrid month in October, and some 550,000 -- about 0.5 percent of the total population -- succumbed. Playing that figure forward to today's population, theoretically 1.6 million Americans would die. Suddenly the fear makes a bit more sense, right?
Wrong. There are four major differences between the 1918 scenario and any new flu pandemic development:
First -- and this one could actually make the death toll higher -- is the virus itself.No one knows how lethal H5N1 (or any animal pathogen) would be if it adapted to human hosts. Not knowing that makes it impossible to reliably predict the as-yet-unmutated virus' mortality rate.
At this point, the mortality rate among infected humans is running right at about 50 percent, but that hardly means that is what it would look like if the virus became human-to-human communicable. Remember, the virus needs to mutate before it is a threat to humanity -- there is no reason to expect it to mutate just once. Also, in general, the more communicable a disease becomes the lower its mortality rate tends to be. A virus -- like all life forms -- has a vested interest in not wiping out its host population.
One of the features that made the 1918 panic so unnerving is the "W" nature of the mortality curve. For reasons unknown, the virus proved more effective than most at killing people in the prime of their lives -- those in the 15- to 44-year-old age brackets. While there is no reason to expect the next pandemic virus to not have such a feature, similarly there is no reason to expect the next pandemic virus to share that feature.
Second, 1918 was not exactly a "typical" year.
World War I, while coming to a close, was still raging. The war was unique in that it was fought largely in trenches, among the least sanitary of human habitats. Soldiers not only faced degrading health from their "quarters" in wartime, but even when they were not fighting at the front they were living in barracks. Such conditions ensured that they were: a) not in the best of health, and b) constantly exposed to whatever airborne diseases afflicted the rest of their unit. As such, the military circumstances and style of the war ensured that soldiers were not only extraordinarily susceptible to catching the flu, but also extraordinarily susceptible to dying of it.
Over half of U.S. war dead in World War I -- some 65,000 men -- were the result not of combat but of the flu pandemic. And it should be no surprise that in 1918, circulation of military personnel was the leading vector for infecting civilian populations the world over. Nevertheless, while the United States is obviously involved in a war in 2005, it is not involved in anything close to trench warfare, and the total percentage of the U.S. population involved in Iraq and Afghanistan -- 0.005 percent -- is middling compared to the 2.0 percent involvement in World War I.
Third, health and nutrition levels have radically changed in the past 87 years. Though fears of obesity and insufficient school lunch nutrition are all the rage in the media, no one would seriously postulate that overall American health today is in worse shape than it was in 1918. The healthier a person is going into a sickness, the better his or her chances are of emerging from it. Sometimes it really is just that simple.
Indeed, a huge consideration in any modern-day pandemic is availability of and access to medical care. Poorer people tend to live in closer quarters and are more likely to have occupations (military, services, construction, etc.) in which they regularly encounter large numbers of people. According to a 1931 study of the 1918 flu pandemic by the U.S. Public Health Service, the poor were about 20 percent to 30 percent more likely to contract the flu, and overall mortality rates of the "well-to-do" were less than half that of the "poor" and "very poor."
But the fourth factor, which will pull some of the strength out of any new pandemic, is even more basic than starting health: antibiotics. The 1918 pandemic virus was similar to the more standard influenza virus in that the majority of those who perished died not from the primary attack of the flu but from secondary infections -- typically bacteria or fungal -- that triggered pneumonia. While antibiotics are hardly a silver bullet and they are useless against viruses, they raise the simple possibility of treatment for bacterial or fungal illnesses. Penicillin -- the first commercialized antibiotic -- was not discovered until 1929, 11 years too late to help when panic gripped the world in 1918.
Wrap...
Monday, October 24, 2005
Bush will NOT give up torture...
October 25, 2005
WHouse Seeks to Shield CIA From Detainee Rules: Report
By REUTERS
Filed at 1:34 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House has proposed that CIA employees be exempted from a measure barring cruel and degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The proposal states that the legislation approved by the U.S. Senate shall not apply to counterterrorism operations abroad or to operations conducted by ``an element of the United States government'' other than the Defense Department, the newspaper reported, citing two unidentified sources.
The report said Vice President Dick Cheney, with CIA Director Porter Goss present, handed the proposal to Sen. John McCain last Thursday.
McCain rejected the proposed exemption at the meeting with Cheney, the newspaper said, citing a government source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A White House spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
McCain, an Arizona Republican who was tortured while a prisoner of war in Vietnam, led an effort in the Senate to establish the Army field manual as the standard for interrogations and bar cruel and degrading treatment of anyone in U.S. military custody.
Bucking a White House veto threat, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan amendment to establish rules for detainee interrogation and treatment.
A number of lawmakers who supported the amendment have said abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and other U.S. military prisons have damaged the United States' international standing and risked retribution against U.S. soldiers who may be captured in the future.
The Bush administration said the measure would tie its hands as it fights terrorism and threatened to veto a $440 billion bill to fund the Pentagon if it contained the restrictions.
Wrap...
WHouse Seeks to Shield CIA From Detainee Rules: Report
By REUTERS
Filed at 1:34 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House has proposed that CIA employees be exempted from a measure barring cruel and degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The proposal states that the legislation approved by the U.S. Senate shall not apply to counterterrorism operations abroad or to operations conducted by ``an element of the United States government'' other than the Defense Department, the newspaper reported, citing two unidentified sources.
The report said Vice President Dick Cheney, with CIA Director Porter Goss present, handed the proposal to Sen. John McCain last Thursday.
McCain rejected the proposed exemption at the meeting with Cheney, the newspaper said, citing a government source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A White House spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
McCain, an Arizona Republican who was tortured while a prisoner of war in Vietnam, led an effort in the Senate to establish the Army field manual as the standard for interrogations and bar cruel and degrading treatment of anyone in U.S. military custody.
Bucking a White House veto threat, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan amendment to establish rules for detainee interrogation and treatment.
A number of lawmakers who supported the amendment have said abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and other U.S. military prisons have damaged the United States' international standing and risked retribution against U.S. soldiers who may be captured in the future.
The Bush administration said the measure would tie its hands as it fights terrorism and threatened to veto a $440 billion bill to fund the Pentagon if it contained the restrictions.
Wrap...
MY WAR blogger, Colby Buzzell...
...will be reading from his book, MY WAR, on NPR's "This American Life" this week.
Wrap...
Wrap...
Scheming & Plotting in DC...
From Insight Mag:
Regime change in the air
By Claude Salhani
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 (UPI)
There is something circulating in Washington these days that is far more contagious than avian flu: it's called regime change.
Since President George W. Bush first addressed the issue of regime change by introducing it in Iraq, courtesy of the U.S. military, the syndrome has become quite contagious. The notion of regime change has affected more than the neo-conservatives who would like to see a repeat performance of the Iraq scenario play itself out (minus, of course, the insurgency, the roadside bombs and the prolongation of the conflict) in Iran, Syria and other countries where the concept of free elections remains an abnormality.
The idea has now ingrained itself among a certain segment of Washington's expatriate community. While dining with a group of friends in a trendy and popular watering hole in Georgetown last week, regime change was the prominent item of the day.
On this particular evening, even my three dinner companions were heavy into the regime change frenzy. Two of them want to bring about regime change in Iran. He is a former official who served in the Reagan administration. She is a former spy who worked undercover in Eastern Europe back when that part of the world was behind the Iron Curtain. Neither of them is Iranian. In fact they are both very red, white and blue.
What motivates them? Their belief that threats emanating from the Islamic republic is of grave concern to the security of the United States and should merit the immediate attention of the Bush administration. They feel so strongly about the issue that they have devoted much of their free time and resources to their adopted cause.
The third dinner guest was a journalist whose target is broader that just Iran. He works for a satellite television network promoting the idea of democracy and regime change across the entire Middle East. The very name of the media he works for reflects the U.S. vision of "freedom" that all nations should enjoy.
I was there to meet a contact that I hoped could shed some light on what, specifically, was going on in another Middle East country high on the U.S. regime change menu. Particularly after the publication of a U.N. report into the assassination of a former prime minister of a neighboring country, and the Bush administration raising the pressure, accusing that country of complicity in the crime, as well as aiding and abetting insurgents making their way to Iraq.
As the evening progressed, the place began to fill up rapidly. The crowd was mostly young, ethno-chic with a touch of exotic. About a half-dozen languages and even more distinctive accents could be heard above the music -- itself mostly foreign. English was spoken with Farsi, Turkish and heavy Arabic accents. In turn, Arabic was spoken with a plethora of dialects -- from North African to the Middle East -- from Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, and other countries.
The atmosphere in the restaurant was reminiscent of scenes right out of "Casablanca," the classic movie starring Humphrey Bogart in which émigrés escaping Nazi-occupied Europe congregated nightly at Rick's Café Americain, biding their time while plotting regime change in their native lands, then under German occupation.
I mentioned the couple "working" on Iran. But there were others. There was the handsome young Libyan who is just as hopeful to bring about a change of regime in his native land. Unlike a number of American politicians who visited Libya in recent months, he is not buying into Moammar Gadhafi's sudden change of heart and mind for one minute. He knows better, having lived under the Libyan strongman's dictatorial whims, before escaping to a better life for himself in the United States, or "in America," as the émigrés in "Casablanca" would say.
But the fact that he found his way to America does not mean he forgot about Libya. Quite the contrary, he too, devotes much time and energy in bringing Gadhafi's shortcomings -- and his impediment to democracy -- to the attention of the U.S. government and the U.S. media.
Then there was the slightly older gentleman from Egypt, with white hair and the looks of a sage. He also finds the notion of regime change very appealing. Much like the others, he too, would like to see a different regime come about in Cairo. This gentleman knows well the inner workings of the Egyptian government having at one time, many years ago now, been involved in government when Anwar Sadat was president. Now, after 24 years of Hosni Mubarak's unabated presidency, and with no end in sight, he is more than glad to discuss regime change in Egypt.
Yes, regime change is definitely on the menu this time of year in Washington, but with one important caveat. The changes in their countries should not come about as a result of U.S. military intervention, but as a result of political pressure and comprehensive diplomacy.--
(Comments may be sent to Claude@upi.com.)
Wrap.
Regime change in the air
By Claude Salhani
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 (UPI)
There is something circulating in Washington these days that is far more contagious than avian flu: it's called regime change.
Since President George W. Bush first addressed the issue of regime change by introducing it in Iraq, courtesy of the U.S. military, the syndrome has become quite contagious. The notion of regime change has affected more than the neo-conservatives who would like to see a repeat performance of the Iraq scenario play itself out (minus, of course, the insurgency, the roadside bombs and the prolongation of the conflict) in Iran, Syria and other countries where the concept of free elections remains an abnormality.
The idea has now ingrained itself among a certain segment of Washington's expatriate community. While dining with a group of friends in a trendy and popular watering hole in Georgetown last week, regime change was the prominent item of the day.
On this particular evening, even my three dinner companions were heavy into the regime change frenzy. Two of them want to bring about regime change in Iran. He is a former official who served in the Reagan administration. She is a former spy who worked undercover in Eastern Europe back when that part of the world was behind the Iron Curtain. Neither of them is Iranian. In fact they are both very red, white and blue.
What motivates them? Their belief that threats emanating from the Islamic republic is of grave concern to the security of the United States and should merit the immediate attention of the Bush administration. They feel so strongly about the issue that they have devoted much of their free time and resources to their adopted cause.
The third dinner guest was a journalist whose target is broader that just Iran. He works for a satellite television network promoting the idea of democracy and regime change across the entire Middle East. The very name of the media he works for reflects the U.S. vision of "freedom" that all nations should enjoy.
I was there to meet a contact that I hoped could shed some light on what, specifically, was going on in another Middle East country high on the U.S. regime change menu. Particularly after the publication of a U.N. report into the assassination of a former prime minister of a neighboring country, and the Bush administration raising the pressure, accusing that country of complicity in the crime, as well as aiding and abetting insurgents making their way to Iraq.
As the evening progressed, the place began to fill up rapidly. The crowd was mostly young, ethno-chic with a touch of exotic. About a half-dozen languages and even more distinctive accents could be heard above the music -- itself mostly foreign. English was spoken with Farsi, Turkish and heavy Arabic accents. In turn, Arabic was spoken with a plethora of dialects -- from North African to the Middle East -- from Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, and other countries.
The atmosphere in the restaurant was reminiscent of scenes right out of "Casablanca," the classic movie starring Humphrey Bogart in which émigrés escaping Nazi-occupied Europe congregated nightly at Rick's Café Americain, biding their time while plotting regime change in their native lands, then under German occupation.
I mentioned the couple "working" on Iran. But there were others. There was the handsome young Libyan who is just as hopeful to bring about a change of regime in his native land. Unlike a number of American politicians who visited Libya in recent months, he is not buying into Moammar Gadhafi's sudden change of heart and mind for one minute. He knows better, having lived under the Libyan strongman's dictatorial whims, before escaping to a better life for himself in the United States, or "in America," as the émigrés in "Casablanca" would say.
But the fact that he found his way to America does not mean he forgot about Libya. Quite the contrary, he too, devotes much time and energy in bringing Gadhafi's shortcomings -- and his impediment to democracy -- to the attention of the U.S. government and the U.S. media.
Then there was the slightly older gentleman from Egypt, with white hair and the looks of a sage. He also finds the notion of regime change very appealing. Much like the others, he too, would like to see a different regime come about in Cairo. This gentleman knows well the inner workings of the Egyptian government having at one time, many years ago now, been involved in government when Anwar Sadat was president. Now, after 24 years of Hosni Mubarak's unabated presidency, and with no end in sight, he is more than glad to discuss regime change in Egypt.
Yes, regime change is definitely on the menu this time of year in Washington, but with one important caveat. The changes in their countries should not come about as a result of U.S. military intervention, but as a result of political pressure and comprehensive diplomacy.--
(Comments may be sent to Claude@upi.com.)
Wrap.
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