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By FRANCES ROBLES
The seizure of up to 66 pounds of low-grade uranium linked to the FARC rebels adds weight to the evidence found in a captured rebel laptop that the guerrillas were interested in buying and selling the material, according to the Colombian Defense Ministry.
But the 30 kilos of uranium found Wednesday in plastic bags dug up about three feet from a road in southern Bogotá was "impoverished," the ministry said, and in that state could not have been used to make a radioactive bomb.
Authorities were waiting for further analysis to determine how dangerous the material found really is, armed forces commander Freddy Padilla said at a press conference late Wednesday.
It was not clear if Colombian authorities meant that they had found depleted uranium, which is the residue left after the mineral is processed to make nuclear energy or nuclear weapons. In its natural state, uranium has low radioactivity and it has to be enriched through a sophisticated process to generate nuclear energy or to make nuclear weapons. According to Colombian daily El Tiempo, the country does not possess the technology to enrich uranium.
The Colombian government has used details of an alleged deal, to buy up to 50 kilos of uranium at $2.5 million a kilo, found in emails on Reyes' computer to prove the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was planning to enter the international terrorism trade from its sanctuary set up in the jungle about one mile from the Colombia-Ecuador border.
A ministry statement Wednesday said that on March 20 informants gave military intelligence officers a sample of uranium allegedly acquired by FARC rebels. Mining experts analyzed the sample and on Tuesday confirmed it to be ''impoverished'' uranium.
The informants led the military to the rest of the stash in Pasquilla, a district in Bogotá's Comuna 20 neighborhood, the ministry said. The uranium was found Wednesday, hidden near the road that leads to San Juan de Sumapaz, a longtime rebel stronghold.
RCN TV showed footage of jeans-clad authorities pulling white cloth bags out of the brush off the side of a road.
Two pieces, one rectangular and another round, each about 33 lbs, were found covered in dirt, Padilla said.
'According to the informants, it's the material the FARC was negotiating that appears in Reyes' seized computer,'' Padilla said. ''The seizure is of great benefit, because it prevents the FARC from counting on this kind of material'' which it has wanted since 2005, he said.
He said the material was transferred to the mining ministry for more analysis on where it came from.
Padilla added the informants were people close to ''Belisario'' whose name appeared in Reyes' computer as the person charged with finding the radioactive material. Belisario, Padilla said, is not a guerrilla but rather a business contact.
Word of a possible effort by Colombian rebels to acquire uranium was first revealed earlier this month when the Colombian National Police rifled through one of several computers found at Reyes' bombed camp.
Some experts questioned the veracity of the emails, saying it was unlikely the FARC was engaged in such a business.
One of the computers contained a Feb. 16 e-mail discussing a deal to buy uranium, which can be used to make dirty bombs in which conventional explosives disperse radioactive materials. The emails suggested that the rebels may have intended to sell the uranium to a third party, rather than use it themselves.
''Another of the themes is the one on uranium,'' said the e-mail allegedly written by a man identified as Edgar Tovar to Raúl -- an apparent reference to Reyes, the FARC's No. 2 man.
''There's a man who supplies me with material for the explosive we prepare, and his name is Belisario and he lives in Bogotá,'' the note reads. ``He sent me the samples and the specifications and they are proposing to sell each kilo for two and a half million dollars, and that they supply and we look for someone to sell to, and that the deal should be with a government that can buy a huge amount. They have 50 kilos ready and can sell much more.''
Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos later said the note proved the FARC was ``negotiating to get radioactive material, the principal base for making dirty weapons of destruction and terrorism.''
''This shows that these terrorist groups ... constitute a grave threat not just to our country but to the entire Andean region and Latin America,'' he added.
The FARC has denied any uranium deal.
''Only developed nations like the United States and others have the conditions and the technology required to process uranium, not a guerrilla movement that still fights for people's dignity with rifles and even sticks,'' a FARC statement previously published by the Colombian media said.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Japan Inflation Up, Jobless Rate Worsens
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TOKYO — Japan's inflation rate climbed at its fastest rate in a decade in February and the jobless rate worsened to 3.9 percent under data released Friday, raising concerns about the health of the world's second-largest economy.
The core consumer price index, which excludes volatile fresh food prices, rose 1.0 percent in February from a year ago — the fastest reading since March 1998, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said.
Japan has long struggled with deflation, or falling prices, but Friday's data, which also marked the fifth straight month of gains, show that higher prices for imported oil and commodities are adding pressure on living costs.
Separate data released by the ministry said household spending was flat in February from a year earlier, an indication that the economy was getting less support from domestic demand, while exports that have long driven the nation's growth are also losing steam.
The result fell short of the 2.5 percent rise expected in surveys by Dow Jones Newswires and Nikkei.
Economy Minister Hiroko Ota voiced concerns that recent sharp rises in consumer prices could have a negative impact on consumption growth.
"With economic growth pausing and workers' wages not increasing, I cannot say that recent rises in consumer prices are good," Ota told a news conference. "I'm concerned about how such price rises — mostly stemming from rises in gasoline and food prices — will affect consumers."
Separately, Japan's unemployment rate stood at a worse-than-expected 3.9 percent in February, the Ministry of Public Management said. The results reflected slowing domestic and overseas growth, which has made business less willing to hire workers.
Japan's unemployment rate was 3.8 percent in January.
The ministry said the total number of jobless was down by 40,000 on year, marking the 27th consecutive month of decline.
The jobless rate registered to 4.0 percent in September and October before dropping to 3.8 percent in November and staying flat for three months.
The core CPI for the Tokyo metropolitan area for March rose a preliminary 0.6 percent on year, the data showed. The number is considered a leading indicator for nationwide consumer prices.
TOKYO — Japan's inflation rate climbed at its fastest rate in a decade in February and the jobless rate worsened to 3.9 percent under data released Friday, raising concerns about the health of the world's second-largest economy.
The core consumer price index, which excludes volatile fresh food prices, rose 1.0 percent in February from a year ago — the fastest reading since March 1998, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said.
Japan has long struggled with deflation, or falling prices, but Friday's data, which also marked the fifth straight month of gains, show that higher prices for imported oil and commodities are adding pressure on living costs.
Separate data released by the ministry said household spending was flat in February from a year earlier, an indication that the economy was getting less support from domestic demand, while exports that have long driven the nation's growth are also losing steam.
The result fell short of the 2.5 percent rise expected in surveys by Dow Jones Newswires and Nikkei.
Economy Minister Hiroko Ota voiced concerns that recent sharp rises in consumer prices could have a negative impact on consumption growth.
"With economic growth pausing and workers' wages not increasing, I cannot say that recent rises in consumer prices are good," Ota told a news conference. "I'm concerned about how such price rises — mostly stemming from rises in gasoline and food prices — will affect consumers."
Separately, Japan's unemployment rate stood at a worse-than-expected 3.9 percent in February, the Ministry of Public Management said. The results reflected slowing domestic and overseas growth, which has made business less willing to hire workers.
Japan's unemployment rate was 3.8 percent in January.
The ministry said the total number of jobless was down by 40,000 on year, marking the 27th consecutive month of decline.
The jobless rate registered to 4.0 percent in September and October before dropping to 3.8 percent in November and staying flat for three months.
The core CPI for the Tokyo metropolitan area for March rose a preliminary 0.6 percent on year, the data showed. The number is considered a leading indicator for nationwide consumer prices.
More powers for financial watchdog?
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By Joe Churcher
City whistleblowers could soon be offered immunity from prosecution under plans to beef up the UK's financial watchdog, Chancellor Alistair Darling has indicated.
The Government was urged to grant the Financial Services Authority (FSA) US-style powers in the wake of last week's slump in a major bank's share price amid claims of market manipulation.
A London-based hedge fund was reported to have circulated rumours about UK companies, including Britain's biggest mortgage lender HBOS in a bid to make money when their share prices fell.
Amid global financial turmoil, Mr Darling told the Guardian he wanted to see a crackdown and that that meant the authorities needed "the tools to do the job".
"I can't allow us to get into a situation where people quite deliberately manipulate markets for personal gain and with the potential to de stabilise the financial system," he said.
"We have a duty to ensure we have clean and efficient markets. We will come down hard on people manipulating the system.
"People are getting away with it and the time has come for us to start looking at it again.
"If a handful of people are up to no good we have to make sure the authorities have the tools to do the job."
The Guardian said FSA investigators would be given the "specified prosecutor" status already enjoyed by tax officials, the Serious Fraud Office and the director of public prosecutions.
A spokeswoman for the FSA, which has asked for the powers, welcomed the move, part of a package of measures designed to tackle the present worldwide period of uncertainty.
By Joe Churcher
City whistleblowers could soon be offered immunity from prosecution under plans to beef up the UK's financial watchdog, Chancellor Alistair Darling has indicated.
The Government was urged to grant the Financial Services Authority (FSA) US-style powers in the wake of last week's slump in a major bank's share price amid claims of market manipulation.
A London-based hedge fund was reported to have circulated rumours about UK companies, including Britain's biggest mortgage lender HBOS in a bid to make money when their share prices fell.
Amid global financial turmoil, Mr Darling told the Guardian he wanted to see a crackdown and that that meant the authorities needed "the tools to do the job".
"I can't allow us to get into a situation where people quite deliberately manipulate markets for personal gain and with the potential to de stabilise the financial system," he said.
"We have a duty to ensure we have clean and efficient markets. We will come down hard on people manipulating the system.
"People are getting away with it and the time has come for us to start looking at it again.
"If a handful of people are up to no good we have to make sure the authorities have the tools to do the job."
The Guardian said FSA investigators would be given the "specified prosecutor" status already enjoyed by tax officials, the Serious Fraud Office and the director of public prosecutions.
A spokeswoman for the FSA, which has asked for the powers, welcomed the move, part of a package of measures designed to tackle the present worldwide period of uncertainty.
House price growth is weakest since 1996
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By Steve Hawkes and Grainne Gilmore
House prices are rising at the slowest rate for 12 years in a blow that could force the Bank of England to bring forward an interest rate cut to April, Britain’s second-biggest mortgage lender said today.
Figures from the Nationwide showed that the price of a typical house dropped this month by 0.6 per cent — or nearly £250 — to an average of £179,100.
The decline means that the annual rate of house price inflation is 1.1 per cent, the lowest since March 1996.
Fionnuala Earley, group economist for Nationwide, said it was clear that there was a “sharp slowdown” in house prices.
She said: "The outlook for UK house prices is clearly more downbeat. Some of the downside risks we idenitfied in November have become a reality — most notably the continued turmoil in the financial markets."
She added that the collapse of Bear Stearns in the US and the rumours over the health of HBOS was likely to force the Bank of England to put aside fears over inflation and cut rates next month to "loosen conditions in financial markets".
A survey reported yesterday suggested that inflation could spiral to 3.6 per cent over the next 12 months.
Ms Earley said: “We think these latest developments, along with the continued weakening in the housing market, will mean that the [Bank of England] will bring forward its rate cut to April.”
Howard Archer, chief economist for Global Insight, gave warning today that there was the real possibility of a "sharp correction" in the property market.
He has been predicting a 5 per cent fall in both this year and next.
Mr Archer said: "We believe the downside for house prices will be limited to some extent by the rising number of households, an overall shortage of supply, high employment, further gradual but steady interest rate cuts over the coming year and the fact that few vendors are currently having to sell for 'distressed' reasons.
"Nevertheless, the current escalation of the credit crunch means that there is an increased risk that a significantly sharper housing market correction could occur."
Nationwide was one of two big lenders to put up its mortgage rates yesterday to close the door to all but the most creditworthy customers in a move that is expected to leave tens of thousands of borrowers struggling to secure a home loan.
The building society raised the rate on one of its most popular products by 0.57 per cent and said that it did not want to take on many more customers because doing so would add too much risk on to its books.
Within hours of the announcement, Norwich & Peterborough Building Society said that it was increasing its mortgage rates by up to half a percentage point.
There are fears that if other lenders followed suit, the property market could slow further.
The number of first-time buyers coming to the market has slowed, with a third fewer mortgages taken out for house purchases last month than in February 2007.
One mortgage industry source yesterday said: "The credit crunch feels like a stomach bug for borrowers — periods of calm followed by nasty spasms. This is the start of a spasm."
Nationwide urged homeowners today to put the slowdown in the housing market into context.
Typical house prices are 11 per cent higher than two years ago and 47 per cent higher than five years ago — the equivalent of £30 a day for the past five years.
Ms Earley said: "If prices were to fall in line with consumers' expectations, they would still be higher than two years ago.
"A moderate fall in prices at this stage should not be unwelcome and should help to ensure greater stability in the market going forward."
By Steve Hawkes and Grainne Gilmore
House prices are rising at the slowest rate for 12 years in a blow that could force the Bank of England to bring forward an interest rate cut to April, Britain’s second-biggest mortgage lender said today.
Figures from the Nationwide showed that the price of a typical house dropped this month by 0.6 per cent — or nearly £250 — to an average of £179,100.
The decline means that the annual rate of house price inflation is 1.1 per cent, the lowest since March 1996.
Fionnuala Earley, group economist for Nationwide, said it was clear that there was a “sharp slowdown” in house prices.
She said: "The outlook for UK house prices is clearly more downbeat. Some of the downside risks we idenitfied in November have become a reality — most notably the continued turmoil in the financial markets."
She added that the collapse of Bear Stearns in the US and the rumours over the health of HBOS was likely to force the Bank of England to put aside fears over inflation and cut rates next month to "loosen conditions in financial markets".
A survey reported yesterday suggested that inflation could spiral to 3.6 per cent over the next 12 months.
Ms Earley said: “We think these latest developments, along with the continued weakening in the housing market, will mean that the [Bank of England] will bring forward its rate cut to April.”
Howard Archer, chief economist for Global Insight, gave warning today that there was the real possibility of a "sharp correction" in the property market.
He has been predicting a 5 per cent fall in both this year and next.
Mr Archer said: "We believe the downside for house prices will be limited to some extent by the rising number of households, an overall shortage of supply, high employment, further gradual but steady interest rate cuts over the coming year and the fact that few vendors are currently having to sell for 'distressed' reasons.
"Nevertheless, the current escalation of the credit crunch means that there is an increased risk that a significantly sharper housing market correction could occur."
Nationwide was one of two big lenders to put up its mortgage rates yesterday to close the door to all but the most creditworthy customers in a move that is expected to leave tens of thousands of borrowers struggling to secure a home loan.
The building society raised the rate on one of its most popular products by 0.57 per cent and said that it did not want to take on many more customers because doing so would add too much risk on to its books.
Within hours of the announcement, Norwich & Peterborough Building Society said that it was increasing its mortgage rates by up to half a percentage point.
There are fears that if other lenders followed suit, the property market could slow further.
The number of first-time buyers coming to the market has slowed, with a third fewer mortgages taken out for house purchases last month than in February 2007.
One mortgage industry source yesterday said: "The credit crunch feels like a stomach bug for borrowers — periods of calm followed by nasty spasms. This is the start of a spasm."
Nationwide urged homeowners today to put the slowdown in the housing market into context.
Typical house prices are 11 per cent higher than two years ago and 47 per cent higher than five years ago — the equivalent of £30 a day for the past five years.
Ms Earley said: "If prices were to fall in line with consumers' expectations, they would still be higher than two years ago.
"A moderate fall in prices at this stage should not be unwelcome and should help to ensure greater stability in the market going forward."
Dollar Heads for Biggest Weekly Drop Against Euro in a Month
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By Agnes Lovasz and Kosuke Goto
The dollar headed for its biggest weekly decline in a month against the euro as traders raised bets the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates to avert a recession.
By Agnes Lovasz and Kosuke Goto
The dollar headed for its biggest weekly decline in a month against the euro as traders raised bets the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates to avert a recession.
The currency was also poised to drop versus the British pound and the Swiss Franc before a U.S. government report today that will probably show growth in consumer spending slowed. The yen fell against the Australian and New Zealand dollars as gains in stocks prompted traders to increase holdings of higher- yielding assets funded with loans from Japan and Switzerland.
``There are further declines ahead for the dollar,’’ said Antje Praefcke, a Frankfurt-based currency strategist at Commerzbank AG, Germany’s second-largest bank. ``The U.S. is probably facing a recession and the Fed will cut rates further. There are ongoing problems with the financial sector. All of this is not good news for the dollar.’’
The dollar traded at $1.5763 per euro at 9:15 a.m. in London, from $1.5779 yesterday in New York and $1.5431 a week ago. The U.S. currency rose to 100.18 yen, from 99.65 yesterday and 99.58 at the end of last week. Japan’s currency weakened to 157.91 per euro, from 157.21 yesterday and 153.55 on March 21. The dollar, which dropped 2.2 percent this week, will trade in the $1.5750 to $1.58 range today before falling to a record $1.60 within the next two weeks, Praefcke predicted.
New Zealand’s dollar advanced after a statistics bureau report showed the nation’s economic growth accelerated at the fastest annual pace in three years in the fourth quarter. The currency rose to as high as 80.68 U.S. cents, before trading at 80.44 cents, from 80.35 cents. It also gained 0.6 percent to 80.50 yen. The Australian dollar strengthened 0.2 percent to 92.08 U.S. cents and 0.5 percent to 92.04 yen.
Pound, Asian Currencies
The pound fell to a record 79.14 pence against the euro after an industry report showed consumer confidence slumped to a 15-year low this month.
The Taiwan dollar dropped 0.8 percent to NT$30.389 on speculation the central bank will curb its gains to protect exporters, after the biggest advance this quarter since June 1987. The bank probably intervened at least twice yesterday, according to a Credit Suisse Group report.
South Korea’s won fell 0.5 percent to 992.97 per dollar after a central bank report showed a third consecutive current- account deficit and Yonhap news agency reported that North Korea had fired short-range missiles.
``The North Korean missiles had a limited impact,’’ said Tetsuhisa Hayashi, chief manager of foreign-exchange trading in Tokyo at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd., a unit of Japan’s largest publicly traded lender. ``It didn’t launch missiles toward Japan, but into the sea between China and Korea.’’
Carry Trades
The yen dropped against the Australian dollar as the MSCI Asia-Pacific Index of regional stocks rose 1.1 percent. In carry trades, speculators get funds in a country with low borrowing costs and invest in one with higher returns, earning the spread between the two. The risk is currency moves erode those profits.
``Gains in stocks are prompting yen sales,’’ said Hayashi.
Lower currency volatility may also encourage carry trades. Implied volatility on one-month dollar-yen options fell to 16.50 percent, from 16.65 percent yesterday. Traders quote the gauge of expectations for future currency swings as part of pricing options.
The Dollar Index traded on ICE Futures in New York, which tracks the currency against those of six trading partners, was at 71.78, from 71.66 yesterday and 72.71 a week ago. It reached a record low of 70.698 on March 17.
The dollar has fallen 0.7 percent against the pound this week, and traded at $1.9954, from $2.0072 yesterday. It has also declined 1.1 percent versus the Swiss franc, and traded at 0.9973 franc, from 0.9941 in New York.
Dollar Drop
The U.S. dollar has fallen 8 percent against the euro this year, heading for its sixth straight quarterly loss and the biggest since 2004 as the Fed slashed interest rates by 3 percentage points since September to 2.25 percent. Personal spending rose 0.1 percent last month, the smallest gain in more than a year, a Commerce Department report will show today, according to a Bloomberg News survey.
Futures on the Chicago Board of Trade show traders increased bets the Fed will lower its target rate by a half-percentage point on April 30. The futures showed a 42 percent chance of a reduction to 1.75 percent, compared with 36 percent the previous day. The remaining bets were for a cut of a quarter-point.
The yen remained lower against the dollar after a government report showed Japan’s consumer prices rose at the fastest pace in a decade in February, prompting some investors to cut bets the Bank of Japan will lower its 0.5 percent benchmark interest rate this year.
There is a 54 percent chance the central bank will reduce the rate to 0.25 percent by December, according to calculations by JPMorgan Chase & Co. using interest-rate swaps. The odds were down from 71 percent on March 19.
US shipped fuses for nuclear-armed missiles to Taiwan
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By Patrick Martin
In what Pentagon officials said was a major breach in US nuclear weapons security, the Defense Logistics Agency has acknowledged shipping four large electrical fuses used in nuclear missile warheads to the Taiwanese military two years ago.
The four cone-shaped fuses, each about two feet tall, were sent in packing crates labeled as spare batteries for helicopters. They were finally returned to the United States last week, after the Taiwanese military notified the Pentagon.
The admission sparked an international uproar, with China complaining loudly over the supplying of such a sensitive weapons component to a regime that it regards as a bitter rival and potential military antagonist.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang issued a statement expressing “strong displeasure” and demanding the US provide an account to China to “eliminate the negative effects and disastrous consequences created by this incident.”
President Bush telephoned Chinese President Hu Jintao to assure him that the transfer was inadvertent and did not represent a shift in US policy towards Taiwan.
The Bush administration claimed that the fuses were not usable in Taiwan, since the country’s military has no intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), let alone those with nuclear warheads. All such assertions must be viewed skeptically, however, since the Pentagon has every reason to conceal the truth if a transfer of nuclear technology was actually intended.
The Washington Post put the case in notably cautious language, writing: “Taiwan has no known nuclear weapons program and the fuses would be of no known use to its Defense Ministry. At the same time, the island’s government mounted a nuclear weapons research program at one point, and the issue remains extremely sensitive in China.”
According to the official account, delivered by Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne at a press conference Monday, the cones were shipped from F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming to a Pentagon warehouse in Utah, and from there on to Taiwan, filling an order from the Taiwanese military for helicopter batteries.
It was not clear at what point in the shipping process the packing crates containing the nuclear warhead fuses were labeled as batteries, but they apparently arrived in that condition in Taiwan in August 2006.
Six months later, Taiwanese military technicians opened the crates and saw the contents were not batteries. The Pentagon was notified, and an e-mail correspondence ensued that stretched over more than a year, with Pentagon logistics officials supposedly believing that it was merely a question of the wrong batteries being sent.
Finally, last week, Taiwanese officials notified the Pentagon that they were in possession of components for a missile carrying a nuclear warhead, and the cones were packed up and shipped back hurriedly to the United States.
Secretary Wynne tried to explain the shipment as an innocent clerical error, declaring, “In an organization as large as the DOD, the largest and most complex in the world, there will be mistakes. But they cannot be tolerated in the arena of strategic systems, whether they are nuclear or only associated equipment. Our policy on Taiwan arms sales has not changed.”
According to the Pentagon account, the cone fuses are part of the standard equipment of the older 1960s-era Mark 12 version of the Minuteman nuclear weapon. About 700 such missiles are still in use, and the fuses signal when the missile is close enough to the target to begin its detonation sequence. The fuses are being phased out of the US nuclear weapons system in favor of the updated Mark 12A, and shipped to the Utah depot for permanent storage.
How they were then forwarded to Taiwan will be the subject of an internal Pentagon investigation. A separate full-scale inventory of all nuclear weapons and components was ordered by Defense Secretary Gates, the Pentagon announced Thursday, in response to the Taiwan incident.
Whatever the exact circumstances that led to the shipment—and the public will certainly not learn this from any Pentagon-run probe—the incident is the second involving alleged mishandling of nuclear weapons or components in the past year.
Last August, an Air Force B-52 bomber flew from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana with six armed nuclear-tipped cruise missiles mounted on its wings. Since Barksdale is the home base for US stealth bombers, such as those which carried out long-range strikes against Iraq and Afghanistan, this has led to considerable speculation that an operation was underway to position US nuclear weapons for a possible strike against Iran.
In the aftermath of that event, four lower-ranking officers were relieved of duty, charged with negligence and inattention. In the latest incident, the claim of innocent error is even more difficult to believe, since there were at least ten quarterly weapons inventories at the US bases that should have noted the absence of the four nuclear cone fuses.
By Patrick Martin
In what Pentagon officials said was a major breach in US nuclear weapons security, the Defense Logistics Agency has acknowledged shipping four large electrical fuses used in nuclear missile warheads to the Taiwanese military two years ago.
The four cone-shaped fuses, each about two feet tall, were sent in packing crates labeled as spare batteries for helicopters. They were finally returned to the United States last week, after the Taiwanese military notified the Pentagon.
The admission sparked an international uproar, with China complaining loudly over the supplying of such a sensitive weapons component to a regime that it regards as a bitter rival and potential military antagonist.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang issued a statement expressing “strong displeasure” and demanding the US provide an account to China to “eliminate the negative effects and disastrous consequences created by this incident.”
President Bush telephoned Chinese President Hu Jintao to assure him that the transfer was inadvertent and did not represent a shift in US policy towards Taiwan.
The Bush administration claimed that the fuses were not usable in Taiwan, since the country’s military has no intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), let alone those with nuclear warheads. All such assertions must be viewed skeptically, however, since the Pentagon has every reason to conceal the truth if a transfer of nuclear technology was actually intended.
The Washington Post put the case in notably cautious language, writing: “Taiwan has no known nuclear weapons program and the fuses would be of no known use to its Defense Ministry. At the same time, the island’s government mounted a nuclear weapons research program at one point, and the issue remains extremely sensitive in China.”
According to the official account, delivered by Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne at a press conference Monday, the cones were shipped from F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming to a Pentagon warehouse in Utah, and from there on to Taiwan, filling an order from the Taiwanese military for helicopter batteries.
It was not clear at what point in the shipping process the packing crates containing the nuclear warhead fuses were labeled as batteries, but they apparently arrived in that condition in Taiwan in August 2006.
Six months later, Taiwanese military technicians opened the crates and saw the contents were not batteries. The Pentagon was notified, and an e-mail correspondence ensued that stretched over more than a year, with Pentagon logistics officials supposedly believing that it was merely a question of the wrong batteries being sent.
Finally, last week, Taiwanese officials notified the Pentagon that they were in possession of components for a missile carrying a nuclear warhead, and the cones were packed up and shipped back hurriedly to the United States.
Secretary Wynne tried to explain the shipment as an innocent clerical error, declaring, “In an organization as large as the DOD, the largest and most complex in the world, there will be mistakes. But they cannot be tolerated in the arena of strategic systems, whether they are nuclear or only associated equipment. Our policy on Taiwan arms sales has not changed.”
According to the Pentagon account, the cone fuses are part of the standard equipment of the older 1960s-era Mark 12 version of the Minuteman nuclear weapon. About 700 such missiles are still in use, and the fuses signal when the missile is close enough to the target to begin its detonation sequence. The fuses are being phased out of the US nuclear weapons system in favor of the updated Mark 12A, and shipped to the Utah depot for permanent storage.
How they were then forwarded to Taiwan will be the subject of an internal Pentagon investigation. A separate full-scale inventory of all nuclear weapons and components was ordered by Defense Secretary Gates, the Pentagon announced Thursday, in response to the Taiwan incident.
Whatever the exact circumstances that led to the shipment—and the public will certainly not learn this from any Pentagon-run probe—the incident is the second involving alleged mishandling of nuclear weapons or components in the past year.
Last August, an Air Force B-52 bomber flew from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana with six armed nuclear-tipped cruise missiles mounted on its wings. Since Barksdale is the home base for US stealth bombers, such as those which carried out long-range strikes against Iraq and Afghanistan, this has led to considerable speculation that an operation was underway to position US nuclear weapons for a possible strike against Iran.
In the aftermath of that event, four lower-ranking officers were relieved of duty, charged with negligence and inattention. In the latest incident, the claim of innocent error is even more difficult to believe, since there were at least ten quarterly weapons inventories at the US bases that should have noted the absence of the four nuclear cone fuses.
Why the Clintons’ profiting off near-slavery is not a campaign issue
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By Bill Van Auken
In the long run-up to the Pennsylvania primary, the Democratic campaign has descended ever deeper into a negative and personal mudslinging contest between the two remaining contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Broadcast news cycles have become dominated by an unending stream of barbs and accusations from each side, the most prevalent of late dealing, on the one hand, with sermons delivered by the pastor of Obama’s church and, on the other, with Hillary Clinton’s flight of the imagination to Bosnia a dozen years ago.
It is curious that in this toxic political environment, the Obama campaign has steered clear of one revelation concerning the Clintons that surfaced earlier this month. The media has virtually ignored it as well.
Last month, agents of the Brazilian Labor Ministry’s slave-labor investigations unit raided facilities run by Brenco (Brazil Renewable Energy Co.), a biofuel company operating in the states of Goiás and Mato Grosso, where some 1,500 workers, most of them cane cutters, were kept in what the ministry described as “degrading” conditions akin to slavery.
Workers at five separate locations inspected by the ministry “complained they were suffering from hunger and cold, and all of the locations were overcrowded and with terrible sanitary conditions. They were apparently held against their will in the abysmal housing provided them, not allowed to leave after their workday was through.
Details of the raids first surfaced in Folha de São Paulo, Brazil’s largest newspaper, on March 8. Hundreds of workers freed in the raids managed to get their final wages and a bus ticket home, most of them returning to the impoverished northeastern states of Ceará, Maranhão and Piauí.
What was also revealed in the investigation was that former US president—and husband of the Democratic presidential candidate—Bill Clinton was an investor in the firm.
According to a financial disclosure form filed by Hillary Clinton last year, the couple’s stake in Brenco was valued at up to $50,000.
A Clinton spokesman described the investment as “small” and claimed that the ex-president had been assured that the Brazilian company was “committed to the highest ethical standard with regard to the treatment of its workforce and the environment.”
While $50,000 may be small for the Clintons—Hillary Clinton reported income as high as $12 million on her Senate disclosure form last May—it is more than an average American household earns in a year. And it would take the cane cutters whose labor is the base of Brenco’s profits 22 years to earn that much money—a physical impossibility given the exceedingly short life expectancy of those doing this back-breaking work.
Clinton’s feigned shock over the appalling working and living conditions of the Brenco workers is hardly credible. The grinding oppression of the some 200,000 cane cutters who are exploited by Brazil’s growing and highly profitable ethanol industry is hardly unknown. As a WSWS correspondent from São Paulo noted in an article last June on a cane cutter dying from overwork, these workers confront “a world of wage slavery in which the precarious conditions of labor have reduced the working life of the average cane cutter to below that of the slaves of the nineteenth century.”
As for Clinton’s faith that the industry was maintaining the “highest standards” in relation to the environment, this is merely laughable. The ethanol boom’s promotion of a sugarcane monoculture, the burning of fields and the dumping of waste threaten to unleash an ecological catastrophe.
The reality is that the Clintons’ investment in a slave-labor ethanol firm in Brazil is merely a manifestation of the way in which the couple have enriched themselves on the basis of political connections established while they were in the White House.
The investment was made through Yucaipa Co., a Los Angeles-based private equity firm, run by billionaire Democratic Party fundraiser and Clinton confidante Ron Burkle. Bill Clinton was hired by the firm as an “advisor” and is expected to get a payout of some $20 million when he leaves it, probably in the coming months.
This immense wealth flowing to the Clintons on the basis of their political connections is what made it possible for Hillary Clinton to plunk down $5 million of her own money to bail out a near-bankrupt campaign earlier this year.
Bill Clinton’s spokesman, Matt McKenna, told the Associated Press that the former president is “taking steps to ensure that there is an appropriate transition for his business relationships should Senator Clinton become the Democratic nominee.” According to some reports, one of these “steps” has included investing his money in Yucaipa’s Cayman Island-based firms, a tactic used to avoid paying taxes.
The Brenco investment was no accident, but clearly something offered to the well connected with the expectation of super-profits. The company was founded by Henri Philippe Reichstul, the former chief executive of Brazil’s powerful state-owned oil firm, Petrobras. According to Folha, others who have invested in Brenco include close Clinton ally James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank president, Hollywood producer and Democratic fundraiser Steven Bing, America Online founder Stephen Case and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla.
Given the bitter and often personal attacks that have characterized both sides during the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, one might expect the revelation that the Clintons were profiting off an insider deal that put their money into a slave-labor operation in Brazil would provide valuable ammunition for the Obama campaign. Yet the Illinois Senator’s camp has said nothing about the matter.
Similarly, the revelation got the scantest coverage in the press. A Google News search for “Clinton” and “Brenco” turns up just four entries, none of them from a US daily newspaper or broadcast network.
Why is the subject virtually taboo? Quite simply because the behavior of the Clintons is not an aberration, but rather the norm for bourgeois politics in America.
While the Obamas trail far behind the Clintons in terms of personal wealth, their gross income increased fivefold since his taking office in the US Senate, averaging $1.3 million a year in 2005 and 2006.
Moreover, both of the candidates’ campaigns are richly funded by Wall Street. Senator Clinton has received some $6.29 million in political contributions from the securities and investment industries, while Senator Obama trails only slightly, with $6.03 million. Both have raked in more than double the amount that has gone to the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, John McCain, and more than four times as much as Al Gore received over the entire 2000 campaign.
Wall Street’s immense profits over the past period have been accrued in no small measure by investments in what is known in the financial industry as “emerging markets,” where brutal exploitation like that imposed upon the Brazilian cane cutters produces handsome returns for the multimillionaires and billionaires who dominate the markets.
Neither Obama nor Clinton has any interest in casting a spotlight on these ugly truths, given that both candidates posture as economic populists to win votes, while remaining firmly committed to defending the profit interests of a ruling financial elite into which they themselves are being integrated.
By Bill Van Auken
In the long run-up to the Pennsylvania primary, the Democratic campaign has descended ever deeper into a negative and personal mudslinging contest between the two remaining contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Broadcast news cycles have become dominated by an unending stream of barbs and accusations from each side, the most prevalent of late dealing, on the one hand, with sermons delivered by the pastor of Obama’s church and, on the other, with Hillary Clinton’s flight of the imagination to Bosnia a dozen years ago.
It is curious that in this toxic political environment, the Obama campaign has steered clear of one revelation concerning the Clintons that surfaced earlier this month. The media has virtually ignored it as well.
Last month, agents of the Brazilian Labor Ministry’s slave-labor investigations unit raided facilities run by Brenco (Brazil Renewable Energy Co.), a biofuel company operating in the states of Goiás and Mato Grosso, where some 1,500 workers, most of them cane cutters, were kept in what the ministry described as “degrading” conditions akin to slavery.
Workers at five separate locations inspected by the ministry “complained they were suffering from hunger and cold, and all of the locations were overcrowded and with terrible sanitary conditions. They were apparently held against their will in the abysmal housing provided them, not allowed to leave after their workday was through.
Details of the raids first surfaced in Folha de São Paulo, Brazil’s largest newspaper, on March 8. Hundreds of workers freed in the raids managed to get their final wages and a bus ticket home, most of them returning to the impoverished northeastern states of Ceará, Maranhão and Piauí.
What was also revealed in the investigation was that former US president—and husband of the Democratic presidential candidate—Bill Clinton was an investor in the firm.
According to a financial disclosure form filed by Hillary Clinton last year, the couple’s stake in Brenco was valued at up to $50,000.
A Clinton spokesman described the investment as “small” and claimed that the ex-president had been assured that the Brazilian company was “committed to the highest ethical standard with regard to the treatment of its workforce and the environment.”
While $50,000 may be small for the Clintons—Hillary Clinton reported income as high as $12 million on her Senate disclosure form last May—it is more than an average American household earns in a year. And it would take the cane cutters whose labor is the base of Brenco’s profits 22 years to earn that much money—a physical impossibility given the exceedingly short life expectancy of those doing this back-breaking work.
Clinton’s feigned shock over the appalling working and living conditions of the Brenco workers is hardly credible. The grinding oppression of the some 200,000 cane cutters who are exploited by Brazil’s growing and highly profitable ethanol industry is hardly unknown. As a WSWS correspondent from São Paulo noted in an article last June on a cane cutter dying from overwork, these workers confront “a world of wage slavery in which the precarious conditions of labor have reduced the working life of the average cane cutter to below that of the slaves of the nineteenth century.”
As for Clinton’s faith that the industry was maintaining the “highest standards” in relation to the environment, this is merely laughable. The ethanol boom’s promotion of a sugarcane monoculture, the burning of fields and the dumping of waste threaten to unleash an ecological catastrophe.
The reality is that the Clintons’ investment in a slave-labor ethanol firm in Brazil is merely a manifestation of the way in which the couple have enriched themselves on the basis of political connections established while they were in the White House.
The investment was made through Yucaipa Co., a Los Angeles-based private equity firm, run by billionaire Democratic Party fundraiser and Clinton confidante Ron Burkle. Bill Clinton was hired by the firm as an “advisor” and is expected to get a payout of some $20 million when he leaves it, probably in the coming months.
This immense wealth flowing to the Clintons on the basis of their political connections is what made it possible for Hillary Clinton to plunk down $5 million of her own money to bail out a near-bankrupt campaign earlier this year.
Bill Clinton’s spokesman, Matt McKenna, told the Associated Press that the former president is “taking steps to ensure that there is an appropriate transition for his business relationships should Senator Clinton become the Democratic nominee.” According to some reports, one of these “steps” has included investing his money in Yucaipa’s Cayman Island-based firms, a tactic used to avoid paying taxes.
The Brenco investment was no accident, but clearly something offered to the well connected with the expectation of super-profits. The company was founded by Henri Philippe Reichstul, the former chief executive of Brazil’s powerful state-owned oil firm, Petrobras. According to Folha, others who have invested in Brenco include close Clinton ally James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank president, Hollywood producer and Democratic fundraiser Steven Bing, America Online founder Stephen Case and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla.
Given the bitter and often personal attacks that have characterized both sides during the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, one might expect the revelation that the Clintons were profiting off an insider deal that put their money into a slave-labor operation in Brazil would provide valuable ammunition for the Obama campaign. Yet the Illinois Senator’s camp has said nothing about the matter.
Similarly, the revelation got the scantest coverage in the press. A Google News search for “Clinton” and “Brenco” turns up just four entries, none of them from a US daily newspaper or broadcast network.
Why is the subject virtually taboo? Quite simply because the behavior of the Clintons is not an aberration, but rather the norm for bourgeois politics in America.
While the Obamas trail far behind the Clintons in terms of personal wealth, their gross income increased fivefold since his taking office in the US Senate, averaging $1.3 million a year in 2005 and 2006.
Moreover, both of the candidates’ campaigns are richly funded by Wall Street. Senator Clinton has received some $6.29 million in political contributions from the securities and investment industries, while Senator Obama trails only slightly, with $6.03 million. Both have raked in more than double the amount that has gone to the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, John McCain, and more than four times as much as Al Gore received over the entire 2000 campaign.
Wall Street’s immense profits over the past period have been accrued in no small measure by investments in what is known in the financial industry as “emerging markets,” where brutal exploitation like that imposed upon the Brazilian cane cutters produces handsome returns for the multimillionaires and billionaires who dominate the markets.
Neither Obama nor Clinton has any interest in casting a spotlight on these ugly truths, given that both candidates posture as economic populists to win votes, while remaining firmly committed to defending the profit interests of a ruling financial elite into which they themselves are being integrated.
Stalled assault on Basra exposes the Iraqi government's shaky authority
Go to Original
By Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi army's offensive against the Shia militia of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Basra is failing to make significant headway despite a pledge by the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to fight "to the end".
Instead of being a show of strength, the government's stalled assault is demonstrating its shaky authority over much of Baghdad and southern Iraq. As the situation spins out of Mr Maliki's control, saboteurs blew up one of the two main oil export pipelines near Basra, cutting by a third crude exports from the oilfields around the city. The international price of oil jumped immediately by $1 a barrel before falling back.
In Baghdad, tens of thousands of supporters of Mr Sadr, whose base of support is the Shia poor, marched through the streets shouting slogans demanding that Mr Maliki's government be overthrown. "We demand the downfall of the Maliki government," said one of the marchers, Hussein Abu Ali. "It does not represent the people. It represents Bush and Cheney."
The main bastion of the Sadrist movement is impoverished Sadr City, which has a population of two million and is almost a twin city to Baghdad. The densely packed slum has been sealed off by US troops. "We are trapped in our homes with no water or electricity since yesterday," said a resident called Mohammed. "We can't bathe our children or wash our clothes."
The streets are controlled by Mehdi Army fighters, many of whom say they expect an all-out American attack, though this seems unlikely since the US says that an attack on the Shia militias is a wholly Iraqi affair.
In Basra, Iraqi forces have cordoned off seven districts but appear stalled in their effort to dislodge the Mehdi Army fighters. Masked gunmen in some cases have captured or seized abandoned Iraqi army vehicles and painted pro-Sadrist slogans on their armour.
A co-ordinated mortar bombardment struck the main police base in the city beside the Shatt al-Arab waterway and there was heavy shooting in the main commercial street of Iraq's southern capital. An Interior Ministry source said that 51 people had been killed and more than 200 wounded in three days of fighting in Basra. There was an attempt to assassinate Basra's police chief in which three of his bodyguards were killed by a bomb.
Mr Maliki's surprise offensive against the Mehdi Army is likely to have repercussions far beyond Iraq. The Americans must have agreed to the attack though they had previously praised the six-month ceasefire declared by Mr Sadr on 29 August and renewed in February as being one of the main reasons why violence had fallen in Iraq. Although Mr Sadr has said the truce is continuing it is ceasing to have much meaning.
President George Bush praised Mr Maliki yesterday saying he faces a "tough battle against militia fighters and criminals". He said that the Iraqi Prime Minister had taken a bold decision "in going after the illegal groups in Basra".
But the rapid increase in violence may puncture optimism in the US over the "success" of the surge in leading to a turning point in the five-year-long war.
The Green Zone, the heavily fortified centre of American power in Iraq, was wreathed in smoke yesterday as it was struck by rockets and mortars fired from Shia neighbourhoods. In a further blow to the belief that the surge has restored law and order, one of the two Iraqi spokesmen for the Baghdad security plan, which is at the heart of the surge strategy, was kidnapped and three of his bodyguards killed before his house was set on fire. The victim was Tahseen Sheikhly, a Sunni who often appeared with American officials to proclaim the success of the surge.
Clashes are now taking place across Iraq and most of the Shia districts in Iraq. In the middle of last year a Mehdi Army commander said that his militia controlled 80 per cent of Shia Baghdad and 50 per cent of the capital as a whole. This is probably only a slight exaggeration. There has also been heavy fighting in Kut on the Tigris, where 44 have been killed and 75 wounded, and in Hilla on the Euphrates where 60 people died. In past months the Sadrists have been locked in a struggle for Diwaniya, also on the Euphrates south of Baghdad, where they have been fighting police units controlled by Badr, the militia of the other great Shia party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI).
When he first came to power, Mr Maliki balanced between ISCI and the Sadrists but has steadily become closer to the first party and has shown growing hostility to Mr Sadr. The last great battle between the Sadrists and the Iraqi government backed by the Americans was in Najaf in 2004 and was ended by the intervention of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who wanted the Sadrists humbled but not crushed. He also did not want to see the Shia community divided into warring factions. It is possible that the Grand Ayatollah may seek to mediate again but Mr Maliki may find it difficult to compromise after his claim that he will win control of Basra.
The government has about 15,000 soldiers and the same number of police in Basra but this is not a great number in a city of two million. The police are closely linked to the militias and are unlikely to prove a resolute ally against the Mehdi Army.
By Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi army's offensive against the Shia militia of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Basra is failing to make significant headway despite a pledge by the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to fight "to the end".
Instead of being a show of strength, the government's stalled assault is demonstrating its shaky authority over much of Baghdad and southern Iraq. As the situation spins out of Mr Maliki's control, saboteurs blew up one of the two main oil export pipelines near Basra, cutting by a third crude exports from the oilfields around the city. The international price of oil jumped immediately by $1 a barrel before falling back.
In Baghdad, tens of thousands of supporters of Mr Sadr, whose base of support is the Shia poor, marched through the streets shouting slogans demanding that Mr Maliki's government be overthrown. "We demand the downfall of the Maliki government," said one of the marchers, Hussein Abu Ali. "It does not represent the people. It represents Bush and Cheney."
The main bastion of the Sadrist movement is impoverished Sadr City, which has a population of two million and is almost a twin city to Baghdad. The densely packed slum has been sealed off by US troops. "We are trapped in our homes with no water or electricity since yesterday," said a resident called Mohammed. "We can't bathe our children or wash our clothes."
The streets are controlled by Mehdi Army fighters, many of whom say they expect an all-out American attack, though this seems unlikely since the US says that an attack on the Shia militias is a wholly Iraqi affair.
In Basra, Iraqi forces have cordoned off seven districts but appear stalled in their effort to dislodge the Mehdi Army fighters. Masked gunmen in some cases have captured or seized abandoned Iraqi army vehicles and painted pro-Sadrist slogans on their armour.
A co-ordinated mortar bombardment struck the main police base in the city beside the Shatt al-Arab waterway and there was heavy shooting in the main commercial street of Iraq's southern capital. An Interior Ministry source said that 51 people had been killed and more than 200 wounded in three days of fighting in Basra. There was an attempt to assassinate Basra's police chief in which three of his bodyguards were killed by a bomb.
Mr Maliki's surprise offensive against the Mehdi Army is likely to have repercussions far beyond Iraq. The Americans must have agreed to the attack though they had previously praised the six-month ceasefire declared by Mr Sadr on 29 August and renewed in February as being one of the main reasons why violence had fallen in Iraq. Although Mr Sadr has said the truce is continuing it is ceasing to have much meaning.
President George Bush praised Mr Maliki yesterday saying he faces a "tough battle against militia fighters and criminals". He said that the Iraqi Prime Minister had taken a bold decision "in going after the illegal groups in Basra".
But the rapid increase in violence may puncture optimism in the US over the "success" of the surge in leading to a turning point in the five-year-long war.
The Green Zone, the heavily fortified centre of American power in Iraq, was wreathed in smoke yesterday as it was struck by rockets and mortars fired from Shia neighbourhoods. In a further blow to the belief that the surge has restored law and order, one of the two Iraqi spokesmen for the Baghdad security plan, which is at the heart of the surge strategy, was kidnapped and three of his bodyguards killed before his house was set on fire. The victim was Tahseen Sheikhly, a Sunni who often appeared with American officials to proclaim the success of the surge.
Clashes are now taking place across Iraq and most of the Shia districts in Iraq. In the middle of last year a Mehdi Army commander said that his militia controlled 80 per cent of Shia Baghdad and 50 per cent of the capital as a whole. This is probably only a slight exaggeration. There has also been heavy fighting in Kut on the Tigris, where 44 have been killed and 75 wounded, and in Hilla on the Euphrates where 60 people died. In past months the Sadrists have been locked in a struggle for Diwaniya, also on the Euphrates south of Baghdad, where they have been fighting police units controlled by Badr, the militia of the other great Shia party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI).
When he first came to power, Mr Maliki balanced between ISCI and the Sadrists but has steadily become closer to the first party and has shown growing hostility to Mr Sadr. The last great battle between the Sadrists and the Iraqi government backed by the Americans was in Najaf in 2004 and was ended by the intervention of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who wanted the Sadrists humbled but not crushed. He also did not want to see the Shia community divided into warring factions. It is possible that the Grand Ayatollah may seek to mediate again but Mr Maliki may find it difficult to compromise after his claim that he will win control of Basra.
The government has about 15,000 soldiers and the same number of police in Basra but this is not a great number in a city of two million. The police are closely linked to the militias and are unlikely to prove a resolute ally against the Mehdi Army.
How Lethally Stupid Can One Country Be?
Go to Original
By David Michael Green
Watching George W. Bush in operation these last couple of weeks is like having an out-of-body experience. On acid. During a nightmare. In a different galaxy.
As he presides over the latest disaster of his administration (No, it's not a terrorist attack -- that was 2001! No, it's not a catastrophic war -- that was 2003! No, it's not a drowning city -- that was 2005! This one is an economic meltdown, ladies and gentlemen!) bringing to it the same blithe disengagement with which he's attended the previous ones, you cannot but stop and gaze in stark comedic awe, realizing that the most powerful polity that ever existed on the planet twice picked this imbecilic buffoon as its leader, from among 300 million other choices. Seeing him clown with the Washington press corps yet once again -- and seeing them fawn over him, laugh in all the right places, and give him a standing ovation, also yet once again -- is the equivalent of having all your logic circuits blown simultaneously. Truly, the universe has a twisted and deeply ironic sense of humor. Monty Python is about as funny -- and as stiff -- as Dick Nixon, by comparison.
It's simply incomprehensible. It's not so astonishing, of course, that a country could have a bad leader whose aims are nefarious on the occasions when they are competent enough to rise to that level of intentionality. Plenty of countries have managed that feat, especially when -- as was the case with Bush -- every sort of scam is employed to steal power, and then pure corruption and intimidation used to keep it. History is quite littered indeed with bimbos and petty criminals of this caliber. What is harder to explain is how the citizens of a country of such remarkable achievements in other domains, and with the capacity to choose, allow this to happen. And then stand by silently watching for eight years as the tragedy unfolds before their eyes.
But let's give credit where credit is due. This is precisely by design. This is exactly the outcome intended by the greatest propaganda-promulgating regime since Hermann Göring set fire to the Reichstag. It was Göring himself who famously reminded us that, "Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Sure worked in Germany. And it worked even better here, because these guys were so absolutely careful to avoid exposing the costs of their war to those who could demand its end. For example, by some counts, there are more mercenaries in Iraq, at extremely high cost, than there are U.S. military personnel.
There's only one reason for that. If the administration implemented the draft that is actually necessary to supply this war with adequate personnel, the public would end both the war and the careers of its sponsors, post haste. For the same reason, this is the first American war ever which has not only not been accompanied by a tax increase, but has in fact witnessed a tax cut. Likewise -- to "preserve the dignity" of the dead, of course -- you are no longer permitted to see photographs of flag-draped caskets returning to Dover Air Force Base. And the press are embedded with forces who are also responsible for their safety, which is just a fancy way of saying that they're so censored they make Pravda look good. It is, in short, quite easy for average Americans to get through their day, every day, without the war impacting their lives in any visible respect, and that is precisely what hundreds of millions of us are doing, week in and week out. All of this is courtesy of an administration that couldn't run a governmental program to save its own life -- but, boy, it sure as hell knows how to market stuff.
Perhaps Americans and American democracy are no wiser or better than any other people or political system, even today, even after the worst century of warfare in human history, even after the mirror-image experience of Vietnam. Maybe the experience of Iraq hasn't even changed them, and they'll once again follow like lemmings when led to war by pathetic creatures such as George W. Bush, 50 years from now. Or five years from now. Or even five months from now, as Dick Cheney tees up a confrontation with Iran in order keep Democrats out of the White House and himself out of jail.
Sure, presidents and prime ministers, no less than kings and führers, will lie their countries into war. Sure, they're very good at it and getting better all the time. Definitely a frightened people are more prone to stupidity than those lucky enough to contemplate in the luxury of quiet safety. Without question, it helps an awful lot -- if you're just Joe Sixpack, out there trying to figure out international politics in between a long day's work, helping the kids with their algebra homework, and the Yankee game -- to have a checking-and-balancing Congress, a responsible opposition party, and/or a critical media helping you to understand the issues accurately, rather than gleefully capitulating to executive power at every opportunity. But that by no means excuses a public who was fundamentally far more lazy than they were ignorant or confused. And lazy is one thing when you're talking about a highway bill or even national healthcare. But when it comes to war, lazy is murder.
I don't think it took a giant leap of logic to understand that this war was bogus from the beginning, even based on what was known at the time. The war was sold on three basic arguments, each of which could have been easily dismantled even then with a little thoughtful consideration.
The first was WMD, of course. So, OK, perhaps your average American didn't know that the United States government (including many in the current administration) had actually once supplied Saddam Hussein the material to make these evil weapons and had covered for him at the United Nations and elsewhere when he used them. This historical myopia is very much part of the problem, of course. Americans are so ready to denounce supposed enemies without doing the slightest bit of historical homework to make sense of the situation. If you don't know that the United States actually canceled elections and helped assassinate a "democratic" president in Vietnam, of course you're going to support war there. If you don't know that the United States toppled a democratically elected Iranian government to steal the country's oil and then installed a brutal dictatorship in its place, of course you're going to be angry at U.S. diplomats being held hostage. And if you don't bother to learn the true history of Iraq, perhaps you'll find the WMD argument quite persuasive.
But, in fact, even without the historical background information, it never made a damn bit of sense. Iraq had been pulverized by war and sanctions for over 20 years prior to 2003. Two-thirds of its airspace was controlled by foreign militaries. Its northern region was effectively autonomous, a separate country in all but name. It was in no position to attack anyone. Moreover, it hadn't attacked anyone -- not the United States or anyone else. Indeed, it hadn't even threatened to attack anyone. Shouldn't that be part of the calculation in determining whether to go to war? Do we really want to give carte blanche to any dry (we hope) drunkard in the White House who today wants to bomb Norway ("They're stealing our fish!") or tomorrow wants to invade Burkina Faso ("They dress funny!")?
Too often, of course, the historical answer to that question has unfortunately been yes, we apparently do want to do that. But let's consider the massive warning signs in this case, even apart from what could be known about the administration's lies at the time. Shouldn't it have been enormously problematic that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11? Even the administration never had the gall to make that claim. Wasn't it transparent to anyone that America had plenty on its plate already in dealing with the enemy we were told we had, rather than adding a new adventure to the pile? And why wasn't this thing selling throughout the world, or even amongst the traitorous half of the Democratic Party in Congress? Remember how everyone at home and abroad -- yes, including the French -- supported the United States and its military actions in Afghanistan only 12 months before? Shouldn't it have been a warning sign of epic proportions that these same folks wouldn't countenance a war in Iraq just a year later? That the administration had to yank its Security Council resolution off the table, even after breaking both the arms of every member-state around the horseshoe table, because it could still only get Britain and two other patsies to lie down for this outrage, out of a total of 15, and nine needed to pass?
And how about the logic of that whole WMD thing, after all? Did anyone ever stop to think that 36 other countries were thought to have clandestine WMD programs, including around a dozen that are pretty hostile to the United States? Did anyone not remember that the Soviets once had nearly 25,000 strategic nuclear warheads pointed in our direction? What ever happened to the logic of deterrence? To mutually assured destruction? And what about the mad rush to go to war, preempting the U.N. weapons inspectors from doing their job? Are we really OK with the notion that instead of "risking" whatever would have been at risk by giving the inspectors another six or eight weeks to finish up, we've instead bought this devastating war down on our own heads for no reason at all?
The second rationale for war was the bogus linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda. The extent and ramifications of this lie are so significant that the White House, it was just recently revealed, squelched a Pentagon report showing no connections between the two. Remember how definitive Cheney and the rest were of this supposed al Qaeda linkage, based pretty much entirely on a meeting between two operatives in Prague which likely didn't even take place? Now we find out that the Department of Defense has spent the last five years combing through a mere 600,000 documents, and found zero evidence of such a link. Not some evidence. Not mixed evidence. Zero evidence.
Then, once again, there's the matter of that whole pesky logic thing. Pay attention now, class. What do we know about al Qaeda? They are devoted to religious war -- jihad -- in the name of replacing governments across the Middle East with theocracies, or better yet recreating the old Islamic caliphate stretching across the region, right? Right. Now if this vision could have more thoroughly contradicted Saddam's agenda for a secular dictatorship seeking regional domination on his own Stalinist terms, it is hard to imagine how. You don't need a Ph.D. in international politics to see that these two actors were about as antithetical to each other as the Republican Party is to integrity.
Lastly, Bush's little adventure in Mesopotamia was supposed to bring democracy to the region, remember? Never mind, of course, that there has long already been a fairly thriving Islamic democracy, right next door. Oops! It's called Turkey. And let's not forget Mr. Bush's long-standing devotion to democracy, as he amply demonstrated in the American election of 2000. Or as he has continually manifested by bravely and publicly pushing the Chinese to democratize. Just as he has with his pals in Egypt and especially the family friends running Saudi Arabia, the recipient of more American foreign aid than nearly any other country in all the world.
What is clear is that the reasons given to the American public for the war in Iraq were entirely bogus. This much is already on the public record, from the Downing Street memos [http://downingstreetmemo.com/] and beyond. Even if we can only speculate on why they actually invaded -- oil, glory, personal insecurity, Israel, clobbering Democrats, Middle Eastern dominance -- what we know for sure is that the rationale fed to the public was a knowingly fabricated pack of scummy lies [http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/Default.aspx?source=home&context=overview&id=945]. It wasn't about WMD, it wasn't about links to al Qaeda, and it sure wasn't about democracy.
But even if we can't identify the true motivations within the administration for invading, we can surely begin to see the costs. Probably a million Iraqi civilians are dead [http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html]. Over 4 million are displaced and now living as refugees [http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/9679]. Together, these equal a staggering one-fifth of the population of the entire country. Meanwhile, the remaining four-fifths are living in squalor, fear and a psychological damage so extensive that it is hard to grasp. America has lost 4,000 soldiers, with perhaps another 30,000 gravely wounded. Hundreds of thousands more will be scarred for life from their experiences in the hell of Mr. Bush's war. Our military is broken and incapable of responding to a real emergency, at home or abroad. Our economy will sustain a blow of perhaps $3 trillion before all is said and done. Our reputation in the world is in the toilet. We have turned the Iranian theocracy into a regional hegemon. And we have massively proliferated our own enemies within the Islamic community. That would be one hell of an expensive war, even if the reasons given for it were legitimate. It is nearly incomprehensible considering that they were not.
This week, a man died in France, the last surviving veteran of World War I, a devastating conflict that -- even a century later -- nobody can really explain to this day. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney, John McCain and Joe "Make-me-SecDef-Mac-oh-please-pick-me-Mac" Lieberman parachuted into Iraq for photo-ops to sustain the war they don't have the integrity or the guts to abandon. Never mind that their visits had to be by surprise, and that they stroll around the Green Zone wearing armored vests -- surely the most powerful measures of the war's success imaginable. Of course, to be fair, we've only been at it for five years now. Perhaps after the remaining 95 on McCain's agenda go by, Americans will finally be safe enough in Iraq to announce their visits in advance.
So, happy anniversary, America! You put these people in charge, and then -- after seeing in explicit in detail what they were capable of -- you actually did it again in 2004! You stood by in silence watching the devastation wrought upon an innocent people, produced in your name and financed by your tax dollars. And you continue to do just that again, now in Year Six.
Brilliant! Put on your party hat, America. You won the prize.
You've successfully answered the musical question, "How lethally stupid can one country be?"
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net) but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at www.regressiveantidote.net/.
By David Michael Green
Watching George W. Bush in operation these last couple of weeks is like having an out-of-body experience. On acid. During a nightmare. In a different galaxy.
As he presides over the latest disaster of his administration (No, it's not a terrorist attack -- that was 2001! No, it's not a catastrophic war -- that was 2003! No, it's not a drowning city -- that was 2005! This one is an economic meltdown, ladies and gentlemen!) bringing to it the same blithe disengagement with which he's attended the previous ones, you cannot but stop and gaze in stark comedic awe, realizing that the most powerful polity that ever existed on the planet twice picked this imbecilic buffoon as its leader, from among 300 million other choices. Seeing him clown with the Washington press corps yet once again -- and seeing them fawn over him, laugh in all the right places, and give him a standing ovation, also yet once again -- is the equivalent of having all your logic circuits blown simultaneously. Truly, the universe has a twisted and deeply ironic sense of humor. Monty Python is about as funny -- and as stiff -- as Dick Nixon, by comparison.
It's simply incomprehensible. It's not so astonishing, of course, that a country could have a bad leader whose aims are nefarious on the occasions when they are competent enough to rise to that level of intentionality. Plenty of countries have managed that feat, especially when -- as was the case with Bush -- every sort of scam is employed to steal power, and then pure corruption and intimidation used to keep it. History is quite littered indeed with bimbos and petty criminals of this caliber. What is harder to explain is how the citizens of a country of such remarkable achievements in other domains, and with the capacity to choose, allow this to happen. And then stand by silently watching for eight years as the tragedy unfolds before their eyes.
But let's give credit where credit is due. This is precisely by design. This is exactly the outcome intended by the greatest propaganda-promulgating regime since Hermann Göring set fire to the Reichstag. It was Göring himself who famously reminded us that, "Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Sure worked in Germany. And it worked even better here, because these guys were so absolutely careful to avoid exposing the costs of their war to those who could demand its end. For example, by some counts, there are more mercenaries in Iraq, at extremely high cost, than there are U.S. military personnel.
There's only one reason for that. If the administration implemented the draft that is actually necessary to supply this war with adequate personnel, the public would end both the war and the careers of its sponsors, post haste. For the same reason, this is the first American war ever which has not only not been accompanied by a tax increase, but has in fact witnessed a tax cut. Likewise -- to "preserve the dignity" of the dead, of course -- you are no longer permitted to see photographs of flag-draped caskets returning to Dover Air Force Base. And the press are embedded with forces who are also responsible for their safety, which is just a fancy way of saying that they're so censored they make Pravda look good. It is, in short, quite easy for average Americans to get through their day, every day, without the war impacting their lives in any visible respect, and that is precisely what hundreds of millions of us are doing, week in and week out. All of this is courtesy of an administration that couldn't run a governmental program to save its own life -- but, boy, it sure as hell knows how to market stuff.
Perhaps Americans and American democracy are no wiser or better than any other people or political system, even today, even after the worst century of warfare in human history, even after the mirror-image experience of Vietnam. Maybe the experience of Iraq hasn't even changed them, and they'll once again follow like lemmings when led to war by pathetic creatures such as George W. Bush, 50 years from now. Or five years from now. Or even five months from now, as Dick Cheney tees up a confrontation with Iran in order keep Democrats out of the White House and himself out of jail.
Sure, presidents and prime ministers, no less than kings and führers, will lie their countries into war. Sure, they're very good at it and getting better all the time. Definitely a frightened people are more prone to stupidity than those lucky enough to contemplate in the luxury of quiet safety. Without question, it helps an awful lot -- if you're just Joe Sixpack, out there trying to figure out international politics in between a long day's work, helping the kids with their algebra homework, and the Yankee game -- to have a checking-and-balancing Congress, a responsible opposition party, and/or a critical media helping you to understand the issues accurately, rather than gleefully capitulating to executive power at every opportunity. But that by no means excuses a public who was fundamentally far more lazy than they were ignorant or confused. And lazy is one thing when you're talking about a highway bill or even national healthcare. But when it comes to war, lazy is murder.
I don't think it took a giant leap of logic to understand that this war was bogus from the beginning, even based on what was known at the time. The war was sold on three basic arguments, each of which could have been easily dismantled even then with a little thoughtful consideration.
The first was WMD, of course. So, OK, perhaps your average American didn't know that the United States government (including many in the current administration) had actually once supplied Saddam Hussein the material to make these evil weapons and had covered for him at the United Nations and elsewhere when he used them. This historical myopia is very much part of the problem, of course. Americans are so ready to denounce supposed enemies without doing the slightest bit of historical homework to make sense of the situation. If you don't know that the United States actually canceled elections and helped assassinate a "democratic" president in Vietnam, of course you're going to support war there. If you don't know that the United States toppled a democratically elected Iranian government to steal the country's oil and then installed a brutal dictatorship in its place, of course you're going to be angry at U.S. diplomats being held hostage. And if you don't bother to learn the true history of Iraq, perhaps you'll find the WMD argument quite persuasive.
But, in fact, even without the historical background information, it never made a damn bit of sense. Iraq had been pulverized by war and sanctions for over 20 years prior to 2003. Two-thirds of its airspace was controlled by foreign militaries. Its northern region was effectively autonomous, a separate country in all but name. It was in no position to attack anyone. Moreover, it hadn't attacked anyone -- not the United States or anyone else. Indeed, it hadn't even threatened to attack anyone. Shouldn't that be part of the calculation in determining whether to go to war? Do we really want to give carte blanche to any dry (we hope) drunkard in the White House who today wants to bomb Norway ("They're stealing our fish!") or tomorrow wants to invade Burkina Faso ("They dress funny!")?
Too often, of course, the historical answer to that question has unfortunately been yes, we apparently do want to do that. But let's consider the massive warning signs in this case, even apart from what could be known about the administration's lies at the time. Shouldn't it have been enormously problematic that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11? Even the administration never had the gall to make that claim. Wasn't it transparent to anyone that America had plenty on its plate already in dealing with the enemy we were told we had, rather than adding a new adventure to the pile? And why wasn't this thing selling throughout the world, or even amongst the traitorous half of the Democratic Party in Congress? Remember how everyone at home and abroad -- yes, including the French -- supported the United States and its military actions in Afghanistan only 12 months before? Shouldn't it have been a warning sign of epic proportions that these same folks wouldn't countenance a war in Iraq just a year later? That the administration had to yank its Security Council resolution off the table, even after breaking both the arms of every member-state around the horseshoe table, because it could still only get Britain and two other patsies to lie down for this outrage, out of a total of 15, and nine needed to pass?
And how about the logic of that whole WMD thing, after all? Did anyone ever stop to think that 36 other countries were thought to have clandestine WMD programs, including around a dozen that are pretty hostile to the United States? Did anyone not remember that the Soviets once had nearly 25,000 strategic nuclear warheads pointed in our direction? What ever happened to the logic of deterrence? To mutually assured destruction? And what about the mad rush to go to war, preempting the U.N. weapons inspectors from doing their job? Are we really OK with the notion that instead of "risking" whatever would have been at risk by giving the inspectors another six or eight weeks to finish up, we've instead bought this devastating war down on our own heads for no reason at all?
The second rationale for war was the bogus linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda. The extent and ramifications of this lie are so significant that the White House, it was just recently revealed, squelched a Pentagon report showing no connections between the two. Remember how definitive Cheney and the rest were of this supposed al Qaeda linkage, based pretty much entirely on a meeting between two operatives in Prague which likely didn't even take place? Now we find out that the Department of Defense has spent the last five years combing through a mere 600,000 documents, and found zero evidence of such a link. Not some evidence. Not mixed evidence. Zero evidence.
Then, once again, there's the matter of that whole pesky logic thing. Pay attention now, class. What do we know about al Qaeda? They are devoted to religious war -- jihad -- in the name of replacing governments across the Middle East with theocracies, or better yet recreating the old Islamic caliphate stretching across the region, right? Right. Now if this vision could have more thoroughly contradicted Saddam's agenda for a secular dictatorship seeking regional domination on his own Stalinist terms, it is hard to imagine how. You don't need a Ph.D. in international politics to see that these two actors were about as antithetical to each other as the Republican Party is to integrity.
Lastly, Bush's little adventure in Mesopotamia was supposed to bring democracy to the region, remember? Never mind, of course, that there has long already been a fairly thriving Islamic democracy, right next door. Oops! It's called Turkey. And let's not forget Mr. Bush's long-standing devotion to democracy, as he amply demonstrated in the American election of 2000. Or as he has continually manifested by bravely and publicly pushing the Chinese to democratize. Just as he has with his pals in Egypt and especially the family friends running Saudi Arabia, the recipient of more American foreign aid than nearly any other country in all the world.
What is clear is that the reasons given to the American public for the war in Iraq were entirely bogus. This much is already on the public record, from the Downing Street memos [http://downingstreetmemo.com/] and beyond. Even if we can only speculate on why they actually invaded -- oil, glory, personal insecurity, Israel, clobbering Democrats, Middle Eastern dominance -- what we know for sure is that the rationale fed to the public was a knowingly fabricated pack of scummy lies [http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/Default.aspx?source=home&context=overview&id=945]. It wasn't about WMD, it wasn't about links to al Qaeda, and it sure wasn't about democracy.
But even if we can't identify the true motivations within the administration for invading, we can surely begin to see the costs. Probably a million Iraqi civilians are dead [http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html]. Over 4 million are displaced and now living as refugees [http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/9679]. Together, these equal a staggering one-fifth of the population of the entire country. Meanwhile, the remaining four-fifths are living in squalor, fear and a psychological damage so extensive that it is hard to grasp. America has lost 4,000 soldiers, with perhaps another 30,000 gravely wounded. Hundreds of thousands more will be scarred for life from their experiences in the hell of Mr. Bush's war. Our military is broken and incapable of responding to a real emergency, at home or abroad. Our economy will sustain a blow of perhaps $3 trillion before all is said and done. Our reputation in the world is in the toilet. We have turned the Iranian theocracy into a regional hegemon. And we have massively proliferated our own enemies within the Islamic community. That would be one hell of an expensive war, even if the reasons given for it were legitimate. It is nearly incomprehensible considering that they were not.
This week, a man died in France, the last surviving veteran of World War I, a devastating conflict that -- even a century later -- nobody can really explain to this day. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney, John McCain and Joe "Make-me-SecDef-Mac-oh-please-pick-me-Mac" Lieberman parachuted into Iraq for photo-ops to sustain the war they don't have the integrity or the guts to abandon. Never mind that their visits had to be by surprise, and that they stroll around the Green Zone wearing armored vests -- surely the most powerful measures of the war's success imaginable. Of course, to be fair, we've only been at it for five years now. Perhaps after the remaining 95 on McCain's agenda go by, Americans will finally be safe enough in Iraq to announce their visits in advance.
So, happy anniversary, America! You put these people in charge, and then -- after seeing in explicit in detail what they were capable of -- you actually did it again in 2004! You stood by in silence watching the devastation wrought upon an innocent people, produced in your name and financed by your tax dollars. And you continue to do just that again, now in Year Six.
Brilliant! Put on your party hat, America. You won the prize.
You've successfully answered the musical question, "How lethally stupid can one country be?"
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net) but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at www.regressiveantidote.net/.
National health records network to hook up with Google, Microsoft
Go to Original
By Bob Brewin
The federal office in charge of creating a national network of electronic health records plans to integrate the system with the health care databases that Google and Microsoft launched last year, on which individuals can store their health records, a top official with the Health and Human Services Department said.
The Office of the Coordinator of Health Information Technology plans this year to expand its Nationwide Health Information Network to also include electronic health records stored in networks operated by the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, and the Indian Health Service, and integrated health care systems that span numerous communities, said Charles Friedman, chief operating officer for the health information office, which is part of HHS.
Friedman spoke March 26 at the Defense Health Care Information Technology Conference at Georgetown University in Washington.
The NHIN is the primary component of a project that President Bush kicked off in 2004 to create a network that eventually will integrate the electronic health records of every American. Bush set 2014 as the deadline to have the majority of the public's electronic health records available to any doctor's office, hospital or clinic hooked up to the network. The original architecture for the national network will be built around four multistate Regional Health Information Organizations that will share their patients' medical data. HHS set up the four RHIOs in 2005 when it awarded contracts to Accenture, Computer Sciences Corp., IBM and Northrop Grumman.
Friedman provided few details on how the office would incorporate personal health records from Google Health and other organizations developing similar applications, such as Microsoft's HealthVault, which it launched in October. By the end of this year, HHS will have demonstrated the exchange of different kinds of health information through the network.
Last month, Google launched a pilot project with the Cleveland Clinic to provide patients the results of their doctor visits, prescriptions, tests and procedures through Google's secure Web authentication proxy service.
Friedman did not say how his office will incorporate multicommunity integrated health care delivery systems, but plans to tie these systems into the NHIN indicate that the HHS office wants to expand the network from the state to the local level, with the network hooking up cities and towns within a state, according to an executive of a health IT vendor at the conference who declined to be identified.
Federal interfaces to the health network will be through an entity called NHIN Connect, Friedman said. NHIN Connect will be based on the National Health Information Exchange Gateway, which Harris Corp. will develop under a contract HHS awarded last week, said Lt. Col. Hon Pak, director of the advanced information technology group of the Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center at Fort Detrick, Md.
Pak, who serves as the Defense representative on NHIN Connect, said the network will use software developed by Defense and VA for the Bidirectional Health Information Exchange, which clinicians in both departments use to share electronic patient information, and software developed by the National Cancer Institute for its Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid.
The NHIN Connect gateway integrates health care IT information from several federal agencies into the NHIN. This includes VA, Defense and the Indian Health Service as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Pak said. NHIN Connect is in an early development stage; the first multiagency planning meeting was held yesterday, he added.
The NHIN gateway will save the government significant money by correlating simple demographic information with federal programs, such as determining who is alive and who has died, said Dr. Stanley Saiki Jr., director of the Pacific Telehealth and Technology Group, a joint Defense and VA research organization funded by the Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center.
States and the federal government "really can't even keep close track of who dies so that their Social Security and other benefits can be terminated," Saiki said. "This savings alone could go a long way to finance important data systems. Magnify this by the potential increased efficiency in the delivery of health care and magnify this again with universal coverage and [the gateway and NHIN Connect] is a big deal."
By Bob Brewin
The federal office in charge of creating a national network of electronic health records plans to integrate the system with the health care databases that Google and Microsoft launched last year, on which individuals can store their health records, a top official with the Health and Human Services Department said.
The Office of the Coordinator of Health Information Technology plans this year to expand its Nationwide Health Information Network to also include electronic health records stored in networks operated by the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, and the Indian Health Service, and integrated health care systems that span numerous communities, said Charles Friedman, chief operating officer for the health information office, which is part of HHS.
Friedman spoke March 26 at the Defense Health Care Information Technology Conference at Georgetown University in Washington.
The NHIN is the primary component of a project that President Bush kicked off in 2004 to create a network that eventually will integrate the electronic health records of every American. Bush set 2014 as the deadline to have the majority of the public's electronic health records available to any doctor's office, hospital or clinic hooked up to the network. The original architecture for the national network will be built around four multistate Regional Health Information Organizations that will share their patients' medical data. HHS set up the four RHIOs in 2005 when it awarded contracts to Accenture, Computer Sciences Corp., IBM and Northrop Grumman.
Friedman provided few details on how the office would incorporate personal health records from Google Health and other organizations developing similar applications, such as Microsoft's HealthVault, which it launched in October. By the end of this year, HHS will have demonstrated the exchange of different kinds of health information through the network.
Last month, Google launched a pilot project with the Cleveland Clinic to provide patients the results of their doctor visits, prescriptions, tests and procedures through Google's secure Web authentication proxy service.
Friedman did not say how his office will incorporate multicommunity integrated health care delivery systems, but plans to tie these systems into the NHIN indicate that the HHS office wants to expand the network from the state to the local level, with the network hooking up cities and towns within a state, according to an executive of a health IT vendor at the conference who declined to be identified.
Federal interfaces to the health network will be through an entity called NHIN Connect, Friedman said. NHIN Connect will be based on the National Health Information Exchange Gateway, which Harris Corp. will develop under a contract HHS awarded last week, said Lt. Col. Hon Pak, director of the advanced information technology group of the Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center at Fort Detrick, Md.
Pak, who serves as the Defense representative on NHIN Connect, said the network will use software developed by Defense and VA for the Bidirectional Health Information Exchange, which clinicians in both departments use to share electronic patient information, and software developed by the National Cancer Institute for its Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid.
The NHIN Connect gateway integrates health care IT information from several federal agencies into the NHIN. This includes VA, Defense and the Indian Health Service as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Pak said. NHIN Connect is in an early development stage; the first multiagency planning meeting was held yesterday, he added.
The NHIN gateway will save the government significant money by correlating simple demographic information with federal programs, such as determining who is alive and who has died, said Dr. Stanley Saiki Jr., director of the Pacific Telehealth and Technology Group, a joint Defense and VA research organization funded by the Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center.
States and the federal government "really can't even keep close track of who dies so that their Social Security and other benefits can be terminated," Saiki said. "This savings alone could go a long way to finance important data systems. Magnify this by the potential increased efficiency in the delivery of health care and magnify this again with universal coverage and [the gateway and NHIN Connect] is a big deal."
Romania reconsiders its welcome of biotech corn
Go to Original
By James Kanter
Romania, which has been one of the most receptive markets on a skeptical Continent for genetically modified crops, is moving toward a reversal of its stance, in what would be another setback for the beleaguered biotechnology industry in Europe.
Attila Korodi, Romania's environment minister, said he would ask a committee of experts Thursday to revaluate a gene-altered version of corn, MON810, the only modified crop that has been approved for commercial planting in the European Union.
During an interview, Korodi said not enough studies had been done to gauge the effects of the corn on ecological systems in Romania, including in the Black Sea area.
In addition, he said, banning biotech crops could increase rural prosperity by allowing farmers to take advantage of a growing global demand for organic feed and foodstuffs, which, in addition to being unaltered, are grown without chemical pesticides or fertilizers.
Such products can command higher prices - although experts question whether farming practices in much of Eastern Europe are developed enough for such a specialized market.
"I think becoming an organic country is a good thing," Korodi said. "We have to analyze the true costs of growing GMOs," he added, since the technology was potentially harmful to the environment and had become widely unpopular in Romania.
An actual ban would still be some ways off and could require parliamentary support, he said.
But its consideration, coming a month after France imposed a similar ban on the corn variety, would be another obstacle for the industry in Europe, where there is widespread skepticism about biotech foods. Specifically, it would hurt the U.S. seed company Monsanto, which produces MON810.
Romania, the biggest corn grower in the 27-member EU by hectares under cultivation, represents a vast potential market for Monsanto and other biotechnology companies. MON810 is designed to combat pests and enhance yields.
"We would be very disappointed to see Romania following France even in attempting to ban such a product, which has proved its benefits to farmers in Romania," said Cristina Cionga, the manager for public and government affairs for Monsanto Romania. "Our products are completely safe for planting and consumption."
EU authorities approved MON810 for cultivation a decade ago, but since then four EU countries - Austria, Greece, Hungary and, most recently, France - have imposed bans. Poland operates restrictions on the sale and import of gene-altered seeds, and very little cultivation takes place there.
Most of these countries, including France and Hungary, which are the second- and third-biggest corn growers in Europe, justified the bans on the grounds that the crops potentially could harm soils and reduce biodiversity.
Even in countries that do not operate formal bans, there are impediments.
Italy, which grows roughly the same amount of corn as Hungary, has delegated decisions on biotech crops to its regions, many of which operate de facto bans. In Tuscany, for example, the supply of gene-altered produce is prohibited in catering for schools, hospitals, convalescent homes and in local and regional government offices.
Romania planted only about 325 hectares, or 800 acres, of MON810 in 2007 and this year is expected to plant about 10,000 hectares. That still represents just a fraction of the roughly 2 million to 3 million hectares of corn planted each year in Romania.
Even so, Korodi's strategy would mark a major change for Romania.
Over the past decade, Romania became the largest producer of gene-altered crops in Europe because of large amounts of modified soy, mostly produced by Monsanto and Pioneer, a unit of DuPont. That crop was approved for use by farmers in Romania but not in the EU, and the government had to pledge to stop growing the crop when Romania joined the bloc in 2007.
In the future, Korodi said, farmers - particularly those with small plots in mountainous areas - could prosper from selling smaller quantities of unmodified produce, as it would command higher prices on local and international markets.
"GMOs mean crops are cheaper to produce," Korodi said. "But if we look at the market price that GMO-free crops earn, and we look at the costs to biodiversity of using GMOs, then non-GMO crops are better," he said.
Early this month the Hungarian agriculture minister, Joszef Graf, said his country's seed industry earned 25 percent more by selling seeds that had not been cross-pollinated with altered crops.
But Nathalie Moll, a spokeswoman for Europabio, a group representing the biotechnology industry, said seed companies had disputed the minister's statement.
Klaus Reinsberg, a senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe, said growing nonbiotech crops was often more expensive, requiring more manual labor to remove weeds and to control pests. But labor costs in Romania remain low compared to other parts of the EU, potentially giving the country a competitive advantage.
Even so, Romania would still have to prove it could grow produce to high standards for specialized markets and finicky consumers, and deliver those goods to markets on time.
"Countries like Romania and Ukraine are dreaming of producing organic products and to export them for the profits they can bring," Reinsberg said. "But organic products can have diseases and fungus." He also said that a big problem for countries like Romania was a "lack of logistics."
Despite such hurdles, environmental groups welcomed signs of a change of heart in Romania.
"It marks a seismic change," said Geert Ritsema, who campaigns against genetic engineering for Greenpeace International in Amsterdam.
By James Kanter
Romania, which has been one of the most receptive markets on a skeptical Continent for genetically modified crops, is moving toward a reversal of its stance, in what would be another setback for the beleaguered biotechnology industry in Europe.
Attila Korodi, Romania's environment minister, said he would ask a committee of experts Thursday to revaluate a gene-altered version of corn, MON810, the only modified crop that has been approved for commercial planting in the European Union.
During an interview, Korodi said not enough studies had been done to gauge the effects of the corn on ecological systems in Romania, including in the Black Sea area.
In addition, he said, banning biotech crops could increase rural prosperity by allowing farmers to take advantage of a growing global demand for organic feed and foodstuffs, which, in addition to being unaltered, are grown without chemical pesticides or fertilizers.
Such products can command higher prices - although experts question whether farming practices in much of Eastern Europe are developed enough for such a specialized market.
"I think becoming an organic country is a good thing," Korodi said. "We have to analyze the true costs of growing GMOs," he added, since the technology was potentially harmful to the environment and had become widely unpopular in Romania.
An actual ban would still be some ways off and could require parliamentary support, he said.
But its consideration, coming a month after France imposed a similar ban on the corn variety, would be another obstacle for the industry in Europe, where there is widespread skepticism about biotech foods. Specifically, it would hurt the U.S. seed company Monsanto, which produces MON810.
Romania, the biggest corn grower in the 27-member EU by hectares under cultivation, represents a vast potential market for Monsanto and other biotechnology companies. MON810 is designed to combat pests and enhance yields.
"We would be very disappointed to see Romania following France even in attempting to ban such a product, which has proved its benefits to farmers in Romania," said Cristina Cionga, the manager for public and government affairs for Monsanto Romania. "Our products are completely safe for planting and consumption."
EU authorities approved MON810 for cultivation a decade ago, but since then four EU countries - Austria, Greece, Hungary and, most recently, France - have imposed bans. Poland operates restrictions on the sale and import of gene-altered seeds, and very little cultivation takes place there.
Most of these countries, including France and Hungary, which are the second- and third-biggest corn growers in Europe, justified the bans on the grounds that the crops potentially could harm soils and reduce biodiversity.
Even in countries that do not operate formal bans, there are impediments.
Italy, which grows roughly the same amount of corn as Hungary, has delegated decisions on biotech crops to its regions, many of which operate de facto bans. In Tuscany, for example, the supply of gene-altered produce is prohibited in catering for schools, hospitals, convalescent homes and in local and regional government offices.
Romania planted only about 325 hectares, or 800 acres, of MON810 in 2007 and this year is expected to plant about 10,000 hectares. That still represents just a fraction of the roughly 2 million to 3 million hectares of corn planted each year in Romania.
Even so, Korodi's strategy would mark a major change for Romania.
Over the past decade, Romania became the largest producer of gene-altered crops in Europe because of large amounts of modified soy, mostly produced by Monsanto and Pioneer, a unit of DuPont. That crop was approved for use by farmers in Romania but not in the EU, and the government had to pledge to stop growing the crop when Romania joined the bloc in 2007.
In the future, Korodi said, farmers - particularly those with small plots in mountainous areas - could prosper from selling smaller quantities of unmodified produce, as it would command higher prices on local and international markets.
"GMOs mean crops are cheaper to produce," Korodi said. "But if we look at the market price that GMO-free crops earn, and we look at the costs to biodiversity of using GMOs, then non-GMO crops are better," he said.
Early this month the Hungarian agriculture minister, Joszef Graf, said his country's seed industry earned 25 percent more by selling seeds that had not been cross-pollinated with altered crops.
But Nathalie Moll, a spokeswoman for Europabio, a group representing the biotechnology industry, said seed companies had disputed the minister's statement.
Klaus Reinsberg, a senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe, said growing nonbiotech crops was often more expensive, requiring more manual labor to remove weeds and to control pests. But labor costs in Romania remain low compared to other parts of the EU, potentially giving the country a competitive advantage.
Even so, Romania would still have to prove it could grow produce to high standards for specialized markets and finicky consumers, and deliver those goods to markets on time.
"Countries like Romania and Ukraine are dreaming of producing organic products and to export them for the profits they can bring," Reinsberg said. "But organic products can have diseases and fungus." He also said that a big problem for countries like Romania was a "lack of logistics."
Despite such hurdles, environmental groups welcomed signs of a change of heart in Romania.
"It marks a seismic change," said Geert Ritsema, who campaigns against genetic engineering for Greenpeace International in Amsterdam.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Global Pulse - 3/26/08: Tibet: China Strikes Back
China launched a propaganda war as the Olympic torch was kindled. Tibetans were shown beating up Han Chinese and looting shops, juxtaposed with picturesque features on Chinese guarantees of freedom for Buddhists. Chinese nationalism has been stoked, but the path of the Olympic torch is already rife with dissent.
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