Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes
Starmail - 6. Jul, 15:54
Skandale
6
Jul
2004
Greenpeace soll Gemeinnützigkeit entzogen werden
Aufgrund des anhaltenden Widerstandes gegenüber Produktion und Vertrieb von Genfood soll Greenpeace nun die Gemeinnützigkeit entzogen werden. Dies hätte zweifellos gravierende Konsequenzen für die weitere Finanzierung von Kampagnen und Aktionen.
In mehreren deutschen Ministerien wird nach Auskunft der "Welt" vom 5.7. darüber nachgedacht, wie auf diesem Weg der Widerstand gegen die Einführung von Genfood zu brechen sei. So hätte Greenpeace u.a. durch die Aussaat von Ökogetreide auf einem Gentech-Versuchsfeld einen Rechtsbruch begangen, der mit der Gemeinnützigkeit nicht vereinbar sei.
Falls diese Bemühungen erfolgreich sein / werden sollten, dann würde auf diesem Weg ein Präzedenzfall geschaffen, der auch alle anderen NGOs an die Kette legen könnte.
Mit diesem Hintergrund wäre Schadenfreude nicht gerade angesagt: mit dieser Schraube könnte auch ganz anderen Gruppen und Projekten die Luft abgeschnürt werden.
Gerhard Wendebourg
In mehreren deutschen Ministerien wird nach Auskunft der "Welt" vom 5.7. darüber nachgedacht, wie auf diesem Weg der Widerstand gegen die Einführung von Genfood zu brechen sei. So hätte Greenpeace u.a. durch die Aussaat von Ökogetreide auf einem Gentech-Versuchsfeld einen Rechtsbruch begangen, der mit der Gemeinnützigkeit nicht vereinbar sei.
Falls diese Bemühungen erfolgreich sein / werden sollten, dann würde auf diesem Weg ein Präzedenzfall geschaffen, der auch alle anderen NGOs an die Kette legen könnte.
Mit diesem Hintergrund wäre Schadenfreude nicht gerade angesagt: mit dieser Schraube könnte auch ganz anderen Gruppen und Projekten die Luft abgeschnürt werden.
Gerhard Wendebourg
Starmail - 6. Jul, 15:18
1
Jul
2004
Justice Department Says It Can't Share Lobbying Data Because Computer System Will Crash
The Bush administration is offering a novel reason for denying a request seeking the Justice Department's database on foreign lobbyists: Copying the information would bring down the computer system...
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBDP9DE2WD.html
From Information Clearing House
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBDP9DE2WD.html
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 1. Jul, 11:22
The defiance of science
More than 4,000 scientists have signed a petition accusing George Bush of twisting their work to further his political agenda. Andrew Buncombe investigates the war between the White House and the men in white coats.
29 June 2004
For Michael Greene, there was little hesitation. The Harvard professor has spent much of his life working in the field of reproductive health, and when - in his capacity as a member of a federal advisory committee - he was asked his opinion about a new emergency contraception, he had few doubts about recommending that it be licensed.
And neither did the overwhelming majority of his colleagues on the committee, formed by the US federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Indeed, the distinguished panel voted 23-4 in favour of selling the "morning after" pill Plan B without prescription. The FDA almost always follows its experts' recommendations.
But not this time. Despite the wealth of expert opinion, the FDA rejected the committee's view, claiming that there was insufficient data. Committee members were incensed. E-mails flew back and forth, talking of resignation and political interference in the scientific process. "People are very angry," says Greene. "The issue here is much larger than just Plan B. The decision is blatantly contrary to the science and the facts, and so blatantly politicised."
But critics say that this is just one modest example among dozens of the way in which the administration of President George Bush is manipulating and twisting science for its own extreme ideological ends. On issues from global warming to lead in drinking water and the alleged link between breast cancer and abortions, this administration, like no other before it, is turning science into a political battleground.
Suddenly, science is responding in what is almost certainly an unprecedented revolt against the government. Earlier this year, the non-profit group, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), put together a petition that has so far been signed by more than 4,000 scientists, among them 20 Nobel prize-winners, demanding that the Bush administration change its behaviour. It also published a 38-page report detailing the government's scientific distortions.
"Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States the world's most powerful nation, and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy," the report says. "Although scientific input to the government is rarely the only factor in public policy decisions, this input should always be weighed from an objective and impartial perspective to avoid perilous consequences. Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George Bush has, however, disregarded this principle."
The result of this politicisation, say disgruntled scientists, has resulted not only in flawed policies but the very undermining of American scientific ideals - and even perhaps the nation's founding principles. What has transpired, Lewis Lapam noted recently in Harper's Magazine, which he edits, has been "the systematic substitution of ideological certainty for reasonable doubt across the entire spectrum of issues bearing on the public health and welfare... [a] rejection of the scientific method in favour of the conviction that if the science doesn't prove what it's been told to prove, then the science has been tampered with by Satan or the Democratic Party".
There are few issues where the evidence of scientific distortion is more apparent than that of reproductive health. On 22 January 2001, four days after his inauguration, Bush reinstated the so-called Mexico City policy, which denies federal funds to family- planning groups that provide abortion counselling or services overseas.
Since then, led by its born-again evangelical leader, the government has waged war on anything that might be considered a "liberal approach" towards reproductive health. Condoms have been condemned as ineffective, and the administration has adopted "abstinence only" as the official approach towards sex education. Over the last three years, Congress has given more than $100m in grants to organisations that promote abstinence-only education.
A report published last year by the House of Representatives committee on government reform noted that this had only been achieved by manipulating the facts. "The Bush administration has consistently distorted the scientific evidence about what works in sex education," it said. "Administration officials have never acknowledged that abstinence-only programmes have not been proven to reduce sexual activity, teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease. Instead, [it] has changed performance measures for abstinence-only education to make the programmes appear successful, censored information on effective sex education programmes, and appointed to a key panel an abstinence-only proponent with dubious credentials."
If the administration can use science to turn common sense on its head - does anyone really believe that simply telling teenagers not to have sex will prevent pregnancies? - there is little wonder that it is prepared to manipulate the facts in more obviously "scientific" areas where ordinary people may be less equipped to decide for themselves. In one incident, the administration altered the National Cancer Institute's website to suggest that there was a link between abortion and breast cancer. The federally funded institute was forced to change the site after an outcry from scientists insisting that there was no such link.
It was in this environment that Barr Laboratories, the makers of Plan B, sought federal approval for their new emergency contraception. Though Greene's panel, along with the Non-Prescription Drugs Advisory Panel, voted last December to license the product, it was only this month that the FDA's acting director, Steven Galson, announced that he was overruling his experts. Galson denied that anyone outside the FDA had influenced his decision. "As is the case with a lot of these difficult decisions, there may not be agreement among people who are experts in data analysis," he said. He failed to mention, however, that 44 members of Congress had written to those on the committee urging them to reject the contraception.
James Trussell, a professor at Princeton University's Office of Population Research and a panel member, said that he believed that Plan B will only get approved if there is a change of government. "It is being done to reflect the philosophy of the administration. It is a very sad day," he said. "But this is not just limited to the FDA and just one decision. It's not an isolated thing. Bad policy is being made."
Indeed, the report drawn up by the committee on government reform lists 20 different topics, ranging from agricultural policy to ecological problems in the Yellowstone National Park, in which science had been twisted. The report concluded: "The Bush administration, however, has repeatedly suppressed, distorted or obstructed science to suit political and ideological goals. These actions go far beyond the traditional influence that Presidents are permitted to wield at federal agencies, and compromise the integrity of scientific policy-making."
Critics say that the administration has adopted three strategies to twist facts. The first is to manipulate the membership of advisory committees, stacking them with people who share its views. Elizabeth Blackburn, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, found out in February that she and a colleague were not to be reappointed to the panel after speaking out in support of research on human stem cells. They were replaced by three new members who opposed such research. "Not one of the newly appointed members is a biomedical scientist," she said.
In other cases, people with links to the industries that the panels are supposed to be monitoring have been appointed. Elsewhere, people have been asked about their views on abortion and the death penalty and their voting record. The Bush administration is even prepared to block the appointment to international bodies of American scientists. In April 2002, it ensured that Robert Watson - a critic of America's energy policy - was voted out of his job as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, after being lobbied by the ExxonMobil oil company.
The second strategy is simply to misrepresent the truth. In August 2001, Bush banned federal funding of research on new stem-cell lines, saying that there were already 60 such lines available. He was not telling the whole truth. In May 2003, the director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) confirmed that there were just 11 such lines available to researchers.
The final strategy, outlined by Martin McKee and Thomas Novotny in an article in the European Journal of Public Health, is to block funding for controversial issues. A federal analysis on air pollution that might have come up with information uncomfortable to the administration was blocked, while researchers applying to the NIH for funds on HIV research have been told to avoid using phrases such as "sex worker", "gay" and "anal sex" in their applications.
The administration dismisses charges of distortion. In April, Dr John Marburger, the President's chief science adviser, issued a report rebutting many of the accusations levelled by the UCS and others. (The UCS, in turn, issued an equally detailed rebuttal of his rebuttals.) "The accusations in the document are inaccurate, and certainly do not justify the sweeping conclusions of either the document or the accompanying statement," Marburger told Congress. "I believe the document has methodological flaws that undermine its own conclusions, not the least of which is the failure to consider publicly available information, or to seek and reflect responses or explanations from responsible government officials."
In a telephone interview, Marburger did not deny that there may be individual cases where scientists dispute the view of the White House. But he said: "What I am denying is that there is a systematic practice of undermining science, or manipulating or distorting it." He also said that as science pushed at the boundaries it was bound to come into contact with contentious issues. He regretted that science had become politicised, but blamed groups such as the UCS for that.
Marburger's office sent me information claiming that the Bush administration has raised the funding of research and development to levels not seen since 1968 and the Apollo programme. It also said that the National Academies' National Research Council had come out in favour of Bush's strategic plan for global warming, which it had earlier criticised. The academy actually said that the plan was "much improved" compared with an earlier draft, but that commitments to fund many of the newly proposed activities were lacking.
Despite Marburger's assertions, what appears beyond question is that an unprecedented number of American scientists believe that science is being manipulated as never before. Their anger is now seeping from the pages of medical journals and reaching the mainstream.
Kurt Gottfried, professor of physics at Cornell and the UCS chairman, said his organisation, as well as collecting the signatures of 4,000 scientists, had had many messages of support from people working for the government who were unable to make their concerns public. "In the first Bush administration, there were no problems. This whole issue is unprecedented."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=535644
Deborah Elaine Barrie
4 Catherine Street
Smiths Falls, On
Canada
K7A 3Z8
(613)284-8259
deborahbarrie@hotmail.com
http://www.noccawood.ca
29 June 2004
For Michael Greene, there was little hesitation. The Harvard professor has spent much of his life working in the field of reproductive health, and when - in his capacity as a member of a federal advisory committee - he was asked his opinion about a new emergency contraception, he had few doubts about recommending that it be licensed.
And neither did the overwhelming majority of his colleagues on the committee, formed by the US federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Indeed, the distinguished panel voted 23-4 in favour of selling the "morning after" pill Plan B without prescription. The FDA almost always follows its experts' recommendations.
But not this time. Despite the wealth of expert opinion, the FDA rejected the committee's view, claiming that there was insufficient data. Committee members were incensed. E-mails flew back and forth, talking of resignation and political interference in the scientific process. "People are very angry," says Greene. "The issue here is much larger than just Plan B. The decision is blatantly contrary to the science and the facts, and so blatantly politicised."
But critics say that this is just one modest example among dozens of the way in which the administration of President George Bush is manipulating and twisting science for its own extreme ideological ends. On issues from global warming to lead in drinking water and the alleged link between breast cancer and abortions, this administration, like no other before it, is turning science into a political battleground.
Suddenly, science is responding in what is almost certainly an unprecedented revolt against the government. Earlier this year, the non-profit group, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), put together a petition that has so far been signed by more than 4,000 scientists, among them 20 Nobel prize-winners, demanding that the Bush administration change its behaviour. It also published a 38-page report detailing the government's scientific distortions.
"Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States the world's most powerful nation, and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy," the report says. "Although scientific input to the government is rarely the only factor in public policy decisions, this input should always be weighed from an objective and impartial perspective to avoid perilous consequences. Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George Bush has, however, disregarded this principle."
The result of this politicisation, say disgruntled scientists, has resulted not only in flawed policies but the very undermining of American scientific ideals - and even perhaps the nation's founding principles. What has transpired, Lewis Lapam noted recently in Harper's Magazine, which he edits, has been "the systematic substitution of ideological certainty for reasonable doubt across the entire spectrum of issues bearing on the public health and welfare... [a] rejection of the scientific method in favour of the conviction that if the science doesn't prove what it's been told to prove, then the science has been tampered with by Satan or the Democratic Party".
There are few issues where the evidence of scientific distortion is more apparent than that of reproductive health. On 22 January 2001, four days after his inauguration, Bush reinstated the so-called Mexico City policy, which denies federal funds to family- planning groups that provide abortion counselling or services overseas.
Since then, led by its born-again evangelical leader, the government has waged war on anything that might be considered a "liberal approach" towards reproductive health. Condoms have been condemned as ineffective, and the administration has adopted "abstinence only" as the official approach towards sex education. Over the last three years, Congress has given more than $100m in grants to organisations that promote abstinence-only education.
A report published last year by the House of Representatives committee on government reform noted that this had only been achieved by manipulating the facts. "The Bush administration has consistently distorted the scientific evidence about what works in sex education," it said. "Administration officials have never acknowledged that abstinence-only programmes have not been proven to reduce sexual activity, teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease. Instead, [it] has changed performance measures for abstinence-only education to make the programmes appear successful, censored information on effective sex education programmes, and appointed to a key panel an abstinence-only proponent with dubious credentials."
If the administration can use science to turn common sense on its head - does anyone really believe that simply telling teenagers not to have sex will prevent pregnancies? - there is little wonder that it is prepared to manipulate the facts in more obviously "scientific" areas where ordinary people may be less equipped to decide for themselves. In one incident, the administration altered the National Cancer Institute's website to suggest that there was a link between abortion and breast cancer. The federally funded institute was forced to change the site after an outcry from scientists insisting that there was no such link.
It was in this environment that Barr Laboratories, the makers of Plan B, sought federal approval for their new emergency contraception. Though Greene's panel, along with the Non-Prescription Drugs Advisory Panel, voted last December to license the product, it was only this month that the FDA's acting director, Steven Galson, announced that he was overruling his experts. Galson denied that anyone outside the FDA had influenced his decision. "As is the case with a lot of these difficult decisions, there may not be agreement among people who are experts in data analysis," he said. He failed to mention, however, that 44 members of Congress had written to those on the committee urging them to reject the contraception.
James Trussell, a professor at Princeton University's Office of Population Research and a panel member, said that he believed that Plan B will only get approved if there is a change of government. "It is being done to reflect the philosophy of the administration. It is a very sad day," he said. "But this is not just limited to the FDA and just one decision. It's not an isolated thing. Bad policy is being made."
Indeed, the report drawn up by the committee on government reform lists 20 different topics, ranging from agricultural policy to ecological problems in the Yellowstone National Park, in which science had been twisted. The report concluded: "The Bush administration, however, has repeatedly suppressed, distorted or obstructed science to suit political and ideological goals. These actions go far beyond the traditional influence that Presidents are permitted to wield at federal agencies, and compromise the integrity of scientific policy-making."
Critics say that the administration has adopted three strategies to twist facts. The first is to manipulate the membership of advisory committees, stacking them with people who share its views. Elizabeth Blackburn, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, found out in February that she and a colleague were not to be reappointed to the panel after speaking out in support of research on human stem cells. They were replaced by three new members who opposed such research. "Not one of the newly appointed members is a biomedical scientist," she said.
In other cases, people with links to the industries that the panels are supposed to be monitoring have been appointed. Elsewhere, people have been asked about their views on abortion and the death penalty and their voting record. The Bush administration is even prepared to block the appointment to international bodies of American scientists. In April 2002, it ensured that Robert Watson - a critic of America's energy policy - was voted out of his job as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, after being lobbied by the ExxonMobil oil company.
The second strategy is simply to misrepresent the truth. In August 2001, Bush banned federal funding of research on new stem-cell lines, saying that there were already 60 such lines available. He was not telling the whole truth. In May 2003, the director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) confirmed that there were just 11 such lines available to researchers.
The final strategy, outlined by Martin McKee and Thomas Novotny in an article in the European Journal of Public Health, is to block funding for controversial issues. A federal analysis on air pollution that might have come up with information uncomfortable to the administration was blocked, while researchers applying to the NIH for funds on HIV research have been told to avoid using phrases such as "sex worker", "gay" and "anal sex" in their applications.
The administration dismisses charges of distortion. In April, Dr John Marburger, the President's chief science adviser, issued a report rebutting many of the accusations levelled by the UCS and others. (The UCS, in turn, issued an equally detailed rebuttal of his rebuttals.) "The accusations in the document are inaccurate, and certainly do not justify the sweeping conclusions of either the document or the accompanying statement," Marburger told Congress. "I believe the document has methodological flaws that undermine its own conclusions, not the least of which is the failure to consider publicly available information, or to seek and reflect responses or explanations from responsible government officials."
In a telephone interview, Marburger did not deny that there may be individual cases where scientists dispute the view of the White House. But he said: "What I am denying is that there is a systematic practice of undermining science, or manipulating or distorting it." He also said that as science pushed at the boundaries it was bound to come into contact with contentious issues. He regretted that science had become politicised, but blamed groups such as the UCS for that.
Marburger's office sent me information claiming that the Bush administration has raised the funding of research and development to levels not seen since 1968 and the Apollo programme. It also said that the National Academies' National Research Council had come out in favour of Bush's strategic plan for global warming, which it had earlier criticised. The academy actually said that the plan was "much improved" compared with an earlier draft, but that commitments to fund many of the newly proposed activities were lacking.
Despite Marburger's assertions, what appears beyond question is that an unprecedented number of American scientists believe that science is being manipulated as never before. Their anger is now seeping from the pages of medical journals and reaching the mainstream.
Kurt Gottfried, professor of physics at Cornell and the UCS chairman, said his organisation, as well as collecting the signatures of 4,000 scientists, had had many messages of support from people working for the government who were unable to make their concerns public. "In the first Bush administration, there were no problems. This whole issue is unprecedented."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=535644
Deborah Elaine Barrie
4 Catherine Street
Smiths Falls, On
Canada
K7A 3Z8
(613)284-8259
deborahbarrie@hotmail.com
http://www.noccawood.ca
Starmail - 1. Jul, 00:15
30
Jun
2004
Dick Cheney: Profiteer-Extraordinaire
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=788&POSTNUKESID=cf572a904f45c4a7052cc6dc9f6f7d27
Informant: littlebrit1961
Informant: littlebrit1961
Starmail - 30. Jun, 23:29
Iraq Regime Change a Sham, Say Mideast Experts
Starmail - 30. Jun, 18:00
Report Shows Revolving Doors Between Gov't, Business
Starmail - 30. Jun, 17:58
Terrorist Tree Huggers
Now the corporate neo- conservatives that are doing their best to destroy what little remains of democracy in America are running a campaign to label environmentalists as eco-terrorists. Under their Orwellian Newspeak definition anyone who threatens corporate profits by trying to protect the environment is a terrorist against the economy. Perhaps a new Orwellian Dictionary term could be coined for these new terrorists = treeorists.
Message from Don Maisch (excerpt)
"Facts don't matter; in politics, perception is reality."
Ron Arnold
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/063004G.shtml
Terrorist Tree Huggers
Bill Berkowitz
Tom Paine
Friday 25 June 2004
One of environmentalism's biggest foes - Ron Arnold - is back, peddling the idea that environmentalism breeds terrorism. Arnold is the same man who once bragged to The New York Times that, "No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along." He's been so successful, says one environmentalist, that he's now "within striking distance" of checking off every item on his "wise-use" agenda.
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime political observer and columnist.
Ron Arnold - the father of America's "wise use" movement - is back. And this time he's adding accusations of terrorism to his arsenal. Consider the following:
On June 8, the FBI distributed its weekly intelligence bulletin to some 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, warning that eco-terrorists were planning a "day of action and solidarity" that could involve violent actions in a number of U.S. cities.
At the recent BIO 2004 annual conference in San Francisco, Phil Celestini, supervisory special agent assigned to the FBI domestic terrorism operations unit, told attendees that they could be targets of attacks by eco-extremists despite the fact that "they don't conduct animal testing at their own facilities," the San Francisco Business Times reported.
And in early June, Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., introduced the "Ecoterrorism Act of 2004" which intends to 'protect and promote public safety and interstate commerce."
All of these stories have Ron Arnold's fingerprints on them. With friends in the Bush administration, a recent Playboy magazine interview under his belt, a series of radio appearances and PowerPoint presentations at industry-association gatherings and a new anti-terrorism consulting contract, Arnold is back riding high in the anti-environmentalism saddle.
"Fifteen years after creating his 25 Point Wise-Use Agenda, an agenda prescribing unrestrained, unregulated and unconscionable abuse of the American commons, Ron Arnold is within striking distance of checking off every agenda items on his list," Scott Silver, executive director of Wild Wilderness, told me in a recent interview.
Arnold is no novice when it comes to leveling charges that environmentalists are eco-terrorists. Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber point out in their new book Banana Republicans (Tarcher/Penguin, 2004) that Arnold "has been tossing around the term eco-terrorism for years, defining it as 'any crime committed in the name of saving nature,' which 'includes but it not limited to crimes officially designated as 'terrorism' by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.' This definition’ "is so broad," Rampton and Stauber write, "that is even includes activities such as sit-ins and other forms of peaceful civil disobedience."
Since 9/11, Arnold, the executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, has been energetically and enthusiastically revving up his anti-environmental gospel with a new twist to his message: Environmental activists not only are working to stifle America's economic growth, but they are a breeding ground for terrorism in the homeland.
The Bush administration's cutbacks in the enforcement of environmental regulations, coupled with its focus on the war against terrorism, have planted the seeds for Ron Arnold's makeover as an expert on ecoterrorism. "It comes as no surprise that in today's Orwellian world where perception has become reality, Arnold has been recast as the fearless protector of corporate interests while mainstream environmentalists are being portrayed as terrorists," Silver says.
Silver pointed out that Arnold's anti-environmental agenda is salted by his public relations expertise and the understanding that, as Arnold told Outside magazine in 1991, "Facts don't matter; in politics, perception is reality." The same year Arnold also told The New York Times : "We [CDFE] created a sector of public opinion that didn't used to exist. No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along."
These days, Arnold maintains that a phalanx of liberal foundations is not only funding anti-growth and anti-labor environmental campaigns, but that the environmental movement has become fertile ground for budding ecoterrorists. While none of this is particularly new - he's been plowing similar ground for more than two decades - it resonates with the industry groups that support his work, as law enforcement officials struggling to keep on top of President Bush's permanent war against terrorism, and has helped him snare a consulting contract supported by government funds.
In the May 2004 issue of Playboy, Arnold told Dean Kuipers that: "There is a criminal section of the environmental movement, and it's probably getting money from the above-ground sector. Some of the environmental movement is simply anti corporate; some of it is more ideological." And in the May issue of Foundation Watch, a publication of the Washington, D.C.-based right-wing think tank Capital Research Center, Arnold's profile of the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts - a leading donor to environmental groups - concludes that Pew, which recently changed its legal status from "private foundation to public charity," is now be in a position to play "an even more active role in advocating sweeping policies to combat the alleged global warming threat."
A month earlier, in the same publication, Arnold took a close look at Teresa Heinz Kerry, the head of the Heinz Foundation and the wife of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Among other issues, Arnold looked at the "relationship between the foundation's charitable gifts to environmental groups and environmentalist supporters of the senator's presidential campaign" and what [that] might mean for a Kerry presidency."
Twelve years ago, Audubon magazine's Kate Callaghan pointed out that during the 20th century's first decade, Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, likely used the term, "wise use" when he "called conservation 'the wise use of resources.'" Eighty years later, Ron Arnold expropriated the phrase and turned it into a political movement. Using the term during a multiple use strategy conference in Reno, Nev., Arnold suggested that "wholesale mining, logging and grazing are possible while simultaneously preserving the land."
Arnold's 1989 book, The Wise Use Agenda , brought the "wise use" movement to the center of an anti-environmental, pro-industry nexus. A savvy corporate fundraiser and public relations spinmeister, he once proudly proclaimed himself as the "Darth Vader for the capitalist revolution."
Arnold's resume also includes his job as the executive vice president of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, a pro-corporate group founded in 1976 by his longtime comrade, Alan Gottlieb. (Gottlieb is also credited with founding the anti-gun control Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizen's Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.) According to the Center for Media and Democracy's Disinfopedia, CDFE claims to be "a non-partisan education and research organization which works on free enterprise studies, public policy research, book publishing, conferences, white papers and media outreach." CDFE's website asserts that it tracks "threats to free markets, property rights and limited government."
Over the years, CDFE, a tax-exempt educational organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Tax Code, has received support from a network of corporations, including Georgia Pacific, Louisiana-Pacific, MacMillan Bloedel, Pacific Lumber, Exxon, DuPont and Boise Cascade.
In 2002, Arnold launched a campaign to convince the FBI's Domestic Terrorism Program to take a close look at the Green Anarchy Tour 2002. He told the Conservative News Service (CNS) that the tour "presents probable cause for investigation. You do have people here recommending violence, murder, property damage, everything you can think of."
In November 2003, according to the organization's website, Arnold, the author of EcoTerror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature, the World of the Unabomber - which traces the history of the radical environmental movement and attempts to link Unabomber Ted Kaczynski to mainstream environmentalists - was "retained as expert consultant on ecoterrorism" for a University of Arkansas Terrorism Research Center study funded by a $343,885 grant from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).
Arnold will work with Brent Smith, a professor of sociology and director of the Terrorism Research Center at the University of Arkansas, who is working on a project called "Pre-incident indicators of Terrorist Incidents: The Identification of Behavioral, Geographic and Temporal Patterns of Preparatory Conduct," an effort aimed at predicting future terrorist attacks.
His warnings may be paying off. In early June, Pork Alert, an online publication of Pork magazine, reported that Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., had introduced the Ecoterrorism Act of 2004. Nethercutt's legislation would "establish federal criminal penalties and civil remedies for violent, threatening, obstructive and destructive conduct that is intended to injure, intimidate or interfere with plant or animal enterprises. This bill would serve to protect livestock from tampering by ecoterrorists." The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee for consideration.
"From drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge to clear-cutting the Tongass National Forest, from opening all public lands to mining and energy production, to gutting the Wilderness Act, from amending and weakening the Endangered Species Act to turning America's national parks over to the Walt Disney Company, Ron Arnold's agenda is on a roll," Scott Silver pointed out. "All that stands in the way of Arnold and his ideologically extreme brethren are decades-worth of environmental laws and those who are dedicated to defending our public lands."
Message from Don Maisch (excerpt)
"Facts don't matter; in politics, perception is reality."
Ron Arnold
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/063004G.shtml
Terrorist Tree Huggers
Bill Berkowitz
Tom Paine
Friday 25 June 2004
One of environmentalism's biggest foes - Ron Arnold - is back, peddling the idea that environmentalism breeds terrorism. Arnold is the same man who once bragged to The New York Times that, "No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along." He's been so successful, says one environmentalist, that he's now "within striking distance" of checking off every item on his "wise-use" agenda.
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime political observer and columnist.
Ron Arnold - the father of America's "wise use" movement - is back. And this time he's adding accusations of terrorism to his arsenal. Consider the following:
On June 8, the FBI distributed its weekly intelligence bulletin to some 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, warning that eco-terrorists were planning a "day of action and solidarity" that could involve violent actions in a number of U.S. cities.
At the recent BIO 2004 annual conference in San Francisco, Phil Celestini, supervisory special agent assigned to the FBI domestic terrorism operations unit, told attendees that they could be targets of attacks by eco-extremists despite the fact that "they don't conduct animal testing at their own facilities," the San Francisco Business Times reported.
And in early June, Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., introduced the "Ecoterrorism Act of 2004" which intends to 'protect and promote public safety and interstate commerce."
All of these stories have Ron Arnold's fingerprints on them. With friends in the Bush administration, a recent Playboy magazine interview under his belt, a series of radio appearances and PowerPoint presentations at industry-association gatherings and a new anti-terrorism consulting contract, Arnold is back riding high in the anti-environmentalism saddle.
"Fifteen years after creating his 25 Point Wise-Use Agenda, an agenda prescribing unrestrained, unregulated and unconscionable abuse of the American commons, Ron Arnold is within striking distance of checking off every agenda items on his list," Scott Silver, executive director of Wild Wilderness, told me in a recent interview.
Arnold is no novice when it comes to leveling charges that environmentalists are eco-terrorists. Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber point out in their new book Banana Republicans (Tarcher/Penguin, 2004) that Arnold "has been tossing around the term eco-terrorism for years, defining it as 'any crime committed in the name of saving nature,' which 'includes but it not limited to crimes officially designated as 'terrorism' by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.' This definition’ "is so broad," Rampton and Stauber write, "that is even includes activities such as sit-ins and other forms of peaceful civil disobedience."
Since 9/11, Arnold, the executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, has been energetically and enthusiastically revving up his anti-environmental gospel with a new twist to his message: Environmental activists not only are working to stifle America's economic growth, but they are a breeding ground for terrorism in the homeland.
The Bush administration's cutbacks in the enforcement of environmental regulations, coupled with its focus on the war against terrorism, have planted the seeds for Ron Arnold's makeover as an expert on ecoterrorism. "It comes as no surprise that in today's Orwellian world where perception has become reality, Arnold has been recast as the fearless protector of corporate interests while mainstream environmentalists are being portrayed as terrorists," Silver says.
Silver pointed out that Arnold's anti-environmental agenda is salted by his public relations expertise and the understanding that, as Arnold told Outside magazine in 1991, "Facts don't matter; in politics, perception is reality." The same year Arnold also told The New York Times : "We [CDFE] created a sector of public opinion that didn't used to exist. No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along."
These days, Arnold maintains that a phalanx of liberal foundations is not only funding anti-growth and anti-labor environmental campaigns, but that the environmental movement has become fertile ground for budding ecoterrorists. While none of this is particularly new - he's been plowing similar ground for more than two decades - it resonates with the industry groups that support his work, as law enforcement officials struggling to keep on top of President Bush's permanent war against terrorism, and has helped him snare a consulting contract supported by government funds.
In the May 2004 issue of Playboy, Arnold told Dean Kuipers that: "There is a criminal section of the environmental movement, and it's probably getting money from the above-ground sector. Some of the environmental movement is simply anti corporate; some of it is more ideological." And in the May issue of Foundation Watch, a publication of the Washington, D.C.-based right-wing think tank Capital Research Center, Arnold's profile of the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts - a leading donor to environmental groups - concludes that Pew, which recently changed its legal status from "private foundation to public charity," is now be in a position to play "an even more active role in advocating sweeping policies to combat the alleged global warming threat."
A month earlier, in the same publication, Arnold took a close look at Teresa Heinz Kerry, the head of the Heinz Foundation and the wife of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Among other issues, Arnold looked at the "relationship between the foundation's charitable gifts to environmental groups and environmentalist supporters of the senator's presidential campaign" and what [that] might mean for a Kerry presidency."
Twelve years ago, Audubon magazine's Kate Callaghan pointed out that during the 20th century's first decade, Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, likely used the term, "wise use" when he "called conservation 'the wise use of resources.'" Eighty years later, Ron Arnold expropriated the phrase and turned it into a political movement. Using the term during a multiple use strategy conference in Reno, Nev., Arnold suggested that "wholesale mining, logging and grazing are possible while simultaneously preserving the land."
Arnold's 1989 book, The Wise Use Agenda , brought the "wise use" movement to the center of an anti-environmental, pro-industry nexus. A savvy corporate fundraiser and public relations spinmeister, he once proudly proclaimed himself as the "Darth Vader for the capitalist revolution."
Arnold's resume also includes his job as the executive vice president of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, a pro-corporate group founded in 1976 by his longtime comrade, Alan Gottlieb. (Gottlieb is also credited with founding the anti-gun control Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizen's Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.) According to the Center for Media and Democracy's Disinfopedia, CDFE claims to be "a non-partisan education and research organization which works on free enterprise studies, public policy research, book publishing, conferences, white papers and media outreach." CDFE's website asserts that it tracks "threats to free markets, property rights and limited government."
Over the years, CDFE, a tax-exempt educational organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Tax Code, has received support from a network of corporations, including Georgia Pacific, Louisiana-Pacific, MacMillan Bloedel, Pacific Lumber, Exxon, DuPont and Boise Cascade.
In 2002, Arnold launched a campaign to convince the FBI's Domestic Terrorism Program to take a close look at the Green Anarchy Tour 2002. He told the Conservative News Service (CNS) that the tour "presents probable cause for investigation. You do have people here recommending violence, murder, property damage, everything you can think of."
In November 2003, according to the organization's website, Arnold, the author of EcoTerror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature, the World of the Unabomber - which traces the history of the radical environmental movement and attempts to link Unabomber Ted Kaczynski to mainstream environmentalists - was "retained as expert consultant on ecoterrorism" for a University of Arkansas Terrorism Research Center study funded by a $343,885 grant from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).
Arnold will work with Brent Smith, a professor of sociology and director of the Terrorism Research Center at the University of Arkansas, who is working on a project called "Pre-incident indicators of Terrorist Incidents: The Identification of Behavioral, Geographic and Temporal Patterns of Preparatory Conduct," an effort aimed at predicting future terrorist attacks.
His warnings may be paying off. In early June, Pork Alert, an online publication of Pork magazine, reported that Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., had introduced the Ecoterrorism Act of 2004. Nethercutt's legislation would "establish federal criminal penalties and civil remedies for violent, threatening, obstructive and destructive conduct that is intended to injure, intimidate or interfere with plant or animal enterprises. This bill would serve to protect livestock from tampering by ecoterrorists." The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee for consideration.
"From drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge to clear-cutting the Tongass National Forest, from opening all public lands to mining and energy production, to gutting the Wilderness Act, from amending and weakening the Endangered Species Act to turning America's national parks over to the Walt Disney Company, Ron Arnold's agenda is on a roll," Scott Silver pointed out. "All that stands in the way of Arnold and his ideologically extreme brethren are decades-worth of environmental laws and those who are dedicated to defending our public lands."
Starmail - 30. Jun, 17:35
29
Jun
2004
Bush Administration Squelches Bad News on Parks
June 29, 2004
Candidate George W. Bush made two promises on the environment when he ran for President in 2000: he would regulate carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, and he would close the $5 billion maintenance backlog for our national parks. It took President George W. Bush a mere 53 days to break his promise on reducing greenhouse gases. [1] And to the dismay of environmentalists and career park officials alike, America's national parks have been steadily deteriorating since the President took office.
To deter public awareness of his national parks reversal, it appears the President has imposed a gag rule on park managers to prevent them from disclosing just how underfunded the parks have become. Since 1998 the Park Service has been collaborating with the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) http://www.npca.org , a nonprofit advocacy group, to create business plans for the country's parks. With federal funding, NPCA and the Park Service recruited graduate students from the country's top business schools to identify funding problems and develop management solutions for the parks. The 64 reports produced so far portray a Park Service woefully short of money, with most parks showing annual budget shortfalls of around 30 percent.
This information has apparently not been sitting comfortably with the administration. The business plan for Olympic National Park in Washington, for example, was kept from the public after it found that funding shortages were crippling the park. The report found that Olympic, which had 3.2 million visitors last year, receives only about half the money it needs. The Washington Post last week quoted a Park Service official, who spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation, as saying that the report was withheld because the Bush administration "...doesn't like bad news. They don't like to see or hear about it or fix it. And they punish the messenger."
Ron Tipton, senior vice president for programs at NPCA, told BushGreenwatch http://www.bushgreenwatch.org , "It's really regrettable that the Department of Interior appears to be uncomfortable with full public disclosure of the results of these business plans. The public and key decision-makers need this information to assure the parks are adequately funded and staffed so their visitors have a high quality experience."
The superintendent of Gettysburg National Military Park was forced to cancel a scheduled press conference to announce that park's business plan, which showed budget shortfalls. The plan was later made public on the park's web site. The press conference was canceled, according to a Park Service spokesman, not to hide the plan but because NPCA "might go out there and say a lot of things that our superintendents aren't comfortable saying."
Apparently, however, it appears to be the Park Service's political appointees who are uncomfortable. To solve the problem of reports informing the public of chronic underfunding, the Park Service has canceled its partnership with NPCA. As NPCA's Tipton explained to the Post: "We were not seen as a friendly voice."
SOURCES:
[1] "Environmental Reversal," Online Newshour, PBS, Mar. 14, 2001.
http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000146.php
Candidate George W. Bush made two promises on the environment when he ran for President in 2000: he would regulate carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, and he would close the $5 billion maintenance backlog for our national parks. It took President George W. Bush a mere 53 days to break his promise on reducing greenhouse gases. [1] And to the dismay of environmentalists and career park officials alike, America's national parks have been steadily deteriorating since the President took office.
To deter public awareness of his national parks reversal, it appears the President has imposed a gag rule on park managers to prevent them from disclosing just how underfunded the parks have become. Since 1998 the Park Service has been collaborating with the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) http://www.npca.org , a nonprofit advocacy group, to create business plans for the country's parks. With federal funding, NPCA and the Park Service recruited graduate students from the country's top business schools to identify funding problems and develop management solutions for the parks. The 64 reports produced so far portray a Park Service woefully short of money, with most parks showing annual budget shortfalls of around 30 percent.
This information has apparently not been sitting comfortably with the administration. The business plan for Olympic National Park in Washington, for example, was kept from the public after it found that funding shortages were crippling the park. The report found that Olympic, which had 3.2 million visitors last year, receives only about half the money it needs. The Washington Post last week quoted a Park Service official, who spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation, as saying that the report was withheld because the Bush administration "...doesn't like bad news. They don't like to see or hear about it or fix it. And they punish the messenger."
Ron Tipton, senior vice president for programs at NPCA, told BushGreenwatch http://www.bushgreenwatch.org , "It's really regrettable that the Department of Interior appears to be uncomfortable with full public disclosure of the results of these business plans. The public and key decision-makers need this information to assure the parks are adequately funded and staffed so their visitors have a high quality experience."
The superintendent of Gettysburg National Military Park was forced to cancel a scheduled press conference to announce that park's business plan, which showed budget shortfalls. The plan was later made public on the park's web site. The press conference was canceled, according to a Park Service spokesman, not to hide the plan but because NPCA "might go out there and say a lot of things that our superintendents aren't comfortable saying."
Apparently, however, it appears to be the Park Service's political appointees who are uncomfortable. To solve the problem of reports informing the public of chronic underfunding, the Park Service has canceled its partnership with NPCA. As NPCA's Tipton explained to the Post: "We were not seen as a friendly voice."
SOURCES:
[1] "Environmental Reversal," Online Newshour, PBS, Mar. 14, 2001.
http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000146.php
Starmail - 29. Jun, 17:02
Bush attempts to censor US scientific participation at the WHO
To All
A bit of political reality.........
The WHO is now negotiating with the Bush Administration over requirements that senior US administration officials approve participants in scientific meetings. The Bush administration, not content with corrupting science in the USA now wants to extend its anti-scientific agenda into the WHO with HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson reviewing US scientists who are appointed to scientific panels. See next message (Part2) on the scientific qualifications of "Tobacco Tommy".
Don Maisch
Access this story and related links online:
http://cme.kff.org/Key=3376.Sh.J.D.DVgDrP
The Junk Science of George W. Bush
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/252509/
(Part2)
To All
AS mentioned in the last message Bush administration is pushing requirements that Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompson approve US participants in international scientific panels so that in the future US scientists "serve as representatives of the U.S. government at all times and advocate U.S. government policies."
So what is Tommy Thompson's track record in appointing scientists to expert advisory panels? For just one example of many we can look at what "Tommy Tobacco" has done to the US Lead Advisory Committee: (Exerpt from my thesis)
Stacking the Lead Advisory Committee at the CDC
Since the early 1990's the CDC's Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention has been providing information aimed to protect American children against exposure to toxic levels of lead in their environment.
According to advice given to the CDC by this advisory committee, approximately 890,000 U.S. children age 1-5 have elevated blood lead levels, and more than one-fifth of African-American children living in housing built before 1946 have elevated blood lead levels. The major sources of lead exposure are deteriorated paint in older housing, and dust and soil that are contaminated with lead from old paint and from past emissions of leaded gasoline. The CDC web site states that:
*"Lead poisoning affects virtually every system in the body, and often occurs with no distinctive symptoms.
*Lead can damage a child's central nervous system, kidneys, and reproductive system and, at higher levels, can cause coma, convulsions, and death.
*Even low levels of lead are harmful and are associated with decreased intelligence, impaired neurobehavioral development, decreased stature and growth, and impaired hearing acuity."
The CDC Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention is charged with assessing the scientific data and recommending changes to CDC policy to prevent lead poisoning, including assessing whether the blood lead level limits are adequate. These blood lead levels are then used to determine which children are at risk for adverse health effects, and how much remediation must be done to ensure that a lead-contaminated site is safe. The Committee has guided major changes in lead poisoning policy for more than a decade. For example, in 1991, the acceptable blood lead level limits were revised from 25 µg/dL (micrograms per deciliter, the unit used to measure blood lead levels) down to 10 µg/dL in a report released by CDC and developed in part by the Advisory Committee.
In March 2002, the Advisory Committee issued Recommendations entitled "Managing Elevated Blood Lead Levels Among Young Children" which provides health care case managers guidance on how to assess and treat children with elevated blood lead levels.
In a major reshuffle in the makeup of the Lead Advisory Committee, nominations of very high qualified scientists with extensive experience on the health effects of lead exposures to children were rejected by The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Tommy Thompson and instead replaced with individuals who have ties with the lead industry.
Susan Cummins, chair of the lead advisory committee from 1995 to 2000 stated that "no previous HHS secretary has ever rejected nominations by the committee or the CDC staff.
Tommy Thompson and Big Tobacco
Tommy Thompson, Secretary of HHS under the G.W. Bush Administration, was approved by the Senate in Jan 2001. Former Republician governor of Wisconsin for several terms Thompson has had a long association with Phillip Morris, the tobacco corporation. Philip Morris executives have been the leading contributers to Thompson's campaign funds. While governor of Wisconsin Thompson was on the legal advisory board of the Philip-Morris funded Washington Legal Foundation and was described in Philip Morris documents as "a close ally of Philip Morris for many years". Both as governor of Wisconsin, and as minority leader, Thompson has worked at opposing the Clean Indoor Act, proposed amendments to exempt most businesses from smoking bans, opposed increases in excise taxes on cigarettes, opposed bans on businesses selling cigarettes to minors and passed legislation making it illegial for communities to pass stricter tobacco laws, such as banning the use of cigarette vending machines.
In 1999 his staff worked with Philip Morris and other lobbysts to eliminate enforcement of the law that makes it illegial to sell cigarettes to minors. Two non-profit groups bankrolled by Philip Morris paid for overseas visits by Thompson to Africa (1995), England (1992) and Australia in 1996.
The CDC Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention
Reappointment rejected by Thompson:
Dr. Michael Weitzman, Department of Pediatrics, University of Rochester, and Pediatrician in Chief, Rochester General Hospital, Dr. Weitzman has been an Advisory Committee member since 1997, and is author of numerous peer-reviewed publications on lead poisoning. Dr. Weitzman was chair of the EPA's Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Workshop to Review Evidence of Health Effects of Blood Lead Levels over 10 micrograms per deciliter.
Nominations rejected:
Dr. Bruce Lanphear, Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, currently the Sloan Professor of Children's Environmental Health. Dr. Lanphear is author of numerous peer-reviewed publications on lead poisoning. Dr. Lanphear was principle investigator on the primary study used by the EPA to establish federal standards for lead in residential buildings.
Dr. Susan Klitzman, Associate Professor of Urban Public Health at the Hunter College School of Health Sciences, and author of numerous peer-reviewed publications on lead poisoning.
Nominated approved:
Dr. William Banner, Jr., MD, PhD- Expert Witness for the Lead Industry.
* Dr. Banner, who is currently an attending physician in the pediatric intensive care unit, Children's Hospital at St. Francis Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, is also currently retained by the Lead Industries Association as an expert witness, in an ongoing legal case wherein the State of Rhode Island is holding the lead paint industry responsible for childhood lead poisoning in Rhode Island. Banner has testified in court that blood levels of lead below 70 µg/dL do not pose a threat to children's health even though the current CDC position" is that blood lead levels of 10 µg/dL or greater are high enough to be a health concern. Dr Banner has also stated that he rejects the evidence in the epidemiological literature that found that there are cognitive, IQ, and other kinds of learning deficits that have been associated with ingestion of lead levels above the CDC recommendation of 10 µg/dL.
*Dr. Joyce Tsuji, principal scientist for Exponent, and King and Spalding, a DC law firm representing several large lead firms, and who has testified as an expert witness for the lead industry.
Exponent's clients 17 include corporations such as ASARCO (which is currently disputing EPA's assumptions that ASARCO is the source of elevated arsenic and lead in residential soils in El Paso and fighting Superfund designation, Dow Chemical, and Dupont (named as a defendant in the Rhode Island lead lawsuit), large insurance companies such as Allstate and USAA, trade associations such as the American Chemistry Council, the National Mining Association and the American Petroleum Institute, and law firms such as Winston and Strawn and King and Spalding (which represents several large lead companies. 31 % of Exponent's 51 corporate clients have a financial interest in the deliberations of the CDC Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention. 20 One of these companies, FMC Corporation, has a lead-contaminated Superfund site. 15 Exponent clients reported releases of lead or lead compounds to air, land or surface waters in EPA's 2000 Toxic Release Inventory.
Dr. Tsuji provided testimony in a class action lawsuit regarding the "alleged" need for medical monitoring for all residents in the vicinity of a smelter living on soil with arsenic and lead levels above background levels. "Key issues included the lack of sensitivity of tests at these low exposure levels and the negligible risk of adverse effects."
*Dr. Kimberly Thompson, Assistant Professor of Risk Analysis and Decision Science, Harvard School of Public Health, affiliated with the John Graham's Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. HCRA has 22 corporate funders with a financial interest in the deliberations of the CDC Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention and less stringent regulation of lead. Three of these funders have Superfund sites with lead contamination - Ciba-Geigy Corporation, FMC Corporation, and Monsanto.
Dr. Sergio Piomelli, Professor, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, researcher who reportedly disagrees with the current blood lead standard set by the CDC Advisory Committee in 1991. In arguing against lowering the acceptable limit of lead in the blood, Piomelli stated: "there is no epidemic of lead poisoning...but some people are trying to create an epidemic by decree."
SNIP
Don
A bit of political reality.........
The WHO is now negotiating with the Bush Administration over requirements that senior US administration officials approve participants in scientific meetings. The Bush administration, not content with corrupting science in the USA now wants to extend its anti-scientific agenda into the WHO with HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson reviewing US scientists who are appointed to scientific panels. See next message (Part2) on the scientific qualifications of "Tobacco Tommy".
Don Maisch
Access this story and related links online:
http://cme.kff.org/Key=3376.Sh.J.D.DVgDrP
The Junk Science of George W. Bush
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/252509/
(Part2)
To All
AS mentioned in the last message Bush administration is pushing requirements that Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompson approve US participants in international scientific panels so that in the future US scientists "serve as representatives of the U.S. government at all times and advocate U.S. government policies."
So what is Tommy Thompson's track record in appointing scientists to expert advisory panels? For just one example of many we can look at what "Tommy Tobacco" has done to the US Lead Advisory Committee: (Exerpt from my thesis)
Stacking the Lead Advisory Committee at the CDC
Since the early 1990's the CDC's Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention has been providing information aimed to protect American children against exposure to toxic levels of lead in their environment.
According to advice given to the CDC by this advisory committee, approximately 890,000 U.S. children age 1-5 have elevated blood lead levels, and more than one-fifth of African-American children living in housing built before 1946 have elevated blood lead levels. The major sources of lead exposure are deteriorated paint in older housing, and dust and soil that are contaminated with lead from old paint and from past emissions of leaded gasoline. The CDC web site states that:
*"Lead poisoning affects virtually every system in the body, and often occurs with no distinctive symptoms.
*Lead can damage a child's central nervous system, kidneys, and reproductive system and, at higher levels, can cause coma, convulsions, and death.
*Even low levels of lead are harmful and are associated with decreased intelligence, impaired neurobehavioral development, decreased stature and growth, and impaired hearing acuity."
The CDC Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention is charged with assessing the scientific data and recommending changes to CDC policy to prevent lead poisoning, including assessing whether the blood lead level limits are adequate. These blood lead levels are then used to determine which children are at risk for adverse health effects, and how much remediation must be done to ensure that a lead-contaminated site is safe. The Committee has guided major changes in lead poisoning policy for more than a decade. For example, in 1991, the acceptable blood lead level limits were revised from 25 µg/dL (micrograms per deciliter, the unit used to measure blood lead levels) down to 10 µg/dL in a report released by CDC and developed in part by the Advisory Committee.
In March 2002, the Advisory Committee issued Recommendations entitled "Managing Elevated Blood Lead Levels Among Young Children" which provides health care case managers guidance on how to assess and treat children with elevated blood lead levels.
In a major reshuffle in the makeup of the Lead Advisory Committee, nominations of very high qualified scientists with extensive experience on the health effects of lead exposures to children were rejected by The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Tommy Thompson and instead replaced with individuals who have ties with the lead industry.
Susan Cummins, chair of the lead advisory committee from 1995 to 2000 stated that "no previous HHS secretary has ever rejected nominations by the committee or the CDC staff.
Tommy Thompson and Big Tobacco
Tommy Thompson, Secretary of HHS under the G.W. Bush Administration, was approved by the Senate in Jan 2001. Former Republician governor of Wisconsin for several terms Thompson has had a long association with Phillip Morris, the tobacco corporation. Philip Morris executives have been the leading contributers to Thompson's campaign funds. While governor of Wisconsin Thompson was on the legal advisory board of the Philip-Morris funded Washington Legal Foundation and was described in Philip Morris documents as "a close ally of Philip Morris for many years". Both as governor of Wisconsin, and as minority leader, Thompson has worked at opposing the Clean Indoor Act, proposed amendments to exempt most businesses from smoking bans, opposed increases in excise taxes on cigarettes, opposed bans on businesses selling cigarettes to minors and passed legislation making it illegial for communities to pass stricter tobacco laws, such as banning the use of cigarette vending machines.
In 1999 his staff worked with Philip Morris and other lobbysts to eliminate enforcement of the law that makes it illegial to sell cigarettes to minors. Two non-profit groups bankrolled by Philip Morris paid for overseas visits by Thompson to Africa (1995), England (1992) and Australia in 1996.
The CDC Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention
Reappointment rejected by Thompson:
Dr. Michael Weitzman, Department of Pediatrics, University of Rochester, and Pediatrician in Chief, Rochester General Hospital, Dr. Weitzman has been an Advisory Committee member since 1997, and is author of numerous peer-reviewed publications on lead poisoning. Dr. Weitzman was chair of the EPA's Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Workshop to Review Evidence of Health Effects of Blood Lead Levels over 10 micrograms per deciliter.
Nominations rejected:
Dr. Bruce Lanphear, Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, currently the Sloan Professor of Children's Environmental Health. Dr. Lanphear is author of numerous peer-reviewed publications on lead poisoning. Dr. Lanphear was principle investigator on the primary study used by the EPA to establish federal standards for lead in residential buildings.
Dr. Susan Klitzman, Associate Professor of Urban Public Health at the Hunter College School of Health Sciences, and author of numerous peer-reviewed publications on lead poisoning.
Nominated approved:
Dr. William Banner, Jr., MD, PhD- Expert Witness for the Lead Industry.
* Dr. Banner, who is currently an attending physician in the pediatric intensive care unit, Children's Hospital at St. Francis Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, is also currently retained by the Lead Industries Association as an expert witness, in an ongoing legal case wherein the State of Rhode Island is holding the lead paint industry responsible for childhood lead poisoning in Rhode Island. Banner has testified in court that blood levels of lead below 70 µg/dL do not pose a threat to children's health even though the current CDC position" is that blood lead levels of 10 µg/dL or greater are high enough to be a health concern. Dr Banner has also stated that he rejects the evidence in the epidemiological literature that found that there are cognitive, IQ, and other kinds of learning deficits that have been associated with ingestion of lead levels above the CDC recommendation of 10 µg/dL.
*Dr. Joyce Tsuji, principal scientist for Exponent, and King and Spalding, a DC law firm representing several large lead firms, and who has testified as an expert witness for the lead industry.
Exponent's clients 17 include corporations such as ASARCO (which is currently disputing EPA's assumptions that ASARCO is the source of elevated arsenic and lead in residential soils in El Paso and fighting Superfund designation, Dow Chemical, and Dupont (named as a defendant in the Rhode Island lead lawsuit), large insurance companies such as Allstate and USAA, trade associations such as the American Chemistry Council, the National Mining Association and the American Petroleum Institute, and law firms such as Winston and Strawn and King and Spalding (which represents several large lead companies. 31 % of Exponent's 51 corporate clients have a financial interest in the deliberations of the CDC Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention. 20 One of these companies, FMC Corporation, has a lead-contaminated Superfund site. 15 Exponent clients reported releases of lead or lead compounds to air, land or surface waters in EPA's 2000 Toxic Release Inventory.
Dr. Tsuji provided testimony in a class action lawsuit regarding the "alleged" need for medical monitoring for all residents in the vicinity of a smelter living on soil with arsenic and lead levels above background levels. "Key issues included the lack of sensitivity of tests at these low exposure levels and the negligible risk of adverse effects."
*Dr. Kimberly Thompson, Assistant Professor of Risk Analysis and Decision Science, Harvard School of Public Health, affiliated with the John Graham's Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. HCRA has 22 corporate funders with a financial interest in the deliberations of the CDC Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention and less stringent regulation of lead. Three of these funders have Superfund sites with lead contamination - Ciba-Geigy Corporation, FMC Corporation, and Monsanto.
Dr. Sergio Piomelli, Professor, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, researcher who reportedly disagrees with the current blood lead standard set by the CDC Advisory Committee in 1991. In arguing against lowering the acceptable limit of lead in the blood, Piomelli stated: "there is no epidemic of lead poisoning...but some people are trying to create an epidemic by decree."
SNIP
Don
Starmail - 29. Jun, 09:55
