A brand new poll reports 53% of Americans think Bush should be impeached for lying about Iraq, while only 42% disagree.

That's what I call a real mandate!

So why haven't Democrats in Congress introduced Articles of Impeachment yet?

I don't know. For months, many of us have called and emailed our Representatives urging them to impeach Bush and Cheney. I know they hear us loud and clear - but they're not responding.

But now that the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq has crossed 2,000, along with countless innocent Iraqis, I'm more determined than ever to impeach Bush and Cheney as soon as possible.

And I believe we can succeed if you'll help me.
http://elandslide.org/elandslide/edonate.cfm?campaign=impeachpac

Today I started a new Political Action Committee called ImpeachPAC http://impeachpac.org .

Its mission is simple: to raise money for Democratic House and Senate candidates who support the immediate and simultaneous impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney for the lies they told to launch the disastrous war in Iraq.

If we can make this a really important PAC - like Moveon or EMILY's List - I am certain many Democrats in Congress will wake up and get busy drafting Articles of Impeachment.

That's why I need your help.
http://elandslide.org/elandslide/edonate.cfm?campaign=impeachpac

I have set a goal of $100,000 to launch ImpeachPAC. If we can raise $100,000 in a short amount of time - perhaps two weeks - we will send shockwaves through the White House, Congress, and the media too.

They will know we're serious - and determined to succeed.
http://elandslide.org/elandslide/edonate.cfm?campaign=impeachpac

We unveiled ImpeachPAC.org at noon today by spreading the word across the progressive blogosphere. As I write at 6 p.m., we have already raised $1,000 towards our goal.

I know we can do it. Please join now by clicking here.
http://elandslide.org/elandslide/edonate.cfm?campaign=impeachpac

Thank you, Bob Fertik

YOUR ZOGBY POLL FINDS 53% SUPPORT IMPEACHMENT

Today Zogby published the results of a poll that you paid for (through AfterDowningStreet.org) asking Americans about impeachment.

The results were stunning: By a margin of 53% to 42%, Americans want Congress to impeach President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq.

In June, when Zogby asked the same question, 42% supported impeachment, while 50% did not. That's an astonishing swing of 19% (from -8% to +11%) in only four months.

If this trend continues, impeachment support will reach 60% in January, 65% in March, and 70% in April. How can an unelected war criminal possibly cling to power when 70% want him impeached?

Still, the overwhelming - and growing - support for impeachment remains the nation's best-kept secret. We can't even get the pollsters to ask the impeachment question unless we pay them. Isn't that an outrage? You can contact all of the pollsters here:

http://www.democrats.com/bush-impeachment-polls

WHIG INQUIRY VOTE ON WEDNESDAY (WHITE HOUSE IRAQ GROUP)

Thanks to your hard work, 63 Congress Members have signed on as co-sponsors in the last three days of H. Res 505, a Resolution of Inquiry into the marketing of the war by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG).

The International Relations Committee will vote on the Resolution at its meeting at 10:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, November 9.

We need volunteer organizers during the next week to help pass H. Res 505. Contact Sophie, Field Coordinator, at 415-789-8469 or lobbykit@yahoo.com

Yesterday, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi introduced a similar resolution to the full House, which was defeated by a party-line vote of 220-191. Please thank Rep. Pelosi. sf.nancy@mail.house.gov

Talking Points on H. Res. 505:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/points

Email Your Congress Member:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/72

More Information and How to Get Involved:
http://www.AfterDowningStreet.org/whig

STOP FUNDING THE WAR

Action Alert from Progressive Democrats of America http://pdamerica.org : Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) has introduced legislation to stop funding the deployment of U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq. The bill would allow Defense Department funds to be used only to provide for: the safe and orderly withdrawal of all troops; consultations with other governments, NATO, and the UN regarding international forces; and financial assistance and equipment to either Iraqi security forces and/or international forces. In addition, the bill would not prohibit or restrict non-defense funding to carry out reconstruction in Iraq. Take action here: http://tinyurl.com/dwsww

BUSH AND NIXON (!) BATTLE FOR "LEAST-LOVED PRESIDENT"

Check out these graphs comparing the popularity of these two unpopular White House occupants. Who will win the race to the bottom? http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/4443

MASSACHUSETTS FORUM SATURDAY: IRAQ EXIT STRATEGY

Please join us for an exciting event: A panel discussion with Congressman Jim McGovern and John Bonifaz, Co-Founder of After Downing Street. Massachusetts Democratic Party Chairman Phil Johnston will moderate the forum. At their annual state convention in June, Massachusetts Democrats unanimously approved a resolution calling for an end to the war in Iraq.

The panelists will discuss how the U.S. got involved in the war, the present situation in Iraq, and our exit strategy.

What: A panel discussion on the Iraq War Who: Congressman Jim McGovern John Bonifaz PDA National Advisory Board Phil Johnston Massachusetts Democratic Party Chairman When: Saturday, November 5 from 7-9 p.m. Where: Turners Fall High School, 222 Turnpike Road, Montague For more information contact Les or Suzie Patlove at 413-625-9388

PARTY WITH PDA's ADVISORY BOARD

Join us in Washington, D.C., for PDA's Advisory Board Party and Fundraiser! Board members already confirmed to attend include Chair Mimi Kennedy, Vice-Chair Joel Segal, Steve Cobble, Acie Byrd, Joe Libertelli, Greg Moore, Cindy Sheehan, David Swanson, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr., Rep. Diane Watson, and Rep. Lynn Woolsey. Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 Location: National Democratic Club, 30 Ivy St., SE, Washington, D.C. Events Include:
4:00pm – 5:00pm Reception with Speakers
5:00pm - 6:30pm Public Event Ticket Prices: $250 includes Reception and Public Event $100 for Public Event only Order tickets:
https://www.pdamerica.org/board-tickets.php

TELL CONGRESS TO IMPEACH GEORGE BUSH
http://democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/65

TELL CONGRESS TO DEMAND DICK CHENEY'S RESIGNATION
http://democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/73

URGE THE SENATE TO REJECT SAM ALITO
http://democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/74

FORWARD THIS INFORMATION



http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Downing+Street+Memo

BIRD FLU

An Epidemic of Overreaction /The scare Scenario / The Fear Epidemic

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP) Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability http://www.ahrp.org

Dr. Marc Siegel, a practicing internist and an associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine, and a subscriber to the AHRP Infomails, forwarded 3 recent Op Ed articles he has published--in The Nation, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. Dr. Siegel puts the Avian flu in perspective and assures the public that at this point the Avian flu poses primarily an epidemic of fear generated by overreaction.

"If Americans are afraid of avian flu now, imagine what will happen if a single scrawny, flu-ridden migratory bird somehow manages to reach our shores. This is how fear works, how the fear epidemic — as opposed to a flu pandemic — spreads. Fear is supposed to be our warning system against imminent dangers, but as a deep-rooted emotion, it interferes with our ability to make sound judgments. And if anything is contagious right now, it's judgment clouded by fear. Immediate government overreaction creates this cycle of fear: The public reacts and calls for action. Health officials, hearing the public and media cries, look to quiet these generated fears with knee- jerk health policy (such as stockpiling a product with a relatively short shelf life: Both Tamiflu and bird flu vaccines are perishable and will have to be discarded if not used in three years)."

"Most human influenzas begin as bird flus, but many bird flus never change to a form that can harm us. Though flu pandemics occur on the average of three times per century, and we are clearly overdue (the last was in 1968), there is absolutely no indication that the transformation to mass human killer is about to happen. The threat is theoretical. Unfortunately, the attention it has received makes it feel like something terrible is inevitable. Why the overreaction? For one thing, direct comparisons to the Spanish flu of 1918, a scourge that killed more than 50 million people worldwide, has alarmed the public unnecessarily"

"But there are many differences between 1918 and now. Many of the
1918 flu victims died of pneumonia because of a lack of antibiotics, which we now have in ample supply. There were also no flu vaccines or antiviral drugs back then, and people lived (and died) in wartime conditions of deprivation and sometimes squalor."


October 24, 2005 THE NATION

The Scare Scenario

Dr. Marc Siegel

When I see the posters for the soon-to-be released Chicken Little movie, I have to wonder what the lead character would have to say about the current bird flu craze. Would he say the sky is about to fall on him? Or would he come to his senses and understand that even as an American chicken, he is more likely to be killed by panic than by the flu?

The American public is profiting the least from the ongoing hysteria surrounding avian influenza. The drug manufacturer Roche is suddenly in great demand for its antiviral drug Tamiflu, which has only been tested against bird flu in the test tube and has no current use, because the virus has not mutated to a form that can easily be transmitted among humans. A common misconception--that Tamiflu is some kind of a bird flu vaccine rather than an antiviral that at best decreases symptoms of infection--has led to a lot of impulse buying. As with the antibiotic Cipro, prescribed to treat anthrax back in 2001, Tamiflu is becoming a treatment for the fear of a virus rather than the virus itself.

Another main profiteer of the bird flu panic is our federal government. Driven to avoid another disaster debacle like Hurricane Katrina, the Bush Administration is galloping to the rescue in advance of anything happening. The President's recent suggestion that he might use the military to control an influenza pandemic reminds us how quickly civil liberties can be sacrificed in an emergency. But more than that, it is a hysterical suggestion. Pandemics infiltrate a community person by person. A show of military force would likely cause a panic that would spread a virus more quickly.

Most bird flus don't mutate sufficiently to pass to humans. And those that do are usually responsible for our yearly influenza outbreak. On the average of three times per century, a mutated avian influenza is a bad enough bug to cause a pandemic. The bird flu of current concern, A(H5N1), is a big killer among birds but is still several mutations away from being able to routinely infect us. The estimated sixty-five people who have died of it over the past two years did so because of their close and repeated contact with birds, not because of casual contact. Cooking a chicken kills the influenza virus.

So why all the panic over a potential threat? In part the public hysteria is due to the fact that basic information about this potential pandemic has been misconstrued or ignored about this potential pandemic, much in the way previous health threats in the news--anthrax, smallpox, West Nile virus, mad cow disease--were all magnified beyond their ability to do great harm.

In each case there is a doomsday scenario that is packaged and sold to the public by the media, which consequently makes some undeserving manufacturer rich or collects votes for an undeserving leader.

In the case of bird flu, direct comparisons to the scourge of 1918 may well be overblown. Many people died of pneumonia during that outbreak of the Spanish flu because there were no antibiotics to treat it. There were also no vaccines, no antivirals and little in the way of public health or the sanitary conditions Americans take for granted today. We also have our top scientists and epidemiologists tracking this avian flu, which was not the case in
1918 prior to the essential mutation.

Fear leads to a diversion of resources; our fear of bird flu is being translated into a proposal for massive stockpiles of perishable drugs and vaccines. Congress could calmly and rationally designate funds to upgrade our flu vaccine manufacturing capacity using the genetic technology we already use routinely for other vaccines. Instead, our government allows pharmaceutical companies to use an outdated chicken- egg medium that requires three to six months to develop a vaccine against a particular strain. This slow process is then a justification for panicked stockpiles.

Bird flu is better studied in the laboratory than in a news conference. This virus deserves public attention only insomuch as it motivates our government to improve emergency services while bringing methods of vaccine manufacturing into the twenty-first century.


LOS ANGELES TIMES

An epidemic of overreaction

10-11-05
By Marc Siegel,

MARC SIEGEL is an internist and associate professor at the New York University School of Medicine. He is the author of "False Alarm: The Truth about the Epidemic of Fear" (Wiley, 2005).

THIS PAST WEEK, my patients seemed more nervous than usual. In addition to concerns about chest pain, coughs and fevers, there were also the sudden, uneasy questions about bird flu.

"Should I be taking Tamiflu?" several asked. "Can you prescribe it so I have a supply on hand just in case?" My answer was always the same. "No. Tamiflu is an antiviral drug that has not yet been proved effective against bird flu. And even if it worked, there's still no bird flu to treat."

The difficulty with informing the public about a potential pandemic is that the uncertainty about when or if it could occur breeds fear. Scared people over-personalize the news, and their worries increase. Fear is a warning system intended to alert us to impending danger. The bird flu, though a potential large-scale danger, is not impending.

The facts are these: The current H5N1 avian influenza virus has not mutated into a form that can easily infect humans, and the 60 people in the world who have died of this bird flu have done so not because this bug is on the road to mutation but because millions of birds throughout Asia have been infected, and the more birds that have it, the more likely that an occasional human bird handler will be infected.

Most human influenzas begin as bird flus, but many bird flus never change to a form that can harm us. Though flu pandemics occur on the average of three times per century, and we are clearly overdue (the last was in 1968), there is absolutely no indication that the transformation to mass human killer is about to happen. The threat is theoretical. Unfortunately, the attention it has received makes it feel like something terrible is inevitable.

Why the overreaction? For one thing, direct comparisons to the Spanish flu of 1918, a scourge that killed more than 50 million people worldwide, has alarmed the public unnecessarily. In fact, there are many scenarios in which the current bird flu won't mutate into a form as deadly as the 1918 virus.

And even if we accept the Spanish flu scenario, health conditions in
1918 were far worse in most of the world than they are now. Many people lived in squalor; 17 million influenza deaths occurred in India, versus about half a million deaths in the U.S. There were no flu vaccinations, no antiviral drugs, and containment by isolating infected individuals wasn't effective, largely because of poor information and poor compliance. Today's media reach could be a useful tool to aid compliance. Of course, the concern that air travel can spread viral infections faster may be valid, but infected migratory birds were sufficient in 1918.

Unfortunately, public health alarms are sounded too often and too soon. SARS was broadcast as a new global killer to which we had zero immunity, and yet it petered out long before it killed a single person in the United States. SARS was something to be taken seriously, but the real lessons of SARS, smallpox, West Nile virus, anthrax and mad cow disease weren't learned by our leaders — that potential health threats are more effectively examined in the laboratory than at a news conference.

With bird flu, scientists have been working on the structure of the viruses in an attempt to protect us. Studies published in the journals Nature and Science over the last six years have given scientists a road map with which to track the current bird flu and alert health officials if it mutates further. It is reasonable to try to control the bird flu while it remains in the bird population. There is great value in improving our emergency health response system and upgrading our vaccine-making capacity. Government subsidies in these areas could make the public safer.

But, right now, there is no value in scaring the public with Hitchcockian bird flu scenarios. The public must be kept in the loop, but potential threats should be put into context. The worst case is not the only case.


USA TODAY

Alive and well: The fear epidemic

By Marc Siegel
10-19-05

A 50-year-old asthmatic patient who came to my office recently asked for Tamiflu as a protection against bird flu. "Bird flu may get us all this year," he wheezed anxiously. "There is no bird flu here," I said. The greatest problem among my patients right now isn't bird flu; it is fear of bird flu. The greatest risk of an epidemic is of a fear epidemic.

The hyperventilating has reached well beyond my practice. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been deluged with phone calls and questions. Among them: "Is it safe to keep a bird feeder in the yard?" The answer: Yes!

Bird flu scares us because it is a mindless microbe that has choked off the breathing of millions of birds. But a species barrier protects us from this virus unless there are several more mutations to the viral DNA.

So why are people scared out of proportion to the risk, which is currently close to zero for anyone except bird handlers?

All eyes on 1918 For one thing, comparisons to the terrible scourge of 1918 — when another bird flu mutated and passed human to human — have dilated the sense of danger. But there are many differences between 1918 and now. Many of the 1918 flu victims died of pneumonia because of a lack of antibiotics, which we now have in ample supply. There were also no flu vaccines or antiviral drugs back then, and people lived (and died) in wartime conditions of deprivation and sometimes squalor.

If Americans are afraid of avian flu now, imagine what will happen if a single scrawny, flu-ridden migratory bird somehow manages to reach our shores.

This is how fear works, how the fear epidemic — as opposed to a flu pandemic — spreads. Fear is supposed to be our warning system against imminent dangers, but as a deep-rooted emotion, it interferes with our ability to make sound judgments. And if anything is contagious right now, it's judgment clouded by fear.

Immediate government overreaction creates this cycle of fear: The public reacts and calls for action. Health officials, hearing the public and media cries, look to quiet these generated fears with knee- jerk health policy (such as stockpiling a product with a relatively short shelf life: Both Tamiflu and bird flu vaccines are perishable and will have to be discarded if not used in three years).

Right and wrong approach So what's the right approach? Modern-day scientists are tracking the current bird flu and comparing its structure with influenzas of the past. This should comfort us. Laboratory science and careful epidemiological study are the best kind of preparation.

But PR is inevitably part of the game. That's where calls for vaccine stockpiles and "fact-finding" missions come in. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt just wrapped up such a trip to Asia over the weekend. His fear-provoking conclusion: Preventing the start of a global pandemic is just about impossible.

We've heard this all before. First it was anthrax, then smallpox, followed by West Nile virus and SARS, then human influenza, and now the animal variety. The public- health batting average has been quite low.

It is true that AIDS taught us that we need to look seriously at emerging threats before they spread. But AIDS still kills nearly 3 million people every year in the world, tuberculosis nearly 2 million and malaria about 1 million. We would be far better off using our personal fear radar against these diseases than against a bird disease that's still off in the distance.

Marc Siegel is an associate professor of medicine at NYU School of Medicine. His new book is "False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear".

http://www.alienshift.com/id126.html


Informant: memoryatlas

Thousands of protesters want Bush expelled. Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez leads the charge against a U.S. free-trade plan for the Americas.

By Patrick J. McDonnell and Edwin Chen Times Staff Writers

November 5, 2005

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina - A hemispheric summit to promote job creation and the spread of democracy throughout the Americas opened here Friday amid raucous anti-U.S. demonstrations and deep divisions among participating nations over the Bush administration's free-trade agenda.

A group of about 200 protesters attempting to breach the security cordon around the meeting site clashed with riot police about six blocks from the hotel where President Bush and other heads of state were meeting.

The protesters hurled rocks; set fire to a bank, apparently using a Molotov cocktail; and broke windows on more than a dozen shops, authorities said. Some of the protesters covered their faces with clothing to conceal their identities.

Police used tear gas to disperse the crowd, and more than 50 demonstrators were arrested. No serious injuries were reported. The protesters were unable to enter the cordoned-off security zone, which includes much of the downtown beachfront area of this seaside resort.

Earlier in the day, tens of thousands of protesters marched peacefully, if boisterously, through the streets calling for Bush to be expelled from Argentina. The demonstrators later cheered Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez when he labeled Washington's free-trade proposal dead and buried during a lengthy address after an alternative "people's summit."

"Mar del Plata is the tomb of ALCA," Chavez said, using the Spanish acronym for the Free Trade Area of the Americas plan backed by the White House.

"We brought our shovels to bury it," declared the fiery populist, who has emerged as the administration's leading antagonist in South America.

All eyes here were on the two rival presidents: Bush, suffering setbacks at home and unpopular in Latin America, and Chavez, the firebrand friend of Cuban leader Fidel Castro who has repeatedly accused Washington of seeking to overthrow him and invade his oil-rich nation. But by Friday evening, the two leaders had not met face to face.

"I will, of course, be polite," Bush said when asked how he would react if confronted by Chavez. "That's what the American people expect their president to do - is to be a polite person. And I will - if I run across him, I will do just that."

The White House and its leading free-trade allies here, Mexico and Chile, are pushing for a resuscitation of the hemispheric open-markets plan, which would create a unified trade bloc from Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina and Chile.

The proposal has been on the table for more than a decade, but host nation Argentina and several other South American nations have opposed it because of concerns about market access, subsidies to U.S. farmers and other issues.

Free trade has emerged as both a substantive and symbolic dispute here, underscoring deep philosophic differences between Washington and left-leaning elected governments in South America.

Although the White House calls open markets a tool to broaden economic progress, many in Argentina, Brazil and elsewhere fear market liberalization could lead to the plundering of their natural resources and depletion of national assets by multinational corporations.

That, they argue, would result in increased economic woes in a region where poverty is already endemic. Many also criticize the U.S. insistence on maintaining its agricultural subsidies while demanding that other countries, which by and large do not subsidize their farmers, open up their markets.

Many of the heads of state at the summit have risen to power as a result of disenchantment with what has become known as the Washington consensus, an agenda of economic liberalization and privatization that the U.S. has pushed for years as a strategy for economic growth. The policies did not provide prosperity, critics say, and left social inequities in place.

Philosophical differences about the role of government in the economy remain sharp, especially in Argentina, where many blame the financial meltdown of 2001 and 2002 on rapid liberalization in the preceding years.

The economy here has seen steady improvement recently, but many once solidly middle-class families live at or below the poverty line. It is estimated that currently, one-third of the Argentine population is impoverished.

"It is the state that should act to redress social inequalities," Argentine President Nestor Kirchner declared in his opening statement at the Hotel Hermitage, where the summit is being held.

It remained unclear whether the Bush administration would be successful in including any consensus language preserving the hemispheric free-trade concept in the summit's final declaration, expected today.

Government leaders and their aides have bemoaned the sharp differences evident at a forum designed to project an image of unity.

"This summit is very politicized," said a disenchanted Mexican President Vicente Fox, a close Bush ally who backs the expanded free-trade plan.

The Brazilian foreign affairs secretary, Celso Amorim, told journalists that the forum could neither bury nor revive the free-trade plan.

"The debate has become too ideological," Amorim said.

Some participants mentioned the possibility of an extended free-trade regimen absent Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and other opponents, an outcome that would highlight hemispheric economic fissures. Washington already has free-trade pacts with Mexico, Canada, Chile and Central America, and is negotiating others.

In his comments, Bush appeared to engage in quiet diplomacy as he promoted trade and good governance.

"This is an opportunity to positively affirm our belief in democracy, in human rights and human dignity," Bush said during a joint appearance with the Argentine president, a left-of-center populist.

Both men described their discussions as candid. Bush indicated that he declined during the meeting to back additional efforts by Argentina to negotiate favorable treatment by the International Monetary Fund. Earlier this year, with U.S. support, Argentina completed a renegotiation of about $103 billion in defaulted debt.

"I listened very carefully to his point of view," Bush told reporters. "I was pleased that the United States was helpful during the early part of his term at the IMF, and I suggested that his record is such now that he can take his case to the IMF with a much stronger hand."

Later, Kirchner held a separate session with Chavez.

The summit's opening ceremony lasted nearly two hours, almost double the scheduled duration. It prompted speculation that the extension was intended to avoid sending the leaders back out on the streets. As Bush's motorcade finally left the summit site, police sirens could be heard in the distance.

Most of Friday's protests, which involved more than 30,000 marchers, according to unofficial estimates here, were peaceful but intensely anti-Bush. The U.S. president was lampooned in banners as a vampire, devil and warmonger. U.S. presidents are seldom well-liked in Latin America, but experts say Bush - whose Middle East and economic policies are extremely controversial here - is among the least popular in recent memory.

It was unlikely Bush saw any of the large-scale protests, which unfolded about two miles from the upscale seaside strip where meetings are taking place and he and other presidents are lodging. However, the smaller clashes with riot police took place much closer to the summit zone.

Marchers at the larger protests, many of whom arrived in more than
1,000 buses from Buenos Aires, included demonstrators ranging from women in indigenous dress to middle-class professionals.

The image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentine militant who joined the Cuban revolution alongside Fidel Castro and was later killed in Bolivia, was ubiquitous.

"We are making a statement against . hunger and poverty," said Jordan Carriles, 28, one of several hundred Cubans who attended the alternate summit and protest march, which was held in a steady rain.

Cuba was not among the 34 nations invited to the summit, but Havana dispatched a large delegation of activists, artists and others, including Silvio Rodriguez, a well-known singer of protest and love songs, to the alternate summit staged at the soccer stadium.

Many Cubans donned colorful track suits with "Cuba" emblazoned on the back as they marched more than half a mile to the stadium, often breaking into anti-U.S. chants.

Leading a train-load of protesters from Buenos Aires was Diego Armando Maradona, the ex-soccer star and current talk-show host who wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with Bush's smiling image and the title, in English: "War Criminal."

Among those marching in the rain was another Chavez admirer, Evo Morales, the firebrand Bolivian leader who is ahead in polls for presidential elections scheduled for Dec. 18. Morales has called for lifting limits on planting coca, the raw material for cocaine, a position that Washington says would harm its anti-drug efforts in the region.

It was later in the day when the splinter group of protesters clashed with riot police at one of the fenced-off streets leading to the summit zone, which was protected by rings of security and several thousand policemen.

The city of 600,000 had a deserted feel, with most schools and shops closed as residents braced for violence.

Protesters also marched Friday against Bush and his free-trade plans in other Latin American cities, including Buenos Aires; Brasilia, Brazil; Caracas, Venezuela; Panama City and Montevideo, Uruguay.

Chavez repeated his accusations against the United States during his two-hour, rain-drenched speech Friday to protesters at the city's main soccer stadium.

"If imperialism decides to invade Venezuela," Chavez told the crowd, "a war of 100 years would begin in these lands."

Bush and Chavez were among the heads of state who gathered for a group photograph on Friday with an Atlantic Ocean backdrop. But the two were in separate rows and there was no obvious visual contact.

Andres D'Alessandro of The Times' Buenos Aires Bureau contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-fg-summit5nov05,1,5783593.story


Informant: Walter Lippmann

Mark Engler writes that the Bush Administration is making the world unsafe for Microsoft and Mickey Mouse.... Maybe George Bush and Dick Cheney aren't very good capitalists at all.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110405P.shtml

Jonathan Schell writes that the pivot is of course the war in Iraq, which in its origins and conduct was and remains a colossal, blood-drenched fraud. But now a majority of the public has caught on and wants the United States to withdraw.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110405O.shtml

Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald has centered in on what are believed to be his final inquiries as to whether Mr. Rove was fully forthcoming regarding the belated discovery of an email confirming his conversation with Time reporter Matthew Cooper, to whom Mr. Rove had mentioned the CIA officer.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110405N.shtml

Senators of both parties said Thursday that Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's choice for the Supreme Court, had told them he believed the court might have gone too far in separating church and state.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110405K.shtml

By Bill Van Auken
4 November 2005

In the midst of the Bush administration’s belated response to the threat of a global bird flu pandemic, the Pentagon last week quietly issued a legal memorandum concerning Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s participation in the government’s plan to confront the danger.

This is not a small matter for the Bush administration, given the president’s single-minded determination to exploit what is a very real public health danger to promote his own political agenda of eliminating constitutional restrictions on the use of the U.S. military on American soil.

The government’s 396-page response plan, posted on the Internet this week ( http://www.pandemicflu.gov ), speaks of using military forces to seal off towns and communities declared to be stricken with the disease, imposing what the document refers to as a cordon sanitaire, or sanitary barrier.

Presumably this would mean armed troops manning roadblocks with orders to use deadly force to prevent people from either entering or leaving.

In a statement last month, Bush called for the use of the military in this fashion, and urged Congress to consider changing the law to give him greater latitude to deploy military forces domestically.

The statement drew sharp criticism from public health officials, who suggested that Bush was proposing what amounted to martial law, a policy that has little efficacy in dealing with the threat of a pandemic.

Last week’s Pentagon memo indicated that Rumsfeld could participate in the martial law component of the government’s plan.

He is recusing himself only from decisions regarding the use of drugs to prevent or treat bird flu.

The problem, it seems, is that the defense secretary is a major stockholder in Gilead Sciences, the company that holds the patent on the prescription antiviral drug Tamiflu, which is said to be the most effective medicine to prevent influenza or ameliorate the symptoms among those already infected.

From 1997 until he came back to Washington in 2001 to head the Pentagon and prepare for the war against Iraq, Rumsfeld was Gilead’s CEO.

He separated with the corporation on very profitable terms and still holds Gilead stock worth up to $25 million, according to his recent federal financial disclosures.

The stock’s price has soared from $35 to over $50 over the past six months as fears of the pandemic have grown.

As Fortune magazine put it on its web site, “The prospect of a bird flu outbreak may be panicking people around the globe, but it’s proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected investors in the California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu...”

According to the government’s estimates, the pandemic could claim nearly 2 million lives in the U.S. and 50-60 million worldwide.

But for Rumsfeld and his friends, the danger has already produced windfall profits worth millions.

According to Fortune, the spiraling stock price has “made the Pentagon chief, already one of the wealthiest members of the Bush cabinet, at least $1 million richer.”

He is not alone among prominent Republicans celebrating the good fortune that has accrued from the threat to the lives of millions.

George Shultz, the former secretary of state, is also a Gilead board member and has sold more than $7 million worth of the company’s stock since the beginning of the year. Also on the board and a major stockholder is the wife of California’s former Republican governor, Pete Wilson.

While Gilead holds the patent for Tamiflu, it has given marketing and manufacturing rights to the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche Holding AG.

In return, it receives a 10 percent royalty on all of the Swiss firm’s sales.

Among the biggest US customers for the drug has been the Pentagon, which last July ordered $58 million worth of Tamiflu for troops deployed overseas.

Under Bush’s proposed plan, some $7.1 billion is to be spent on preparing to combat the potential pandemic, with much of it going to buy Tamiflu and other drugs.

The Pentagon would again be one of the main consumers of the medicine, as the government’s plan calls for protecting the troops it proposes to use in enforcing quarantines.

The silver lining that catastrophes hold for members of the Bush cabinet did not begin with Rumsfeld and bird flu.

Since he was elected, Vice President Dick Cheney, like the Pentagon chief a multimillionaire, has received $2 million from Halliburton Corp, which he previously headed.

Last July, the company announced a 284 percent increase in operating profits for its KBR division during the second quarter of this year.

KBR is responsible for implementing billions of dollars worth of no-bid, cost-plus Pentagon contracts in Iraq.

Halliburton’s own stock prices have tripled over the past year. They soared once again in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans in the expectation that the company would reap super-profits from government contracts for reconstruction.

This administration has provided the most powerful confirmation— and in the most personal terms— of the old adage that “it is an ill wind that blows no good.”

Rumsfeld has nothing to worry about in recusing himself from any decisions regarding Tamiflu.

His interests will be well looked after.

The source of the millions in profits that he and other well-connected Republicans are making off of the avian flu threat is the effective monopoly that Gilead and Roche hold over the production and supply of the antiviral drug.

Public health officials have warned that the drug companies exercising this monopoly cannot possibly produce enough of the medicine to meet the global demand, and have called for the government to abrogate the patent and allow the manufacture of generic equivalents of the drug.

Needless to say, such an obvious measure— which could save millions of lives— is not contemplated by the Bush administration.

On the contrary, it has used the pandemic threat as a means of boosting the power and profits of the big pharmaceutical corporations, among the most generous corporate contributors to both Republican and Democratic campaign funds.

Bush called for the government to grant the drug companies “liability protection,” providing them with immunity from court actions over deaths and injuries caused by faulty drugs.

See Also:

Bush bird flu plan includes windfall for pharmaceuticals giants [3 November 2005]

Bush seizes on flu threat to press for martial law power [7 October 2005]
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/rums-n04.shtml


Informant: friends2b