A Early Xmas Gift To The Planet From Obama

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http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/joss-garman-copenhagen--historic-failure-that-will-live-in-infamy-1845907.html

Joss Garman: Copenhagen - Historic failure that will live in infamy

Green activist's searing despatch from Denmark

Sunday, 20 December 2009

The most progressive US president in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speaker-phone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that could challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation that put a man on the Moon can't summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantle of a religion.

Then a Chinese premier who is in the process of converting his Communist nation to that new faith (high-carbon consumer capitalism) takes such umbrage at Barack Obama's speech that he refuses to meet – sulking in his hotel room, as if this were a teenager's house party instead of a final effort to stave off the breakdown of our biosphere.

Late in the evening, the two men meet and cobble together a collection of paragraphs that they call a "deal", although in reality it has all the meaning and authority of a bus ticket, not that it stops them signing it with great solemnity.

Obama's team then briefs the travelling White House press pack – most of whom, it seems, understand about as much about global-climate politics as our own lobby hacks know about baseball. Before we know it, The New York Times and CNN are declaring the birth of a "meaningful" accord.

Meanwhile, a friend on an African delegation emails to say that he and many fellow members of the G77 bloc of developing countries are streaming into the corridors after a long discussion about the perilous state of the talks, only to see Obama on the television announcing that the world has a deal.

It's the first they've heard about it, and a few minutes later, as they examine the text, they realise very quickly that it effectively condemns their continent to a century of devastating temperature rises.

By now, the European leaders – who know this thing is a farce but have to present it to their publics as progress – have their aides phoning the directors of civil society organisations spinning that the talks have been a success.

A success? This deal crosses so many of the red lines laid out by Europe before this summit started that there are scarlet skid marks across the Bella Centre, and one honest European diplomat tells us this is a "shitty, shitty deal". Quite so.

This "deal" is beyond bad. It contains no legally binding targets and no indication of when or how they will come about. There is not even a declaration that the world will aim to keep global temperature rises below C. Instead, leaders merely recognise the science behind that vital threshold, as if that were enough to prevent us crossing it.

The only part of this deal that anyone sane came close to welcoming was the $100bn global climate fund, but it's now apparent that even this is largely made up of existing budgets, with no indication of how new money will be raised and distributed so that poorer countries can go green and adapt to climate change.

I know our politicians feel they have to smile and claim success; they feel that's the only way to keep this train on the tracks. But we've passed that point – we need to go back to first principles now. We have to admit to ourselves the scale of the problem and recognise that at its core this carbon crisis is, in fact, a political crisis.

Until politicians recognise that, they're kidding themselves, and, more than that, they're kidding us too.

Not all of our politicians deserve the opprobrium of a dismayed world. Our own Ed Miliband fought hard, on no sleep, for a better outcome; while Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva offered to financially assist other developing countries to cope with climate change, and put a relatively bold carbon target on the table. But the EU didn't move on its own commitment (one so weak we'd actually have to work hard not to meet it), while the United States offered nothing and China stood firm.

Before the talks began, I was of the opinion that we would know Copenhagen was a success only when plans for new coal-fired power stations across the developed world were dropped. If the giant utilities saw in the outcome of Copenhagen an unmistakable sign that governments were now determined to act, and that coal plants this century would be too expensive to run under the regime agreed at this meeting, then this summit would have succeeded.

Instead, as details of the agreement emerged last night, we received reports of Japanese opposition MPs popping champagne corks as they savoured the possible collapse of their new government's carbon targets.

It's not just that we didn't get to where we needed to be, we've actually ceded huge amounts of ground. There is nothing in this deal – nothing – that would persuade an energy utility that the era of dirty coal is over. And the implications for humanity of that simple fact are profound.

I know we Greens are partial to hyperbole. We use language as a bludgeon to direct attention to the crisis we are facing, and you will hear much more of it in the coming days and weeks. But, really, it is no exaggeration to describe the outcome of Copenhagen as a historic failure that will live in infamy.

In a single day, in a single space, a spectacle was played out in front of a disbelieving audience of people who have read and understood the stark warnings of humanity's greatest scientific minds. And what they witnessed was nothing less than the very worst instincts of our species articulated by the most powerful men who ever lived.

Joss Garman is a Greenpeace activist and co-founder of Plane Stupid

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Letting the Beast Out of the (Corporatist) Bottle: Obama Channels Bush on Bioweapons

by Tom Burghardt / December 19th, 2009

The Obama administration’s recent declaration on bioweapons would simply be another run-of-the-mill example of our “change” president’s duplicity were it not such an unmitigated disaster.

Recapitulating sinister Cold War practices that informed American ruling class consensus when it came to secretly toying with nature’s most deadly pathogens, (a) because they could, (b) because it was, and is, highly profitable and © because they got with it, the profound failure by the administration to rein-in out-of-control corporate grifters, militarists and scientists thirsting after an endless flow of taxpayer dollars, have put us all on a potential glide path towards the abyss.

Since the roll-out of the Obama product-line January 21, on issues ranging from war and peace to economic justice and from civil liberties to healthcare, the “change” team exhibit the same callous disregard for disarmament proposals that characterized their Bushist predecessors in the Oval Office.

Nowhere is this reality so transparently delineated than by the administration’s continuing efforts to derail plans to revitalize the moribund Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), rejecting binding verification protocols that would finally give the 1972 treaty teeth.

“Strengthening” the BWC: Killing it with Kindness

From her perch as U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Ellen Tauscher, a former Democratic congresswoman from the San Francisco Bay Area (in other words, a feckless “liberal” who spent her career paying lip-service to the antiwar sentiments of her constituents–and then voting in favor of every blood-soaked imperialist adventure undertaken by the Bush regime) rejected international monitoring of military and pharmaceutical sites that might employ research for illicit purposes, e.g., the fabrication of banned biological weapons.

“The Obama administration will not seek to revive negotiations on a verification protocol to the convention,” Tauscher told delegates December 9 at the annual meeting of the States Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention in Geneva.

The position outlined last week by the administration eerily follows in the footsteps of the previous government. In 2001, there was broad support internationally for revitalizing the BWC draft Protocol; a long, circuitous process undertaken back in 1991.

But during these earlier negotiations, the U.S. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) released a position paper opposing the routine inspection of laboratories and other research facilities on the grounds of safeguarding “confidential business information,” a position they have reiterated today.

This, along with U.S. Defense Department opposition killed the deal after the American delegation, under instructions from arch neocon John Bolton who then held Tauscher’s brief, argued that an international inspections regime would put U.S. “national security” at “risk” by allowing spot checks of suspected U.S. weapons sites.

Revealing a warmer and fuzzier, though no less obstructionist side than blustery Bolton, the Undersecretary mounted a charm offensive in Geneva, touting the National Security Council’s (NSC) “National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats” as a major transformation of the U.S. position. It wasn’t. Tauscher told delegates: “The United States intends to implement this [NSC] strategy through renewed cooperation and more thorough consultations with our international counterparts in order to prevent the misuse and abuse of science while working together to strengthen health security around the world.”

However, not a single word in the 23-page NSC document addresses the vital issue of verification. Indeed, while no-holds-barred inspections of nuclear weapons’ facilities undergird international treaties governing the destruction of warheads and missiles, thus ensuring compliance with treaty obligations by states, when it comes to biological weapons the “National Strategy” skirts the question entirely. Why?

While the United States claims that it will “advance policies and practices that establish and reinforce norms against the misuse of the knowledge and capabilities that arise from the life sciences while encouraging their free and open availability for peaceful and beneficial use,” a call to “develop and employ complementary and multi-layered systems for influencing, identifying, inhibiting, and interdicting biological threats” does nothing to constrain state or corporate actors from exploiting the life sciences for nefarious ends, to wit, work with dual use select agents that can be diverted into surreptitious weapons’ programs.

This is crucial. While the document asserts that America’s “relationships with the United Nations, international organizations, foreign governments, and the private sector are critical to the success of our efforts” the fact is, the “private sector” and the secret state’s own Defense Department are dead-set against any initiative that give international arms’ control monitors access to their facilities.

Claiming that the United States “has carefully reviewed previous efforts to develop a verification protocol,” the administration has “determined that a legally binding protocol would not achieve meaningful verification or greater security.”

Echoing Tauscher and the NSC’s lame reasoning, Barry Kellman, president of the International Security and Biopolicy Institute told The Hill he “agreed,” and told the publication “that given the rapid evolution of the biological market, technologies that once could only be made in a laboratory can now be made anywhere, so it would be impossible to verify that a country is holding true to the convention protocols.”

Really? Perhaps then, Mr. Kellman would care to enlighten us as to which select agent was used in the first and to date, only, bioterrorist attack of the 21st century, and where pray tell it might have come from.

Editing Out the Secret State: The 2001 Anthrax Attacks

As has generally been accepted by scientific experts and as The Baltimore Sun revealed back in 2001, “for nearly a decade, U.S. Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have made small quantities of weapons-grade anthrax that is virtually identical to the powdery spores used in the [October 2001] mail attacks.”

Investigative journalist Scott Shane disclosed that Dugway’s Life Sciences Division “made hundreds of kilograms of anthrax for bombs designed to kill enemy troops over hundreds of square miles” during the Cold War.

Indeed, the “extraordinary concentration” of the finely-milled powdered anthrax mailed to the media and members of Congress was “in the range of 1 trillion spores per gram” which “meant that the letter could have contained 200 million times the average dose necessary to kill a person.”

Researchers at Northern Arizona University determined that “the genetic fingerprint of the mailed anthrax is indistinguishable from that of the Ames ‘reference strain,’ which is the strain used most often at Fort Detrick and Dugway, according to a scientist familiar with the genetic work,” the Sun reported.

Years later, former Ft. Detrick deputy commander Richard Spertzel told investigative journalists Bob Coen and Eric Nadler that “the material that was in the Daschle/Leahy letter was “1.5 to 3 microns in particle size” and characterized the refinement “as super sophisticated … phenomenal.” When investigators attempted to examine samples under a microscope, “it readily floated off the slides.”

In other words, the “genetic fingerprint” and “extraordinary concentration” of the weaponized anthrax used in the attack would require a team of individuals, and not a proverbial “lone nut” to produce a biotoxin possessing such exquisitely lethal characteristics. The inescapable conclusion is that the anthrax used to murder five people, sicken dozens of others and terrorize the rest of us, could only have come from a state program or one operating under contract to a government agency.

Could the deadly biotoxin have been diverted from a U.S. defense facility or corporate lab by a group of “black box” scientists operating under the radar for their own nefarious ends, i.e. strengthening the state’s repressive hand within the social-political context of the 9/11 attacks? It is certainly possible and cannot be ruled out.

As I previously reported, Global Security Newswire (GSN) disclosed in June that “a recently completed inventory at a major U.S. Army biodefense facility found nearly 10,000 more vials of potentially lethal pathogens than were known to be stored at the [Ft. Detrick] site.”

According to reporter Martin Matishak, the 9,220 samples discovered “included the bacterial agents that cause plague, anthrax and tularemia; Venezuelan, Eastern and Western equine encephalitis viruses; Rift valley fever virus; Junin virus; Ebola virus; and botulinum neurotoxins.”

While Ft. Detrick’s deputy commander Col. Mark Kortepeter claimed there are “multiple layers of security” and that “a lot of buffers [would] prevent anyone who shouldn’t be in the laboratory from getting in in the first place and then preventing them taking something out with them,” this dodges the question of whether someone who was authorized to be inside Ft. Detrick or any of the other 400 U.S. facilities that have Biosafety Level-3 or Biosafety Level-4 laboratories, could smuggle out deadly toxic substances.

The New York Times reported December 9, that Tauscher rejects a strict regulatory regimen that would monitor state bioweapons research and development because of the “regulatory burdens that verification would place on the American pharmaceutical industry and on the military’s bio-defense research activities.”

Given the available facts surrounding the 2001 anthrax terrorist incident and the FBI’s subsequent cover-up, Tauscher’s fear of “regulatory burdens” on the “pharmaceutical industry” and the state’s own “bio-defense research activities” are certainly misplaced and should be viewed with suspicion.

Big Pharma and Congress: Best Friends Forever!

While journalists and researchers have explored ethically-challenged relationships amongst former Defense Department officials and the weapons’ industry, most recently by USA Today, and have described the oft-cited revolving door as entrée to an exclusive and highly lucrative good ‘ol boys club; call it a Beltway version of a retirement village for Pentagon clock-punchers.

Inquiring minds can’t help but wonder: does the same clubby atmosphere pervade, and inform, the policy decisions made by denizens of the Bioweapons-Industrial-Complex? Let’s take a look!

Take the Alliance for Biosecurity, a Big Pharma lobby shop aligned with the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), as a starting point. Self-described as “a collaboration among the Center for Biosecurity and 13 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies,” one “whose mission is to work in the public interest to improve prevention and treatment of severe infectious diseases–particularly those diseases that present global security challenges,” one discovers that similar relationships between academia, industry and government abound.

Since Antifascist Calling first reported on Alliance efforts to increase state funding of biotechnology and “biodefense” research in August, all references to the Alliance for Biosecurity have been scrubbed from UPMC’s web site. Indeed, all traces of the lobby shop’s activities, including group policy statements and testimony before relevant congressional committees have simply vanished.

But why, pray tell, would they take evasive action in the first place? And more importantly, what do they have to hide? As it turns out, quite a lot.

According to The Washington Times, when the Center for Biosecurity’s director, Dr. Tara O’Toole, was nominated for her current post as Undersecretary of Science and Technology at the Department of Homeland Security, she had “served as a key adviser for a lobbying group funded by the pharmaceutical industry that has asked the government to spend more money for anthrax vaccines and biodefense research.”

Reporter Tim McElhatton disclosed that O’Toole “never reported her involvement with the lobbying group called the Alliance for Biosecurity in a recent government ethics filing.” The Washington Times further reported that the Alliance “has spent more than $500,000 lobbying Congress and federal agencies–including Homeland Security–since 2005, congressional records show.”

“In written testimony to Congress” according to McElhatton, “Dr. O’Toole said the alliance was ‘created to protect the Center for Biosecurity’s status as an honest broker between the biopharma companies and the U.S. government’.” As is well known, $500,000 buys much in the way of “honesty” in the halls of Congress!

In an October 31 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) “signed by Dr. O’Toole and two other alliance officials, the group called on Congress to include more than $900 million for the ‘advanced development of medical countermeasures’ to be administered by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.”

The Washington Times revealed that the letter was also “signed by the chief executive officer of member company PharmAthene, David Wright, who was one of the two first co-chairmen for the alliance after its creation in 2005.”

McElhatton reported that according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing “Mr. Wright’s company has a big financial interest in securing work from the authority,” and that “PharmAthene has been trying to win a contract administered by the authority to supply 25 million doses of an anthrax vaccine to the national stockpile.”

According to a press release, the firm announced that PharmAthene “will participate in and present data at the HHS Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise (PHEMCE) workshop and BARDA Industry Day taking place in Washington, DC Dec. 2-4, 2009.”

Indeed, the PHEMCE work shop “will bring together public and private sector stakeholders for a dynamic dialogue on the current state of medical countermeasure preparedness, PHEMCE initiatives in the past year, and plans for moving forward to enhance national capabilities to respond to a public health emergency.”

When “moving forward” entails the expenditure of nearly one billion dollars for “countermeasure preparedness,” one can be sure that companies on the make will be all ears!

Former Bushist Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, averred that the PHEMCE workshop “is very timely given the WMD Commission’s conclusion that terrorists are much more likely to attack America with a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon.”

Despite the fact that weapons’ experts have not reached a consensus on the Commission’s alarmist report, given the extreme difficulty faced by “terrorists” to fabricate biotoxins into an effective weapon, Thompson claims, “now that our national experts have made this warning clear, we need to take the immediate steps necessary to protect against potential biological attacks against the U.S. homeland. In particular, we need to move forward efforts to build and stockpile appropriate biological countermeasures, such as next-generation anthrax vaccines, recombinant influenza vaccines, and novel antivirals.”

Among the “experts” consulted by the WMD Commission were none other than Dr. O’Toole’s Center for Biosecurity who have called for the expenditure of some $3.4 billion annually on “countermeasure development to reach 90 percent chance of success defending the country against bioterrorism threats.”

Nowhere however, in the PharmAthene press release is it disclosed that the former HHS Secretary has a proprietary interest in securing federal dollars allegedly to “enhance national capabilities” to better respond “to a public health emergency.” Currently, Thompson is the President of Logistics Health, Inc., a firm that does extensive business with the U.S. Department of Defense for what it euphemistically calls “military readiness.”

Craig Holman, the legislative director of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said that O’Toole’s lack of transparency “definitely and clearly runs counter to the intent of the law.”

What was the response by Senate Democrats, quick to denounce the “culture of corruption” of their coconspirators across the aisle? According to The New York Times, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “slammed Republicans for slowing down, and in some cases, blocking the confirmation of nominees for various posts in the Obama administration.”

Neither Reid, nor for that matter the Times, breathed a word about O’Toole’s obvious conflict of interest and cosy relationships with biodefense firms she would presumably oversee from her perch at DHS.

Instead, we are lavished with empty rhetoric from Reid who told the Times: “‘For that position, [DHS Undersecretary] President Obama nominated an expert in combating both pandemics and bioterror attacks,’ Mr. Reid said, adding: ‘Imagine that: Americans are bracing against a flu epidemic here at home and threats of terrorism from abroad, the President nominated someone highly experienced in both of those areas, and Republicans are saying no’.”

Despite revelations of serious ethical breaches, O’Toole was confirmed by the Senate November 4.

The Ties that Bind (And Pay Handsomely!)

The close proximity of O’Toole, the Center for Biosecurity and now, the Department of Homeland Security to Alliance members such as Bavarian Nordic; Cangene Corporation; DOR BioPharma, Inc.; DynPort Vaccine Company LLC; Elusys Therapeutics, Inc.; Emergent BioSolutions; Hematech, Inc.; Human Genome Sciences, Inc.; NanoViricides, Inc.; Pfizer Inc.; PharmAthene; Siga Technologies, Inc.; Unither Virology LLC, , as well as associate Alliance member, the spooky, CIA-connected Battelle Memorial Institute, might just help explain the Obama administration’s opposition to strengthening the BWC.

According to the Center for Responsive Politic’s OpenSecrets.org database, the Alliance for Biosecurity have contributed some $600,000 to congressional grifters since 2005 through the Philadelphia law firm Drinker, Biddle & Reath.

While chump change when it comes to assuring that the best congresspeople money can buy stay “on-message,” OpenSecrets reports that since 1990, Big Pharma and their allies in the health products industry have spent a whopping $177,030,005 on “influence and lobbying.” Breaking down the numbers, the watchdog group avers that the bulk of contributions have benefited Republicans ($111,405,078 or 63%) vs. Democrats ($65,056,643 or 37%).

In The Washington Times piece cited above, ethics groups have said that the Alliance’s set-up “is an example of what critics call “stealth lobbying,” in which like-minded companies form a loosely knit compact and spend lots of money lobbying the government. The arrangement is legal, but it exposes loopholes that prevent the public from finding out how much money each company pays and whether one business exerts more control over the others.”

Alliance legal counsel Anita Cicero told the paper, “the group is complying with all applicable federal laws” and that the group “does not generate income, does not have a bank account and does not owe taxes.” She told the paper the organization “was formed so companies, academic institutions and the government” could work together to “accelerate the development of therapeutic and vaccine countermeasures.”

“Countermeasures” that markedly add to the corporatist bottom line.

As Antifascist Calling previously reported, the National Biodefense Science Board (NBSB), chock-a-block with industry insiders and academic shills, posted an August 11 notice buried in the Federal Register.

Rescued from oblivion by the whistleblowing intelligence and security web site Cryptome, we were informed that NBSB’s “Market & Sustainability Work Group” seek to hand over even more cash to industry partners.

Seeking public comment on the group’s working document, “Inventory of Issues Constraining or Enabling Industry Involvement in Medical Countermeasure Efforts,” NBSB is seeking to further “streamline” the Food and Drug Administration’s already lax review process in a move meant to further “incentivize” industry by “increased federal funding for advanced development, in the form of cost-reimbursement contracts and rewarding private-capital investments with milestone payments at procurement.”

Under NBSB’s proposal, the drug industry stands to grab “reimbursement of development costs + 15%, with return-on-working-capital at 22%, and cost-of-money-for-capital at 15%.”

If said corporate patriots swing into action during a national emergency, then “compensation if commercial product(s) during emergencies (e.g., lost sales, market share, delayed licensing” are fully paid by the federal government. Talk about a robust “public-private partnership” in action!

But wait, there’s more!

GSN reported in October that Alliance member Human Genome Sciences Inc. had earned $160 million from the federal government for sales of its ABthrax vaccine, despite a Food and Drug Administration report that stated although the product performed better than a placebo (!) “it is still unknown how well these models and results predict efficacy in humans.” Despite these equivocal findings, “Washington has placed an order for 65,000 doses of ABthrax for the country’s emergency medicines reserve.”

Now that’s what I call a streamlined review process!

Earlier in October, GSN disclosed that Alliance member Emergent BioSolutions won $4.9 million in funding from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, “for the development of a new anthrax vaccine that could require only two doses to provide protection.”

As investigative journalists and filmmakers Bob Coen and Eric Nadler revealed in Anthrax War and a companion book, Dead Silence: Fear and Terror on the Anthrax Trail, Emergent BioSolutions has a very interesting pedigree indeed.

When the State of Michigan auctioned off the Michigan Biological Products Institute (MBPI) in 1998, standing in the wings with a check for $24 million were Lebanese financiers Ibrahim El-Hibri and son Fuad, “an international telecom magnate” according to Coen and Nadler. During this period, the firm the El-Hibri’s had founded after scooping-up MBPI for a song, BioPort, “held the exclusive contract to provide the U.S. government with the anthrax vaccine, and that in addition to the physical plant, the Michigan sale included $130 million in contracts with the Department of Defense.”

During their investigation, Coen and Nadler learned “that the El-Hibris had participated in the privatization of portions of the United Kingdom’s leading biodefense facility, Porton Down, a decade earlier” and that “with the acquisition of the Michigan plant, the family had planted stakes in the only two leading anthrax vaccine producers in the West.” What makes this particularly troubling according to Coen and Nadler, is the fact that the “El-Hibri’s did not have science backgrounds or biotech business experience before the Porton takeover–but were clearly canny investors.”

Alarmingly, “the troubling fact [was] that the sale of MBPI to BioPort had transferred control of a sensitive government program to a network of companies, one of which was headquartered in the Dutch Caribbean.”

Indeed, “Fuad El-Hibri himself informed Congress in 1999 that the controlling shareholder in BioPort–Intervac LLC–was partly owned by I and F Holdings NV, a Netherlands Antilles investment company owned by his father.”

None of this troubled Congress in the least since, as Coen and Nadler relate “no one on the House Committee on Government Reform asked him if El-Hibri senior had any partners in I and F Holdings.” These disturbing facts led the investigative journalists to wonder: “Who actually owned the largest anthrax vaccine manufacturing plant in the West, if not the world? Who really knew.”

Fast forward a decade and according to GSN BioPort, now Emergent BioSolutions, “is the producer of BioThrax, the only vaccine licensed by the Food and Drug Administration for the prevention of anthrax disease. The company is also developing other anthrax treatments and countermeasures against diseases such as botulism and hepatitis B.” Funds for developing the vaccine were provided “through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.”

Last month, GSN revealed that Alliance member, Danish firm Bavarian Nordic will receive some $40 million for a freeze-dried version of the firm’s Imvamune vaccine for smallpox. GSN reported that “Bavarian Nordic has received $680 million in contracts for Imvamune from the U.S. government. Washington has ordered 20 million doses of the vaccine in its liquid-frozen form and has the option of buying another 60 million,” according to a company press release.

This, despite the fact that smallpox has disappeared as an international public health threat. However as the Sunshine Project’s Edward Hammond revealed in Emerging Technologies: Genetic Engineering and Biological Weapons, when a U.S. research team at the State University of New York in Stony Brook synthesized poliovirus “from scratch,” the responsible bioresearch community were alarmed.

Hammond commented that “the experiment exemplifies possibilities that generate real problems if similar techniques become applicable to agents such as smallpox. Today it is unlikely (though not completely impossible) that countries apart from Russia and the USA have access to smallpox virus. This is the basis of the current threat assessments with regard to smallpox, which rate the likelihood of a smallpox attack very low. Should it become possible in a few years to build smallpox virus in the laboratory, the situation would be turned upside down. The relative security that can be assumed today (at least for most countries in the world) will evaporate.”

Since Hammond’s piece first appeared in 2003, is it plausible that synthetic smallpox could have been ginned-up in a top secret U.S. research facility, hence contingency planning by secret state officials to have a freeze-dried, hence longer-lived vaccine on hand? We don’t know.

Examining only the three above-named firms, OpenSecrets reports that since 2000, Human Genome Sciences has expended some $24 million since 2002 for lobbying; Emergent BioSolutions has spent some $10.9 on lobbying efforts since 2003, and Bavarian Nordic has spent some $21.7 lobbying Congress since 2002.

Given the enormous outlay of taxpayer largesse to firms that have profited handily under the Project BioShield Act of 2004, a grotesque piece of Bushist legislative flotsam, and the nearly $60 billion dollars reported by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation spent on so-called biodefense by the federal government, one can only conclude that lobbying activities by Big Pharma is an investment well-spent!

Keep in mind too, that the expenditure of federal dollars for Project BioShield and related programs do not include black budget allocations concealed by the CIA and Pentagon under a welter of above top secret Special Access Programs, a subject that Antifascist Calling will explore in future reports.

Conclusion

As the Sunshine Project’s Edward Hammond has warned: “Rapid developments in biotechnology, genetics and genomics pose a variety of environmental, ethical, political, and social questions. And because they open up tremendous new possibilities for biological warfare, these technological developments have grave implications for peace and security.”

We must view the Obama administration’s cynical opposition to strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention because of the “regulatory burdens that verification would place on the American pharmaceutical industry and on the military’s bio-defense research activities” as a dire international public health emergency, one which University of Illinois constitutional law professor Francis Boyle, the author of the 1989 Bioweapons Anti-Terrorism Act, has called “a catastrophe waiting to happen.”

We proceed blindly along this path at our own peril.

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily and Pacific Free Press. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press. Read other articles by Tom, or visit Tom's website.

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Pentagon's Role in Global Catastrophe: Add Climate Havoc to War Crimes

by Sara Flounders

International Action Center - 2009-12-18

In evaluating the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen -- with more than 15,000 participants from 192 countries, including more than 100 heads of state, as well as 100,000 demonstrators in the streets -- it is important to ask: How is it possible that the worst polluter of carbon dioxide and other toxic emissions on the planet is not a focus of any conference discussion or proposed restrictions?

By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.

The Pentagon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; its secret operations in Pakistan; its equipment on more than 1,000 U.S. bases around the world; its 6,000 facilities in the U.S.; all NATO operations; its aircraft carriers, jet aircraft, weapons testing, training and sales will not be counted against U.S. greenhouse gas limits or included in any count.

The Feb. 17, 2007, Energy Bulletin detailed the oil consumption just for the Pentagon's aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities that made it the single-largest oil consumer in the world. At the time, the U.S. Navy had 285 combat and support ships and around 4,000 operational aircraft. The U.S. Army had 28,000 armored vehicles, 140,000 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, more than 4,000 combat helicopters, several hundred fixed-wing aircraft and 187,493 fleet vehicles. Except for 80 nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, which spread radioactive pollution, all their other vehicles run on oil.

Even according to rankings in the 2006 CIA World Factbook, only 35 countries (out of 210 in the world) consume more oil per day than the Pentagon.

The U.S. military officially uses 320,000 barrels of oil a day. However, this total does not include fuel consumed by contractors or fuel consumed in leased and privatized facilities. Nor does it include the enormous energy and resources used to produce and maintain their death-dealing equipment or the bombs, grenades or missiles they fire.

Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, reports: "The Iraq war was responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) from March 2003 through December 2007. ... The war emits more than 60 percent of all countries. ... This information is not readily available ... because military emissions abroad are exempt from national reporting requirements under U.S. law and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change." (www.naomiklein.org, Dec. 10) Most scientists blame carbon dioxide emissions for greenhouse gases and climate change.

Bryan Farrell in his new book, "The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism," says that "the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency ... the Armed Forces of the United States."

Just how did the Pentagon come to be exempt from climate agreements? At the time of the Kyoto Accords negotiations, the U.S. demanded as a provision of signing that all of its military operations worldwide and all operations it participates in with the U.N. and/or NATO be completely exempted from measurement or reductions.

After securing this gigantic concession, the Bush administration then refused to sign the accords.

In a May 18, 1998, article entitled "National security and military policy issues involved in the Kyoto treaty," Dr. Jeffrey Salmon described the Pentagon's position. He quotes then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen's 1997 annual report to Congress: "DoD strongly recommends that the United States insist on a national security provision in the climate change Protocol now being negotiated." (www.marshall.org)

According to Salmon, this national security provision was put forth in a draft calling for "complete military exemption from greenhouse gas emissions limits. The draft includes multilateral operations such as NATO- and U.N.-sanctioned activities, but it also includes actions related very broadly to national security, which would appear to comprehend all forms of unilateral military actions and training for such actions."

Salmon also quoted Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, who headed the U.S. delegation in Kyoto . Eizenstat reported that "every requirement the Defense Department and uniformed military who were at Kyoto by my side said they wanted, they got. This is self-defense, peacekeeping, humanitarian relief."

Although the U.S. had already received these assurances in the negotiations, the U.S. Congress passed an explicit provision guaranteeing U.S. military exemption. Inter Press Service reported on May 21, 1998: "U.S. law makers, in the latest blow to international efforts to halt global warming, today exempted U.S. military operations from the Kyoto agreement which lays out binding commitments to reduce 'greenhouse gas' emissions. The House of Representatives passed an amendment to next year's military authorization bill that 'prohibits the restriction of armed forces under the Kyoto Protocol.'"

Today in Copenhagen the same agreements and guidelines on greenhouse gases still hold. Yet it is extremely difficult to find even a mention of this glaring omission.

According to environmental journalist Johanna Peace, military activities will continue to be exempt from an executive order signed by President Barack Obama that calls for federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Peace states, "The military accounts for a full 80 percent of the federal government's energy demand." (solveclimate.com, Sept. 1)

The blanket exclusion of the Pentagon's global operations makes U.S. carbon dioxide emissions appear far less than they in fact are. Yet even without counting the Pentagon, the U.S. still has the world's largest carbon dioxide emissions.

More than Emissions

Besides emitting carbon dioxide, U.S. military operations release other highly toxic and radioactive materials into the air, water and soil.

U.S. weapons made with depleted uranium have spread tens of thousands of pounds of microparticles of radioactive and highly toxic waste throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and the Balkans.

The U.S. sells land mines and cluster bombs that are a major cause of delayed explosives, maiming and disabling especially peasant farmers and rural peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America . For example, Israel dropped more than 1 million U.S.-provided cluster bombs on Lebanon during its 2006 invasion.

The U.S. war in Vietnam left large areas so contaminated with the Agent Orange herbicide that today, more than 35 years later, dioxin contamination is 300 to 400 times higher than "safe" levels. Severe birth defects and high rates of cancer resulting from environmental contamination are continuing into a third generation.

The 1991 U.S. war in Iraq , followed by 13 years of starvation sanctions, the 2003 U.S. invasion and continuing occupation, has transformed the region -- which has a 5,000-year history as a Middle East breadbasket -- into an environmental catastrophe. Iraq 's arable and fertile land has become a desert wasteland where the slightest wind whips up a dust storm. A former food exporter, Iraq now imports 80 percent of its food. The Iraqi Agriculture Ministry estimates that 90 percent of the land has severe desertification.

Environmental War at Home

Moreover, the Defense Department has routinely resisted orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up contaminated U.S. bases. ( Washington Post, June 30, 2008) Pentagon military bases top the Superfund list of the most polluted places, as contaminants seep into drinking water aquifers and soil.

The Pentagon has also fought EPA efforts to set new pollution standards on two toxic chemicals widely found on military sites: perchlorate, found in propellant for rockets and missiles; and trichloroethylene, a degreaser for metal parts.

Trichloroethylene is the most widespread water contaminant in the country, seeping into aquifers across California , New York , Texas , Florida and elsewhere. More than 1,000 military sites in the U.S. are contaminated with the chemical. The poorest communities, especially communities of color, are the most severely impacted by this poisoning.

U.S. testing of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Southwest and on South Pacific islands has contaminated millions of areas of land and water with radiation. Mountains of radioactive and toxic uranium tailings have been left on Indigenous land in the Southwest. More than 1,000 uranium mines have been abandoned on Navajo reservations in Arizona and New Mexico .

Around the world, on past and still operating bases in Puerto Rico, the Philippines , South Korea , Vietnam , Laos , Cambodia , Japan , Nicaragua , Panama and the former Yugoslavia , rusting barrels of chemicals and solvents and millions of rounds of ammunition are criminally abandoned by the Pentagon.

The best way to dramatically clean up the environment is to shut down the Pentagon. What is needed to combat climate change is a thoroughgoing system change.

Sara Flounders is Co-Director of the International Action Center

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Massive Hike in Military Spending Financed by Cuts in Health and Education

US House Passes $636 Billion Military Spending Bill

by Joe Kishore

Global Research, December 20, 2009

With overwhelming bipartisan support, the United States House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a massive $636 billion military appropriations bill for 2010.

The bill includes some $128 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it does not fully fund the Obama administration’s escalation in Afghanistan, making likely further appropriations for war spending next year.

The deployment of 30,000 additional US troops is expected to cost $35 to $40 billion a year. On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that the first of the new troops ordered to Afghanistan have begun to arrive.

All told, US military spending in 2010 will be close to $700 billion. If one adds the hundreds of billions of dollars in military-related spending included in the budgets of other departments, the total is as much as $1 trillion.

The overwhelming support for the bill, which passed 395-34, demonstrates the bipartisan agreement in Washington on the war policy of the Obama administration. The vote comes shortly after President Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize speech, in which he outlined an expansion of US militarism.

Among the many separate provisions of the bill is the allocation of $80 million to acquire more unmanned Predator drones, currently being used to bomb both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The administration is planning on expanding these operations, including drone attacks against insurgents in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan that might target the large city of Quetta.

Only 23 Democrats voted against the bill, joined by 11 Republicans. Among those voting for the measure was House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (Democrat, Wisconsin), who has postured as a critic of the Afghan escalation.

The Senate, which is currently discussing Obama’s health care overhaul, is expected to vote in support of the measure later this week.

Added on to the bill was a two-month extension of the anti-democratic Patriot Act, which also has bipartisan support. Other amendments to the bill temporarily extended jobless pay and health care assistance for the unemployed. These measures will be reexamined in February.

The House did not include a measure that would extend the estate tax, which applies only to the wealthiest layers of the population. The tax is due to expire next year as part of Bush’s tax cuts.

The House leadership also decided to exclude from the military appropriations bill a separate “jobs” measure. This $174 billion bill—including a six-month extension of unemployment coverage, limited aid to states to cover Medicaid costs, and $27.5 billion in highway construction and repair projects—passed by a vote of 217-212. By segregating the two bills, the Democratic House leadership allowed the Senate to pass the military appropriations while delaying consideration of the meager economic relief package.

After authorizing the military spending by a wide margin, both the Democrats and Republicans made clear that they are planning for a year of fiscal austerity, in which non-military spending programs will be targeted. Obama is set to launch his campaign for cost-cutting in his State of the Union speech in January.

Separately, by a vote of 218-214, the House passed a short-term $290 billion increase in the federal debt ceiling, raising it from $12.1 trillion to about $12.4 trillion. The Obama administration has warned that it might run up against the current limit by the end of the year. Republicans and some Democrats resisted a proposal to lift the debt ceiling by $2 trillion.

“Representative John S. Tanner, Democrat of Tennessee and a leader of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, said the short-term increase in the debt limit amounted to Congress’s ‘hitting the pause button’ while allowing lawmakers time to work out a way to tackle the deficit,” the New York Times wrote.

One measure being considered to force through cost cuts is the establishment of an independent commission, which, according to the Times, would have “the power to recommend spending cuts and tax increases for congressional approval.”

Meanwhile, states, cities and school districts throughout the country are imposing cuts to balance budget deficits that add up to a small fraction of the military spending bill.

School districts, in particular, are planning crippling cuts in preparation for the second half of the school year, beginning in January. Below are some examples of measures recently pushed through or planned:

• $550 million in K-12 education cuts in Michigan, leading school districts to lay off staff, close schools and eliminate programs.

• $300 million in cuts to K-12 education in Indiana. This amounts to an across-the-board 3-percent cut in the state’s education budget.

• $101.5 million less for public schools in South Carolina, adding to cuts of $85 million in September, along with $38.3 million in Medicaid cuts.

• $110 million in cuts to the 127,000-student Prince George County School District in Maryland, including 490 layoffs, an increase in class sizes, and teacher furloughs.

• $750 million withheld from local governments by New York Governor David Paterson, including funding cuts of between 10 percent and 30 percent for school districts.

• Plans for up to $470 million in cuts to public education in Los Angeles, California, including up to 8,000 layoffs.

The combined budget deficits for all 50 states this year was about $180 billion, less than one third of the military appropriation passed by the House.

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click link for full story

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/17/BUK91B5TVF.DTL&type=business

Activists protest bonuses from large banks

Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, December 18, 2009

Labor and activist groups rallied outside a Well Fargo branch in San Francisco's Financial District on Thursday to decry what they called excessive pay and bonuses by six large banks that had received federal investments under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The rally, spearheaded by an Oakland-based local of the Service Employees International Union, estimated that the six banks will pay a total of $152 billion in salaries, benefits and bonuses for 2009.

The six banks are Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley.

"We will not allow the big banks to reward themselves with the biggest payout in history, after they crashed our economy," said SEIU organizer Pete Vargas.

A Treasury Department spokeswoman said Wells Fargo and Citigroup are repaying their TARP investments and the other four institutions have already repaid the government, freeing themselves of restrictions on executive pay and bonuses that had been imposed as a condition of accepting the federal help.

The protest comes at a time when banks are under pressure to slow foreclosures and increase lending, and pay and bonuses have become a flash point.

"I've never seen an angrier public," said Frank Glassner, chief executive of the Veritas Executive Compensation Consultants practice in San Francisco.

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Here is the blogspot of Mike Ruppert.We brought him to speak at our local college in the spring of 2001

http://www.mikeruppert.blogspot.com/

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Iran Sanctions are Precursor to War

by Rep. Ron Paul

US House of Representatives - 2009-12-21

Last week the House overwhelmingly approved a measure to put a new round of sanctions on Iran. If this measure passes the Senate, the United States could no longer do business with anyone who sold refined petroleum products to Iran or helped them develop their ability to refine their own petroleum. The sad thing is that many of my colleagues voted for this measure because they felt it would deflect a military engagement with Iran. I would put the question to them, how would Congress react if another government threatened our critical trading partners in this way? Would we not view it as asking for war?

This policy is pure isolationism. It is designed to foment war by cutting off trade and diplomacy. Too many forget that the quagmire in Iraq began with an embargo. Sanctions are not diplomacy. They are a precursor to war and an embarrassment to a country that pays lip service to free trade. It is ironic that people who decry isolationism support actions like this.

If a foreign government attempted to isolate the US economically, cut off our supply of gasoline, or starve us to death, would it cause Americans to admire that foreign entity? Or would we instead unite under the flag for the survival of our country?

We would not tolerate foreign covert operations fomenting regime change in our government. Yet our CIA has been meddling in Iran for decades. Of course Iranians resent this. In fact, many in Iran still resent the CIA’s involvement in overthrowing their democratically elected leader in 1953. The answer is not to cut off gasoline to the Iranian people. The answer is to stay out of their affairs and trade with them honestly. If our operatives were no longer in Iran, they would no longer be available as scapegoats for the regime to, rightly or wrongly, blame for every bad thing that happens. As bad as other regimes may be, it is up to their own people to deal with them so they can achieve true self-determination. When foreigners instigate regime change, the new government they institute is always perceived as serving the interest of the overthrowing country, not the people. Thus we take the blame for bad governance twice. Instead we should stay out of their affairs altogether.

With the exception of the military industrial complex, we all want a more peaceful world. Many are hysterical about the imminent threat of a nuclear Iran. Here are the facts: Iran has never been found out of compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) they signed. However, being surrounded by nuclear powers one can understand why they might want to become nuclear capable if only to defend themselves and to be treated more respectfully. After all, we don’t sanction nuclear capable countries. We take diplomatic negotiations a lot more seriously, and we frequently send money to them instead. The non-nuclear countries are the ones we bomb. If Iran was attempting to violate the non-proliferation treaty, they could hardly be blamed, since US foreign policy gives them every incentive to do so.

Ron Paul is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Ron Paul

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ThreatsWatch.Org: PrincipalAnalysis

Wither Sovereignty

Executive Order Amended to Immunize INTERPOL In America - Is The ICC Next?

By Steve Schippert, Clyde Middleton

Last Thursday, December 17, 2009, The White House released an Executive Order "Amending Executive Order 12425." It grants INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) a new level of full diplomatic immunity afforded to foreign embassies and select other "International Organizations" as set forth in the United States International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945.

By removing language from President Reagan's 1983 Executive Order 12425, this international law enforcement body now operates - now operates - on American soil beyond the reach of our own top law enforcement arm, the FBI, and is immune from Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

For Immediate Release December 17, 2009

Executive Order -- Amending Executive Order 12425

EXECUTIVE ORDER

- - - - - - -

AMENDING EXECUTIVE ORDER 12425 DESIGNATING INTERPOL

AS A PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION ENTITLED TO

ENJOY CERTAIN PRIVILEGES, EXEMPTIONS, AND IMMUNITIES

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words "except those provided by Section 2©, Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act" and the semicolon that immediately precedes them.

BARACK OBAMA

THE WHITE HOUSE,

December 16, 2009.

After initial review and discussions between the writers of this analysis, the context was spelled out plainly.

Through EO 12425, President Reagan extended to INTERPOL recognition as an "International Organization." In short, the privileges and immunities afforded foreign diplomats was extended to INTERPOL. Two sets of important privileges and immunities were withheld: Section 2© and the remaining sections cited (all of which deal with differing taxes).

And then comes December 17, 2009, and President Obama. The exemptions in EO 12425 were removed.

Section 2c of the United States International Organizations Immunities Act is the crucial piece.

Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable. (Emphasis added.)

Inviolable archives means INTERPOL records are beyond US citizens' Freedom of Information Act requests and from American legal or investigative discovery ("unless such immunity be expressly waived.")

Property and assets being immune from search and confiscation means precisely that. Wherever they may be in the United States. This could conceivably include human assets - Americans arrested on our soil by INTERPOL officers.

Context: International Criminal Court

The importance of this last crucial point cannot be understated, because this immunity and protection - and elevation above the US Constitution - afforded INTERPOL is likely a precursor to the White House subjecting the United States under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). INTERPOL provides a significant enforcement function for the ICC, just as our FBI provides a significant function for our Department of Justice.

We direct the American public to paragraph 28 of the ICC's Proposed Programme Budget for 2010 (PDF).

29. Additionally, the Court will continue to seek the cooperation of States not party to the Rome Statute and to develop its relationships with regional organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS), the Arab League (AL), the African Union (AU), the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), ASEAN and CARICOM. We will also continue to engage with subregional and thematic organizations, such as SADC and ECOWAS, and the Commonwealth Secretariat and the OIF. This will be done through high level visits, briefings and, as appropriate, relationship agreements. Work will also be carried out with sectoral organizations such as IDLO and INTERPOL, to increase efficiency.

The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute - the UN treaty that established the International Criminal Court. (See: Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court)

President George W. Bush rejected subjecting the United States to the jurisdiction of the ICC and removed the United States as a signatory. President Bill Clinton had previously signed the Rome Statute during his presidency. Two critical matters are at play. One is an overall matter of sovereignty and the concept of the primacy of American law above those of the rest of the world. But more recently a more over-riding concern principally has been the potential - if not likely - specter of subjecting our Armed Forces to a hostile international body seeking war crimes prosecutions during the execution of an unpopular war.

President Bush in fact went so far as to gain agreement from nations that they would expressly not detain or hand over to the ICC members of the United States armed forces. The fear of a symbolic ICC circus trial as a form of international political protest to American military actions in Iraq and elsewhere was real and palpable.

President Obama's words have been carefully chosen when directly regarding the ICC. While President Bush outright rejected subjugating American armed forces to any international court as a matter of policy, President Obama said in his 2008 presidential campaign that it is merely "premature to commit" to signing America on.

However, in a Foreign Policy in Focus round-table in 2008, the host group cited his former foreign policy advisor, Samantha Power. She essentially laid down what can be viewed as now-President Obama's roadmap to America rejoining the ICC. His principal objections are not explained as those of sovereignty, but rather of image and perception.

Obama's former foreign policy advisor, Samantha Power, said in an early March (2008) interview with The Irish Times that many things need to happen before Obama could think about signing the Rome Treaty.

"Until we've closed Guantánamo, gotten out of Iraq responsibly, renounced torture and rendition, shown a different face for America, American membership of the ICC is going to make countries around the world think the ICC is a tool of American hegemony.

The detention center at Guantánamo Bay is nearing its closure and an alternate continental American site for terrorist detention has been selected in Illinois. The time line for Iraq withdrawal has been set. And President Obama has given an abundance of international speeches intended to "show a different face for America." He has in fact been roundly criticized domestically for the routinely apologetic and critical nature of these speeches.

President Obama has not rejected the concept of ICC jurisdiction over US citizens and service members. He has avoided any direct reference to this while offering praise for the ICC for conducting its trials so far "in America's interests." The door thus remains wide open to the skeptical observer.

CONCLUSIONS

In light of what we know and can observe, it is our logical conclusion that President Obama's Executive Order amending President Ronald Reagans' 1983 EO 12425 and placing INTERPOL above the United States Constitution and beyond the legal reach of our own top law enforcement is a precursor to more damaging moves.

The pre-requisite conditions regarding the Iraq withdrawal and the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facility closure will continue their course. meanwhile, the next move from President Obama is likely an attempt to dissolve the agreements made between President Bush and other states preventing them from turning over American military forces to the ICC (via INTERPOL) for war crimes or any other prosecutions.

When the paths on the road map converge - Iraq withdrawal, Guantánamo closure, perceived American image improved internationally, and an empowered INTERPOL in the United States - it is probable that President Barack Obama will once again make America a signatory to the International Criminal Court. It will be a move that surrenders American sovereignty to an international body who's INTERPOL enforcement arm has already been elevated above the Constitution and American domestic law enforcement.

For an added and disturbing wrinkle, INTERPOL's central operations office in the United States is within our own Justice Department offices. They are American law enforcement officers working under the aegis of INTERPOL within our own Justice Department. That they now operate with full diplomatic immunity and with "inviolable archives" from within our own buildings should send red flags soaring into the clouds.

This is the disturbing context for President Obama's quiet release of an amended Executive Order 12425. American sovereignty hangs in the balance if these actions are not prevented through public outcry and political pressure. Some Americans are paying attention, as can be seen from some of the earliest recognitions of this troubling development here, here and here. But the discussion must extend well beyond the Internet and social media.

Ultimately, a detailed verbal explanation is due the American public from the President of the United States detailing why an international law enforcement arm assisting a court we are not a signatory to has been elevated above our Constitution upon our soil.

By Steve Schippert on December 23, 2009 3:00 AM

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From:

Climate Crisis Coalition

info@climatecrisiscoalition.org

Earth Equity News

To Friends of CCC: Because of heightened interest in the Copenhagen U.N. conference, we are sending this edition of EE News, not just to our subscribers, but to all of our supporters as well.

Special Edition

Climate Crisis Coalition

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Click the highlighted headlines for links to these stories.

The Copenhagen Accord

U.N. Conference Concludes with Grudging Accord. By Andrew C. Revkin and John M. Broder, NYTimes, December 20, 2009. "After two weeks of delays, theatrics and last-minute deal-making, the United Nations climate change talks concluded here early Saturday morning with a grudging agreement... to a pact [The Copenhagen Accord, PDF, 5 pp] shaped by five major nations... Ultimately, all but a handful of countries -- Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan and Saudi Arabia among them -- went along with the decision to accept the document...But many delegates of the 193 countries that had gathered here left Copenhagen in a sour mood, disappointed that the pact lacked so many elements they considered crucial, including firm targets for mid- or long-term reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and a deadline for concluding a binding treaty next year. Even President Obama, a principal force behind the final deal, said the accord would take only a modest step toward healing the Earth's fragile atmosphere. Many participants also said that the chaos and contentiousness of the talks may signal the end of reliance on a process that for almost two decades had been viewed as the best approach to tackling global warming: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [uNFCCC] and a series of 15 conventions following a 1992 climate summit meeting in Rio de Janeiro...

"The deal worked out in Copenhagen is a political agreement forged by major emitters to curb greenhouse gases, to help developing nations build clean-energy economies and to send money flowing to cushion the effects of climate change on vulnerable states. But even if countries live up to their commitments on emissions, a stark gap remains -- measured in tens of billions of tons of projected flows of carbon dioxide -- between nations' combined pledges and what would be required to reliably avert the risks of disruptive changes in rainfall and drought, ecosystems and polar ice cover from global warming, scientists say. The chances of success substantially hinge on whether Mr. Obama can fulfill his promises to reduce American greenhouse gas emissions and raise tens of billions of dollars to help other countries deal with global warming. That in turn depends in large part on whether Congress takes action on a bill that puts a price on carbon and devotes a large part of the proceeds to foreign aid. And that is no sure thing...

"[At the 11th hour,] the White House set up an evening meeting between Mr. Obama and Premier Wen Jiabao of China. It also set up a separate meeting with Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, and Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister. The approval of those was needed to seal any climate deal. Shortly before the appointed time of the meeting with Mr. Wen, Denis McDonough, the national security council chief of staff, and Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, arrived and were startled to find the Chinese prime minister already meeting with the leaders of the three other countries. They alerted Mr. Obama and he rushed down to the site of the meeting. 'Mr. Premier, are you ready to see me?' Mr. Obama called from the doorway... Despite its tense start, the meeting led to an accord that settled a number of issues, including a compromise on wording on the issue of monitoring and verification that satisfied Mr. Wen. Mr. Obama then took the proposed text to a group of European nations whose representatives grumbled but signed off." Editor's Note: With the completion of his coverage of Copenhagen, Andy Revkin has left the NYTimes as a lead reporter on climate issues. His reporting will be missed.

A Deal that Outraged the Rest of the World. Commentary by George Monbiot, The Guardian (UK), December 21, 2009. "The immediate reason for the failure of the talks can be summarized in two words: Barack Obama. The man elected to put aside childish things proved to be as susceptible to immediate self-interest as any other politician. Just as George Bush did in the approach to the Iraq war, Obama went behind the backs of the UN and most of its member states and assembled a coalition of the willing to strike a deal which outraged the rest of the world. This was then presented to poorer nations without negotiation; either they signed it or they lost the adaptation funds required to help them survive the first few decades of climate breakdown."

Getting Ready for Mexico. By Daniela Astrada, IPS/Terra Viva, December 19, 2009. "Before the outcome of COP 15 has even emerged, Latin American social organizations are already discussing their strategies for the next climate summit, to be held in a year's time in Mexico. The primary challenge is to broaden and strengthen the links between the different civil society movements and networks in the region, the international coordinator of Jubilee South, Beverly Keene, told TerraViva. Jubilee South is a network of social movements and people's organizations in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, formed in 1999 to fight for 'freedom from debt and domination' in developing countries. Keene spoke at a session of Klimaforum09 - the civil society meeting held parallel to the Dec. 7-18 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 15) - focused on what directions to take on the road to COP 16, in December 2010 in the Mexican capital. 'Frankly, I do not expect anything (from COP 15). We have stated very clearly that no agreement at all is better than one which only reinforces the false solutions we have been fighting,' Camila Moreno of Brazil, a member of Friends of the Earth International, told TerraViva at another Klimaforum session. Activists concur that the international movement for climate justice has grown stronger over the past year."

The White House Calls the Copenhagen Accord a Major Breakthrough. Press Release, The White House, December 19, 2009. "On Friday, the President traveled to Copenhagen to meet with world leaders and for the first time in history the world's major economies have come together in agreement to accept their responsibility in confronting climate change. After extremely complex and difficult negotiations, Friday's breakthrough will lay the foundation for international action in the years to come. In the U.S., the Obama Administration plans to continue efforts to build a clean energy economy and urge Congress to deliver comprehensive energy legislation to the President's desk. The President's announcement was promptly met with strong support from a diverse group of leaders representing Congress, business and environmental organizations...

"

Copenhagen's Achievements Are Not Trivial. Editorial, NYTimes, December 21, 2009. "The global climate negotiations in Copenhagen produced neither a grand success nor the complete meltdown that seemed almost certain as late as Friday afternoon. Despite two years of advance work, the meeting failed to convert a rare gathering of world leaders into an ambitious, legally binding action plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions... Copenhagen's achievements are not trivial, given the complexity of the issue and the differences among rich and poor countries. President Obama deserves much of the credit. He arrived as the talks were collapsing, spent 13 hours in nonstop negotiations and played hardball with the Chinese. With time running out - and with the help of China, India, Brazil and South Africa - he forged an agreement that all but a handful of the 193 nations on hand accepted... The pledges now on the table, from both rich and poor countries, are nowhere near enough to keep atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide from rising above dangerous levels. But for the moment it is worth savoring the steps forward. China is now a player in the effort to combat climate change in a way it has never been, putting measurable emissions reductions targets on the table and accepting verification. And the United States is very much back in the game too. After eight years of playing the spoiler, it is now a leader with a president who seems to embrace the role."

The Copenhagen Spin from Around the Climatesphere. Breakthrough Blog, December 23, 2009. "As a whirlwind of drama unfolded in the 11th hour of the climate negotiations in Copenhagen today, voices from across the climatesphere were quick to report on the outcome thus far, adding their own perspective (read: spin) on the events. Below are excerpts from some of the press releases issued to date, provided without comment:"

League of Conservation Voters: "While there is still much work to be done, the deal reached in Copenhagen is a breakthrough for international climate cooperation and provides a path forward towards a binding global treaty in 2010. Significantly, the United States and China will -- for the first time -- both be at the table, working to tackle the historic challenge of global climate change."

Bill McKibben and 350.org: "Bill McKibben and 350.org: 'This is a declaration that small and poor countries don't matter, that international civil society doesn't matter, and that serious limits on carbon don't matter. The president has wrecked the UN and he's wrecked the possibility of a tough plan to control global warming. It may get Obama a reputation as a tough American leader, but it's at the expense of everything progressives have held dear. 189 countries have been left powerless, and the foxes now guard the carbon henhouse without any oversight."

Friends of the Earth: "Climate negotiations in Copenhagen have yielded a sham agreement with no real requirements for any countries. This is not a strong deal or a just one -- it isn't even a real one. It's just repackaging old positions and pretending they're new. The actions it suggests for the rich countries that caused the climate crisis are extraordinarily inadequate. This is a disastrous outcome for people around the world who face increasingly dire impacts from a destabilizing climate."

Obama: Disappointment is Justified, But We Held Ground. Interview with Jim Lehrer, PBS News Hour, December 23, 2009, transcript and video, 22:40 min., video excerpt 2:55 min. "Lehrer: 'Here was a situation where there were many things that you and others wanted done. None of them got done, and yet you've said, well, it was a success anyhow...' Obama: 'I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen. What I said was essentially that rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen, in which nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind of held ground and there wasn't too much backsliding from where we were. It didn't move us the way we need to. The science says that we've got to significantly reduce emissions over the next - over the next 40 years. There's nothing in the Copenhagen agreement that ensures that that happens. What did occur was that at a point where there was about to be complete breakdown, and the prime minister of India was heading to the airport and the Chinese representatives were essentially skipping negotiations, and everybody's screaming, what did happen was, cooler heads prevailed. And we were able to at least agree on non-legally binding targets for all countries - not just the United States, not just Europe, but also for China and India, which, projecting forward, are going to be the world's largest emitters. So that - that was an important principle, that everybody's got to do something in order to solve this problem...'

"'My main responsibility here is to convince the American people that it is smart economics and it is going to be the engine of our economic growth for us to be a leader in clean energy. And if we pass a bill in the Senate, reconcile it with the House, that says we are going to invest in wind energy and solar energy and we're going to be the guys who are producing wind turbines, and we're going to be the folks who are producing solar panels on rooftops, and we're going to be the country that is retrofitting all its homes and businesses so that we are 30% more energy-efficient than we are right now, that produces jobs that can't be exported; it reduces our dependence on foreign oil; it is good economics; it will increase our exports -- oh, and by the way, it also solves the climate problem. And that is, I think, an argument that I'm going to be making not just next year but for several years to come.'"

CCC, Copenhagen, and Beyond

Impressions of Copenhagen from CCC's Observer and Advocate. By James Handley, CarbonTax.org, December 19, 2009. "While the mainstream press lamented the COP15 stalemate, and delegates struggled through the night to spin their impasse over 'targets' and 'verification' into some semblance of progress, the scene was harmonious, even jubilant at Klimaforum, the 'people's climate summit' near Copenhagen's main train station Friday night. Klimaforum negotiations coordinator Mathilde Kaalund-Jørgensen proclaimed to a standing room-only audience in the main auditorium that she had been admitted to the Bella Center (off limits to most non-governmental organizations since Wednesday), only to sit through hours of 'very boring' speeches by heads of state, droning on about 'urgency' and 'binding targets.' The UN granted Mathilde just two minutes at its plenary session to introduce the Klimaforum Declaration. The consensus Declaration calls on industrialized nations to recognize and begin to pay their 'climate debt' for the Earth's accumulated greenhouse gas pollution that is already raining destruction and death disproportionately on developing nations. The Declaration rejects carbon trading, carbon markets and offsets as false solutions and perhaps most importantly, includes a clear call for a transparent carbon tax with revenue returned to the people. After Mathilde's remarks, Klimaforum closed with a rollicking, diverse celebration, including latin, kletzmer, waltz and folk music, dance and some good laughs...

"For the first week and a half of COP15, I divided my time between UN events at the Bella Center and the Klimaforum. While the plenary sessions were grinding along, the UN side events offered a wealth of information and occasional inspiration: British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell was congratulated for enacting North America's first revenue-neutral carbon tax which led in May to his comfortable re-election. The German government detailed ambitious plans for 95% reductions in GHG emissions by 2050, pointedly including a scenario in which carbon capture and sequestration turns out not viable... The Klimaforum presentation, Carbon Taxation - A forgotten climate policy tool, by Global Utmaning (Global Challenge), an independent Swedish think-tank... was thorough, clear and well documented, covering the advantages of direct carbon pricing in reducing emissions and encouraging alternatives... I also attended two Klimaforum sessions featuring prolific and influential Guardian columnist George Monbiot... At his session later in the week entitled: 'Are you getting the climate agreement you came for?,' Monbiot mentioned climatologist Jim Hansen's trenchant critique of cap-and-trade and called on me during a comment period. I explained some of the flaws of carbon trading and suggested a direct carbon pricing system. Later, Monbiot picked up the point, explaining that a carbon tax is a way to reduce demand for fossil fuels and put alternatives on a stronger footing. Perhaps he'll adopt revenue-neutral carbon taxing as a future talking point. (Click here for Monbiot's bristling valedictory from COP15.)...

"Like so many, I came to Copenhagen with a vague hope for a 'fair and binding' agreement. I now question whether that was even a good framework to begin with... What's a better framework? How about one major trading bloc (e.g., the European Union or the U.S.) setting a steadily-increasing carbon tax? That would create pressure for others to follow, as the carbon-taxing countries collected (and kept) the laggards' carbon taxes for them at the border. In effect, penalize the laggards while offering a bounty of tax revenue for those that join. The only international agreement needed -- if at all -- would be that every country will enact a carbon fee, along with clarification of World Trade Organization rules on border tax adjustments. Nations don't even need to agree on the same carbon tax rate, since individual countries' rates can be harmonized at the border. Forget targets, verification, offsets, trading… And don't wait for the UN. Just lead: set a carbon price. The world will follow." James Handley's earlier post (Copenhagen Klimaforum To Press UN Delegates for Carbon Tax, 12/10/09) describes his involvement with the Klimaforum Declaration. James' work in Copenhagen was sponsored by the Climate Crisis Coalition, the Carbon Tax Center, and Citizens Climate Lobby.

42-Day Climate Fast Concludes. CCC editors note, December 24, 2009. "There can be mixed interpretations about how Copenhagen concluded and about where Congress now stands on climate legislation, but from our perspective there can be no confusion about the Climate Justice Fast, on how it helped to keep the focus in on what is right with their call for strong just climate action that can help us meet the goal of 350 ppm of atmospheric CO2. For this, we at CCC and others around the world are enormously grateful to the fasters, which included our own cofounder, Ted Glick. Someday the survivors on this fragile planet may look back with the same gratitude and awe for those brave souls who by putting their lives on this line in this way shined a light during some of our darkest and most confusing (and at times hopeful) hours."

A Prophetic Appeal. Speech by Father Paul Mayer, CCC, December 15, 2009. "Spiritual teachers may help us find the words of comfort, transformation and wisdom that the peoples of the world need to hear at this dangerous moment in human history. This is not just another 'social' issue to be addressed by one more committee, one more web site, one more pastoral letter, or one more Environmental Sunday. A moderate response will no longer serve to confront a crisis that is anything but moderate - the collapse of the life support systems of the planet demands a response that raises a cry, sounds the alarm, tells unvarnished truths and makes demands that may at first seem unreasonable. From the religious perspective this is to assume a prophetic stance...

"The time has come for a Global Interfaith Convocation for the Earth, called by the leaders of the world's great religious traditions. Such a gathering would issue an inspired prophetic appeal to the planet announcing the extremity of the crisis of global warming and a call for a worldwide mobilization to reverse this danger while there is still time. This would be a message of hope, but not of easy optimism. Its hope would lie in a concrete plan of action based on the best scientific economic information and would include the input of the poor, of indigenous, young people and of women. This message would state the dangerous consequences of non-action or of inadequate measures in a clear and honest way...

"Sooner or later under the present escalating crisis, our consumer life style may be forcibly taken from us or at least severely diminished. Here the most profound teachings of our respective traditions can teach us, as St. Francis of Assisi and Mahatma Gandhi demonstrated, that a simple life can lead to greater freedom and even to joy. Can we collectively, through deep prayer and meditation, through community consultation, and through our love for the earth, for each other, for our children and for all beings, rise to this challenge, perhaps one of the greatest in human history?... Sooner or later under the present escalating crisis, our consumer life style may be forcibly taken from us or at least severely diminished. Here the most profound teachings of our respective traditions can teach us, as St. Francis of Assisi and Mahatma Gandhi demonstrated, that a simple life can lead to greater freedom and even to joy. Can we collectively, through deep prayer and meditation, through community consultation, and through our love for the earth, for each other, for our children and for all beings, rise to this challenge, perhaps one of the greatest in human history?" Father Paul Mayer is a CCC co-founder. The speech was delivered at the Education Caucus of the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development, a side event during the Copenhagen U.N. climate conference.