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Scientists call Bush Administration to
end scientific abuses
Washington, DC, Feb. 18— Today, more than 60 leading scientists-including
Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors
and university chairs and presidents -- issued a statement calling for
regulatory and legislative action to restore scientific integrity to
federal policymaking. According to the scientists, the Bush administration
has, among other abuses, suppressed and distorted scientific analysis
from federal agencies, and taken actions that have undermined the quality
of scientific advisory panels.
“Across a broad range of issues, the administration has undermined
the quality of the scientific advisory system and the morale of the
government’s outstanding scientific personnel,” said Dr. Kurt
Gottfried, emeritus professor of physics at Cornell University and Chairman
of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Whether the issue is lead
paint, clean air or climate change, this behavior has serious consequences
for all Americans.”
“Science, to quote President Bush’s father, the former president,
relies on freedom of inquiry and objectivity,” said Russell Train,
head of the Environmental Protection Agency under Nixon and Ford, who
joined the scientists in calling for action. “But this administration
has obstructed that freedom and distorted that objectivity in ways that
were unheard of in any previous administration.”
The statement notes that while scientific input to the government is
rarely the only factor in public policy decisions, this input should
be weighed from an objective and impartial perspective. However, the
administration of George W. Bush has disregarded this principle. “The
Earth system follows laws which scientists strive to understand,”
said Dr. F. Sherwood Rowland a Nobel laureate in chemistry.
“The public deserves rational decisionmaking based on the best
scientific advice about what is likely to happen, not what political
entities might wish to happen,” added Rowland
“We are not simply raising warning flags about an academic subject
of interest only to scientists and doctors,” said Dr. Neal Lane,
a former director of the National Science Foundation and a former Presidential
Science Advisor. “In case after case, scientific input to policymaking
is being censored and distorted. This will have serious consequences
for public health.”
In conjunction with the statement, the Union of Concerned Scientists
released a report “Scientific Integrity in Policymaking” that
investigates numerous allegations in the scientists’ statement
involving censorship and political interference with independent scientific
inquiry at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration,
and the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Interior
and Defense.
One example cited in the statement and report involves the suppression
of an EPA study that found the bipartisan Senate Clear Air bill would
do more to reduce mercury contamination in fish and prevent more deaths
than the administration’s proposed Clear Skies Act. “This
is akin to the White House directing the National Weather Service to
alter a hurricane forecast because they want everyone to think we have
clear skies ahead,” said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union
of Concerned Scientists
“The hurricane is still coming, but without factual information
no one will be ready for it.” Comparing President Bush with his
father, George H.W. Bush and former president Richard M. Nixon, the
statement warned that had these former presidents similarly dismissed
science in favor of political ends, over 200,000 deaths and millions
of respiratory and cardiovascular disease cases would not have been
prevented with the signing of the original Clean Air Act and the 1990
amendments to that Act.
The statement demands that the Bush administration’s “distortion
of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease”
and calls for Congressional oversight hearings, guaranteed public access
to government scientific studies and other measures to prevent such
abuses in the future. The statement further calls on the scientific,
engineering and medical communities to work together to reestablish
scientific integrity in the policymaking process.
Source: Union of Concerned Scientists
US soldier seeks refugee status
By Jonathan Franklin
Feb. 23— US army private Jeremy Hinzman fought in Afghanistan
and considers himself a patriot. But when his unit was ordered to Iraq,
he refused to go and embarked on a radical journey that could make legal
history.
Private first class Hinzman left the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment,
taking his wife and son to Canada. Officially, he is AWOL (absent without
leave), and, instead of fighting insurgents, he is battling the US military
in the Canadian courts.
This month Hinzman, 25, filed legal papers to become the first US soldier
objecting to the Iraq war to be granted refugee status in Canada. His
case is expected to be a test of new Canadian immigration laws and the
country’s traditional role of accepting refugees from the US military.
An estimated 250 Americans every year seek refugee status in Canada,
the vast majority making mental health claims, according to Jeffrey
House, a Toronto criminal defense lawyer who represents Hinzman.
“This is the first time a soldier from the Iraq war is seeking
protection. He does not want to fight in Iraq and he will do any lawful
thing to stay in Canada.”
If he returns to the US, Hinzman could be prosecuted as a deserter,
according to Sergeant Pam Smith, a spokes woman for the 82nd Airborne.
“We don’t have time to go and track down people who go AWOL,”
she told the Associated Press. “We’re fighting a war.”
On the telephone from Toronto, Hinzman said: “I signed up to defend
my country, not carry out acts of aggression.”
He hopes other soldiers will refuse to serve in Iraq and come to Canada:
“I think I am the first, but I encourage others to do the same.
I do not want to sound seditious, but there is strength in numbers.”
Hinzman told the Fayetteville Observer that he had liked the subsidized
housing and groceries offered by the army and the promises of money
for college. “It seemed like a good financial decision,” he
said. “I had a romantic vision of what the army was.”
From the start of basic training, he was upset by the continuous chanting
about blood and killing, and what he called the dehumanization of the
enemy. “It’s like watching some kind of scary movie, except
I was in it,” he said.
“People would just walk around saying things like ‘I want
to kill somebody’.”
Human rights lawyers and religious counselors in the US predict that
the case is the start of a huge wave of protests and legal moves by
military personnel and their families.
Volunteers at the GI Rights Hotline, a legal aid center for soldiers,
are receiving about 3,500 calls a month from military personnel looking
to leave the armed forces.
With a growing number of dead and wounded, the Pentagon is struggling
to maintain troop levels in Iraq. Nearly 40 percent of those now deployed
are national guard or reserve troops. “These guys are not going
to re-enlist, that is for sure,” said Giorgio DeShaun Ra’Shadd,
a lawyer in Centennial, Colorado, who represents several military families.
“Soldiers are fighting to get out of the service.”
In late January the Pentagon cancelled retirement dates for an estimated
40,000 soldiers. This unilateral move postpones soldiers’ return
to civilian life.
Military families erupted in protest at the decision and immediately
launched web sites and demonstrations.
“Can the US president with the signature of a pen indenture tens
of thousands of US citizens? That is the question we are now investigating,”
said Luke Hiken, a lawyer in San Francisco. “This is a tremendous
militarization of civilian families. Soldiers are now being asked to
stay for two more years. This takes civilian families and turns them
into military families.”
Based on his work with US military personnel in Germany, Hiken estimates
that there are “thousands” of soldiers who want to escape
from Iraq. “When they brought them home for vacation in the US,
about 15 percent – 20 percent simply never went back. They stayed
with their families.”
Hinzman said his family was part of his reason for going AWOL.
“I vowed to myself, to my wife and son, that I would not go to
Iraq. To me it was a war fought on false pretenses. Dr Blix [the former
chief UN weapons inspector] went time and time again [to Iraq] and he
said there are no weapons of mass destruction.
“They are exploiting the events of September 11, based on greed
and our need for oil.”
Source: Counterpunch
9-11 Relatives challenge White House
to answer 23 questions
By Nicholas Levis
New York, New York, Feb. 17— “Mr. Bush, who approved
the flight of the bin Laden family out of the United States, when all
commercial flights were grounded?”
That is one of 23 explosive questions that George W. Bush and his subordinates
will have to face in public testimony, under oath and pain of perjury
-- that is, if the relatives of people killed in the terror attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001 get their way.
“Why has no one in any level of our government been held accountable
for the countless failures leading up to and on 9/11?”
For more than a year, the Family Steering Committee -- a group of thirteen
“9/11 relatives” representing several other 9/11 family groups
-- has monitored the government’s commission on Sept. 11 which
is headed by former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean. FSC member Mindy
Kleinberg was among the first to testify when the Kean Commission held
its first proceedings. She alerted the panel to a number of disturbing
and unanswered questions and contradictions in the government’s
explanation of what happened on Sept. 11.
Almost none of the issues raised by Kleinberg were ever again brought
up in the Kean Commission’s public hearings.
The Family Steering Committee issued their challenge to Bush on Feb.
16, following reports last week that the Kean Commission had asked George
W. Bush and Bill Clinton to testify.
The White House says Bush is considering an appearance before the Kean
Commission, but only in secret session. And if he does appear, it is
unlikely Bush will face questions like those on the Family Steering
Committee’s list: “Please explain why you remained at the
Sarasota, Florida, Elementary School for a press conference after you
had finished listening to the children read, when as a terrorist target,
your presence potentially jeopardized the lives of the children?”
(Bush, his staff and his Secret Service entourage were indeed in that
school, as carried on live television, until 9:32 am on Sept. 11, 45
minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, and 27 minutes
after the moment when Bush was informed of the second plane crash and
told “America is under attack,” at 9:05 am, an anomaly that
the White House has never explained.)
In recent weeks, the family members have released a series of harshly
worded statements, blasting the Bush administration for stonewalling
the investigation -- and also condemning the Kean Commission for refusing
to examine key evidence.
In its public hearings the Kean Commission has indeed displayed reluctance
to pursue controversial lines of inquiry. It is hard to imagine its
members would ever ask if the US government tried to cut a deal with
Osama Bin Laden in advance of the attacks, as reported in the European
press already in 2001. But the families want the answer: “Did you
or any agent of the United States government carry out any negotiations
or talks with UBL, an agent of UBL, or al-Qaida?” (“UBL”
is government speak for Osama Bin Laden.) Nor has the Kean Commission
shown any inclination to follow the trail of the Cheney “energy
policy meetings” in early 2001 and the Bush administration’s
oil-pipeline negotiations with the Taliban up to July 2001-- a touchy
subject that might come up if the government ever had to answer this
question: “During that same period, did you or any agent of the
United States government carry out any negotiations or talks with any
foreign government, its agents, or officials regarding UBL?”
And it is simply inconceivable that the Kean Commission would ever wonder
out loud if anyone other than al-Qaida benefited from the attacks. But
the families are not afraid of the obvious: “Which individuals,
governments, agencies, institutions, or groups may have benefited from
the attacks of 9/11?”
Although the Kean Commission accepted a deal strictly limiting its access
to the White House documents detailing advance warnings of a possible
terror attack, Governor Kean last week felt confident enough to claim
there was “no smoking gun” to indicate Bush had specific advance
knowledge of the attacks -- at least not in the “parts of the documents”
Kean had been allowed to see.
The families don’t buy that on faith or partial evidence. They
want to know the real answer: “As Commander-in-Chief, from May
1, 2001 until September 11, 2001, did you receive any information from
any intelligence agency official or agent that UBL was planning to attack
this nation on its own soil using airplanes as weapons, targeting New
York City landmarks during the week of September 11, 2001 or on the
actual day of September 11, 2001?”
Meticulously researched, the FSC’s questions to Bush reflect many
of the same concerns that have caused millions of people worldwide to
doubt everything about the official story of Sept. 11, 2001, and to
call for a truly independent investigation with subpoena power, testimony
under oath, and no self-imposed restrictions as to “allowable”
lines of inquiry.
It may be hard to dismiss these concerns as “conspiracy theory”
when the US government itself used the most outrageous conspiracy theory
of all — the lie that Saddam backed the attacks -- as one of its
pretexts to invade Iraq.
In that matter as well, the families want to see the government held
accountable: “Do you continue to maintain that Saddam Hussein was
linked to al-Qaida?” they ask. “What proof do you have of
any connection between al-Qaida and the Hussein regime?”
These questions indicate that the families have come to understand that,
as great as their grief and tragedy was, the stakes in the 9/11 disclosure
issue are far greater, and involve more than justice for the victims
and well-deserved closure for the families. 9/11 was used as a lever
to shift the world. All Americans -- and, given the global impact, the
people of the whole world -- need to learn the answers that the families
now demand.
Source: www.911truth.org
AIDS activists slam new Bush strategy
By Jim Lobe
Washington, DC, Feb. 23 (IPS)— President George W. Bush’s
new, five-year, $15-billion strategy for fighting the global HIV/AIDS
pandemic provoked dismay among health activists here Feb 23, just hours
after the 103-page document was released and the first disbursements
— totaling $350 million — were announced.
Activists charged that the strategy, which will be overseen by Bush’s
global AIDS coordinator, Ambassador Randall Tobias, offered little new
in the way of ideas, and severely under- finances the Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
“It’s a go-slow, go-it-alone approach,” noted Paul Zeitz,
head of the Global AIDS Alliance (GAA). “And it’s amazing
that more than 13 months after the president announced the plan, only
now is the first dollar being spent.”
The new strategy paper also failed to clarify a key question —
whether Washington will buy life-preserving anti-AIDS drugs from generic
producers, which are mostly made in poor countries such as India, Thailand
and Brazil, as opposed to western brand-name drugs that generally are
more expensive.
Many activists are concerned the administration will buy only brand-name
drugs. The fact that Tobias, former chairman and chief executive officer
of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, was chosen as the global AIDS czar
has enhanced those concerns.
Tobias himself was non-committal on the issue Feb. 23, stressing that
brand producers have reduced their prices so much that the question
is no longer particularly relevant.
The administration, he said, is committed to “buying drugs that
are safe and effective at the lowest possible price.” The standards
to be adopted in determining those criteria remain to be worked out,
added Tobias.
But the activists said key anti-retroviral drug treatments from brand
companies were four times more expensive than comparable ones from generic
manufacturers currently recommended by the World Health Organization
(WHO).
“Tobias’ assertions are factually untrue,” said Zeitz,
who added that the strategy document is curiously silent about both
debt relief for AIDS-affected countries and any follow-up on administration
pledges two years ago to exempt certain life-saving medicines from intellectual
property rights provisions in new trade agreements.
“Both are absolutely essential to any strategy for dealing with
AIDS, but the administration has nothing to say,” he added.
“Candidate Bush is AWOL [absent without leave] on AIDS,” said
Asia Russell of the Health Global Access Project (Health GAP) in a reference
to the upcoming presidential election.
“Compared to [opposition Democrats John] Kerry and [John] Edwards,
who are campaigning on a 30-billion-dollar pledge [to fight AIDS] and
a commitment to use affordable generic drugs, the Bush White House has
proven itself to be a subsidiary wholly owned and operated by big drug
companies,” she added.
The strategy document, developed over the four months since Tobias was
appointed, lays out how the administration intends to spend the $15
billion, which Bush first pledged 13 months ago, over the five-year
life of the program.
Activists had hoped the president would allocate $3 billion a year to
the program, but were disappointed when his initial request, for fiscal
year (FY) 2004, came to only $2 billion, of which only $200 million
was allocated to the Global Fund.
In a rare display of independence, Congress approved $2.4 billion for
2004, and increased the fund’s share to $550 million.
But under the strategy released Feb. 23, Bush is proposing the United
States commit only $1 billion to the Global Fund over the five years.
He has again requested only 200 million for the fund for fiscal year
2005.
The other $14 billion, says the strategy paper, would be used for bilateral
programs only — nine billion dollars for programs in 14 African
and Caribbean countries — and another $5 billion in ongoing bilateral
programs, most administered by the US Agency for International Development
(USAID), in more than 100 countries worldwide.
The targeted African and Caribbean countries, which have been previously
announced, include Botswana, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti,
Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania,
Uganda and Zambia.
The fifteenth country, which must be located in another region, is to
be named shortly, according to Tobias.
The strategy says that in the 15 focus countries the nine billion dollars
will be used to provide treatment to two million people through 2008,
prevent seven million new HIV infections, and provide care to some 10
million people infected or affected by HIV/AIDS, including AIDS orphans
and other vulnerable children.
Worldwide, some 13 million children have lost at least one parent to
HIV/AIDS, 11 million of them in Africa, creating a crisis the United
Nations Children’s Fund, the World Bank and UNAIDS called “unprecedented
in the history of mankind,” in a report released Feb. 21.
The $350 million in grant awards announced Feb. 23 will provide care
to 60,000 AIDS orphans in Africa in the coming year, according to Tobias.
In addition, it will nearly double the number of people in Africa who
now receive life-saving, anti-retroviral drugs — from roughly 50,000
to 100,000.
But he was distinctly defensive about the administration’s proposed
contributions to the Global Fund, stressing that the president could
propose, but Congress would have the last word, as it did in 2004.
Tobias declared Washington has so far provided more money to deal with
the global pandemic than all other donor governments combined and that
it remains the largest single donor to the Global Fund, having pledged,
with Monday’s announcement, nearly $2 billion to the agency through
2008.
“There’s a perception that the Global Fund is the old, established
organization and what we’re doing is new, but that’s a reversal
of the facts,” he said, noting the fund “is just getting started
(while) the US, on the other hand, has almost 20 years of experience.”
The bilateral approach is more efficient in many cases because it “gets
the middleman out of the middle,” Tobias said, stressing that the
two ways of delivering assistance should not be seen as competitive.
“I think we need to stop spending our energy on beating up on each
other,” he added.
But Zeitz noted that a major selling point of the Global Fund was precisely
to establish one global coordinating mechanism for donors that would
greatly ease the burden of monitoring and reporting, particularly for
front-line agencies that receive assistance.
“For the first time, everyone is at the table with a coordinated
strategy, and now the Bush administration is setting up a parallel coordination
mechanism that will be overseen by a US ambassador. That’s not
improving the situation.”
To many activists, what was most disappointing about the new strategy
was how much time it had taken to put together.
“Three million people have died waiting for a new bureaucracy to
be set up at the State Department, while Bush denies the already existing
Global AIDS Fund the cash needed to actually fight AIDS and save lives,”
said Paul Davis of Health GAP.
“The plan released today by the president is a vastly under-funded
initiative that favors corporate interest over public health and undermines
multilateral efforts to fight the AIDS pandemic,” said Sherry Ayres
of Africa Action, another advocacy group.
“It is an insult to the nearly three million Africans who died
of AIDS during the time it took the administration to come up with it.”
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