According to this, the President is the heir to a long line of miscreants, traitors, and influence peddlers. And here I thought it started with Prescott Bush trading with the Nazis.
This is counter-intuitive, but Nielsen says that teens are less able to move aournd the web, and less willing to actually work through sites that are not easy to navigate.
Weird.
According to MSNBC, modern teenagers think that the First Amendment goes too far, and that the overnment should have the right to approve or reject news articles. Obviously for a representative Democracy, which relies on debate of issues to determine the nation's course, this is a troubling sign.
We shouldn't be all that surprised by the results, though. Many students never have a civics class, are never exposed to the details or background of the Constitution, and lack a basic understanding of even American history. They are also continuously bombarded by the message that anyone who disagrees with the President and his advisors is a traitor, a Communist, a terrorist, a liberal, stupid, or crazy - and the media does little to combat these messages.
I remember sitting in the semester long civics classes we were required to take as high school Freshmen in 1985-86 in the Tampa area - at the time we were required to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution and learned how the Federal government was setup. In retrospect that class should have been a full year and integrated with the U.S. History course we took in the 8th grade. A full discussion of the rights, duties, and privileges of U.S. citizens, as well as the historical issues behind the guarantees in Bill of rights, should have occurred.
For a variety of reasons, the governments of the United States no longer desire to produce citizens, finding instead that easily lead drones that are bored by anything more complex than a sound bite cause fewer problems. Unfortunately, creating a society of drones also reduces our global competitiveness - how can people whose intellectual curiosity been deadened hope to continually develop the skills required to compete? Even our exalted leaders can't answer that one.
It can be done: just ask Finland.
This is just another example of how the corporate greed and obsession with government non-interference in the economy (other than for corporare welfare) hurts our economy and our health.
If Finland can rank highest in environmental protection and global competitivenes simulateously, why can't we do better?
Please check out Orac's comments regarding the 60th anniversary of the Red Army's liberation of Auschwitz. He is much more eloquent than I am on the subject.
It never ceases to amaze me that Holocaust deniers exist.
A whole 13 Senators voted against Condoleeza Rice's confirmation as Secretary of State, despite her obvious shortcomings. Despite conservative's traditional claims that they want a meritocracy in the United States, this is yet another example of them valuing only political reliability over demonstrated ability.
The 13 heroes are:
Daniel Akaka (Hawaii)
Evan Bayh (Indiana)
Barbara Boxer (California)
Robert Byrd (West Virginia)
Mark Dayton (Minnesota)
Dick Durbin (Illinois)
Tom Harkin (Iowa)
Jim Jeffords (Vermont)
Edward Kennedy (Massachusetts)
John Kerry (Massachusetts)
Frank Lautenberg (New Jersey)
Carl Levin (Michigan)
Jack Reed (Rhode Island)
Which means I need to write a nasty gram to Ken Salazar (D) of Colorado for voting the wrong way. He isn't exactly fulfilling our hopes for a Democratic Senator...
Woohoo! Ok, so it shouldn't really be a big deal because I know I graduated, and the degree is on my transcripts (and CCCOnline says I'm qualified to teach History), but it still makes me feel good to see the official document with its gold lettering and seals.
Although there aren't as many details as I'd like, at least the Democratic caucus isn't going to just lay down and let the GOP have its way with things. Thanks to the left coaster for publishing the details.
This goes along nicely with efforts to give the Bush Administration a black eye through the Senate confirmations of COndoleeza Rice and Alberto Gonzalez, neither of whome should be anywhere near the reigns of government.
Senate Bill 11 will address our troop strength problems brought about by George W. Bush’s foreign policy and backdoor draft. It will increase Army and Marine endstrength by up to 40,000 by 2007, provide a National Guard Bill of Rights that requires among other things straight answers about deployment/service obligations; and would address the financial and physical health for servicemembers and their families. S 11 would also require the President to report to Congress on U.S., Iraqi, and foreign contributions to Iraq’s reconstruction before any new U.S. reconstruction funds are appropriated. Furthermore, the President would be required to certify to Congress that he has been unable to generate additional support from Iraqi oil revenues or other nations before any new U.S. reconstruction funds can be allocated.
Senate Bill 12 establishes four interlocking pillars necessary to wage an effective war on terrorism: (1) taking the fight to the terrorists, (2) drying up the breeding grounds that produce terrorism, (3) enhancing the U.S. government’s accountability and effectiveness to deal with this issue, and (4) reducing the possibility terrorists could acquire and use nuclear materials as a weapon, the greatest single threat to U.S. national security.
Senate Bill 13 addresses Bush’s abandonment of our veterans by ensuring all veterans get the health care they deserve by 2006; expand mental health services to all VA hospitals by 2006; make prescription drugs readily available to veterans; and enact a new GI Bill for the 21st century.
Senate Bill 14 lays out an ambitious list of measures to deal with economic opportunity, ranging from the restoration of overtime pay for 6 million wage earners who have lost it under Bush; increases the Federal minimum wage over the next two years; supports relief for multi-employer pension plans, which are used predominantly by small businesses to provide pension benefits to an estimated 9.7 million American workers. It would also end tax breaks for companies exporting jobs; and would call for a recommitment to funding infrastructure improvements here at home.
Senate Bill 15 deals with education by strengthening Head Start and child care programs; it would create a federal program for rural school districts to purchase new buses so that they can retire substandard buses; fixes some of the problems caused for local districts by the No Child Left Behind law; creates a tuition-free program for future teachers in math, science, and special education teachers; restores the formula for Pell Grants, saving 1.3 million students from receiving decreased funding. Democrats will also increase the maximum Pell Grant award to $5,100 starting in FY2006, and take other measures to make college more affordable.
Senate Bill 16 deals with health care, by legalizing the safe importation of FDA-approved prescription drugs from other industrialized countries where they are more affordable. The bill also addresses the safety of prescription drugs and provides for better monitoring of drugs after they are approved for use. S 16 will provide small businesses relief by offering tax credits to help small employers provide coverage for their employees. The bill would create 25 pilot programs to build on the innovation of several programs across the country that help small employers cover their employees. This legislation would provide coverage to all children and would increase coverage for pregnant women. It also affirms Democrats’ commitment to protect the Medicaid program that provides coverage to more than 40 million Americans.
Senate 17 deals with voting reform, through a broad range of measures including among other things: requiring that all voting systems used in Federal elections provide a voter verified ballot that is fully accessible to the disabled and ensures privacy and independence; requiring each state to adopt Election Day registration procedures for Federal elections; creates a National Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot (NFWAB) for Federal offices that every and any eligible voter is entitled to cast from anywhere inside or outside the United States and requires the NFWAB be counted without regard to which polling place, precinct, local unit of government, state, or country the NFWAB is cast in; requires states to provide public notice of all proposed purged names from voting rolls 60 days in advance of a Federal election. It also prohibits states from purging names of voters from the list without specific notice provided in accordance with National Voting Rights Act (NVRA); requires states to establish early voting periods for a minimum of fifteen calendar days prior to a Federal election, with uniform mandatory Saturday hours, and a minimum of four hours per day, including Saturdays; requires punch card voting systems to provide in-person notice of over-votes; and prohibits central count optical scan systems from meeting the voter verification requirements without the public's knowledge or accountability; and requires notice provisions, public statements, and other transparency/accountability measures with regard to election administrators.
Senate Bill 18 deals with Medicare by addressing the corporate welfare that Bush larded onto the HMOs and drug companies with the Medicare drug benefit, by removing the prohibition against the federal government negotiating for best price; it also addresses the current gaps in coverage that exist in the law; and protects retirees from losing drug coverage, among other changes.
Senate Bill 19 is the Fiscal Responsibility for a Sound Future Act, which would among other things restore the Senate pay-as-you-go rule to require that mandatory spending and tax legislation be fully paid for, or be subject to a 60-vote point of order; would also reinstate sequestration (across-the-board spending cuts) to enforce pay-go and discretionary spending limits; prevents procedural gimmicks from being used to increase the deficit. The bill allows the Senate’s fast-track “reconciliation” procedures, which cut off debate after only 20 hours, to be used only for deficit reduction. Legislation that would increase the deficit could still be considered in the Senate, but could not be expedited. This would restore reconciliation to its original purpose of deficit reduction, and ensure that any legislation increasing deficits is subject to full scrutiny, debate, and consideration in the Senate. In addition, the legislation would prohibit the fast-tracking of Congressional budget resolutions that contain a reconciliation instruction that would worsen the deficit.
Senate Bill 20 deals with reducing unintended pregnancies and reduces abortions through increasing access to family planning services. It will also provide relief to Medicaid by decreasing the financial burden of pregnancy-related and newborn care.
From Alternet we get the 10 worst corporations of 2004, which includes a couple of drug companies, Dow Chemical, and Walmart. The biggest sinner (in my book) is Merck, whose drug Vioxx is responsible for 55,000 deaths - and all indications suggest that the company knew of the dangers, but didn't warn anyone.
All ten of these companies make me wonder why we don't have a corporate death penalty for egregiously immoral companies, and why we don't go after executives more harshly for corporate misdeeds. Just image what would happen to private citizens who committed these acts?
Abbott Laboratories: Drug Pricing Chutzpah
Chutzpah. Webster's defines the Yiddish term now incorporated into English slang as: 1. unmitigated effrontery or impudence; gall. 2. audacity; nerve.
In the next edition, they may want to add: 3. See Abbott.
In December 2003, the company raised the U.S. price of its anti-AIDS drug Norvir (generic name ritanovir) by 400 percent. That is, unless the product is used in conjunction with other Abbott products – in which case the price increase is zero.
Norvir has become an increasingly important treatment in recent years. Scientists have discovered that while Norvir is generally too toxic for safe use as a protease inhibitor (one category of anti-AIDS drugs), in lower doses it works well as a booster to increase the efficacy of other protease inhibitors. As a result, Norvir is frequently prescribed along with other protease inhibitors.
The Norvir price increase does not apply when the product is used as a booster with another Abbott protease inhibitor (in the combined product Kaletra). Thus the impact of the Norvir price increase is to make Kaletra far cheaper than rival combinations of Norvir and non-Abbott protease inhibitors.
Norvir is especially important for patients in need of a "salvage therapy" of new and powerful treatments because their virus has become resistant to other medicines.
Lynda Dee, co-chair of the Aids Treatment Activists Coalition's Drug Development Committee, called the price increase for these patients, who may have no choice as to the medications they need to survive, "pharma terrorism perpetrated against the patients who need new drugs the most."
Abbott said the price spike was justified by its need to raise money for research and development. "New medicines cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop," Jeffrey Leiden, president and chief operating officer of Abbott's Pharmaceutical Products Group, told a National Institutes of Health meeting in May.
Moreover, Leiden said, the price increase would not deny any patients access to the drug. The price increase does not apply to federal AIDS drug programs, which cover 54 percent of people with HIV/AIDS. Price increases only apply to private insurers and to uninsured individuals, who Abbott says can get the product for free under a special program it operates.
Making the Abbott price jump especially pernicious in the eyes of consumer advocates was that the drug was invented on a grant from the U.S. federal government.
Because of the U.S. government's financing role, Essential Inventions, Inc., a nonprofit corporation created to distribute affordable public health and other inventions, in January petitioned the government to exercise its "march-in" rights under the federal Bayh-Dole Act and issue an open license to generic firms to produce their own version of Norvir.
"Essential Inventions is asking the Bush Administration to adopt a simple rule – U.S. consumers should not pay more for drugs invented on government grants," said Essential Inventions president James Love. Following the U.S.-only price increase, Norvir is 5 to 10 times more expensive in the United States than in other high-income countries.
But NIH rejected the Essential Inventions proposal, arguing that companies that obtained licenses to government-funded inventions have a duty only to commercialize the inventions. NIH does not have authority to consider the price at which a product is sold and the impact of the price on access, the agency ruled – even though the Bayh-Dole Act says government-funded inventions should be made "available to the public on reasonable terms."
"If Secretary Thompson agrees that quadrupling the price of a life-or-death AIDS drug, rigging the market, and discriminating against U.S. consumers is 'reasonable,' you can't help but wonder what the Secretary considers unreasonable," said Representative Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, in criticizing the NIH decision.
AIG: Deferred Prosecutions On the Rise
When the world's largest insurer, American International Group Inc. (AIG), was charged by federal prosecutors with crimes in November, it quickly cut a deal with the Justice Department that ended a criminal probe into its finances with a deferred prosecution agreement.
In a deferred prosecution, the corporation accepts responsibility, agrees not to contest the charges, agrees to cooperate, usually pays a fine and implements changes in corporate structure and governance to prevent future wrongdoing.
If the company abides by the agreement for a period of time, then the prosecutors will drop the criminal charges.
In a non-prosecution agreement – like the one secured by Merrill Lynch's in 2003 with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer – prosecutors agree not to bring criminal charges in exchange for corporate fines, cooperation and a change in corporate structure and governance.
"This comprehensive settlement brings finality to the claims raised by the SEC and the Department of Justice," said AIG Chair M. R. Greenberg. "The role of the independent consultant complements our own transaction review processes. We welcome this enhancement to our overall risk management and control mechanisms."
Under the deal with AIG, an AIG subsidiary was charged with a crime for the next 12 months, but then the charge will be dismissed with prejudice – if AIG abides by the deferred prosecution agreement.
As part of the agreement, AIG and two subsidiaries will pay an $80 million penalty, and $46 million into a disgorgement fund maintained by the SEC.
Federal officials in October filed a criminal complaint charging AIG-FP PAGIC Equity Holding Corp., a subsidiary of AIG, with violating the federal securities laws, by aiding and abetting PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. (PNC) in connection with a fraudulent transaction to transfer $750 million in mostly troubled loans and venture capital investments from subsidiaries off of its books.
These transactions were previously the subject of a deferred criminal disposition involving PNC.
Earlier this year, the Department dismissed the criminal complaint against a PNC subsidiary, after the company fulfilled its deferred prosecution agreement obligations.
Merrill, AIG and PNC are three of 10 major corporations that have settled serious criminal charges with deferred prosecution, no prosecution or de facto no prosecution agreements over the last two years. Companies are getting off the criminal hook with these agreements, which were originally intended for minor street crimes. Now they are being used in very serious corporate crime cases.
If a crime has been committed – and there is little doubt that crimes have been committed by the corporations in these cases – then the companies should plead guilty and pay the penalty. If prosecutors want to impose change on the corporation, they can do this after securing a conviction through probationary orders. Right now, corporate lawyers are teaming up with prosecutors to go after individual executives while the company's record is wiped clean.
Coca-Cola: KillerCoke.org vs. CokeKills.org
On KillerCoke.org, you'll find a raft of information on Coke and its bottlers' operations in Colombia. There is extensive documentation of rampant violence committed against Coke's unionized workforce by paramilitary forces, and powerful claims of the company's complicity in the violence.
An April 2004 report from a fact-finding delegation headed by New York City Council Member Hiram Monserrate contends:
"To date, there have been a total of 179 major human rights violations of Coca-Cola's workers, including nine murders. Family members of union activists have been abducted and tortured. Union members have been fired for attending union meetings. The company has pressured workers to resign their union membership and contractual rights, and fired workers who refused to do so."
"Most troubling to the delegation were the persistent allegations that paramilitary violence against workers was done with the knowledge of and likely under the direction of company managers."
Allegations such as these formed the basis of a lawsuit filed in 2001 by the International Labor Rights Fund and the United Steelworkers of America in U.S. courts against Coke on behalf of a Colombian trade union and union leader victims of violence at Coke bottling facilities in Colombia.
In 2003, a federal court dismissed the claims against Coke, arguing that its relationship with the owners of the Coke bottling plant in Colombia was too attenuated to hold the soft drink multinational responsible for human rights abuses at the plant. The plaintiffs have since refiled their complaint – they argue the original decision was mistaken, but that Coke's subsequent purchase of the Colombia bottlers means the company is now clearly responsible for the bottlers' actions.
Strangely, for the response to KillerCoke.org, you can check out CokeKills.org. That site, which is operated by Coke, redirects you to CokeFacts.org.
Here's what Coke has to say:
"The pervasive violence in Colombia, and the targeting of union members by its perpetrators, has, unfortunately, touched The Coca-Cola Company in a very personal way. Employees of our Company and bottling partners in Colombia have been threatened, kidnapped, and some have even been murdered... In a lawsuit in Colombia, the court concluded that the bottler not only took proper steps to initiate investigation by the authorities, but went further to enhance its workers' safety by heightening security at the plant."
Leave aside for the moment the issue of Coke's legal liability. The idea that Coke can't control the behavior of its bottlers is simply implausible. It can control them if it so chooses – just the way that clothing retailers can control the actions of their manufacturers, but even more so.
Instructive in raising questions about Coke's good-faith concern for its workers is its unwillingness to support an independent investigation into the Colombia allegations – even after the company's former General Counsel, and the former assistant U.S. attorney general, Deval Patrick, had committed to one. Coke's refusal to authorize an investigation reportedly contributed to Patrick's decision to resign from the corporation.
Dow Chemical: Forgive Us Our Trespasses
At midnight on December 2, 1984, 27 tons of lethal gases leaked from Union Carbide's pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, immediately killing an estimated 8,000 people and poisoning thousands of others.
Today in Bhopal, at least 150,000 people, including children born to parents who survived the disaster, are suffering from exposure-related health effects such as cancer, neurological damage, chaotic menstrual cycles and mental illness. Over 20,000 people are forced to drink water with unsafe levels of mercury, carbon tetrachloride and other persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals.
Activists from around the world – including human rights, legal, environmental health and other experts – mobilized this year to demand that Dow Chemical, the current owner of Union Carbide, be held accountable.
Twenty years after this disaster, the company responsible for this catastrophe and its former executives are still fugitives from justice. Union Carbide and its former chairman, Warren Andersen, were charged with manslaughter for the deaths at Bhopal, but they refuse to appear before the Indian courts.
Here is part of Dow's statement on Bhopal:
While Dow has no responsibility for Bhopal, we have never forgotten the tragic event and have helped to drive global industry performance improvements. This is why Responsible Care was created and why these standards are essential for the protection of our employees and the communities where we live and work. Our pledge and our commitment is the full implementation of Responsible Care everywhere we do business around the world.
Dow has no responsibility for Bhopal? The people of Bhopal don't agree. They say Union Carbide was responsible, and if Union Carbide is now owned by Dow, then Dow is responsible.
In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the crime of Bhopal, we present here 20 things to remember about Dow Chemical – the company now responsible for Bhopal and a fugitive from justice.
20. Agent Orange/Napalm: The toxic herbicide and jellied gasoline used in Vietnam created horrors for young and old alike.
19. Rocky Flats: The top secret Colorado site managed by Dow Chemical from 1952 to 1975 remains an environmental nightmare.
18. Body burden: In March 2001, the Centers for Disease Control reported that most people in the United States carry detectable levels of plastics, pesticides and heavy metals in their blood and urine.
17. 2,4-D: One of the key ingredients in Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant used in Vietnam, 2,4-D is still the most widely used herbicide in the world.
16. Mercury: In Canada, Dow had been producing chlorine using the mercury cell method since 1947. Much of the mercury was recycled, but significant quantities were discharged into the environment. In March 1970, the governments of Ontario and Michigan detected high levels of mercury in fish in major waterways. Dow was sued by state and local officials for mercury pollution.
15. PERC: Perchloroethylene is the hazardous substance used by dry cleaners everywhere. Dow tried to undermine safer alternatives.
14. 2,4,5 T: One of the toxic ingredients in Agent Orange.
13. Busting unions: In 1967, unions represented almost all of Dow's production workers. But since then, according to the Metal Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, Dow undertook an "unapologetic campaign to rid itself of unions."
12. Silicone: The key ingredient for silicone breast implants made women sick. Litigation continues over silicone breast implants, removed from the market more than a decade ago.
11. DBCP: The toxic active ingredient in the Dow pesticide Fumazone. Doctors who tested men who worked with DBCP thought they had vasectomies, because no sperm was present.
10. Dursban: Trade name for chlorpyrifos, a toxic pesticide, proved to have nerve agent effects. It was tested on prisoners in New York in 1971. It replaced DDT when DDT was banned in 1972. A huge seller, in June 2000, EPA limited its use and forced it off the market at the end of 2004.
9. Dow at Christmas: "Uses of Dow plastics by the toy industry are across the board," boasted Dow Chemical in an internal company memo one Christmas season. Among the chemicals used in these toys are polystyrene, polyethylene, ethylene copolymer resins, saran resins, PVC resins, or vinyls and ethyl cellulose.
8.The Tittabawassee: A river and river basin polluted by Dow in its hometown, Midland, Michigan.
7. Brazos River, Freeport, Texas: A February 1971 headline in the Houston Post read: "Brazos River is Dead." In 1970 and 1971, Dow's operation there was sending more than 4.5 billion gallons of wastewater per day into the Brazos and on into the Gulf of Mexico.
6. Toxic Trespass: From Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century by Jack Doyle: "Dow Chemical has been polluting property and poisoning people for nearly a century, locally and globally – trespassing on workers, consumers, communities, and innocent bystanders – on wildlife and wild places, on the global biota and the global genome."
5. Holmesburg Experiments: In January 1981, a Philadelphia Inquirer story revealed that Dow Chemical paid a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist to test dioxin on prisoners at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia in 1964.
4. Worker deaths: Dow has a long history of explosions and fires at its facilities. In May 1979, an explosion ripped through Dow's Pittsburgh facility, killing two workers and injuring more than 45 others.
3. Brain tumors: In 1980, investigators found 25 workers with brain tumors at the company's Freeport, Texas facility – 24 of which were fatal.
2. Saran Wrap: The thin slice of plastic invaluable to our lives, Saran Wrap was produced by Dow until consumers went looking for Dow products to boycott.
1. Bhopal.
GlaxoSmithKline: Deadly Depressing
GlaxoSmithKline, Paxil and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs): It was the story that foreshadowed and strikingly paralleled the controversy surrounding Merck, Vioxx and Cox-2 inhibitors.
With the antidepressant Paxil (generic name: paroxetine), the story was driven primarily from the United Kingdom, by the BBC Program "Panorama" and a public interest group called Social Audit. They called attention to the severe side effects from the drugs; notably that they are addictive and lead to increased suicidality in youth.
In 2003, the evidence of dangerous side effects had piled too high for British regulators to continue to ignore them. In June, the UK health experts advised that children should not be prescribed Paxil.
In February 2004, "Panorama" reported on internal documents from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) showing the company knew that Paxil could not be proved to work in children.
In March 2004, days after the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (the UK's drug regulatory agency) advised that Paxil dosages should be kept to low levels, an expert participating in the Paxil review resigned, claiming the agency had possessed evidence for more than a decade suggesting that Paxil dosages should be kept low, but failed to act on it.
By this time, the story had started to heat up in the United States. Dr. Andrew Mosholder, of the FDA Office of Drug Safety, had conducted an analysis of clinical trials related to antidepressant use in children, and found a heightened risk of suicidality. But his superiors refused to let him present his findings to an advisory panel convened to look at the issue in the wake of the British action.
According to an investigation by Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the FDA actually tried to get Mosholder to present data that deceptively underrepresented the risk of suicidality.
Although Paxil is not approved by the FDA for prescription to children, doctors routinely write "off-label" prescriptions for the product for children, a practice permitted under FDA rules. More than two million prescriptions for Paxil were written for children and adolescents in the United States in 2002.
In April 2004, the Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, published a paper showing that clinical test data did show problems with prescribing Paxil and other SSRIs to children.
In June, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed suit against Glaxo, charging the giant drug maker with suppressing evidence of Paxil's harm to children, and misleading physicians.
GSK responded in a statement that it "acted responsibly in conducting clinical studies in pediatric patients and disseminating data from those studies. All pediatric studies have been made available to the FDA and regulatory agencies worldwide."
Spitzer's complaint cited a 1998 GSK memo which states that the company must "manage the dissemination of these data in order to minimi[z]e any potential negative commercial impact."
Responding to Spitzer's suit, GSK claimed that, "As for the 1998 memo, it is inconsistent with the facts and does not reflect the company position."
The New York complaint asserted as well that "GSK has repeatedly misrepresented the safety and efficacy outcomes from its studies of paroxetine as a treatment for MDD [Major Depressive Disorder] in a pediatric population to its employees who promote paroxetine to physicians."
In August, the company settled with Spitzer for $2.5 million, plus a commitment to maintain the policy of posting clinical trial results, for all drugs marketed by the company.
The next month, the Star-Ledger of New Jersey reported on a Glaxo memo from the year before, instructing the company's sales force not to talk to doctors about company data showing dangers from prescribing Paxil to kids.
In October, the FDA ordered Glaxo and other SSRI makers to include a "black box" warning with their pills. The warning says SSRIs double the risk of suicide in children, though some medical researchers say the number should be higher. At least one GSK clinical trial showed 7.5 percent of youth taking Paxil suffering from suicidality (versus zero percent among those taking a placebo).
Glaxo continues to insist that it disclosed information to appropriate authorities as soon as it discerned important results from its clinical studies.
Hardee's: Heart Attack on a Bun
When Hardee's introduced the Thickburger this year, Jay Leno joked that it was being served in little cardboard boxes shaped like coffins.
With other major fast food outlets moving to green salads, Hardee's revels in big beef. From Hardee's press release of November 15, 2004:
Now Hardee's is introducing the mother of all burgers – the Monster Thickburger™. Weighing in at two-thirds of a pound, this 100 percent Angus beef burger is a monument to decadence, yet is still a throwback, as it features lots of meat, cheese and bacon on a bun.
Clearly, Hardee's, a subsidiary of CKE Restaurants, Inc. of Carpinteria, California, is not worried about the public health aspects of unleashing the monster into the marketplace.
Eating one Thickburger is like eating two Big Macs or five McDonald's hamburgers. Add 600 calories worth of Hardee's fries and you get more than the 2,000 calories that many people should eat in a whole day, according to Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) earlier this year charged KFC Corporation, owner of the Kentucky Fried Chicken national restaurant chain, with making false claims in a national television advertising campaign about the relative nutritional value and healthiness of its fried chicken.
The false claim? KFC said that eating fried chicken, specifically two Original Recipe fried chicken breasts, is better for a consumer's health than eating a Burger King Whopper.
The FTC says that while it is true that the two fried chicken breasts have slightly less total fat and saturated fat than a Whopper, they have more than three times the trans fat and cholesterol, more than twice the sodium, and more calories.
KFC settled the case.
But there will be no law enforcement action brought against Hardee's. Hardee's makes no pretensions that the Hardee's Thickburger is good for you, and has no qualms about the impact of the monster on the public's health. The fast-food pusher's new advertising campaign is straight up: "Be afraid. Be very afraid."
As the New York Times put it in an editorial, "It is a setback for public health, but a triumph for truth in advertising."
Merck: 55,000 Dead
It's not as if people in power didn't know about the impending disaster – what David Graham, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) drug safety official, calls "maybe the single greatest drug-safety catastrophe in the history of this country.''
Testifying before a Senate committee in November, Dr. Graham put the number in United States who had suffered heart attacks or stroke as result of taking the arthritis drug Vioxx in the range of 88,000 to 139,000. As many as 40 percent of these people, or about 35,000-55,000, died as a result, Graham said.
The unacceptable cardiovascular risks of Vioxx were evident as early as 2000 – a full four years before the drug was finally withdrawn from the market by its manufacturer, Merck, according to a study released by the Lancet, the British medical journal.
"This discovery points to astonishing failures in Merck's internal systems of post-marketing surveillance, as well as to lethal weaknesses in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's regulatory oversight," Lancet editors wrote.
Authors of the Lancet study pooled data from 25,273 patients who participated in 18 clinical trials conducted before 2001. They found that patients given Vioxx had 2.3 times the risk of heart attacks as those given placebos or other pain medications.
Merck withdrew Vioxx on September 30 of this year after a company-sponsored trial found a doubling of the risks for heart attack or stroke among those who took the medicine for 18 months or more.
Merck says it disclosed all relevant evidence on Vioxx safety as soon as it acquired it, and pulled the drug as soon as it saw conclusive evidence of the drug's dangers.
"Over the past six years," Merck CEO Raymond Gilmartin told the Senate Finance Committee at the November hearing where Graham made his big splash, "since the time Merck submitted a New Drug Application for Vioxx to the FDA, we have promptly disclosed the results of numerous Merck-sponsored studies to the FDA, physicians, the scientific community and the media and participated in a balanced, scientific discussion of its risks and benefits."
Until the September clinical trial results came in, Gilmartin said, "the combined data from randomized controlled clinical trials showed no difference in confirmed cardiovascular event rates between Vioxx and placebo and Vioxx and NSAIDs other than naproxen. When data from the APPROVe study [the September results] became available, Merck acted quickly to withdraw the medicine from the market."
But there is evidence that strongly suggests a different version of the story.
The Lancet findings came in the wake of new disclosures that suggest Merck was fully aware of Vioxx's potential risks by 2000.
The Wall Street Journal revealed emails that confirm Merck executives' knowledge of their drug's adverse cardiovascular profile – the risk was "clearly there," according to one senior researcher.
"Given this disturbing contradiction – Merck's own understanding of Vioxx's true risk profile and its attempt to gloss over these risks in their public statements at the time – it is hard to see how Merck's chief executive officer, Raymond Gilmartin, can retain the confidence of the public, his company's most important constituency," the Lancet editors wrote.
Dr. Graham, the federal drug-safety reviewer, continues to seek to publish his study demonstrating the dangers of Vioxx, but he has been delayed and demeaned by top officials at the Food and Drug Administration.
At the Senate hearing, Dr. Graham said that the FDA "as currently configured is incapable of protecting America against another Vioxx," because of ties between agency reviewers and the pharmaceutical industry. Graham says that as a result of his testimony, his bosses have threatened to toss him out of the FDA's drug safety unit.
At the Senate hearing, Graham said that at least five medications currently on the market pose such risks that their sale ought to be limited or stopped. Graham named the five as Meridia, Crestor, Accutane, Bextra and Serevent.
In November 2004, Forbes.com named David Graham "face of the year."
We join with Forbes in saluting Graham "for his steadfast advocacy of drug safety and his willingness to blow the whistle on his bosses."
McWane: Death on the Job
The New York Times ran a three-part series by David Barstow and Lowell Bergman that exposed the egregious safety record of McWane Inc., a large, privately held Alabama-based sewer and water pipe manufacturer.
Nine McWane employees have lost their lives in workplace accidents since 1995. More than 4,600 injuries were recorded among the company's 5,000 employees.
According to the series, one man died when an industrial oven exploded after he was directed to use it to incinerate highly combustible paint. Another was crushed by a conveyor belt that lacked a required protective guard.
Three of McWane's nine deaths were the result of deliberate violations of safety standards. In five others, safety lapses were a contributing factor.
According to the Times, McWane pulled the wool over the eyes of investigators by stalling them at the factory gates, and then hiding defective equipment. Accident sites were altered before investigators could inspect them, in violation of federal rules.
When government enforcement officials did find serious violations, "the punishment meted out by the federal government was so minimal that McWane could treat it as simply a cost of doing business."
"After a worker was crushed to death by a forklift that apparently had faulty brakes, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation found defects in all 14 of the plant's forklifts, including the one involved in the death," the Times reported. The fine was just $10,500. Employers are further protected by the workers' compensation system, which can make it hard for victims to sue."
According to the Times, in one McWane oven explosion that killed an employee, Frank Wagner, McWane "hired a well-connected lobbyist to lean on Dennis Vacco, then New York State's attorney general, and ended up with a settlement in which it did not admit responsibility for the death."
The experts who looked at the case determined that the explosion that killed him was the result of reckless criminal actions by McWane, which was operating a cast-iron foundry in Elmira, New York, where Wagner worked.
"The evidence compels us to act," the prosecution team wrote in a confidential memorandum to Vacco in 1996. The team urged him to ask a grand jury to indict McWane and its managers on manslaughter and other charges. A grand jury inquiry, senior investigators believed, could have taken them up the corporate ladder, the Times reported.
But Vacco never sought an indictment against McWane for any crime.
Only after an unusual intervention by the United States attorney in Buffalo, who threatened federal charges, did McWane agree to plead guilty to a state felony and pay $500,000.
"But as the company and Mr. Wagner's widow are quick to note, that charge, a hazardous-waste violation, specifically did not hold McWane accountable for Mr. Wagner's death," the Times reported.
"It was a reckless act on the part of certain individuals in that company that caused the death of that person. I'll believe that till the day I die," says Donald Snell, who supervised the state environmental agency's investigation. "The ends of justice were not met."
As the Times series showed, in plant after plant, year after year, "McWane workers have been maimed, burned, sickened and killed by the same safety and health failures."
McWane says it is changing – and it's certainly paying more attention to PR after the Times series.
"Over the last several years, our Company has embarked on significant changes that are focused on setting the industry standard in employee safety, health and environmental programs," asserts a May 2004 report from the company on health and safety.
That doesn't exactly jibe with what company managers call "the McWane way" – what federal and state regulators characterized to the Times as a "lawless" and "rogue" operation that ruthlessly sought profits with disregard for worker safety and well-being.
Riggs Bank: The Pinochet Connection
An explosive report from the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, issued in July, revealed that Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C. illegally operated bank accounts for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and routinely ignored evidence of corrupt practices in managing more than 60 accounts for the government of Equatorial Guinea.
An ongoing internal investigation by Riggs has revealed that the bank's dealing with Pinochet dates back to 1985, while the Chilean despot remained in power, according to a November Washington Post report.
Riggs has not so far been cited for civil or criminal violations in connection with the Pinochet money-laundering scheme. In May, the bank paid $25 million in fines in connection with money-laundering violations related to the Equatorial Guinea and Saudi Arabian governments.
The bank capitalized on its venerable reputation in Washington to become the banker to the embassies that dot the city and the large foreign diplomatic corps resident in the U.S. capital. Riggs eagerly sought to service them all, apparently even when dictators and their families requested the bank engage in illegal activities to launder money.
The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report found that from 1994 until 2002, Riggs opened at least six accounts and issued several certificates of deposit (CDs) for Pinochet while he was under house arrest in the United Kingdom and his assets were the subject of court proceedings. The aggregate deposits in the Pinochet accounts at Riggs ranged from $4 million to $8 million at a time.
What is now becoming apparent is that Riggs was collaborating with Pinochet even a decade earlier, with a scale of activity not yet clear.
Riggs was not a passive or unknowing actor in this drama. According to the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report, high bank officials solicited Pinochet's business, the bank helped Pinochet set up offshore shell corporations and open accounts in the names of those corporations to disguise his control of the accounts, altered the names of his personal accounts to disguise their ownership, and otherwise worked to help him hide his money flow.
Although these activities seem to violate U.S. banking rules, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) did not take enforcement action against the bank after it learned of these matters in 2002. That presumably was not unrelated to the fact that the OCC examiner at Riggs soon thereafter went to work for Riggs.
Pinochet is not the only dictator for whom Riggs undertook money laundering.
Equatorial Guinea is a small, oil-rich West African country dominated by a dictator, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasago. Obiang, his family and cronies live a life of luxury, while the rest of the country remains desperately poor.
The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report found that from 1995 until 2004, Riggs Bank administered more than 60 accounts and CDs for the government of Equatorial Guinea, Equatorial Guinea government officials or their family members. Money laundering to cover up corruption appeared to be routine.
Combined, these accounts represented the largest relationship at Riggs Bank, with aggregate deposits ranging from $400 to $700 million at a time.
Riggs does not deny these activities took place, and its internal investigation is continuing. A number of Riggs employees involved in the scandals have been fired or demoted. In July, Riggs announced that it was going to be acquired by PNC Financial Services Group (see profile of AIG above) for more than $700 million. Ongoing legal problems at Riggs could derail the deal, which is supposed to be consummated early in 2005, but for now both parties say it remains on.
Wal-Mart: The Workfare Company
Wal-Mart faces a class action lawsuit on behalf of 1.6 million women workers, alleging rampant employment discrimination at Wal-Mart.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has announced plans to spend $25 million a year with the ultimate goal of unionizing Wal-Mart, the largest private U.S. employer.
And the company – which has already lost more than 200 site fights – faces an even more-intensified resistance to its efforts to locate new stores, as it increasingly seeks to enter markets in more urban areas.
But while on a bit of a public relations defensive, the company remains the colossus of U.S. – and increasingly global – retailing. It registers more than a quarter trillion dollars in sales. Its revenues account for 2 percent of U.S. Gross Domestic Product.
A February 2004 report issued by Representative George Miller (D-Calif.) encapsulated the ways that Wal-Mart squeezes and cheats its employees, among them: blocking union organizing efforts, paying employees an average $8.23 an hour (as compared to more than $10 for an average supermarket worker), allegedly extracting off-the-clock work, and providing inadequate and unaffordable healthcare packages for employees.
Miller's report's innovation was in documenting how Wal-Mart's low wages and inadequate benefits not only hurt workers directly, but impose costs on taxpayers. The report estimated that one 200-person Wal-Mart store may result in a cost to federal taxpayers of $420,750 per year – about $2,103 per employee. These public costs include: $36,000 a year for free and reduced lunches for just 50 qualifying Wal-Mart families. $42,000 a year for Section 8 housing assistance, assuming 3 percent of the store employees qualify for such assistance, at $6,700 per family. $125,000 a year for federal tax credits and deductions for low-income families, assuming 50 employees are heads of household with a child and 50 are married with two children. $100,000 a year for the additional Title I [educational] expenses, assuming 50 Wal-Mart families qualify with an average of two children. $108,000 a year for the additional federal healthcare costs of moving into state children's health insurance programs (S-CHIP), assuming 30 employees with an average of two children qualify.
Wal-Mart's abuses are giving rise to countervailing efforts, but it is an open question whether the company has amassed such power that it will be able to defeat such initiatives.
In California, in November, the company was able to stave off by a 51-to 49 percent margin a proposition that would have required every large and medium employer in the state to provide decent healthcare coverage for their workers, with the employer contribution set at a minimum of 80 percent of costs.
Wal-Mart dumped a half million dollars into the anti-Proposition 72 campaign just a week before the vote.
"As one of California's leading employers, we care about the health of our 60,000 employees here," said Wal-Mart spokesperson Cynthia Lin, in celebrating the defeat of Proposition 72. "That's why we provide our employees with affordable, quality health care coverage."
The biggest immediate challenge facing Wal-Mart is the class action lawsuit filed by its women workers. The women allege that Wal-Mart pays female workers less than men, promotes men faster than women and men above more competent women, and fosters a hostile work environment.
While Wal-Mart is willing to bend to consumer demand on marginal issues like covering over the headlines on Cosmopolitan magazine, it is not so flexible on respect for worker rights. Nor is there any sign of a consumer rebellion on anything like the scale necessary to make the company revisit its employment policies.
The full-length version of this piece can be found at The Multinational Monitor.
Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman are co-authors of "On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy" (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press). Robert Weissman is general counsel for Essential Inventions, a nonprofit mentioned in the Abbott profile.
I've officially decided that I'm not going to apply for the Classics program at CU. It just isn't reasonable that I can master four languages over the course of the next two years. One will be quite hard enough, thanks.
I am going to find a Library Science program to apply for, though. If nothing else, I can combine it with my M.A. in History to work in special collections and reference areas. I've also already taken four grad level library science courses, which I'm hoping will significantly reduce the time to finish.
The American people have returned George W. Bush to office. May the world forgive us and God preserve us.
I'm still feeling a bit conflicted after the rest of my campus visits, but I have at least two more to do on another day - Prof Q. (Ancient) and Prof. U (U.S.). I also need to give the Graduate Director a call regarding funding.
The best two parts of the day were talking to Prof. C (U.S. Social History) and the Graduate Secretary. Because I seem to have established a good relationship with Prof. C (one of Heather's instructors), that was a lot of fun. Prof C. introduced me to the Graduate Secretary, who went through my application packet with me. He made a couple of suggestions for modifying my personal statement, and gave me time to make them this evening. Heather is going to drop it off for him tomorrow before her Latin class. This is sort of significant, in that the application packets were due on January 1st. I guess getting to know the right people really can help.
I'm going to finish up my app for the Classics Dept. tomorrow. I spent the down time at CU editing my writing sample, so tomorrow is really just finishing off the personal statement. I'm worried about this one, mostly because of their language requirements - German, Latin, Greek, and one additional - which the History faculty made seem to be requirements before admission. Which means another phone call to the Classics Graduate Director on Tuesday.
*sigh*
Applying to get into the PhD program at CU is becoming a frustrating experience. The first part was the rush to get the application in to the History Dept. This involved transcripts, letters of recommendation, a writing sample, a description of background and research interests. All of that had to be complete by January 1st, which meant I worked on it while finishing my M.A. Not fun.
Today I am on campus at CU to meet some faculty members about the History program. In some ways this is a discouraging experience. CU does not specifically do Military History, and the only PhD in Ancient History is through the Classics Department. Both of the faculty members made sure I understood this dilemma rather explicitly.
You'd expect that was merely due diligience - you don't want someone to get into something as important as their PhD only to have them become discouraged because their program doesn't quite fit their interests. Unfortunately, it felt like the first faculty member I met (Prof. X) went out of his way to pigeonhole my interests in the narrow category of Military History, and that I would be better of somewhere else. Unfortunately, Prof. X is also a person I would likely end up spending a lot of time working with if I come here. sigh.
Prof. Y was more positive. He also pointed out that CU doesn't really do Military History, but he suggested that a concentration in American History with a concentration in Military History might work quite well. He also noted that I have fairly broad interests, which Prof. X blew off. Later today I meet with Prof Z, whose office is next to Prof. Y's. Hopefully this will be another productive meeting.
I am wondering if my meeting with Prof. X didn't go so well because I was nervous (quite), or because my email asking for an appointment specifically mentioned Military History - with the result that he had already determined what he thought. Prof. Y was kind enough to meet with me after his morning class depsite the fact that I didn't have an appointment, and had not emailed him. I just introduced myself and asked if he had a few minutes. Did that go better because he had no preconceived ideas of who I was, or did I just present myself in a different, and more favorable, light?
These conversations also made me nerous about my ongoing application to the Classics Dept. Classics is necessarily focused on languages - German, Greek, and Latin - that I have no experience with. I plan on working on Latin over the next few month, which is aided by Heather's Latin classes, but Profs X & Y indicated that I needed Greek and Latin before Classics would admit me. I guess next week I'll be calling Classics to discuss that particular issue.
This is becoming an increasingly nerve wracking experience, particularly because if I don't get in here I will have to wait until Heather finishes law school to go somewhere else.
I guess it's a small victory that these two Mississippi counties aren't actively destroying the books, but I still think they should be allowing people to choose whether they want to read Jon Stewart's book, or not. So much for individual responsibility, personal choice, and access to information.
Here's all the information on voting fraud in Ohio during the 2004 election. How depressing.
Congress passed this little doomsday provision that allows a small group of Congressional reps to run the government and pass laws if the traditional quorum of 218 representatives can't get to the Capitol during an emergency. Ignoring the issue of Constitutionality, there are huge opportunities for abuse of this piece of legislation.
Not only is there the potential that a small minority of legislators could use an emergency to declare war on another country, but they could conceivably try to use their temporary ability to run the government to pass non-emergency legislation like budgets, Constitutional Amendments (gay marriage anyone?), or other controversial policy changes. It doesn't take much imagination that unscrupulous partisan legislators could use this government continuity legislation to further their own agendas...
And here I always thought that the Republicans were supposed to be the sober, reflective, thoughtful people in government that were aware of the dangers inherent with this type of monkey business.
Brigadier General David M. Brahms (Ret. USMC)
Brigadier General James Cullen (Ret. USA)
Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote (Ret. USA)
Lieutenant General Robert Gard (Ret. USA)
Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn (Ret. USN)
Rear Admiral Don Guter (Ret. USN)
General Joseph Hoar (Ret. USMC)
Rear Admiral John D. Hutson (Ret. USN)
Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy (Ret. USA)
General Merrill McPeak (Ret. USAF)
Major General Melvyn Montano (Ret. USAF Nat. Guard)
General John Shalikashvili (Ret. USA)
The Honorable Members of the Senate Judiciary
United States Senate
Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE:
Dear Senator
We, the undersigned, are retired professional military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces. We write to express our deep concern about the nomination of Alberto R. Gonzales to be Attorney General, and to urge you to explore in detail his views concerning the role of the Geneva Conventions in U.S. detention and interrogation policy and practice. During his tenure as White House Counsel, Mr. Gonzales appears to have played a significant role in shaping U.S. detention and interrogation operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere. Today, it is clear that these operations have fostered greater animosity toward the United States, undermined our intelligence gathering efforts, and added to the risks facing our troops serving around the world. Before Mr. Gonzales assumes the position of Attorney General, it is critical to understand whether he intends to adhere to the positions he adopted as White House Counsel, or chart a revised course more consistent with fulfilling our nation’s complex security interests, and maintaining a military that operates within the rule of law.
Among his past actions that concern us most, Mr. Gonzales wrote to the President on January 25, 2002, advising him that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the conflict then underway in Afghanistan. More broadly, he wrote that the “war on terrorism” presents a “new paradigm [that] renders obsolete Geneva’s” protections. The reasoning Mr. Gonzales advanced in this memo was rejected by many military leaders at the time, including Secretary of State Colin Powell who argued that abandoning the Geneva Conventions would put our soldiers at greater risk, would “reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva Conventions,” and would “undermine the protections of the rule of law for our troops, both in this specific conflict [Afghanistan] and in general.” State Department adviser William H. Taft IV agreed that this decision “deprives our troops [in Afghanistan] of any claim to the protection of the Conventions in the event they are captured and weakens the protections afforded by the Conventions to our troops in future conflicts.” Mr.
Gonzales’ recommendation also ran counter to the wisdom of former U.S. prisoners of war. As Senator John McCain has observed: “I am certain we all would have been a lot worse off if there had not been the Geneva Conventions around which an international consensus formed about some very basic standards of decency that should apply even amid the cruel excesses of war.”
Mr. Gonzales’ reasoning was also on the wrong side of history. Repeatedly in our past, the United States has confronted foes that, at the time they emerged, posed threats of a scope or nature unlike any we had previously faced. But we have been far more steadfast in the past in keeping faith with our national commitment to the rule of law. During the Second World War, General Dwight D. Eisenhower explained that the allies adhered to the law of war in their treatment of prisoners because “the Germans had some thousands of American and British
prisoners and I did not want to give Hitler the excuse or justification for treating our prisoners more harshly than he already was doing.” In Vietnam, U.S. policy required that the Geneva Conventions be observed for all enemy prisoners of war – both North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong – even though the Viet Cong denied our own prisoners of war the same protections. And in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the United States afforded Geneva Convention protections to
more than 86,000 Iraqi prisoners of war held in U.S. custody. The threats we face today – while grave and complex – no more warrant abandoning these basic principles than did the threats of enemies past.
Perhaps most troubling of all, the White House decision to depart from the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan went hand in hand with the decision to relax the definition of torture and to alter interrogation doctrine accordingly. Mr. Gonzales’ January 2002 memo itself warned that the decision not to apply Geneva Convention standards “could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries.” Yet Mr. Gonzales then made that very recommendation with reference to Afghanistan, a policy later extended piece by piece to Iraq.
Sadly, the uncertainty Mr. Gonzales warned about came to fruition. As James R. Schlesinger’s panel reviewing Defense Department detention operations concluded earlier this year, these changes in doctrine have led to uncertainty and confusion in the field, contributing to the abuses of detainees at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and undermining the mission and morale of our troops.
The full extent of Mr. Gonzales’ role in endorsing or implementing the interrogation practices the world has now seen remains unclear. A series of memos that were prepared at his direction in 2002 recommended official authorization of harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, feigned suffocation, and sleep deprivation. As with the recommendations on the Geneva Conventions, these memos ignored established U.S. military policy, including doctrine prohibiting “threats, insults, or exposure to inhumane treatment as a means of or aid to interrogation.” Indeed, the August 1, 2002 Justice Department memo analyzing the law on interrogation references health care administration law more than five times, but never once cites the U.S. Army Field Manual on interrogation. The Army Field Manual was the product of
decades of experience – experience that had shown, among other things that such interrogation methods produce unreliable results and often impede further intelligence collection. Discounting the Manual’s wisdom on this central point shows a disturbing disregard for the decades of hardwon knowledge of the professional American military.
The United States’ commitment to the Geneva Conventions – the laws of war – flows not only from field experience, but also from the moral principles on which this country was founded, and by which we all continue to be guided. We have learned first hand the value of adhering to the Geneva Conventions and practicing what we preach on the international stage. With this in mind, we urge you to ask of Mr. Gonzales the following:
(1) Do you believe the Geneva Conventions apply to all those captured by U.S. authorities in Afghanistan and Iraq?
(2) Do you support affording the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all detainees in U.S. custody?
(3) What rights under U.S. or international law do suspected members of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or members of similar organizations have when brought into the care or custody of U.S. military, law enforcement, or intelligence forces?
(4) Do you believe that torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment – such as dietary manipulation, forced nudity, prolonged solitary confinement, or threats of harm – may lawfully be used by U.S. authorities so long as the detainee is an “unlawful combatant” as you have defined it?
(5) Do you believe that CIA and other government intelligence agencies are bound by the same laws and restrictions that constrain the operations of the U.S. Armed Forces engaged in detention and interrogation operations abroad?
Signed,
Brigadier General David M. Brahms (Ret. USMC)
Brigadier General James Cullen (Ret. USA)
Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote (Ret. USA)
Lieutenant General Robert Gard (Ret. USA)
Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn (Ret. USN)
Admiral Don Guter (Ret. USN)
General Joseph Hoar (Ret. USMC)
Rear Admiral John D. Hutson (Ret. USN)
Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy (Ret. USA)
General Merrill McPeak (Ret. USAF)
Major General Melvyn Montano (Ret. USAF Nat. Guard)
General John Shalikashvili (Ret. USA)
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ON SIGNATORIES OF LETTER TO SENATE JUDICIARY
Biographical information on:
Brigadier General David M. Brahms (Ret. USMC)
Brigadier General James Cullen (Ret. USA)
Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote (Ret. USA)
Lieutenant General Robert Gard (Ret. USA)
Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn (Ret. USN)
Rear Admiral Don Guter (Ret. USN)
General Joseph Hoar (Ret. USMC)
Rear Admiral John D. Hutson (Ret. USN)
Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy (Ret. USA)
General Merrill McPeak (Ret. USAF)
Major General Melvyn Montano (Ret. USAF Nat. Guard)
General John Shalikashvili (Ret. USA)
Brigadier General David M. Brahms (Ret. USMC)
General Brahms served in the Marine Corps from 1963-1988. He served as the Marine Corps' senior legal adviser from 1983 until his retirement in 1988. General Brahms currently practices law in Carlsbad, California and sits on the board of directors of the Judge Advocates Association.
Brigadier General James Cullen (Ret. USA)
General Cullen is a retired Brigadier General in the United States Army Reserve Judge Advocate General's Corps and last served as the Chief Judge (IMA) of the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals. He currently practices law in New York City.
Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote (Ret. USA)
General Foote was Commanding General of Fort Belvoir in 1989. She was recalled to active duty in 1996 to serve as Vice Chair of the Secretary of the Army's Senior Review Panel on Sexual Harassment. She is President of the Alliance for National Defense, a non-profit organization.
Lieutenant General Robert Gard (Ret. USA)
General Gard is a retired Lieutenant General who served in the United States Army; his military assignments included combat service in Korea and Vietnam. He is currently a consultant on international security and president emeritus of the Monterey Institute for International Studies.
Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn (Ret. USN)
Admiral Gunn served as the Inspector General of the Department of the Navy until his retirement in August 2000. Admiral Gunn commanded the USS BARBEY and the Destroyer Squadron “Thirty-one,” a component of the U.S. Navy's Anti-Submarine Warfare Destroyer Squadrons.
Rear Admiral Don Guter (Ret. USN)
Admiral Guter served as the Navy’s Judge Advocate General from 2000 to 2002.
Admiral Guter is currently CEO of Vinson Hall Corporation/Executive Director of the Navy Marine Coast Guard Residence Foundation in McLean, Virginia.
General Joseph Hoar (Ret. USMC)
General Hoar served as Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Central Command. After the first Gulf War, General Hoar led the effort to enforce the naval embargo in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and to enforce the no-fly zone in the south of Iraq. He oversaw the humanitarian and peacekeeping operations in Kenya and Somalia and also led the U.S. Marine Corps support for operations in Rwanda, and the evacuation of U.S. civilians from Yemen during the 1994 civil war. He was the Deputy for Operations for the Marine Corps during the Gulf War and served as General Norman Schwarzkopf's Chief of Staff at Central Command. General Hoar currently runs a consulting business in California.
Rear Admiral John D. Hutson (Ret. USN)
Admiral John D. Hutson served as the Navy's Judge Advocate General from 1997 to 2000. Admiral Hutson now serves as President and Dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire.
Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy (Ret. USA)
General Kennedy is the first and only woman to achieve the rank of three-star general in the United States Army. Kennedy served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Army Intelligence, Commander of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, and as Commander of the 703d military intelligence brigade in Kunia, Hawaii.
General Merrill A. McPeak (Ret. USAF)
General McPeak served as the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. Previously, General McPeak served as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces. He is a command pilot, having flown more than 6,000 hours, principally in fighter aircraft.
Major General Melvyn Montano (Ret. USAF Nat. Guard)
General Montano was the adjutant general in charge of the National Guard in New Mexico from 1994 to 1999. He served in Vietnam and was the first Hispanic Air National Guard officer appointed as an adjutant general in the country.
General John Shalikashvili (Ret. USA)
General Shalikashvili was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Department of Defense) from 1993 till 1997. Prior to serving as Chairman, he served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, and also as the commander-in-chief of the United States European Command. He was until recently a visiting professor at The Stanford Institute for International Studies.
