Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China

long live the bottom line and obscene profits

Where did all the people and animals go?

NYT April 30, 2007
Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China
By DAVID BARBOZA and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
ZHANGQIU, China, April 28 — As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.
For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.
“Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed,” said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they? If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.”
Melamine is at the center of a recall of 60 million packages of pet food, after the chemical was found in wheat gluten linked this month to the deaths of at least 16 pets and the illness of possibly thousands of pets in the United States.
No one knows exactly how melamine (which is not believed to be particularly toxic) became so fatal in pet food, but its presence in any form of American food is illegal.
The link to China has set off concerns among critics of the Food and Drug Administration that ingredients in pet food as well as human food, which are increasingly coming from abroad, are not being adequately screened.
“They have fewer people inspecting product at the ports than ever before,” says Caroline Smith DeWaal, the director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. “Until China gets programs in place to verify the safety of their products, they need to be inspected by U.S. inspectors. This open-door policy on food ingredients is an open invitation for an attack on the food supply, either intentional or unintentional.”
Now, with evidence mounting that the tainted wheat gluten came from China, American regulators have been granted permission to visit the region to conduct inspections of food treatment facilities.
The Food and Drug Administration has already banned imports of wheat gluten from China after it received more than 14,000 reports of pets believed to have been sickened by packaged food. And last week, the agency opened a criminal investigation in the case and searched the offices of at least one pet food supplier.
The Department of Agriculture has also stepped in. On Thursday, the agency ordered more than 6,000 hogs to be quarantined or slaughtered after some of the pet food ingredients laced with melamine were accidentally sent to hog farms in eight states, including California.
The pet food case is also putting China’s agricultural exports under greater scrutiny because the country has had a terrible food safety record.
In recent years, for instance, China’s food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim.
For their part, Chinese officials dispute any suggestion that melamine from the country could have killed pets. But regulators here on Friday banned the use of melamine in vegetable proteins made for export or for use in domestic food supplies.
Yet what is clear from visiting this region of northeast China is that for years melamine has been quietly mixed into Chinese animal feed and then sold to unsuspecting farmers as protein-rich pig, poultry and fish feed.
Many animal feed operators here advertise on the Internet, seeking to purchase melamine scrap. The Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Company, one of the companies that American regulators named as having shipped melamine-tainted wheat gluten to the United States, had posted such a notice on the Internet last March.
Here at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory, huge boiler vats are turning coal into melamine, which is then used to create plastics and fertilizer.
But the leftover melamine scrap, golf ball-size chunks of white rock, is sometimes being sold to local agricultural entrepreneurs, who say they mix a powdered form of the scrap into animal feed to deceive those who raise animals into thinking they are buying feed that is high in protein.
“It just saves money if you add melamine scrap,” said the manager of an animal feed factory here.
Last Friday here in Zhangqiu, a fast-growing industrial city southeast of Beijing, two animal feed producers explained in great detail how they purchase low-grade wheat, corn, soybean or other proteins and then mix in small portions of nitrogen-rich melamine scrap, whose chemical properties help the feed register an inflated protein level.
Melamine is the new scam of choice, they say, because urea — another nitrogen-rich chemical — is illegal for use in pig and poultry feed and can be easily detected in China as well as in the United States.
“People use melamine scrap to boost nitrogen levels for the tests,” said the manager of the animal feed factory. “If you add it in small quantities, it won’t hurt the animals.”
The manager, who works at a small animal feed operation here that consists of a handful of storage and mixing areas, said he has mixed melamine scrap into animal feed for years.
He said he was not currently using melamine. But he then pulled out a plastic bag containing what he said was melamine powder and said he could dye it any color to match the right feed stock.
He said that melamine used in pet food would probably not be harmful. “Pets are not like pigs or chickens,” he said casually, explaining that they can afford to eat less protein. “They don’t need to grow fast.”
The resulting melamine-tainted feed would be weak in protein, he acknowledged, which means the feed is less nutritious.
But, by using the melamine additive, the feed seller makes a heftier profit because melamine scrap is much cheaper than soy, wheat or corn protein.
“It’s true you can make a lot more profit by putting melamine in,” said another animal feed seller here in Zhangqiu. “Melamine will cost you about $1.20 for each protein count per ton whereas real protein costs you about $6, so you can see the difference.”
Feed producers who use melamine here say the tainted feed is often shipped to feed mills in the Yangtze River Delta, near Shanghai, or down to Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong. They also said they knew that some melamine-laced feed had been exported to other parts of Asia, including South Korea, North Korea, Indonesia and Thailand.
Evidence is mounting that Chinese protein exports have been tainted with melamine and that its use in agricultural regions like this one is widespread. But the government has issued no recall of any food or feed product here in China.
Indeed, few people outside the agriculture business know about the use of melamine scrap. The Chinese news media — which is strictly censored — has not reported much about the country’s ties to the pet food recall in the United States. And few in agriculture here do not see any harm in using melamine in small doses; they simply see it as cheating a little on protein, not harming animals or pets.
As for the sale of melamine scrap, it is increasingly popular as a fake ingredient in feed, traders and workers here say.
At the Hebei Haixing Insect Net Factory in nearby Hebei Province, which makes animal feed, a manager named Guo Qingyin said: “In the past melamine scrap was free, but the price has been going up in the past few years. Consumption of melamine scrap is probably bigger than that of urea in the animal feed industry now.”
And so melamine producers like the ones here in Zhangqiu are busy.
A man named Jing, who works in the sales department at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory here, said on Friday that prices have been rising, but he said that he had no idea how the company’s melamine scrap is used.
“We have an auction for melamine scrap every three months,” he said. “I haven’t heard of it being added to animal feed. It’s not for animal feed.”
David Barboza reported from Zhangqiu and Alexei Barrionuevo reported from Chicago. Rujun Shen also contributed reporting from Zhangqiu

Putin to Suspend Pact With NATO

"everyone is expected to live up to treaty obligations,”

"in 2001 the US administration unilaterally pulled out of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972" .

.......and so we march closer to wisdom and understanding with nuclear toys to play with

NYT April 27, 2007
Putin to Suspend Pact With NATO
By C. J. CHIVERS and MARK LANDLER
MOSCOW, April 26 — President Vladimir V. Putin said Thursday that Russia would suspend its compliance with a treaty on conventional arms in Europe that was forged at the end of the cold war, opening a fresh and intense dispute in the souring relations between NATO and the Kremlin.
The announcement, made in Mr. Putin’s annual address to Parliament, underscored the Kremlin’s anger at the United States for proposing a new missile defense system in Europe, which the Bush administration insists is meant to counter potential threats from North Korea and Iran.
Mr. Putin suggested that Russia would use its future compliance with the treaty as a bargaining point in that disagreement with the United States.
The new standoff also demonstrated the Kremlin’s lingering frustration over NATO’s expansion toward Russia’s borders and with the treaties negotiated in the 1990s when Russia, still staggering through its post-Soviet woes, was much weaker and less assertive on the world stage than it is today.
Although Mr. Putin did not mention it on Thursday, Russia is angry that in 2001 the Bush administration unilaterally pulled out of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.
On Monday, Mr. Putin’s defense minister, Anatoly E. Serdyukov, rejected an offer from the visiting American defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, to share antimissile technology, which had been intended as a way to assuage Moscow’s opposition to Washington’s missile defense plan.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in Oslo at a gathering of diplomats from NATO countries, reacted coldly to Mr. Putin’s speech.
“These are treaty obligations, and everyone is expected to live up to treaty obligations,” she said.
Ms. Rice also dismissed Russian concerns that introducing new military technology to Europe could upset the balance of forces there and set off an escalation that could lead to a new cold war. She called such claims “purely ludicrous” and said the scale of the proposed missile defense system was obviously far too small to defend against the Russian nuclear arsenal.
Though the step by Mr. Putin was incremental, it was highly symbolic and reminiscent of brinkmanship in the cold war.
The agreement in question, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, known by the initials C.F.E., was signed in 1990 by the members of NATO and of the Warsaw Pact, including Russia.
It required the reduction and relocation of much of the main battle equipment then located along the East-West dividing lines, including tanks, artillery pieces, armored vehicles and attack aircraft. It also established an inspection regime.
Under the treaty more than 50,000 pieces of military equipment were converted or destroyed by 1995. With its initial ambitions largely achieved, it was renegotiated in 1999, adding a requirement that Russia withdraw its forces from Georgia and Moldova, two former Soviet republics where tensions and intrigue with Moscow run high.
Russia has not withdrawn its troops, and the revised treaty has not been ratified by most of the signing nations, including the United States, which has withheld ratification until the Kremlin complies with the troop withdrawal commitments.
Though in many ways the treaty has already stalled, it has remained a powerful diplomatic marker, a central element in the group of agreements that defused the threat of war in Europe as Communism collapsed.
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO’s secretary general, expressed dismay at the Kremlin’s decision, saying the alliance greeted Russia’s announcement with “concern, grave concern, disappointment and regret” and calling the treaty “one of the cornerstones of European security.”
Mr. Putin abruptly called the treaty’s future into question. In doing so, he pointedly did not use any of the conciliatory language he sometimes inserts into his speeches to leaven his criticisms of the United States.
He did not define specifically what he meant by a moratorium, nor did his foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, when asked in an appearance in Oslo whether Russia might resist inspections or shift conventional forces now that it was no longer observing the treaty. “Everything will be in moratorium,” Mr. Lavrov said. “It is clear, is it not?”
Mr. Lavrov’s hard-line position in public was preceded by what one senior American official described as a “riveting” session with NATO diplomats in private. In an intense 10-minute monologue, he presented a list of grievances about NATO and its role in the world, from its enlarged membership to the missile defense system.
The officials said Mr. Lavrov’s tone prompted stern responses from several NATO members. “The push-back was universal,” the official said, “including some countries that have been reserved about missile defense. It did not have the effect that he may have anticipated.”
The back-and-forth underscored the intensity and breadth of the dispute, and the degree to which the two sides have parted.
Mr. Putin and Mr. Lavrov warned that Russia might withdraw completely from the treaty if the Kremlin was not satisfied with the results of negotiations in the NATO-Russia Council, an organization created in 2002 to increase cooperation between the former enemies.
“I propose discussing this problem,” Mr. Putin said, “and should there be no progress in the negotiations, to look at the possibility of ceasing our commitments under the C.F.E. treaty.”
His comments drew the loudest applause of the day from Russia’s largely compliant Parliament, which for the most part sat quietly during his 70-minute speech.
The Russian president’s remarks coincided with the latest effort by the Bush administration to promote its missile defense system, which it says is necessary to protect Europe if diplomacy fails to deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The system would take at least several years to install and be put into operation, American officials say, and the project would be running on a parallel clock against Iran’s suspected weapons program.
Mr. Lavrov said forcefully that Russia saw no such danger, and that in any event Russia, Europe and the United States should assess the region’s strategic risks jointly. “Our starting point is that we should conduct a joint analysis of whom we should protect ourselves against,” he said. “Who are our enemies?”
He added, “We cannot see at the moment any kind of justified threat.”
American officials were equally adamant in dismissing Russia’s contention that the system would threaten its security.
“The idea that somehow 10 interceptors and a few radars in Eastern Europe are going to threaten the Soviet strategic deterrent is purely ludicrous, and everybody knows it,” Ms. Rice said, slipping inadvertently into cold war terminology with her reference to the Soviet Union.
Aside from the military issues, Mr. Putin chided the West for what he called meddling in Russia’s domestic affairs in the guise of democracy promotion efforts.
The argument simultaneously evoked old times and raised questions about how, and through whom, the latest disagreement might be resolved. Mr. Putin restated to the Parliament his intention to leave office next year, at the end of his second four-year term, which would mean that the issues raised on Thursday could well fall to a successor.
The Russian Constitution limits the president to a maximum of two terms, but there have been calls by politicians loyal to Mr. Putin to set the rule aside and let him remain in office, and speculation has never fully subsided that he might do so. But on Thursday, Mr. Putin was clear about his intentions, saying this annual address was his last.
“In the spring of next year my duties end, and the next state of the nation speech will be delivered by a different head of state,” he said.
The disagreement with the West seemed certain to extend well into that next term. “On missile defense,” Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said, “we do not see eye to eye.”
C. J. Chivers reported from Moscow, and Mark Landler from Oslo

Starving the poor "to feed the automobiles"

WHAT PART OF FREEDOM INEXTRICABLY INTERWOVEN WITH EVOLUTION, SURVIVAL, WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING AND QUALITY OF LIFE, IS STILL NOT UNDERSTOOD ON THE ENERGY FRONT? Evolution Freedom Survival

Latin America Divided Over Ethanol
MEXICO CITY and CARACAS, Venezuela, April 22, 2007
(Christian Science Monitor) This article was written by Sara Miller Llana.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez calls the boom in ethanol the equivalent of starving the poor "to feed automobiles " Ethanol, which is derived from crops such as corn or sugar, is seen by some as a green alternative, a rising star on the path toward reducing independence on foreign petroleum. But it's not just Mr. Chávez who is questioning whether the benefits outweigh the unintended consequences. Now poultry industry executives, who have seen the price of feedstock go up; Mexican consumers, facing a 60 percent jump in the cost of tortillas; and even environmentalists, who look at the amount of fertilizer that will be needed to grow extra crops, are wondering aloud whether ethanol will help or hurt Latin American economies. The South American energy summit that concluded in Venezuela this week provided the latest platform for critics. Even though the debate has been cast as another issue in the long line of ideological battles aligning Chávez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro against the U.S., some analysts say that their point is larger than political: If the price for staple food items rises across the globe because of demand, Latin America will be one of the hardest-hit regions. "I think people worry that rich Americans are trying to fuel cars at the expense of hungry people in poorer countries," says Janet Larsen, director of research at the Earth Policy Institute in Washington. "This increased push for ethanol production could be an incredible foreign policy blunder." What we are seeing now, she says, is the beginning of a very long debate. Chávez's comments came shortly after harsh op-eds penned by Mr. Castro who, in his first public statements since falling ill last July, resurfaced to call the U.S. proposal "genocidal." His words follow mass protests in Mexico, after the price of corn tortillas shot up in January. The South American Energy Summit at Margarita Island was the first meeting between Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva since Chávez lambasted the plan after Mr. Bush visited Brazil last month, when Bush and Lula signed a proposal to promote the industry in the region. For this meeting, Chávez nuanced his position — saying he is not against ethanol production but against the U.S. plan to use corn to produce it. "We're not against biofuels," he said. "They are viable alternatives, as long as they don't negatively affect the lives of the inhabitants of the region." For many analysts, it seemed a retraction of his earlier position that is likely to reduce friction — and ensuing divisions — with Brazil, says Rafael Quiros Corradi, an analyst in Caracas. But it's more than just a political football. Many in the U.S. share great hope in ethanol's potential. President Bush, during his State of the Union address in January, pushed for more production by 2017 to 35 billion gallons, up from 5 billion gallons last year. But there is no doubt, says Pat Westhoff, an associate professor of agriculture at the University of Missouri–Columbia, that ethanol production has contributed to higher food prices. In August the average price paid to U.S. farmers for a bushel of corn was $2.09 — rising to $2.20 in September, $2.54 in October, $2.87 in November, and past $3 in December. By January, angry Mexicans took to the streets to protest the rising cost of tortillas, the central part of most Mexicans' diet. While many factors contributed to the ballooning Mexican corn industry, U.S. prices are reflected on the international market, Mr. Westhoff says. Mexico has reacted most strongly to higher food prices, but it could be the beginning of protests across the world. The food vs. fuel debate poses questions about the management and beneficiaries of resources, says Celso Garrido, an economist at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico. "Mexico gets great quantity of corn from the U.S. This will have an impact on the basket of food for the population in Mexico," he says. "It seems that Mexico requires a policy to look at the impact of transferring food to energy." Food price increases represent far less of an impact on most Americans, since U.S. households, according to United Nations figures, spend 7.3 percent of their consumption expenditure on food, compared to low- and middle-income countries such as Mexico, where the number is 24.5 percent. At the summit, Chávez drew a distinction between America's emphasis on using food staples to produce ethanol and Brazil's plan to use sugar. "We have always said that the bioethanol project ... that Brazil has had for more than 30 years is very different from the madness that the U.S. president has proposed," he said. "It's completely the opposite," said Chávez. Analysts say producing ethanol from sugar is also more efficient. Evanan Romero, an international energy consultant in Venezuela, says he doesn't believe that increased ethanol production — whether with corn or sugar — will contribute to drastically higher prices or hunger among the poor. Instead, he sees ethanol as a development opportunity for poor countries that lack substantial natural energy resources. "Central America will no longer be known as the Banana Republic, but rather the Alcohol Republic," he says, referring to potential production there.
2007 The Christian Science Monitor

Pollution: A life and death issue

WHAT PART OF FREEDOM INEXTRICABLY INTERWOVEN WITH EVOLUTION, SURVIVAL, WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING AND QUALITY OF LIFE, IS STILL NOT UNDERSTOOD ON THE ENERGY FRONT? Evolution Freedom Survival

Pollution: A life and death issue
By Alex Kirby BBC News website environment correspondent
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2004/planet/default.stm
As part of Planet Under Pressure , a BBC News website series looking at some of the biggest environmental issues facing humanity, Alex Kirby considers the Earth's growing pollution problem.
One of the main themes of Planet Under Pressure is the way many of the Earth's environmental crises reinforce one another.
Pollution is an obvious example - we do not have the option of growing food, or finding enough water, on a squeaky-clean planet, but on one increasingly tarnished and trashed by the way we have used it so far.
Cutting waste and clearing up pollution costs money. Yet time and again it is the quest for wealth that generates much of the mess in the first place.
Living in a way that is less damaging to the Earth is not easy, but it is vital, because pollution is pervasive and often life-threatening.
· Air: The World Health Organization (WHO) says 3 million people are killed worldwide by outdoor air pollution annually from vehicles and industrial emissions, and 1.6 million indoors through using solid fuel. Most are in poor countries.
· Water: Diseases carried in water are responsible for 80% of illnesses and deaths in developing countries, killing a child every eight seconds. Each year 2.1 million people die from diarrhoeal diseases associated with poor water.
· Soil: Contaminated land is a problem in industrialised countries, where former factories and power stations can leave waste like heavy metals in the soil. It can also occur in developing countries, sometimes used for dumping pesticides. Agriculture can pollute land with pesticides, nitrate-rich fertilisers and slurry from livestock. And when the contamination reaches rivers it damages life there, and can even create dead zones off the coast, as in the Gulf of Mexico.
Chronic problem
Chemicals are a frequent pollutant. When we think of chemical contamination it is often images of events like Bhopal that come to mind.
But the problem is widespread. One study says 7-20% of cancers are attributable to poor air and pollution in homes and workplaces.
The WHO, concerned about chemicals that persist and build up in the body, especially in the young, says we may "be conducting a large-scale experiment with children's health".
Some man-made chemicals, endocrine disruptors like phthalates and nonylphenol - a breakdown product of spermicides, cosmetics and detergents - are blamed for causing changes in the genitals of some animals.
Affected species include polar bears - so not even the Arctic is immune. And the chemicals climb the food chain, from fish to mammals - and to us.
About 70,000 chemicals are on the market, with around 1,500 new ones appearing annually. At least 30,000 are thought never to have been comprehensively tested for their possible risks to people.
Trade-off
But the snag is that modern society demands many of them, and some are essential for survival.
So while we invoke the precautionary principle, which always recommends erring on the side of caution, we have to recognise there will be trade-offs to be made.
The pesticide DDT does great damage to wildlife and can affect the human nervous system, but can also be effective against malaria. Where does the priority lie?
The industrialised world has not yet cleaned up the mess it created, but it is reaping the benefits of the pollution it has caused. It can hardly tell the developing countries that they have no right to follow suit.
Another complication in tackling pollution is that it does not respect political frontiers. There is a UN convention on transboundary air pollution, but that cannot cover every problem that can arise between neighbours, or between states which do not share a border.
Perhaps the best example is climate change - the countries of the world share one atmosphere, and what one does can affect everyone.
For one and all
One of the principles that is supposed to apply here is simple - the polluter pays.
Sometimes it is obvious who is to blame and who must pay the price. But it is not always straightforward to work out just who is the polluter, or whether the rest of us would be happy to pay the price of stopping the pollution.
One way of cleaning up after ourselves would be to throw less away, designing products to be recycled or even just to last longer.
Previous generations worked on the assumption that discarding our waste was a proper way to be rid of it, so we used to dump nuclear materials and other potential hazards at sea, confident they would be dispersed in the depths.
We now think that is too risky because, as one author wrote, "there's no such place as 'away' - and there's no such person as the 'other'".
Ask not for whom the bell tolls - it tolls for thee, and for me.
Story from BBC NEWS:

Global Warming Called Security Threat

WHAT PART OF FREEDOM INEXTRICABLY INTERWOVEN WITH EVOLUTION, SURVIVAL, WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING AND QUALITY OF LIFE, IS STILL NOT UNDERSTOOD ON THE ENERGY FRONT? Evolution Freedom Survival

NYT April 15, 2007
Global Warming Called Security Threat

(& Could Global Warming Cause War? Christian Science Monitor - below)

By ANDREW C. REVKIN and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
For the second time in a month, private consultants to the government are warning that human-driven warming of the climate poses risks to the national security of the United States.
A report, scheduled to be published on Monday but distributed to some reporters yesterday, said issues usually associated with the environment — like rising ocean levels, droughts and violent weather caused by global warming — were also national security concerns.
“Unlike the problems that we are used to dealing with, these will come upon us extremely slowly, but come they will, and they will be grinding and inexorable,” Richard J. Truly, a retired United States Navy vice admiral and former NASA administrator, said in the report.
The effects of global warming, the study said, could lead to large-scale migrations, increased border tensions, the spread of disease and conflicts over food and water. All could lead to direct involvement by the United States military.
The report recommends that climate change be integrated into the nation’s security strategies and says the United States “should commit to a stronger national and international role to help stabilize climate changes at levels that will avoid significant disruption to global security and stability.”
The report, called “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,” was commissioned by the Center for Naval Analyses, a government-financed research group, and written by a group of retired generals and admirals called the Military Advisory Board.
In March, a report from the Global Business Network, which advises intelligence agencies and the Pentagon on occasion, concluded, among other things, that rising seas and more powerful storms could eventually generate unrest as crowded regions like Bangladesh’s sinking delta become less habitable.
One of the authors of the report, Peter Schwartz, a consultant who studies climate risks and other trends for the Defense Department and other clients, said the climate system, jogged by a century-long buildup of heat-trapping gases, was likely to rock between extremes that could wreak havoc in poor countries with fragile societies.
“Just look at Somalia in the early 1990s,” Mr. Schwartz said. “You had disruption driven by drought, leading to the collapse of a society, humanitarian relief efforts, and then disastrous U.S. military intervention. That event is prototypical of the future.”
“Picture that in Central America or the Caribbean, which are just as likely,” he said. “This is not distant, this is now. And we need to be preparing.”
Other recent studies have shown that drought and scant water have already fueled civil conflicts in global hot spots like Afghanistan, Nepal, and Sudan, according to several recent studies.
This bodes ill, given projections that human-driven warming is likely to make some of the world’s driest, poorest places drier still, experts said.
“The evidence is fairly clear that sharp downward deviations from normal rainfall in fragile societies elevate the risk of major conflict,” said Marc Levy of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, which recently published a study on the relationship between climate and civil war.
Given that climate models project drops in rainfall in such places in a warming world, Mr. Levy said, “It seems irresponsible not to take into account the possibility that a world with climate change will be a more violent world when making judgments about how tolerable such a world might be.”

Could Global Warming Cause War?
April 19, 2007
(Christian Science Monitor) This article was written by Brad Knickerbocker.
For years, the debate over global warming has focused on the three big "E's": environment, energy, and economic impact. This week it officially entered the realm of national security threats and avoiding wars as well. A platoon of retired U.S. generals and admirals warned that global warming "presents significant national security challenges to the United States." The United Nations Security Council held its first-ever debate on the impact of climate change on conflicts. And in Congress, a bipartisan bill would require a National Intelligence Estimate by all federal intelligence agencies to assess the security threats posed by global climate change. Many experts view climate change as a "threat multiplier" that intensifies instability around the world by worsening water shortages, food insecurity, disease, and flooding that lead to forced migration. That's the thrust of a 35-page report by 11 admirals and generals this week issued by the Alexandria, Va.-based national security think tank The CNA Corporation. The study, titled "National Security and the Threat of Climate Change," predicts:
· "Projected climate change will seriously exacerbate already marginal living standards in many Asian, African, and Middle Eastern nations, causing widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states. ... The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide, and the growth of terrorism.
· "The U.S. may be drawn more frequently into these situations, either alone or with allies, to help provide stability before conditions worsen and are exploited by extremists. The U.S. may also be called upon to undertake stability and reconstruction efforts once a conflict has begun, to avert further disaster and reconstitute a stable environment." "We will pay for this one way or another," retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of American forces in the Middle East and one of the report's authors, told the Los Angeles Times. "We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today … or we'll pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives." As quoted in The Associated Press, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, who presided over the United Nations meeting in New York on April 17, posed the question "What makes wars start?" The answer: "Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use. There are few greater potential threats to our economies ... but also to peace and security itself." This is the concern behind a recently introduced bipartisan bill by Sens. Richard Durbin (D) of Illinois and Chuck Hagel (R) of Nebraska. It would require all U.S. intelligence agencies — the CIA, the NSA, the Pentagon, and the FBI — to conduct a comprehensive review of potential security threats related to climate change around the world. "Many of the most severe effects of global warming are expected in regions where fragile governments are least capable of responding to them," Senator Durbin said in a story from the Inter Press Service news agency in Rome. "Failing to recognize and plan for the geopolitical consequences of global warming would be a serious mistake." Rep. Edward J. Markey (D) of Massachusetts, chairman of the newly formed House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, is proposing companion legislation that would fund climate change plans by the Department of Defense. On his Web site, Mr. Markey called for action based on the retired senior officers' report, saying: "Global warming's impacts on natural resources and climate systems may create the fiercest battle our world has ever seen. If we don't cut pollution and head off severe global warming at the pass, we could see extreme geopolitical strain over decreased clean water, environmental refugees, and other impacts." In a speech April 16 to BritishAmerican Business Inc., a trans-Atlantic business organization, British Foreign Secretary Beckett "praised the growing actions of U.S. business executives and state politicians in addressing climate change, including California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced plans last year to work toward a possible joint emissions-trading market," reported The Associated Press. Ms. Beckett also told the business executives that clean technology is going to create a "massive" market opportunities: "Those who move into that market first – first to design, first to patent, first to sell, first to invest, first to build a brand – have an unparalleled chance to make money." The Bush administration has taken a less stark view of the security implications of greenhouse-gas emissions than many scientists and military officers. But in a broader context, the administration has agreed that environmental issues could present national and international security challenges. In its 2006 National Security Strategy, the administration acknowledged that environmental destruction, including that caused by human activity, "may overwhelm the capacity of local authorities to respond, and may even overtax national militaries, requiring a larger international response." "These challenges are not traditional national security concerns, such as the conflict of arms or ideologies. But if left unaddressed they can threaten national security." These concerns are likely to keep growing and continue to be on the agendas at international meetings. A strongly worded draft communiqué for June's G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, warns that "tackling climate change is an imperative, not a choice," reported the British newspaper The Independent on Sunday. The draft says: "Global warming caused largely by human activities is accelerating [and it] will seriously damage our common natural environment and severely weaken [the] global economy, with implications for international security."

The Squeezing Of America's Middle Class

WHAT PART OF FREEDOM INEXTRICABLY INTERWOVEN WITH EVOLUTION, SURVIVAL, WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING AND QUALITY OF LIFE, IS STILL NOT UNDERSTOOD ON THE ENERGY FRONT? Evolution Freedom Survival

The Squeezing Of America's Middle Class
NEW YORK, April 15, 2007
(CBS) The idea of a thriving middle class has always been at the heart of the American dream. The concept really took off in the wake of World War II, when the GI Bill started helping everyday Americans pay for college or vocational education and take out loans to buy homes. By the 1950s, TV shows like "Leave It to Beaver" were presenting an idealized picture of middle-class life. Dad worked, Mom took care of the kids, and there wasn't much talk about how they'd pay the bills. But today the American middle class is struggling. "It seems as if health care, retirement security, being able to pay for kids' college, being able to hold on to and afford a home are real sources of anxiety for middle-class Americans today," Jacob Hacker, a professor of political science at Yale University, told Sunday Morning correspondent Rita Braver. Hacker, an author of a new book that focuses on problems facing America's middle class, says the middle class is more of a symbol than a concrete definition. "I think the symbol is people who are not rich, who have to work hard, usually both parents are working," he said. "They probably have children, that's sort of the image that we have. It's a hard-working middle-class family with kids, making $60,000 to $80,000 a year and feeling really strained economically." Case in point: Jan and Karen Seidler of Youngstown, Ohio: Together, the Seidlers make about $80,000 a year before taxes. It's a second marriage for both and they have four kids. Two sons are still in college, which costs the family $45,000 a year. The Seidlers pay for the boys' living expenses but both sons are taking out loans for tuition. Karen Seidler said her parents could afford to send her to college but she is having trouble paying for her children's education. "I can't, and especially having two at the same time, it's impossible to pay for both of their tuitions and then keep up with all the other bills," she said. Her job as a respiratory therapist at a local hospital does provide some occasional raises. "But the 3 percent that we received in September was, between the groceries going up and our health care out-of-pocket costs [going up], we’re not really getting ahead," she said. And like many other Americans, the Seidlers recently faced a downturn in earnings. Jan Seidler now runs the Youngstown Community Improvement Corporation. But he landed his current job only last year, after losing his previous position as a sales director at a hospital. He was unemployed for seven months. They dipped into their savings and now worry what will happen if there's another emergency. All across the country, middle class Americans are beginning to wonder whether they'll ever have the kind of economic security they thought hard work would bring them. A major reason is that the middle class share of the American Pie has shrunk in recent years. As executive compensation skyrocketed from 2003 to 2004, the average after-tax income for the richest 1 percent of U.S. households went up almost 20 percent, while after-tax incomes for the middle fifth of the nation — the middle of the middle class — went up only 3.6 percent. Looking back 25 years — starting in 1979 — the contrast is even greater. The top one percent saw a whopping 176 percent jump, while the middle fifth of Americans saw only a 21 percent rise. That's a big difference, but although 21 percent still seems high, Hacker says it's not high enough. "We know that the cost of healthcare over that period has quadrupled or gotten even bigger than that," he said. "We know that the cost of housing has gone way up. We know that the cost of college tuition has gone through the roof. The fact is that being middle class means spending a lot more money than it used to. But people don't have a whole lot more money to spend then they used to." Democrats in Congress have focused on the middle class squeeze. In the Democrats' State of the Union response, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia said the middle class is "losing its place at the table." The middle class squeeze is a becoming a rallying cry for Democrats on the presidential campaign trail: "And as our economy changes, let's be the generation that ensures our nation's workers are sharing in our prosperity," Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said when addressing a crowd. "The leadership here in Washington seems to ignore the middle class and hardworking families across our country," Sen. Hilary Clinton (D-NY) said in a speech. In fact a new study shows that in 2005, the top 10 percent of Americans collected almost half of all reported income in this country. This is their biggest share since 1928. Nonetheless, some scholars say that middle class Americans still have plenty to cheer about. "It’s time to look and sit there and say, you know, 'Is the middle class really, really that bad off?'" said Rea Hederman, a senior policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation. "And I think, you know, some of the data with home ownership, the access to amenities such as DVD players and iPods, the consumption level, the things that the American middle class is able to afford and buy, I think indicates that maybe they're not as bad off as we think." Hederman says that the economy is looking bright, with unemployment at 4.5 percent and 1.7 million new jobs added in 2006. But he says average Americans workers are still feeling the affects of the 2001 recession. "Wage gains have been a little slower at improving to the middle class, but they are arriving now," Hederman said. "And so I think, you know, in a few years, I think American families will feel much better off than they do today." A CBS News poll conducted for Sunday Morning this past week finds that almost 60 percent of Americans think that life for the middle class has gotten worse in the past ten years. Almost half of those who identified themselves as middle class are concerned about having enough money to pay for major expenses like health care, tuition, buying a home and retirement. According to the poll, only 19 percent of middle class Americans feel they are getting ahead in life. Like many of the folks who responded to our poll, Jerry and Sherry Stanley of Rio Vista, Tex., consider themselves solidly middle class. Their pre-tax income is more than $70,000 a year. He is a police officer and she is a licensed practical nurse. There are some simple, practical items on their current shopping wish list. "We want a new bed — mattress for our bed. Of course the refrigerator, we had that when I was in college back there," Jerry Stanley said. "We’re just waiting for it to go out. We're gonna have to buy that — buy a new one of them." If they were forced to pay a $1,000 bill right away, the Stanleys admit it would be difficult. "Would have a little problem — we could do it, but we'd have to cut out something else," Jerry Stanley said. Their life is all about economy. They live in the country where land is less expensive. Sherry's parents, who live nearby, can watch 12-year-old Jacob and 9-year-old Sarah after school. But there are trade offs: Jerry works in Dallas which is 60 miles away. "The gas is outrageous. I spend probably $600-700 a month on gas," he said. And Jerry Stanley's recent shoulder surgery took a serious bite out of their budget. They racked up close to $6,000 in medical bills. The Stanleys say they thought things would be a little easier at this point in life. "Middle class, you know, we should be able to afford a few luxuries, not many, but you know, be able to get to do a few things, and that should be middle class," Jerry Stanley said. So what could ease the burden on middle class families? "Our economy has been the envy of the world," Hederman said. "You know, if we increase levels of regulation, if we increase taxes, you know we'll make it harder for American businesses to expand. We'll lower the level of investment in the economy, which will mean fewer jobs." Hederman and many Republicans agree that health care and college costs are eroding a lot of middle class budgets. A college degree is now seen as an important ticket for entering the middle class and average tuitions are increasing about 8 percent a year. President George W. Bush has taken note of middle class anxiety: "I know some of our citizens worry about the fact that our dynamic economy is leaving working people behind," Mr. Bush said in a speech. "The fact is that income inequality is real; it's been rising for more than 25 years." But most Republicans vehemently disagree with those like Hacker, who wants to help the middle class by rolling back the President's tax cuts for wealthy Americans. "Most Americans aren't in favor of the very, very top-heavy tax cuts that we've had in the last few years that have really given almost all of their benefits to those at the very top," Hacker said. "And it's certainly the case that we need to think about new ways to go forward with programs." So the Seidlers are paying close attention to the 2008 presidential campaign. "What will they do to the help the 'common man,' if you will?" Jan Seidler said. "There is a middle class out here, even though I think the gap is getting wider and it is more difficult to make ends meet." And one thing everyone seems to agree on is that even if the days of "Ozzie and Harriet" are long gone, the concept of the middle class is a vital part of the American dream. But many fear it is dissipating. "Well, vanishing is too strong a word," Hacker said. "But I think that the American middle class — the idea that if you work hard, you play by the rules, you're gonna be economically secure and you'll have the opportunity to rise above the station your parents occupied — that dream is in danger."
© MMVII, CBS Interactive, Inc.

Pope criticizes the ‘cruelty’ of capitalism

"Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization."
by Ken Reiner: I view the continuing growth of corporate power and its despotic control of governments throughout the world, including our own, as a socio-economic disease. While Mussolini and others named it "Fascism," I call it "Corporism" because that name better reveals its underlying institutional structure. I would define Corporism as the domination of government and society by the emergence and power of the giant publicly-traded multinational corporations and financial institutions, organized in totalitarian hierarchies, which singly and in combinations buy or destroy their competitors, corrupt the politics of nations, and seize, hoard, and wield for themselves most of the wealth of the human race.

Pope criticizes the ‘cruelty’ of capitalism
In a new book, Benedict XVI decries power of rich over the poor
The Associated Press
Updated: 1:11 p.m. CT April 13, 2007

VATICAN CITY - Benedict XVI criticizes the “cruelty” of capitalism and colonialism and the power of the wealthy over the poor in his first book as pope released on Friday.
Benedict began writing his personal meditation on Jesus Christ’s teachings, entitled “Jesus of Nazareth,” in 2003 when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. He stressed that the book is an expression of his “personal search for the face of the Lord” and is by no means official Catholic Church doctrine.
“Everyone is free, then, to contradict me,” he wrote.
Benedict — a prolific and well-known theologian well before he became pope — thoroughly examined the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ public ministry to arrive at the foundation of the Christian faith: that Jesus is God.
Benedict said the fundamental question he is exploring in the book is what Jesus did.
“What did Jesus truly bring, if he didn’t bring peace to the world, well-being for all and a better world? What did he bring?
“The answer is very simple: God. He brought God.”
The 448-page book is due in bookstores in German, Italian and Polish on Monday, Benedict’s 80th birthday. The English edition is due for release May 15 and translations are planned for 16 other languages.
The book is the first of two volumes: Rizzoli, the Italian publisher, said Benedict is expected to write a second volume exploring the birth of Christ, his crucifixion and resurrection.
“Jesus of Nazareth” covers several key points of Jesus’ public life and ministry. An entire chapter is devoted to his baptism, another to the prayer Jesus taught the faithful, the Lord’s Prayer, and another to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, praising the poor, the meek and the hungry in the “Beatitudes.”
“Confronted with the abuse of economic power, with the cruelty of capitalism that degrades man into merchandise, we have begun to see more clearly the dangers of wealth and we understand in a new way what Jesus intended in warning us about wealth.”
In another chapter on the key Biblical parable, the Good Samaritan, Benedict decries how the wealthy have “plundered” Africa and the Third World both materially and spiritually through colonialism.
“Instead of giving them their God, the God that is close to us in Christ, and welcome from their traditions all that is dear and great ... we brought them the cynicism of a world without God, in which only power and profit matters,” he wrote.
He criticized the lifestyles of the wealthy, citing “victims of drugs, of human trafficking, of sexual tourism, people destroyed on the inside, who are empty despite the abundance of their material goods.”
Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the archbishop of Vienna and a friend of the pope’s, told a Vatican presentation of the book on Friday that Benedict was seeking to portray Jesus as he was historically.
Despite the social justice tone of many of Jesus’ teachings, however, Schoenborn said it would be wrong to call him a “social reformer.”
He noted Benedict’s tough stance on liberation theology — the theology of salvation as liberation from injustice — when he was prefect at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
During his two-decade tenure as prefect, Ratzinger worked to cripple support for “liberation theology;” some versions of the movement, which is especially popular in Latin America, are at variance with church teaching because they view Christ as a mere social liberator.
“The innumerable fanciful images of Jesus as a revolutionary, as a moderate social reformer, as the secret lover of Mary Magdalene, etc ... can be calmly deposited in the ossuary of history,” Schoenborn said.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18094760/

Nutrition firm or herbal cabal engaged in Mob tactics?

Corporate MO improvements beyond Enron et al? Based on news since Enron and the Pope's criticism of the ‘cruelty’ of capitalism, it is beginning to look like the "few bad apples" are coming from a barrel full of rotten apples

Nutrition firm or herbal cabal?
Prosecutors allege Georgia company, execs engaged in Mob tactics
By Mike Brunker Projects Team editor
MSNBC
Updated: 12:14 p.m. CT April 12, 2007

Until late last year, Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals of Norcross, Ga., appeared to be a thriving business with a hot-selling line of natural dietary supplements. But in a bizarre case quietly unfolding in federal court in Atlanta, prosecutors allege that it was really a criminal enterprise that sold dangerous “spiked” products and was run by executives who considered assassination and blackmail to quash a federal investigation.
The allegations are the most far-ranging ever leveled against a major player in the loosely regulated dietary supplement industry, and include activities more at home in the Mob hangouts of television's Tony Soprano than a corporate boardroom. Among other things, prosecutors allege in court filings that some or all of the defendants:
· Discussed killing a U.S. Food and Drug Administration agent and blackmailing an assistant U.S. attorney. Neither plot was carried out, but a Hi-Tech co-founder was subsequently jailed after being convicted of being a felon in possession of a “firearm silencer.”
· Used the herbal stimulant ephedra in Hi-Tech diet products after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned its use on April 12, 2004, finding it presented “an unreasonable risk of illness or injury.”
· Sold "herbal" supplements that actually contained the active ingredients of prescription drugs that could interact dangerously with other medications.
· Illegally imported and sold banned steroids.
· Manufactured phony ecstasy tablets that were sold on U.S. streets.
· Created a muscle-building drink that was later marketed as a cleaning solution in an effort to mislead investigators.
The shocking allegations spring from the Sept. 7 indictment of the company and 11 executives, employees and associates for allegedly operating an illegal Internet pharmacy in Belize.
Belize lab ‘substandard and unsanitary’The defendants used numerous Web sites to advertise and sell what were described as generic prescription drugs from Canada but were actually products that they were manufacturing in “substandard and unsanitary conditions” in Belize, according to the indictment.
Among the substances were the steroids Oxymethelone and Stanozolol, controlled drugs Ambien, Valium and Xanax, and prescription drugs Viagra, Cialis, Lipitor and Vioxx, it said.
The indictment also charged Hi-Tech President and CEO Jared R. Wheat, 35, with operating a “continuing criminal enterprise” — a violation of an anti-organized-crime statute that carries a minimum penalty of 20 years in prison. In court filings, prosecutors describe Wheat as a “lifelong drug dealer,” citing a conviction for dealing ecstasy at the age of 19 in addition to the current allegations.
Wheat has pleaded not guilty to all charges and Hi-Tech said in a statement that it is "appropriately conducting its business and there is no basis for the indictment."
The case raises concerns about the safety of the company’s line of dietary supplements, which remain available through many major U.S. retailers, and more generally about a loosely regulated industry that supplies nutrition products consumed by millions of Americans.
But it remains unclear to what extent the government’s charges involve Hi-Tech products manufactured and sold in the United States versus those made in Belize for sale over the Internet.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not issued any safety advisories for Hi-Tech products since the indictment. Representatives of the FDA and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta said they could not discuss the ongoing criminal case.
Sensational allegations buried in legal filingsThe indictment generated a few headlines when it was unsealed in September, but the case has received no attention as it has spiraled into the sensational since then through a series of legal filings by prosecutors.
Allegations that company officials discussed using violence and blackmail in an effort to block the government’s investigation surfaced March 21 in response to a defense motion asking the court to allow Wheat to post bond and leave the Atlanta jail where he has been held since his arrest on Sept. 14.
The filing alleged that Hi-Tech co-founder and convicted steroid dealer Tomasz Holda discussed with Wheat, Hi-Tech Vice President Stephen D. Smith and others “obtaining a firearm silencer for use in attacking an FDA agent conducting a criminal investigation into Hi-Tech’s use of Viagra in its Stamina Rx product.”
The prosecution filing said that while the FDA agent was not harmed, “It is important to note that in June 2004, Defendant Holda purchased a silencer on the Internet for delivery to his home. This silencer was intercepted by U.S. Customs and Defendant Holda was prosecuted and ultimately pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm silencer.”
The timing of the alleged threat was not specified, but the reference to Stamina Rx appears to refer to an FDA complaint brought against Hi-Tech in late 2002. The complaint charged, among other things, that the company used the prescription-strength drug ingredient tadalafil — the active ingredient in the erectile-dysfunction product Cialis — in what it marketed as a natural dietary supplement. Hi-Tech agreed the following year to FDA supervision of its product labeling and marketing, but admitted no wrongdoing in the alleged mislabeling of Stamina Rx’s ingredients.
Serving time for possession of silencerHolda, 44, who had previously been convicted of possession of steroids with intent to distribute, remains behind bars in Atlanta, serving a 54-month sentence. But his attorney, Thomas J. Spina of Birmingham, Ala., said that the prosecutors’ assertion runs counter to evidence presented at trial indicating Holda purchased the silencer for a friend.
“Tom’s reason for purchasing that silencer is on the record and documented,” he said. “... It was intended to be provided to someone else and was not intended to be shipped to his house.”
The government also alleged in court filings that “Wheat and Smith, among others, discussed hiring a private investigator to try and gain evidence for use in blackmailing Assistant United States Attorney Aaron M. Danzig.”
While the prosecution said it was unclear whether subsequent steps were taken to execute the plan, it argued that “mere discussions” of acts intended to “harm or intimidate a federal prosecutor … shows the depth of Defendant Wheat’s desperation.”
The government has not charged any Hi-Tech officials with any crime in connection with the alleged discussions of violence and intimidation. The information was included in the court record to argue against bail for Wheat and Smith.
Michael Trost of Atlanta, Wheat’s criminal attorney, did not return phone calls from MSNBC.com seeking comment on the new allegations.
But Timothy M. Fulmer, a Birmingham, Ala., attorney who represents Hi-Tech and has known Wheat for years, said the charges do not fit a man he describes as a “workaholic” with a wide charitable streak.
“I am confident that Mr. Wheat is innocent of those allegations and that that will be borne out,” he said. “Everything I know about Jared Wheat tells me he is not a violent man.”
Smith’s attorney, Brett M. Bloomston of Birmingham, said his client “was not involved in any conspiracy to violate any laws. I believe the entire company did everything it could to avoid that.”
Ephedra allegedly used after FDA banOf potential concern to a broader audience — the millions of Americans who take herbal supplements intended to help them lose weight — is the prosecution’s charge that Wheat and the company continued to put ephedra in its diet products after its use was banned by the FDA in April 2004.
Responding to the defense’s contention that Hi-Tech and another company controlled by Wheat “have become quite successful through the legal sale of lawful products,” prosecutors stated in the March 21 filing that “the government concedes no such thing.”
“The government previously investigated Hi-Tech for spiking its Stamina Rx product with the active ingredient in Viagra and Cialis,” it said. “While Defendant (Wheat) and Hi-Tech denied this activity, the government has recently learned from cooperating sources that, in fact, Defendant Wheat had done just that. Moreover, the government has learned that Defendant Wheat and Hi-Tech have been similarly spiking its diet products with ephedra and continued to do this even after the ban on ephedra products was upheld.”
The filing did not identify the “cooperating sources,” but the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta issued a press release on Feb. 13 stating that two of the original defendants in the Hi-Tech case – David A. Brady and David D. Johnson of Pinehurst, N.C. – had pleaded guilty to charges related to the Internet drug sales and were cooperating with authorities.
The prosecution’s filing did not say how recently ephedra was allegedly added to Hi-Tech products, and Patrick Crosby, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta, declined to elaborate on the court documents or provide any other additional details concerning the ongoing case.
Company's explanationFulmer, the Hi-Tech attorney, told MSNBC.com that the company added ephedrine alkaloids — the active ingredient in ephedra — to its diet products only from April 2005, when a U.S. district judge in Utah overturned the FDA ban, to August 2006, when a federal appeals court reinstated it. All such products were clearly labeled as containing ephedrine alkaloids, he said.
After the first ruling, “Hi-Tech, after seeking counsel, resumed selling ephedrine-alkaloid-containing products,” he said. “At the time of the appeals court ruling, Hi-Tech consulted lawyers and we told them that their position would no longer be supported and they stopped.”
The FDA and Justice Department did not agree with the company’s interpretation of the ban’s status, and in February 2006 ordered the seizure of approximately $3 million worth of raw ephedrine alkaloid and diet products containing the substance from Hi-Tech facilities in Norcross. Fulmer said the company remains in litigation with the FDA over the seized ephedrine alkaloid and the diet products.
Kimberly Rawlings, a spokeswoman for the FDA, declined to comment on the seizure or the prosecution’s allegation, citing the ongoing criminal case.
Other documents filed in the case subsequent to the indictment allege the defendants engaged in other drug schemes:
· An affidavit from Edward Smith, a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, filed in support of a seizure warrant, alleged that one of the early products created by Wheat and other defendants and manufactured in Georgia was a liquid known as Verve, which was marketed to bodybuilders as a “nutrient supplement.”
‘Nutrient supplement’ or cleaning product?In fact, according to the affidavit, the drink contained gamma hydroxybutyrate, or GHB, a central-nervous system depressant that gained notoriety in the 1990s as a “date rape” drug, and gamma butyrolactone, or GBL, a chemical used in many industrial cleaning solvents and paint thinners.
To mask the chemicals’ taste, the affidavit alleges, Wheat and others mixed the active ingredients with water, blue raspberry Kool-Aid and sugar in 55-gallon drums in a rented storage unit in Duluth, Ga., ending up with a bluish liquid that one witness said looked like Windex.
Smith quoted a cooperating defendant in the case, Charles Hill, as stating that individuals associated with Hi-Tech later repackaged Verve as a “cleaning solution” and added warnings against human consumption as a means of concealing its real purpose.
Possession and intent to distribute GHB and GBL are among the violations cited by the government in support of the “continuing criminal enterprise” charge against Wheat.
· The affidavit also quoted Hill as stating that Hi-Tech employee Brad Watkins, who also is a defendant in the criminal case, sold large quantities of fake ecstasy tablets bearing the Playboy bunny imprint.
Tests on one lot seized by the DEA in California in 2004 found no trace of methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, but did contain Clobenzorex, a stimulant that is illegal in the United States. Tests on similar Playboy-stamped pills found at the lab in Belize also tested positive for Clobenzorex, Smith said in the affidavit.
Buttressing a faulty case?A defense attorney who spoke with MSNBC.com on condition of anonymity portrayed the added allegations as an attempt by the government to buttress a case built on a faulty assumption: that Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals Inc. operated an Internet pharmacy business in Belize.
“The government takes the position that Hi-Tech is some sort of a parent company or a holding company that has various divisions, one of which seems to be a Belizean entity that manufactures pharmaceuticals,” the lawyer said. “Hi-Tech does not own any interest in Belize. … Hi-Tech is a dietary supplement business in Norcross, Ga.”
The lawyer conceded that Wheat and other individuals do have “an ownership in entities in Belize," but added that they "conduct business in accordance with the laws of Belize.”
The defense attorney also noted that the government has a significant financial interest in the outcome of the case, noting it is seeking forfeiture of the company, which it has valued at $35 million, at least $19.8 million in cash, 17 pieces of real estate and 15 luxury vehicles it says were the proceeds of the criminal operation.
Other cases multiply defendants' woesBut the allegations that prosecutors have added also are echoed in other criminal cases and lawsuits involving Hi-Tech, Wheat or the other criminal defendants:
· Sergio Oliveira, a defendant in the Atlanta criminal case, was among six people indicted in Illinois on Oct. 26, 2006, on charges of smuggling illegal steroids and other controlled substances into the United States via Mexico.
The indictment alleges that Oliveira, an associate of Hi-Tech who prosecutors say worked out of an office at the company’s Norcross complex and who visited the Belize drug-manufacturing facility with company officials, was the supplier of millions of dollars worth of anabolic steroids and other drugs that were dispensed by the other defendants.
The case against Oliveira has since been dismissed at the government’s request to be consolidated with the Atlanta case, said his attorney, Michael Monico.
· A lawsuit filed in 2005 by a Dutch company, OX2000, alleged that Wheat and Hi-Tech, in partnership with another diet supplement maker, NVE Pharmaceuticals of Newton, N.J., entered into an agreement to sell it 25 million two-pill packets of a product known as Sigra, “an all-natural herbal supplement to enhance male sexual performance.”
Pills said to contain Viagra ingredientAfter OX2000 paid the defendants more than $751,000, the lawsuit contends, Dutch authorities seized a shipment of 656,000 packets of Sigra and conducted tests that determined that they contained sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, and tadalafil, the active ingredient in Cialis.
OX2000 later abandoned the lawsuit for unknown reasons. Efforts to reach OX2000 officials or its attorneys were unsuccessful.
David Caldwell, an attorney for NVE Pharmaceuticals, which is under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as a result of ephedra-related lawsuits, declined to comment on the allegations.
· Wheat and another company under his control — the National Urological Group — and NVE Pharmaceuticals also have been sued by Tom and Monica Killian of Ottawa County, Mich.
The Killians’ lawsuit alleges that Tom Killian suffered a stroke after taking a free sample of Spontane-ES, a male sexual enhancement supplement manufactured by Wheat’s National Urological Group and marketed by NVE Pharmaceuticals, that he received in the mail. Later tests showed the product actually contained tadalafil, the Cialis ingredient, which was not listed on the product’s label, it said.
Wheat portrayed as flight riskIt is against this complex legal tapestry that pretrial maneuvers in the Hi-Tech criminal case are being played out.
Much of the early maneuvering has focused on attempts by the defense to enable Wheat and Stephen D. Smith to post bond and be released from the Atlanta City Detention Center pending trial.
The government has strenuously objected to freeing Wheat, saying he would pose a flight risk because he faces the prospect of a long prison term and is believed to have money stashed in offshore banks.
To support its contention, the government alleged that Wheat fled Belize and transferred $1.7 million to a bank in Panama in 2004 when authorities there raided the pharmacy lab searching for illicit drugs.
But defense attorneys say that they need Wheat to help them work through a mountain of evidence submitted by the government that may eventually total 1 million pages. Because of the difficulties of viewing the evidence at the jail, where computer access is limited, Wheat has only had the opportunity to review 77 binders worth of the government’s case, or approximately 41,000 pages, as of March 7, defense attorneys said.
The defense attorneys who agreed to speak with MSNBC.com also argued that the government is using unnecessarily tough tactics.
Prosecutors painted as ‘unduly aggressive’One, Steve Murrin, represented Tomasz Holda’s wife, Jessica, until she committed suicide by shooting herself in the head in February. He said she took her life after the government took “unduly aggressive” actions that included threatening to arrest her for trading in a vehicle that the government said was subject to seizure and summoning state case workers from the Georgia Department of Family and Children’s Services to determine if the couple’s 1½-year-old daughter should be removed from her custody.
“This was, in my experience, out of the ordinary and I think was designed to pressure Mrs. Holda to testify against her husband,” he said.
And Bloomston, Stephen D. Smith’s attorney, said that efforts by the prosecution to portray the defendants as dangerous were “ludicrous.”
“For the allegations they are facing, these guys should not be incarcerated,” he said. “There are many worse folks out there that are out on bond. I know. I represent some of them.”
© 2007 MSNBC Interactive© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

How to Confine the Plants of the Future?

corporate greedy guts vs your life

A NEW generation of genetically engineered crops that produce drugs and chemicals raise concerns about the safety of the global food and feed supply. Once harvested, seeds can move easily, accidentally or deliberately, across and beyond borders on which developers depend for safety. And what happens from there is anyone’s guess.The containment practices used by developers assume an ability to control living and propagating organisms, which scientific evidence does not support. Developers say these crops are the best way to achieve the economies of scale and cost savings that will let them meet rising demand for drugs and continue to generate huge obscene profits

NYT Re: Framing
How to Confine the Plants of the Future?
By DENISE CARUSO
A NEW generation of genetically engineered crops that produce drugs and chemicals is fast approaching the market — bringing with it a new wave of concerns about the safety of the global food and feed supply.
The plants produce medicinal substances like insulin, anticoagulants and blood substitutes. They produce vaccine proteins for diseases like cholera, as well as antibodies against tooth decay and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Enzymes and other chemicals from the plants can be used for a range of industrial processes.
As in past debates over genetically modified crops, biotech developers say that the benefits outweigh the risks, and that the risks are manageable. Critics question the benefits, and say the risk of a contaminated and potentially toxic food supply is untenable.
In the middle, balancing economic benefit and public safety, are our appointed arbiters of risk, the government regulators.
Controversies over biotech risk are caused by a crisis in “official scientific expertise,” according to Jerome Ravetz, an associate fellow at the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at the University of Oxford.
The crisis, he said, stems from the conflicting roles of government. On one side, businesses provide regulators with scientific evidence about the risk and safety of their product innovations. On the other, suspicious citizens demand that regulators challenge that evidence.
The side whose expertise is accepted as “official” calls the shots.
So far, the business sector has tipped the scales in its favor. Despite science-based concerns voiced by farmers, environmentalists and even its own researchers, the United States Department of Agriculture has approved more than 100 applications to grow so-called biopharma crops of corn, soybeans, barley, rice, safflower and tobacco in the United States.
Developers say these crops are the best way to achieve the economies of scale and cost savings that will let them meet rising demand for drugs like human insulin.
They acknowledge that growing pharmaceutical crops is riskier than making drugs in factories. They know that the plants contain potentially toxic drugs and chemicals, and because they look like ordinary crops, they can be mistaken for food, both before and after harvest.
The most important thing, then, is to keep biopharma plants, pollen and seeds confined to the fields where they are planted. Otherwise, they may contaminate other crops, wild relatives and the environment.
Developers say they have worked with the Agriculture Department to develop containment procedures for biopharma crops.
“Under our system, the degree of oversight is commensurate with the risk of the crops,” said John Turner, director of the policy coordination program for the agency’s Biotechnology Regulatory Services. “We take extraordinary measures to make sure these pharma and industrial crops are kept separate and confined.”
To this end, some developers use plants like rice and safflower that self-pollinate, reducing the risk of contaminating nonpharma plants by wind and insect pollination.
They also provide regulators with data on the potential health and environmental effects of the special chemicals in their crops.
For example, SemBioSys, a Canadian company, has applied to the U.S.D.A. for permits to grow safflower-based human insulin. It is already field-testing safflower crops in the United States and Chile that produce carp growth hormone for aquaculture feed, to bolster the weak immune systems of farmed shrimp.
The company’s chief executive, Andrew Baum, says “categorically” that the insulin derived from its plants has no biological effects while in plant form, and is activated only after processing. And the evidence his company has gathered indicates that its carp growth hormone affects only shrimp.
The new methods, Mr. Baum said, can cut capital costs by 70 percent, and “reach levels of scale easier than any other system.”
But there is some scientific evidence not acknowledged in biopharma risk assessments that casts a dark cloud over this silver lining.
For starters, the “system” under discussion is nature, and despite our best efforts it always manages to elude our puny attempts at controlling it. The containment practices used by developers assume an ability to control living and propagating organisms, which scientific evidence does not support.
One scientist familiar with some of the issues raised by pharma crops is Norman C. Ellstrand, a professor in the department of genetics at the University of California, Riverside, and director of its Biotechnology Impacts Center. Professor Ellstrand is known as a fair and credible critic of various aspects of agricultural biotechnology.
He is deeply skeptical that efforts to confine biopharma genes in open fields will work.
“I don’t think that engineering plants for pharma is a bad idea, with two caveats,” Professor Ellstrand said. One, he says he thinks that planting should be done in greenhouses rather than in open fields. “The other issue is food,” he said. “Why do we have to do this in food crops? It doesn’t matter what you’re squeezing the compound out of. It could be a carnation, a corn plant or a castor bean.”
Professor Ellstrand also said that self-pollination does not eliminate gene flow between plants, and that cross-pollination is not the only way that pharma crops can escape confinement. Once harvested, seeds can move easily, accidentally or deliberately, across and beyond borders. As a result, valuable biopharma crops may well end up growing in fields far from the controlled environment on which developers depend for safety. And what happens from there is anyone’s guess.
Once the rogue seeds are replanted, could the plants thrive in their new home and possibly overtake native varieties or wild relatives? Could the pharma trait increase in frequency and concentration, until it reaches a “dose” that causes health effects in those who consume it unwittingly? The probability for any one of these situations may be low, Professor Ellstrand said, but the scientific answer to each question is yes.
What is most worrisome is that the Agriculture Department seems to reject such reasonable, science-based public safety concerns. Agency policy allows developers to withhold data on pharma crops from the public as confidential business information, and the public is not allowed to comment on biopharma planting applications until after an official risk evaluation is completed.
Such behavior has raised the hackles of many farmers and food producers who are concerned about biopharma crops. Rice farmers, in particular, know what happens when a food crop is contaminated with unapproved genes. The U.S.D.A has presided over two such scares in less than a year, and the rice industry has suffered greatly as it tries to purge contaminants from crops.
AT the end of March, the Agriculture Department approved a permit allowing a California biotech company, Ventria Bioscience, to plant its pharmaceutical rice in open fields in Kansas.
Ventria’s pharma rice is engineered to produce two of the human proteins found in breast milk and other body fluids. Once harvested, the proteins will be used in treatments for diarrhea and infections, as well as in nutritional supplements.
In a public comment demanding that the Agriculture Department withdraw the Ventria approval, the U.S.A. Rice Federation wrote: “If Ventria’s pharmaceutical rice were to escape into the commercial rice supply, the financial devastation to the U.S. rice industry would likely be absolute. There is no tolerance, either regulatory or in public perception, for a human gene-based pharmaceutical to end up in the world’s food supply.”
So whose market is more important: the farmers’ or the drug makers’? Whose health matters more: people who need drugs or people who eat food?
Scientists often dismiss the idea that people without technical knowledge can help them make risk assessments. As a result, biotech scientists and regulators have long made safety determinations from within an opaque system of their own design, using only the evidence they accept as valid.
But scientific evidence is not a constant, like the speed of light or pi. Especially in biology, where we still know so little, “evidence” is often just a small circle of light surrounded by the darkness of the unknown. Decisions about risk cannot safely be made in a private club that accepts only its members’ notions of scientific evidence.
The best research on risk declares the opposite to be true: that risk evidence is particularly subject to distortion by conflicting interests, and that the best foil for such distortions is to ensure that the people whose fate is at stake participate in the analysis.
We need a new policy framework for scientific evidence that is built on this foundation. If developers want to sell their products, they must subject their inventions to the helpful scrutiny of people outside the club — before radical technologies like biopharma are brought to market.
Denise Caruso is executive director of the Hybrid Vigor Institute, which studies collaborative problem-solving. E-mail: dcaruso@nytimes.com.

Shocking Mismanagement: Iraqi details Inept US Occupation

Who could have imagined !!!! "THREATS ABOUT AIRPLANES AS WEAPONS PRIOR TO 9/11" By: Dr. Matthew Robinson
Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Appalachian State University http://www.justiceblind.com/airplanes.html

Shocking Mismanagement: Iraqi details Inept US Occupation
Insider: Missteps Soured Iraqis on U.S.
Iraq Government Official Says 'Incompetent' U.S. Management Turned Iraqis Against Americans
By CHARLES J. HANLEY AP Special Correspondent
The Associated Press
NEW YORK - In a rueful reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the U.S. occupation's "shocking" mismanagement of his country a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had "turned their backs on their would-be liberators."
"The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order," Ali A. Allawi concludes in "The Occupation of Iraq," newly published by Yale University Press.
Allawi writes with authority as a member of that "new order," having served as Iraq's trade, defense and finance minister at various times since 2003. As a former academic, at Oxford University before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, he also writes with unusual detachment.
The U.S.- and British-educated engineer and financier is the first senior Iraqi official to look back at book length on his country's four-year ordeal. It's an unsparing look at failures both American and Iraqi, an account in which the word "ignorance" crops up repeatedly.
First came the "monumental ignorance" of those in Washington pushing for war in 2002 without "the faintest idea" of Iraq's realities. "More perceptive people knew instinctively that the invasion of Iraq would open up the great fissures in Iraqi society," he writes.
What followed was the "rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance" of the occupation, under L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which took big steps with little consultation with Iraqis, steps Allawi and many others see as blunders:
The Americans disbanded Iraq's army, which Allawi said could have helped quell a rising insurgency in 2003. Instead, hundreds of thousands of demobilized, angry men became a recruiting pool for the resistance.
Purging tens of thousands of members of toppled President Saddam Hussein's Baath party from government, school faculties and elsewhere left Iraq short on experienced hands at a crucial time.
An order consolidating decentralized bank accounts at the Finance Ministry bogged down operations of Iraq's many state-owned enterprises.
The CPA's focus on private enterprise allowed the "commercial gangs" of Saddam's day to monopolize business.
Its free-trade policy allowed looted Iraqi capital equipment to be spirited away across borders.
The CPA perpetuated Saddam's fuel subsidies, selling gasoline at giveaway prices and draining the budget.
In his 2006 memoir of the occupation, Bremer wrote that senior U.S. generals wanted to recall elements of the old Iraqi army in 2003, but were rebuffed by the Bush administration. Bremer complained generally that his authority was undermined by Washington's "micromanagement."
Although Allawi, a cousin of Ayad Allawi, Iraq's prime minister in 2004, is a member of a secularist Shiite Muslim political grouping, his well-researched book betrays little partisanship.
On U.S. reconstruction failures in electricity, health care and other areas documented by Washington's own auditors Allawi writes that the Americans' "insipid retelling of `success' stories" merely hid "the huge black hole that lay underneath."
For their part, U.S. officials have often largely blamed Iraq's explosive violence for the failures of reconstruction and poor governance.
The author has been instrumental since 2005 in publicizing extensive corruption within Iraq's "new order," including an $800-million Defense Ministry scandal. Under Saddam, he writes, the secret police kept would-be plunderers in check better than the U.S. occupiers have done.
As 2007 began, Allawi concludes, "America's only allies in Iraq were those who sought to manipulate the great power to their narrow advantage. It might have been otherwise."