Dear friends,
Below
are one-paragraph excerpts of important news articles you may have
missed.
These news articles include revealing information on the secret legal
opinions issued by the U.S. Justice Department authorizing harsh torture
techniques, the cover-up by the U.S. State Department and Blackwater
Corporation of the company's indiscriminate killings in Iraq, the lack of
adequate F.D.A. oversight of private clinical trials, and more. Each
excerpt is taken verbatim from the major media website listed at the link
provided. If any link fails to function, click
here.
Key sentences are highlighted for those with
limited
time. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread
the word, we can and will build a brighter
future.
With
best wishes,
Tod Fletcher and Fred
Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team
Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe
InterrogationsOctober 4, 2007, New York
Timeshttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/washington/04interrogate.html
When the
Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal
opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have
abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to
order brutal interrogations. But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival
as attorney general
in February 2005, the Justice Department
issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different
document; according to officials briefed on it, [it was] an expansive
endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the
Central Intelligence Agency. The new opinion ... for the first
time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a
combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including
head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. Later that
year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading”
treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion. The
Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A.
interrogation
methods violated that standard. The classified opinions, never previously
disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush’s second term and Mr.
Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department. Congress and the Supreme
Court have intervened repeatedly in the last two years to impose limits
on
interrogations, and the administration has responded as a policy matter
by
dropping the most extreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department
opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been
confirmed
by several more recent memorandums, officials said. They show how the
White
House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude
for
harsh tactics.
Report Says Firm Sought to Cover Up Iraq
ShootingsOctober 2, 2007, New York
Timeshttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/washington/02blackwater.html
Employees
of Blackwater USA have engaged in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq since
2005,
in [the] vast majority of cases firing their weapons from moving vehicles
without stopping to count the dead or assist the wounded, according to a
new report from Congress. In at least two cases,
Blackwater paid
victims’ family members who complained, and sought to cover up other
episodes, the Congressional report said. It said State Department
officials approved the payments in the hope of keeping the shootings
quiet. In one case last year, the department helped Blackwater
spirit an employee out of Iraq less than 36 hours after the employee,
while drunk, killed a bodyguard for one of Iraq’s two vice presidents on
Christmas Eve. The report ... adds weight to complaints from Iraqi
officials, American military officers and Blackwater’s competitors that
company guards have taken an aggressive, trigger-happy approach to their
work and have repeatedly acted with reckless disregard for Iraqi life.
But
the report is also harshly critical of the State Department for
exercising
virtually no restraint or supervision of the private security company’s
861 employees in Iraq. “There is no evidence in the documents that the
committee has reviewed that the State Department sought to restrain
Blackwater’s actions, raised concerns about the number of shooting
episodes involving Blackwater or the company’s high rate of shooting
first, or detained Blackwater contractors for investigation,” the report
states. Based on 437 internal Blackwater incident reports as well as
internal State Department correspondence, the report said Blackwater’s
use
of force was “frequent and extensive, resulting in significant casualties
and property damage.” The State Department ... has paid Blackwater more
than $832 million for security services in Iraq and elsewhere, under a
diplomatic security contract it shares with two other companies, DynCorp
International and Triple Canopy.
Back In Iraq: The 'Whores Of
War'September 29, 2007, Sunday Herald
(Scotland's leading newspaper, Sunday edition)http://www.sundayherald.com/search/display.var.1724225.0.back_in_iraq_the_whores_of_war.php
Despite
being implicated in several controversial killings, [Blackwater] is the
Pentagon's most favoured contractor and has effective diplomatic immunity
in Iraq. Referred to as "the most powerful mercenary army in the world",
both the US ambassador to Iraq and the army's top generals hold it in
regard. The company, based near the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina,
was co-founded by Erik Prince, a billionaire right-wing fundamentalist.
At
its HQ, Blackwater has trained more than 20,000 mercenaries to operate as
freelancers in wars around the world. Prince is a big bankroller of the
Republican Party - giving a total of around $275,550 - and was a young
intern in the White House of George Bush Sr. Under George Bush Jr,
Blackwater received lucrative no-bid contracts for work in Iraq,
Afghanistan and New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. His firm has pulled
down contracts worth at least $320 million in Iraq alone. Jeremy Scahill,
who wrote the book
Blackwater:
The Rise Of The World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, says when
Bush was re-elected in 2004, one company boss sent this email to staff:
"Bush Wins, Four More Years!! Hooyah!!"
One Blackwater employment
policy is to hire ex-administration big-hitters into key
positions. It hired Cofer Black, a former State Department
co-ordinator for counter-terrorism and former head of the CIA's
counter-terrorism centre, as vice-chairman. Robert Richer, a former CIA
divisional head, joined Blackwater as vice-president of intelligence in
2005. Scahill says
the firm is "the front line in what the Bush
administration views as the necessary revolution in military affairs" -
privatisation of as many roles as possible. Scahill went on to
call Prince a "neo-crusader, a Christian supremacist, who ... has been
allowed to create a private army to defend Christendom around the
world."
Report Assails F.D.A. Oversight of Clinical
TrialsSeptember 27, 2007, New York
Timeshttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/health/policy/28fda.html
The Food
and Drug Administration does very little to ensure the safety of the
millions of people who participate in clinical trials, a federal
investigator has found. The inspector general of the Department of Health
and Human Services, Daniel R. Levinson, said federal health officials did
not know how many clinical trials were being conducted, audited fewer
than
1 percent of the testing sites and, on the rare occasions when inspectors
did appear, generally showed up long after the tests had been completed.
The F.D.A. has 200 inspectors, some of whom audit clinical trials part
time, to police an estimated 350,000 testing sites. Even when those
inspectors found serious problems in human trials, top drug officials in
Washington downgraded their findings 68 percent of the time, the report
found. Among the remaining cases, the agency almost never followed up
with
inspections to determine whether the corrective actions that the agency
demanded had occurred.
“In many ways, rats and mice get greater
protection as research subjects in the United States than do
humans,” said Arthur L. Caplan, chairman of the department of
medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Animal research
centers have to register with the federal government, keep track of
subject numbers, have unannounced spot inspections and address problems
speedily or risk closing, none of which is true in human
research, Mr. Caplan said. Because no one collects the data
systematically, there is no way to tell how safe the nation’s clinical
research is or ever has been. The drug agency oversees just the safety of
trials by companies seeking approval to sell drugs or devices. Using an
entirely different set of rules, the Office for Human Research
Protections
oversees trials financed by the federal government. Privately financed
noncommercial trials have no federal oversight.
Note:For further information on corruption in the health care industry, click here.
Accueil 
