This video shows what is really happening in the Gulf Coast areas where BP and the Marine Spill Response Corporation owned by the oil industry barons are stopping any and every effort to keep the oil off the coast and out of the marshlands – why they are doing it and how they are using our Coast Guard and other US federal authorities to stop other projects that would prevent the oil from reaching the coastal areas.
Maybe BP and other oil industry insiders figure that once all the wildlife and marine life in the Gulf is dead – they won’t have to be bothered with answering to the environmentalists anymore. It will be a wasteland specifically serving no other purpose than the harvest of oil and everyone will leave them alone.
Boy, are they in for a surprise.
- cricketdiane
***
See nearly all the fish are dead -and they didn’t show it in this video clip, but they also made an underwater video at the coral reefs and there were no fish.
I swear if I worked at BP – I’d find another job before it ruined my career and reputation forever. I don’t have that problem but I sure wouldn’t sit there and end up with that on my resume when I tried to go work somewhere else.
- cricketdiane
***
Found this -
Liability of shareholders for corporate debt:
Separating the owners from the business
Many individuals do business in the corporate form. While the individuals think of themselves as the “owners” of the business, in reality they are the owners of the stock in the corporation that owns the business. They are probably also its officers and directors.
When it is necessary to consider bankruptcy, it becomes important to know just which debts of the corporation, if any, the shareholders may be personally liable for.
Simply owning the stock in a corporation does not make the individuals liable for the corporation’s debt. The shareholders may, however, become liable for the debts of the corporation either by agreement or by operation of law.
So anybody who thinks the insurance companies are going to cover this BP mis-handling and criminal conduct – and the American taxpayer will be taking care of the rest so shareholders won’t be liable – are not playing with a full deck.
- cricketdiane
***
See, the funniest thing was that the BP executives lied to Congress when they were under oath. That is a no-no.
Then, they lied to regulators at every point in the process, that’s more than a no-no. That’s illegal
And, then – they not only killed eleven men and decimated the marine life in the Gulf of Mexico because they didn’t want the oil as visible so they used the dispersants they wanted to use – and that’s criminal.
And, that’s not all – when they led Congress and Federal agencies like the EPA to believe – or rather lied and misled them – well, that made them liable for more than the damages and the cleanup – that made them criminals and made all of their assets and operations vulnerable to be assumed just like any other drug criminal that kills the people and breaks the law – and just like any other Mafia-like gangster criminal activity that kills people and destroys communities and breaks the law. And just like any other terrorist that decimated human lives in the pursuit of their private agenda.
When the folks at BP and at the Marine Spill Response Corporation intentionally decided not to pursue any other course of action – and when they destroyed people’s lives and communities, and when they decimated all the numbers of wildlife and marine animals that they have – they stepped over the line into murder and criminal activities that were by their choices.
I don’t care why they did it, how they excused it, how they blamed it on something or someone else – all that means is that they and their colleagues at TransOcean and Halliburton are criminals who broke the law – of the United States – of the International Maritime Treaties and International Law – of the clauses in their contracts for insurance that would’ve otherwise covered it and of the laws in every nation around the world inclusively.
Hmmmm…….
Maybe they don’t know that yet.
- cricketdiane
***
Maybe they think that doesn’t count for them. And, that there is no government in the world or court of law that will condemn them as criminals. Maybe they think that since it is business, it doesn’t count the same. They would be wrong. Ask Enron. Ask Al-Qaeda. Ask Libya.
Hell, ask Rio Tinto – for that matter.
***
What happens to a person or a group of people who cruelly and sadistically torture animals and cause undue suffering with viciousness and disregard?
That is against the law. It is cruel and vicious actions to the consciousness of every animal, every sea turtle, every fish, every dolphin, every porpoise, every marine mammal and every bird, every squid, every whale, every sea creature of every kind to have been subjected sadistically to the poisons that the marine spill response corporation run by the oil companies and BP put into the Gulf.
And, then a multitude of these marine animals and birds died cruel, tortured and horrible deaths as a direct result of BP’s actions and their insistence on certain actions or refusals to act. They may as well have taken those animals in their own hands and shot them – it wouldn’t have been as cruel with the same torture and suffering as what they did in the ways they’ve done it. There is no right for BP to harvest oil anywhere in the world in the days to come. They are an unnecessary evil and have chosen to commit the most heinous of crimes. They’ve murdered our citizens at Texas City and Deepwater Horizon. They’ve tortured our marine wildlife to the point of death – and massively done so with intention and complete disregard for life.
They don’t need to be in our economic world anymore – they need to be in jail for the rest of their natural lives, not eating caviar and drinking champagne for having “gotten it over on us” and “gotten away with it” on our government.
The shareholders and board of directors members that sit behind these executives need to have every last asset frozen and be indicted for participating in it with their approval for these actions and for their continued financial backing for these illegal and criminal activities that have cause so many to suffer with such sadistic inhumane torture and that continue to be life-threatening to the people and wildlife even on this day.
- cricketdiane
***
And, no I will not be nice to a murdering criminal enterprise that has cheated every state where it has operated out of national resources that belonged to us all – and I will not show niceness to an organization that is sadistic and evil. If they and Charles Manson and the perpetrators of terrorism and murder – don’t deserve hate – then something is vastly wrong with our churches and our society.
Or do I need to get out the encyclopedias and explain exactly what those animals experienced when they were subjected to the crude oil and the crude oil mixed with the dispersants they chose to use? It was cruel and sadistic. Now, that’s about four times I’ve used that word – and I do mean it, this wasn’t an accident that wasn’t likely ever to happen. And, it will happen again.
They knew at BP and at the oil spill response companies what would be experienced by the marine animals and aquatic wildlife when they decided to use those chemicals and when they decided not to cap off the well in the first few days, using the method they are about to use now – the top kill method.
That is Satanic in its degree of evil.
And if our laws do not apply to that level of evil – then the law is neither just nor the rule of law.
If I don’t get to torture an animal to death without being charged and put in jail – then I sure don’t see why the BP executives and the decision-makers of the marine spill response corporation get to sadistically torture entire species by the hundreds to their death and get away with it.
- cricketdiane
***
Maybe we need to box up all the marine animals they’ve killed and send them to Parliament and the Queen so they can see what they think about it.
Just a thought.
And, as soon as the companies who hold the insurance on this deal realize that they can get out of those contracts because of the intentional misconduct of the participants at BP and TransOcean and Halliburton and every contractor hired by the marine spill response corporation – well – those funds, revenue streams and assets owned by those companies – including BP won’t be covered by those insurance contracts and they will claw back any and all of what they’ve already paid on them.
That might open the marketplace for players who have more intelligence and a great deal more conscience as corporate entities. It seems to be the only terms in the English language they understand – money and liability.
***
By the way – even though the dispersant was on the approved list by EPA – all that means when BP executives said so – was that they were admitting to the knowledge that appeared with that approval noting the level of toxicity as a poison to marine life and that the chemicals were known to be lethal to those animals when they chose to use them.
The EPA could’ve approved DDT – but it still offers no coverage when that DDT kills the people in a surrounding community or administers poisons to the “wild kingdom” in cruel, gruesome suffering and deaths. They chose to put poisons in the Gulf of Mexico and admitted to knowing what it would do to the marine life there – it’s no different than poisoning the neighbor’s dog which is also illegal and open to criminal prosecution in almost every country in the world – including the USA.
The only difference is the scale – which as far as I’m concerned makes most of the people at BP in the executive and management pool along with every director and every shareholder that backed them and approved them and financially supported them – all liable, criminal and financially bound to have their assets seized under the same laws that apply to the rest of us.
- cricketdiane
***
Yep – this is the American police left by the Republicans that have trained them, armed them, controlled them and had the police do it their way – and they still are -
While Tony the BP man was being given a birthday party in Great Britain and the porpoises in the Gulf were suffocating to death in his crude oil & poisons.
Yeah, right – I hope Ronald Reagan and everyone of his administrative clan, along with the Bush twins and their gang of four – that ran America into the ground – took away the regulations that would’ve prevented the Gulf Oil Spill and the Texas City explosion and the Alaska pipeline spill and the mining deaths of all those men – among countless deaths from poisoned peanut butter and spinach and ground beef – and thousands of maimings and deaths of our finest and our brightest men and women in the military conquests that they started and did – hmmm . . . Yeah – I hope they are forced to watch as we pick America up and right her despite their cronies still trying to destroy her.
And then – I pray they will be chained in hell forever. And, I really mean that. But – I’m not going to put them there, they’ve already done that themselves.
And I’ve got better things to do including to do all that I can and all I can encourage others to do that will make their gasoline companies stocks worthless because gasoline becomes obsolete. It seems like a good use of time to me.
- cricketdiane
***
Here are the TransOcean people responsible for this -
The following are members of the BP board of directors and the BP executive management team. To view their full biographies please follow the link below to the ‘About BP’ section.
Iain Conn
Chief executive, Refining and Marketing
Executive member of the BP board of directors Iain Conn’s biography
Chief financial officer
Executive member of the BP board of directors Byron Grote’s biography
Andy Inglis
Chief executive, Exploration and Production
Executive member of the BP board of directors Andy Inglis’s biography
Non-executive Directors
The following members are non-executive directors of BP. To view their full biographies please follow the link below to the ‘About BP’ section.
Paul Anderson
Non-executive director
Member of the chairman’s and the safety, ethics and environment assurance committees Paul Anderson biography
Antony Burgmans, KBE
Non-executive director
Member of the chairman’s, the remuneration and the safety, ethics and environment assurance committees Antony Burgman’s biography
Cynthia Carroll
Non-executive director
Member of the chairman’s and safety, ethics and environment assurance committees Cynthia Carroll’s biography
Sir William Castell, LVO
Non executive director and senior independent director
Chairman of the safety, ethics and environment assurance committee, member of the chairman’s and nomination committees Sir William Castell’s biography
George David
Non-executive director
Member of the chairman’s, the audit and the remuneration committees George David’s biography
Ian Davis
Non-executive director
Member of the chairman’s, the audit and the remuneration committees Ian Davis biography
Douglas J Flint, CBE
Non-executive director
Chairman of the audit committee, member of the chairman’s and nominations committees Douglas J Flint’s biography
Dr DeAnne S Julius, CBE
Non-executive director
Chairman of the remuneration committee, member of the chairman’s and nomination committees Dr DeAnne S Julius’ biography
David Jackson
David Jackson was appointed company secretary in 2003. A solicitor, he is a director of BP Pension Trustees Limited, and a member of the Listing Authorities Advisory Committee.
Executive management
Executive management
Our executive management team is responsible for the day to day running of the company. To view their full biographies, please follow the links below to the ‘About BP’ section
Tony Hayward
Group Chief Executive
Member of the BP board of directors, head of the BP executive management team. Tony Hayward’s biography
Rupert Bondy
Group General Counsel, BP plc
Member of the BP executive management team. Rupert Bondy’s biography
Sally T. Bott
Executive Vice President, Human Resources
Member of the BP executive management team. Sally T. Bott’s biography
Iain Conn
Chief Executive, Refining and Marketing
Member of the BP board of directors, member of the BP executive management team. Iain Conn’s biography
Robert Dudley
Managing Director
Member of the BP board of directors and a member of the BP executive management team Robert Dudley’s biography
Byron Grote
Chief Financial Officer
Member of the BP board of directors, member of the BP executive management team. Byron Grote’s biography
Andy Inglis
Chief Executive, Exploration and Production
Member of the BP board of directors, member of the BP executive management team. Andy Inglis’ biography
Much as we’d like to write off BP as a British invader, the company is as American as the Honda Accords made in Ohio. (That is a lie – they were started in Iran with British money, my note.)
BP is not only a top energy provider to the U.S.; it is also a defense contractor. Its directors sit on the boards of major American companies. It is a contributor to American political campaigns and an employer of Washington lobbyists.
The (BP) company’s campaign contributions between 1989 and 2010 exceeded $6.2 million, with Republican candidates getting 70 percent of the funds.
BP’s energy contracts with the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency total more than $5 billion.
BP board members also have current and former connections to many U.S. businesses, including Citigroup, McKinsey & Company, General Electric . . .
(Well, considering who out of that group I know defied the embargo on Iran – let’s see at least three out of three, including BP as one of the three – not sure about McKinsey & Company, but I can look it up.)
As an officer, director and/or owner of publicly traded securities, Bruce W. Wilkinson has filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission. >> See filings
It was Cameron who made the blowout preventer that failed on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Why is that idiot on bloomberg speaking for the oil industry – how much is he getting paid? – he was what the owner of the ship that rescued 115 people from the Deepwater Horizon when it had Dean Taylor – President and CEO of Tidewater. Apparently he can wear the US flag on his lapel and still not understand what it is to care about America and her citizens in comparison to his playmates in the oil industry that have murdered eleven Americans this time, fifteen Americans they murdered in 2005 and if I really get to counting . . . that is only the tip of the iceberg. Along with torturing and murdering animals in the poisoned waters of the Gulf of Mexico, BP and TransOcean and Halliburton and the other oil industry companions have done nothing but rape and pillage and plunder our country from Alaska to Texas to Oklahoma to the Gulf of Mexico and everywhere in between. And that man talking on bloomberg had no expression and looked like a mask with lips moving – even his voice failed to convey a thinking human being behind that mask of lies.
If you’re providing information or a photograph about Daniel H. Yergin that you would like us to include in the Muckety database, please cite the source.
Contributions to political organizations (other than PACs or campaigns):
As an officer, director and/or owner of publicly traded securities, Douglas L. Foshee has filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission. >> See filings
f -in – inbreeding – (see above) – the same people that have positions in Halliburton – have directorships in Cameron and sit as members of the National Petroleum Council – and then this one was chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas – in Houston
it is inbreeding – all the way up to the Cheney White House of the Bush eras and before – damn.
Anadarko co-owns a part in the Deepwater Horizon with BP.
and, I noticed this on the listing immediately above for Cameron Intnl.
- cricketdiane
***
Peter J. Fluor
Gender: Male
Financial information:
As an officer, director and/or owner of publicly traded securities, Peter J. Fluor has filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission. >> See filings
As an officer, director and/or owner of publicly traded securities, James T. Hackett has filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission. >> See filings
Photo 36 of the 143 shows the executives of BP, TransOcean, Halliburton and Cameron taking the oath in front of Congress before opening their mouths and lying to the legislators breaking that oath and committing perjury.
On CNN just now – I was watching the protesters in front of the BP headquarters in Houston – I guess that’s where they were – you know what – they just need to go down to each state and each coastal city and sign a warrant for the bastards torturing and poisoning those marine animals, fish, birds, sea turtles, marine mammals and other aquatic wildlife – it is against the law to do that to any living thing.
For the past 35 years, the API has worked cooperatively with the U.S. Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency bringing together industry experts to share information and discuss problems and solutions regarding oil spills as part of its biennial “International Oil Spill Conferences.” Many API members participated in the formation and continued activities of the “Marine Spill Response Corporation” and the “Great Lakes Spill Prevention Initiative.” Along the Gulf of Mexico, employees from several companies participate in annual beach and coastal clean-ups.
ExxonMobil supported the establishment of a network of worldwide industry-supported oil spill response organizations that are on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year around the world and strategically located around the world near major airports to facilitate the rapid transportation of equipment and experts to spill sites. Alyeska Pipeline spends over $60 million annually on oil spill prevention and response in Prince William Sound, and has over 300 dedicated personnel assigned to this effort, mostly through its Ship Escort/Response Vessel System (SERVS).
Petroleum Trade Association – American Petroleum Institute
***
(also on this page – the portals to some of the main organizations that provide oil spill response that the oil companies are paying to be members, in order to satisfy the EPA and MMS Response to Preparations regulations of the US Federal government legislation, my note – cricketdiane)
Crisis Management and Emergency Response
ConocoPhillips is a member of the tier three oil spill response organizations that cover the regions of the world in which it operates. Membership in these cooperatives extends company access to resources both equipment and trained personnel – that can provide immediate emergency assistance.
ENV-COP-22
International Oil Spill Response Centers ExxonMobil has supported the establishment of a network of worldwide industry-supported oil spill response organizations. information can also be obtained from the IPIECA web site under OSR publications Tier 3 Centers or from the US Marine Spill Response Corporation website at www.msrc.org.
ENV-EM-10
This list is in order of degree of known hazardous qualities, rather than alphabetic.
- cricketdiane
***CARMARTHEN, Wales, May 24 (UPI) — The driver of a lawn mower built for speed said he and his team broke the speed record for the machines by reaching an average speed of 87.833 mph in Wales.
Don Wales and his team said the mower broke the record of 80.792 mph, set in 2006 by U.S. man Bob Cleveland, by reaching an average speed of 86.069 mph during a run Saturday at Pendine Sands in Carmarthenshire, Wales, the BBC reported Monday.
Lawn mower exceeds 87 mph
Published: May 24, 2010 at 4:53 PM
CARMARTHEN, Wales, May 24 (UPI) — The driver of a lawn mower built for speed said he and his team broke the speed record for the machines by reaching an average speed of 87.833 mph in Wales.
Don Wales and his team said the mower broke the record of 80.792 mph, set in 2006 by U.S. man Bob Cleveland, by reaching an average speed of 86.069 mph during a run Saturday at Pendine Sands in Carmarthenshire, Wales, the BBC reported Monday.
pp. 330 – 331, vol. 13; Encyclopedia Britannica, 1978
Nucleotides are organic chemical compounds composed of nitrogen-containing unites joined to sugar and phosphate units. They are of importance in biology as the structural groups composing nucleic acids, long chainlike molecules that may contain more than 1,000,000 nucleotides and that make up the fundamental genetic material responsible for storage and replication of hereditary information in living cells.
Several nucleotides belong to a class of compounds called coenzymes, substances that act in conjunction with compounds called enzymes that catalyze (speed up) chemical reactions in biological systems; a few nucleotides are starting materials in biological systems from which compounds of other classes are synthesized.
The chemistry of nucleotides has been studied since 1847, when a German chemist, Justus von Liebig, isolated inosinic acid from a meat extract, but nucleic acids were not obtained until more than 20 years later, and their relationship to nucleotides was made clear only after 1900. The first discovery of a nucleotide coenzyme occurred in 1904. The study of nucleotides has been greatly facilitated by the introduction of such analytical techniques as spectroscopy and chromatography about the middle of the 20th century.
General considerations.
Understanding of nucleotides is based on knowledge of the structure of organic compounds, which are classified into families that have similar molecular structures and, as a result, comparable qualities.
All organic compounds have as their basic structural feature chains or rings of carbon atoms linked together by bonds, of a type called covalent, that result from sharing electrons between each pair of atoms. Each carbon atom has the capacity to form four such bonds with other carbon atoms or atoms of other elements.
Empirical formulas for compounds are written with the symbol for an element representing a single atom and a subscript indicating the number of such atoms in the molecule; for example, methane has one carbon and four hydrogen atoms: CH4
(etc.)
When small organic molecules bond with one another to form chains, the repeating unit is called a monomer, or subunit, and the chain, or macromolecule, a polymer. Several kinds of monomers may also bond together in a repeating pattern to form polymers of varied classifications.
Nucleic acids belong to a class of polymers, the subunits of which are nucleotides, themselves composed of three subunits.
The formation of nucleic acids in plant and animal cells is a process of joining a very large number of nucleotides end to end. The reaction is catalyzed by enzymes called polymerases.
(from pp. 331)
Chemistry of the nucleotides and related compounds.
Composition.
The nitrogen-containing based combined with sugar and phosphate units in the naturally occurring nucleotides are derivatives, and so named, of members of three families of heterocyclic compounds: the pyrimidines, purines, and pyridines.
The derivatives have formulas in which one or more hydrogen atoms in a pyrimidine, purine, or pyridine structure has been replaced by simple radicals or functional groups, usually amino (NH2), hydroxyl (OH), or methyl (CH3). The most abundant of these nitrogen bases are the pyrimidines cytosine, thymine, and uracil; the purines adenine and guanin; and the pyridine nicotinamide. The structures of these compounds are represented by structural formulas in which the symbols for the elements are joined by single lines for single covalent bonds and two lines for double bonds. (etc.)
( . . . )
The nitrogen bases can all be prepared from simpler compounds in the laboratory. Pyrimidines are usually synthesized from urea and a second component that furnishes the three carbon atoms that occupy positions designated 4, 5, and 6, in the product. Purines are commonly made from pyrimidines that have amino groups at positions 4 and 5; these amino groups become the nitrogen atoms at positions 7 and 9 of the purine structure.
Several compounds analogous in structure to purine and pyrimidine bases have been synthesized, and their effects on biological systems have been studied.
Small variations in the molecular structure can exert profound influences upon processes such as the formation of proteins or of deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA’s), often because the modified compound cannot undergo some essential chemical reaction.
Nucleosides are compounds in which one of the nitrogen bases is combined with a sugar unit, but the phosphate portion of the nucleotides is absent. . .
Nucleosides can be decomposed into their constituent bases and sugars by hydrolysis; that is, a reaction with water in which a chemical bond is broken and the products are the parts of the original molecule – formerly connected by the bond that was hydrolyzed – now combined with the parts of a water molecule (a hydrogen atom and a hydroxyl group). (etc.)
(from pp. 332 – 333)
Laboratory preparation of nucleosides requires prior conversion of the sugar into a “protected” form that can combine with a nitrogen base only at position 1′ of the sugar ring. After the base-sugar bond has been formed, the protecting modifications are removed.
The point at which the sugar is linked to the phosphate group may be determined by studies of the compounds in which these components remain bound together. It has been found that the location of this linkage may change during the chemical treatments used to isolate the nucleoside but that, in natural polynucleotides (nucleic acids), phosphate ester bonds extend from the 3′ position of one nucleotide to the 5′ position of the next.
( . . .. )
The nucleotides that serve as coenzymes or as the actual physiological building blocks in synthesis of nucleic acids often are esters (when an acid and an alcohol react they form water and an ester) not of phosphoric acid but of condensed relatives of it, pyrophosphoric or triphosphoric acids. They are named as derivatives of the nucleosides.
(one other part on pp. 332 – 333)
Biological functions of nucleotides.
Nucleotides are very widely distributed, apparently being present in all known life forms. . . .
Nucleotides have the same functions — those of coenzymes and of starting materials for nucleic acid synthesis — in all plants and animals, from the simplest to the most complex, and they are built up and broken down by processes that vary only in details throughout the same range.
In the biological synthesis of the pyramidine nucleotides, ammonia, carbon dioxide, and the amino acid aspartic acid are utilized in the assembly of the pyramidine ring of orotic acid, which is then attached to the ribose phosphate unit to produce orotidine 5′-phosphate, (etc.)
***
(Excuse me – phone call with crisis of no baby formula for granddaughter in New York because daycare used up a week’s worth in one day and no money, no foodstamps, no WIC vouchers, nothing to pawn and no way to get too a Western Union office or bank or Kroger where I might resource any of it – figures.)
- cricketdiane
***
This is what I had generated early in the process and posted as a solution (this is a practical paraphrase of that option) -
From the very first day, BP and their Oil Spill Response Organizations, the Coast Guard, Minerals Management and EPA could’ve put an extremely large piece of architectural fabric used in building roofs – over the spill and siphoned off the oil and natural gas from underneath it and they didn’t – and it works
At any point they could’ve done that as well, these fabrics are used for roofing materials – they are structural composites found in practice arenas for sports, NASA has some sitting near the coastal areas in the Huntsville and Houston warehouses and they are available in huge sizes. They don’t present an extra economic or ecological cost and they operate properly even at those depths. They could have done this from the points anywhere along the way and they didn’t. The oil and the methane gas could be brought out from underneath the “underwater canopy” and the use of a simple bleed off to get the methane as well could easily be incorporated. The mechanical subsea robots can manipulate it, anchors can devise the way to hold it down and how big the canopy spreads. It could’ve been done effectively to contain and encapsulate the oil in place rather than having let it spread.
That was my idea and it still is my idea and it still works and there have been other people who have picked up the idea and forwarded it to them. And they still insist on not using it and out of all the available systems of choices and other options – they are not using any of them while I’m watching our Commander of the Coast Guard kiss Tony Hayward’s collective BP ass before even wiping his own or making a dictum to go forward on anything. I’ve never been so captured by the wrongness of a thing in my life. We wouldn’t do that with the North Koreans, or the Iranian government nor the old regimes of Stalin. Then why would we watch them doing it now with a foreign based oil company that is destroying our coast and our national waters more than an atomic bomb would’ve done. Why would they treat this as any less an enemy with its own agenda, its own motives and its own disregard for human life?
- cricketdiane
***
And, I hate being poor and right this minute – I hate being an American and I don’t like it.
In the system I outlined above to capture the oil using architectural structure fabrics used in roofing, the methane causes the “tent” to rise, the oil just sits in the bottom half where it can be siphoned off from an underneath pipe stuck up under the “tent” and the methane can be bled off from halfway down its pool level under the tent using either a side tap hose or from a vent hose on the very top portion of the canopy. It regulates what is coming out, stratifies it under that canopy and it only takes a $1.59 cent connector to attach a hose to bleed off the methane from the top part of the structural canopy.
(and it would’ve taken less than two days to acquire and put into place – even NASA has some of this stuff warehoused in large quantities and massive pieces – my note added at 10.29 pm same day)
How fucking hard is that to figure out?
Did they need a drawing or graphic of some kind to understand it with their damn engineering degrees?
Did they need me to get up a list of resources for the architectural fabrics that are the same as they use to cover practice fields for the Dallas Cowboys, for airports and numerous other structures – including Olympics’ stadiums?
They can stretch nets and fabrics across bays to catch fish underwater. They can stretch architectural and geotextile fabrics across harbors to keep mines out of the shipping lanes. What is the fucking problem with keeping this oil contained in 20 square miles or less – from the very get-go?
How is there contempt for the people of American coastal areas and the environment of our coastal waters tolerated? How is that possible? When does something happen that constitutes a national disaster with a response that appropriately handles it and contains it using everything we have instead of following some preset course that didn’t work when it saw the light of day in the first place, and in fact, was never intended to successfully solve the problems that would occur or that could occur?
How dare they let BP take the lead on this thing? These jackasses started their corporate life serving their own interests over that of human life from their inception and they have maintained that corporate culture successfully despite the valiant efforts of MR. Hayward over the last few years. It is because the corporation is vile and its attorneys are running its response rather than those who care about anything in the real world.
The fact that our EPA members sound for every respect more like employees of the oil industry and BP in particular, than the concerned and conscientious professionals that we’ve been led to believe they are and as I watch our great and conscientious Commander of the Coast Guard, and even NOAA administrators cotton to BP like its way must prioritize every single thing that is done (or not done) – I think about Chernobyl and what would’ve happened, if the corporate entity running it had made all the decisions concerning the aftermath. It would be insane and this is also insane. Don’t tell me that they can’t do anything else. That is a lie.
- cricketdiane
Wanna see the things that I think are incredibly funny right now -
and in a sad, twisted way – absolutely a pathetically and tragically perverse expert exercise in insanity given the current real world situation and its real time, real world, forever damaging, results -
Crisis Management and Emergency Response
ConocoPhillips has developed an integrated global emergency response process. The process includes response capabilities and crisis management plans at the corporate, regional and local level. All plans include regular training, equipment maintenance and review of procedures.
ConocoPhillips is a member of the tier three oil spill response organizations that cover the regions of the world in which it operates. Membership in these cooperatives extends company access to resources both equipment and trained personnel – that can provide immediate emergency assistance.
ConocoPhillips participates in and helps coordinate Spill of National Significance (SONS) drills – mandated by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 – which are conducted every two to three years under the direction of the U.S. Coast Guard. One of several emergency response exercises ConocoPhillips engages in, SONS drills are designed to foster significant improvements in the preparedness, prevention and oil spill response efforts of the U.S. government and the petroleum industry. The drills, funded jointly by government and industry, typically involve a year of planning by the major public and private sector participants.
In April 2004, trained ConocoPhillips personnel joined more than 1,100 other incident responders from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Coast Guard, the government of Mexico, the U.S. and Mexican Navies, the state of California, another oil company and numerous spill response contractors to practice implementing their oil spill contingency plans. The scenario was a vessel collision, a ship explosion and two major oil spills – all in the same morning, off the California coast. Drill participants staffed local unified command posts in San Diego and San Pedro, California, supplemented by a national incident command center in Los Alamitos, California, and a response center in Ensenada, Mexico.
Partnership Examples by Company
The companies listed below are participating in the API Public-Private Partnerships. Click on the links to see information on their participation. Contact information for each company is included.
***
I like your idea. When they have been siphoning – they have been using some filtering system. I won’t say what that is because I don’t know and there is some barge or ship filtering system like you are suggesting that is used when we have ships spill oil, crude or fuel oil products.
One thing I just noticed as Commander Thad Allen was speaking probably suggested what the real problem is. Since the 1990s, a change was made in how prevention and spill mitigation were to be tackled. And, this change added specialized companies intended to perform that part of the business, including to provide any and all resources once a disaster of some kind occurs. That means, when people have made suggestions, offers of support, teams have gone to be of help, ideas for solutions have been generated and known solutions that could help have been offered – they aren’t even in the mix because these spill response organizations (SRO)s are handling the situation.
It also means that BP and other large oil corporations were given a pass on having preparations “in-house” to provide immediate and effective response for a spill. Many of the oil companies could pay a little each together and as members, could simply support a group organization for spill response which offered the minimum tools, boats, resources, teams, engineering companies access points, and mitigation resources to deal with it when some accident or spill might happen.
So, instead of each company having their own teams and resources available and ready to deal with a spill, these spill response organizations received money to put together on standby the minimum requirements to satisfy whatever current EPA and MMS guidelines demanded. I went to the spill response organization site for the area of the Gulf of Mexico early on when this happened, and I noticed the very small fleet of marine resources that they listed. The coordination of these resources and placement also doesn’t fall to BP or the oil company members, it is given over to the Spill Response Organizations at the point of a disaster, accident or small incident. They determine how to do what needs to be done and they coordinate bringing resources to the point of need and they decide how they are utilized and in what order, in what measure, and where to get them. If they have never dealt with a spill or disaster of this magnitude, which none of them had ever even approached previously, they would have quickly been in over their heads.
From what I noticed, the only thing the spill response organizations would have been ready and capable of handling is a situation that never occurred or what was so minimal as to not be considered an incident of any regional magnitude. You can go to their website online and see what they started with to handle this massive disaster. It would be a good joke, if it weren’t so pathetic and the magnitude of the disaster it subsequently caused to get worse – weren’t so dire.
The ideas that you have or I have or anyone else has – whether in the greater community or in academia or in the fine societies of engineers and scientists could not get in through the process that has been in place. So, our ideas weren’t even on the menu. Nor, unfortunately would they be on those menus now unless we were to create some company that could get into that game with them. Nothing outside that small tightly knit oil trade business and its companion industries mean anything to them because they seem to believe they are more qualified, more experienced and more so, stand in an adversarial position to the rest of us. That’s partly because of their profit-driven motivations that have advanced their own opportunities and positions over many years against regulations that would require of them, permits and certifications that would slow their profit-making activities and environmental activist organizations that would change their most profitable and economically-based decisions about how to do what they want to do.
When I decided that BP, if not the enemy – are certainly part of the problem, it occurred to me that the best answer now is to find effective ways to genuinely mitigate the damage that none of us can prevent them from doing, not only in the Gulf of Mexico – but everywhere they drill. The other best answer that I know – is to take our time and efforts to create answers and generate solutions to do everything beyond what is possible yesterday and using everything that has ever been known or done yesterday – to create what will make petroleum obsolete in our societies. That is the good answer that works and to do it, implement it and make that work today. It is 2010 and many things existed even a hundred and fifty years ago, that would offer options we pretend today, don’t exist. But, in fact – many options and choices were cast aside in favor of gasoline.
As long as there are profits to be made, they will drill for oil and in doing so, they will make life-threatening disasters occur. That isn’t any longer necessary for our societies – and our nations – and our progress to go forward. There are a multitude of other ways for our cars and trucks to run, for our ships and trains to move goods, for our planes to fly and for our energy needs of all kinds to be supplied. At some point, our leaders and decision-makers fell to the sway of what had the power and influence to affect their decisions and they stopped all progress going in any other direction that would compete with what we already had in place. And, when they did that at many stages along the process, they denied the real progress that would’ve taken our societies to the next level instead of keeping it at the last one.
That, we can go forward and do some things to fix. The oil that exists in the Gulf of Mexico where it is destroying life even as I write this, can be given to solutions that we create and implement. But, as long as the situation is set up the way it is – putting those solutions in place would require making a substantial hole in the isolating fortresses that are in place around, not only BP and other oil companies and its industries, but in the spill response organizations as well. I don’t know how to do that but maybe someone can find some ways to do it.
They have a thinking set about what their choices are that cannot remain the same, including how they think about what is more costly or determine cost-based analysis of the things available to tackle a problem, or a spill, or a disaster, or a potential disaster. The booms our Navy have look more like a substantial response to containment of an oil or fuel spill than the flimsy pieces of ineffective junk put out through the spill response organizations supported by the oil industry tycoons and the EPA and the Minerals Management Service requirements. That determination of which specs for those booms and other spill mitigation equipment were cost-effective in the long run indicates a sorry kind of thinking about it that has got to go.
- cricketdiane
(response I made to a blog comment earlier today)
***
MapEcos - which shows all the toxic chemicals released in the United States that manufacturers, companies, corporations and businesses were willing to voluntarily admit to the EPA and to the extent they admitted there was some degree or volume of chemical release.
I’ll get back to the information about the nucleotides in a while and explain why I was posting it with this at all – but to be brief, there are two things – one is that when a carbon based – hydrocarbon group is put into that system is doesn’t work for life on any level. And, two that co-enzymes based in that same system can be constructed for use to (not de-stabilize the petroleum as the dispersants are doing) – but to delete it, in fact and mitigate through a process where the oil doesn’t exist in the Gulf of Mexico anymore chemically.
- cricketdiane, 05-24-10 (9.04 pm ET)
***
And I was absolutely serious when I said that I will never spend one single dollar of my money, my family’s money nor anyone else’s resources ever on anything that I find out BP in any way contributed to the feedstocks or raw products to create – up to and including their gasoline products, fuel oils, plastics made from their raw products and any chemical products I find that has used anything from them.
And, I’ve already determined for my self and for anyone that I get to say something to about it – where I see an ad for BP – I will stop seeing that channel in my home, I will not buy any magazines or journals that include even one advertisement from them and I promise myself that once anything has carried their advertisements or specialists that are promulgating the viewpoints of their company – I will no longer watch that show or patronize that group of people in any way – whether it is something on the history channel or news program or anything else.
I don’t mean – when a news broadcast is showing Tony Hayward in an interview – I mean when FoxNews or bloomberg troops some damn bunch of experts across the screen in my home – to tell me how I am supposed to think or feel about this giant corporate bastard – I won’t watch that show or those news channels any more – not even once and I will tell everyone I know about the fact they are doing that in those shows intentionally misleading the public and engaging in propaganda for a vicious and vile enterprise knowing the fact that they are doing it when they’ve done it.
That choice doesn’t belong to my federal government and it doesn’t belong to the Republican Party attorneys and business backers – and it doesn’t belong to anyone posting a comment on my blog about “let’s get together on this and not say anything ugly about BP.” There isn’t anything ugly enough to say about BP that can convey anything close to what they’ve done and the way they’ve been doing it. The way they’ve handled this and mishandled this oil crisis turning it into a catastrophic event instead of a manageable containment is an abomination to mankind that will last far in excess of my grandchildren’s and great grandchildren’s lifetimes.
- cricketdiane
***
And one other note – when BP doesn’t solve the problem or creates problems, they may be able to cover their ass with a team of attorneys. Admiral whoever and Commander whoever in our Navy and Coast Guard aren’t going to need attorneys nor a safety net when it is evident that they’ve mucked it up – because our laws about national security will mean more in that scenario and there isn’t an attorney that can get them out of that.
Oh well.
That is all the more reason for them not to defer to BP in setting priorities, coordination of efforts, placing resources or rezoning resources and solving the problem overall and specifically solving the problems involved with this event. I’m sorry that the Coast Guard leadership, the EPA, the Department of the Interior, the Minerals Management Services and the prior Presidential and Party administrations bowed to BP and other oil producing corporate energy “drivers”. There is nothing that can get them out of having done that now. But, today is not that day – it is no longer required to be constrained by kissing the ground these oil companies beat down with the fires of their own portable profit machines.
History will show right this minute that they were wrong. That doing business that way was wrong. That damaging people’s lives that way was wrong. And, that destroying the nations they were dependent upon to make their profits was also wrong. And, history will show this time – just as it has everytime – that there is not enough money in all the world, nor enough power and prestige in the entire history of the world – that can fix that.
So, here we are completely violated and raped, pillaged and plundered by BP and its sister industries. And, our coast is filled with human lives that are soon to be irreparably damaged by what is happening in the Gulf Coast waters that has already killed, maimed and sickened huge populations of marine life permanently.
And, BP as an organization and its companion, marine spill response organization along with their little expensive contractors – have made an otherwise manageable situation into a nightmare of catastrophic proportions. And, still the Coast Guard, the EPA and the Department of the Interior along with others in authority and decision-making capacities continue to insist on letting BP set priorities and determine what must be the focus.
Hmmm……..
Well, that’s exactly why I’m going to count BP and all of those contractors like TransOcean, Halliburton, the marine spill response groups and the other oil industry producers that supported them doing it this way – to be terrorists in the same term of the word that anyone who would detonate a nuclear bomb on or near our shores.
And, I for one – will not give them one purchase of a share of stock, not support one loan to them nor bond for their operations. I will encourage anyone whose pension funds holds any of those things to dispose of them and any that don’t – I will tell people to move their money somewhere else. And, on top of that – in every respect – the international courts who do have jurisdiction over their activities and their choices will be interested in taking a look at the crimes to humanity that they’ve managed to accomplish with their insistence on covering their asses instead of fixing the problem.
• Use spill modeling and scenario analysis to measure spill response
capacity • Consider acquiring different types of spill response equipment in future
purchases, to meet other response needs or conditions.
• Consider adding on-water recovery (skimming and storage) capacity to
those regions of the state that currently lack it.
• Evaluate the availability of vessels and personnel to support largescale
implementation of GRPs. • Develop a plan to continually maintain and update the response
equipment spreadsheet developed through this project.
• Assess response management capabilities and limitations and use drills
and exercises to practice and improve response preparedness.
• Evaluate the mobilization/deployment time for MassDEP trailers to be
called in en masse to another region of the state to support a largescale
response. • Evaluate the dispersant application capability and determine whether additional stockpiles and application platforms are required in the Northeast region.
So, not only did they know better, they knew as a matter of planning to update the available resources that could be brought to bear on it. And, they will use the same dispersants on the wildlife and marine life in the New England waters – just as they have off Texas waters and Louisiana waters and Alaska’s waters and the waters of Los Angeles and California.
And, they had modeled various simulations of possible spill scenarios beforehand – including the one we have right now in the Gulf of Mexico.
- my note
(***
ExxonMobil has offered the use of a drilling rig as a staging base, two supply vessels, an underwater vehicle and support vessel and has provided experts to respond to BP’s request for technical advice on blowout preventers, dispersant injection, well construction, and containment options. The company also continues to support the work of Tier 3 spill response and cleanup cooperatives, such as MSRC, Clean Gulf, and Oil Spill Response Ltd., to provide personnel and equipment, such as dispersants, fire boom and radios. ExxonMobil is also identifying, procuring, and manufacturing additional supplies of dispersant for potential use.
(among other things that ConocoPhillips has donated – this one on the list shows somebody that is behind the scenes running the show – pulling strings – altering assessments to “not be alarmist” and other miserable strategies to mislead legislators, science teams and the general public -my note
• Nominated two technical experts to participate in API’s proposed joint industry government task forces;)
Marine Spill Response Corp. (MSRC) is coordinating four C-130 aircraft (one MSRC, one commercial, two Air Force) spraying dispersants, along with six smaller planes that act as spotters. It has also supplied:
• Eight offshore rescue vessels (OSRVs) that are working on site;
• Two additional OSRVs en route from Maine and New York;
• Three ocean-barges on site to capture and store oil that is skimmed up by the OSRVs;
• Six fast response vehicles that are on site and working the scene;
• 200 MSRC staff and field personnel, along with supervision of more than 1,000 contractors;
• Numerous shallow-water barges that hold pontoons used for skimming and can be deployed in shallow-water situations to protect the shoreline; and
• More than 700,000 ft (213,500 m) of boom deployed/staged under MSRC coordination
• Several fire boom systems.
BP is using the Tidewater M/V Pat Tillman to bring dispersant chemical, tanks, and assorted tools for the proposed injection plan that BP has devised to alleviate the current spill. The vessel was dispatched directly to the location where the support vessel Skandi Neptune was standing by with coiled tubing lowered to the wellhead to inject the dispersant directly into the leak stream. In addition, BP has chartered the Tidewater M/V War Admiral, which will be outfitted with equipment used to monitor current patterns in the GOM.
So, not only does BP claim to have over 400 petroleum engineers working around the clock for the last 35 days to solve this thing, and a number of other resources coming from petroleum industry individual sister companies – but they’ve managed to bring all these ideas to bear on it without having one single idea that wasn’t on their menu to start with. How do you even manage to do that?
They knew the top kill strategy had been used on land and in shallow water with usual success and it could have been used from the first day they knew the valves wouldn’t close on the subsea blowout preventer. But they didn’t do that either. In all the days and hours that have followed, they do still have the same 1 then 2 then 3 – plan with exactly the same elements and components on it that they did have in the first place.
Now, I want to know how that many experts and engineers and business people can possibly be that sum total stupid and hairbrained and incapable of generating or accepting and implementing any damn thing else.
And, believe me – watching them blame and hide behind the EPA and the Coast Guard and NOAA for why they didn’t know there was a greater volume coming out of the leaking pipes beyond 1,000 barrels or 5,000 barrels – isn’t going to get it. And, when they have hidden in the skirts of the EPA for the choice of dispersants they are using – on tv and on the news and in print and everywhere else they could open their mouths and get it publicized – they aren’t going to side-step one iota of responsibility for doing it that way in the long run when court after court after court after Congressional act and International act and International court gets done with them. And, that is after I get done with them as a consumer of their goods which I will never be again in my lifetime or in the influence I might have in the course of my children’s lifetimes.
That isn’t going to change because BP executives did what their attorneys told them to do and blamed the EPA and the Coast Guard Unified Command for the choices they have been making and implementing.
The most important convention regulating and preventing marine pollution by ships is the IMO International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1973, as modified by the Protocol of 1978 relating thereto (MARPOL 73/78). It covers accidental and operational oil pollution as well as pollution by chemicals, goods in packaged form, sewage, garbage and air pollution.
IMO’s Intervention Convention affirms the right of a coastal State to take measures on the high seas to prevent, mitigate or eliminate danger to its coastline from a maritime casualty. The International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation (OPRC), 1990 provides a global framework for international co-operation in combating major incidents or threats of marine pollution. A protocol to this convention (HNS Protocol) covers marine pollution by hazardous and noxious substances.
The Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) is IMO’s senior technical body on marine pollution related matters. It is aided in its work by a number of Sub-Committees.
(under the tab on the top bar that says – Marine Environment)
a drilling platform is also a ship. (it is authorized and certified under the marine vessels codes and regulations internationally and in the United States.)
***
Revised MARPOL Annex I
The revised MARPOL Annex I Regulations for the prevention of pollution by oil was adopted in October 2004 and enters into force on 1 January 2007. It incorporates the various amendments adopted since MARPOL entered into force in 1983, including the amended regulation 13G (regulation 20 in the revised annex) and regulation 13H (regulation 21 in the revised annex) on the phasing-in of double hull requirements for oil tankers. It also separates, in different chapters, the construction and equipment provisions from the operational requirements and makes clear the distinctions between the requirements for new ships and those for existing ships. The revision provides a more user-friendly, simplified Annex I.
New requirements in the revised Annex I include the following:
Regulation 22 Pump-room bottom protection: on oil tankers of 5,000 tonnes deadweight and above constructed on or after 1 January 2007, the pump-room shall be provided with a double bottom.
Regulation 23 Accidental oil outflow performance – applicable to oil tankers delivered on or after [date of entry into force of revised Annex I plus 36 months] 1 January 2010; construction requirements to provide adequate protection against oil pollution in the event of stranding or collision.
Oman Sea – new special area under MARPOL Annex I
The Oman Sea area of the Arabian Seas is designated a special area in the revised Annex I.
The other special areas in Annex I are: Mediterranean Sea area; Baltic Sea area; Black Sea area; Red Sea area; “Gulfs” area; Gulf of Aden area; Antarctic area; and North West European Waters. In the special areas, there are stricter controls on discharge of oily wastes.
“Gulfs” area
“Gulfs” area
“Gulfs” area
(it includes the Gulf of Mexico and because parts of it are in international waters – it includes every single oil drilling rig, semi-submersible platform, permanent oil drilling or oil harvesting platform and every other ocean based vessel or vessel system of any and every kind. – my note)
Summary of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
42 U.S.C. §6901 et seq. (1976)
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) gives EPA the authority to control hazardous waste from the “cradle-to-grave.” This includes the generation, transportation, treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste. RCRA also set forth a framework for the management of non-hazardous solid wastes. The 1986 amendments to RCRA enabled EPA to address environmental problems that could result from underground tanks storing petroleum and other hazardous substances.
HSWA – the Federal Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments – are the 1984 amendments to RCRA that focused on waste minimization and phasing out land disposal of hazardous waste as well as corrective action for releases. Some of the other mandates of this law include increased enforcement authority for EPA, more stringent hazardous waste management standards, and a comprehensive underground storage tank program.
They have broad sweeping powers, just as our Coast Guard does and just as many UN groups in the international community have over marine environments and coastal regions. It even applies to national coastal waters and subcoastal activities when they abrogate the coastal waters that affect the marine environment and the trade / business/ commercial and economic activities of an international host of “stakeholders” and nations’ populations, broad spectrums of aquatic life, other commercial activities, and threatens massive air and/or ocean current carries of violating substances, especially toxins and hazardous chemicals in particular. – it makes this illegal on a grand scale, with a number of international laws in place that are enforced and with criminal consequences along with the civil penalties involved.
- cricketdiane
and now, this time, I think I will record the music that I create to get over thinking about this stuff for awhile.
or go take a bath or a walk
or all of the above.
***
See what I mean – they are bragging about something that wouldn’t even take a few hours worth of this spill from the bottom of the sea and do anything much with it – and they only had 15 of them – how big is the Gulf of Mexico?
“One of the most visible hallmarks of MSRC is its broad base of oil spill response resources, at the center of which is a fleet of 15 dedicated Responder Class Oil Spill Response Vessels (OSRVs), designed and built specifically to recover spilled oil. The OSRVs are approximately 210 feet long, have temporary storage for 4,000 barrels of recovered oil, and have the ability to separate oil and water aboard ship using two oil-water separation systems.”
“have temporary storage for 4,000 barrels of recovered oil,” which is expected to be combined with water maybe to begin with and then separated – and there is more like 70,000 barrels each pouring out of the two leaks on the bottom of the seabed in the Gulf of Mexico from this.
Are they in some world where they serve the Gulf of Mexico and it is a small place of two or three acres or are they doing drugs with their free time or what? Did they think that two or three boats and a handful of barges were going to be the coverage needed for any significant event encompassing the Gulf of Mexico – or in fact, did they believe it would never be required and just had enough to barely satisfy the Coast Guard, EPA and MMS federal guidelines?
Do they understand the concept of size that represents the Gulf of Mexico in flat acreage and volume and 3-dimensional space or are they sitting in Houston Texas completely oblivious to the scale of the actual environment involved in this catastrophic environmentally damaging and life-threatening event?
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
OVERVIEW OF TOTAL PETROLEUM HYDROCARBONS aliphatics), and high grade oils. Naphtha is the lightest of the paraffin fraction, followed by kerosene fractions
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
complex mixture of petroleum hydrocarbons potentially present in an air sample is separated into aliphatic and aromatic fractions, and then these two major …
www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp123-c3.pdf
My Note -
I stopped to say something on a couple post comments and then I wanted to add this to the last post but I decided to start a new one instead.
These two entries came from the google search results using the search terms -
aliphatic hydrocarbons petroleum
(there were a bunch of other goodies there too.)
***
My Note -
And I was thinking about the testing being done for the EPA out in the Gulf Coast areas – this was on one of my documents with some other things about the toxic waste mitigation for a number of things and hopefully some of the access points for specific health and environmental hazards from them that I had looked up a while back.
- cricketdiane
***
Aberdeen Test Center Facilities / Capabilities Guide
Toxic Fumes and Field Testing (Chemistry)
State-of-the-art instrumentation analyzes gases produced during weapons and ammunition testing, mobile and stationary vehicle tests, and during the assessment of tents, shelters, and other field equipment in real time.
Measurements are taken with portable analyzers for vehicle testing, mobile instrumentation vans for remote site testing, and a bombproof for ballistics tests
A list of the gases analyzed and particulate collectors used is as follows:
• Carbon monoxide
• Carbon dioxide
• Sulfur dioxide
• Nitric oxide
• Nitrogen dioxide
• Hydrocarbons
• Ammonia
• Oxygen depletion
• Explosive gases (LEL)
• Hydrogen
• Particulate impactors
•Chlorine
• Cyclone and Particulate Traps
Reactive gases can be detected during toxic gas analysis using a field Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer (FTIR)
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Warfighter Directorate, 410-278-4277, email atcwd@atc.army.mil
Some of the other things on this document from my previous research on this stuff -
Decades later, U.S. military pollution in Philippines linked to deaths
By Travis J. Tritten, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Travis J. Tritten / S&S
Nov. 8, 2009 Residents fish at the mouth of the Santa Rita river, where the U.S. Navy dumped its untreated sewage until it left Subic Bay in 1991. A landfill used by the Navy still sits along the river.
Travis J. Tritten / S&S
Nov. 7, 2009 These members of the Fastulan village tribe worked as subcontractors for the U.S. Navy sorting waste such as paints, chemicals and asbestos materials by hand until 1991. Villagers, who do not keep birth or death records, made a list of 42 former workers who they believed died of complications from exsposure to military toxic waste, some dating back to the 1970s.
CLARK AIR BASE, Philippines – The U. S. military is long gone from bases in the Philippines, but its legacy remains buried here.
Toxic waste was spilled on the ground, pumped into waterways and buried in landfills for decades at two sprawling Cold War-era bases.
Today, ice cream shops, Western-style horse ranches, hotels and public parks have sprung up on land once used by the Air Force and the Navy — a benign facade built on land the Philippine government said is still polluted with asbestos, heavy metals and fuel.
Records of about 500 families who sought refuge on the deserted bases after a 1991 volcanic eruption indicate 76 people died and 68 others were sickened by pollutants on the bases. A study in 2000 for the Philippine Senate also linked the toxins to “unusually high occurrence of skin disease, miscarriages, still births, birth defects, cancers, heart ailments and leukemia.”
The 1991 base closing agreement gave the Philippines billions of dollars in military infrastructure and real estate at the bases and in return cleared the United States of any responsibility for the pollution. The Department of Defense told Stars and Stripes it has no authority to undertake or pay for environmental cleanup at the closed bases.
Philippine government efforts never gained traction. Philippine President Joseph Estrada formed a task force in 2000 to take on the issue, but it fell dormant and unfunded after he left office a year later. Efforts by private groups and environmentalists to force a cleanup have largely fizzled.
After two decades, the base closing agreement has run up a troubling environmental record. Filipinos claim exposure to U.S. pollutants has brought suffering and death.
As the U.S. military works to become greener in the 21st century, the Philippines stand as a dark reminder of how environmental responsibilities can go astray overseas.
Both the Air Force and the Navy polluted haphazardly in the Philippines.
The Navy pumped 3.75 million gallons of untreated sewage each day into local fishing and swimming waters at Subic Bay, according to a 1992 report by what was then known as the General Accounting Office.
The bases poured fuel and chemicals from firefighting exercises directly into the water table and used underground storage tanks without leak detection equipment, the agency found.
At least three sites at the Subic Bay Navy base — two landfills and an ordnance disposal area — are dangerously polluted with materials such as asbestos, metals and fuels, the Philippines government found after an environmental survey there.
Clark Air Base was a staging area during the Vietnam War. Its aviation and vehicle operations contaminated eight sites with oil, petroleum lubricants, pesticides, PCB and lead, according to a 1997 environmental survey by the Philippine government.
Before the U.S. closed the bases, it drew up a rough bill for cleaning the hazardous pollution.
Though they never tested the water or soil, the Air Force and the Navy estimated cleanup at each could cost up to $25 million — the average cost of handling the most polluted sites back in the United States, according to the GAO.
Rose Ann Calma is believed to be one of the warning signs of pollution at Clark Air Base.
Now 13 years old, she weighs just 32 pounds and must wear diapers. Cerebral palsy and severe mental retardation have stolen her ability to speak or walk.
Her mother and about 500 other families who were displaced by a volcanic eruption in 1991 moved onto the base and set up a tent village.
They drilled shallow wells on a former motor pool site and drank the untreated water — despite an oily sheen — until they were moved off the land in the late 1990s.
Records of the families, published by the Philippines Senate, said 144 people were sickened at the camp, 76 of whom died.
It said at least 19 children were born with disabilities, diseases and deformities between 1996 and 1999.
Tests in 1995 by the Philippine Department of Health confirmed wells on Clark were contaminated with oil and grease, a byproduct of decades of military use.
“If it is God’s will, then I accept it,” Rose Ann’s mother, Susan Calma, said recently.
In a village near Subic Bay, Norma Abraham, 58, holds an X-ray showing the lung disease that killed her husband, Guillermo.
Her husband worked through the 1980s and early 1990s sorting the Navy waste that went into local landfills, which are the most polluted sites at Subic Bay.
Many aborigines like Abraham, who are among the poorest in a poor country, were paid about 30 cents per day to hand-sort recyclable metals from Navy waste that included asbestos, paint and batteries, villagers told Stars and Stripes.
No protective equipment other than gloves was ever used, and asbestos dust was often thick in the air, the villagers said. Sometimes, when a truck dumped new waste for sorting, they said the workers would faint from the toxic fumes.
Guillermo Abraham began to cough, feel tightness in his lungs and have trouble breathing while working there, his wife said.
The lung ailment plagued him through his life and after an X-ray in January showed he was terminally ill with lung disease, he died on May 29, Norma Abraham said.
His disease, which mirrors asbestosis, is the most common ailment and killer among the 70 or so families who worked with the Navy’s waste, according to the villagers.
The aborigines rarely get quality medical treatment and do not keep birth or death records. But they compiled a list for Stars and Stripes of 41 people who they believe died over the years from toxic exposure.
Any real chance for an environmental cleanup was scuttled by the two governments in the agreement that gave the Philippines billions of dollars in base infrastructure and real estate in return for absolving the United States of any responsibility for the pollution.
As a result, the United States has no legal responsibility or authority to conduct a cleanup, and an influential Philippines politician said that government has little interest in the problem.
“It is not one of its priorities,” said Philippine Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr., a former majority leader and Senate president. “If it was, it would have been done a long time ago.”
Dolly Yanan keeps the records and photos of the gray-faced, emaciated and disabled children believed to have been poisoned by U.S. military pollution in the Subic Bay area.
The records count 38 deaths from disease between 2000 and 2003.
But the record-keeping has begun to lapse in recent years as hope for a cleanup and enthusiasm for the cause recedes.
“For the past four or five years, we cannot track the leukemia,” said Yanan, who runs a community center in Olongapo City.
A coalition of citizens known as the People’s Task Force for Bases Cleanup has fought for U.S. accountability for two decades and met with a string of disappointments.
The Philippine Senate inquiry and task force in 2000 led to no action, and a lawsuit designed to force a U.S.-led environmental assessment survey, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, was thrown out in 2003.
“If only our government was strong enough, I think there would have been a cleanup or at least an initial assessment,” Yanan said. “First, it should be our government who should have a strong will and call for a cleanup.”
The Associated Press February 17, 2010, 11:42AM ET text size: TT
Toxic fumes leak in Philippine port kills 3
MANILA, Philippines
A chemical leak on a barge undergoing repairs killed three workers and prompted authorities to close schools and move to safety nearly 2,000 residents at a northern Philippine port, officials said Wednesday.
The three men suffocated Tuesday while repainting and fixing the docked barge in Batangas port south of Manila, said regional police director Rolando Anonuevo.
Three other workers were hospitalized while authorities temporarily moved about 2,000 people living nearby to a local school.
The gas was probably sodium hydrosulfide, a toxic chemical used in the production of paper and dyes and to process ores, said Philippine National Red Cross Chairman Richard Gordon.
Mayor Ryan Dolor declared an emergency in the town, sealed off a 1.6-mile (1 kilometer) radius around the wharf and suspended classes. Police vehicles, fire trucks, ambulances and Red Cross personnel were on the scene as officials investigated the leak, he said.
Police summoned the owner of the barge for questioning.
Trackman’s estate sues BNSF over toxic fumes
2/18/2010 10:00 AM By Kelly Holleran
The executrix of a deceased man’s estate has filed suit against his former employer, saying he developed respiratory and cardiovascular problems after being exposed to toxic fumes while working.
Maria Seijas claims the recently deceased Roberto Seijas worked as a trackman and machine operator for BNSF Railway Company from 1971 until 2008.
During the time of his employment, Roberto Seijas was exposed to numerous airborne pollutants, chemicals, toxins, ballast dust and diesel fumes, which led him to experience a heart attack on May 15, 2008, according to the complaint filed Feb. 11 in Madison County Circuit Court.
Before his death, Roberto Seijas sustained severe and permanent injuries to his respiratory and cardiovascular systems, lungs, heart and body, which caused him to suffer great pain and mental anguish, the suit states. In addition, he lost money, experienced an extinguished earning capacity and incurred medical costs, the complaint says.
Maria Seijas blames BNSF for causing Roberto Seijas’ death, saying the company was guilty of a number of negligent acts, including its failure to provide safe tools, proper equipment and adequate supervision; its failure to warn him of hazardous conditions; its allowance of unsafe business practices to become common; and its assigning work to Roberto Seijas that it knew would cause him injury.
In her complaint, Maria Seijas seeks a judgment of more than $50,000, plus costs.
Gregory M. Tobin of Pratt and Tobin in East Alton will be representing her.
Madison County Circuit Court case number: 10-L-160.
Frying meat on a gas hob may elevate the risk of developing cancer, warns a novel research.
The study claims that frying meat on a gas hob may be worse than frying it on an electric ring. Professional chefs and cooks may be particularly at risk, it cautioned.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer recently declared that frying on high-temperature may be ‘probably carcinogenic to humans.’
Details of the study
To come up with this finding, a research team from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology replicated the conditions of a typical Western European restaurant kitchen.
For the study, 17 beefsteaks, weighing 400 g each, were fried both on a gas or an electric hob consecutively for 15 minutes, using margarine or soya bean oil.
Then the team measured the amount of toxic particles given off in the ‘breathing zone’ of the chefs.
Outcome of the study
It was found that meat cooked on a gas hob produced more toxic fumes or the harmful polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) compared to food cooked on the electric hob.
Margarine oil was shown to produce the highest level of toxic fumes. The researchers also found napthalene, a chemical contained in mothballs, in 16 of the 17 samples.
The cooks were also shown to report an increased risk of respiratory tract cancer due to the presence of PAHs in their breathing zones.
Findings of the study caution that cooking fumes, as well as other tiny particles given off while frying cause DNA changes which may trigger cancer risk, or cause lung cancer.
However, what causes such toxic content–type of fat or food–still remains uncertain.
Word of caution
The researchers recommended that in order to avoid the consequences, people should keep their kitchens as ventilated as they can, and also make sure that their gas appliances are well maintained.
They concluded, “The measured levels of total particles and PAHs for the cooks in our study are far below the Norwegian occupational exposure limits for nuisance dust.
“However, cooking fumes consist of a mixture of toxic and mutagenic compounds, including mutagenic aldehydes and heterocyclic amines with no known dose-response relationship, so exposure to cooking fumes should be reduced as much as possible.”
Health expert Dr Deborah Jarvis of Imperial College London said, “People should keep their kitchens well ventilated when cooking.”
The study appears in the Journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
It was found that meat cooked on a gas hob produced more toxic fumes or the harmful polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) compared to food cooked on the …
A range of health problems are linked to the pits on military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Toxic substances have been found in the smoke.
A military environmental agency that tested air samples from Balad in 2007 found dioxins, metals, volatile organic compounds and other toxic substances in the smoke. (U.S. Air Force)
By David Zucchino
February 18, 2010
The noxious smoke plumes that wafted over the military base in Balad, Iraq, alarmed Lt. Col. Michelle Franco. The stench from a huge burn pit clung to her clothing, skin and hair.
“I remember thinking: This doesn’t look good, smell good or taste good,” Franco said recently. “I knew it couldn’t be good for anybody.”
She wheezed and coughed constantly. When Franco returned to the U.S., she was diagnosed with reactive airway dysfunction syndrome. She is no longer able to serve as an Air Force nurse.
Other returning veterans have reported leukemia, lymphoma, congestive heart problems, neurological conditions, bronchitis, skin rashes and sleep disorders — all of which they attribute to burn pits on dozens of U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“The military needs to step up and address this problem,” said John Wilson of the advocacy group Disabled American Veterans, which maintains a registry of more than 500 veterans with disorders they blame on burn pits. The fumes emanating from the pits, he warned, could become the Agent Orange of the current war zone.
Items burned in the pits have included medical waste, plastics, computer parts, oil, lubricants, paint, tires and foam cups, according to soldiers and contractors. Some say amputated body parts from Iraqi patients were burned in Balad, site of a large U.S. military hospital.
A military environmental agency that tested air samples from Balad in 2007 found dioxins, metals, volatile organic compounds and other toxic substances in the smoke. But in its report — titled “Just the Facts” — the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine said the substances “were within acceptable standards.” It also blamed particulate matter found at levels above military exposure guidelines on the blowing sand and dust that is common at bases across the region.
“Although no chemical concerns or significant health risks have been identified, smoke from any source, including burning trash, can still cause temporary irritation effects,” the report said.
Last year, the center recommended moving burn pits downwind from areas where service members live and work, and minimizing the burning of plastics and cooking grease.
According to Lt. Cmdr. Bill Speaks, a military spokesman, the burning of medical waste, fuels, oils, lubricants, tires, most metals, electronics, batteries and other hazardous items is prohibited. More environmental sampling and independent reviews are planned “to ensure . . . an improved understanding of burn-pit smoke and any resulting health risks,” Speaks said.
Still, Army Master Sgt. Tex C.G. Hughes said batteries, computer parts and other banned materials were burned regularly at the main U.S. military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He said the fumes wafted over a nearby training camp, where he and other soldiers suffered from burning eyes, coughing and wheezing.
“You could taste the smoke all night long,” said Hughes, a 61-year-old intelligence specialist. He attributes his sleep apnea to smoke exposure.
The Pentagon operates at least 84 burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Rep. Timothy H. Bishop (D-N.Y.), who cosponsored legislation last fall that prohibited burning hazardous and medical waste unless the military showed it had no alternative. The law also requires the Defense Department to justify burn pits, develop alternatives and improve medical monitoring.
Two pits at Balad were shut down in October and replaced by four closed incinerators with pollution controls. The military has installed 27 incinerators in Iraq and Afghanistan and has ordered 82 more, Bishop said.
While the Pentagon says the pits do not cause serious long-term health problems, some health experts disagree.
Dr. Anthony Szema, chief of the allergy section at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northport, N.Y., said exposure to smoke and fumes from burning refuse can increase the risk of death from lung cancer or cardiovascular disease. Szema told a Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing in November that burning plastic bottles produces dioxin and hydrochloric acid, and burning polystyrene foam cups produces dioxin, benzene and other carcinogens.
“In summary, you should not burn trash or inhale burning trash,” Szema said.
And retired Lt. Col. Darrin L. Curtis — a bioenvironmental engineer who served at Balad in 2006 and 2007 — told the committee that “burn pits may be responsible for long-term health problems in many individuals who were exposed to the smoke plumes.”
Army Sgt. 1st Class Francis Jaeger, a communications specialist, said he was regularly ordered to haul refuse to a pit at a U.S. base in Tall Afar, Iraq, where it was burned by contractors.
“We were told to burn everything — electronics, bloody gauze, the medics’ biohazard bags, surgical gloves, cardboard. It all went up in smoke,” said Francis, 46, who attributes his asthma, joint pain, muscle spasms and fatigue to exposure.
Russell Keith, a paramedic working at Balad, said he could tell when the wind had blown dark green plumes from burn pits toward base living areas. He said long lines formed for sick call, with troops coughing up blood, vomiting and complaining of nausea or burning lungs.
Keith said that medical waste, including syringes and expired drugs, was burned in the pits, and that jet fuel was sometimes used as an accelerant. Keith, 50, said he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, which he blames on toxic smoke.
In January, Bishop and Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) introduced the Military Personnel Toxic Exposure Registry Act, which would require the Pentagon to create a database of the tens of thousands of troops exposed to burn pits. The bill also would ban burning plastics, require annual reports to Congress on sicknesses, and ensure that veterans affected by the smoke received full service-related health benefits, Bishop said.
More than 280 veterans and contract workers have sued defense contractor KBR Inc., alleging that burn pits it operated on U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan caused cancers, respiratory problems and 13 wrongful deaths, said Susan Burke, lead attorney for the plaintiffs.
Chief Warrant Officer 5 John A. Wester, 59, a Special Forces soldier, blames his Hodgkin’s disease on exposure to a burn pit at the U.S. base in Bagram, Afghanistan.
“The military wants to deny anything’s wrong, just like with Agent Orange,” Wester said. “But there’s no doubt in my military mind where I got my cancer.”
While serving for Operation Enduring Freedom at a base that was not exactly secret but not exactly publicized, we were told to burn anything and everything that had any English on it. We used 55-gallon drums, and burned 24 hours a day. All food wrappers, papers, trash, batteries, etc. The smell was incredible. Every so often, another unit came to burn cassette tapes, and then you couldn’t even be in the area because you just couldn’t breathe. HOWEVER, the worst airborne contamination we faced was the mystery powder that they sprayed from trucks to kill mosquitos. It was bright yellow and killed any insect it touched. It had this bizarre smell and made your eyes itch. Against regulation, I used my gas mask every time the truck came by. There were a few Army guys that were stationed in a tower about 10 feet from the road where the truck would drive by that had no masks or any other way to not breathe whatever this powder was, and they told me that their hands would go so numb that they couldn’t make a fist after breathing this stuff. However, the base commanders refused to tell us what was in the insecticide. Our military only cares about the troops so much, then we are thrown to the wolves. Also, we dumped our raw sewage from the porta-johns on open ground a few miles off base…and we wonder why they hate us over there!
Bay_Area_Vacationer (02/18/2010, 4:49 PM )
Another example of why we shouldn’t be in Iraq. We have no respect for other people and cultures.
ma8rty (02/18/2010, 8:59 AM )
What about all the material burned or buried on domestic military bases? Check out the marine corps logistics bases, east coast and west coast, they routinely dispose of old materials. What about camp lejeune north carolina?
Blackbeard420 (02/18/2010, 6:40 AM )
On both of my tours in Iraq, there were burn pits operated by KBR in the vicinity of our compound. They burned all garbage such as tires, batteries, plastics, etc. Everything was burnt. The burn pit had a toxic smell that was impossible to get rid of. Our battalion commander complained about the burn pit because it was endangering the health of his Marines. Because of his complaints, the EPA came out to sample the air quality. On the day the EPA arrived, KBR had shut down the burn pit. Air quality was acceptable, case closed. I have had breathing problems ever since.
Aromatic hydrocarbons are the most toxic compounds found in petroleum products. Most aromatic hydrocarbons are long-term toxins and known cancer causing agents. These aromatic compounds are found in all crude oils and most petroleum products. Many aromatic hydrocarbons have a pleasant odor and include such substances as naphthalene, xylene, toluene, and benzene. Aliphatic hydrocarbons are flammable and may be explosively flammable. Aliphatic hydrocarbons include methane, propane, and kerosene.
Aliphatics and aromatics pose a special health risk if ingested and vomited. When swallowed, the lighter, more volatile distillate products can be sucked into the lungs interfering with the lung’s functions and chemical pneumonia may result. Aspiration of fluid into the lungs can occur both during swallowing and vomiting of the product. Upon skin contact, petroleum distillates can produce local skin irritation and sensitivity to light in some individuals. Environmentally, many of the petroleum distillate products add to smog and water pollution due to improper disposal or during their manufacture and use.
Products which contain petroleum distillates should be used carefully. Wear gloves to avoid skin contact and avoid breathing vapors of volatile compounds. Always keep petroleum distillate products out of reach of children. Do not mix different petroleum distillate products. Refer to the specific petroleum distillate product listed in this guide for safe use, storage, and disposal information.
On Dec. 18, 2009, a jury awarded more than $100 million to 10 workers who accused BP North America Inc. of releasing toxic chemicals into the air at its refinery in Texas City.
The workers were among dozens who were treated for sore throats and dizziness related to chemical exposure in March and April 2009. The plaintiffs’ attorneys said the plant had a poor safety record, citing a 2005 explosion that killed 15 people and injured 170, and they contended BP had failed to take adequate steps to remedy the problems.
BP denied releasing any hazardous substances into the plant, but the jury disagreed. It found the energy giant negligent and awarded each plaintiff $10 million in punitive damages, plus between $5,000 and $244,000 apiece for medical expenses, lost earnings, and pain and suffering.
Garner, et al. v. BP Products North America Inc., No. 3:07-cv-00221
Court: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Galveston
Plaintiffs’ Attorneys: Anthony G. Buzbee, Sean E. O’Rourke and Peter K. Taaffe, The Buzbee Law Firm, Houston
Defense Attorney: James B. Galbraith, McLeod, Alexander, Powell & Apffel, Galveston
The information above is reported and written by VerdictSearch Texas. Additional verdicts can be found in VerdictSearch Texas or at VerdictSearch.com, affiliates of Texas Lawyer.
My Note -
If you are angry about the BP, TransOcean, Halliburton Gulf of Mexico oil spill destroying the ocean waters, the coast and the communities of people and animals along the Gulf Coast right now – then call the Republican Party headquarters nearest you and explain it to them over the phone, by email – on their websites, on their contact us pages and on the comments sections to anything anywhere they write to put in the newspaper, locally, regionally, specialized information bases like financial pages, and in oil industry pages and websites, their blogs, their places where they are posting their way of seeing it.
But, especially call them and call the Republican Congressmen and Congressional leaders, committees and Party leadership in the Senate and Congress, at the State levels and at the Federal levels, Call the Republican Party headquarters at local offices, state offices and national headquarter offices including their policy making committee members, and the Conservative Political Action Committee – CPAX – (CPAC) – call and email and tell them what you think about our country being polluted by these oil producers with complete disregard for our economic and physical well-being. They caused it, they made the law such that it would allow it and they de-regulated at their insistence knowing this could happen as a result. They can’t hear it – if you don’t say it.
- cricketdiane, 05-23-10
Added note – right now and over that last month, the only things the Republican Party and conservatives have heard has been from the lobbyists for the oil industry and their partners, from people that agree with them and from conservatives who want to make sure they do keep drilling offshore and in Alaska.
They’ve also been hearing from those who want to insist that the Party members and conservative caucus protect the oil industry from any fallout that might result from the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling and the resultant spill, leaking gusher problems they now have, my note – cd9
I say it is time for them to hear from the rest of us now.
***
(repeated from the middle of the last post – my apologies if you already enjoyed it the first time – or not.)
(TPH) Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon has been identified in 34 of the 1,519 current or former EPA National Priorities List (NPL) hazardous waste sites (ATSDR 1998a).
My note -
This seems odd now doesn’t it -
“Raw petroleum and refined petroleum products used as fuels or lubricants are generally excluded at the national level from the cradle-to-grave record-keeping associated with recognized toxics such as heavy metals or chlorinated solvents.”
“With an eye to the availability of petroleum as a source of energy, petroleum production is tracked by the federal government as well as industry trade associations. Statistics are available for wellhead production as well as for production of major bulk fuel types from domestic refineries. These primary production statistics have been summarized in Chapter 4.”
The movement of raw petroleum to automobile fuel tanks or fuel oil boilers is part of a complex bulk product distribution and storage system, providing many opportunities for accidents, spills, leaks, and losses from simple volatilization. Consistent national statistics are lacking for many stages in the overall oil distribution and storage system. The main exceptions involve larger leaks and spills, especially spills in coastal areas or on larger navigable rivers.
Data for the period from 1984 through 1993 (API 1996) show that most data reported to the U.S. Coast Guard occurred in inland bodies of water: rivers, lakes, and points on bays or estuaries. Spills from large ocean-going tankers and large spills in general (more than 1,000 gallons) are relatively infrequent, never more than 5% of the total number of reported spills in a year. The average number of spills during the 1984-93 period was just under 6,000 spills. The numbers in any given year can vary enormously, with a maximum of just under 9,600 spills reported in 1991.
pp. 59 – 60
***
Within the broad reporting categories of vessels (tankers and barges) and facilities (pipelines, tanks batteries, and other onshore facilities) in the period 1984-1993, numbers of reported spill incidents were roughly equivalent: 42,000 incidents from vessels and 38,000 from facilities. Over this period, the vessels spilled a much larger cumulative amount of oil: 45 million gallons from vessels versus 15 million gallons for facilities. Major incidents can dominate these totals. Two vessel spills account for around one-third of the vessel totals.
At the national level, virtually the only other regulatory program that provides broad-based statistics on petroleum product releases to the environment is EPA’s (leaking) Underground Storage Tank (UST) Program. In 1994, there were over a million underground storage tanks on more than 300,000 identified UST sites; about 91% of these involve tanks at gasoline stations, truck stops, vehicle repair shops, or convenience stores selling gasoline or diesel fuel (EPA 1998c). There were at least 119,000 confirmed instances of underground releases of gasoline or similar petroleum bulk fuels to soils or groundwater, with the total number of sites needing remediation likely to climb to over 176,000 by the turn of the century (EPA 1994a).
While tests to confirm contamination may involve (TPH) Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons or tests for surrogates of specific chemicals such as benzene, the UST program does not attempt to make detailed estimates of releases to environmental media.
U.S. Statistics. President: Ronald W. Reagan Vice President: George Bush … Grammys awarded in 1985. Record of the Year: “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” …
www.infoplease.com/year/1985.html – 22 hours ago
The Presidents, Uncle George Sr. and the Uncle Ron of movie star fame were in place when these changes were made in how the statistics were constructed about toxic releases of petroleum and crude oil in particular. They were also the administrations in place when it was determined that total petroleum hydrocarbons as a group of toxic agents would not be included as a category in the hazards lists, and in the health hazards categories within other directories and databases of statistics.
It was changed from 1976 or sometime prior that intended this to be included and mandated it.
- cricketdiane
And, Thad Allen – just said there was no way for anybody to get down to the levels of 5,000 feet or one mile below the surface and it isn’t an accurate reflection of reality – although he probably didn’t intend that.
*** At the same time, we were stepping on the moon, in 1969 – the deepest bathyscaphe / bathysphere dive was made to two miles down, I think it was. So what happened between there and here that now there is a reason to get down there to get humans into that area – we can’t do it and don’t know how and its way too deep?
- cd9
***
A bathyscaphe (pronounced /ˈbæθɨskeɪf, ˈbæθɨskæf/) is a free-diving self-propelled deep-sea submersible, consisting of a crew cabin similar to a bathysphere, but suspended below a float rather than from a surface cable, as in the classic bathysphere design.[1]
The float is filled with gasoline because this is readily available, buoyant, and for all practical purposes, incompressible. The incompressibility of the gasoline means the tanks can be very lightly constructed as the pressure inside and outside of the tanks equalises and they are not required to withstand any pressure differential at all. By contrast the crew cabin must withstand a huge pressure differential and is massively built. Buoyancy can be trimmed easily by replacing gasoline with water, which is denser.
Auguste Piccard, inventor of the first bathyscaphe, composed the name bathyscaphe using the Ancient Greek words βαθύςbathys (“deep”) and σκάφηskaphē (“ship”).
The iron shot containers are in the form of one or more hoppers which are open at the bottom throughout the dive, the iron shot being held in place by an electromagnet at the neck. This is a fail-safe device as it requires no power to ascend; in fact, in the event of a power failure, shot runs out by gravity and ascent is automatic.
Internal arrangement of Trieste. Click to enlarge.
Piccard’s second bathyscaphe was Trieste, which was purchased by the United States Navy from Italy in 1957.[1] It had two water ballast tanks and eleven buoyancy tanks holding 120,000 litres of gasoline.[2]
Accomplishments
In 1960 Trieste, carrying Piccard’s son Jacques Piccard and Lt. Don Walsh, reached the deepest point on the Earth’s surface, the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench.[1]As of 2010, the two remain the only people to reach this extreme depth. No manned vessel has ever repeated this feat. In 1995, the Japanese sent an unmanned submersible to this depth, Kaikō, but it was later lost at sea. Most recently, in 2009, a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution sent a robotic submarine named Nereus to the bottom of the trench.[3]
The onboard systems indicated a depth of 37,800 ft (11,521 m) but this was later corrected to 35,813 ft (10,916 m) by taking into account variations arising from salinity and temperature. Later and more accurate measurements made in 1995 have found the Challenger Deep to be shallower at 35,798 ft (10,911 m).
The bathyscaphe was equipped with a powerful light, which illuminated a small flounder-like fish, putting to rest the question of whether or not there was life at such a depth in the complete absence of light. The crew of the Trieste noted that the floor consisted of diatomaceous ooze and reported observing “some type of flatfish, resembling a sole, about 1 foot long and 6 inches across” lying on the seabed.[4]The report has since been questioned, with suggestions that it may have been a sea cucumber.
The fishermen whose boats have been hired and they have been hired by BP to help place booms in oil infested waters, anyone including them who are working out in the Gulf waters with the crude oil and dispersants in it and anyone who is involved in cleanup operations, etc. who has any problems physically from these environmental pollutants – can make a complaint officially with this office of NIOSH above and they are legally required to immediately do something about it.
There is also the possibility that communities and people in communities along the coast who have any ill health effects from this crude oil spill can also find help with it here, register the complaint about it and register what their symptoms are, because this is an industrial workplace health hazard and has been caused by an industrial accident.
Mr. BP on CNN State of the Union show – rebroadcast from earlier today but playing now – he still thinks the ocean is going to clean up itself through biological processes that are naturally occurring in the ocean. To be redundant, there were things I posted on a previous post about the 1946 spill of Texaco products in bayous and lands in Louisiana which were found to still have those chemicals in higher concentrations than acceptable even today.
So, he is lying or lying or lying or lying. Or he might be lying because his lips are moving. – Mr. BP Dudley – managing director of BP doesn’t mind it, I guess cause there he is doing it again, knowing full well better.
- cricketdiane
***
I found this interesting -
National Center for Policy Analysis
People related to National Center for Policy Analysis:
W. Mike Baggett – director
Don A. Buchholz – director
Harlan R. Crow – director
Pierre S. du Pont – national policy chairman
William J. Gedwed – director
John Victor Lattimore Jr. – director
Frederick R. Meyer – director
Henry J. Smith – director
James Cleo Thompson Jr. – director
Jere W. Thompson Sr. – director
Michael L. Whalen – director
Raymond E. Wooldridge – director
Robert J. Wright – director
Other current National Center for Policy Analysis relationships:
Castle Rock Foundation – donor
National Center for Policy Analysis past relationships:
Bruce Bartlett – senior fellow
***
Minton report: Carter-Ruck give up bid to keep Trafigura study secret
• Guardian ‘released from restrictions forthwith’
• Report called firm’s oil waste ‘potentially toxic’
• Read the Trafigura study: the Minton report (pdf)
* David Leigh
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 October 2009 22.19 BST
* Article history
Lawyers for oil traders Trafigura finally abandoned attempts to keep secret a scientific report about toxic waste dumping in west Africa, that was shown to the Guardian.
Just after 7.30pm Carter-Ruck, libel lawyers for Trafigura, wrote a letter to the Guardian which said the newspaper should regard itself as released forthwith from any reporting restrictions. An MP revealed the report’s existence to parliament this week, after the Guardian was hit with a super-injunction banning all mention of it and other UK media were then subsequently notified of, and therefore bound by it.
The Minton report, commissioned in 2006 from the London-based firm’s scientific consultants, said that based on the limited information they had been given Trafigura’s oil waste, dumped cheaply the month before in a city in Ivory Coast, was potentially toxic, and capable of causing severe human health effects .
The study said early reports of large scale medical problems among the inhabitants of Abidjan, were consistent with a release of a cloud of potentially lethal hydrogen sulphide gas over the city. The effects could have included severe burns to the skin and lungs, eye damage, permanent ulceration, coma and death.
The author of this initial draft study, John Minton, of consultants Minton, Treharne & Davies, said dumping the waste would have been illegal in Europe and the proper method of disposal should have been a specialist chemical treatment called wet air oxidation.
Although the report was cautious, pointing out that unreliable press reports and mass hysteria might have led to exaggeration of alleged ill effects, its contents were unwelcome.
Trafigura subsequently did not use the report in the personal injury report in the claim against them and did not dislcose the report’s existence.
It issued a series of public statements over the next three years saying the waste had been routinely disposed of and was harmless. Trafigura based this decision on other reports produced from an analysis of the slops obtained from the Probo Koala ship. Trafigura dismissed complaints of illness in a lawsuit brought by 30,000 inhabitants of Abidjan, before being forced last month to pay them £30m in compensation and legal costs in a confidential out of court settlement.
The oil firm then conceded in a public statement that the toxic fumes could have caused flu-like symptoms to the inhabitants. But it was accepted in an agreed statement by both sides that expert evidence did not back the more serious claims of deaths, miscarriages or serious injuries, made in previous official statements by the Ivory Coast and British governments and in a UN report.
Before the settlement announcement, Trafigura’s lawyers Carter-Ruck obtained a super-injunction from a judge, banning the Guardian not only from revealing the existence of the Minton report, but also from telling anyone about the existence of the injunction.
They said the Minton report was confidential because it had been obtained for possible use in litigation. Trafigura said the report was only preliminary and had proved to be inaccurate. They said hydrogen sulphide in the waste could not have broken down into a dangerous gas after the dumping and that other experts had concluded: no other chemicals were released in concentrations capable of causing significant harm to human health .
Carter-Ruck was unable to prevent the publication of internal company emails by the Guardian, which confirmed Trafigura executives had been aware in advance that their waste was hazardous, and knew that it ought to have received expensive specialist treatment. Company traders talked about making serious dollars from paying someone to take away their shit .
Attempts by Carter-Ruck to suppress the Minton report led to a controversy about parliamentary privilege this week, when the law firm initially tried to prevent reporting of parliamentary questions tabled by the Labour MP Paul Farrelly. They later abandoned this attempt. Carter-Ruck was accused by MPs of potential contempt of parliament.
Tonight, Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian’s editor, said: I welcome the climbdown by Trafigura and Carter-Ruck. Now people can read the Minton report they will realise why it was in the public interest for it to be published. It has taken a five-week legal battle – involving journalists, lawyers, bloggers and parliament itself – to force this information into the open. Never again should a newspaper be threatened with contempt of court for reporting parliament. And judges should think again about the use of super-injunctions which are themselves secret. This is a good day for parliament, open justice and free reporting.
Pierre Lorinet, Trafigura’s chief financial officer, told the Telegraph: We decided that our best course of action at the time was to get the injunction, because we didn’t want more inaccurate reporting on things which are very clearly wrong effectively. It is a heavy-handed approach, absolutely. With hindsight, could it have been done differently? Possibly. The injunction was never intended to gag parliament or attack free speech.
Experts on dealing with maritime incidents involving hazardous and noxious substances to meet in France
IMO’s Fourth R&D Forum on Hazardous and Noxious Substances (HNS) in the Marine Environment, Parc Chanot, Marseille, France, 12 to 14 May 2009
Leading experts in dealing with maritime incidents involving hazardous and noxious substances, such as chemicals, will gather to exchange information and ideas at IMO’s Fourth R&D Forum on Hazardous and Noxious Substances (HNS) in the Marine Environment, which is to be held from 12 to 14 May 2009, in conjunction with INTERSPILL 2009, in Marseille, France.
The growth in marine transportation of chemicals, together with State and industry obligations arising from the entry into force, in 2007, of the Protocol on Preparedness, Response and Co-operation to Pollution Incidents by Hazardous and Noxious Substances, 2000 (OPRC-HNS Protocol), have focused professional and public attention on the potential dangers of HNS at sea.
The R&D Forum will take an in-depth scientific, technical and legal look at the experience to date in planning for, and responding to, HNS incidents and the challenges that remain, and will define areas for new developments. The integration of the R&D Forum with the INTERSPILL conference underpins the conference theme of Working Together for the protection of the marine environment.
The Forum provides a platform for direct communication amongst senior researchers and Research and Development managers from recognized institutions around the world to promote and encourage co-operative activities including joint research, as well as to stimulate new ideas and studies related to preparedness and response to maritime incidents involving HNS. It will focus on impact assessment, the operational dimension of pollution-combating techniques and equipment, and health and safety issues. Compliance with, and enforcement of, international legislation related to HNS will be also analyzed.
It is anticipated that the Forum will bring together some 100 delegates from IMO Member States, other United Nations agencies, inter-Governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations and research institutions, in addition to providing an opportunity for participants to attend other events related to oil pollution response, organized as part of INTERSPILL 2009.
Previous IMO R&D Fora
The first and second International R&D Fora on oil spill response issues were held in McLean (USA, 1992) and London (1995).
The Third R&D Forum on High Density Oil Spill Response was held in Brest, France, in 2002.
The OPRC-HNS Protocol was adopted by IMO in 2000 and entered into force in 2007. It follows the principles of the International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation (OPRC), which was adopted in 1990 and entered into force in 1995.
Article 8 of the OPRC Convention and Article 6 of the OPRC-HNS Protocol call on Governments and IMO to play an active role in the promotion of R&D relating to the enhancement of state-of-the-art pollution preparedness and response, through the exchange of information, and to promote the holding, on a regular basis, of international symposia on relevant subjects, including technological advances in techniques and equipment for responding to pollution incidents.
Briefing 18, 8 May 2009
For further information please contact:
Lee Adamson, Head, Public Information Services on 020 7587 3153 (media@imo.org )
Natasha Brown, External Relations Officer on 020 7587 3274 (media@imo.org ).
Previous IMO R&D Fora
The first and second International R&D Fora on oil spill response issues were held in McLean (USA, 1992) and London (1995).
The Third R&D Forum on High Density Oil Spill Response was held in Brest, France, in 2002.
*********
http://www.iopcfund.org/
from their news / headlines page – about Interspill 2009 conference coming up in June – 2009
http://www.iopcfund.org/headlines.htm
Interspill 2009
Working Together
12-14 May 2009, Marseille, France
The Interspill 2009 Conference and Exhibition will take place at the Parc Chanot, Marseille, France, from
12-14 May 2009, in conjunction with the Fourth IMO R&D Forum on Hazardous & Noxious Substances in the Marine Environment. The theme of the conference is ‘Working Together’ to prevent, prepare for and respond to oil spills. The IOPC Funds’ Director, Mr Willem Oosterveen, will give a presentation entitled ‘The IOPC Funds: What has been achieved and what will be the main challenges for the future’ . The IOPC Funds will also run a short course on Oil Pollution Claims and Compensation as part of the educational programme and have a stand at the exhibition.
Click here for more information on Interspill 2009.
(http://www.interspill.com)
***
(from)
ABS 16855 Northchase Drive Houston TX 77060 USA Tel: 1-281-877-5800 | 2008 All Rights Reserved. Release 1.0.1.0024
Mission
The mission of ABS is to serve
the public interest as well as the
needs of our clients by promoting
the security of life, property and the
natural environment primarily through
the development and verifi cation of
standards for the design, construction
and operational maintenance of
marine-related facilities.
(from the ABS news)
EPA National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Permit
The US Environmental Protection Agency has published their final National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Vessel General Permit (VGP). Compliance within US waters is required from 6 February 2009. Read More
Latest News Browse News
ABS Announces New Structural Requirements for FPSO Conversions and Newbuilds Leading offshore classification society ABS has adopted new structural requirements for the evaluation of converted floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) units. Read More
ABS Extends Offshore Structure Assessment Program To Tension Leg Platforms, Spars Classification society ABS unveiled its ABS Eagle Offshore Structure Assessment Program (OSAP) Version 2.0 at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, TX, this week. Read More
My apologies for repeating these parts but I thought it would be good to have them here in this part of the post – Yes, as stated in the State of the Union show on CNN – these oil platforms drilling in the Gulf of Mexico are flagged out of other nations and territories. But, there are international requirements and internationally criminal charges can be brought against them along with serious fines and their companies can be stripped of their rights, although they rarely ever do that.
- cricketdiane
***
Okay – these two entries are about hazardous waste generally – the Georgia site indicates the same thing that is available through every state out of the fifty United States and these resources are available to anyone.
Ohio State University Extension Fact Sheet
Ohio State University Fact Sheet
Community Development
700 Ackerman Road, Suite 235, Columbus, OH 43202-1578
Disposal Of Household Hazardous Materials
CDFS-102
Joe E. Heimlich
One of the most controversial subjects of our time is hazardous waste. Where it goes has been central to many long legal battles. Often, people forget that every household contributes to hazardous waste.
Individually, the waste that is hazardous may seem insignificant, but in the aggregate….Picture, for example, a city of 50,000; if every household contributes an average of five gallons of hazardous material to the solid waste stream each year, there would be over 250,000 gallons of waste each year which would convert to roughly 41 1/3 tons of hazardous waste per year. Whether cleansers, paints, batteries, or motor oil, household hazardous waste should be of grave concern to all citizens.
Each person has options available to them for reducing their dependency on hazardous materials, using less, and careful disposal. This fact sheet will briefly discuss the current best means of disposing of household hazardous waste. Step One: Read the Label
Some hazardous materials indicate proper disposal techniques on their labels. Unfortunately, these are in a minority and some of the containers that do indicate disposal techniques fail to go far enough. If disposal directions are not present on the label of a material known to be hazardous, the label will indicate contents, solubility, or corrosive/reactive potential through the warnings or cautions on the container.
These warnings could include the following:
* Wear gloves is a sign of corrosive or dermally toxic substances.
* Do not store near heat or open flame suggests ignitability.
* Do not store near… indicates reactive qualities of the material.
* Use only in well ventilated room is used for toxic fumes and reactive chemicals.
These and similar clues on the label will present a wise consumer with information necessary for proper disposal of the material.
An important note: Even when a container is empty, it is rarely empty of all chemicals. There is some liquid that the pump won’t spray and there is nearly always chemical residual on the sides and bottom of the container. Careful attention to disposal is imperative. Step Two: Use and Reuse as Much as Possible
Often, there’s just that little bit left over from a job and it does not seem to be enough to bother saving. What to do? Attempt to use all of any hazardous material. If you don’t need it, perhaps a neighbor might.
Some solvents and cleaners (like paint thinner) can be reused–store the cleaner in a covered jar and when the paint has settled, strain and reuse (see below for the disposal of the sludge).
Some hazardous materials are recyclable; motor oil and fuel oils are often collected by service stations for filtering and reuse. Although the complete use of a product is wise, give leftover products to others only if the material is in its original container with the label intact. Any precautionary information that may have accompanied the container should also be given to the new user.
Step Three: Select Disposal Approach
* First and foremost, never burn or dump any hazardous wastes on the ground.
* Do not dispose of any hazardous material down the sink unless you are sure it can safely be disposed into the sewer system. Down the sink includes letting hazardous materials run down the sewer system (draining an auto’s oil into the gutter system or excessive water runoff from a pesticide treated yard) or down the toilet. If you have a septic tank, additional care must be taken.
* Avoid burying any containers or leftover chemicals.
* Do not mix hazardous wastes and do not collect containers and chemicals to dispose of them at one time.
* Solidify any liquid wastes. This involves using an absorbent material (sawdust, kitty litter, paper towels, rags) to soak up a liquid hazardous material. Do not solidify more than one chemical at a time. Using gloves, sweep or dispose of the material into a plastic bag, and then dispose of with other household garbage.
* Use this same process with any empty container other than an aerosol container. It is often good to open a non- aerosol container with wire cutters or scissors and air-dry; wearing gloves, swab the inside before disposal. Dispose of the rags or paper towels after they have aired outside.
* Latex paint can be solidified by exposing the paint to air. When dried, the paint and container can be disposed with household refuse. Wrap empty containers in several layers of newspaper prior to disposal. This prevents environmental contamination and reactive potential.
* With aerosol cans, turn the container upside down and depress spray button, with nozzle facing paper toweling, rags or any absorbent surface. When the spray has lost pressure, wrap the can in several layers of newspaper and dispose with household refuse.
* Some cleansers can be poured down a drain. If you have a septic tank, drain disposal should nearly always be avoided. If cleansers are designed to be used with water in a home or in sinks, showers, toilet bowls, and tubs, the material is probably drain disposable. Let the water run, rinse the container and slowly pour the water/chemical down the drain. Allow the water to continue running after the chemical is gone. Allow the container to air dry (or swab with paper towels), wrap in newspaper and dispose in household refuse.
* Antifreeze can be flushed down the toilet if connected to a sewer system.
* Pesticides, herbicides, oil paints, paint cleaners, and oil and transmission fluids should never be flushed into a water system or disposed of on ground or put into household refuse.
* Automobile batteries should never be added to a home’s garbage. Some communities have hazardous waste material collection systems for some of these wastes.
In many cases, disposal is difficult at best and the preferred solution is to
1. use an alternative material
2. recycle where possible (oil and batteries) or
3. use the material completely, then solidify residual and dispose of the container as described above.
In our society, hazardous waste is guaranteed. We use many chemicals daily at home, at play, and at work. Wise purchase, use, storage and disposal of necessary chemicals can greatly reduce the negative environmental impact of these chemicals. Finding effective alternatives to their use avoids the creation of hazardous wastes from the home.
All educational programs conducted by Ohio State University Extension are available to clientele on a nondiscriminatory basis without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, gender, age, disability or Vietnam-era veteran status.
Keith L. Smith, Associate Vice President for Ag. Adm. and Director, OSU Extension.
Government and businesses that generate or store hazardous waste are regulated through the Hazardous Waste Management Branch. This Branch also investigates spills and releases involving hazardous waste, and determines the impact to soil and water. The Branch administers the Hazardous Waste Trust Fund, also called the State Superfund, which is used to pay for the cleanup of some contaminated sites. Please click on the Branch title for detailed program information and contact information.
Hazardous Waste Management Branch links of interest:
* Georgia Industrial Materials Exchange
* Rules and Laws
o Existing Rules
o Proposed Rules
* Technical Guidance
* Forms o Hazardous Site Cleanups
o Hazardous Waste Management
o Brownfields
* Hazardous Site Inventory http://www.gaepd.org/Documents/hazsiteinv.html
Georgia Environmental Protection Division
Georgia Department of Natural Resources
2 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Suite 1152 East Tower
Atlanta, GA 30334
Telephone: 404.657.5947 or 888.373.5947 (toll-free throughout Georgia)
Copyright 2009 by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division. All rights reserved.
As I said – every state has one of these divisions and can have many answers about the toxic nature, health hazards and necessary protection needed when cleaning up a spill – and other dangers, especially of petroleum based spills and similar toxic petroleum product releases.
- cricketdiane
This is the one for the county where I live. Among other documents available for the State offices, indications are somewhere on the page for county references as well, and often for national databases and related information.
Please notice – Petroleum, crude oil and total petroleum hydrocarbons are not on the list – but it is not because they don’t belong there – note earlier post and discussion earlier in this one -
United Nations Industrial Development Organization
Distr.
GENERAL
IDB.30/9
PBC.21/9
30 March 2005
ORIGINAL: ENGLISH
Industrial Development Board
Thirtieth session
Vienna, 20-23 June 2005
Item 4 (a) of the provisional agenda
Programme and Budget Committee
Twenty-first session
Vienna, 10-12 May 2005
Item 3 of the provisional agenda
PERFORMANCE REPORT AND PROGRAMME PERFORMANCE
REPORT FOR THE BIENNIUM 2004-2005
Interim financial performance report for the biennium 2004-2005
Submitted by the Director-General
CONTENTS
Page
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 3
Chapter
I. FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE 12-MONTH PERIOD OF THE
BIENNIUM 2004-2005 ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2004 ……………………………………………………… 3
Statement I Statement of income and expenditure and changes in reserves and fund
balances for the year ended 31 December 2004…………………………………………. 4
Statement II Statement of assets, liabilities, and reserves and fund balances as at
31 December 2004 ………………………………………………………………………………… 5
Schedule 2.1 Status of assessed contributions to the regular budget as at 31 December 2004 6
Schedule 2.2 Status of advances to the Working Capital Fund as at 31 December 2004 …….. 12
Itemizes the utilization of financial resources during the period 1 January – 31 December 2004 in accordance
with Programme and Budget Committee conclusion 1987/19.
***
V.05-82685 (E)
For reasons of economy, this document has been printed in a limited number. Delegates are kindly requested to bring
their copies of documents to meetings.
United Nations Industrial Development Organization
Distr.
GENERAL
IDB.30/9
PBC.21/9
30 March 2005
ORIGINAL: ENGLISH
Industrial Development Board
Thirtieth session
Vienna, 20-23 June 2005
Item 4 (a) of the provisional agenda
(k) Commitments
Commitments, representing legal obligations for which disbursements will be made in future years, were entered
into prior to 31 December 2004, as below:
US$ 000’s 000’s Industrial Development Fund 3,232.3 2,515.3
Montreal Protocol 5,651.7 4,452.3 Global Environment Facility 4,033.8 3,262.7
Trust funds 5,738.0 4,474.4 Regular Programme of Technical Cooperation 784.1 618.9
Inter-organization arrangements 1,345.1 1,065.6
20,785.0 16,389.2
****
My Note -
Believe it or not – the people above and their budgets have something to do with this and their funding has been accessed by a number of these companies to provide for the operating costs associated with the drilling platforms and asundry operations that go along with them, including help paying the liability insurance, if I remember correctly. I thought I saw something about it in the IMO stuff one time and the UN international accords about the shipping and movement of petroleum products along with the drilling and terminal operations. It might be part of the reason that these platforms are flagged under the flags of other nations, especially those considered to be candidates for these moneys and UNIDO subsidies (among others).
- cricketdiane
***
(k) Borrowings
At the time UNIDO became a specialized agency, an interest-free loan of $16,000,000 was received from the
United Nations. The loan is repayable at the rate of $1,000,000 a year, commencing in 1990. The total amount due as at
31 December 2004 amounts to $1,000,000 ( 737,000 at the United Nations operational rate of exchange as at
31 December 2004).
IDB.30/9
PBC.21/9
Page 27
(b) Expenditure of 5,106,636 on RPTC and SRA activities is re-analysed into its component parts.
(r) Long-term contracts
Long-term contracts awarded for the operation of the VIC are not reported as commitments, as they may be
terminated at any time without penalty.
(s) Commitments
Commitments of 420,038 representing legal obligations for which disbursements will be made in future years
were entered into prior to 31 December 2004.
IDB.30/9
PBC.21/9
Page 29
Note 3. Other Headquarters funds
(a) Funds reported under this heading comprise:
(i) Special Account for Programme Support Costs;
(ii) Computer Model for Feasibility Analysis and Reporting (COMFAR);
(iii) Buildings Management Services (BMS).
During the year 2004, the Organization’s contribution to the scheme amounted to 1,659,567. The contributions
against the Buildings Management Services amounted to 57,538, which were cost-shared with other Vienna-based
organizations. In accordance with Programme and Budget Committee conclusion 2000/2, a detailed actuarial study to
determine the financial impact of the after-service health insurance was carried out, which showed the level of unfunded
liabilities as at December 2004 to be 35.2 million ($47.7 million based on the year-end exchange rate). A United
Nations system-wide solution is being sought to address the issue of unfunded liabilities. The lead agency on this issue,
established by the High-Level Committee on Management, Financial and Budget Network, is the United Nations who
are scheduled to submit a report to the General Assembly in 2005.
(x) Common Fund for Major Repairs and Replacements
On 1 January 1981, an agreement between the Republic of Austria, the United Nations and the IAEA went into
effect to establish a common fund for the purpose of financing the cost of major repairs and replacements of buildings,
facilities and technical installations, which are the property of the Republic of Austria and form part of the Headquarters
areas of the United Nations and IAEA at the Vienna International Centre. This agreement has also applied to UNIDO
since 1986, when it became a specialized agency. The Fund is administered by UNIDO through a joint committee.
Annual financial statements are prepared by UNIDO and audited by its Internal Oversight Group.
In 2002, an agreement was reached between the Vienna-based organizations and the Republic of Austria under
which reimbursement of the disbursements made during the year 2001 ($988,626) was not required. Under this
agreement, there will only be annual assessed contributions to the Fund as follows: the Republic of Austria
( 1,235,300) and the Vienna-based organizations ( 1,235,300). Furthermore, unexpected major repairs and
replacements, which are not included in the agreed investment plan, will have to be shared by all parties. In the past,
such costs were fully absorbed by the Austrian Government.
The fund balance as at 31 December 2004 is 1,936,547.
The ninth session of
the General Conference (GC.9/Dec.14), established with effect from January 2002, a special account
for BMS (for other than staff costs), which is not subject to financial regulations 4.2(b) and 4.2(c).
Thus the budgetary surplus, if any, will not require distribution to Member States. Each Vienna-based
organization (UNIDO, IAEA, UNOV and CTBTO) is required to pay its share into this account.
Interest income is credited to the account. This amount is then prorated to each Vienna-based
organization taking into account the funds contributed by it and the date of receipt of such funds in the
special account.
Additional analysis of BMS operations is provided in schedule 4.1 (supplementary) and the analysis on the special
account is provided in annex III. The surplus on the special account for BMS costs of 10,532,077 does not form part of
the unencumbered balances of the appropriations due to Member States at the end of the biennium; this amount includes
4,815,676 due from the Vienna-based organizations. The accumulation of funds under the special account is primarily
caused by the delay experienced in the removal of asbestos from the VIC complex and related maintenance work.
(c) Currency adjustment
The 415,683 exchange difference results primarily from the revaluation of the United States dollar cash and term
deposits held by the special account for programme support costs.
(k) Commitments
Commitments, representing legal obligations for which disbursements will be made in future years, were entered
into prior to 31 December 2004, as below:
US$ 000’s 000’s Industrial Development Fund 3,232.3 2,515.3
Montreal Protocol 5,651.7 4,452.3
Global Environment Facility 4,033.8 3,262.7
Trust funds 5,738.0 4,474.4
Regular Programme of Technical Cooperation 784.1 618.9
Inter-organization arrangements 1,345.1 1,065.6
20,785.0 16,389.2
The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer (a protocol to the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer) is an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of a number of substances believed to be responsible for ozone depletion. The treaty was opened for signature on September 16, 1987, and entered into force on January 1, 1989, followed by a first meeting in Helsinki, May 1989. Since then, it has undergone seven revisions, in 1990 (London), 1991 (Nairobi), 1992 (Copenhagen), 1993 (Bangkok), 1995 (Vienna), 1997 (Montreal), and 1999 (Beijing). It is believed that if the international agreement is adhered to, the ozone layer is expected to recover by 2050 [1]. Due to its widespread adoption and implementation it has been hailed as an example of exceptional international co-operation with Kofi Annan quoted as saying that “perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date has been the Montreal Protocol”.[2] It has been ratified by 196 states.[3]
The United Nations Office at Vienna (UNOV) was established on 1 January 1980 as the third United Nations Headquarters after New York and Geneva (and before Nairobi). It performs representation and liaison functions with permanent missions to the United Nations (Vienna), the host Government and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations in Vienna.
BP – British Petroleum – working in American waters using TrasOcean with a sea-based platform also operating in American waters flagged from the Marshal Islands – (and their other floating semi-permanent movable drilling rigs are what – Panama and Tanzania or something?)
That makes also marketplaces which are international trading partners as well, who are using these companies’ services and products. Obviously BP isn’t only consuming products from trading partners in America but is also selling consumer products in America – and around the world (among other things involved in their businesses. Along with the fact that the massive oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico risks great environmental catastrophe and economic repercussions throughout international business / industrial and trading communities, my note ).
- cricketdiane, 05-23-10
***
The IAEA also combines with these offices and the BP oil spill in the Gulf – there are lots of nifty things available on their site about energy resources including petroleum. I won’t go back into the notes I have rather I’ll just quickly go get the stuff directly right now – it’s faster.
May 17, 2010 … In this study, we compare results from two different chemical transport models … Berntsen, T. K. and Isaksen, I. S. A.: A global three-dimensional chemical…IEA (International Energy Agency): Oil Information 2006, …
www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/4477/2010/acp-10-4477-2010.xml
(and this one just caught my fancy – looks pretty nifty – )
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
May 13, 2009 … Vehicle Technologies and Programmes of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has …. alternator and a li-ion battery (project CV-ISA by Zytec), … vehicles, advanced electro-chemical storage systems, market deployment …
www.evs24.org/docs/ieaward.pdf
***
My Note -
I almost forgot you might want to see this part -
II. NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
Preface UNIDO MISSION STATEMENT
The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) is a specialized United Nations agency dedicated to promoting sustainable industrial development in countries with developing and transition economies.
UNIDO draws on the wide industrial expertise of its staff and the resources of government, the private sector and other United Nations multilateral and national institutions to create productive employment, competitive economies and a sound environment.
Fostering growth and productivity is central to UNIDO’s highly focused sectoral, regional and country-specific programmes. UNIDO is committed to maintaining excellent standards in the implementation of these programmes with the ultimate aim of assisting the developing countries and transition economies in their struggle against poverty and marginalization.
*** (r) Technical cooperation accounts:
(i) The appropriations for the Regular Programme of Technical Cooperation (RPTC) are administered in accordance with the financial regulations of UNIDO, and in accordance with the General Conference decision mentioned in paragraph (o) above;
(ii) Allocation income—UNDP. The figures for allocation income from UNDP and UNDP trust funds are the same as reported for total expenditure in line with UNDP procedures, which require that allocations be adjusted to equal actual expenditure;
(iii) Contributions income—trust funds and Industrial Development Fund (IDF). Voluntary contributions from Governments or other donors are recorded upon receipt of cash. The use of such contributions is governed by agreements between UNIDO and the Government/donor. Upon termination, expiration, or revision of an agreement or receipt of other instructions from the Government/donor, any surplus remaining in a trust/other funds is returned to the Government/donor or disposed of as requested by the Government/donor;
(iv) Interest and miscellaneous income. Interest income arising from the RPTC is credited to the General Fund; however, the miscellaneous income relating to the RPTC is credited to the special account.
Interest income arising from the special account for Buildings Management is credited to that account, and finally prorated to the Vienna-based organizations taking into account the funds contributed by them and the date of receipt of such funds in the account. Interest income arising from UNDP activities is credited to the operating fund account maintained with that organization. Interest income arising from the Industrial Development Fund, other than the general-purpose segment, as well as the trust funds relating to the technical cooperation activities is credited to accounts payable until instructions regarding its disposal are received from the donor. Interest accrued under the General Purpose segment of the Industrial Development Fund is credited to that Fund. Interest income
IDB.30/9
PBC.21/9
Page 24
attributable to the Montreal Protocol is treated immediately as an additional programmable balance. Interest income credited to the Global Environmental Facility, excluding interest income earned on funds transferred as UNIDO fees, is set aside as accounts payable pending instructions to its return to the trustee;
UN Treaty Collection
Status and text of multilateral treaties deposited with the UN Secretary-General and those formerly deposited with the League of Nations. Bilateral and multilateral treaties.
Aerosols and their precursors are emitted abundantly by transport activities.
Transportation constitutes one of the fastest growing activities and its
growth is predicted to increase significantly in the future. Previous studies
have estimated the aerosol direct radiative forcing from one transport
sub-sector, but only one study to our knowledge estimated the range of
radiative forcing from the main aerosol components (sulphate, black carbon
(BC) and organic carbon) for the whole transportation sector. In this study,
we compare results from two different chemical transport models and three
radiation codes under different hypothesis of mixing: internal and external
mixing using emission inventories for the year 2000.
The main results from this study consist of a positive direct radiative forcing for aerosols emitted by road traffic of +2011 mW m−2 for an externally mixed aerosol, and of +32;13 mW m−2 when BC is internally mixed. These direct radiative forcings are much higher than the previously published estimate of +3;11 mW m−2>. For transport activities from shipping, the net direct aerosol radiative forcing is negative. This forcing is dominated by the contribution of the sulphate. For both an external and an internal mixture, the radiative forcing from shipping is estimated at −26]4 mW m]−2]. These estimates are in very good agreement with the range of a previously published one (from −46 to −13 mW m]) but with a much narrower range. By contrast, the direct aerosol forcing from aviation is estimated to be small, and in the range −0.9 to +0.3 mW m.
(And a ton of references they used as resources – very nifty.)
***
continuing then on google -
using this search -
international chemical ISa IEA
My note –
Yes, this one on the IEA Style Guide is important but not for the same reasons and this is one place to find it – so I’m adding it here just in case you ever wanted to know . . .
I’ve looked up things on it a time or two and it is really easy.
Most of it is common sense but it isn’t the same style used in news reporting or other journal types of articles – but the differences are not that great, honestly. And, like I said – mostly it is common sense, kind of like the St.Martin’s Handbook.
Not the same as technical writing either though and this is the best lookup when I have a quick question.
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View IEA STYLE GUIDE. INTERNATIONAL. International Association for the ….. Note: *
If ise/isa forms part of an actual name, keep the original ……Chemical terms (H2O), trigonometric terms (tan, log), non-statistical subscripts to …
www.iea.nl/fileadmin/user_upload/docs/IEA_Style_Guide.pdf
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
This edition of the World Energy Outlook provides the IEA’s latest …. of the increase in international trade. The Outlook assumes that it will be …… 2005 is implemented by the European chemical industry. The …… pipeline linking south-west Queensland to the Mount Isa region provides …
www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2000/weo2000.pdf
***
My Note -
More from the UNIDO that might be of interest – (from my notes)
FOREWORD
The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) has a special place in the United Nations system: it is the only organization specifically targeting the creation of wealth through manufacturing, in which it mainly focuses on promoting growth in the small and medium enterprise sector, the key generator of wealth in most developing countries. To improve standards of living through industries that are both internationally competitive and environmentally sustainable, the Organization has created the largest portfolio of projects related to trade capacity-building in the United Nations system, and the Organization plays a lead role in, among others, the implementation of the Montreal Protocol for the elimination of ozone depleting substances (ODS) and the Stockholm Convention for the elimination of persistent organic pollutants (POPs).
The reforms that are underway to make the United Nations system an even more relevant force for development, humanitarian assistance and environmental sustainability, also require that the United Nations delivers its message better to build up broad-based support among the many stakeholders in development. UNIDO, as this document will show, is in the vanguard when it comes to reforms. One measure to raise the Organization’s profile is to make the Annual Report of UNIDO, a legislative document on UNIDO’s performance, accessible to a wider public. In this way, it will help to highlight the contribution of UNIDO’s core activities to international development objectives, which—although evident to those who work in the Organization—is often not recognized by the outside world.
The Annual Report opens with an introductory message by the Director-General of UNIDO, Kandeh K. Yumkella. Chapter 2 reviews the year in brief, starting with a major event, the celebration of UNIDO’s fortieth anniversary as a United Nations organization. This is followed by an overview of technical cooperation management, funds mobilization, managerial reforms, advocacy activities to raise UNIDO’s profile and efforts to strengthen cooperation in the field with other United Nations agencies as well as partners outside the United Nations system. Chapter 3 discusses the broader framework within which the Organization pursues cooperation with other United Nations agencies: the reform of the United Nations and the very active role UNIDO plays in that context.
Chapters 4 to 8 present an overview of UNIDO’s operations in the field. The CD-ROM attached to this report includes appendices that provide detailed figures on UNIDO’s technical cooperation activities. For those who are unfamiliar with the Organization’s activities a brief description of the principles guiding these operations may be useful.
The Organization’s assistance is based on two core functions and three thematic priorities. Core functions:
Serving as a global forum which generates and disseminates industry-related knowledge and provides a platform for all actors in the public and private sectors;
Designing and implementing technical cooperation programmes that support the industrial development efforts of its clients.
Page 6 Thematic priorities:
Poverty reduction through productive activities, by promoting industry, especially through small and medium enterprises, in less developed areas, with a focus on employment creation, income generation and institutional capacity-building;
Trade capacity-building, by helping countries to develop both production and trade-related capacities, including the capacity to conform to the standards of international markets;
Environment and energy, by promoting industrial energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy, particularly in rural areas, and supporting other activities for sustainable industrial development.
The two core functions complement and support each other: technical cooperation experiences can be shared with policy makers and other actors; both analytical work helps to identify areas of maximum impact for technical cooperation. Because of the complex interrelations among development issues, programmes and projects often spill over thematic borders. Eight service modules translate the core functions and thematic priorities into action:
1. Industrial governance and statistics
2. Investment and technology promotion
3. Industrial competitiveness and trade
4. Private sector development
5. Agro-industry
6. Sustainable energy and climate change
7. Montreal Protocol
8. Environmental management
The services can be combined in integrated programmes (IPs) or country service frame-
works (CSFs), or be used in stand-alone projects
(above from my previous research documents on my computer – )
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
This edition of the World Energy Outlook provides the IEA’s latest …. of the increase in international trade. The Outlook assumes that it will be …… 2005 is implemented by the European chemical industry. The …… pipeline linking south-west Queensland to the Mount Isa region provides …
www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2000/weo2000.pdf
My note -
That might be of interest sometime – I’ve already read it several years ago. It is interesting now, I suppose. But this is what I want to add here -
NIST Chemistry Webbook and IUPAC International Chemical Identifier. … The IUPAC International Chemical Identifier (InChI) is a tool that has been …
www.nist.gov › … › Chemical Reference Data
The IUPAC International Chemical Identifier (InChITM) is a … Abstract : The central token of information in Chemistry is a chemical substance, …
www.iupac.org/inchi/
The ICCA represents the global chemical industry and highlights its economic, …International Year of Chemistry – 01 January 2011. Worldwide (year 2011) …
www.icca-chem.org/
“The IUPAC International Chemical Identifier:InChl”. Chemistry International (IUPAC) 28 (6). http://www.iupac.org/publications/ci/2006/2806/4_tools.html. …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Chemical_Identifier – Cached – Similar
The Institution of Chemical Engineers, an international body of chemical and process engineers based in Rugby, UK. Information on education & development, … chemistry.about.com/…/Chemistry_Societies_Organizations.htm
(from the wikip; entry)
The format was originally called IChI (IUPAC Chemical Identifier), then renamed in July 2004 to INChI (IUPAC-NIST Chemical Identifier), and renamed again in November 2004 to InChI (IUPAC International Chemical Identifier), a trademark of IUPAC.
International Merchandise Trade Statistics (IMTS) – United Nations Statistics Division
This web site provides access to information and data on International Merchandise Trade Statistics (IMTS) and the work of the International Merchandise Trade Statistics Section (IMTSS) of the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD). The work program of the IMTSS has four parts:
C. Eliminating the use of hazardous and toxic materialsThe Organization’s CP programme and activities, such as the elimination or reduction ofthe use of mercury by artisanal gold miners, help to minimize the role and impact ofhazardous and toxic materials in industry. The Montreal Protocol programme, which started14 years ago, is UNIDO’s flagship programme in this particular area. It eliminates ozonedepletingsubstances (ODSs)—chemicals that destroy the Earth’s protective ozone layer.
The Montreal Protocol has been very successful. The bulk of the activities under theProtocol will be completed by 2010, and the parties to the Protocol are turning their attentionto ODS uses that have been exempted to date. One of these is the use of ODSs inaerosol metered dose inhalers (MDIs), widely used to treat asthma and other respiratoryillnesses. UNIDO has started a project in Egypt with the objective of managing the transitionto ODS-free MDIs.
It helps companies to convert to ODS-free manufacturing technologyand assists the Government in implementing a national MDI transition strategy,an important part of which is an awareness campaign to educate doctors prescribing MDIs on the timing and reasons for the transition to ODS-free MDIs. This will be the first of a number of such projects. The production of ODS-free aerosols inthe United Republic of Tanzania wasa pioneering project in the Montreal Protocol programme.
E. Promoting renewable sources of energy
UNIDO mainly promotes the adoption of renewable energy sources through its rural and renewable energy programmes, which particularly target rural areas without connections to the national electricity grid. Activities during 2006 under this programme are described in more detail in chapter 4.
There was an important development with regard to biofuels this year, reflecting the rapidly growing global interest in their potential contribution to the energy mix of countries. Since biofuels can replace fuels from non-renewable sources and thus present a possible response to climate change, and in view of the high price of traditional hydrocarbon-based fuels, UNIDO has initiated the development of a strategy for biofuels with the following areas of emphasis:
The creation of profiles of sustainable biofuel provision and use, emphasizing that fuel use comprises far more than transport;
South-South transfer and market introduction of technology for the gasification of solid biomass, building on the successful establishment of UNIDO’s Centre of Excellence for biomass gasification in Bangalore, India;
The conversion of waste residues, especially from the food industry, into ethanol as a short-term priority;
The promotion of decentralized biodiesel production and links between local rural biofuel developments and global trade and markets;
Setting up a clearinghouse service on biorefineries as a contribution to global knowledge platforms within the United Nations system. F. From selling products to selling product services
This comparatively new activity for UNIDO, which was launched in 2005, has primarily been undertaken within the context of the CP programme. The new business model of selling the services of products rather than the products themselves, which is now being adopted in the developed countries, is being introduced by UNIDO to developing countries and economies in transition. It can lead to dramatic reductions in the environmental impacts of products throughout their life cycle, from manufacture to final disposal.
The Organization has focused its initial work on the chemical industry. A more detailed description of these activities during 2006 can be found in chapter 8. G. Abatement of industrial pollution and waste management
While promoting more sustainable production and consumption patterns, UNIDO recognizes that industrial pollution and wastes cannot be eliminated fully. To minimize their impact, UNIDO promotes environmentally sound abatement practices through the TEST programme and its sector-specific programmes for textiles and leather.
In the context of the Stockholm Convention, UNIDO focuses on the elimination of old stocks of POPs. Often these are obsolete pesticides, but stocks of industrial POPs, such as polychlorinated biphenyls, which have seen heavy use as oils in electrical transformers and other equipment, must also be eliminated.
In Slovakia, full-sized demonstration projects for various technologies that destroy POPs without using combustion were launched. In the past, POPs were usually burned, but because of controversies surrounding the use of incinerators the Stockholm Convention proposed to explore whether non-combustion technologies can offer an effective, or more effective, way of destroying these compounds. The project in Slovakia builds on several years of assessments and evaluations, as well as the identification of stockpiles of POPs that could be the subject of a demonstration project. UNIDO’s first step was to set up the management structure of the project. The Organization then invited nine technology suppliers to make presentations of various technologies. In 2007, technology suppliers will be chosen on the basis of their bids, and demonstration projects will be set up.
UNIDO ANNUAL REPORT 2006
***
TRADE STATISTICS BRANCH
The Trade Statistics Branch (TSB) of the United Nations Statistics Division is responsible for International Merchandise Trade Statistics (IMTS) and Statistics of International Trade in Services (SITS). Additional activities include Tourism Statistics, Distributive Trade Statistics (DTS) and the Compilation of Basic Economic Statistics.
For each of these statistical areas TSB develops or is involved in the development of the international methodology and cooperates with countries and international organizations to strengthen statistical capacity. For merchandise trade (IMTS) and trade in services (SITS) TSB collects and disseminates detailed data. For merchadise trade additional outputs such as a yearbook are available. Further details are given via the links on the left-hand menu. Latest news on IMTS, SITS and additional activities are provided on the right.
IRDTS 2008 is part of UNSD’s efforts to strengthen countries’ methodological and operational foundations of basic economic statistics in an integrated manner, including enhancement of their coherence across different sectors of an economy, conceptual consistency with macroeconomic statistics and production of official distributive trade statistics in the most cost efficient way.
IRDTS 2008 provides the comprehensive methodological framework for collection and compilation of distributive trade statistics in all countries irrespective of the level of development of their statistical systems. Its primary audience is the staff of national statistical offices involved in the compilation of these statistics. IRDTS 2008 also contains a wealth of information which might be of interest to data users who would like to better understand the nature of distributive trade data.
Distributive Trade Indices
Indices of Distributive Trade: Handbook on Good Practices
While adopting the IRDTS 2008, the Statistical Commission also agreed to its implementation programme and requested UNSD to develop practical guidance on the compilation of distributive trade statistics, including a description of good practices in compilation of distributive trade indices. The Indices of Distributive Trade: Handbook on Good Practices has been prepared in response to this Commission’s request. Its general objective is to support compilers of distributive trade statistics by collecting experiences in compilation of distributive trade indices in one document. The Handbook contains explanations of the challenges and good practices in compilation experience of several countries with different statistical background. The decision for a good practice in a country should always be based on national circumstances. By providing readers with a description of various country experiences, the present Handbook could be a useful tool in this decision process.
The distributive trade has long been of great interest for analysts and forecasters as the changes in value and volume of trade turnover, in particular the retail turnover, is regarded as an important short-term indicator of consumer confidence and economic activity in general. Chapters 2 to 6 of the Handbook describe both general issues relevant to the compilation of value and volume indices of retail trade turnover and experiences of several countries in this area. The output of distributive trade is a significant component in the compilation of the GDP and, in this context, deflation of its value is of a special interest for national accounts. Chapter 7 is devoted to a discussion of conceptual issues and practices of the European countries relevant in this regard.
Along the left hand sidebar the information goodies are easily located about nearly any trade group category from services to petroleum and fuels, merchandise, texitles – I don’t think financials are considered an export or a product group – but it should be – it really is a product category. I’ve also thought that if it were included our national GDP (and GNP) depending on where I’m reading – would be much improved. As would the UK’s.
- cricketdiane
***
Sometime – when you want to know – here is where to find these -
When you want to know something about chemicals, chemical hazards, health hazards and environmental hazards from chemicals – this is the only one of three best sites to find that information especially when it involves petroleum and other fuel products -(cricketdiane)
Sorry about that – I almost forgot to put this one, now its out of order – Oh well – you know it is from the House in Vienna (UN) and this appears among those on its list of assets -
from the first page of the Chemistry WebBook – at the bottom of the page -
Species List
NIST Chemistry WebBook
Species List
A list of all of the chemical species in this release of the NIST Chemistry WebBook can be downloaded from this page. The list is in tab-delimited format can contains the following information:
Species name
Species formula
CAS registry number (if known)
Due to the size of the file, it is only available in compressed formats. Please select one of the following downloads:
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) uses its best efforts to deliver a high quality copy of the Database and to verify that the data contained therein have been selected on the basis of sound scientific judgment. However, NIST makes no warranties to that effect, and NIST shall not be liable for any damage that may result from errors or omissions in the Database.
CAS registry numbers are copyrighted by the American Chemical Society. Redistribution rights for CAS registry numbers are reserved by the American Chemical Society. “CAS registry” is a registered trademark of the American Chemical society.
which allows you to look up all or part of the chemical components of petroleum and raw crude specifically – then I should be back and well, never mind – here is the lookup page on the NIST -
Got tired of trying to find my notes – finally did a search on my other computer for the documents with toxic whatevers in them and then on this computer, the above pieces came from another composite document and there is a group of information about money that went to Haiti over a period of time prior to the earthquake – which I’ll bring up later with the information from the new donations made to the Haitians affected by the earthquake and Port-au-Prince. This is just to remind me later to post it – I’m keeping that document open. Then I made a quick search with google on the tab I had the IAEA open – rather than using their site index or site search window. These terms yield these documents online that I was trying to find in my notes – and they are there somewhere -
IAEA/AL/125 IAEA/MEL/69, Wold-wide and regional intercomparison for the determination of organochlorine compound and petroleum hydrocarbons in fish …
www-naweb.iaea.org/naml/page.php?page=2090
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat IAEA-432. Petroleum hydrocarbons and organochlorinated compounds in mussels Report issued July 2004. IAEA-433. Trace elements and methylmercury in marine …
www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/…/MEL_NL_02-2.pdf
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
by JP Villeneuve – 2000 – Cited by 10 – Related articles
Determination of organochlorinated compounds and petroleum hydrocarbons in sediment sample IAEA-408. Results from a world- wide intercalibration exercise{ …
www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayArticleForFree.cfm?doi…
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
Intercomparison for Determination of Organochlorine Compounds and Petroleum Hydrocarbons in Fish Homogenate IAEA-406” [1]. This report is available free of …
nucleus.iaea.org/rpst/Documents/rs_iaea-406.pdf
Apr 21, 2009 … (13) According to the IAEA, Iran has installed 2 or 3 types of … while Reliance Industries and British Petroleum reportedly did not supply …
www.thomas.gov/home/gpoxmlc111/h1985_ih.xml
Yes, you’ll like this one immediately above – it won’t open on this computer but it is open on the other one – and number (21) and (22) in the document says -
(21) Up to 40 percent of Iranian gasoline comes from imports.
- and -
(22) Over the course of the past year, Iran purchased nearly all of this gasoline from just six companies, five of them European (the Swiss firm Vitol; the Swiss/Dutch firm Trafigura, [see earlier note about them]; the French firm Total; the Swiss firm Glencore; British Petroleum) and one Indian company, Reliance Industries.
- and maybe -
(23) In February 2009, Vitol and Trafigura supplied some 80 percent of Iran’s gasoline imports, while Reliance Industries and British Petroleum reportedly did not supply gasoline to Iran that month.
The US imposed sanction of 1995 bans aviation companies from selling aircraft and repair parts to Iranian airlinesdirectly.
This article outlines economic, trade, scientific and military sanctions against Iran, which have been imposed by the U.S. government, or under U.S. pressure by the international community through the United Nations Security Council. Currently the sanctions include an embargo on dealings with Iran by the United States, and a ban on selling aircraft and repair parts to Iranian aviation companies. One exception is that US-made goods can be supplied to Iran under certain circumstances as long as they are shipped to Iran from another country. This exception was a result of the original Executive Order restricting trade with Iran.
In 1979, after the U.S. permitted the exiled Shah of Iran to enter the United States for medical treatment, and after rumors of another U.S. backed coup and re-installation of the Shah, a group of radical students took action in Tehran by seizing the American Embassy and taking hostage the people inside.[1] The United States responded by freezing about $12 billion in Iranian assets, including bank deposits, gold and other properties. Some assets — Iranian officials say $10 billion, U.S. officials say much less — still remain frozen pending resolution of legal claims arising from the revolution.
Iran–Iraq War
After the invasion of Iran by Iraq, the United States increased sanctions against Iran. In 1984, sanctions were approved prohibit weapons sales all U.S. assistance to Iran; the U.S. also opposed all loans to Iran from international financial institutions. In 1987, the U.S. further prohibited the importation and exportation of any goods or services from Iran.
The term of President Rafsanjani, who has said that he had tried to reduce tensions between Iran and the West,[citation needed] was marked by some of the toughest sanctions against Iran. In April 1995, President Bill Clinton issued a total embargo on U.S. dealings with Iran, prohibiting all commercial and financial transactions with Iran. Trade with the U.S., which had been growing following the end of the Iran–Iraq War, ended abruptly. One exception is that US-made goods can be supplied to Iran under certain circumstances as long as they are shipped to Iran from another country. This exception was a result of the original Executive Order restricting trade with Iran.
In 1996, the United States Congress passed the Iran–Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA). Under ILSA, all foreign companies that provide investments over $20 million for the development of petroleum resources in Iran will have imposed against them two out of seven possible penalties by the U.S.:[2]
denial of Export-Import Bank assistance;
denial of export licenses for exports to the violating company;
prohibition on loans or credits from U.S. financial institutions of over $10 million in any 12-month period;
prohibition on designation as a primary dealer for U.S. government debt instruments;
prohibition on serving as an agent of the United States or as a repository for U.S. government funds;
denial of U.S. government procurement opportunities (consistent with WTO obligations); and
a ban on all or some imports of the violating company.
In response to the election of Iranian reformist President Mohammad Khatami, President Clinton eased sanctions on Iran. A debate in the US Congress on whether to allow the expiration of ILSA, which some legislators argued hindered bilateral relations, and others argued would be seen as a concession on an effective program, ended on August 5, 2001, with its renewal by the Congress and signing into law by President George W. Bush.[3]
After being elected president in 2005 Ahmadinejad reversed the retroactive nuclear policy and lifted the suspension of uranium enrichment, that had been put in place by the reformists. This raised red flags in the United States government, which began pushing for international sanctions against Iran over its atomic ambitions.[6]
Iranian financial institutions are barred from directly accessing the U.S. financial system, but they are permitted to do so indirectly through banks in other countries. In September 2006, the U.S. government imposed sanctions on Bank Saderat Iran, barring it from dealing with U.S. financial institutions, even indirectly. The move was announced by Stuart Levey, the undersecretary for treasury, who accused the major state-owned bank in Iran of transferring funds for certain groups, including Hezbollah. Levey said that since 2001 a Hezbollah-controlled organization had received 50 million U.S. dollars directly from Iran through Bank Saderat. He said the U.S. government will also persuade European banks and financial institutions not to deal with Iran.[7]
In June 2007, the U.S. state of Florida enacted a boycott on companies trading with Iran and Sudan, while New Jersey‘s state legislature was considering similar action.[8]
As of November 2007, the following Iranian banks were prohibited from transferring money to or from United States banks:[9]
For individuals and small businesses, these banking restrictions have created a large opportunity for the hawala market, which allows Iranians to transfer money to and from foreign countries using an underground unregulated exchange system.[10]
As of early 2008, the targeted banks, such as Bank Mellat, had been able to replace banking relationships with a few large sanction-compliant banks with relationships with a larger number of smaller non-compliant banks.[11] The total assets frozen in Britain under the EU (European Union) and UN sanctions against Iran are approximately 976,110,000 pounds ($1.64 billion).[12] In 2008, the US Treasury ordered Citigroup Inc. to freeze over $2 billion allegedly held for Iran in Citigroup accounts.[13]
Effects and criticism
According to a Iranian journalist, the effects of sanctions in Iran include expensive basic goods and an aging and increasingly unsafe aircraft fleet. “According to reports from Iranian news agencies, 17 planes have crashed over the past 25 years, killing approximately 1,500 people.”[14]
The U.S. forbids aircraft manufacturer Boeing to sell aircraft to Iranian aviation companies.[15]
A 2005 report, presented at the 36th session of the International Civil Aviation Organization, reported that the U.S. sanctions had endangered the safety of civil aviation in Iran because it prevented Iran from acquiring parts and support essential for aviation safety. It also stated that the sanctions were contrary to article 44 of the Chicago convention (to which the US is a member). The ICAO report said aviation safety affects human lives and human rights, stands above political differences, and that the assembly should bring international public pressure on the United States to lift the sanctions against Iran.[16]
The European Union has been critical of most of the U.S. trade sanctions against Iran. Some EU Member States have criticized ILSA as a “double standard” in U.S. foreign policy, in which the United States vigorously worked against the Arab League boycott of Israel while at the same time promoted a worldwide boycott of Iran. The EU Member States have threatened formal counter-action in the World Trade Organization.[3]
According to a study by Akbar E. Torbat, “overall, the sanctions’ economic effect” on Iran “has been significant, while its political effect has been minimal.”[17]
According to the U.S. National Foreign Trade Council, in the medium-term, lifting US sanctions and liberalizing Iran’s economic regime would increase Iran’s total trade annually by as much as $61 billion (at the 2005 world oil price of $50/bbl), adding 32 percent to Iran’s GDP. In the oil-and-gas sector, output and exports would expand by 25-to-50 percent (adding 3 percent to world crude oil production).
Iran could reduce the world price of crude petroleum by 10 percent, saving the United States annually between $38 billion (at the 2005 world oil price of $50/bbl) and $76 billion (at the proximate 2008 world oil price of $100/bbl). Opening Iran’s market place to foreign investment could also be a boon to competitive US multinational firms operating in a variety of manufacturing and service sectors.[18]
In 2009, there was discussion in the U.S. of implementing “crippling sanctions” against Iran, such as the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009, “if diplomatic overture did not show signs of success by the autumn”. Professor Hamid Dabashi, of Columbia University, said in August 2009 that this was likely to bring “catastrophic humanitarian consequences”, while enriching and strengthening the “security and military apparatus” of “the Pasdaran and the Basij,” and having absolutely no support from “any major or even minor opposition leader” in Iran.[19] According to Bloomberg News, Boeing and Exxon have said that new Iran sanctions would cost $25 billion in U.S. exports.[20]
It has also been argued the sanctions have had the counter effect of protecting Iran in some ways, for example the 2007 imposition of US sanctions against Iranian financial institutions to a high degree made Iran immune to the then emerging global recession.[21]
^ John B. Reynolds, III, Amy E. Worlton and Cari N. Stinebower, “U.S. Dollar Transactions with Iran are Subject to New Restrictions – Tough Policy Decisions Face International Financial Institutions”, Wiley Rein LLP, November 28, 2007
My Note – on my other computer I have a search open for aliphatic hydrocarbons petroleum on google.
I’ve gotta change computers because theis one is totally buggared.
- cricketdiane
Besides I did a doc search through the computer files there and found a whole lot of very nifty documents that I had been trying to find.
Rusty Costanza / The Times-PicayuneWorkers clean oil from Fourchon Beach on Saturday.
TRAJECTORY FORECAST MAPS
Twice a day NOAA releases trajectory forecast maps predicting the extent and concentration of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill expected for the next 24, 48 and 72 hours. These are the latest maps.
Once a day, NOAA releases offshore surface oil trajectory maps showing the southern extent of oil that has potentially entered the loop current, which could take it to southern Florida and the east coast.
I was just watching CNN’s Sunday coverage and they had the iReporter, Eileen Romero calling from the Gulf of Mexico after seeing Grand Isle, Louisiana – whose shores are now coated in crude oil from the spill.
She noted that the Navy booms are larger, stronger, sturdier and have a flap that goes three feet down into the water. She reports that Grand Isle didn’t have any booms from BP protecting it and that the skimpy booms that BP put out are half submerged in some places along the coast of Louisiana that she has seen and are breaking apart, lower in the water – and the oil is simply washing over them and under them to the areas they were supposed to be protecting. (my paraphrase of her information.)
The other thing I noticed quite a few days ago, is that when the National Guard went out with their systems to protect islands – they have a much better system with fabric and wire frame boxes at least a couple feet high that expand and connect to sit in place. Then they are filled with an oil absorbent material – a copolymer that collects the oil while letting the water pass through and cleans it as well as protecting the coastal shores. It is a much better system that provides a genuine barrier to the oil and I don’t understand why BP and other oil industries did not have that for an event of this kind prepared ahead of time. I will see if I can find one of the pictures of the National Guard system.
On CNN just now – they were showing in one of their pictures, the difference of the Navy’s oil protection / containment boom and the BP ones were in the backgrounds. There is an obvious as well as a substantial difference in them seen in the photos. I can’t imagine that all over the world, these flimsy booms were the only thing available to any spill or other oil accident that might happen and its been that way all this time.
Everyone has seen the oil go over, around, through and under the booms that BP had workers stretch all over the Gulf of Mexico. The areas they were supposed to protect are covered in oil now in many cases and estuaries / saltwater marshes / beaches / protected wildlife sanctuaries – were not served to be protected by many, many of their booms. Why have these been in use anytime after the very first spill where they were used to the same effect – with areas covered over in oil that were supposed to be protected by them?
Now, I am beginning to wonder if the safety and containment plans for any oil spill or petroleum disaster were known to be ineffective for a vast number of years through the experiences in real world conditions which would’ve proved over and over again, the very same things we are seeing now.
Then, again – if they knew, why would they have continued to do it that way? Obviously it doesn’t work – why would they have done it that way over once, let alone twice and certainly, any more times beyond that?
Experts on dealing with maritime incidents involving hazardous and noxious substances to meet in France
IMO’s Fourth R&D Forum on Hazardous and Noxious Substances (HNS) in the Marine Environment, Parc Chanot, Marseille, France, 12 to 14 May 2009
Leading experts in dealing with maritime incidents involving hazardous and noxious substances, such as chemicals, will gather to exchange information and ideas at IMO’s Fourth R&D Forum on Hazardous and Noxious Substances (HNS) in the Marine Environment, which is to be held from 12 to 14 May 2009, in conjunction with INTERSPILL 2009, in Marseille, France.
The growth in marine transportation of chemicals, together with State and industry obligations arising from the entry into force, in 2007, of the Protocol on Preparedness, Response and Co-operation to Pollution Incidents by Hazardous and Noxious Substances, 2000 (OPRC-HNS Protocol), have focused professional and public attention on the potential dangers of HNS at sea.
The R&D Forum will take an in-depth scientific, technical and legal look at the experience to date in planning for, and responding to, HNS incidents and the challenges that remain, and will define areas for new developments. The integration of the R&D Forum with the INTERSPILL conference underpins the conference theme of Working Together for the protection of the marine environment.
The Forum provides a platform for direct communication amongst senior researchers and Research and Development managers from recognized institutions around the world to promote and encourage co-operative activities including joint research, as well as to stimulate new ideas and studies related to preparedness and response to maritime incidents involving HNS. It will focus on impact assessment, the operational dimension of pollution-combating techniques and equipment, and health and safety issues. Compliance with, and enforcement of, international legislation related to HNS will be also analyzed.
It is anticipated that the Forum will bring together some 100 delegates from IMO Member States, other United Nations agencies, inter-Governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations and research institutions, in addition to providing an opportunity for participants to attend other events related to oil pollution response, organized as part of INTERSPILL 2009.
Previous IMO R&D Fora
The first and second International R&D Fora on oil spill response issues were held in McLean (USA, 1992) and London (1995). The Third R&D Forum on High Density Oil Spill Response was held in Brest, France, in 2002.
The OPRC-HNS Protocol was adopted by IMO in 2000 and entered into force in 2007. It follows the principles of the International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation (OPRC), which was adopted in 1990 and entered into force in 1995.
Article 8 of the OPRC Convention and Article 6 of the OPRC-HNS Protocol call on Governments and IMO to play an active role in the promotion of R&D relating to the enhancement of state-of-the-art pollution preparedness and response, through the exchange of information, and to promote the holding, on a regular basis, of international symposia on relevant subjects, including technological advances in techniques and equipment for responding to pollution incidents.
Briefing 18, 8 May 2009
For further information please contact:
Lee Adamson, Head, Public Information Services on 020 7587 3153 (media@imo.org )
Natasha Brown, External Relations Officer on 020 7587 3274 (media@imo.org ).
IOPC = The International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds (IOPC Funds) are three intergovernmental organisations (the 1971 Fund, the 1992 Fund and the Supplementary Fund) which provide compensation for oil pollution damage resulting from spills of persistent oil from tankers.
http://www.iopcfund.org/
from their news / headlines page – about Interspill 2009 conference coming up in June – 2009
http://www.iopcfund.org/headlines.htm
Interspill 2009
Working Together
12-14 May 2009, Marseille, France
The Interspill 2009 Conference and Exhibition will take place at the Parc Chanot, Marseille, France, from
12-14 May 2009, in conjunction with the Fourth IMO R&D Forum on Hazardous & Noxious Substances in the Marine Environment. The theme of the conference is ‘Working Together’ to prevent, prepare for and respond to oil spills. The IOPC Funds’ Director, Mr Willem Oosterveen, will give a presentation entitled ‘The IOPC Funds: What has been achieved and what will be the main challenges for the future’ . The IOPC Funds will also run a short course on Oil Pollution Claims and Compensation as part of the educational programme and have a stand at the exhibition.
Click here for more information on Interspill 2009.
(http://www.interspill.com)
Outstanding Oil Reports and Deferment of
Compensation Payments: New 1992 Fund Policy
3 February 2009
At its October 2008 session, the 1992 Fund Assembly decided to adopt a new policy on the deferment of compensation payments in States which have outstanding oil reports, as set out in 92FUND/Circ.63. The policy will apply as of 28 April 2009 to all relevant claims in Member States with outstanding oil reports.
2007 Annual Report
26 September 2008
The 2007 Reports in French and Spanish are now available and can be accessed by clicking on the following links: French and Spanish.
2007 Annual Report
3 July 2008
The 2007 Annual Report is now available in English. The French and Spanish versions of the 2007 Report will be available shortly. The 2006 Reports in French and Spanish can be accessed by clicking on the following links: French and Spanish.
HNS Focus Group
8 November 2007
I am noting this below because it may be good for comparison so the knowledge of it can be brought forward to the current situation in the Gulf of Mexico, Deepwater Horizon oil leak and disaster. This outlines a number of things that have been ongoing in the international community and resources available beyond our shores, as well.
- cricketdiane
(from my notes last year)
***
Solar 1 Incident
21 December 2006
Following an underwater inspection of the wreck, the shipowner’s insurer has appointed a company to remove the oil which remained on board the vessel. The removal operations will start in the New Year, probably in early February. The shipowner’s insurer has also paid a number of claims by cleanup contractors and some tourist claims.
A large number of claims have been received from the fisheries industry based in Guimaras. The 1992 Fund is in the process of paying compensation totalling approximately US$2.6 million to some 11 000 fisherfolk. A substantial number of these fisherfolk should be paid before Christmas, with the remainder being paid early in the New Year.
Måns Jacobsson Hands Over To Next Director Willem Oosterveen
31 October 2006
Mr Måns Jacobsson of Sweden is standing down as Director of the International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds (IOPC Funds) on 31 October 2006, with his successor, Mr Willem J G Oosterveen of the Netherlands, taking up office on 1 November 2006 .
Further information is available in the press release issued by the IOPC Funds.
Solar 1 Incident
31 August 2006
On 11 August 2006 the Philippines registered tanker Solar 1, laden with about 2 000 tonnes of intermediate fuel oil, sank off the coast of Guimaras (Philippines) spilling an unknown but substantial quantity of its cargo. The wreck is lying in some 600-900 meters of water. Technical experts from International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Ltd (ITOPF) and a fisheries expert have been jointly appointed by the shipowner’s insurer and the 1992 Fund to attend at the site and provide technical expertise to deal with the incident and assess damage to fisheries.
Offshore clean-up operations are being carried out under the supervision of the Philippine Coastguard utilising local vessels and oil spill response equipment. The oil from the Solar 1 has impacted the coastline of Guimaras where shoreline clean-up is being conducted with the assistance of local labour. As regards the wreck, the shipowner’s insurer has appointed a salvage company to conduct an underwater inspection of the wreck using a remotely operated vehicle and to determine if there is any significant quantity of oil remaining on board.
Claims have been received from local vessel operators who are responding in the offshore clean up operations. The shipowner’s insurer is dealing with these claims with the assistance of ITOPF and his local correspondent. Claims are expected from the fisheries and aquaculture industry based in Guimaras.
and also this from that same site – which reminds me that the BP oil company, the TransOcean rig and the Halliburton group all have any number of resources who are paying them for this to be a system of disaster through insurance, credit derivative types against this kind of event and much more than replacement and cleanup costs of their operations. I meant to check on that after I had initially found a story with a couple weeks of the event, found among the financial pages somewhere, that TransOcean had already received payment of $401 million dollars or something on the oil platform costs of $365 million – which is interesting in and of itself, both because they already got paid off for it that quickly and also the staggering difference in the dollar amounts of the loss and what they were paid.
It isn’t necessarily the only thing they were paid for it by insurance companies and other funds. BP has access to any number of insurance company funds for the disaster, for the loss of product, for the lost production facility and for the capping off attempts, the clean up, the settlements, the law suits, etc. There are any number of funds they may be tapping only provided that the disaster continued rather than was stopped. I though that was a very interesting profit motive involved in the process and meant to look it up. I will work on it.
It reminds me also that BP is an international company which means that not only its country of origin and industry backers / trade associations have funds available to them for this – but also that there are international and UN maritime organizations and international intergovernmental agencies and organizations that cover their collective asses as well providing money to them that otherwise wouldn’t have been available except in a situation of this nature providing it so continues.
Considering that the goals of BP are single-mindedly to pursue profits even during this event, perhaps it has been in their best profit picture interest to continue the days of the disaster rather than to have stopped it. More is paid out to them from numerous sources as a result of the way it is written in insurance contracts, group fund requirements, access to international funds, etc. only as the situation continues and expands. They, at BP don’t have any other goals. Could they have done the kill shot at the beginning, yes.
Did they choose the top hat nonsense because they wanted to retrieve product rather than turning the whole thing off? Are they continuing to make profits of $24 million dollars a day, despite being boycotted by customers and share values dropping substantially because they are using these financial maneuvers to get the difference in profits made up by insurance and emergency funds access?
The jobs of BP’s executives is to get the job done – but what job is that? Aren’t they serving the same profit motives as always with the same short-term thinking that caused the mess in the first place? Aren’t they still serving those same corporate profit health even now, at the expense of our entire Gulf Coast wetlands and shores and public health and marine animals and the future of our entire Gulf of Mexico eco-systems?
- cricketdiane
***
Co-operation with P&I Clubs
2 May 2006
The MOU was signed on 19 April 2006 by
Måns Jacobsson (right), Director of the IOPC Funds and by Alistair Groom (left), Chairman of the International Group of P&I Clubs
The IOPC Funds have over the years co-operated closely with the shipowners’ insurers, normally one of the Protection and Indemnity Associations (P&I Clubs), in claim settlement procedures. The monitoring of the response to an incident and the assessment of the damage caused are normally carried out jointly by the P&I Club and the Fund involved in the incident.
Co-operation between the 1971 Fund and Clubs belonging to the International Group of P&I Clubs (International Group) has been governed by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which was signed in November 1980 and subsequently extended in 1996 to also cover the 1992 Fund.
As a result of the entry into force of the Supplementary Fund Protocol in March 2005, the Assemblies of the 1992 Fund and the Supplementary Fund approved in February 2006 a revised MOU to also cover the Supplementary Fund and to include the undertakings by the Clubs in respect of the new voluntary arrangements of STOPIA and TOPIA.
The new MOU, which was signed on 19 April 2006, emphasises the importance of compensating victims of oil pollution damage as promptly as possible. In view of the importance of uniform application of the 1992 Conventions, the P&I Clubs also agree to endeavour to ensure that, in respect of incidents falling within the 1992 Conventions where the Fund is not involved, the concept of pollution damage is given the same interpretation as if the 1992 Fund had been involved.
Interspill 2006 Conference:
Changing energy patterns, changing spill risks
21-23 March 2006, London, UK
5 January 2006
Interspill 2006, which will take place in London from 21 to 23 March 2006, is an international conference and exhibition for professionals concerned with marine and inland spills and their impact on the environment. The IOPC Funds Director, Måns Jacobsson, is a member of the conference’s organising committee and will be one of several IOPC Funds staff giving presentations or chairing sessions at the conference. The IOPC Funds will also run a short course on Claims and Compensation as part of the educational programme and have a stand at the exhibition.
Click here for more information on Interspill 2006.
Kwang Min No.7 Incident
8 December 2005
The Kwang Min No.7, a Korean coastal tanker of 161 GT, collided with the fishing boat Chil Yang No1 on 24 November 2005. An estimated 80 tonnes of heavy fuel oil spilled from the ship.
The Korean Marine Police promptly mobilised pollution response vessels. Most of the clean-up operations were completed by 27 November 2005.
Much of the spilt oil appears to have stranded on the shorelines west and south of Yengdo. Most of the shoreline is rocky, thus making clean-up more difficult. The affected area contains fishing grounds, an amenity beach and a wharf which were all affected.
The shipowner did not have any insurance for pollution liabilities. It is therefore likely that the 1992 Fund will be required to pay compensation for all the pollution damage arising from the incident.
Claims are expected for costs of clean-up operations and for losses in the fishing and mariculture sectors. It is too early to estimate the total amount of the pollution damage arising from this incident.
Governor Bobby Jindal is talking right now on CNN about the hard booms that are sitting on the standby waiting to be deployed while BP has been failing to get them in place and the oil is swamping the entire Louisiana coast.
my note, cricketdiane
***
Erika
France, 12 December 1999
Report updated 9 January 2009
What has happened?
On 12 December 1999 the Erika broke in two off the coast of Brittany, France, whilst carrying approximately 30 000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil. Some 19 800 tonnes were spilled. The sunken bow section contained 6 400 tonnes of cargo and the stern a further 4 700 tonnes.
Operations to pump the remaining oil to the surface were carried out during the period June – September 2000.
Clean-up operations took place along some 400 kilometres of polluted coastline and over 250 000 tonnes of oily waste was collected from the shoreline.
The compensation system: who is paying?
Compensation is available to any individual, business, private organisation or public body who has suffered pollution damage as a result of the Erika incident. Compensation is payable under the 1992 Civil Liability and Fund Conventions as enacted into French law.
Approximately 12.8 million (£12.2 million) compensation is available from the shipowner’s liability insurer, the Steamship Mutual P&I Club. Additional compensation of approximately 172 million (£164.5 million) is available from the International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund 1992 (1992 Fund). In other words, a total of 185 million (£177 million) is available.
Compensation is payable for expenses actually incurred and for loss or damage actually suffered as a result of the oil pollution. All claims must be properly supported by documentation.
Erika Claims Handling Office
The Steamship Mutual and the 1992 Fund established a Claims Handling Office in Lorient to serve as a focal point for the claimants and the technical experts engaged to examine the claims for compensation.
Some 50 experts have been involved in the examination of the claims relating to clean-up, fishing, mariculture and tourism.
The Claims Handling Office was closed on 31 July 2004, although the office manager continues to deal with outstanding issues from his office in Lorient.
The contact details are:
58 Avenue de la Perrière
56100 Lorient
France
Tel: 00 33 (0) 2 97 37 67 10
E-mail: Merri.Jacquemin@wanadoo.fr
As at 24 September 2008, 7 130 claims for compensation, other than those made by the French Government and Total SA, had been submitted for a total of 211 million (£201. 8 million) . By that date 99.7% of these claims had been assessed. Some 1 014 claims, totalling 31.8 million (£30.4 million) , had been rejected.
Payments of compensation had been made in respect of 5 934 claims for a total of 129.7 million (£102.79 million), out of which Steamship Mutual had paid 12.8 million (£10.2 million) and the 1992 Fund 116.9 million (£92.5 million).
Legal proceedings
Legal actions against the shipowner, his insurer and the 1992 Fund have been taken by 796 claimants. The courts have rendered 140 judgements and 37 actions involving 46 claimants remain pending totalling 25.5 million (£24.4 million) excluding the claims by Total SA.
Criminal proceedings
In its judgement, delivered in January 2008, the Criminal Court held the following four parties criminally liable: the representative of the shipowner (Tevere Shipping), the president of the management company (Panship Management and Services Srl), the classification society (RINA) and Total SA. The representative of the shipowner and the president of the management company were sentenced to pay a fine of 75 000 (£59 400) each. RINA and Total SA were sentenced to pay a fine of 375 000 (£296 700) each. All the other accused parties were acquitted.
Regarding civil liabilities, the judgement made the four parties jointly and severally liable for the damage caused by the incident and awarded claimants in the proceedings economic losses, damage to the image of several regions and municipalities, moral damages and damages to the environment. The Court assessed the total damages in the amount of 192.8 million (£184.4 million) , including 153.9 million (£147.2 million) for the French State.
At the June 2008 session the French delegation informed the Committee that the French State had reached an agreement with Total SA, whereby Total SA had paid, in full and final settlement, the French State 153.9 million (£121.8 million), ie the amount awarded by the Criminal Court, which took into account the compensation amounts already received from the 1992 Fund. That delegation also stated that, as a result of this payment, the French State had withdrawn all its civil actions, including those against the Fund.
The four parties held criminally liable and a number of civil parties have appealed against the judgement.
Court judgements in respect of claims against the 1992 Fund
The French Courts have issued some 150 judgements in respect for claims for compensation brought against the 1992 Fund.
The majority of the judgements rendered by the French Courts related to issues of admissibility. The judgements were in general very favourable for the Fund, since the Courts in most cases where the Fund had rejected claims as not admissible concurred with the Fund’s position. In some cases the Courts applied the Fund’s admissibility criteria, in other cases the Courts did not apply them but took them into account, and in some cases the Courts stated that the Fund’s criteria were not binding and that the admissibility should be decided by the application of French law but reached the same results as the Fund on its rejection of the claims by applying the requirement that there must be a link of causation between the event and the damage. The Court of Appeal in Rennes in two judgements stated that the 1992 Fund’s criteria for admissibility were not binding on the national courts, but could serve as a reference ( une référence d’ordre indicatif ) for the national judge. A few judgements related to issues of quantum. Where the Courts did not agree with the Fund’s assessments, the Fund did not appeal unless the amounts awarded by the Court were significantly different or appeared arbitrary.
Detailed information on the judgements can be found in the documents presented to the Executive Committee at the following sessions:
March 2005:
92FUND/EXC.28/4
92FUND/EXC.28/4/Add.1
June 2005:
92FUND/EXC.29/3
92FUND/EXC.29/3/Add.1
October 2005:
92FUND/EXC.30/6
92FUND/EXC.30/6/Add.1
92FUND/EXC.30/6/Add.2
February 2006: 92FUND/EXC.32/3
May 2006: 92FUND/EXC.33/5
92FUND/EXC.33/5/Add.1
October 2006: 92FUND/EXC.34/6/Add.2
92FUND/EXC.34/6/Add.3
March 2007: 92FUND/EXC.36/4
92FUND/EXC.36/4/Add.1
92FUND/EXC.36/4/Add.2
June 2007: 92FUND/EXC.37/4/Add.1
92FUND/EXC.37/4/Add.2
October 2007:
92FUND/EXC.38/5
92FUND/EXC.38/5/Add.1
March 2008: 92FUND/EXC.40/4
92FUND/EXC.40/4/1
June 2008: 92FUND/EXC.41/3
October 2008: 92FUND/EXC.42/4
Legal proceedings by the Commune de Mesquer against Total
A legal action has been brought by the Commune de Mesquer against Total before the French Courts, where it has argued that the cargo on board the Erika was in fact a waste under European law. The French Supreme Court has referred three questions to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for an opinion, namely:
* Whether the fuel oil transported as cargo on board the Erika was in fact a waste under European law.
* Whether a cargo of fuel oil that accidentally escaped from a ship would, once it had been mixed with seawater and sediments, become a waste under European law.
* If the cargo on board the Erika was not a waste but became a waste after accidentally escaping from the ship, should the companies of the Total group be considered responsible for the waste under European law even though the cargo was being transported by a third party?
In the Director’s view it is unlikely that the ECJ would find that the cargo on board the Erika was not persistent oil and that therefore the Court’s opinion was not likely to have an effect on the applicability of the 1992 Civil Liability and Fund Conventions.
The legal opinion delivered by Advocate-General Kokott of the European Court of Justice stated, inter alia, that heavy fuel oil must be treated as a waste when it was discharged as a result of an incident and became mixed with water and sediments, but that, in her opinion, this provision of European law was compatible with the provisions of the 1992 Civil Liability and Fund Conventions.
Judgement by the European Court of Justice
The European Court of Justice delivered its judgement on 24 June 2008. The Director, with the help of the 1992 Fund’s French lawyer, has studied the judgement and a summary of the same is provided in the paragraphs below.
1) Reply to the first question
On the first question of whether the fuel oil transported as cargo on board the Erika was in fact a waste under European law, the ECJ initially pointed out that Directive 75/442 on waste(Directive 75/442/EEC of 15 July 1975 on waste, as amended by Commission Decision 96/350/EC of 24 May 1996.) defines as ‘waste’ any substance or any object which falls within the categories set out in Annex I of the Directive and which is discarded or intended to be discarded by the holder or which the holder has the obligation to discard. The ECJ endeavoured to give the term ‘discard’ an interpretation which takes account of the objective of the Directive, namely an elevated level of protection of human health and the environment. However, the heavy fuel oil sold as a combustible fuel in the Erika case is a substance which is residual, as obtained at the end of the oil refining process, but which is likely to be exploited commercially under advantageous economic conditions and to be actually used as combustible fuel without requiring preliminary operation or transformation. Its holder thus does not seek to discard it. The Court concludes therefore that this substance does not constitute a waste within the meaning of the directive.
2) Reply to the second question
On the second question, whether a cargo of fuel oil that accidentally escaped from a ship would, once it had been mixed with seawater and sediments, become a waste under European law, the ECJ initially pointed out that Annex I of the Directive on waste proposes lists of substances or objects that may be considered as waste, but that this has only an indicative character, the qualification as waste resulting above all from the behaviour of the holder and the meaning of the term ‘discard’ in article 1(a) of that Directive. Proceeding in the same way as for the first question, the Court then analysed, in the case of the Erika, the behaviour of the holder, to note that hydrocarbons having been spilled into the sea following a shipwreck and subsequently having become mixed with water and sediments, were the origin of the pollution of the territorial waters and the coasts of a Member State and that these substances do not constitute a reusable product without undergoing previous transformation. The Court thus concluded that the holder of these substances did not intend to produce them and that it is thus ‘discarded’, albeit involuntarily, at the time of their transport, so that they must be considered as waste within the meaning of the Directive.
3) Reply to the third question
The Court’s answer to the third question, namely whether, in the event of the sinking of an oil tanker, the producer of the heavy fuel oil spilled at sea and/or the seller of the fuel and charterer of the ship carrying the fuel may be required to bear the cost of disposing of the waste thus generated, even though the substance spilled at sea was transported by a third party, in this case a carrier by sea, is summarised in the following paragraphs.
The ECJ recalled that the European Community is not bound by the 1992 Civil Liability and Fund Conventions. On the one hand, the Community did not adhere to those Conventions and, on the other hand, it could not be regarded as having taken the place of its Member States, if only because not all of them are party to these Conventions, or as being indirectly bound by those Conventions as a result of Article 235 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The Court also pointed out that Directive 75/442 on waste does not contain a provision like Article 4(2) of Directive 2004/35 on Environmental Liability, which expressly states that that Directive is not to apply to an incident or activity in respect of which liability or compensation falls within the scope of any of a number of international conventions listed in Annex IV to that Directive, which mentions the 1992 Civil Liability Convention and the 1992 Fund Convention.
The ECJ also recalled that the Directive on waste provides that certain categories of people, in fact the ‘former holders’ or the ‘producer of the generating product’, can, in accordance with the polluter pays principle, be held liable for the cost of the waste disposal, because of their contribution to the generation of that waste and to the risk that results from it. In this respect, in accordance with European law, the Member States, while retaining the freedom to choose the form and the means of implementation of the Directive, are bound as to the result to be achieved by the Directive in terms of financial liability for the cost of disposing of waste. They are therefore obliged to ensure that their national law allows that cost to be allocated either to the previous holders or to the producer of the product from which the waste came.
The ECJ then ruled as follows:
The national court may regard the seller of those hydrocarbons and charterer of the ship carrying them as a producer of that waste within the meaning of Article 1(b) of Directive 75/442, as amended by Decision 96/350, and thereby as a ‘previous holder’ for the purposes of applying the first part of the second indent of Article 15 of that directive, if that court, in the light of the elements which it alone is in a position to assess, reaches the conclusion that that seller-charterer contributed to the risk that the pollution caused by the shipwreck would occur, in particular if he failed to take measures to prevent such an incident, such as measures concerning the choice of ship.
In addition, the ECJ stated that Article 15 of the Directive on waste does not preclude the Member States from laying down, pursuant to their relevant international commitments such as the 1992 Civil Liability and Fund Conventions, that the shipowner and the charterer can be liable for the damage caused by the discharge of hydrocarbons at sea only up to maximum amounts depending on the tonnage of the vessel and/or in particular circumstances linked to their negligent conduct. That provision also does not preclude a compensation fund such as the IOPC Funds, with resources limited to a maximum amount for each incident, from assuming liability, pursuant to those international commitments, in place of the ‘holders’ within the meaning of the Directive on waste, for the cost of disposal of the waste resulting from hydrocarbons accidentally spilled at sea.
However, the ECJ continued by stating that:
If it happens that the cost of disposing of the waste produced by an accidental spillage of hydrocarbons at sea is not borne by the International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund, or cannot be borne because the ceiling for compensation for that accident has been reached, and that, in accordance with the limitations and/or exemptions of liability laid down, the national law of a Member State, including the law derived from international agreements, prevents that cost from being borne by the shipowner and/or the charterer, even though they are to be regarded as ‘holders’ within the meaning of Article 1(c) of Directive 75/442, as amended by Decision 96/350, such a national law will then, in order to ensure that Article 15 of that directive is correctly transposed, have to make provision for that cost to be borne by the producer of the product from which the waste thus spread came. In accordance with the ‘polluter pays’ principle, however, such a producer cannot be liable to bear that cost unless he has contributed by his conduct to the risk that the pollution caused by the shipwreck will occur.
Director’s considerations
The Director has studied the judgement by the European Court of Justice and discussed it with the 1992 Fund’s French lawyer. On that basis, the Director considers that, although it might be too early to reach a conclusion on the possible consequences that the judgement by the European Court of Justice could have for the 1992 Civil Liability and Fund Conventions, it seems that the judgement has taken into account all the relevant international commitments of the EU Member States, including the 1992 Civil Liability and Fund Conventions and it would therefore appear that the judgement does not affect the applicability of these conventions.
Recourse actions
The 1992 Fund has taken legal action, for the purposes of protecting the right of recovering the amounts paid by it in compensation, against the parties who may be found liable as a result of the incident, namely against the owner and the manager of the Erika, their liability insurer, the charterers and the classification societies which had inspected the Erika. The Fund will pursue or withdraw the actions against the various parties (or against some of them) in the light of the outcome of the criminal proceedings brought before the French Courts.
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Prestige
Spain, 13 November 2002
Report updated 9 January 2009
What has happened?
On 13 November 2002 the Bahamas registered tanker Prestige, laden with 77 000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil, broke in two off the coast of Galicia ( Spain) spilling an unknown but substantial quantity of its cargo. The bow section sank to a depth of 3 500 meters and the stern section to a depth of 3830 meters. They are estimated to contain 13 800 tonnes of cargo.
Due to the highly persistent nature of the Prestige’s cargo, released oil drifted for extended periods with winds and currents, travelling great distances. The west coast of Galicia was heavily contaminated and oil eventually moved into the Bay of Biscay, affecting the north coast of Spain and France.
A major offshore clean-up operation was carried out using vessels from Spain and nine other European countries including France and Portugal. The oil from the Prestige affected the Atlantic coast from Vigo in Spain to Brest in France, as well as causing intermittent and light contamination on the French and English coasts of the English Channel as far as the Dover Strait. Approximately 1 900 km of shoreline was affected in Spain and France. Around 141 000 tonnes of oily waste was collected in Spain and some 18 300 tonnes in France.
The Spanish Government concluded a contract with the oil company Repsol YPF to remove the remaining oil from the wreck of the Prestige. The work commenced in May 2004 and was finalised in September 2004 at a cost of some 109.2 million (£81.4 million).
No oil is reported to have come ashore in Portugal, but some clean-up operations at sea were carried out by the Portuguese authorities.
The compensation system: who is paying?
Compensation is available to any individual, business, private organisation or public body who has suffered pollution damage as a result of the Prestige incident. Compensation is payable under the 1992 Civil Liability and Fund Conventions which form part of Spanish, French and Portuguese law.
Compensation is payable for expenses actually incurred and for loss or damage actually suffered as a result of the oil pollution. All claims must be properly supported by documentation.
Approximately 22.8 million (£21.8 million) compensation is available from the shipowner’s liability insurer (the London P&I Club). Additional compensation of up to approximately 148.7 million (£142.2 million) is available from the 1992 Fund. In other words, a total of 171.5 million (£164 million) is available.
Claims Offices
The London P&I Club and the 1992 Fund have established a Claims Office in La Coruña (Spain) to assist claimants who wish to make claims for compensation for pollution damage in Spain. Claimants are invited to contact the Prestige Claims Office by telephone or fax in order to obtain a claims form and further information on presenting claims.
The office is located at:
(c/o CGC y Asociados S.L.)
San Andrés, 56 – 2º A
15003 La Coruña
Spain
Telephone: 00 34 981 217207
Fax: 00 34 981 210538
The Director decided to close the Claims Handling Office in Bordeaux on 30 September 2006. The activities of that office are now carried out from Lorient by the person who managed the Erika Claims Handling Office.
The contact details are:
58 Avenue de la Perrière
56100 Lorient
France
Tel: 00 33 (0) 2 97 37 67 10
E-mail: Merri.Jacquemin@wanadoo.fr
Claims situation
Spain
With respect to Spain , as at 20 August 2008 the Claims Handling Office in La Coruña had received 844 claims totaling 1 018.8 million (£974.5 million). These include 14 claims from the Spanish Government totaling 968.5 million (£926.3 million) submitted during the period October 2003 – August 2008.
As at 20 August 2008, 753 (91.69%) of the claims other than those of the Spanish Government have been assessed for 3.9 million (£3.7 million). Interim payments totalling 521 501 (£416 000) have been made in respect of 169 of the assessed claims, mainly at 30% of the assessed amount. Of the remaining claims three are pending clarification, 174 are awaiting a response from the claimant, 52 are awaiting further documentation, 413 (totalling 29.2 million (£27.9 million)) have been rejected and 19 were withdrawn by the claimants.
France
As at 20 August 2008, 481 compensation claims totalling 109.6 million (£104.8 million) have been received by the Claims Office in Lorient , including a claim from the French Government for clean-up totalling 67.5 million (£64.6 million). The 1992 Fund and the London Club have provisionally assessed the claim at 31.2 million (£29.8 million). Further documentation has since been provided by the French Government. The Fund’s experts are carrying out a detailed further assessment of the claim.
Of the 481 claims submitted to the Claims Handling Office, 92% had been assessed by 20 August 2008. Many of the remaining claims lack sufficient supporting documentation and such documentation has been requested from the claimants. Four hundred and forty six claims had been assessed for 49.8 million (£47.6 million) and interim payments totaling 5 million (£4 million) had been made at 30% of the assessed amounts in respect of 324 claims. The remaining claims await a response from the claimants or are being re-examined following the claimants’ disagreement with the assessed amount. Fifty-four claims totalling 3.7 million (£3.5 million) had been rejected because the claimants had not demonstrated that a loss had been suffered due to the incident.
Portugal
In December 2003 the Portuguese Government submitted a claim for 3.3 million (£3.2 million) in respect of the costs incurred in clean up and preventive measures. On the basis of additional documentation submitted in February 2005 the Portuguese Government increased its claim by 1 million (£1 million). The claim was finally assessed at 2.2 million (£2.1 million). The Portuguese Government accepted this assessment. In August 2006 the 1992 Fund made a payment of 328 488 (£222 600), corresponding to 15% of the final assessment. This payment does not preclude a further payment to the Portuguese Government in the event that the Executive Committee were to increase the level of payments unconditionally.
Level of payments
The maximum amount available for compensation under the 1992 Civil Liability Convention and the 1992 Fund Convention in respect of the Prestige incident is 171.5 million (£164 million). The figures given in May 2003 by the Governments of the three States affected by the incident, Spain, France and Portugal, as to the damage caused indicated that the total amount of the damage could be as high as 1 050 million (£1 004.3 million). Under the 1992 Conventions, the Fund has to give all claimants equal treatment. The Executive Committee therefore decided in May 2003 that the 1992 Fund’s payments should be for the time being limited to 15% of the loss or damage actually suffered by each individual claimant as assessed by the 1992 Fund’s experts. The Committee reconsidered the payment level several times but decided, as late as in June 2005, that the level of 15% should be maintained.
The level of the 1992 Fund’s payments has in the past generally been determined on the basis of the total amount of claims already presented and possible future claims against the Fund, and not on the basis of the Fund’s assessment of the admissible amounts. When the level of payments was considered by the Executive Committee in October 2005 on the basis of the figures presented by the Governments of the three States affected by the incident, it was clear that the level of payments would probably have to be maintained at 15% for several years, unless a new approach were taken.
The Director suggested that an alternative way of determining the Fund’s level of payments would be to base it on an estimate of the final amount of the admissible claims against the Fund, established either as a result of agreements with the claimants or by final judgements of a competent court, which was unlikely to be exceeded.
In view of the magnitude of the Prestige incident and the exceptional circumstances surrounding it, the Executive Committee agreed to the Director’s proposal to increase the level of payments from 15% to 30% of the actual losses suffered by claimants. The Committee also decided to apportion on a provisional basis the amount payable by the 1992 Fund, minus a reserve of 10%, amongst the three States affected by the incident. Both these decisions were subject to the provision of certain guarantees and undertakings by the States concerned so as to ensure that the Fund was protected against overpayment. In agreeing to the proposal, it was stressed that it should not be seen as a precedent for future incidents.
Payments to the Spanish Government and undertaking by the French Government
The first claim received from the Spanish Government in October 2003 for 384 million (£367 million) was assessed on an interim basis by the Director in December 2003 at 107 million (£102.3 million), and the 1992 Fund made a payment of 16 050 000 (£11.1 million), corresponding to 15% of the interim assessment. The Director also made a general assessment of the total of the admissible damage in Spain and concluded that the admissible damage would be at least 303 million (£289.8 million). On that basis, and as authorised by the Assembly, the Director made an additional payment of 41 505 000 (£28.5 million), corresponding to the difference between 15% of 383.7 million or 57 555 000 and 15% of the preliminarily assessed amount of the Government’s claim, 16 050 000. That payment was made against the provision by the Spanish Government of a bank guarantee covering the above-mentioned difference (ie 41 505 000) from the Instituto de Credito Oficial, a Spanish bank with high standing in the financial market, and an undertaking by the Spanish Government to repay any amount of the payment decided by the Executive Committee or the Assembly.
The Portuguese Government subsequently informed the 1992 Fund that it would not provide any bank guarantee and would, as a consequence, only request payment of 15% of the assessed amount of its claim.
In January 2006 the French Government gave the required undertaking to accept, if necessary, a reduction in compensation in respect of its own claim. As for Spain, in March 2006, the Spanish Government gave the required undertaking and bank guarantee and as a consequence, a payment of 56 365 000 (£38.5 million) was made in March 2006. The Director also increased the level of payments to 30% of the established claims for damage in Spain and in France (except in respect of the French Government’s claim), with effect from 5 April 2006. In August 2006 the 1992 Fund settled the claim of the Portuguese Government at 2.2 million (£1.5 million) and made a payment of 328 488 (£222 600), corresponding to 15% of the assessed amount.
As requested by the Spanish Government, the 1992 Fund retained 1 million in order to make payments at the level of 30% of the assessed amounts in respect of the individual claims that have been submitted to the Claims Handling Office in Spain. These payments will be made on behalf of the Spanish Government in compliance with its undertaking, and any amount left after paying all the above claimants will be returned to the Spanish Government. If the amount of 1 million were to be insufficient to pay all the claimants who had submitted claims to the Claims Handling Office, the Spanish Government has undertaken to make payments to these claimants up to 30% of the amount assessed by the London Club and the 1992 Fund.
Removal of the oil from the wreck
The claim for the removal of the oil from the wreck, initially for 109.2 million (£104.4 million), was reduced to 24.2 million (£23.1 million) to take account of European funding the Spanish Government had received following the incident. The Fund is examining the information provided and its bearing on the assessment of the claims by the Spanish Government.
At its February 2006 session the Executive Committee decided that some of the costs incurred in 2003 in respect of sealing the oil leaking from the wreck and various surveys and studies were admissible in principle, but that the claim for costs incurred in 2004 relating to the removal of oil from the wreck was inadmissible. In accordance with the Executive Committee’s decision, an assessment is being carried out of the admissible costs of activities that had a bearing on the assessment of the pollution risk posed by the oil in the wreck, incurred by the Spanish Government in 2003 prior to the removal of the oil from the wreck.
Legal Proceedings
Spain
As of August 2008, some 3 790 claims have been lodged in the legal proceedings before the Criminal Court in Corcubión ( Spain ). Six hundred and thirty six of these claims involve persons who have submitted claims directly to the 1992 Fund through the Claims Handling Office in La Coruña. Details of the claims made in some of these court actions have been provided by the Court and are being examined by the experts engaged by the 1992 Fund. The Claims Handling Office has dealt with 102 of the claims submitted in court, out of which two have been settled and paid for an amount of 2 140 (£1 700).
One thousand nine hundred and sixty eight of these claims have been paid by the Spanish Government under the Royal Decrees (397 claims have been rejected) or by the 1992 Fund through the Claims Handling Office in La Coruña. A number of claimants who have been paid by the Spanish Government under the Royal Decrees have withdrawn their claims from the court proceedings. It is expected that more claimants will withdraw their court actions for the same reason.
The Spanish Government has taken legal action in the Criminal Court in Corcubión on its own behalf and on behalf of regional and local authorities as well as on behalf of 1 877 other claimants or groups of claimants. A number of other claimants have also taken legal actions and the Court is assessing whether these claimants are eligible to join the proceedings.
France
As regards France, the French Government and 233 other claimants have taken legal action against the shipowner, the London Club and the 1992 Fund in 16 courts in France requesting compensation totalling some 131 million (£125.3 million), including 67.7 million (£64.8 million) claimed by the Government .
The courts have granted the stay of proceedings in 29 legal actions in order to give the parties time to discuss the claims out of court. Four hundred and twelve French claimants, including
various communes, have joined the legal proceedings in Corcubión, Spain.
Portugal
The Government took legal action in the Maritime Court in Lisbon against the shipowner, the London Club and the 1992 Fund claiming compensation for 4.3 million (£4.1 million). Following the settlement of the claim, the Portuguese State withdrew its action in December 2006.
United States
Claim and counterclaim
The Spanish State has taken legal action against American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) before the Federal Court of first instance in New York requesting compensation for all damage caused by the incident, estimated initially to exceed US$700 million (£455.7 million) and estimated later to exceed US$1 000 million (£651 million). The Spanish State has maintained, inter alia, that ABS had been negligent in the inspection of the Prestige and had failed to detect corrosion, permanent deformation, defective materials and fatigue in the vessel and had been negligent in granting classification.
ABS denied the allegation made by the Spanish State and in its turn took action against the State, arguing that if the State had suffered damage this was caused in whole or in part by its own negligence. ABS made a counterclaim and requested that the State should be ordered to indemnify ABS for any amount that ABS may be obliged to pay pursuant to any judgement against it in relation to the Prestige incident.
For details about the defence of sovereign immunity, the discovery of the criminal file in Corcubión and of financial records reference is made to document 92FUND/EXC.38/7, section 7.
Discovery of e-mail communications
The judge assigned to supervise discovery in the District Court case in New York, granted a motion by ABS to compel the Spanish State to produce certain electronic documents. As Spain did not, in the judge’s view, fully comply, the judge imposed sanctions against Spain by awarding ABS its legal fees associated with the motion . Spain filed objections to the judge’s rulings, requiring them to be reviewed by the District Court judge assigned to the case. In August 2008 the District Court ju dge overruled Spain’s objections and upheld the decisions of the judge assigned to supervise discovery.
ABS acting as an agent or servant of the shipowner
In August 2005 ABS submitted a request to the New York Court (District Court) for a summary judgement dismissing the Spanish State’s action. ABS argued that it was an agent or servant of the shipowner or fell under the category of ‘the pilot or any other person who, without being a member of the crew, performs services for the ship’ and that, therefore, in accordance with Article III.4(a) and (b) of the 1992 Civil Liability Convention (1992 CLC) no claim for compensation for pollution damage could be made against it, unless the damage resulted from its personal act or omission, committed with the intent to cause such damage, or recklessly and with knowledge that such damage would probably result. ABS also maintained that under Article IX.1 of the 1992 CLC all actions for compensation, such as that pursued by the Spanish State in the New York Court, could only be brought in the courts of a Contracting State. Since the United States was not a Contracting State to the 1992 CLC and the pollution damage had occurred in Spain, ABS argued that the United States Courts were not competent to hear the case.
The Spanish State opposed the request by ABS, arguing that a classification society could not be considered either an agent or servant of the shipowner or a person who performs services for the ship, within the meaning of Article III.4(a) and (b) of the 1992 CLC respectively. As regards Article III.4(b), Spain argued that ‘any other person’ only referred to a person similar to a pilot or a member of the crew in their relationship with the owner, who performs services of the kind performed by a pilot or a member of the crew of the ship and who is involved in the navigation or operation of the vessel on the incident voyage in question. In support of its argument, the Spanish State relied upon the ejusdem generis rule of construction, which provides that when a general word or phrase follows a list of specific persons or things, the general word or phrase shall be interpreted to include only persons or things of the same type as those listed.
In support of its motion, Spain submitted declarations from legal experts that had attended the 1969 and 1984 diplomatic conferences. Both experts’ declarations take the position that classification societies were not intended to be covered by Article III.4(b). The Spanish State further argued that since the United States was not a signatory to the 1992 CLC, the jurisdictional provisions of Article IX.1 of the Convention were not binding on its courts.
New York Court decision in January 2008
In January 2008 the New York Court accepted ABS’s argument that ABS fell into the category of ‘any other person who performs services for the ship’ under Article III.4(b) of the 1992 CLC. The Court argued that the text of the treaty had to be interpreted in accordance with the ordinary meaning given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in light of its object and purpose. It further argued that the ejusdem generis rule of construction did not apply because it was only to be used where there was uncertainty as to the meaning of a particular clause in a statute. The Court found no uncertainty or ambiguity in the wording of Article III.4(b) and, therefore, held it did not need to refer to ejusdem generis, negotiation history or other extrinsic sources. The Court further ruled that, under Article IX.1 of the 1992 CLC, Spain could only make claims against ABS in its own courts and it therefore granted ABS’s motion for summary judgement, dismissing the Spanish State’s claim.
Appeal
In its decision, the New York Court also denied all pending motions as now being non actionable, except for the pending motions over sanctions for Spain’s failure to comply with the discovery requests relating to e-mails.
The Spanish State has appealed against the New York Court’s decision. ABS has also filed an appeal against the Court’s decision to dismiss its counterclaims for lack of jurisdiction. The Spanish State has also filed a motion with the Court of Appeal seeking to dismiss ABS’s appeal.
In its appeal Spain argued that since the United States is not a party to the 1992 CLC, ABS as a United States national had no standing to assert rights under the 1992 CLC in a court of the United States, that the 1992 CLC could not deny jurisdiction to a federal court, and that Article IX.1 of the 1992 CLC applied only to claims under the 1992 CLC compensation regime and not to Spain’s claims against ABS, which were governed by other law. The Spanish State has also argued that principles of treaty interpretation required consideration of the text, drafter’s intent, judicial rulings from 1992 CLC Contracting States and other authorities, all of which showed that Article III.4(b) of the 1992 CLC did not provide immunity to classification societies such as ABS. The Spanish State has further argued that even if Article III.4(b) did apply to classification societies, its immunity did not cover the reckless conduct alleged against ABS.
ABS has opposed Spain’s appeal and has cross-appealed, arguing that if Spain was allowed to pursue its claim against ABS in the United States. The counterclaims of ABS, which had been dismissed by the District Court as not logically related to Spain’s claim, should be reinstated. The Spanish State has made a motion to the Court of Appeal to dismiss the cross-appeal of ABS but that motion was denied.
In its reply to the appeal by the Spanish State, ABS has argued that Article IX.1 of the 1992 CLC clearly stated that ‘actions for compensation may only be brought in the courts of such Contracting State or States’ and that the District Court chose not to execute its jurisdiction so as not to allow Spain to ignore its obligation under the 1992 CLC to seek compensation in the courts of Spain. ABS has further argued that there is no evidence of intentional or reckless conduct on its part leading to pollution.
The Spanish State has submitted a reply to ABS arguing that ABS’s location in the United States and the presence of key witnesses and documents there, legitimised Spain’s choice of forum and that since the United States had not ratified the 1992 CLC, its courts had no obligation to apply the 1992 CLC. In its reply Spain has also renewed its argument that Clause III(4) only applies to persons who provide services to the vessel on the ‘incident voyage’ and not to persons like ABS, who provided its services many months before, and has supported its argument relying upon the decision by the Criminal Court in Paris regarding the Erika incident
Recourse actions
The Governments of the Fund Member States have taken a policy decision that the Fund should, in respect of any oil pollution incident, endeavour to recover from third parties the amounts it has paid in compensation for pollution damage.
The Criminal Court in Corcubión in Spain is carrying out an investigation into the cause of the incident in the context of criminal proceedings. The Court is investigating the role of the master of the Prestige and of a civil servant who was involved in the decision not to allow the ship into a port of refuge in Spain. The Fund is closely following developments in the Court proceedings.
Spain has also taken legal action against the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), the classification society of the Prestige, before a Court in New York. In October 2004, the Executive Committee therefore considered whether the Fund should also pursue recourse action against ABS, and if so, in which jurisdiction, namely the United States where ABS is incorporated or in Spain where the major part of the pollution damage occurred.
After having considered the implications and costs associated with legal action in the United States and Spain, the Executive Committee decided that the Fund should not take recourse action against ABS in the United States. It further decided to defer any decision on recourse action against ABS in Spain until further details surrounding the cause of the Prestige incident are available.
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ABS 16855 Northchase Drive Houston TX 77060 USA Tel: 1-281-877-5800 | 2008 All Rights Reserved. Release 1.0.1.0024
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Mission
The mission of ABS is to serve
the public interest as well as the
needs of our clients by promoting
the security of life, property and the
natural environment primarily through
the development and verifi cation of
standards for the design, construction
and operational maintenance of
marine-related facilities.
In view of the magnitude of the Prestige incident and the exceptional circumstances surrounding it, the Executive Committee agreed to the Director’s proposal to increase the level of payments from 15% to 30% of the actual losses suffered by claimants.
Yesterday, when I was researching through the 1988, 1992 and other documents in the EPA, and CDC about the noxious and health hazards of the petroleum crude in the Gulf of Mexico, I noticed something in one of the documents which I posted and then got to thinking about it. In 1992, the document said there was not a set of guidelines for petroleum (as in crude oil petroleum) because it was excluded from lists, from studies, from research on chemical hazards such as those encountered in spills.
So, who was president in 1992 that would have done that? Who was running these agencies at the point and which administration’s policies were they enacting that would exclude spills of petroleum crude oil from the list of hazardous chemicals, noxious and hazardous substances and OSHA<ETPE>EPA>CDC>NIOSH, if they existed at the time or whatever was their predecessor – etc. – Who would do that?
Why would anybody do that when everything in raw crude oil and the raw petroleum itself, is known to be noxious, dangerous, toxic, hazardous, poisonous and to cause grossly detrimental, and often, even life-threatening effects from exposure to it?
- cricketdiane
***
Tetra Tech
2110 Powers Ferry Rd SE # 202, Atlanta, GA
(770) 850-0949
***
Tetra Tech Research and Development Division
Through a network of more than 150 offices, Tetra Tech provides comprehensive resource management, infrastructure, and telecommunications support services …
www.tetratech.org/
Through a network of more than 350 offices, Tetra Tech provides comprehensive resource management, infrastructure, and telecommunications support services to our clients. This is the home page of Tetra Tech’s R&D Division, which specializes in surface and groundwater investigations, environmental assessments, remedial investigations/feasibility studies for hazardous waste sites, simulation model development, and information systems.
Tetra Tech’s clients include the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Electric Power Research Institute, private corporations, and state and local government agencies.
Members of Tetra Tech’s staff are nationally recognized experts in key technical areas such as hazardous waste management, water quality, human health and ecological risk assessment, hydrogeology, modeling (chemical fate and transport, ecosystem, water quality, and hydrodynamics), GIS, Information Technology services, database development, environmental auditing, permit compliance, remediation engineering, health and safety, and remedial design.
The technical brochure, Mercury in the Environment, describes the leading role Tetra Tech has played in several major projects investigating mercury cycling in the environment.
Tetra Tech’s risk assessment experience in support of site restoration, waste-management, and regulatory decision-making at Brownfields, RCRA and Superfund sites is described in a new technical brochure, Human Health & Ecological Risk Assessment.
To contact Tetra Tech’s R&D Division, email rd@tetratech.com, or call Tom Grieb at (925) 283-3771.
2003 Tetra Tech, Inc 3746 Mt Diablo Blvd, Suite 300, Lafayette, CA 94549
My Note -
If you are angry about the BP, TransOcean, Halliburton Gulf of Mexico oil spill destroying the ocean waters, the coast and the communities of people and animals along the Gulf Coast right now – then call the Republican Party headquarters nearest you and explain it to them over the phone, by email – on their websites, on their contact us pages and on the comments sections to anything anywhere they write to put in the newspaper, locally, regionally, specialized information bases like financial pages, and in oil industry pages and websites, their blogs, their places where they are posting their way of seeing it.
But, especially call them and call the Republican Congressmen and Congressional leaders, committees and Party leadership in the Senate and Congress, at the State levels and at the Federal levels, Call the Republican Party headquarters at local offices, state offices and national headquarter offices including their policy making committee members, and the Conservative Political Action Committee – CPAX – (CPAC) – call and email and tell them what you think about our country being polluted by these oil producers with complete disregard for our economic and physical well-being. They caused it, they made the law such that it would allow it and they de-regulated at their insistence knowing this could happen as a result. They can’t hear it – if you don’t say it.
- cricketdiane, 05-23-10
Added note – right now and over that last month, the only things the Republican Party and conservatives have heard has been from the lobbyists for the oil industry and their partners, from people that agree with them and from conservatives who want to make sure they do keep drilling offshore and in Alaska.
They’ve also been hearing from those who want to insist that the Party members and conservative caucus protect the oil industry from any fallout that might result from the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling and the resultant spill, leaking gusher problems they now have, my note – cd9
I say it is time for them to hear from the rest of us now.
***
Tetra Tech, Inc.
Business sector:
services – engineering services
Tetra Tech, Inc. financial information:
Securities and Exchange Commission filings
Stock quote and chart
People related to Tetra Tech, Inc.:
Dan L. Batrack – chairman, CEO & president
Sam Box – VP
Hugh M. Grant – director
Patrick C. Haden – director
J. Christopher Lewis – director
Albert E. Smith – director
J. Kenneth Thompson – director
Richard H. Truly – director
Other current Tetra Tech, Inc. relationships:
Blank Rome Government Relations LLC – lobby firm
Tetra Tech, Inc. past relationships:
Ralph S. Cunningham – director
J. Taft Symonds – chairman
With more than 250 offices worldwide, Tetra Tech has the local presence and global resources to serve you.
Corporate Headquarters
3475 East Foothill Boulevard
Pasadena, California 91107-6024
Phone: (626) 351-4664
Fax: (626) 351-5291
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Tetra Tech
Atlanta Office
2110 Powers Ferry Rd.
Ste. 202
Atlanta, GA 30339
United States
Phone: (770) 850-0949
Fax: (770) 850-0950
**
Toxics Release Inventory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
TRI-ME, the TRI computer reporting program
The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) is a publicly available database from the EPA that contains information on toxic chemical releases and other waste management activities reported annually by certain covered industry groups as well as federal facilities. This inventory was first proposed in a 1985 New York Times op-ed piece[1] written by David Sarokin and Warren Muir, researchers for an environmental group, INFORM. TRI was established under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA), and later expanded by the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990. The law grew out of concern surrounding Union Carbide’s releases of toxic gases in the 1984 Bhopal disaster and a smaller 1985 release in Institute, West Virginia[2]
Each year, companies across a wide range of industries (including chemical, mining, paper, oil and gas industries) that produce more than 25,000 pounds or handle more than 10,000 pounds of a listed toxic chemical must report it to the TRI. The TRI threshold was initially set at 75,000 pounds annually. If the company treats, recycles, disposes, or releases more than 500 pounds of that chemical into the environment (as opposed to just handling it), then they must provide a detailed inventory of that chemical’s inventory.
Proposed changes in late 2005 would lower the reporting standards for TRI. Several state attorney generals wrote the EPA asking that the standard not be altered. This move came under fire from Eliot Spitzer who said Public disclosure has proven to be a strong incentive for polluters to reduce their use of toxic chemicals, this move by EPA appears to be yet another poorly considered notion to appease a few polluting constituents at the expense of a valuable program. [3] EPA originally proposed to reduce the required reporting frequency from every year to every other year. This drew intense criticism, and the idea was dropped.
However, the EPA went forward with another part of the plan that initially did not receive much attention. Companies were previously required to disclose any release over 2000 pounds (907 kg) on a more detailed Form R rather than the less detailed Form A . With the new regulations, the minimum reporting requirements for Form R have been increased to 5000 pounds (2268 kg), thus reducing the amount of information available. Although this move was widely criticized by the public as well as many officials, EPA went ahead with the new rule anyway.[4] EPA claimed that the comments submitted opposed to the Form R requirements were invalid because nearly all the people who had commented did so on both the change in reporting frequency as well as the minimum amounts required for Form R.
Accessing TRI data
The data in the Toxic Release Inventory is available to the public, but accessing has until recently been a difficult task. In recent years, the EPA and several other organizations has made the task much easier.
Mapping Systems
In 2007, three organizations released tools for mapping the TRI data to particular locations. These tools also allow the user to view some of the information in the database.
MapEcos, A Map of Industrial Environmental Performance
* MapEcos.org is a browser-based tool. It allows users to access an interactive map of the US showing the most recent TRI data. The map can be searched for locations of interest. At lower zoom levels, it allows the user to get information on pollution from particular facilities. This site was created by faculty and students at Dartmouth College, Harvard Business School, and Duke University.[5]
* The Commission for Environmental Cooperation has created a downloadable File for Google Earth which shows all of the most recent reports to the TRI database. It also includes locations from the equivalent Canadian and Mexican pollution inventory. The system currently only maps the locations and links to data at the national registries.[6]
* DotGovWatch offers a simple browser-based map of TRI data. The map can be searched by city, address, and each facility’s detailed emissions are available.
* TRI.NET is a new application developed by EPA that supports complex adhoc queries of TRI data. TRI.NET maps facilities using Google Maps, Google Earth, or Virtual Earth. Additional data layers allow TRI data to be analyzed with respect to other factors such as Environmental Justice, Chemical Toxicity, and Tribal and U.S. Mexico Border geographies. Uses powerful drill-downs and advanced trends to spot trends and hot spots. [7]
Public Portals
* Scorecard.org For those seeking detailed information, the easiest access to the data is at scorecard.org. This site also provides information about a variety of other pollution issues, but it has not been updated since 2002. This site was created by a team at Environmental Defense. It is now run by the Green Media Tool Shed.
Research Oriented Portals
* RTKnet.org Run by an OMB watch, this site provides access to current to a variety of EPA data, including data for the TRI. Queries allow users to download files with the raw data.
* The EPA also provides access to the raw data through their Envirofacts site. As with RTK net, queries to the underlying relational database produce downloadable text documents.
See also
* Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)
References
1. ^ Too Little Toxic Waste Data, New York Times, Oct 7, 1985, pg A31
2. ^ What is the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program
3. ^ Waste News
4. ^ EPA Finalizes Rules for Toxics Release Inventory – January 9, 2007 Vol. 8, No. 1 – OMB Watch
5. ^ Mapping out the environment – CNN.com
6. ^ GIS News:Google Earth layer helps mapping industrial pollutants
7. ^ Find toxic wastelands via Google Earth | CNET News.com
* EPA’s TRI page
* EPA’s TRI.NET page (for accessing the data)
* EPA’s TRI Explorer page (for accessing the data)
* The Right-to-Know Network for accessing the TRI
* Environmental Working Group’s report on the TRI rollback
* OMB Watch’s page on the TRI
* National Environmental Trust’s Page on the TRI
Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxics_Release_Inventory
Categories: Pollutant release inventories and registers | United States federal environmental legislation | Pollution in the United States | Government databases in the United States | United States Environmental Protection Agency
Welcome to MapEcos
MapEcos is a map of US facilities with information on pollution and improvement efforts. We present a balanced view of industrial environmental performance.
To help us understand usage patterns, please provide the following (optional) information.
What shall we call you?
In which zip code do you live?
Skip the survey
What’s on the MapEcos map?
You can view detailed industrial performance information on facilities across the US
Mapped facilities are color coded by emission level
blue marker Low emissions red marker High emissions
Facility managers can describe their efforts toward environment protection and community engagement
purple marker with ring Green rings indicate facilities with management provided information
MapEcos in the news:
HBS Working Knowledge
Mapping Polluters
Encouraging Protectors (Jan 14)
World Bank Group
Withdrawing the Claws… (Jan 11)
GreenBiz.com
MapEcos
CNN
Mapping out the environment
The Economist
Dirty work
London Financial Times
Pollution is put on the map
Where are the biggest polluters? And what is your company doing to protect the environment? A new Web site—both a public service and a research tool—posts managers’ data in real time, allowing a balanced view of industrial environmental performance. HBS professor Michael W. Toffel and senior research fellow Andrew A. King explain. Key concepts include:
* The Web project was started to get around an information bottleneck.
* Users of MapEcos can easily find detailed information on the environmental performance of facilities across the United States.
* Managers can monitor peer companies’ environmental information as well as disclose information about their own facilities.
* The scholars use the site to examine what industrial facilities do and what the public at large is concerned about.
<p>Where are the biggest polluters? And what is your company doing to protect the environment? A new Web site—both a public service and a research tool—posts managers’ data in real time, allowing a balanced view of industrial environmental performance. HBS professor <b>Michael W. Toffel</b> and senior research fellow <b>Andrew A. King</b> explain.</p>
About Faculty in this Article:
HBS Faculty Member Michael W. Toffel
Michael Toffel is an assistant professor in the Technology and Operations Management unit at Harvard Business School.
* More Working Knowledge from Michael W. Toffel
* Michael W. Toffel – Faculty Research Page
* E-mail Michael W. Toffel: mtoffel@hbs.edu
About Faculty in this Article:
HBS Faculty Member Andrew A. King
Andrew A. King is a visiting associate professor in the Technology and Operations Management unit at Harvard Business School.
* Andrew A. King – Faculty Research Page
Citizens, industrial polluters, and scholars do not usually see eye to eye—but that may change with a new Web site that monitors corporate environmental performance in the United States.
According to the university professors who created it, MapEcos (mapecos.org) is a breakthrough for visualizing and interpreting data about industrial environment performance because it brings together information about companies’ environmental management, provided voluntarily by managers in real time, with companies’ pollution data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
MapEcos itself is a public service, because it makes this data, most of which exist in archival databases of the EPA, much more readily accessible, says Michael Toffel, an expert on industry self-regulation and an assistant professor in the Technology and Operations Management unit at Harvard Business School.
You don’t need to be green to see the value of such an endeavor. What makes MapEcos attractive for managers in any industry is the opportunity to watch peer companies—and in some cases, subsidiaries of their own companies—provide environmental information on the map and easily disclose information themselves.
Besides managers, the site’s creators hope MapEcos will grab the attention of members of the public, including environmental activists. Users can track factories’ pollution activity over time, compare factories in their community, and compare the pollution of local factories to others in their industry across the country—but just as important, monitor what mitigating steps facility managers are taking.
Toffel and his colleagues also developed MapEcos as a mechanism to support their academic research. Often public impact conflicts with scholarship and vice versa, says Toffel. We decided to bridge this impasse by creating the experiment inherent in MapEcos, providing a diverse group of companies the opportunity to disclose their environmental management efforts. The map provides both the stimulus and the public good, and we can remain completely impartial.
Toffel planned and stewards the site with colleagues whose research is similarly devoted to issues surrounding business and the environment: Andrew King, an associate professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School and currently a Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School, and Michael Lenox, an associate professor at the Fuqua School and faculty director of Duke University’s Corporate Sustainability Initiative. They received essential technical expertise from student programmers who were fascinated by environmental issues, technologically talented—and tireless. It was a huge amount of work, King recalls with a grin. The name MapEcos emphasizes an attempt to integrate information that is relevant to both ecology and economics.
A niche to fill
The observation that led to the site’s founding is a common one that vexes businesspeople as well as scholars concerned with markets: information bottlenecks. On many of the projects that I’ve been involved in, it seemed that a major flaw was that information wasn’t getting to the people who needed to make decisions, says King. All 3 of us are interested in the concept of voluntary activities that firms do as alternatives to regulation—one of which is the voluntary disclosure of information. That is perhaps the critical issue, I think, for environmental performance.
We needed a way of getting information about unobserved environmental attributes and getting that information credibly, he continues. And so a Web project seemed like a great opportunity for us to explore that process.
The researchers decided to join forces in early 2007 while attending the Institutional Foundations for Industry Self-Regulation Conference they organized for researchers and policymakers. By December, the site launched.
Research matters
According to Toffel, 2 research projects are associated with the map: looking at what facilities do, and what the public at large is concerned about.
For the first project, the researchers sent a survey to as many of the facilities on the map as possible based on the availability of e-mail addresses in the EPA database, and asked them to describe their environmental management activities, environmental awards, and the ecolabels their products use. (An ecolabel is meant to denote that a product is particularly green. )
From a research point of view, we want to get a better understanding of why some firms are more transparent than others about their environmental practices and performance, Toffel explains.
In the second project, the researchers hope that usage patterns on MapEcos will provide insight into the dynamics of stakeholder interest. For instance, which companies and industries attract more attention from stakeholders? Which communities are particularly interested in the environmental performance and activities of local companies?
Taking action
On the site, users, whether company executives or private citizens, can view detailed environmental performance information on facilities across the United States. Each facility on the map is color-coded according to emission level (blue is low, red is high; a green ring indicates that a company disclosed some information about its environmental management activities by responding to the researchers’ survey). In their survey responses, managers can outline what their companies are doing about environmental protection and community engagement, and see their responses posted in real time. Companies are aware that by responding their data may be analyzed.
Other stakeholders can view the entire United States, or focus on data about particular geographic regions.
We want to get a better understanding of why some firms are more transparent than others about their environmental practices and performance. —Michael Toffel
With the entire United States on view, where are the most flagrant polluters? Well, the United States has a lot of red dots. Toffel mentions that power plants and metal mines are the 2 industries with the greatest amount of toxic pollution, and that counties with the largest emissions in the country are in Utah, Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Texas.
Users can search on variables such as emission level or health hazard level, rated from 0 to 9, with 9 being worst. By typing in 7, 8, or 9, they can see highest polluters indicated all across the map, either by raw sum of pounds of toxic chemical emissions or by pounds weighted by human toxicity. According to King, emissions in the United States are highly skewed: Several make the lion’s share of emissions while a great number make relatively few.
Knowing that some factories have vast emissions really puts the situation in perspective, says King. It makes you wonder whether all the attention that gets paid to a local dry cleaner is worth it. Now of course, there are other factors that weigh in: for instance, whether a dry cleaner is in a highly populated area.
Geospatial research on business and the environment is still in its infancy, Toffel concurs. From a public health perspective, it would be quite useful to map, for instance, how individuals are exposed to pollutants based on where they live: Living upwind or downwind from a smokestack, at the same distance, can carry dramatically different health implications, and mapping this difference could help easily communicate this to a variety of stakeholders.
A number of countries already require a subset of their regulated community to report information on their own environmental performance. Wherever such data exists, this map can expand, says King. The MapEcos researchers would like to add Canada and Mexico to the site, and possibly build a portal for countries that do not currently have voluntary reporting by firms. King suggests that for such a non-U.S. site, citizens could report information about the companies in their communities, and the companies themselves could be asked to report information, creating a virtual, transparent mechanism for stakeholder engagement. Such projects would be difficult but worthwhile.
According to the scholars, the array of research possibilities is immense and ever growing. As environment sciences continue to rapidly develop, mapping can bring together specialists in fields as diverse as environmental engineering and graphics. As Toffel concludes, The notion of how to display environmental information geographically is something that people are getting very excited about, because while the world faces some serious global environmental problems like climate change, a great deal of pollution and many environmental impacts are local.
About the author
Martha Lagace is the senior editor of HBS Working Knowledge.
Keywords:
Corporate Social Responsibility, Science & Environment, Manufacturing, Chemical, North America
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china as a strategic investor – 61.8% ownership (voting) – 101 + billion shares purchased using their sovereign wealth fund
***
My Note -
That reminds me, I should find out what the payout on the IXtoc event was – which lasted some number of weeks, over the course of several months before being capped in the same type of event, except in shallower waters. That might explain a lot of how much money is involved in allowing it to continue rather than stopping the leak quickly.
Talk about a conflict of interest – when I was thinking about what could bring those BP executives to lie in front of Congress at the hearings, it could be that they simply have one goal in mind and it isn’t the containment nor cleanup of the leaking well but to cover the profits of BP continuing from some financially managed system of revenue streams including those from credit / leverage against future insurance payouts, credit derivatives or “shorting” their own stocks or who knows what.
And, I meant to look up who their majority stock holders are currently, including what interest the UK government continues to have in their operation such as they had during the early years and war years historically in BP as shadow partners understating their practical participation to run things although they were there the whole time. Interesting questions anyway.
BP won’t change dispersant used in oil spill — for now
By the CNN Wire Staff May 22, 2010 11:07 p.m. EDT
(CNN) — BP plans to continue using a controversial subsea dispersant to break up a plume of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, saying that the leading alternative could pose a risk over the long term, the EPA indicated Saturday.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
EPA says it “will continue to work over the next 48 hours to ensure BP is complying”
BP maintains “Corexit was the best and most appropriate choice”
The EPA issued a directive on Thursday, ordering BP to find, within 24 hours, a less toxic but equally effective chemical than its current product, Corexit 9500 — and one that is available in sufficient quantities. The directive also gave the company 72 hours to stop applying it to the undersea gusher.
Corexit has been rated more toxic and less effective than many others on the list of 18 EPA-approved dispersants, according to testimony at a congressional hearing Wednesday.
The EPA released BP’s response to the mandate on Saturday.
What BP is saying is that they are not going to do one thing differently and whatcha gonna do about it? And, they’ve got their Republican guard dogs started attacking anything that might be done to hold BP accountable, as is shown in the video segment that appears on this CNN page.
So, what I’m going to do is start looking up the products, oils, gasoline derivative products, motor oils, diesel and kerosene products made by BP, find the clients of TransOcean, and of Halliburton. Then, I will make a choice to simply buy something else from someone else. As much as it seems that won’t make any difference, I’ll feel better about it and that means something to me.
If I find a plastic product or packaging that has been made with the products that have come from BP = I won’t buy it, I’ll personally embargo every single product that I find which has had any money going to that sorry irresponsible corporate tyrant. And, that is one thing I can definitely do.
And, I’ll let everyone I know understand exactly which products those are that feed the BP revenue streams – and any company that is doing business with the TransOcean and Halliburton groups. I can make a choice. And, one thing I don’t have to do is to continue supporting any of these violent, abrasive, corporate psychotics that care none for the human race, our planet, our nation and our needs.
That is a fact. I don’t have to be a part of feeding that any more, and I won’t be a part of giving any money I have to them. There is a chance that if I have anything to say about it, my family members will stay away from those stocks as well – because there is no sense supporting any company that is that nightmarish and sadistic.
They say, absolute power corrupts absolutely – obviously it has corrupted the bunch who have been running the oil industry and the bunch up in Wall Street without a doubt. It is a shame, too.
And, the one thing that can most assuredly stop them forever is to make gasoline and petroleum based fuel products obsolete. Maybe, I can’t do that yet. But someone can or all of us together can starting today. That is what I vote for – making the use of gasoline and diesel fuels for transportation obsolete right now today and to fix the disaster they have created in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere permanently and positively without regard for what they think we should do about it.
They’ve had their turn. Now is our turn. And, they don’t know why they’re messin’ with – to put it mildly. The American people are something beyond what the oil executives could begin to imagine in their isolated fortresses. We have among us abilities and power – that they don’t even have recorded in the histories they read. So, that’s what I’m going to work on doing. Let’s me and you and our neighbors, and our friends, at every measure combine to make a national effort of explaining it to these companies in the only terms they can understand – that of power, status and money. I wouldn’t want to be them.
- cricketdiane
***
And, by the way – they can be fined for everyday they have been polluting the environment in the Gulf of Mexico. They should have to pay to relocate every family, every town, every school along the Gulf Coast because they have made it genuinely uninhabitable. If you think I’m joking or being outrageous about it – check the information about petroleum on the EPA and OSHA sites, on the NIST and ASTM sites.
There is nothing healthy about petroleum and raw crude oil and the toxic dispersants they’ve been using. There is nothing healthy about the air, the fumes, the toxins they are sending across the coastal cities and towns. There is nothing = not one thing healthy about the particulate matter from the controlled burns and the methane gas burnoffs they have been doing which also is heading across the communities inland.
And, there damn sure isn’t anything healthy that will be along those shores and coastlines with the first storms that come when they come driving it up over whatever is in its path. That is the truth of it. And, I can prove it – you can prove it for yourself – scientists and medical research has already proven it and all of this is well-known, not hidden.
BP should be required to relocate every coastal town and person affected by their spill, be fined for every single day they have dumped petroleum sludge into the Gulf of Mexico and their leases should be subordinated. There isn’t enough money in the whole world that’s worth what they’ve done. They can’t replace one human being they’ve already killed. They can’t restore the health of the people and children they are endangering now. They can’t replace one dolphin or porpoise or turtle or squid or tuna or marsh or coast that they have killed or destroyed already.
They can’t fix what they’ve destroyed in the Gulf Coast waters and they obviously have had over 400 of the best engineers in the petroleum industry and countless experts working 24 hours a day over the past month without being able or willing to do one thing other than what they were already going to do and they continue to say so at every stage of this ongoing nightmare.
Their executives lied under oath to our Congress and Senate. They’ve lied to reporters, journalists, engineers independently studying the problem, to the scientists studying the problem and to the American people – who are their customers. It is our money they are using to drill those wells, it is our money that they are using to pay to clean it up, it is our resources they are harvesting from the Gulf and from Alaska and elsewhere – and they are not the only game in town.
When I saw that the Petroleum Institute, the trade group for the petroleum industry and the Society of Petroleum Engineers didn’t have one thing to say about the biggest oil disaster thus far in the history of mankind – it occurred to me that there is something very wrong with this industry. It was like watching Goldman Sachs man, Blankfein explain to us across America that he was doing God’s work when he shorted the same stocks, mortgage products and mortgage backed securities products while telling their clients to buy them because they were sure to go up in value. And, in the minds of every one of the oil industry people, including their executives and their industry professional and trade organizations – they seem to believe the same thing even while handing out death and destruction every where they go.
These are the same people that wasted countless years refusing to take the lead out of the gasoline so that every American child could play in the dirt next to their driveway with massive amounts of lead in it for several generations. They are the same people who fought against exhaust emissions standards, against electric trolleys and undermined subsidies, programs, tax incentives and funding for every single project involving mass transportation choices from buses to major metropolitan subway systems.
They are also the same people and companies that go up every fifteen minutes on the price of gasoline and diesel fuel at the pumps when the speculators are playing with the oil futures even when those prices don’t drive their industry and then fail to bring the price down for weeks, days, and months after that same barrel price has dropped over half what it was. They are the same people who have robbed every state and the US Department of the Interior absolutely blind with trading virtually nothing for something of profitable value and they are the same ones who have spent trillions of dollars lobbying and having attorneys fight against any single increase in safety or reasonable requirement instead of spending the thousands of dollars it would take to just do them.
And, they are the same people who still put chemicals into our air from the exhaust emissions of their products which make our children ill, our air unhealthy to take a walk almost anywhere in any city in America, and who have given us a list of cancers which all of us are likely to endure in our lifetimes whether we do anything else carcinogenic or not. They have had the ears and minds of our Congressional members, they have been running our Senate, they have run the stock market straight to hell on more than one occasion, they have manipulated, lied, connived and stolen from our country and every single nation on earth.
They have killed and maimed without regard for human life, nor for the people in their employ, nor for the people in the communities surrounding their operations. In the history of our nation, and in the history of the world – there have been very few as sadistic and as arrogant as these petroleum insiders and their corporate activities. And, the Republicans who are running bird dog for them, attacking at their demand and enjoying that special relationship with them are a kind of evil that there is a name to describe.
There was note on the tv news one day, when the investigative hearings about the stock market debacle were happening, about the plays in the stock markets being made by the Senators and Congressional members. I didn’t ever think about that they could be owners and shareholders with something to gain or lose personally from holding these instruments or playing them with shorts or whatever other strategies they or their brokers and financial managers might choose.
But, I do know that somewhere there is a trail of paperwork that expresses what each one of our elected representatives own and exactly what every one of our agency members own in stocks, bonds, portfolios, derivative products, treasury notes, oil industry stocks, bonds and whatever else. Somewhere there is a record of it and whether I can find it or not – somebody can and somebody definitely will – as well as listing every leased property or sale of property that was purchased from a Senator or Congressman by the oil industry, etc.
Those things will be found, I don’t doubt that at all. What I do doubt is that any of it makes any difference to any of them. That is why the Republican jackass was on the CNN tape I watched a few minutes ago representing the interests of the oil companies and attacking any idea of a commission to understand the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that is unfolding before us. He is untouchable.
The BP shareholders, executives and board of directors members and their inside supporters in Washington and Wall Street are untouchable. They are unaccountable, not held responsible, and expect to suffer absolutely no personal consequences from their actions and mis-actions, poor decisions and sadistic choices, nor from the lies they’ve told and the damages they have caused. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain from continuing to do it the way they have been doing it – in their estimations of it and they know they are untouchable.
I say they are not, but I can see why they would think that way. It has been that way as long as they remember and in the course of the history of their company even from its inception, especially in the case of BP, they have always caused suffering to people and not been held accountable. What would be any different today?
my other note -
cricketdiane, 05-23-10
&
Although I feel so small and insignificant compared to BP – I am reminded that it only takes one mosquito to bring an army to its knees and be its utter undoing.” – cd9
VENICE, La., May 23 (Reuters) – The top U.S. environmental official was to visit the Gulf Coast on Sunday as energy giant BP Plc (BP.L) scrambled to contain a widening oil spill.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson planned to return to the Gulf to monitor the EPA’s response, while Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was to travel to the BP Command Center in Houston to get an update from the federal science team working on the problem.
The two Cabinet members’ missions underscore the rising political and economic stakes for the Obama administration in dealing with the environmental disaster, which grows worse as oil gushes from a ruptured well on the sea floor.
Salazar was also to address the media the day after U.S. President Barack Obama blamed the spill on “a breakdown of responsibility” at BP. Obama also unveiled a commission to investigate the disaster.
(etc.)
WRAPUP 1-US environment chief to visit Gulf, spill spreads
Sun May 23, 2010 1:19am EDT
* Obama says future offshore drilling depends on safety
* EPA chief to visit Gulf; interior secretary due in Texas
VENICE, La., May 23 (Reuters) – The top U.S. environmental official was to visit the Gulf Coast on Sunday as energy giant BP Plc (BP.L) scrambled to contain a widening oil spill.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson planned to return to the Gulf to monitor the EPA’s response, while Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was to travel to the BP Command Center in Houston to get an update from the federal science team working on the problem.
The two Cabinet members’ missions underscore the rising political and economic stakes for the Obama administration in dealing with the environmental disaster, which grows worse as oil gushes from a ruptured well on the sea floor.
Salazar was also to address the media the day after U.S. President Barack Obama blamed the spill on “a breakdown of responsibility” at BP. Obama also unveiled a commission to investigate the disaster.
While also promising to hold Washington accountable for proper oversight of the industry, Obama ramped up pressure on companies linked to the spill: BP, Halliburton (HAL.N) and Transocean Ltd (RIG.N)
“First and foremost, what led to this disaster was a breakdown of responsibility on the part of BP and perhaps others, including Transocean and Halliburton,” Obama said in his toughest remarks yet on companies linked to the spill.
“And we will continue to hold the relevant companies accountable,” he said.
We have had “assurances” from the oil industry along every path they’ve taken to tell us it is safe. The problem is – they were obviously lying about the real facts and the real risks and the real liabilities. Out of 4,000 oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico and the 30,000 oil wells operating in the United States and in our offshore waters – all it takes is one to be an ecological and human disaster of the scale unequaled by any other disaster and longer ranging than any other disaster in the history of man.
Those assurances are not enough anymore. We have the results of those assurances in the Gulf of Mexico right now. And, I still want to know who those BP executives answer to that are more powerful to them and more frightening to them than the power of our Congress that they felt obligated and free to tell lies and half-truths, to be evasive and intentionally misleading, to show contempt for and to break their oath when they testified about the oil spill. I want to know who holds such strings of power in these men’s lives that they would risk going to jail and being personally fined for doing so?
I guess the Rio Tinto executives had to learn it the hard way – I guess the BP, TransOcean and Halliburton group of executives will have to learn it the same way. There is a question of who holds that much sway and power over these men, though. Maybe they thought it was alright to lie to the American people, but they lied to the regulating agencies of our government, to Congress and to the Senate along with countless fairy tales they told the press and the international communities.
And, I was thinking about that playbook of what to do when a corporate disaster happens or in this case, when an explosion and oil leak involving the company’s products and actions creates a disaster – are the plays used by Exxon during the Prince William Sound disaster being taught as the model way to handle these events? Are the methods of cleanup known to not work very well, the only ones on their menu because they have never intended to do even one thing any differently. Which, I would say wouldn’t have mattered only if there never was a major disaster where those methods had to work and to actually perform as claimed.
Is the Gulf of Mexico, just one big swamp in some remote corner of the world to these oil executives because the entire globe and its finest places are their playgrounds and everyone wherever they go throughout the world treats them with the respect awarded kings while serving them the finest of everything at their whim or call? Is it because every governor, every Senator, every Congressman and Cabinet member gush to meet them as if hearing the words of God uttered from their expertise and inside track on the oil industry providing our nation’s magic facility to move each one in their own little personal transportation device at will? Is that the awesome power they have that makes every leader in the world grovel at their feet and hunger for the goodwill of their corporation?
Environmental Protection Agency officials are debating whether to stop British Petroleum from receiving government contracts, ProPublica reports.
The energy giant paid tens of millions of dollars in fines during the past 10 years and has been implicated in four instances of criminal misconduct, according to ProPublica.
Aside from the other products, including chemical products I’m not going to buy if they are in any way using anything from BP, I’m thinking about the ads they run in various journals, publications, magazines, cable stations and on specific programs on tv and I think I’ll just stop buying any of those places that advertise this company as well. That will make me feel better too. If I don’t put up with it personally, I’ll just feel better so that’s one thing I am going to make a conscious effort to do. When I see an advertisement for BP on a show – I’ll make a note, change the channel and simply stop watching that program anymore. I can do that. And, every magazine, journal, website, or other media outlet where I see their ads – I’ll make sure and keep those sources out of anything I write, out of anything I suggest anyone else check out and make sure to make a note of it and never go to that site or that journal again.
That I can do, along with encouraging anyone I am with to get their gasoline somewhere else and let anyone and everyone know where the different products have received part of their raw stock from BP or their partners. And, I am definitely not only never buying their stock nor supporting their stocks in anything I encourage anyone to do, I am also going to make sure and let people know that they have stocks from BP in their portfolios, pension funds, pension plans or anywhere else I find them and I will find them. If those account managers invest my family’s money in BP, they are going to hear about it and change it to something else. There is no sense in an organization as big as BP and as rich being as shitty as they have been.
I would hope that our government contracts do not go to BP or any of the products their rawstock has been used to create. There are other things just as good, if not better and there is no reason any of our national dollars needs to go to them anymore. In fact, when I find the subsidies and tax incentives they have been getting in every state where they operate and from every agency and department of our Federal government, I am going to let our Congressional and State leaders know of it, along with Party leadership and State Congressional Legislators. Then, if they do continue giving those incentives to BP, they can be held accountable for it come election time. The base of their electorate have a right to know what kinds of horrendous crap they’re supporting while they are in office. The public has a right to know. We are American citizens and we are the stewards as citizens of the world for this debacle. They aren’t getting away with it anymore and at least in my life, and in my choices, I can do some things about it to stop supporting them.
The other thing that I am going to do is to find the information that explains the health risks of staying in the Gulf Coast states where this spill is generating its fumes and toxins around the seashore and through the air of the cities and towns along our coastal areas. I can take the time to do that and publish it here. If people don’t want to leave from there, I don’t blame them – but it won’t be because they don’t know any better. And, whether people have “accepted” a settlement already from BP or not – they need to get an attorney because that “settlement” isn’t going to be anywhere near enough and BP knows it from their expert previous experiences of doing this to other communities and other people around the world. So, I would say they lied to the people who they conned into accepting those settlements, including by approaching them in a time of ignorance and duress, misleading them and lying to them along with knowingly and intentionally swindling them. It is against the law.
Now, let me see what else I can find.
- cricketdiane
***
I am at the EPA site – I put the terms -
petroleum fumes into their search window on their site and you can follow along if you like
1992Air pollution; Toxic substances; Research projects; National government; Local government; State government; Chemical compounds; Pollution regulations; Risk assessment; Public health; Exposure; Toxicity; Air pollution standards; Permits; Air pollution sources; Listings; Data bases; National Air Toxics Information Clearinghouse
note – I’m watching the NatGeo show about J.Edgar Hoover and his secret files – pretty amazing how totally beyond the law the FBI was and maybe, still is – I don’t know. It is pretty bizarre stuff though on this show and every bit of it true. They didn’t care.
It said that Hoover had gained a reputation as a bully – gee, maybe its always been that way. A blackmailer as the top of the FBI doing domestic surveillance and espionage. Figures.
- cricketdiane
Anyway, here is the information from the cdc site and then I’ll find the ones in the EPA group, if I have to go find my own dos about it. Those are on both my computers and shouldn’t be as hard to find as the EPA search is to use. By the way, most of the time, I don’t use the onsite windows for searches on American government agency sites anyway – because they are notoriously difficult to get pertinent and appropriate results. I don’t know why that is, but I noticed it one time when looking up dams and flood control levees on the GAO site among a number of other agency sites. It was impossible so I started using Google searches instead to find the same things. Occasionally, I get a good search on the website’s internal search window, but not commonly.
Keep in mind that throughout this document and likely elsewhere that you might want to find this information – on the CDC, the Department of the Interior, the EPA and possibly some other locations – the documents and information are possibly found with this – (TPH) which stands for TOTAL PETROLEUM HYDROCARBONS -
I don’t think it is like that on the OSHA sites, the ASTM and the NIST sites.
- cricketdiane
***
So, from this page – (keeping in mind that everywhere it says TPH it means Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons which I may write out.)
Despite the large number of hydrocarbons found in petroleum products and the widespread nature of petroleum use and contamination, only a relatively small number of the compounds are well characterized for toxicity. The health effects of some fractions can be well characterized, based on their components or representative compounds (e.g., light aromatic fraction BTEX-benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes). However, heavier (TPH) Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon fractions have far fewer well characterized compounds.
Systemic and carcinogenic effects are known to be associated with petroleum hydrocarbons, but ATSDR does not
develop health guidance values for carcinogenic end points (ATSDR 1996b). See Chapter 6 for further discussion of the ATSDR approaches and the approaches of other groups (MADEP, TPHCWG, and ASTM).
***
My Note –
From the last paragraph, believe it or not. Apparently there is another discussion elsewhere because I found it when the previous documents I made from about five years ago and three years ago were made. I might have to just go find them.
(TPH) Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon has been identified in 34 of the 1,519 current or former EPA National Priorities List (NPL) hazardous waste sites (ATSDR 1998a).
My note -
This seems odd now doesn’t it -
“Raw petroleum and refined petroleum products used as fuels or lubricants are generally excluded at the national level from the cradle-to-grave record-keeping associated with recognized toxics such as heavy metals or chlorinated solvents.”
“With an eye to the availability of petroleum as a source of energy, petroleum production is tracked by the federal government as well as industry trade associations. Statistics are available for wellhead production as well as for production of major bulk fuel types from domestic refineries. These primary production statistics have been summarized in Chapter 4.”
The movement of raw petroleum to automobile fuel tanks or fuel oil boilers is part of a complex bulk
product distribution and storage system, providing many opportunities for accidents, spills, leaks, and
losses from simple volatilization. Consistent national statistics are lacking for many stages in the
overall oil distribution and storage system. The main exceptions involve larger leaks and spills,
especially spills in coastal areas or on larger navigable rivers.
Data for the period from 1984 through 1993 (API 1996) show that most data reported to the U.S.
Coast Guard occurred in inland bodies of water: rivers, lakes, and points on bays or estuaries. Spills
from large ocean-going tankers and large spills in general (more than 1,000 gallons) are relatively
infrequent, never more than 5% of the total number of reported spills in a year. The average number
of spills during the 1984-93 period was just under 6,000 spills. The numbers in any given year can
vary enormously, with a maximum of just under 9,600 spills reported in 1991.
pp. 59 – 60
***
Within the broad reporting categories of vessels (tankers and barges) and facilities (pipelines, tanks
batteries, and other onshore facilities) in the period 1984-1993, numbers of reported spill incidents
were roughly equivalent: 42,000 incidents from vessels and 38,000 from facilities. Over this period,
the vessels spilled a much larger cumulative amount of oil: 45 million gallons from vessels versus
15 million gallons for facilities. Major incidents can dominate these totals. Two vessel spills account
for around one-third of the vessel totals.
At the national level, virtually the only other regulatory program that provides broad-based statistics on petroleum product releases to the environment is EPA’s (leaking) Underground Storage Tank (UST) Program. In 1994, there were over a million underground storage tanks on more than 300,000 identified UST sites; about 91% of these involve tanks at gasoline stations, truck stops, vehicle repair shops, or convenience stores selling gasoline or diesel fuel (EPA 1998c). There were at least 119,000 confirmed instances of underground releases of gasoline or similar petroleum bulk fuels to soils or groundwater, with the total number of sites needing remediation likely to climb to over 176,000 by the turn of the century (EPA 1994a). While tests to confirm contamination may involve (TPH) Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons or tests for surrogates of specific chemicals such as benzene, the UST program does not attempt to make detailed estimates of releases to environmental media.
pp. 60 and 65
(my note, Table 5 – 4 is a good one – )
I’m printing it off my other computer so I can type it in here.
A profile is provided for each chemical on the list of extremely hazardous substances. Profiles are presented in ascending order of Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) registry numbers. ( . . . )
The CAS number was used to search the automated Toxicology Data Base (TDB) or Hazardous Substance Data Bank (HSDB) from the National Library of Medicine (NLM). If available, TDB/HSDB files were retrieved. Approximately 65 percent of the chemicals were listed in the TDB/HSDB files. For these chemicals, the TDB/HSDB files provided the main source of information for the profiles.
All data obtained from the TDB/HSDB were indicated by an asterisk (*) followed by a reference to the TDB/HSDB citation, (e.g., (*Merck 1976). For those chemicals without a TDB/HSDB file, a limited number of standard reference materials were searched. Such references are cited by author, year, and page number. A master list of references, including the secondary references cited in TDB/HSDB, has been prepared and may be found in the Reference Section of this document. The abbreviations used in the profiles have been defined in a master list and may be found in the Abbreviation Section. Medical terms not commonly used have been included in a Glossary Section. Dorland’s Medical Dictionary (1974) was used to provide most of the definitions in the Glossary.
If information was not available for a specific compound but the chemical could be categorized, then general information about the chemical category was included. Such information is indicated, for example, by the notation “Non-Specific – - Oranophosphorus Pesticide” or “Non-Specific Poisonous solid, n.o.s.”.
pp. 4
Chemical Toxicology Profiles - EPA document - 1988 - pp. 5
The Emergency Planning And Community Right To Know Act Of 1986 Extremely Hazardous Substances Listed Under Title 3 Section 302 Chemical Profiles - EPA - 1988 - pp. 6 of 1804 pages
Doyle (1994) estimates the total amount of leakage or spillage related to petroleum product
production, processing, and distribution to end users at around 134 million barrels per year (see
Table 5-5); different estimation approaches could lead to slightly different total figures.
from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and from the news about it -
A band of oil runs the entire 7-mile length of the beach. A mile away, connected by two passes, is an unprotected state marine sanctuary, Strassmann reports.
Oil now stains 53 miles of coastal Louisiana, and more hits land every day.
“As we’ve reported, Corexit was also used after the Exxon Valdez disaster [8] and was later linked with human health problems including respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders. One of the two Corexit products also contains a compound that, in high doses, is associated with headaches, vomiting and reproductive problems [9].”
And that’s because for some reason BP, other oil industry companies, the EPA, the Unified Command, the physicians, the environmental scientists and the oil company executives believe that people along the Gulf Coast, the specialists in the area, the response teams in the area, the future swimmers in the Gulf Coast waters, the fish and marine animals, birds and people on the oil rigs and boats and that might ever be tourists in these areas, deserve to endure headaches, vomiting, and reproductive problems, liver damage, kidney damage, blood disorders, nervous system disorders and respiratory damage.
While we were out there, my nose and the back of my throat began to burn as I inhaled the putrid-smelling air.
–Eileen Romero, a CNN iReporter touring Louisiana’s Chandeleur Islands on Tuesday
For surface water, the relatively low density of many petroleum fractions can pose some major short term concerns, especially for fish and wildlife. Many petroleum fractions float in water and form thin surface films (Jordan and Payne 1980; Mackay 1984).
Gasoline, diesel, or other common fuel oils when spilled to water quickly spread out into a film 0.1 millimeter or less in thickness. This means that a very small amount of oil can create a film over a very large area of water surface.
While natural physical and biological weathering processes will dissipate or degrade such oil slicks in time frames ranging from days to a few weeks, there is considerable short-term opportunity for damage to water fowl, aquatic mammals, fish, and other aquatic organisms.
For inland waters, large oil spills may force shutdowns in surface water withdrawals for public drinking water supplies until the surface slicks have dissipated (Clark et al. 1990).
Where the spilled petroleum washes up onto beaches or shorelines, there may be short-term damage to fish and wildlife as well as impacts to recreational use of shoreline or riparian areas for human swimming or fishing.
Some heavier petroleum fractions, including the chemicals called PAHs found in motor oils or as byproducts of combustion, show neutral buoyancy or may be heavier than water. Such components can accumulate in substrates.
This can lead to stresses for benthic organisms, shellfish, or bottom feeding fish. PAHs or “tarballs” formed when lighter oil fractions combine with suspended sediment or algae can have a serious impact on a water body’s use for commercial fishing or shellfishing and its value for recreational swimming or sports fishing.
Since petroleum products are complex mixtures of hundreds of compounds, the compounds characterized by relatively high vapor pressures tend to volatilize and enter the vapor phase. The exact composition of these vapors depends on the composition of the original product. Using gasoline as an example, compounds such as butane, propane, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene are preferentially volatilized (Bauman 1988).
Because volatility represents transfer of the compound from the product or liquid phase to the air phase, it is expected that the concentration of that compound in the product or liquid phase will decrease as the concentration in the air phase increases.
Since petroleum products are complex mixtures of hundreds of compounds, the compounds characterized by relatively high vapor pressures tend to volatilize and enter the vapor phase. The exact composition of these vapors depends on the composition of the original product. Using gasoline as an example, compounds such as butane, propane, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene are preferentially volatilized (Bauman 1988).
Because volatility represents transfer of the compound from the product or liquid phase to the air phase, it is expected that the concentration of that compound in the product or liquid phase will decrease as the concentration in the air phase increases.
In general, compounds having a vapor pressure in excess of 10-2 mm Hg are more likely to be present in the air phase than in the liquid phase. Compounds characterized by vapor pressures less than 10-7 mm Hg are more likely to be associated with the liquid phase. Compounds possessing vapor pressures that are less than 10-2 mm Hg, but greater than 10-7 mm Hg, will have a tendency to exist in both the air and the liquid phases (Knox 1993).
Although volatility is a function of vapor pressure, environmental factors affect the rate of volatilization. For example, high summer temperatures enhance volatilization, particularly when soils begin to dry out. The rate of volatilization is also a function of air and soil temperature, humidity, wind speed, soil type, moisture content, oil composition, solar radiation, and thickness of the oil layer.
Volatilization of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene from gasoline contaminated soils tends to increase with decreasing moisture content (Frankenberger 1992). Bossert and Bartha (1986) indicated that n-alkanes greater than C18 exhibit no substantial volatilization at ambient temperatures; however, lighter fractions (<C18) are subject to volatilization.
The propensity for a compound to volatilize from an aqueous phase can be grossly estimated using Henry’s law, which relates vapor pressure, solubility, and molecular weight. Henry’s law constant can be estimated using these three chemical-specific parameters or it can be measured on a compound by-compound basis in the laboratory. Henry’s law constant is frequently used to assess the environmental fate of organic compounds in the subsurface. Solubility. Solubility is one of the key factors in determining compound behavior, and thus the impact, of a chemical in the environment. Solubility is expressed in terms of the number of milligrams of pure chemical that can be dissolved in one liter of water under standard conditions of 25 ºC and one atmosphere of pressure. The solubility of an organic compound determines its propensity to dissolve into water. The greater the solubility, the greater the likelihood that the chemical will dissolve into infiltrating rainwater or groundwater and migrate away from the release area.
correct interpretation of data for such media as surface water, soils, or groundwater. Petroleum site contaminants, especially the types of bulk fuel products and lubricants that are the focus of this profile, are usually encountered as liquids or semi-liquid sludges. The site contaminants almost always originate as mixtures of many different hydrocarbons typical of such initial products as motor gasoline, jet fuels, or fuel oils. Frequently, there are portions of a waste site where soils or sub-soil materials have accumulated large masses of petroleum contaminants that form nonaqueous liquid systems.
The term nonaqueous phase liquids (NAPL) is often applied to such areas of heavy contamination. NAPLs propagate plumes moving away from the central mass. The NAPL complex, consisting of the central mass and plumes, usually reaches an equilibrium due to a combination of physical, chemical, and biochemical processes. TPH chemicals move into the actual soil or groundwater media from the edge of the NAPL plumes.
pp. 84
(and the page before Figure 5-2 which shows a flow chart for Risk Based Corrective Action Process Flow Chart)
Food Chain Bioaccumulation. Studies of the accidental and intentional release of gasoline and fuel oils to the aquatic environment indicate that aquatic organisms are able to bioaccumulate some TPH fractions, particularly PAHs (Air Force 1989; Farrington et al. 1982); however, depuration does occur if the source of the contamination is removed (Cox et al. 1975; Williams et al. I989). In general, the lower molecular weight aliphatics and aromatics do not bioaccumulate (Air Force 1989).
Further studies are needed to determine the biomagnification potential of the TPH fractions, particularly PAHs, up the food chain within aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Specific research needs are presented in the individual ATSDR toxicological profiles on specific hydrocarbon components such as benzene, toluene, total xylenes, and PAHs (ATSDR 1994, 1995d, 1995f, 1997a).
Research on the biomagnification of various petroleum products (e.g., gasoline, fuel oil) would not be useful because the composition of these mixtures changes rapidly in the environment. Individual chemicals present in the original mixture may bioaccumulate, but the mixture does not.
Exposure Levels in Humans. Workers who use petroleum products in manufacturing and those involved in their transfer may experience increased dermal and inhalation exposures to TPH.
Workers in the petroleum refining industry, particularly those involved with monitoring and servicing unit equipment, are known to have increased exposure to TPH (Runion 1988). Reliable monitoring data for levels of TPH in contaminated media could be used in combination with biomarkers to identify TPH exposure and assess the potential risk of adverse health effects in populations living near contaminated areas. This information is necessary for assessing the need to conduct health studies on these populations.
Exposure Registries. No exposure registries for TPH or petroleum products were located. This substance is not currently one of the compounds for which a subregistry has been established in the National Exposure Registry. The substance will be considered in the future when chemical selection is made for subregistries to be established. The information that is amassed in the National Exposure Registry facilitates the epidemiological research needed to assess adverse health outcomes that may be related to exposure to this substance. A registry does exist for benzene, a component of TPH.
More information on the benzene exposure registry can be found in the ATSDR toxicological profile for benzene (ATSDR 1997a).
ASTM Committees Develop Standards for Oil Spill Response and Cleanup
Two ASTM International technical committees are responsible for standards that are relevant to the oil spill cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico. ASTM International Committee F20 on Hazardous Substances and Oil Spill Response develops and maintains standards for the performance, durability, and strength of systems and techniques that are used for oil spill response activities around the world. In addition to standards, F20 publishes Manual 34, Oil Spill Response Performance Review of Skimmers. And Committee E47 on Biological Effects and Environmental Fate develops standards focusing on the effects of physical and chemical stress on plants and animals. E47 also publishes STP 1219, Exxon Valdez Oil Spill: Fate and Effects in Alaskan Waters. More.
Doug Suttles, the (BP) oil company’s chief operating officer, said that a tube inserted into a leaking pipe on the sea floor had captured 2,200 barrels of oil and 15 million cubic feet of natural gas in 24 hours. BP said Thursday that it was collecting 5,000 barrels a day, but Suttles said that rate was achieved only for short periods of time. He added that surges of gas meant that the mile-long tube, which is connected to a ship, was at times bringing up no oil.
“We’ve never said it produced 5,000 barrels a day. . . . I apologize if for some reason you’ve heard it that way,” Suttles said. “Yes, at some points in time, we’ve had rates as high as 5,000, but the average in the last day was 2,200.”
U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Edwin M. Stanton — who oversees the New Orleans area — admitted in Chauvin that he had not pushed BP hard enough, and that the oil company had moved too slowly in bringing floating “containment boom” to areas threatened by oil.
The Anderson Island (AI) site consists of approximately two hundred sixty acres and is located within the city limits of Shreveport, Louisiana (appendix A, map1). Texaco operated the Texaco Inc., Shreveport Works topping plant and tank farm at Anderson Island from approximately 1911 to 1939.
The topping plant distilled fuels such as gasoline, kerosene, and diesel from crude oil. The portion of the crude remaining after extracting the fuels was shipped to another facility in Texas by pipeline.
Petroleum and petroleum products such as gasoline and diesel fuel were transported to and from the site by rail and pipeline. Texaco dismantled the topping plant in 1940 and sold the property in 1941.
Texaco leased thirty acres of the site and continued operating the pipeline until 1945. The property owners began residential development of the property in the early 1950’s, which was essentially complete by 1980 [1].
Current land use of the AI site includes residential neighborhoods, a park, and commercial properties such as shopping centers and office complexes.
The site is bounded on the north, northwest, and southwest by six bayou segments. Measured during the July 2005 sampling event, each of the six bayous ranged from approximately 500 to 4100 feet in length and from 2.8 to six feet deep [2].
The bayous are numbered by LDEQ from 1 to 6, with number 1 being the southernmost bayou segment, and each successive number proceeding clockwise to circumscribe the site, culminating with number 6 being the bayou segment at the northeast limit of the site.
A sediment Phase I Investigation (SPI) was conducted by LDEQ in July 2005 in order to evaluate site conditions in the bayou sediments and surface waters surrounding the Anderson Island site. Bayou sediments were sampled from 26 locations in bayous 1-6, and a total of six surface water samples were collected, one from each of the bayous (appendix A, map 2). All samples were analyzed for benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and total xylenes (BTEX), total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH), metals, and semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs), including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Five of the sediment sample concentrations of SVOCs, specifically PAHs from bayous 1, 2 and 6 exceeded the LDEQ Risk Evaluation/Corrective Action Program (RECAP) sediment standards.
In August 2006, LDEQ conducted a sediment Phase II Investigation (SPII), collecting an additional 11 sediment samples from three of the six bayous (1, 2, and 6) surrounding the AI site (appendix A, map 3). Samples were collected from these bayous to further evaluate PAH concentrations at these locations. Samples were submitted to the laboratory for SVOCs analysis including PAHs. Ten of the sediment sample concentrations of PAHs from bayous 1, 2 and 6 exceeded RECAP.
In August 2007, SEET completed an evaluation of the SPI and SPII data [3]. The summary results are available in the appendix, B-1.
From August 16-22, 2007, LDEQ contractors conducted a Sediment Phase II Addendum (SPIIA), collecting 25 fish tissue samples (using rod/reel and trot lines) from largemouth bass, yellow bullhead catfish and channel catfish located in bayous 1 and 2 where PAH sediment concentrations exceeded the RECAP in SPII (appendix A, map 4). In bayou 6, PAH concentrations in sediment also exceeded the RECAP in SPII, however bayou 6 was observed as being too shallow to support a fish population that would grow to sizes that humans would consume, and therefore was excluded from the SPIIA [4].
Upon collection of the samples, individual fish were weighed, retaining those with a weight of at least 0.5 pounds for representativeness of specimens likely to be potentially consumed by humans. Those fish were filleted in the field, with two fillets from each fish packed together in a plastic bag and preserved on ice for transport to the lab. The fish tissue samples were analyzed for SVOCs by US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Method SW8468270 [4]. The SPII determined concentrations of specific SVOCs as constituents of concern, and therefore the SPIIA workplan was limited to analysis of the following SVOCs/PAHs by bayou:
With the exception of B(a)P and indeno(1,2,3-cd)pyrene, all of the PAH concentrations in bass and catfish from bayou 1 were below the laboratory detection limit of 0.67 micrograms per kilogram (ug/kg). B(a)P was detected in nine of the eleven samples collected from bayou 1, while indeno(1,2,3-cd)pyrene was detected in two of the eleven (appendix B-2). Benzo(a)anthracene and B(a)P were not detected in any of the samples collected from Bayou 2.
Exposure Pathways
SEET evaluated the factors that lead to exposure in order to determine whether an individual would be exposed to PAHs detected in fish from bayou 1 at the AI site. During SEET’s evaluation of SPI and SPII sediment data in August 2007, it was concluded that the City of Shreveport Ordinance Number 148, Section 62-59, Swimming and Wading in Bayou Pierre and Old River provides legal controls to minimize the potential for exposure to the bayous at the AI site. The City of Shreveport interprets the Ordinance to prohibit swimming and wading in all of the bayous at the AI site [4].
Furthermore, as per LDEQ, there has been no current or historical evidence or observation of swimming and/or fishing in any of the bayous, as they are generally unsuitable for recreational activities. The water surface is often covered by a thick layer of algae or other aquatic vegetation and the bed of the bayou is a thick, mucky consistency, which moves and is unstable under the weight of a person. The bayous typically contain trash and debris that make it dangerous and unappealing for wading [4]; which poses a physical hazard to anyone who may enter the bayou(s).
Public Health Implications
In spite of the lack of exposure, SEET estimated the risk of adverse health effects if the public were exposed to PAHs in fish from bayou 1 at the AI site. In the evaluation of PAHs detected in bayou 1, toxicity equivalency factors (TEFs) (EPA 1993a; Nisbet and LaGoy 1992) were used to weight each PAH’s toxicity relative to the toxicity of B(a)P [5]. The TEF of B(a)P is set to 1.
Multiplying the concentration of each PAH by its respective TEF produces a toxicity equivalence quotient (TEQ). Where applicable, the total TEQ at each sample location was used in this data evaluation. Furthermore, according to SEET’s current approach to evaluating fish, concentrations of contaminants which were below the method detection limit were assigned a value of zero if more than half of the samples were below the detection limit, otherwise they were assigned a value of one-half the detection limit. Due to the detection limit protocol for fish, the TEQ approach was applicable to bayou 1 catfish samples 1 and 5 only (appendix B, B-3, 4).
Because B(a)P is a probable human carcinogen, SEET calculated a lifetime excess cancer risk (LECR) for adults related to exposure to B(a)P TEQ in fish collected from bayou 1 at the AI site. This LECR is based on daily exposure during a 70 year lifetime. The LECR indicates that a worst-case scenario of maximum detected B(a)P concentration in largemouth bass of 0.0013 mg/kg presents a cancer risk of 4.1 E-06, or approximately 4 excess cancers per 1,000,000 people. This is below SEET’s acceptable cancer risk rate of 1 excess cancer per 10,000 people (1 x 10-4).
Furthermore, SEET calculated a LECR for adults using a maximum detected B(a)P concentration in catfish (from bayou 1) of 0.004 mg/kg. Results indicate an estimated cancer risk of 1.2 E-05, which is slightly below SEET’s acceptable cancer risk rate of 1 excess cancer per 10,000 people (1 x 10-4).
Although there has been no evidence of fishing in the bayous, if ingestion of largemouth bass or catfish from bayou 1 at the AI site were to occur, such ingestion poses a low risk to the public. A detailed explanation of the ATSDR/SEET evaluation process and the adult LECR exposure assumptions can be accessed in appendix B.
Child Health Considerations:
In communities faced with air, water, or food contamination, the many physical differences between children and adults demand special emphasis. Children could be at greater risk than adults from certain kinds of exposure to hazardous substances. Children play outdoors and sometimes engage in hand-to-mouth behaviors that increase their exposure potential. Children are shorter than adults; this means they breathe dust, soil, and vapors close to the ground. A child’s lower body weight and higher intake rate results in a greater dose of hazardous substance per unit of body weight. If toxic exposure levels are high enough during critical growth stages, the developing body systems of children can sustain permanent damage. Finally, children are dependent on adults for access to housing, for access to medical care, and for risk identification. Thus adults need as much information as possible to make informed decisions regarding their children’s health.
Due to the probable carcinogenic nature of B(a)P, SEET evaluated the LECR for children, using the same maximum detected B(a)P TEQ concentration (0.004 mg/kg) in catfish collected from bayou 1. The maximum detected concentration of B(a)P was observed at a level below that expected to present an unacceptable cancer risk (3.4 x 10-6). Acceptable risk represents an estimated one excess cancer in 10,000 (1 x 10-4) people exposed for a lifetime of 70 years in duration. If ingestion of fish from bayou 1 from the AI site were to occur, such contact poses a low risk to children. An explanation of the exposure assumptions for the child LECR is available in Appendix B. Furthermore, due to the stated City of Shreveport Ordinance described above deeming it unlawful to swim in the bayous and the knowledge of adherence to the advisory, there should be no exposure pathway between bayou 1 fish and the local population, including children surrounding the AI site.
LOUISIANA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HOSPITALS/OFFICE OF PUBLIC HEALTH SECTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL EPIDEMIOLOGY AND TOXICOLOGY
1450 L & A ROAD ▪ METAIRIE, LOUISIANA 70001
PHONE #: 504/219-4586 ▪ FAX #: 504/219-4582 ▪ WWW.DHH.LA.GOV
“AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER”
Now, if petroleum and all its parts dissipate and disappear over time, why is it that the chemical signatures of it and its parts were still in the sediments of these areas and in the tissues of fish as well in high concentrations? Hmmmm?
- cricketdiane
***
Apparently the oil industries have being allowed to regulate themselves as they harvest the rich wealth of oil reserves around the world in order to make their business profits – my note – from this article in the Washington Post –
The Associated Press
Thursday, May 20, 2010; 8:58 AM
STOCKHOLM — The U.S. government is not alone in ceding responsibility to the oil industry for the design of key safety features on offshore rigs, a trend coming under scrutiny worldwide following the deadly blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
The shift away from more heavy-handed regulation started about two decades ago and was based on the notion that oil companies best know the risks of offshore operations – and how to minimize them.
But the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20 and another platform incident in the Timor Sea off Australia last year have raised concerns that Big Oil has been given too much leeway to police itself.
( . . . )
Mexico’s state oil monopoly Pemex has struggled with safety issues related to pipelines and a shallow-water platform disaster in 2007 that killed 21 workers. But it has little exposure to the dangers of deep-water drilling because Pemex lacks technology to explore untapped resources in the Gulf of Mexico.
Britain moved away from prescriptive government regulations after a 1988 fire on the Piper Alpha platform in the North Sea killed 167 workers. It also moved oversight of safety for the offshore oil and gas industry from the Department of Energy to the Health and Safety Executive, or HSE.
“Our supervisory activity is not to inspect the steel or the hardware. It’s to inspect how the companies inspect themselves,” said Ole-Johan Faret, a spokesman for Norway’s Petroleum Safety Authority.
However, the practice of letting industry select the best safety measures is widespread. The system is referred to as “performance-based” in some countries and “goal-oriented” or “goal-setting” in others.
It comes down to granting flexibility for oil companies to select the best technology and practices to ensure safety on their offshore installations, as long as they meet the regulator’s minimum standards.
“Generally, goal-setting allows you to make improvements as technology develops without having to change the legislation,” said Robert Wine, a spokesman for BP PLC, the company that owns the ruptured well that is releasing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. “So it makes it a more flexible way of improving standards, improving performance.”
He added that some practices and standards are stricter outside the U.S. For example, Norway requires an acoustic backup system to trigger the blowout preventer remotely with sound pulses if the regular switch fails.
“That’s also true in Brazil and off the east coast of Canada,” Holand said, adding acoustic triggers are not widely used on American rigs.
HHE Report No. HETA-86-132-1780, Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, Valdez, Alaska
Author
Apol-AG; Singal-M
Abstract
In response to a request from the State of Alaska Department of Labor, a study was made of employee exposure to oil sludge and vapors during oil sludge removal and maintenance activities at the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company’s Ballast Water Treatment Facility (SIC-1311), Valdez, Alaska.
Hydrogen-sulfide (7783064) concentrations were less than 0.1 part per million (ppm) when no one was working in the ballast water tank, and 0.6ppm during work operation. Phenol (108952) concentrations were below 0.01ppm.
Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbon concentrations showed only detectable levels of acenaphthylene (208968), acenaphthene (83329), fluorene (86737), phenanthrene (85018), anthracene (120127), and naphthalene (91203).
Benzene (71432) concentrations in the tank ranged from 4.2 to 5.9mg/m3 with no activity in the tank and from 6.0 to 15.4mg/m3 during work; the proposed benzene standard is 1ppm.
Toluene (108883) concentrations ranged from 3 to 10ppm. Xylene (1330207) concentrations ranged from 9 to 21ppm.
Total hydrocarbons, except benzene, toluene, and xylene, showed concentrations from 371 to 1228mg/m3.
Of eight maintenance workers, five reported headache, dizziness, or nausea when working without a respirator. The authors conclude that workers were potentially exposed to benzene vapors and total hydrocarbon vapors exceeding the evaluation criteria for these substances. The authors recommend the use of respiratory protection measures to reduce exposures during work operations.
Environmental air sampling was performed and nondirect medical questionnaires were administered on March 6 and 7, 1979 at Ashland Petroleum Company, (SIC-1311) Freedom, Pennsylvania to determine if employees were exposed to bauxite (1318167) dust and unknown toxic substances. The evaluation was requested by the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union Local 8-621, for the 15 potentially exposed employees. The benzene (71432) soluble fraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PPAH) measured 0.43 milligrams per cubic meter (mg/cu m) and exceeded the OSHA recommended exposure limit of 0.20mg/cu m in one of four sampling periods. Total dust particulates ranged from 1.1 to 8.5mg/cu m, lead (7439921) was undetectable, and sulfur dioxide (7446095) gas measured 3.1 micrograms/cu m. All were below their respective recommended limits of 15mg/cu m, 50 mg/cu m, and 13mg/cu m. Medical reports of acute, intermittent irritation of the eyes and mucous membranes of the upper respiratory tract, dry skin, occasional headache, sinus congestion, and wheezing with exertion were associated with increased heat and with the burning of certain products that probably contained sulfur dioxide. The authors recommend periodic vacuum cleaning of the burner house, periodic maintenance of the burner and ducts to seal leaks; a program of environmental sampling, preplacement and periodic medical examinations for exposed workers, maintaining medical records on all employees exposed for 1 or more years to sulfur dioxide, and a review of the value of the current preemployment practice of routinely recording lower back radiographs.
Over two weeks after the catastrophic explosion and fire that killed 11 workers and caused the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, details are beginning to emerge about what went wrong. This diagram helps explain what was supposed to happen, and what failed.
Watching our politicians and listening to oil industry voices during BP’s mugging of our coastal ecosystem has me repeatedly thinking of two things:
Horses out of barns, and the planet Mars.
The first thought is prompted by the endless parade of Louisiana politicos who can’t seem to get enough face time lately showing their concern for the potentially horrendous harm oil poses to our coastal wetlands, all the while stressing how important that habitat is to our economy, culture and future. . . .
Well, if they’re serious about that accounting, they can start by looking in the mirror.
( . . . )
I’m talking about the fervor for deregulation, the movement to eliminate federal laws that protect people and the environment.
That has been a battle cry for conservative politics for three decades. It was Ronald Reagan who famously made “get government off the backs of business,” a winning strategy. And it was George W. Bush who pushed to rewrite the rule books for energy development on public property, rolling back protections for fish, wildlife, air and water under the banner of streamlining the nation’s race for energy. That movement sought to turn 40 years of bipartisan environmental protection on its head, and it did.
Industry lobbyists and officials were appointed to key environmental positions with orders to make the environment safe for business — especially the energy business. Agencies became boosters for development, not protectors of the public trust.
Louisiana’s delegations, and most of its voters, cheered almost every step.
For our political leaders to act shocked that something like this could happen requires equal portions of gall and amnesia.
The media is now filled with testimony from whistle blowers at agencies telling how warnings of threats to the environment were down-played, ignored or tossed in the trash bin. Their bosses were only following orders.
Even after the disaster, industry promoters are saying how rare such accidents are, are talking (in almost reverential tones) about how amazing the technology for deep-ocean drilling is, often using the refrain “this is like stuff we do in space.”
That’s when I think about Mars.
You see, deep ocean drilling is much, much more dangerous and risky than the space program.
(etc.)
If Louisiana is lucky, the Deepwater Horizon will be the Three-Mile Island of deep-ocean drilling. It will be the event that demonstrates to all who sneer at environmental regulation just what’s at stake here, and the enormous danger facing our coast each and every day.
We always knew accidents would happen, but what this event teaches us is the industry has no effective way to prevent a mishap from becoming a catastrophe.
I keep hoping I will hear the shameless oil industry boosters in our congressional delegation say something like “Until this industry proves it can react quickly and effectively to cap blowouts in deep water drilling, we shouldn’t proceed.”
And maybe that will happen before we send men to Mars.
Bob Marshall is outdoors editor. He can be reached at 504-826-3539 or at bmarshall@tpmail.com.
Rusty Costanza / The Times-PicayuneWorkers clean oil from Fourchon Beach on Saturday.
TRAJECTORY FORECAST MAPS
Twice a day NOAA releases trajectory forecast maps predicting the extent and concentration of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill expected for the next 24, 48 and 72 hours. These are the latest maps.
Once a day, NOAA releases offshore surface oil trajectory maps showing the southern extent of oil that has potentially entered the loop current, which could take it to southern Florida and the east coast.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) is the only national trade association that represents all aspects of America’s oil and natural gas industry. Our nearly 400 corporate members, from the largest major oil company to the smallest of independents, come from all segments of the industry. http://www.api.org/aboutapi/
***
“A band of oil runs the entire 7-mile length of the beach. A mile away, connected by two passes, is an unprotected state marine sanctuary, Strassmann reports.
Oil now stains 53 miles of coastal Louisiana, and more hits land every day.”
Obama forms bipartisan commission to investigate oil spill
By the CNN Wire StaffMay 22, 2010 — Updated 0320 GMT (1120 HKT)
Is enough being done to protect the public from chemical pollutants? Watch “Toxic America,” a special two-night investigative report with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, on June 2 and 3 at 8 p.m. ET on CNN.
Washington (CNN) — President Obama has issued an executive order establishing a bipartisan commission tasked with investigating how to prevent future oil spills, two sources familiar with the announcement said Friday.
Obama named former Florida Sen. Bob Graham and former Environmental Protection Agency William K. Reilly as commission co-chairs.
The sources said Obama on Saturday will announce the formation of the panel, officially known as the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, as the administration faces a growing chorus of criticism about whether it is putting enough pressure on BP to clean up the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
After this weekend’s official formation, the commission will have six months to issue a report with recommendations on how to prevent spills from offshore drilling.
In the Gulf, the “top kill” method intended to stop the runaway flow of oil will likely be tried early next week, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said Friday.
In the procedure, thick, viscous fluid twice the density of water will be pumped at a high rate into the site of the leak to stop the flow so that it can then be sealed with cement, Suttles said.
“Our best estimate is probably Tuesday,” he said, noting that the operation has never been tried in such deep water.
The timing for the “top kill” effort appears to be slipping: BP Managing Director Bo Dudley said Thursday night that the company would try the procedure this weekend.
Statement by the President on the House Administration Committee’s Passage of the DISCLOSE Act
“Today, the House Administration Committee took another important step toward putting in place critical protections to control the flood of special interest money into American elections. The DISCLOSE Act, now moving to debate on the floor of the House of Representatives, would establish the toughest-ever disclosure requirements for election-related spending by big oil corporations, Wall Street and other special interests.”
“It would prohibit foreign entities from manipulating the outcome of U.S. elections, and it would shine an unprecedented light on corporate spending in political campaigns so that the American people can clearly see who is trying to influence campaigns for public office. These changes are particularly urgent in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and I encourage the full Congress to give this strong, bipartisan legislation the swift consideration it deserves.”
Posted by Jesse Lee on May 22, 2010 at 06:00 AM EDT
The President announces that the independent commission he created for the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling will be chaired by former Florida Governor and Senator Bob Graham and former EPA Administrator Bill Reilly. He promises accountability not just for BP, but for those in government who bore responsibility.
For the first time, SPE’s flagship meeting—the Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition—will be held outside the United States. Join us in Florence to share technical knowledge, network with colleagues from around the world, and celebrate key successes in the E&P industry. Registration and housing is now open.
These people are a separate breed unto themselves . . . How did that happen?
- cricketdiane
***
Looking at their President’s Forum – look at these entries – on the date of the explosion of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico – the Deepwater Horizon – April 20, 2010 and then the next post – what planet are they living on?
In the past decade, an increasing number of organizations have been creating networks, mentoring programs, and coaching and leadership training for women in the workplace. Today, women represent a significant portion of the educated talent pool in most of the developed and emerging world in a broad range of industries, lead countries and companies, and hold an unprecedented amount of power in their hands and minds. The oil industry is not an exception. Read more »
The oil and gas industry employs a large number of people around the world. The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimates that in the US alone, the oil and gas industry is one of the largest employers, supporting more than nine million jobs providing cost-competitive energy and adding more than USD 1 trillion to the US economy. Read more »
I am writing this column on the other side of the globe from my home in California, after flying for almost 20 hours to get here. The details of my trip, as in the case of many others, were arranged by SPE staff in Dallas working in concert with the SPE staff in our six other offices around the world. Read more »
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My Note –
I thought maybe in the “read more” parts of the two posts that he made after the explosion, sinking, the deaths of eleven men on the rig, the range of horrors experienced by those who barely escaped the Deepwater Horizon explosion with their lives, the vast oil slick and thick oil across the Gulf of Mexico – he would have something . . . They are the engineers for the petroleum industry after all and their work directly results in either safety or disaster – and many things they do can influence either one or both.
But, no – that is not what these folks were interested in at all – look what this says – they are trying to focus their membership on rounding up the wagons and teaching the public how everything is wonderful and environmentally sound in the efforts and activities of the peptic petroleum industry.
See what I found on his May 4, 2010 post -(turns out it is from April 1, 2010)
- cricketdiane
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From President’s Forum – Society of Petroleum Engineers -
However, at least a segment of the general public views the activities of the oil and gas industry as incompatible with the concept of a sustainable planet. I am not certain of the extent of the sentiment or the significance of the numbers, but I have clearly heard about it from the industry leaders and the officials in many countries that I have travelled to as the SPE president. Jeane Kirkpatrick, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, once said that “Oil is a product that arouses so much passion. A lot of people have a passionate fear, or distaste, or downright hatred almost for oil. There is no other product that so many people need so badly, yet so many people believe should be produced entirely without profits.”
This is a serious matter. Public perception is an intangible asset that helps the industry attract resources, and develop a sustainable viability. We may differ on whether there is a scientific basis for this negative public opinion, but the reality is that the perception exists, and it translates into a more difficult environment for the industry to conduct its business. We, as members of the industry, need to recognize this and find ways to reverse the sentiment. Erosion of our image, I suggest, has not been due to the way we have run our business, but rather because we have behaved somewhat passively in the past, allowing unqualified others to make sweeping negative claims that portray our industry as insensitive to a sustainable planet. SPE’s energy education program is a key weapon in the fight against misinformation. Our outreach efforts that give teachers the science and facts about energy and our industry’s contributions are hugely important.
Our energy future depends not only on increased efficiency and investment in technology; it is also linked to sound policy decisions. Sound energy policies, however, can be developed only through data- and information-based debate, not on the basis of emotions and hearsay. SPE does not, and cannot, take positions on public policies. But SPE can and should ensure that decision makers have access to factual information.
Simply speaking of “sustainability,” “social responsibility,” and “corporate citizenship” will not get us far; we must offer evidence to those outside of the industry that we truly care, and that we have embraced these concepts in practice. We individual members of the industry also can play an important and much needed role. As former SPE president Eve Sprunt urged us, we must stand tall and speak up to create an informed public that we hope will then accept and support not only our tactical aims, but also our strategic goals.
SPE can help. We have taken a strong position in the area of global energy education through programs such as our Energy4me (www.energy4me.org) and Ambassador Lecturers. Yet, we should not expect all the effort to be led and organized by SPE. In fact, our most effective approach is for members to reach individuals and small groups in their own backyard, not a mass advertising campaign. Each of us must actively engage in educating the public, by speaking to students in classrooms or to friends and relatives about the industry, or even through writing an article for the local newspaper. Energy4me.org provides presentations and educational resources in multiple languages that make it easy for members to speak to students or civic groups. We are also providing factual classroom materials for teachers to use. In doing so, we have to offer information that makes sense to the general public—simple examples but not simplistic. Here are some simple industry facts we should ensure that the public hears:
The E&P industry does not set the price of oil; the financial market does that on the basis of supply and demand and speculations on futures.
The price of oil, a depleting commodity typically at USD 70/bbl these days, is low when compared to such nondepleting commodities as a barrel of bottled water (three to five times higher), ice cream (15 to 20 times higher), and some types of cosmetic medicine (20,000 times higher).
Fig. 1 – Performance profile of major energy producers.
Our industry revenues in absolute terms are impressive, but not as striking when stated in terms of percent of the invested capital at risk (Fig. 1).
A recent API study indicates that the so-called “big oil” is 98% owned by the public. Anyone today can be a partner in “big oil” by buying stocks.
Our industry is a major creator of “green” jobs. It invested more than USD 58 billion in greenhouse-gas mitigating technologies from 2000 to 2008 in the North American market, which was more than the US government or all other US-based private industries combined. These green jobs are in developing advanced batteries, biofuels, and other alternatives; in finding and implementing ways to reduce energy consumption; in increasing recycling; in developing carbon capture and storage technology; and much more.
Our high-tech industry has and will continue investments and involvement in alternative energy, resulting in millions of high-tech jobs, traditional industry jobs, and green jobs. The industry has a long history in applying sophisticated technologies, using materials, sensors, chemistry, and engineering techniques that have surpassed the visions of the industry pioneers or the public. In the US alone, the petroleum industry invested more than all of private industry and the federal government combined in new energy technologies (65% of total). This investment of an estimated USD 121 billion between 2000 and 2007 was in emerging energy technologies including renewables; frontier hydrocarbons, such as shale and oil sands; and end-use technologies, such as fuel cells.
We each have a role to play in addressing the many ways that our industry supports our day-to-day safety, mobility, health, and lifestyle. Obviously the social expectation for us to operate sensibly will always be there. It is high time now for us to actively educate the public about who we are, what we do, how we impact and improve the life of every human being, and the noble causes that we pursue in our industry. An unfavorable public opinion eventually translates into more restrictive operating environment, constraints on access to reserves, and discouragement of young people to contemplate a career in an industry that has everything to offer to the world. http://www.spe.org/jpt/cat/president/
My Note –
Excuse me – that was from April 2, 2010 – the one written on May 1, 2010 was about getting more women into the industry and included 0 (that’s ZERO) note, reference or remark whatsoever about the oil disaster, explosion, spill and deaths from it that had already become well-known throughout their industry and in fact, throughout the world.
- cricketdiane
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And a note from our President on the address today -
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
May 22, 2010
Weekly Address: President Obama Establishes Bipartisan National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling
Names Former Two-Term Florida Governor and Former Senator Bob Graham and Former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency William K. Reilly as Commission Co-Chairs
WASHINGTON – In this week’s address, President Obama announced that he has signed an executive order establishing the bipartisan National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling with former two-term Florida Governor and former Senator Bob Graham and former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency William K. Reilly serving as co-chairs.
The bipartisan National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling is tasked with providing recommendations on how we can prevent – and mitigate the impact of – any future spills that result from offshore drilling.
The commission will be focused on the necessary environmental and safety precautions we must build into our regulatory framework in order to ensure an accident like this never happens again, taking into account the other investigations concerning the causes of the spill.
The commission will have bipartisan co-chairs with a total membership of seven people. Membership will include broad and diverse representation of individuals with relevant expertise. No sitting government employees or elected officials will sit on the commission.
The Commission’s work will be transparent and subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The Commission will issue a report within six months of having been convened.
President Obama named the following individuals as Co-Chairs of National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling:
Senator Bob Graham is the former two–term governor of Florida and served for 18 years in the United States Senate. Senator Graham is recognized for his leadership on issues ranging from healthcare and environmental preservation to his ten years of service on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — including eighteen months as chairman in 2001–2002. After retiring from public life in January 2005, Senator Graham served for a year as a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. From May 2008 to February 2010, he served as Chairman of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism whose mandate was to build on the work of the 9/11 Commission. Senator Graham was also appointed to serve as a Commissioner on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, established by Congress to examine the global and domestic causes of the recent financial crisis. The Commission will provide its findings and conclusions in a final report due to Congress on December 15, 2010. He also serves as a member of the CIA External Advisory Board and the chair of the Board of Overseers of the Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida. Senator Graham has been recognized by national and Florida organizations for his public service including The Woodrow Wilson Institute award for Public Service, The National Park Trust Public Service award and The Everglades Coalition Hall of Fame. Senator Graham earned a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Florida and an LLB from Harvard Law School. He is the recipient of an honorary doctorate of public service from his alma mater, the University of Florida, and honorary doctorates from Pomona College and Nova Southeastern University.
William K. Reilly is a Founding Partner of Aqua International Partners, LP, a private equity fund dedicated to investing in companies engaged in water and renewable energy, and a Senior Advisor to TPG Capital, LP, an international investment partnership. Mr. Reilly served as the first Payne Visiting Professor at Stanford University (1993-1994), Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1989-1993), president of the World Wildlife Fund (1985-1989), president of The Conservation Foundation (1973-1989), and director of the Rockefeller Task Force on Land Use and Urban Growth from (1972-1973). He also served as the head of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Earth Summit at Rio in 1992. Mr. Reilly is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of the World Wildlife Fund, Co-Chair of the National Commission on Energy Policy, Chairman of the Board of the ClimateWorks Foundation, Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University, and a Director of the Packard Foundation and the National Geographic Society and a member of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force. He also serves on the Board of Directors of DuPont, ConocoPhillips, Royal Caribbean International and Energy Future Holdings, for which he serves as Chairman of the Sustainable Energy Advisory Board. In 2007 Mr. Reilly was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds a B.A. degree from Yale, J.D. from Harvard and M.S. in Urban Planning from Columbia University.
The full audio of the address is HERE. The video can be viewed online at www.whitehouse.gov.
Remarks of President Barack Obama
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Weekly Address
Washington, DC
One month ago this week, BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded off Louisiana’s coast, killing 11 people and rupturing an underwater pipe. The resulting oil spill has not only dealt an economic blow to Americans across the Gulf Coast, it also represents an environmental disaster.
In response, we are drawing on America’s best minds and using the world’s best technology to stop the leak. We’ve deployed over 1,100 vessels, about 24,000 personnel, and more than 2 million total feet of boom to help contain it. And we’re doing all we can to assist struggling fishermen, and the small businesses and communities that depend on them.
Folks on the Gulf Coast – and across America – are rightly demanding swift action to clean up BP’s mess and end this ordeal. But they’re also demanding to know how this happened in the first place, and how we can make sure it never happens again. That’s what I’d like to spend a few minutes talking with you about.
First and foremost, what led to this disaster was a breakdown of responsibility on the part of BP and perhaps others, including Transocean and Halliburton. And we will continue to hold the relevant companies accountable not only for being forthcoming and transparent about the facts surrounding the leak, but for shutting it down, repairing the damage it does, and repaying Americans who’ve suffered a financial loss.
But even as we continue to hold BP accountable, we also need to hold Washington accountable. Now, this catastrophe is unprecedented in its nature, and it presents a host of new challenges we are working to address. But the question is what lessons we can learn from this disaster to make sure it never happens again.
If the laws on our books are inadequate to prevent such an oil spill, or if we didn’t enforce those laws – I want to know it. I want to know what worked and what didn’t work in our response to the disaster, and where oversight of the oil and gas industry broke down. We know, for example, that a cozy relationship between oil and gas companies and agencies that regulate them has long been a source of concern.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has taken steps to address this problem; steps that build on reforms he has been implementing since he took office. But we need to do a lot more to protect the health and safety of our people; to safeguard the quality of our air and water; and to preserve the natural beauty and bounty of America.
In recent weeks, we’ve taken a number of immediate measures to prevent another spill. We’ve ordered inspections of all deepwater operations in the Gulf of Mexico. We’ve announced that no permits for drilling new wells will go forward until the 30-day safety and environmental review I requested is complete. And I’ve called on Congress to pass a bill that would provide critical funds and tools to respond to this spill and better prepare us to confront any future spills.
But we also need to take a comprehensive look at how the oil and gas industry operates and how we regulate them. That is why, on Friday, I signed an executive order establishing the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. While there are a number of ongoing investigations, including an independent review by the National Academy of Engineering, the purpose of this Commission is to consider both the root causes of the disaster and offer options on what safety and environmental precautions we need to take to prevent a similar disaster from happening again. This Commission, I’d note, is similar to one proposed by Congresswoman Capps and Senator Whitehouse.
I’ve asked Democrat Bob Graham and Republican Bill Reilly to co-chair this Commission. Bob served two terms as Florida’s governor, and represented Florida as a United States Senator for almost two decades. During that time, he earned a reputation as a champion of the environment, leading the most extensive environmental protection effort in the state’s history.
Bill Reilly is chairman emeritus of the board of the World Wildlife Fund, and he is also deeply knowledgeable about the oil and gas industry. During the presidency of George H.W. Bush, Bill was Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and his tenure encompassed the Exxon Valdez disaster.
I can’t think of two people who will bring greater experience or better judgment to the task at hand. In the days to come, I’ll appoint 5 other distinguished Americans – including scientists, engineers, and environmental advocates – to join them on the Commission. And I’m directing them to report back in 6 months with recommendations on how we can prevent – and mitigate the impact of – any future spills that result from offshore drilling.
One of the reasons I ran for President was to put America on the path to energy independence, and I have not wavered from that commitment. To achieve that goal, we must pursue clean energy and energy efficiency, and we’ve taken significant steps to do so. And we must also pursue domestic sources of oil and gas. Because it represents 30 percent of our oil production, the Gulf of Mexico can play an important part in securing our energy future. But we can only pursue offshore oil drilling if we have assurances that a disaster like the BP oil spill will not happen again. This Commission will, I hope, help provide those assurances so we can continue to seek a secure energy future for the United States of America.
Weatherford International this week launched its Compact Cross-Dipole Sonic (CXD) tool, the industry’s first 2.25-in. monopole/cross-dipole sonic tool which promises more robust acoustic data delivery for all well types. Read more »
Baker Hughes recently introduced its RockView mineral characterization service to enhance reservoir interpretation. The company states that by applying principles of gamma ray spectroscopy, RockView will reduce the need for core samples and provide more accurate mineralogy estimates in reservoir interpretations. Read more »
The Blackstorm Oil Production System (BPS), a portable one-piece pumping unit designed to replace traditional pump jacks, is gearing up for a global expansion. Blackstorm developer Stripper Solutions and Global Industrial of America are in the final stages of negotiations that would designate Global as the worldwide distributor for the corrosion-free system that installs in less time and at a lower cost compared to pump jacks. Read more »
Cudd Energy Services was recently awarded a patent for its Rack Jack hydraulic workover (HWO) system. The Rack Jack, one of many recent Cudd offerings aimed at expanding its HWO service line into the drilling and completions market, is an alternative to traditional derrick-based workover/drilling systems, both onshore and on platform and jack-up rigs. Read more »
Tendeka recently launched the new Sensornet Oryx-XR Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) system, designed for use in harsh environments. The autonomous, low-powered device boasts an extended sensing range and an operating temperature range from desert to sub-freezing conditions. Read more »
Ingrain recently launched CoreHD, a technology platform that allows for high-definition CT scanning and logging of whole core samples from oil and gas wells. The platform, which gives geoscientists 3D visibility into their reservoirs at the wellbore scale, also provides faster and more accurate optimization of sampling locations for rock-properties analysis. Read more »
Norwegian company NorLense has developed a new system to mitigate the effects of oil spills in coastal areas and farther offshore. The versatile system, which was developed in part through funding by the Petromaks program at the Research Council of Norway, reportedly can be deployed under a range of environmental conditions, including rough weather and difficult currents. Read more »
A recent update of Statoil’s oil-sands production plans in Canada presented a methodical development process aimed at driving efficiency and environmental gains. Among its initiatives: a 5-year technology plan that will provide a pathway to reduce carbon emissions from oil sands by more than 40% by 2025. Read more »
Abu Dhabi played host earlier this year to an SPE Applied Technology Workshop (ATW) titled “Sustaining Business Excellence and Process Safety Through Effective Facilities Integrity Management.” The goal: to provide the more than 80 professionals in attendance with various perspectives on managing the challenges of ensuring safe and efficient operations in the face of aging facilities and increasing economic constraints. Read more »
Argus Subsea has recently introduced the AZ-15J subsea tree and wellhead system, specially designed for jack-up mobile drilling units. The company states that the new system is the world’s first purpose-built system that allows operators to drill and complete wells at up to 15,000 psi working pressure without special riser systems or temporary abandonments. Read more »
Queensland Energy Resources (QER) has announced it is going ahead with a demonstration plant to produce shale oil at the Gladstone site in central Queensland. The chosen production method—an above ground retorting technology based on the Paraho process—promises for efficient and environmentally safe oil extraction, the company states. Read more »
Canada-based operation management provider Zedi recently announced a successful field trial of its Smart-Skid technology in the Russian Federation. The trial allowed a major Russian oil and gas producer to avoid operational problems such as liquids loading in wells experiencing ambient temperatures of -50 °C. Read more »
Schlumberger recently launched its SeaConnect VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) service for the offshore industry. This new service uses a portable marine C-band antenna and related technologies to provide connectivity to any offshore vessel or rig, regardless of size or location. Read more »
VeruTEK Technologies recently announced that trials of its VeruSOLVE Marine dispersant demonstrated promising results in cleaning up oil in marine environments. The company says that the low-toxicity, plant-based surfactant technology may provide an effective solution for US Gulf Coast communities dealing with the recent Gulf of Mexico (GOM) oil spill. Read more »
So, on May 20, 2010 – a full month later – there is something in this group about it – “and by the way there was a disaster because of petroleum engineering” needs to be explained to this group and bring them into the “rest of the world” category out of their wherever it is separate from us.
On their front page – there is not one thing about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, not about the failure of the blowout preventer now filling the Gulf with curdling putrid filth and neither does it mention anything about the failure of safety systems on the first explosions – nor of the failures in engineering the upside down funnel – top hat nonsense they already tried.
Society of Petroleum Engineers – these jackasses are unbelievable. These aren’t engineers – they are something else, some other breed. In fact, they would seem to be more of an arm of a very corrupt petroleum industry that just wants to do things the way they want to do them sealing the fate of whatever it destroys and regardless of what is known about the risks and destruction it can cause.
A minute or two ago, I just noticed this on the bloomberg ticker and I sure wish they hadn’t done that.
- cricketdiane
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Lazard to Advise U.S. Treasury on Auto Asset Sales (Update2)
The agreement signals the Treasury Department is making progress on plans to sell the assets after providing GM with about $50 billion. GM Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said May 18 the automaker’s $865 million first-quarter net profit, the first since 2007, was a “good, useful step” on the way to an initial public offering that may come this year.
Lazard, the biggest non-bank merger adviser, was picked over firms including Greenhill & Co. and Perella Weinberg Partners, which also had been in talks with the Treasury, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said this month.
The New York-based firm will provide advice on “strategy and optimal timing to execute the disposition” of the assets, according to the Treasury. The assignment includes a $500,000 monthly fee in the first year, according to the document signed on May 17 and posted today on the Treasury’s website.
“The assignment includes a $500,000 monthly fee in the first year”
My Note –
Are they out of their minds? They are getting $500,000 a month to tell the US Treasury every month for a year – when to sell the assets from General Motors? Are they absolutely crazy?
And, Lazard is a real piece of work anyway. But why in f - in hell would they get paid $500,000 a month to do that? They say I’m breaking the national budget because the government gives me a $600 a month (more or less) disability check. I can tell them when to sell those assets –
In fact, right this minute – I’d like to tell them what they do need to do with them anyway – it would be a better job than the jackass bunch from Lazard will do. We are sure to get screwed with them having any hand in it. Give me a break.
- cricketdiane, 05-22-10
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Regardless, I couldn’t do it any worse than they will do it.
Durn that makes me mad enough to spit nails.
First, I find the Society of Petroleum Engineers that aren’t in any way interested in even noting the horrendous damages that are occurring in the Gulf of Mexico and likely will be there for many generations to come that are the direct result of their work.
And, then I find that the bastards at Lazard which – just don’t even get me started about that – but are going to get $500,000 a month to tell the US Treasury when to sell the “goodies” and toxic crap that was left over to dump sometime from the General Motors financial disaster.
That has got to be way out in a world that makes hell look like a theory instead of a possibility.
Damn.
And, damn again.
And, damn.
- cricketdiane
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Its like they are playing with monopoly money – only it isn’t their money.
Okay, maybe its a typo – I’ll go over to the US TReasury site and see what it is – also, I’m on the EMM Explorer to look up some coverage of the oil spill from elsewhere – and on the explorer (rather than the news brief) – it has a story from Australia where BP is denying they have any fault in the cleanup not being what it should’ve been – so I’m going over to see that also.
BP OFFICIALS deny botching the month-long clean-up of an oil spill off the Gulf of Mexico and deliberately hiding the true extent of the disaster.
With a thick sludge now washing up in the Mississippi delta threatening disaster for a wealth of animal and plant life, the US administration has set the British energy giant tight deadlines to come clean about their operation.
Just how much oil is gushing from a pipe ruptured when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank a month ago has been a contentious issue, with BP initially putting the figure at 5000 barrels a day.
“That was not just BP’s estimate. That was the estimate of the in-flight command, including NOAA and the Coast Guard. That’s the best estimate we have,” BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttles said on Friday.
But the company says it is now siphoning 5000 barrels a day from the leak by a 1600-metre-long insertion tube device, and live webcam television pictures show more oil continuing to spew into the Gulf from the ruptured well, meaning the figure must be higher.
Protesters gathered for a candlelight vigil Thursday in New Orleans to mark the one-month anniversary of the BP oil spill.
May 21, 2010
Why wouldn’t they have any contingency plan? I’m not a genius, and even I would have thought of that.
E.J. Boles, resident of Big Pine Key, Fla.
Until now, only tar balls and a sheen of oil had come ashore in Louisiana. But chocolate brown and vivid orange globs and sheets of foul-smelling oil have begun coating the reeds and grasses of the state’s wetlands. Fishing boats loaded with oil booms have been going in and out of a command center in the St. Bernhard parish of New Orleans in recent days trying to contain the slick.
“We send the boats out on a daily basis in different rotations to either do boom repair work or put new booms in strategic places where we think the oil might be coming in,” Pat Touchard, an oil and chemical spill contractor hired by BP, told NPR.
(etc.)
The Gulf of Mexico slick is also spreading fear among potential tourists, with resorts in the Florida Keys reporting waves of cancellations ahead of the financially important Memorial Day weekend.
Enlarge Charlie Riedel/APA sign chastising BP is seen along a highway south of Belle Chasse, La.
“We’ve seen a tremendous amount of phone calls, we have got some cancellations, primarily because of the news reports of the tar balls that showed up at a couple Key West beaches,” said Andy Newman of the Florida Keys tourism council.
A month after the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank, BP has conceded that much more oil is coming out of the well than it had acknowledged. The company originally estimated the leak at 5,000 barrels a day, but independent analyses, including one done for NPR, show the flow rate is much higher.
In the worst-case scenario, he said, the gusher could continue until early August, when engineers may finish a new well being drilled to try to permanently cap the flow. But Suttles said he believes the rich Gulf environment will recover, in part because it is a large body of water that has withstood other oil spills.
“I’m optimistic, I’m very optimistic that the Gulf will fully recover,” he said.
These people are thinking “big ocean – little oil never hurt nothing” – even still. I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe anybody could be that utterly stupid and arrogance isn’t even the word for it – what was the word for the people’s attitude that so completely and sadistically maimed others and snickered, mocked and derided their helplessness to prevent it even while torturing them? What is the word for that – it is what the BP executives and other oil industry groups, including the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the big Petroleum Industry trade group seems to have. What is that?
In the worst-case scenario, he said, the gusher could continue until early August, when engineers may finish a new well being drilled to try to permanently cap the flow. But Suttles said he believes the rich Gulf environment will recover, in part because it is a large body of water that has withstood other oil spills.
“I’m optimistic, I’m very optimistic that the Gulf will fully recover,” he said.
I can’t believe that a company and its decision-makers could do such a heinous crime as this – there were eleven men who died horribly, hundreds of men on the rig and in boats nearby that will never have a night of sleep again in their lives without the visions of it and barely escaped with their lives. The marshes, estuaries, beaches, delta, islands, fisheries, economies, animals, communities, people – and people and people and several generations of people beyond today will suffer as a result of this.
The man in the coastal area who is going out on a boat with BP paying to use him and his fishing boat because his wife is pregnant and there they are – and they have to do something to make it – but they are all being subjected to all of the toxic waste of this situation and have no protection from it whatsoever.
Talk about a captive audience. They are a captive audience, not only to history that is being made in a very negative scenario but to the subjection of all its effects without regard or safety or protection or any of the great things that money cannot buy – from good health, to a safe place to raise a family, to having a thriving wonderful community in which to live. None of that is available there in this mess. And it is just plain wrong.
- cricketdiane
***
Boom Effectiveness Test – Small Waves Render Booms Useless
I live in Panama City Beach, FL and they have began to stage booms along the coast of Shell Island in preparation for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I drove a jet ski to the staging point to demonstrate what little disturbance to the water’s surface is required to render the booms useless. If the oil does come our way, the booms BP is laying out are not going to protect our gorgeous white sand beaches and endangered species habitats.
The “top kill” method intended to stop the runaway flow of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico probably will be tried early next week, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said Friday. FULL STORY | ECOLOGICAL FALLOUT | CNNMoney: PRICE OF A PELICAN |
Administration Completes Implementation of Initiative
To Support State and Local Housing Finance Agencies
Initiative Expands Resources for Working Families to Access Affordable Rental Housing and Home Ownership
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury, together with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) today announced the completion of all transactions under the recently-introduced state and local Housing Finance Agency (HFA) Initiative, a key element of the Obama Administration’s Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan. With these transactions, the Obama Administration helps support low mortgage rates and expands resources for low and middle income borrowers to purchase or rent homes that are affordable over the long term. Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played a central role in both Initiative design and transaction execution. The HFA Initiative is expected to come at no cost to taxpayers.
Through more than 90 participating HFAs, the HFA Initiative will make affordable financing available to hundreds of thousands of new homebuyers and existing homeowners, as well as support the development and rehabilitation of multi-family rental properties. Mortgages can be used to purchase or rehabilitate homes, as well as refinance existing mortgages at more affordable rates. Participating HFAs are also expected to provide affordable multifamily loans that will help keep rents affordable for tens of thousands of renters. Participating state and local agencies have already begun providing affordable mortgages financed through the HFA Initiative.
“Supporting the work of state and local HFAs is critical to the Administration’s broader initiative to stabilize the housing market, which is helping to keep mortgage rates low and mortgage finance flowing for American households across the country,” said Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
“The assistance provided under the HFA Initiative will help maintain the viability of state and local HFAs which play key roles in HUD’s efforts to promote expanded access to affordable rental housing and serve as important players in making homeownership possible for hardworking Americans who otherwise would not be able to purchase or remain in their homes,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan.
“Working together we were able to address the stresses on HFAs created by the housing market turmoil,” said FHFA Acting Director Edward J. DeMarco. “The Enterprises played a critical role, consistent with their mission and on commercially reasonable terms. Their successful execution of over 125 separate transactions, all in the final month of 2009, was an impressive achievement.”
“Given our long-standing partnership with state and local HFAs, we were able to move quickly to support the Administration’s initiative, which is targeted directly at affordable housing for America’s working families,” said Michael J. Williams, Fannie Mae President and CEO. “By creating $23 billion in much-needed, new housing capital for the housing finance system, this initiative will enable the HFAs to return to the level of market liquidity they have provided historically.”
“We applaud the successful completion of the HFA Initiative. Freddie Mac is proud to provide an essential financial link to the nation’s state and local HFAs that will support affordable homeownership and rental housing and help stimulate America’s housing markets,” said Freddie Mac CEO Ed Haldeman.
Local and State Impact of the Initiative
“These bond proceeds, combined with the $7.7 billion in retail housing bonds the Initiative requires state HFAs to issue, will allow HFAs to finance more than 200,000 affordable homes, while generating jobs and tax revenue for the economy,” said Susan Dewey, president of the National Council of State Housing Agencies (NCSHA) and executive director of the Virginia Housing Development Authority. “HFAs are already putting these resources to work to provide first-time home buyer mortgages and finance rental housing,” Dewey added.
“The National Association of Local Housing Finance Agencies (NALHFA) applauds the Treasury, Federal Housing Finance Agency, and especially the Government-Sponsored Enterprises for putting together, in a nearly impossible timeframe, this vital bond purchase program and liquidity facility. It will give participating local housing finance agencies the ability to significantly expand homeownership and rental housing opportunities for their lower income households,” said NALHFA President Patricia Braynon, Executive Director of the Miami-Dade County, FL Housing Finance Authority.
“The Treasury Initiative will provide loans to approximately 11,000 home buyers in Pennsylvania, as well as putting our home builders back to work,” said Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency Brian Hudson. “I believe a new and stronger partnership has been formed between the Administration, the GSEs, and state HFAs to deliver affordable housing across the nation.”
“As one of many HFAs that have participated in the Administration’s HFA Initiative, the Idaho Housing and Finance Association has been able to once again access the tax-exempt bond markets for affordable homeownership lending capital,” said President and Executive Director of the Idaho Housing and Finance Association Gerald Hunter. “Many prospective home buyers will be able to purchase homes because of this financing opportunity. And, it comes at a time when our economy needs all the assistance it can get. We appreciate the professional and focused efforts by the many staff members at Treasury, HUD, FHFA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac to make this opportunity available for our citizens.”
Background on the HFA Initiative
On October 19, Treasury announced a new initiative for state and local HFAs to help support low mortgage rates and expand resources for low and middle income borrowers to purchase or rent homes that are affordable over the long term. Following up on the intent to support HFAs first outlined in February under the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, the Administration’s Initiative has two parts: a New Issue Bond Program (NIBP) to support new lending by HFAs and a Temporary Credit and Liquidity Program (TCLP) to improve the access of HFAs to liquidity for outstanding HFA bonds.
The New Issue Bond Program (NIBP)
The New Issue Bond Program (NIBP) provided temporary financing for HFAs to issue new housing bonds. Treasury purchased securities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac backed by these new housing bonds. With these investments, the HFAs have issued an amount of new housing bonds equal to what they are authorized to issue with the allocations provided them by Congress but have been unable to issue given the current challenges in housing and related markets. The program may support up to several hundred thousand new mortgages to first time homebuyers this coming year, as well as refinancing opportunities to put at-risk, but responsible and performing, borrowers into more sustainable mortgages. The NIBP will also support development of tens of thousands of new rental housing units for working families.
The Temporary Credit and Liquidity Program (TCLP)
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are administering a Temporary Credit and Liquidity Program (TCLP) for HFAs to help relieve current financial strains and enable them to continue to serve their important role in providing housing resources to working families. Treasury has agreed to purchase a participation interest in the Temporary Credit and Liquidity Facilities (TCLFs) provided to HFAs under the program, providing a credit and liquidity backstop. The TCLP provides HFAs with temporary credit and liquidity facilities to help the HFAs maintain their financial health and preserve the viability of the HFA infrastructure so that HFAs can continue their Congressionally supported role in helping provide affordable mortgage credit to low and moderate income Americans, as well as continue their other important activities in communities.
Over 90 state and local HFAs representing 49 states participated in the NIBP for an aggregate total new issuance of $15.3 billion. Twelve HFAs participated in the TCLP for an aggregate total usage of $8.2 billion. The Initiative is expected to come at no cost to the taxpayers and to the Government Sponsored Enterprises.
Officials closed the public beach here Friday as thick gobs of oil resembling melted chocolate washed up, a very visible reminder of the blown-out well that has been spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico for a month. A band of oil runs the entire 7-mile length of the beach. A mile away, connected by two passes, is an unprotected state marine sanctuary, Strassmann reports.
Oil now stains 53 miles of coastal Louisiana, and more hits land every day.
Play CBS Video Video Oily Mess along Gulf CoastlineResidents across coastal Louisiana, particularly fishermen, are outraged over British Petroleum’s lagging efforts to contain leaking oil. Mark Strassmann reports from Grand Isle, La.
Video Oil Spill: One Month LaterA light sheen of oil has entered the loop current in the Gulf while heavy, thick oil is washing ashore in La. Kelly Cobiella reports.
DuBois told Strassmann he has warned BP for days that oil was coming ashore and that its response has been almost meaningless.
“So far they have not done anything,” DuBois told Strassmann. “They have not picked up a quart of oil yet … Nothing at all. Now it’s coming to the beach. They still don’t know what to do.”
IPAA’s Derivatives Reform Testimony to House Agriculture Committee
IPAA testimony on the importance of retaining use of the OTC market to manage financial risk for natural gas and oil producers. Testimony also supports greater transparency and increased oversight and enforcement authority for the CFTC.
Solving the Climate Change Puzzle
A look at the U.S. natural gas industry’s contributions to the economy and the nation’s climate change goals, prepared by the Natural Gas Council.
IPAA Chairman Bruce Vincent (center) rings the NASDAQ stock market closing bell during IPAA’s Oil and Gas Investment Symposium in New York City. Click here.
The American Petroleum Institute, commonly referred to as API, is the main U.S trade association for the oil and natural gas industry, …. increases since 2003 · Price of petroleum · Society of Petroleum Engineers · Swing producer…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Petroleum_Institute
Jan 14, 2010 … The American Petroleum Institute (API) is the only national trade … They are producers, refiners, suppliers, pipeline operators and marine … we work with the National Science Teachers Association and other …
www.api.org/aboutapi/
Mar 10, 2010 … Brick Industry Association Carpet and Rug Institute Coal Operators & Associates … Independent Petroleum Association of America Indiana Coal Association … National Milk Producers Federation National Mining Association …
www.uschamber.com/issues/letters/2010/100310epa.htm
May 13, 2010 … The API is the producer of a 16-minute video titled ‘Fuel-less: you can’t … Brian Westenhaus and the National Association of Manufacturers’s …. “The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s main trade group …
Florida Independent Petroleum Producers Association, Inc. (FLIPPA), Pensacola, Florida … Gas Research Institute (GRI) / Gas Technology Institute (GTI) …
www.energypersonnel.com/CrudeOilandNaturalGasAssociations.html
Who We Are
The American Petroleum Institute (API) is the only national trade association that represents all aspects of America’s oil and natural gas industry. Our nearly 400 corporate members, from the largest major oil company to the smallest of independents, come from all segments of the industry. They are producers, refiners, suppliers, pipeline operators and marine transporters, as well as service and supply companies that support all segments of the industry.
Although our focus is primarily domestic, in recent years our work has expanded to include a growing international dimension, and today API is recognized around the world for its broad range of programs:
Advocacy We speak for the oil and natural gas industry to the public, Congress and the Executive Branch, state governments and the media. We negotiate with regulatory agencies, represent the industry in legal proceedings, participate in coalitions and work in partnership with other associations to achieve our members’ public policy goals.
ResearchandStatistics
API conducts or sponsors research ranging from economic analyses to toxicological testing. And we collect, maintain and publish statistics and data on all aspects of U.S. industry operations, including supply and demand for various products, imports and exports, drilling activities and costs, and well completions. This data provides timely indicators of industry trends. API’s Weekly Statistical Bulletin is the most recognized publication, widely reported by the media.
Standards For more than 75 years, API has led the development of petroleum and petrochemical equipment and operating standards. These represent the industry’s collective wisdom on everything from drill bits to environmental protection and embrace proven, sound engineering and operating practices and safe, interchangeable equipment and materials.
Oil spill’s toll spreads far beyond gulf
Published: May 22, 2010 at 12:11 PM
WASHINGTON
May 22 (UPI) — Environmental devastation from the gushing Gulf of Mexico oil spill has spread as far as Europe and the arctic, scientists said.
“This is not just a regional issue for the wildlife,” Carl Safina, president of the Blue Ocean Institute, told members of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee . . .
Safina said multiple forms of marine life across the Atlantic Ocean come to the Gulf of Mexico to breed.
( . . . )
“I think asking BP for answers is the wrong place to look,” he said. “They seem to have cut corners on some critical junctures. We keep asking their permission to go down and measure the oil that’s coming out.”
Sylvia Earle of The National Geographic Society said BP’s playing a leading role in containment efforts would amount to “relying on the foxes to look after the chicken coop.”
( . . . )
Safina suggested BP used dispersants so cameras would be unable to show the extent of the oil slick.
A giant oil slick 7 miles from Grand Isle was spotted from helicopters Friday.
“It’s coming our way. All that oil you’re seeing on Grand Isle beach now — that’s nothing compared to what’s coming,” one deputy sheriff told the Herald.
GRAND ISLE, La., May 22 (UPI) — The mayor of Grand Isle, the only inhabited island on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, closed the beach to the public Friday after oil from the BP spill washed ashore.
Mayor David Camardelle closed the 8-mile-long island’s beach to its 1,500 residents and the thousands more tourists who normally flock to the vacation spot to fish and swim, The Miami Herald reported Friday.
Engineers nix using hair to soak up Gulf oil spill
11:07 AM
Engineers are nixing the use of booms made out of hair to soak up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Associated Press reports.Crews said Saturday that using hair wasn’t feasible and asked organizations collecting it to stop doing so, the story says.
An alpaca has his neck fur sheared at Eastland Alpaca Farm in Mount Joy, Pa. Hair from more than 100 central Pennsylvania alpacas was sent to the Gulf of Mexico in hopes of soaking up oil that’s being released by a leaking well.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco did not give a new estimate of how much oil the scientists think is leaking but said it’s important to know the volume.
British Petroleum said Thursday that its initial estimate of the spill, 5,000 barrels a day, is too low, the Times-Picayune reports.
“Five thousand was always understood to be a very rough estimate. That number was useful and sort of the best estimate at the time,” Lubchenco told the Picayune. “We’ve always pegged our response to the worst-case scenario.”
Weren’t they the same sons of bitches at every point that were saying it didn’t matter what the volume of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico might be and that there was no way to estimate it any better than that – and what was the other thing –
Oh yeah, that their experts had made that 5,000 barrels a day estimate they knew was exactly right and that the rest of us should not expect to understand these complex matters because we are all “lay” people and they are industry professionals.
Yeah, that”s what is said and conveyed over and over and over in every interview, every tape of every question and answer session with them, every tape of every broadcast and briefing as well as in every last shred of pulling no punches public relations propaganda they have been putting out multiple times a day for the last 31 days.
Now, I remember – they have experts and engineers for the petroleum industry and scientists that work for them and specialists who can’t measure this kind of thing – that’s why 5,000 barrels a day is the best and most accurate estimate of how much crude oil is pouring into the Gulf waters. I remember now.
Yep, and I do remember as Ms. Lubchenco who should’ve durn well known better – stood there downplaying all of it like she worked for the oil companies and the oil company, BP in particular instead of for NOAA and the American people. It beats all I’ve ever seen.
I hate to be “alarmist” but there is a massive problem in the Gulf of Mexico and despite how “big” it may seem to the oil companies who stand out on their little rigs in the midst of it and fly over far reaching vast spaces of the ocean to get there in the little helicopters they own – I’m here to tell you there is a massive life-threatening problem in the waters of the Gulf Of Mexico. (period)
And, what’s more – I think you all over there at BP and throughout the oil industry have known it all along or else you are blind, you are deaf, you are dumb and you are deranged. And, maybe – all of the above.
That is not the kind of businesses we need in America or anywhere else. That isn’t business – that is something significantly unprofitable to the human race and almost every living thing.
I don’t know what that is – but it isn’t business.
- cricketdiane
, 05-22-10
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I’m getting cleaned up and go take a walk. There will have to be answers that actually are put into use which work and these people in charge of making a bigger mess out of what was already a disaster aren’t going to do one thing differently no matter what come hell, high water, crude oil up to the eyeballs of every living thing, air unbreathable, seas of our nation so polluted no one and nothing can swim in them, our beaches populated with crude oil and toxic chemical dispersants mixed with oil instead of rosy faced children and families vacationing as tourists, and there won’t be one thing fit to eat out of the waters of America for the rest of our lifetimes. But, they know what they are doing because they are experts. They can go to hell.
Yeah, I’m taking a bath and then going for a walk now. That is enough.
They have the same three solutions they started with . . . I don’t even see how that is possible.
The top hat, the top kill, the junk shot – who is coming up with this stuff> Are they spending most of their time trying to come up with a catchy name to establish it as an industry standard and get an award or something for having it accepted throughout the industry or what?
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Maybe it is time we find out if the things they are planning to use have been successful in the past most of the time, sometimes, or occasionally. I don’t think that question has been asked at this point. Is is a 50 – 50 thing or have they worked differently than expected 2 out 3 times they were used or what?
- cricketdiane
8.48 pm
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Gone to walk to the store now that it is cool enough to do it.
Be back in a bit. – cd
Well, that was no fun at all. The air is filled with exhaust fumes from the cars and no wind, the humidity is impossible and it was too hot to be walking anywhere, even at night. And, everybody was racing their cars faster than the typical speed limit to eat up as much gasoline as possible so they can get their fair share before it is gone.
At least, that’s the case whenever the price goes up, the availability goes down, the scarcity of it is feared, the potential loss of it is feared. I’ve noticed it especially over the course of events the last few years and it matches what people did in Los Angeles during the oil shortages then. They would race their cars down the road faster than usual, go more places than they needed to go just in case they needed to get there and genuinely used more fuel making jackrabbit starts and idling their cars higher than they had to be when stopped at lights.
I saw them do it during the oil prices spiking a couple years ago, whenever it was. And, on the days that the price significantly spiked – this road wasn’t safe to walk down the sidewalk for the filth in the air and the speeding of the cars through here, even at night. I don’t know what the overwhelming fear is that drives it – but its like an obsessed need to use as much gasoline as possible to the point of making sure they have had their share of it not taken away. It is bizarre.
And, it was like that tonight. People were rushing around like they had somewhere pertinent to go that couldn’t wait and they needed to have left fifteen minutes ago to get there in time, but its Saturday night at 9.00 – our stores stay open late. There is no hurry. It is not a workday. And, if there are that many parties tonight that have to have started earlier in the evening and people are rushing to get to – then they need to stop going by Starbucks on the way sipping the caffeine or something.
But, most of all – the air is so filthy that when I don’t smoke, it smells like I’m standing behind a diesel truck that has been idling in an enclosed space for a long time when I walk down the sidewalk from here to the grocery store a mile away, especially when there is high humidity and no wind like there was tonight.
To be honest, all the way up to the store and a bit of the way back, I still kept thinking about that business getting $500,000 a month for every month over this next year in front of us, just to tell the US Treasury Department when to sell the GM stuff. And, I can expand that and know the fact is highly hellishly likely that they are giving that much or more every month at about 80 other companies of the same kind who are telling them when to sell the AIG stuff and the whatever stuff they took off the hands and books of Bank of America and Citigroup and not telling who all else.
And, I thought about how many jobs at $50,000 A YEAR that is for how many people and their families to keep their homes and to keep their financial well-being sound going forward. And, I think about the 6,000 houses in Detroit and how many in countless other cities and counties across America that we are paying from the Home Help – Keep Your House Programs money to tear down, as well as paying to buy them.
You know and I know that many of those building materials aren’t even the same anymore – many were made with hardwoods that we don’t even have now for building houses. And, they are just tearing them down with hundreds of thousands of people homeless across America.
In fact, that is the other thing I think about a lot – that the people who suited up every day, got there on time, did the job well, cared about their work, and cared about their family, their home and their community didn’t stay employed – they were let go.
And, the assholes on the top rungs who drove these businesses into bankrupt status that we had to bail them out of – are the worthless, show up three percent of the time, late, incapable, uncaring, greedy jerks that made 412 times what everybody else made at the company while doing little or nothing to earn it – and those are the ones these companies kept at the same time they unemployed everybody that was doing a good honorable job for the company. That’s what I think about as I’m walking to the store and back on days like this – and I don’t much like it.
These people have stolen America blind and their companies blind. They’ve leveraged the securities and assets of the company against future earnings until they bankrupted them. They raided every pension fund, health fund, savings plan and employee benefit program to give themselves the salaries and perks they’re enjoying and then they have turned to the vast array of employees and management teams who were actually doing their jobs and blamed them for the mess while laying off huge numbers of people as they went.
Then, it turns out as we know now that any revenues coming in the front door weren’t even going to pay out the overhead costs as these companies in our country were doing business.
It has all been loans and special privilege commercial paper and obtuse, complex credit derivatives, bonds and other leveraging that they have been using to pay themselves outrageously, pay high dividends to share holders and cover operating costs as they went.
That leverage still has every dime and dollar of future earnings tied up but the market base for their consumer-driven economic standing no longer exists because huge numbers of our population are out of work, their houses aren’t sellable at any increased but rather sit at a decreased price, their stock values and privately held portfolios are nearly worthless.
Bush Seeks to Allay Fears Bush seeks to explain US bailout plan to world leaders, seeking to allay fears, build support
By TERENCE HUNT AP White House Correspondent
NEW YORK September 22, 2008 (AP)
The Associated Press
The White House calls the bailout plan progress, but stocks still slipped.
President Bush sought to assure anxious world leaders on Monday that the United States is taking “bold, aggressive, decisive action” to rescue the crisis-ridden economy with a $700 billion bailout package. “The whole world is watching to see if we can act quickly,” Bush said, prodding lawmakers in Washington to approve his plan.
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Proposed Guidance – Nontraditional Mortgage Products March 27, 2006 Page 5 of 10
The Agencies’ concerns about tighter underwriting standards for Interest Only and Option ARMs may be unwarranted. Our members report that borrowers with Interest Only and Option ARMs tend to have higher incomes and higher FICO scores than borrowers with traditional mortgages.
In May Zuckerman’s Boston Properties (nyse: BXP – news – people ) shelled out $2.8 billion (including debt) for the GM Building on Fifth Avenue and 59th Street–the most money ever spent on a single building. The deal included three additional office properties for a total of $4 billion. (Zuckerman holds a 60% share of the GM Building; Goldman Sachs (nyse: GS – news – people ) property fund U.S. Real Estate Opportunities I and the Dubai private equity firm Meraas Capital each own 20%.)
“It is the best single purchase that I’ve made since I’ve been in the business,” boasts Zuckerman, who’s been buying buildings since the 1960s. The 50-story, 2-million-square-foot GM Building defines a trophy property: It sits on Central Park’s southeast corner, and its tenants include a chic Apple (nasdaq: AAPL – news – people ) computer store, cosmetics giant Estée Lauder, Icahn Enterprises, Jana Partners and the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.
Since starting the real estate investment trust Boston Properties in 1970 with partner Edward Linde, Zuckerman has steered the company toward acquisitions of the country’s most iconic office buildings, including Citicorp Center, 399 Park Avenue, and Times Square Tower, which he built. It also owns Boston’s Prudential Center and the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco. We put Zuckerman’s net worth at $2.8 billion, some $1.2 billion of that in Boston Properties stock.
( . . . )
But the purchase comes as commercial real estate enters what could be a tough few years. Thousands of layoffs in the financial sector have softened demand for office space in Manhattan, and other tenants are cautious, given the economy’s dubious state. Notwithstanding, Boston Properties’ stock is up 9% since the GM purchase, perhaps reflecting confidence in Zuckerman’s timing. In 2006 and 2007 Boston Properties sold off $4.5 billion of real estate near the market’s peak, while the rest of the industry was on a buying binge.
“It turned out we sold at exactly the right time,” he says. “Some people, alas, bought at exactly the wrong time. One of them was Harry Macklowe, and we all know what happened.”
Indeed, the previous two owners of the GM Building came to grief. Conseco (nyse: CNOPRB – news – people ), an Indiana insurance company, along with the Trump Organization, bought the building in 1998 but got in over its head with leverage and went bankrupt in 2002. Macklowe, a longtime New York real estate mogul, bought it for $1.4 billion (including debt) in 2003 and surfaced on The Forbes 400 in 2007. Macklowe, too, was stretched too thin. He sold in distress and has, we estimate, suffered a more than $1 billion decline in his net worth.
Some of the older office tenants are paying only $84 per square foot. Zuckerman says he could get $175 today.
Though prime office plots are the meat of the GM Building, the 150,000 square feet of retail space may prove its most lucrative asset. The building’s ground floor boasts the toy haven FAO Schwarz and the glass-cubed Apple store.
Today the Apple store is one of the most productive big retail stores in the world, according to Haim Chera, chief investment officer of Crown Acquisitions, a real estate investment and development firm. He estimates its sales at $440 million a year, or $29,000 a square foot.
The GM Building’s ground floor retail space currently averages rents of $150 a square foot. Zuckerman predicts he could get ten times that if he were signing a lease today. Other recently acquired retail spaces in the area have rented for upwards of $2,500 per square foot. And with GM set to vacate its remaining three floors there in 2009 (to decamp to Boston Properties’ Citicorp Center), Zuckerman will soon be able to offer up naming rights to the building.
Steve Forbes 10.06.08, 10:00 AM ET – (October 6, 2008)
Steve Forbes Monologue [00:09-02:41]
It’s a pleasure and privilege to introduce you to our featured guest, Mort Zuckerman. Mort is the chairman of Boston Properties (nyse: BXP – news – people ), the publisher and editor of U.S. News and World Report and publisher of the New York Daily News.
He’ll tell us how he’s guiding his businesses through the financial crisis, what the government should do to get us out of this mess.
But first,
Even the Great Depression wasn’t quite like this. Lehman Brothers, AIG (nyse: AIG – news – people ), Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual (nyse: WM – news – people ) and Wachovia (nyse: WB – news – people ) are all gone, each with their own tale to tell. These firms all took on so much debt and had so many bad assets because of the easy money policy of the Federal Reserve.
Chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke created this massive liquidity and we’re all paying for it. Now we seek solutions.
The federal government can turn things around, but it will have to swallow some pride first. First, the Securities and Exchange Commission should reverse its foolish decision to throw out the uptick rule in short-selling. The rule required short positions to be established only when a stock has risen. Reinstating it would put a speed bump in front of the short-selling stampede.
Also, the SEC should enforce another rule: no naked short-selling. That is, you have to own or borrow shares in a firm before you can short it. Each violation should result in big fines. This would put a mountain in front of the shorts.
( . . . – about gold to the dollar )
We could weather this system by taking a page from the past. Twenty years ago, during the savings and loan crisis, the government created the Resolution Trust Corporation as a dumping ground for bad assets. Today’s bad assets could be disposed of in a similar fashion. There’s no need to panic when you know what’s worked before.
Washington needs to bring these exotic instruments in from the cold. One way is by creating new exchanges for them. This would standardize and bring transparency to a perplexing, opaque market. (cdo, cds, mbs, etc.)
Mort Zuckerman: “We still don’t know where the bottom is”
By Cernig Sunday Sep 07, 2008 5:00pm
Financial expert Zuckerman appeared on Morning Joe to talk about the Federal bailout of Fannie and Freddie Mac – a move that he estimates will cost the taxpayer upwards of $500 billion added to an already record federal debt. The panicked looks on the faces of the hosts as he laid out just how bad it could be were the most vocal commentary though. Zuckerman says that Fannie and Freddie are “too big to fail” because their paper is held by financial institutions worldwide and if they fell then the world economy would plummet like a stone in a “systemic crisis”.
But he also says that “this is not the end of the real problem”, which is $5 trillion plus in mortgage loans with record foreclosures and falling house prices. In other words, America’s piggy bank is broken. Zuckerman says that no-one should think the bailout is the end of the story: “this problem is still not measurable, we still don’t know where the bottom is,” and that the only way out in the long term is to “force savings upon the American people, and that’s called taxes.”
Placing a big bet on the future of the newspaper business, Cablevision announced a deal Monday to buy Long Island’s Newsday for $650 million from Tribune.
*
Rupert Murdoch withdraws bid for Newsday
Posted on 05-10-2008
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is withdrawing its $580 million bid for Tribune Co’s Newsday newspaper, a spokesman for the company said Saturday, leaving cable television operator Cablevision as the likely winner of the Long Island daily.
You can look up every single contributor of over $200 on this site – or you used to could do that anyway. Along with totals from any specific zipcode, this shows what a number of celebrities and well-known companies, industries and newsmakers have contributed and to whom. On the list from 2008, included Halliburton and Rush Limbaugh among the celebrities’ contributions available.
- cricketdiane, 05-21/22-10
***
A four-year long study of relations between America and China was conducted by the Council of Foreign Relations between 1964 and 1968. One study published in 1966 concluded that American citizens were more open to talks with China than their elected leaders. Kissinger had continued to publish in Foreign Affairs and was appointed by President Nixon to serve as National Security Adviser in 1969. In 1971, he embarked on a secret trip to Beijing to broach talks with Chinese leaders. Nixon went to China in 1972, and diplomatic relations were completely normalized by President Carter’s Secretary of State, another Council member, Cyrus Vance.[21]
In November 1979, while chairman of the CFR, David Rockefeller became embroiled in an international incident when he and Henry Kissinger, along with John J. McCloy and Rockefeller aides, persuaded President Jimmy Carter through the State Department to admit the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, into the US for hospital treatment for lymphoma. This action directly precipitated what is known as the Iran hostage crisis and placed Rockefeller under intense media scrutiny (particularly from The New York Times) for the first time in his public life.[22]
**
Members
Board of directors
OFFICE NAME
Co-Chairman of the Board Carla Anderson Hills
Co-Chairman of the Board Robert Rubin
Vice Chairman Richard E. Salomon
President Richard N. Haass
Board of Directors
Director Peter Ackerman
Director Fouad Ajami
Director Madeleine Albright
Director Charlene Barshefsky
Director Henry Bienen
Director Stephen W. Bosworth
Director Tom Brokaw
Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell
Director Frank J. Caufield
Director Kenneth Duberstein
Director Martin Feldstein
Director Richard N. Foster
Director Stephen Friedman
Director Ann M. Fudge
Director Helene D. Gayle
Director Maurice R. Greenberg
Director Richard Holbrooke
Director Karen Elliott House
Director Alberto Ibargüen
Director Henry Kravis
Director Jami Miscik
Director Michael H. Moskow
Director Joseph Nye
Director Ronald L. Olson
Director James W. Owen
Director Colin Powell
Director David Rubenstein
Director Anne-Marie Slaughter
Director Joan E. Spero
Director Vin Weber
Director Sherwin Noorian
Director Christine Todd Whitman
Director Fareed Zakaria
The Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations is composed in total of thirty-six officers. Peter G. Peterson and David Rockefeller are Directors Emeriti (Chairman Emeritus and Honorary Chairman, respectively). It also has an International Advisory Board consisting of thirty-five distinguished individuals from across the world.[2][25]
Corporate Members
* ABC News
* Alcoa
* American Express
* AIG
* Bank of America
* Bloomberg L.P.
* Boeing
* BP
* CA, Inc.
* Chevron
* Citigroup
* Coca-Cola
* De Beers
* Deutsche Bank
* Duke Energy
* DVS Group
* ExxonMobil
* FedEx
* Ford Motor
* General Electric
* GlaxoSmithKline
* Google
* Goldman Sachs
* Halliburton
* Heinz
* Hess
* IBM
* JPMorgan Chase
* Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
* Lehman Brothers
* Lockheed Martin
* MasterCard
* McGraw-Hill
* McKinsey
* Merck
* Merrill Lynch
* Morgan Stanley
* Motorola
* NASDAQ
* News Corp
* Nike
* PepsiCo
* Pfizer
* Shell Oil
* Sony Corporation of America
* Tata Group
* Time Warner
* Total S.A.
* Toyota Motor North America
* UBS
* United Technologies
* United States Chamber of Commerce
* U.S. Trust Corporation
* Verizon
* Visa[26]
Notable current council members
* Angelina Jolie (UN Goodwill Ambassador)[27]
Notable historical members
* Graham Allison
* Robert Orville Anderson
* Les Aspin
* J. Bowyer Bell[28]
* W. Michael Blumenthal
* Harold Brown
* Zbigniew Brzezinski
* William P. Bundy
* George H. W. Bush
* Dick Cheney
* William S. Cohen
* Warren Christopher
* E. Gerald Corrigan
* William J. Crowe
* Kenneth W. Dam
* John W. Davis
* Norman Davis
* C. Douglas Dillon
* Thomas R. Donahue
* Lewis W. Douglas
* Elizabeth Drew
* Peggy Dulany
* Allen Welsh Dulles
* Dianne Feinstein
* Tom Foley
* Leslie H. Gelb
* David Gergen
* Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
* Maurice R. Greenberg
* Alan Greenspan
* Chuck Hagel
* Najeeb E. Halaby
* W. Averell Harriman
* Theodore M. Hesburgh
* Carla A. Hills
* Stanley Hoffmann
* Richard Holbrooke
* James R. Houghton
* Charlayne Hunter-Gault
* Bobby Ray Inman
* Otto H. Kahn
* Nicholas Katzenbach
* Lane Kirkland
* Jeane Kirkpatrick
* Henry Kissinger
* Walter Lippmann
* Winston Lord
* Charles Mathias, Jr.
* John McCain
* John J. McCloy
* William J. McDonough
* Donald F. McHenry
* George J. Mitchell
* Bill Moyers
* Peter George Peterson
* Frank Polk
* John S. Reed
* Elliot L. Richardson
* Alice M. Rivlin
* David Rockefeller
* Jay Rockefeller
* Robert Roosa
* Elihu Root
* William D. Ruckelshaus
* Brent Scowcroft
* Donna E. Shalala
* George P. Shultz
* Theodore Sorensen
* George Soros
* Adlai E. Stevenson
* Strobe Talbott
* Peter Tarnoff
* Fred Thompson
* Garrick Utley
* Cyrus Vance
* Paul Volcker
* Paul M. Warburg
* Paul Warnke
* Clifton R. Wharton, Jr.
* Owen D. Young
* Robert Zoellick
Source: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996:Historical Roster of Directors and Officers[29]
List of chairmen and chairwomen
* Russell Cornell Leffingwell 1946-1953
* John J. McCloy 1953-1970
* David Rockefeller 1970-1985
* Peter George Peterson 1985-2007
* Carla A. Hills (co-chairman) 2007-
* Robert E. Rubin (co-chairman) 2007-
List of presidents
* John W. Davis 1921-1933
* George W. Wickersham 1933-1936
* Norman Davis 1936-1944
* Russell Cornell Leffingwell 1944-1946
* Allen Welsh Dulles 1946-1950
* Henry Merritt Wriston 1951-1964
* Grayson L. Kirk 1964-1971
* Bayless Manning 1971-1977
* Winston Lord 1977-1985
* John Temple Swing 1985-1986 (Pro tempore)
* Peter Tarnoff 1986-1993
* Alton Frye 1993
* Leslie Gelb 1993-2003
* Richard N. Haass 2003-
Source:The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996: Historical Roster of Directors and Officers[30]
Controversy
The Council has been the subject of conspiracy theories, partly due to the number of high-ranking government officials in its membership, its secrecy clauses, and the large number of aspects of American foreign policy that its members have been involved with, beginning with Wilson’s Fourteen Points. The John Birch Society believes that the CFR plans a one-world government.[31] Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech was the first in which he suggested a worldwide security organization to prevent future world wars.[32]
For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.
—David Rockefeller, “Memoirs” autobiography (2002, Random House publishers), page 405
Historian Carroll Quigley included the CFR in his discussion of the Anglo-American Establishment’s efforts to shape international developments during the 20th century. His book “Tragedy and Hope” was cited by conspiracy theorists as showing that the CFR was engaged in a conspiracy against American interests, though Quigley himself denied this.[33]
Assistant Secretary of Commerce David Bohigian says that there is no truth to the rumors.[34] Senator Kit Bond, who is a member of committees that would have to authorize funding for a NAFTA superhighway, has said that there are no plans for a North American Union and the theories are not valid.[35] However, Rep. Ron Paul has said that Congress has provided “small amounts” of money to study the feasibility of such a highway. Paul also suggested that because the funding constituted “just one item in an enormous transportation appropriations bill… most members of Congress were not aware of it.”[36] Rep. Virgil Goode introduced a resolution in September 2006, with 21 co-sponsors, to prohibit the building of a NAFTA superhighway and an eventual North American Union with Canada and Mexico. The resolution remains in committee.[37]
In 2005, CFR task force co-chairman Robert Pastor testified in Congress in front of the Foreign Relations Committee: “The best way to secure the United States today is not at our two borders with Mexico and Canada, but at the borders of North America as a whole.”[38]
The CFR task force he headed called for one border around North America, freer travel within it, and cooperation among Canadian, Mexican and American military forces and law enforcement for greater security. It called for full mobility of labor among the three countries within five years, similar to the European Union.[2] He also appeared at a CFR forum called “The Future of North American Integration in the Wake of the Terrorist Attacks” on October 17, 2001, discussing the prospect of North American integration in the wake of the September 11 attacks.[39] Conservative commentator Phyllis Schlafly wrote of the 2005 report, “This CFR document, called ‘Building a North American Community,’ asserts that George W. Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin ‘committed their governments’ to this goal when they met at Bush’s ranch and at Waco, Texas on March 23, 2005. The three adopted the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America and assigned ‘working groups’ to fill in the details.”[40]
The document advocated allowing companies to recruit workers from anywhere within North America and called for large loans and aid to Mexico from the US. It called for a court system for North American dispute resolution and said that illegal aliens should be allowed into the United States Social Security system through the Social Security Totalization Agreement. The report called for a fund to be created by the US to allow 60,000 Mexican students to attend US colleges. The report says the plan can be carried out within five years. Other members of the task force included former Massachusetts governor William Weld and immigration chief for President Clinton, Doris Meissner.
Pastor wrote in Foreign Affairs:
“The U.S., Mexican, and Canadian governments remain zealous defenders of an outdated conception of sovereignty even though their citizens are ready for a new approach. Each nation’s leadership has stressed differences rather than common interests. North America needs leaders who can articulate and pursue a broader vision… Countries are benefited when they changed these [national sovereignty] policies, and evidence suggests that North Americans are ready for a new relationship that renders this old definition of sovereignty obsolete.”[41]
Pastor appeared at a CFR-sponsored symposium at Arizona State University on issues that would face the next president.[42]
Publications by the Council on Foreign Relations
* Council on Foreign Relations in association with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales. Building a North American Community: Report of an Independent Task Force. Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, 2005. (Task Force Observers: Sam Boutziouvis, Canadian Council of Chief Executives; Daniel Gerstein, Council on Foreign Relations; Lawrence Spinetta, Council on Foreign Relations; David Stewart-Patterson, Canadian Council of Chief Executives; multiple authors.)
(Among the Miscellaneous articles – )
* Kassenaar, Lisa. “Wall Street’s New Prize: Park Avenue Club House With World View“.[3] Bloomberg December 15, 2005. [Profile of the Council and its new members.]
* Sanger, David E. “Iran’s Leader Relishes 2nd Chance to Make Waves“. The New York Times September 21, 2006, Foreign Desk: A1, col. 2 (Late ed.-Final). Accessed February 23, 2007. (TimesSelect subscription access).
(“Over the objections of the administration and Jewish groups that boycotted the event, Mr. Ahmadinejad, the man who has become the defiant face of Iran, squared off with the nation’s foreign policy establishment, parrying questions for an hour and three-quarters with two dozen members of the Council on Foreign Relations, then ending the evening by asking whether they were simply shills for the Bush administration.”)
The other day when I was in the timeline site for 1967, I noticed that the point at which Mexico’s border became a place of American corporate interests opening plants for the use of Mexican national labor forces to work manufacturing American corporate products was actually in 1967 – not at some point thereafter as is commonly believed.
Personally, I don’t think about the Council on Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission, The Bilderburg Group and others of a similar nature in the same terms that some people consider them. What I see is that they offer an intimate and personal opportunity for world leaders, lobbyists, companies and those who would exert influence to change the opinion of a few and have far-reaching ripples of influence.
That seems like a vulnerability as noted with the event concerning Mr. Ahmadinejad in 2007 and the Council on Foreign Relations members that hosted him. In such an intimate opportunity to individually and collectively influence those with the power to affect change in foreign and business policy comes an inherent risk of a rarefied air isolated from common sense and an intellectual inbreeding that simply starts to convince itself in its own quarters by common agreement that some things are for the best which may not be. That’s what I see.
Another thing I see generally about the Council, the Trilateral Commission, the World Economic Forum – also, and the Gilded Bilderburg meetings – is that they have, over the years become quite a bit more of a social function with multiple dinners, open bars, socials of various types, parties, golfing or skiing, afternoon social activities, many of which are sponsored by commercial interests with the intention of influencing and promoting their own agenda.
These fortune few of power and decision-making positions that influence huge long-ranging decisions are given many, many special reports about things that go unread, unused, missed, misunderstood and misinterpreted as they are thrown over into a pile while everyone dresses and gathers to party. If that doesn’t make any sense, think about it a minute – what good is a technical report about the economic foundations of the country in comparison to enjoying the social affairs of that environment? Even after coming back from such events, most of the decision-makers have thrown those same critical reports into a stack, into a pile, into a drawer, into a file, into the hands of a secretary to file, or otherwise disregarded them. But, they will remember what the commercial sponsors said about some bill or idea or position.
That’s what I’ve noted.
- cricketdiane, 05-21/22-10
***
William Bundy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Putnam “Bill” Bundy (September 24, 1917 – October 6, 2000) was a member of the CIA and foreign affairs advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He had a key role in planning the Vietnam War. After leaving government service he became a historian.
Raised in Boston, Massachusetts he came from a family long involved in politics. His father, Harvey Hollister Bundy, was a diplomat who helped implement the Marshall Plan. Bill was raised in a highly accomplished, highly intellectual family. After attending the Groton School and Yale University (where he was one of the first presidents of the Yale Political Union), he entered Harvard Law School but left to join the Army Signal Corps during World War II. During this time he worked at Bletchley Park in Britain as part of the top secret ULTRA operation to break Nazi codes.
Positions held
During the 1950s he worked as an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. During the Kennedy years he was deputy to Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs Paul Nitze and worked for the Secretary of the Navy. During much of the LBJ era he was an Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs. After resigning from the executive branch in 1969 he taught at MIT and then edited the influential journal of the Council on Foreign Relations (of which he was a member), Foreign Affairs, from 1972 to 1984, after declining the offer of the Council’s chairman, David Rockefeller, to be the Council’s president.
His brother, McGeorge Bundy, was also an integral part of the both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Bill was married to Mary Acheson, the daughter of Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Bill and Mary had three children, Michael, Christopher, and Carol.
Bill was somewhat to the left of his brother politically, and was a spirited opponent of Joseph McCarthy. He was also considered one of the administration’s more dovish members on Vietnam.
He left politics in 1969 to teach at MIT. In 1972 he moved to Princeton University where he remained for the rest of his life. His most noted work is Tangled Web which explores the foreign policy of the Nixon administration.
William Bundy’s papers are held by the Seeley G. Mudd Library at Princeton University, where he was a professor until his death at age 83.
A little more of interest about the Council on Foreign Relations and similar memberships –
Seven American presidents have addressed the Council, two while still in office – Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.[9] – Council on Foreign Relations
Journalist Joseph Kraft, a former member of both the CFR and the Trilateral Commission, said the Council “comes close to being an organ of what C. Wright Mills has called the Power Elite – a group of men, similar in interest and outlook, shaping events from invulnerable positions behind the scenes.”[10]
***
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith resigned in 1970, objecting to the Council’s policy of allowing government officials to conduct twice-a-year off-the-record briefings with business officials in its Corporation Service.[11]
***
The Americans who subsequently returned from the conference became drawn to a discreet club of New York financiers and international lawyers who had organized previously in June 1918 and was headed by Elihu Root, J. P. Morgan’s lawyer;[10] this select group called itself the Council on Foreign Relations.[14] They joined this group and the Council was formally established in New York on July 29, 1921, with 108 founding members, including Elihu Root as a leading member, geographer Isaiah Bowman as a founding Director, and John W. Davis, the chief counsel for J. P. Morgan & Co. and former Solicitor General for President Wilson,[10] as its founding president. Davis was to become Democratic presidential candidate in 1924.
Other members included John Foster Dulles, Herbert H. Lehman, Henry L. Stimson, Averell Harriman, the Rockefeller family’s public relations expert, Ivy Lee,[15] and Paul M. Warburg and Otto Kahn of the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb.[10]
(also from wikipedia entry – Council on Foreign Relations)
I had a google search open here and wanted to grab one thing out of the list I had seen then I’ll go back to the Sutherland Muckety Map and open the link to the other associations he has – including the Goldman Sachs International – and the World Economic Forum, World Trade Organization ones -
_ although what it tells me is that I need to go over to the European Union site and access some information about the Trilateral Commissions last meetings and their other influence lately -
From that page – they have met since the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster was looming and since the Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s and financial reform investigations in the Senate and Congressional Committees have happened.
Hmmm….
- cricketdiane, 05-20-10 (these notes about the Trilateral Commission meeting recently were taken from my earlier post about the oil spill, BP and its decision-makers on 05-20-10, I think it was.)
Trilateral Commission meet in Dublin for the first time
As the Trilateral Commission meet in Ireland this weekend political campaigners have made a call on for the media report on the issue and let us the public know what is going on there – and most of all who is attending this behind closed doors meeting which is being kept secret and protected at taxpayers expense.
The public in Ireland need to know about the Trilaterial Commission Meeting in Ireland. This is a public interest story that need exposure somewhere.
Trilateral Commission AGM in Ireland
Existentialist 2010-05-06 19:49 Trilateral Commission AGM in Dublin from 7th – 9th May 2010
This gathering of about 400 merits a demo because it will consist of some of the business leaders and academic friends of big business and bankers who are spreading financial meltdown to Europe, and most likely to Ireland. It hosts people like war criminal Henry Kissinger. Does anyone know where they are likely to meet in Dublin?
John Jay McCloy (March 31, 1895, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – March 11, 1989, Stamford, Connecticut) was a lawyer and banker who later became a prominent United States presidential advisor. He was known for his opposition to the World War II atomic bombing of Japan, his refusal to endorse compensation to the 110,000 Japanese-Americans who were held in internment camps within the USA, and his refusal as Assistant Secretary of War to endorse USAAF bombing raids on the rail approaches to Auschwitz concentration camp that would have saved countless Nazi Holocaust victims.
McCloy was educated at Peddie School, New Jersey, and Amherst College. He enrolled in Harvard Law School in 1916, but would have his education interrupted by World War I. He was commissioned into the U.S. army as a Second Lieutenant in 1917, being promoted to Captain in 1918. He served with the American Expeditionary Force in France in 1918 and 1919. He received his LL.B. from Harvard in 1921.[1]
He was a legal counselor to the major German chemical combine I. G. Farben, and was the Assistant Secretary of War from 1941 to 1945, during which he was noted for opposing the nuclear bombing of Japan. [2] McCloy was notably supportive of the Third Reich at least until 1939 and was photographed sitting with Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
During World War II, as Assistant Secretary of War, McCloy was a crucial voice in setting U.S. military priorities. The War Department was petitioned throughout late 1944 to help save Nazi prisoners by ordering the bombing of the railroad lines leading to Auschwitz and the gas chambers in the camp. McCloy responded that only heavy bombers would be able to reach the sites from England, and that those bombers would be too vulnerable and were needed elsewhere.
However, only a few months earlier, Allied forces had bombed industrial centers just a few kilometers away from the extermination camp, and would continue to do so, apparently even causing some damage to buildings in Auschwitz, while sustaining very low losses. Indeed, regular US bombing raids from Foggia, Italy to nearby strategic targets routinely crossed right over Auschwitz en route. [3] On another occasion, when replying to another appeal to bomb the gas chambers, McCloy claimed that the final decision on the selection of bombing targets, including those attacked by American planes, lay with the British alone. This was an incorrect claim.
According to Michael Beschloss, in an interview three years before the latter’s death (in 1986) with Henry Morgenthau, III, McCloy claimed that the decision not to bomb Auschwitz was President Roosevelt’s and that he was merely fronting for him. [4] This appears possible, given Roosevelt’s generally unsympathetic response to the Holocaust, but is otherwise unsupported.
Further, McCloy also alleged to Morgenthau that Roosevelt refused to approve the Auschwitz rail bombing because he would then be accused of also killing Auschwitz prisoners. As they were about to be gassed en masse anyway, this allegation by McCloy is highly suspect and self-serving. In the early 1970s, McCloy claimed that he himself “could no more order a bombing attack on Auschwitz than order a raid on Berlin.” [5]
However, while in the field with General Jacob L. Devers, advancing eastward through Germany in early 1945, a “suggestion” from McCloy resulted in Devers’ Army bypassing and sparing the historic Romantic Road town of Rothenberg o.d. Tauber. For his action, McCloy was later made an honorary citizen of the town.[6] These and other pro-German actions by McCloy resulted in significant protests much later, when McCloy was announcing the Volkswagen Scholarship at Harvard University in 1983.
From March 1947 to June 1949, McCloy was president of the World Bank. In 1949 he replaced Lucius D. Clay who was the Military Governor for the U.S. Zone in Germany as the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany and held this position until 1952, during which time he oversaw the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany. At his direction, a campaign of wholesale pardoning and commutation of sentences of Nazi criminals took place, including those of the prominent industrialists Friedrich Flick and Alfried Krupp. McCloy also pardoned Ernst von Weizsäcker. (In 1978 Ernst Weizsacker’s son German President Richard von Weizsäcker conferred honorary German Citizenship on McCloy). Some of the less notable figures were retried and convicted in the newly independent West Germany. His successor as High Commissioner was James B. Conant; the office was terminated in 1955.
Following this, he served as chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank from 1953 to 1960, and as chairman of the Ford Foundation from 1958 to 1965; he was also a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1946 to 1949, and then again from 1953 to 1958, before he took up the position at Ford.
From 1954 to 1970, he was chairman of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations in New York, to be succeeded by David Rockefeller, who had worked closely with him at the Chase Bank. McCloy had a long association with the Rockefeller family, going back to his early Harvard days when he taught the young Rockefeller brothers how to sail. He was also a member of the Draper Committee, formed in 1958 by Eisenhower.
He later served as advisor to John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan, and was the primary negotiator on the Presidential Disarmament Committee. In 1963, he was awarded the prestigious Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy at West Point for his service to the country.
He was selected by Johnson to serve on the Warren Commission in 1963. Notably, he was initially sceptical of the lone gunman theory, but a trip to Dallas with Allen Dulles, an old friend also serving on the Commission, in the spring of 1964 to visit the scene of the assassination convinced him of the case against Oswald. The only prominent lawyer among the seven commissioners, he brokered the final consensus — avoiding a minority dissenting report — and the crucial wording of the primary conclusion of the final report. He stated that any possible evidence of a conspiracy was “beyond the reach” of all of America’s investigatory agencies — principally the FBI and the CIA — as well as the Commission itself.
From 1966 to 1968 he was Honorary Chairman of the Paris-based Atlantic Institute.[7]
Law Firm Background
Originally a partner of the Cravath firm in New York, after the war McCloy became a name partner in the Rockefeller-associated prominent New York law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. In this capacity he acted for the “Seven Sisters”, the leading multinational oil companies, including Exxon, in their initial confrontations with the nationalisation movement in Libya—as well as negotiations with Saudi Arabia and OPEC. Because of his stature in the legal world and his long association with the Rockefellers, and as a presidential adviser, he was sometimes referred to as the “Chairman of the American Establishment”.
Further reading
* The Chairman: John J. McCloy – The Making of the American Establishment, Kai Bird, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
* The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made: Acheson, Bohlen, Harriman, Kennan, Lovett, and McCloy, Walter Isaacson & Evan Thomas, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986.
* The Chase: The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., 1945-85, John Donald Wilson, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1986.
* Memoirs, David Rockefeller, New York: Random House, 2002.
3. ^ Dino Brugioni and Robert Poirier, CIA photo analysts, whose revelatory 1944 file photos of Auschwitz taken from US bombers passing directly overhead, and 1978 refutation of John McCloy’s lies about bombing “feasibility”, were printed in THE NEW YORK TIMES and elsewhere in 1979. President Jimmy Carter personally directed the release of these photos and their 1978 interpretation.
4. ^ Beschloss
5. ^ Letter from John J. McCloy to Donald L. Pevsner, following Pevsner’s citing to McCloy of the damning allegations in “While Six Million Died”, by Arthur D. Morse (1967).
6. ^ “The Arms of Krupp”, by William Manchester, 1968.
7. ^ (2007) Who Was Who. A&C Black.
See also
* Chase Manhattan Bank
* Council on Foreign Relations
* David Rockefeller
* Rockefeller family
* Japanese American internment
* Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy
* Warren Commission
* World Bank
Presidents of the World Bank
Eugene Meyer * John J. McCloy * Eugene R. Black, Sr. * George David Woods * Robert McNamara * Alden W. Clausen * Barber Conable * Lewis Thompson Preston * James Wolfensohn * Paul Wolfowitz * Robert Zoellick
Members of the Warren Commission
Earl Warren (Chairman)
Hale Boggs • John Cooper • Allen Dulles • Gerald Ford • John McCloy • Richard Russell
Allen Welsh Dulles (April 7, 1893 – January 29, 1969) was the first civilian and the longest serving (1953-1961) Director of Central Intelligence (de-facto head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) and a member of the Warren Commission. Between stints of government service, Dulles was a corporate lawyer and partner at Sullivan & Cromwell.
* 1 Early life and family
* 2 Background in intelligence
* 3 CIA career
* 4 Later life
* 5 “Dulles’ Plan”
Allen Dulles was born on April 7, 1893, in Watertown, New York, and grew up in a family where public service was valued and world affairs were a common topic of discussion. Dulles was one of five children born to Presbyterian minister Allen Macy Dulles and his wife Edith (Foster).
He was the younger brother of John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State and Chairman and Senior Partner of Sullivan & Cromwell, and the grandson of John W. Foster, another U.S. Secretary of State and brother to diplomat Eleanor Lansing Dulles.
His uncle (by marriage) Robert Lansing also was a U.S. Secretary of State.[1]
His nephew, Avery Dulles, is a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and a Jesuit priest and noted theologian who teaches and resides at Fordham University in The Bronx, New York.
He graduated from Princeton University, and in 1916 entered the diplomatic service.
Dulles was serving in Switzerland and was responsible for reviewing and rejecting Lenin’s application for a visa to the United States.
In 1920 he married Clover Todd, daughter of a Columbia University professor; their only son, Allen Macy Dulles, Jr., was wounded and permanently disabled in the Korean War when a mortar fragment penetrated his brain.
In 1926 he earned a law degree from George Washington University and took a job at the New York firm where his brother, John Foster Dulles, was a partner.
Background in intelligence
Dulles was appointed by William J. Donovan to become head of operations in New York for the Coordinator of Information (COI), which was set up in Room 3603 of Rockefeller Center, taking over offices staffed by Britain’s MI6. The COI was the precursor to the Office of Strategic Services, renamed in 1942.
During the 1930s Allen Dulles gained much experience in Germany. An early foe of Adolf Hitler, Dulles was transferred from Britain to Berne, Switzerland for the rest of World War II, and notably was heavily involved in the controversial and secret Operation Sunrise. He is featured in the classic Soviet TV series Seventeen Moments of Spring for his role in that operation. Dulles became the station chief in Berne, Switzerland, for the newly formed Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the CIA), a logical one. Dulles supplied his government with much sensitive information about Nazi Germany.
Dulles worked on intelligence regarding German plans and activities. Dulles established wide contacts with German émigrés, resistance figures, and anti-Nazi intelligence officers (who linked him, through Hans Bernd Gisevius, to the tiny but daring opposition to Hitler in Germany itself). Although Washington barred Dulles from making firm commitments to the plotters of the 20 July 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler, the conspirators nonetheless gave him reports on developments in Germany, including sketchy but accurate warnings of plans for Hitler’s V-1 and V-2 missiles.
Dulles’s career was jump-started by the information provided by Fritz Kolbe, a German diplomat and a foe of the Nazis. Kolbe supplied secret documents regarding active German spies and plans regarding the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter. In 1945, he played a central role in negotiations leading to the unconditional capitulation of German troops in Italy.
After the war in Europe, Dulles served for six months as the OSS Berlin station chief. In 1947, Congress created the Central Intelligence Agency. Dulles was closely involved with its development. His translator at this time was Henry Kissinger, who worked for Army Intelligence.
Dulles’ CIA Operation Paperclip assimilated Nazi scientists into the American establishment by obscuring their histories and short circuiting efforts to bring their true stories to light. The project was led by officers in the United States Army. Although the program officially ended in September 1947, those officers and others carried out a conspiracy until the mid-fifties that bypassed both law and presidential directive to keep Paperclip going. Neither Presidents Truman nor Eisenhower were informed that their instructions were ignored.
In the 1948 Presidential election, Allen Dulles was Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey’s chief advisor. The Dulles brothers and James Forrestal helped form the Office of Policy Coordination. Under President Eisenhower, Dulles became CIA director.
CIA career
In 1953, Dulles became the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence, which had been formed in 1947 as part of the National Security Act; earlier directors had been military officers. The Agency’s covert operations were an important part of the Eisenhower administration’s new Cold War national security policy known as the “New Look”.
Under Dulles’s direction, the CIA created MK-Ultra, a top secret mind control research project which was managed by Sidney Gottlieb. Dulles also personally oversaw Operation Mockingbird, a program which influenced American media companies as part of the “New Look”.
University Distinguished Service Professor and former Dean, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; former Chair, National Intelligence Council and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs
European Chairman: PETER SUTHERLAND
Chairman, BP p.l.c., London; Chairman, Goldman Sachs International; Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Migrations; former Director General, GATT/WTO, Geneva; former Member of the European Commission; former Attorney General of Ireland
Pacific Asian Chairman: YOTARO KOBAYASHI
Chief Corporate Advisor, Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd., Tokyo
North American Deputy Chairman: ALLAN E. GOTLIEB
Senior Adviser, Bennett Jones LLP, Toronto, ON; Chairman, Sotheby’s, Canada; former Canadian Ambassador to the United States
Former North American Chairmen:
THOMAS S. FOLEY (2001-2008)
PAUL A. VOLCKER (1991-2001) Honorary North American Chairman
DAVID ROCKEFELLER (1977-91) Founder and Honorary North American Chairman
GERARD C. SMITH (1973-77)
Former European Chairmen:
OTTO GRAF LAMBSDORFF (1992-2001) Honorary European Chairman
GEORGES BERTHOIN (1976-92) Honorary European Chairman
(my note – all of these are coming from my files – I’m working on it, cricketdiane)
***
(more about Allen Dulles – and our national intelligence groups)
In the early 1950s the U.S. Air Force conducted a competition for a new photo reconnaissance aircraft. Lockheed Aircraft Corporation’s Skunk Works submitted a design number called the CL-282, which married sailplane-like wings to the body of a supersonic interceptor. This aircraft was rejected by the Air Force, but several of the civilians on the review board took notice, and Edwin Land presented a proposal for the aircraft to Dulles. The aircraft became what is known as the U-2 spy plane, and it was initially operated by CIA pilots. Its introduction into operational service in 1957 greatly enhanced the CIA’s ability to monitor Soviet activity through overhead photo surveillance. Ironically, the aircraft eventually entered service with the Air force, who still operate it today.
At the direction of President Eisenhower, Dulles established Operation 40, comprised of 40 officials and agents whose primary area of operations was the Caribbean region, including Cuba. On 4 March, 1960, La Coubre, a ship flying a Belgian flag, exploded in Havana Bay. It was loaded with arms and ammunition destined for the armed forces of the government of Fidel Castro. The explosion killed 75 people and over 200 were injured. Fabian Escalante, an officer of the Department of State Security (G-2), later claimed that this was the first successful act carried out by Operation 40.
Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has died.
McNamara, 93, died at home in his sleep Monday morning, his wife Diana told The Associated Press. She said he had been in failing health for some time.
Known as a policymaker with a fixation for statistical analysis, McNamara was president of the Ford Motor Co. when President John F. Kennedy asked him to head the Pentagon in 1961. (responsible for the Edsel debacle, my note)
McNamara worked for seven years as the defense secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, longer than any other person in that post. He headed the war department during the build-up of forces in Vietnam.
He is considered the architect of the concept of “mutual assured destruction,” a key feature of the nuclear arms race during the Cold War.
****
No bed of roses for Le Roy
The new UN peacekeeping chief has a tough job ahead: to find an effective role for the blue helmets in a multipolar world
o guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 August 2008 20.00 BST
Next Monday, the UN’s new peacekeeping chief gets to work. Alain Le Roy, a French diplomat with experience in Africa and the Balkans, will take charge of 90,000 troops and police. No country save the US has as many personnel deployed abroad.
Le Roy will not have much time to settle in. If the number of UN peacekeepers worldwide is at a record high – almost seven times the figure for 2000 – the number of problems facing them is also peaking.
Some are practical, like a perennial shortage of helicopters. Worse is the fear that the international consensus on the UN’s role is eroding. The boom in peacekeeping may end.
From Darfur to Georgia, UN missions have been in well-publicized trouble this summer. Like Nato in Afghanistan, the UN increasingly has to operate in places where there is little peace to keep. But its lack of resources make struggling Nato look over-equipped.
In New York, a sense of crisis prevails. Le Roy’s predecessor, the intellectual and respected Jean-Marie Guéhenno, concluded that peacekeeping is at its “outer limits”.
The first task for Le Roy is to reassure his staff – and UN members that are funding operations to the tune of over $7bn a year – that peacekeeping can survive this strain.
He will need to lobby hard for extra money and equipment to reinforce his biggest missions. He is well-placed to do so: when Guéhenno announced his retirement earlier this year, Le Roy was named by many UN insiders as their preferred replacement.
He can build on a series of management reforms introduced by Guéhenno and Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general. These have left the department of peacekeeping operations (DPKO) considerably more efficient than most parts of the doddering UN bureaucracy.
And Le Roy will know that the blue helmets enjoy significant public support, for the first time since Rwanda and Bosnia. UN staffers sometimes raise their eyebrows at celebrity backing from George Clooney and co, but it has turned their reputation around.
Even the greatest celebrity of the moment recognises the dilemmas of peacekeeping. In a 2007 Foreign Affairs article, Barack Obama worried that the UN is now “overextended”.
Western governments have been falling over each other to launch initiatives to boost UN operations. With luck, it should be possible to turn some of this goodwill into resources in the short term. But UN peacekeeping faces much longer-term strategic challenges too.
These aren’t about management. They involve adapting to a less American, more multipolar world. The current scale of UN peacekeeping is a product of the last, all-too-American decade. The Bush administration favoured hefty UN missions to stabilise countries where it did not want to get bogged down itself: Haiti, Liberia, Darfur.
UN officials, shaken by their impotence over Iraq, have often felt obliged to look “relevant” elsewhere. The result has been a trend towards bigger peace operations with ever-more ambitious, perhaps unrealistic, mandates to rebuild these shattered states.
In private, many of the organisation’s experts worry that they cannot fulfil these mandates – almost all would prefer less expansive alternatives with realistic targets.
But the greatest obstacle to effective peace operations is that tensions between the US and its rivals can reduce the UN to paralysis. China has ensured that the UN mission in Darfur cannot push back much (if at all) against pressure from the Sudanese government.
Throughout 2008, Russia has stymied efforts to transfer UN peacekeeping responsibilities to the EU in Kosovo. UN observers in Georgia evacuated as Russian troops advanced this month.
If great power tensions increase further, the chances for more UN missions can only decrease. That would be tragic for the vulnerable who rely on the UN from Port-au-Prince to Kinshasa. It might be dangerous for the great powers too. Without the UN to provide basic security, the odds of small flare-ups escalating into big crises will grow.
So as Alain Le Roy looks beyond his first round of crises, he may decide that his overarching strategic task is to build up a minimal consensus between the US, its allies and its rivals about what UN peacekeeping is for in an age of tensions between them.
It’s not the sort of thing that wins much celebrity love. But it is the sort of thing that is good for international peace and security. That’s what the UN was founded to preserve.
Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron (14 March 1905 – 17 October 1983) was a French philosopher, sociologist and political scientist, well known to the broad public for his skeptical analyses of the post-war vogue in France for leftist ideologies that largely took their inspiration from a Marxist tradition.
Background
Aron, the son of a Jewish lawyer, studied at the École Normale Supérieure where he met Jean-Paul Sartre (who became his friend and lifelong intellectual opponent). He took 1st place in the Agrégation of philosophy in 1928, the year Sartre failed the same exam. In 1930, he received a doctorate in the philosophy of history from the École Normale Supérieure. In 1939, when World War II began, he had been teaching social philosophy at the University of Toulouse for a few weeks; he left the University and joined the Armée de l’Air. When France was defeated, he left for London to join the Free French forces, and between 1940 and 1944 edited their newspaper, France Libre (Free France).
At the close of the war, he returned to Paris to teach sociology at the École Nationale d’Administration and at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (also known as “Sciences Po”), maintaining that the government of Vichy France and Marshal Philippe Pétain had chosen the lesser of two evils in collaborating with the Nazis during World War II. From 1955 to 1968, he taught at the Sorbonne, and after 1970 at the Collège de France.
A lifelong journalist, Aron in 1947 became an influential columnist for Le Figaro, a position he held for thirty years until he joined L’Express, where he wrote a political column up to his death.
Infused as he was with a liberal disposition, Aron’s views on multiple citizenship and dual nationality were pessimistic. In his 1974 article, “Is Multinational Citizenship Possible?” he clearly considered it an anachronism, totally incommensurate with the logic of the sovereign-state system. Aron argued that multiple citizenship could not break the indelible link between the individual citizen and his nation-state. Citizenship, according to Aron, was a special relation between the individual and the state; citizenship defined the state’s rule within a specific territory, and in turn the state determined who its citizens were and what rights and obligations bound citizens to the state.
Political commitment
When sojourning in Berlin, Aron saw Nazi book burnings and developed from that an aversion to totalitarian systems. In 1938, he participated in the Colloque Walter Lippmann ((French) Colloque Walter Lippmann) in Paris.
After the war, he opposed Jean-Paul Sartre and leftist ideologies, without also always backing Charles de Gaulle or other right-wing political movements.
See also
* Liberalism
* Contributions to liberal theory
* Liberalism and radicalism in France
Works
* La Sociologie allemande contemporaine, Paris: Alcan, 1935; German Sociology, London: Heinemann, 1957
* Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire. Essai sur les limites de l’objectivité historique, Paris: Gallimard, 1938; Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1948
* Essai sur la théorie de l’histoire dans l’Allemagne contemporaine. La philosophie critique de l’histoire, Paris: Vrin, 1938
* L’Homme contre les tyrans, New York, Editions de la Maison française, 1944
* De l’armistice à l’insurrection nationale, Paris: Gallimard, 1945
* L’Âge des empires et l’Avenir de la France, Paris: Défense de la France, 1945
* Le Grand Schisme, Paris: Gallimard, 1948
* Les Guerres en chaîne, Paris: Gallimard, 1951
* La Coexistence pacifique. Essai d’analyse, Paris: Editions Monde nouveau, 1953 (under the pseudonym François Houtisse, with Boris Souvarine)
* L’Opium des intellectuels, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1955; The Opium of the Intellectuals, London: Secker & Warburg, 1957
* Polémiques, Paris: Gallimard, 1955
* La Tragédie algérienne, Paris: Plon, 1957
* Espoir et peur du siècle. Essais non partisans, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1957
* L’Algérie et la République, Paris: Plon, 1958
* La Société industrielle et la Guerre, suivi d’un Tableau de la diplomatie mondiale en 1958, Paris: Plon, 1959
* Immuable et changeante. De la IVe à la Ve République, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1959
* Dimensions de la conscience historique, Paris: Plon, 1961
* Paix et guerre entre les nations, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1962; Peace and War, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966
* Le Grand Débat. Initiation à la stratégie atomique, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1963
* Dix-huit leçons sur la société industrielle, Paris: Gallimard, 1963; Eighteen Lectures on Industrial Society, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967
* La Lutte des classes, Paris: Gallimard, 1964
* Essai sur les libertés, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1965
* Démocratie et totalitarisme, 1965
* Trois essais sur l’âge industriel, Paris: Plon, 1966
* Les Étapes de la pensée sociologique, Paris: Gallimard, 1967; Main Currents in Sociological Thought, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965
* De Gaulle, Israël et les Juifs, Paris: Plon, 1968
* La Révolution introuvable. Réflexions sur les événements de mai, Paris: Fayard, 1968
* Les Désillusions du progrès, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1969; Progress and Disillusion: The Dialectics of Modern Society, Pall Mall Press, 1968
* D’une sainte famille à l’autre. Essai sur le marxisme imaginaire, Paris: Gallimard, 1969
* De la condition historique du sociologue, Paris: Gallimard, 1971
* Études politiques, Paris, 1972
* République impériale. Les États-unis dans le monde (1945–1972), Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1973; The Imperial Republic: The United States and the World 1945-1973, Little Brown & Company 1974
* Histoire et dialectique de la violence, Paris: Gallimard, 1973; History and the Dialectic of Violence: Analysis of Sartre’s Critique de la raison dialectique, Oxford: Blackwell, 1979
* Penser la guerre, Clausewitz, Paris: Gallimard, 1976; Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, London: Routledge, 1983
* Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente, Paris: Laffont, 1977; In Defense of Decadent Europe, South Bend IN: Regnery, 1977
* with Andre Glucksman and Benny Levy. “Sartre’s Errors: A Discussion”. TELOS 44 (Summer 1980). New York: Telos Press
* Le Spectateur engagé, Paris: Julliard, 1981 (interviews)
* Mémoires, Paris: Julliard, 1983
* Les dernières années du siècle, Paris: Julliard, 1984
* Ueber Deutschland und den Nationalsozialismus. Fruehe politische Schriften 1930-1939, Joachim Stark, ed. and pref., Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1993
* Le Marxisme de Marx, Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 2002
* De Giscard à Mitterrand: 1977-1983 (editorials from L’Express), with preface by Jean-Claude Casanova, Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 2005
Other media
* Raymond Aron, spectateur engagé. Entretiens avec Raymond Aron. (Duration: 160 mins.), DVD, Éditions Montparnasse, 2005
Bibliography
* Launay, Stephen, La Pensée politique de Raymond Aron, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995
* Anderson, Brian C., Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the Political, Rowman & Littlefield, 1998
* Mahoney, Daniel and Bryan-Paul Frost (eds.), Political Reason in the Age of Ideology: Essays in Honor of Raymond Aron, New Brunswick/London: Transaction Publishers, 2006
* Stark, Joachim, Das unvollendete Abenteuer. Geschichte, Gesellschaft und Politik im Werk Raymond Arons, Wuerzburg: Koenigshausen und Neumann, 1986
* Stark, Joachim, Raymond Aron (1905-1983), in Dirk Kaesler, Klassiker der Soziologie, Vol.II: Von Talcott Parsons bis Anthony Giddens, Munich: Beck, 5th ed., 2007, 105-129
* Davis, Reed M. A Politics of Understanding: The International Thought of Raymond Aron. Baton Rouge, LA.:Louisiana State University Press ISBN 978-0-8071-3517-4
* Davis, Reed M. A Politics of Understanding: The International Thought of Raymond Aron. Baton Rouge LA.:Louisiana State University Press, 2009 ISBN 978-0-8071-3517-4
External links
* Profile page for Raymond Aron on the Find-A-Grave web site
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Aron”
Categories: 1905 births | 1983 deaths | 20th-century French philosophers | 20th-century philosophers | French agnostics | French sociologists | Collège de France faculty | French philosophers | French political scientists | French liberals | Erasmus Prize winners | Alumni of Sciences Po | Alumni of the École Normale Supérieure | Jewish philosophers | Jewish scientists | Jewish sociologists | French anti-communists | Scholars of Marxism | French Jews | French military personnel of World War II | Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) | French columnists
In oceanography, a sofar bomb (SOund Fixing And Ranging bomb) is a long-range position-fixing system that uses explosive sounds in the deep sound channel of the ocean, where the speed of sound is minimal. A position is determined from the differences in arrival times at a known geographic position of signals sent from elsewhere. The useful range from the signal sources to the monitor station can exceed 3,000 miles (4,800 km).
Dr. Maurice Ewing suggested putting small hollow metal spheres in pilots’ emergency kits, which implode when they sink to the sofar channel, acting as a secret homing beacon.
See also
Thermocline, a steep temperature gradient in a body of water such as a lake, marked by a layer above and below which the water is at different temperatures.
Most sonar systems are monostatic, in that the transmitter and receiver are in the same place. Bistatic sonar describes when the transmitter and receiver(s) are separated by a distance large enough to be comparable to the distance to the target.
In monostatic sonar, the first thing the receiver can hear is the sound of the transmitted ping. This sound level is very high, and it is impossible to detect the echo during the ping duration τ. That means targets are undetectable within the circle of Cτ/2 radius, where C is sound speed in water. This area is usually referred to as “dead zone”. If the sonar is close to the surface, bottom or both, (which may happen in shallow water), the dead zone may be greater than Cτ/2 due to a high level of reverberation.
In bistatic sonar, the travel distance from projector to target and from target to receiver is R = Rpt + Rtr . As the projector is separated from receiver by Rpr distance, first Rpr /C seconds after the ping starts, the receiver is just waiting. After that time, it receives direct signal from the projector (often referred to as “direct blast”,[1]) which lasts Cτ seconds. So the sonar cannot detect targets within the ellipse R = Rpr + Cτ, as shown at the picture. High level reverberation in the projector area does not affect the dead zone.
Target scattering pattern
Targets do not reflect the sound omni-directionally. The mechanism of sound reflection (or scattering by the target) is complicated, because the target is not just a rigid sphere. Scattered sound level depends on the angle β from which the target is ensonified by the projector, and it also varies with angle scattering direction α (refer to local target axes Z{x,y}). These angles are often referred to as aspects.
In monostatic sonar the receiver is listening to the echo which is reflected (scattered) right back from the target. Bistatic sonar can work in two ways: by utilizing either the target backscattering or forward scattering. Backscattering bistatic sonar is the sonar in which the bistatic angle φ is less than 90º. Forward scattering is the physical phenomena based on Babinet’s principle. Forward scattering bistatic sonar is the sonar in which the bistatic angle φ is greater than 90º.
Pseudo-monostatic sonar
This is the sonar with a small bistatic angle. In other words, both the range from projector to target Rpt and from target to receiver Rtr is much greater than the distance from projector to receiver Rpr.
Long range surveillance
For coastal surveillance, a large receive array of hydrophones is usually deployed close to the shore and connected with cables to a land-based processing center. To enable long range target detection (far away from the shore), one can use a powerful mobile projector, deployable from the ship. A system of this kind exploits the idea of “bringing the projector closer to area of interest and getting the transmission loss down”.
Large area surveillance with a single projector and a net of receivers
A system of this type is multistatic. It exploits the idea of “cover the area of interest with a sparse net of receivers and ensonify the whole area with a powerful projector”. Receive nodes may be sonobuoys (with radio communication link to a processing center) or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with an acoustic communication link.[2] The example is GOATS project,[3] using AUVs as receive nodes.
Low frequency towed sonar
The lower the frequency, the less the transmission loss absorbing and scattering components. On the other hand, the lower the frequency, the larger the size of directional projector and receive array. So the ship-deployable long range sonar is a low frequency bistatic towed array sonar with spatially separated projector and receive array. The example is LFATS towed sonar.[4]
Yes, I realize that the acoustic information above do not seem to fit the other information in this post – but they actually do, and I could explain why but then you’d know that I know and I don’t think that would be very handy right now. Suffice it to say – it does fit together in very important ways and will make much better sense as I get a bit more of the information into the posts I am making.
- cricketdiane, 05-22-10
***
Peter Sutherland
He was the youngest ever European Commissioner and served in the first Delors Commission, where he played a crucial role in opening up competition across Europe, particularly the airline, telecoms, and energy sectors. Subsequently he was Director General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organisation). Later Mickey Kantor, the US Trade Minister, credited him with being the father of globalization and said that without him there would have been no WTO.The Uruguay round of global trade talks, concluded in 1994 with Sutherland as chair of GATT, produced the biggest trade agreement in history and established the World Trade Organisation.
He is non-executive Chairman of Goldman Sachs International (a registered UK broker-dealer, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs). He was previously non-executive chairman of BP and was a director of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group until he was asked to leave the board when it had to be taken over by the UK government to avoid bankruptcy. He also formerly served on the board of ABB.
He is President of the Federal Trust for Education and Research, a British think tank. He is Chairman of The Ireland Fund of Great Britain, part of The Ireland Funds.[5] He is a member of the advisory council of Business for New Europe, a British pro-European think-tank.[6]
On 22 January 2010 he said while in Dublin that Ireland should have fewer universities.[11][12][13]
Outside banking, Sutherland in early 2010 finished a 13-year stint as chairman of BP, Europe’s largest oil company. At one point during his tenure, the company was valued on the stock market at £236 billion (it is currently worth about £120 billion) and was making £42 million a day in profits.[16]
The next stage of his career Surtherland disclosed that he has decided to join three boards – at German insurer Allianz; Koc Holdings, Turkey’s largest conglomerate; and a Chinese shipping company.[18]
He is non-executive Chairman of Goldman Sachs International (a registered UK broker-dealer, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs). He was previously non-executive chairman of BP and was a director of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group until he was asked to leave the board when it had to be taken over by the UK government to avoid bankruptcy. He also formerly served on the board of ABB.
(from the Allen Dulles entry on wikipedia – cont,)
Operation 40 not only was involved in sabotage operations but also, in fact, evolved into a team of assassins. One member, Frank Sturgis, claimed: “this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents… We were concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time.”
Over the next few years Operation 40 worked closely with several anti-Castro Cuban organizations including Alpha 66. CIA officials and freelance agents such as William Harvey, Thomas G. Clines, Porter Goss, Gerry Patrick Hemming, E. Howard Hunt, David Sánchez Morales, Carl Elmer Jenkins, Bernard Barker, Barry Seal, Frank Sturgis, William Robert Plumlee (“Tosh” Plumlee), and William C. Bishop also joined the project.
Dulles went on to be successful with the CIA’s first attempts at removing foreign leaders by covert means. Notably, the elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran was deposed in 1953 (via Operation Ajax), and President Arbenz of Guatemala was removed in 1954. The Guatemalan coup was called Operation PBSUCCESS. Dulles was on the board of the United Fruit Company. Dulles saw these kind of clandestine activities as an essential part of the struggle against communism.
During the Kennedy Administration, Dulles faced increasing criticism. The failed Bay of Pigs Invasion and several failed assassination plots utilizing CIA-recruited operatives from the Mafia and anti-Castro Cubans directly against Fidel Castro undermined the CIA’s credibility, and pro-American but unpopular regimes in Iran and Guatemala that he helped put in place were widely regarded as brutal and corrupt.
The reputation of the agency and its director declined after the Bay of Pigs Invasion fiasco; he and his staff (including Director for Plans Richard Bissell and Deputy Director Charles Cabell) were forced to resign (September 1961). President Kennedy did not trust the CIA, and he reportedly intended to dismantle it after the Bay of Pigs failure. Kennedy said he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”[3] Ironically, Dulles was later appointed to the Warren Commission, the official government investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Mr. Gowan is responsible for developing CIC’s outreach and profile, in addition to working on peacekeeping, multilateral security arrangements and the relationship between the UN and the EU. Formerly manager of the Europe Programme at The Foreign Policy Centre (London), he is also a Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (www.ecfr.eu ). He has broadcast widely – including the BBC, CNN and the Lehrer NewsHour – and frequently contributes to policy magazines and websites. He has worked with the OSCE Mission to Croatia, and published on the political philosophy of Raymond Aron.
Selected Publications:
* “Europe needs a new Human Rights strategy,” Financial Times, September 17, 2008.
* “No bed of roses for Le Roy,” The Guardian, August 20, 2008.
* “The Strategic Context: Peacekeeping in Crisis, 2006-08″, International Peacekeeping, 15:4, 453 — 469, 2008.
* “Chad necesita negociadores, no soldados.” El Pais, June 21, 2008.
* “The EU faces bigger challenges in Africa than in Ireland.” Commentary for the European Council on Foreign Relations, June 19, 2008.
* “The EU still needs UN peacekeepers.” EUobserver, May 21, 2008.
* “The United States and Peacekeeping Policy in Europe and Latin America: An Uncertain Catalyst?” International Peacekeeping, Volume 15 (2008): 84-101.
Richard Gowan, Center on International Cooperation at New York University. Richard Gowan coordinates the International Security Institutions program at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University. He is a contributor to the Center’s Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2007, published this March.
Mr. Gowan works on peacekeeping and multilateral security arrangements. He holds an MPhil in International Relations and BA in History from Cambridge University. As manager of the Europe Programme at The Foreign Policy Centre (London) from 2003- 5, he published and broadcast widely on public opinion towards the European Union and relations between the EU, UN and African Union.
He has also worked with the OSCE Mission to Croatia, and published on the political philosophy of Raymond Aron.
Calls grow within G8 to expel Italy as summit plans descend into chaos
While US tries to inject purpose into meeting, Italy is lambasted for poor planning and reneging on overseas aid commitments
* Julian Borger, Diplomatic editor
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 6 July 2009 19.30 BST
* Article history
Preparations for Wednesday’s G8 summit in the Italian mountain town of L’Aquila have been so chaotic there is growing pressure from other member states to have Italy expelled from the group, according to senior western officials.
[ . . . ]
“The Italian preparations for the summit have been chaotic from start to finish,” said Richard Gowan, an analyst at the Centre for International Co-operation at New York University.
[ . . . ]
“This is a gigantic fudge,” Gowan said. “The Italians have no ideas and have decided that best thing to do is to spread the agenda extremely thinly to obscure the fact that didn’t really have an agenda.”
So, I got to wondering who Mr. Gowan is, where he came from, who he works for and why they were being so shitty to the Italians who have had a major disaster and loss of life in their own country three months ago. I also was wondering whether he knew the person who wrote this article. It seems likely since the London assignment Gowan had in the Foreign Policy Center.
- and, then I wanted to know why Mr. G decided his purpose in the position he holds is to further the ideologies he listed as the political philosophy of Raymond Aron – or did he simply publish about it without ever taking on those beliefs?
This Mr. Gowan is what we have available to set policies, give expert analysis on the international situations and we are to consider his opinion with deferment because he has been paid, published and seen on tv? Has anybody ever really vetted this guy and his judgment – his beliefs and philosophies before putting him on the air for his “expert” opinion? Is this the kind of person who we are left with that gets to say what is what – and then this is what they are doing with it?
Just my curiosity – but if the author of the story listed above from the Guardian had actually spoken with another participant in the G-8 then I’m sure he would’ve said so. And, then this article would constitute more than rumor-mongering and innuendo for the sake of starting some antagonism in the rooms of the summit which could be better served than that.
- cricketdiane
here is something else he wrote – but most interesting was the fact that he was published at the Guardian, UK for it in 2008 – the article link is available – read it or not, there are more mental gyrations than substance, but whatever.
[ . . . ]
No bed of roses for Le Roy
The new UN peacekeeping chief has a tough job ahead: to find an effective role for the blue helmets in a multipolar world
***
My Note – (from the time, 2009)
I can’t even imagine that “Center on International Cooperation” would be the appropriate title for anywhere that has people like that on staff. It would be more honest to call it the “Centre for Breaking Down the Dialogues between International Participants” -
The G-8 has a lot on its menu whether they have a written menu or not. This day is not the same as any other and “business as usual” is not the norm of the day this time. There are events which have changed whatever focus or facet or factmight be named.
It isn’t a “club” anymore – these summits are useful tools where the meeting of citizens elected to positions of leadership are occurring in a way that has never had to happen before this. The challenges are not an academic debate anymore. The aspects of those challenges are here today.
The G-8, the G-20 and other summits are no longer a week-long getaway where studies provided can be thrown on the bureau or in the desk drawer back home. It isn’t going to work that way when these people who were willing to take the job as our current leaders get into the same place together.
- cricketdiane, 07-07-09
***
G8 Summit L’Aquila Abruzzo Italy – July 8 – 10, 2009 – that would be Wednesday of this week – an antagonism from a media source and who said it ( they were rumor-mongering ) -
***
The Summit Programme Is Now on Line in a New Section Entitled “The Summit”
I totem del G8 2009 nella Caserma ispettori della Guardia di Finanza di Coppito
As the event itself draws closer, the section entitled “Towards the Summit” is being withdrawn and replaced by a new area in the website devoted to the three-day G8 Summit in L’Aquila. The new item on the menu is called “The Summit” and it contains information on the programme, on the main issues under discussion, on the participants and on the collateral events planned for 8 to 10 July.
Prime Minister Berlusconi Presents L’Aquila G8 Summit in Naples
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the Delegate Commisioner Guido Bertolaso
29/06/2009 The international economic crisis and regional crises, food safety and security, the struggle against climate changes and the deregulation of world trade are the main issues that the world’s eight leading countries will be addressing in L’Aquila from 8 to 10 July, in the course of a Summit which will be unique in terms of the number of countries attending. Once the Summit is over, the Guardia di Finanza School in Coppito will be used to house local people who have lost their homes in the earthquake.
***
Interview with Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso
06/07/2009 The economic crisis, energy efficiency, support for the developing countries and Africa, the nuclear issue and topics bound up with North Korea and Iran and cooperation between Italy and Japan are the main subjects discussed by Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso in the first ANSA interview conducted exclusively for the G8 official website during the countdown to the L’Aquila Summit.
Press conference for the G8 Summit presentation
View Video on Governo.it
Photo gallery
The Headquarters block inside the Non-Commissioned Officers School in Coppito, L’Aquila The new Summit Venue in L’Aquila
It is very understandable that the number of participants would be greater with each moment as the evidence surmounts expectations, indicating the vicious and critical nature of the global economic and geopolitical situations.
- cricketdiane, 07-07-09
***
Brown and Sarkozy meet ahead of G8
Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy have been discussing economic recovery and tension with Iran in talks ahead of this week’s G8 summit.
The two leaders said relations between their countries were strong, following talks in the French town of Evian.
President Sarkozy said France stood “shoulder to shoulder” with Britain over attacks by Iran’s rulers.
The UK has promised France 15m for border protection in return for help deporting immigrants, it was announced.
The prime minister is expected to warn leaders at the G8 summit in Italy against complacency when the economy is at a “pivotal point” and will raise concerns about oil prices going up, protectionism and bank lending.
Truly a force of nature
Gordon Brown on Nicolas Sarkozy
Analysis: Rejuvenating summit?
President Sarkozy said action was needed to find a way to reduce the volatility of oil prices – saying that big price changes were putting the pace of economic recovery at risk.
The two leaders lavished praise on each other in a joint press conference – Mr Sarkozy remarking that the April G20 summit in London had been chaired “remarkably” by Gordon Brown. Mr Brown in response paid tribute to Mr Sarkozy’s leadership, saying he was “truly a force of nature”.
The French president said there was a “total convergence” of views between Britain and France, while Mr Brown said the countries’ relations had “never been better”.
Mr Sarkozy said the two countries were united in expecting the G20 summit in Pittsburgh in September to be “far-sighted” and to get “hard and fast results when it comes to regulation”.
Iran row
He also said they would work together to ensure progress on development, climate change and global warming at the G8 this week and would not settle for “way off” targets.
“We believe 2009 is a turning point in terms of regulation, new world governance and the battle against climate change and we will get things moving together,” he said.
We were particularly shocked by the totally unfair disproportionate attacks and criticism
President Sarkozy
The French president said on Iran he wanted to be clear about where he stood saying “our British friends” could “count unreservedly on our support and solidarity – we will do whatever they want us to do”.
“We were particularly shocked by the totally unfair disproportionate attacks and criticism,” he said.
The prime minister replied that he was grateful for French “solidarity” on the issue and any response would be made in conjunction with EU partners.
He said they had been looking at how to stimulate economic recovery, particularly in working together on industries “of the future” – like low carbon production, electric cars and biotechnology.
He added that “radical reforms” agreed at the G20 still had to be completed.
In addition, he promised to push for measures against international tax havens with new sanctions from March 2010, at this week’s G8, and expressed concerns the banks were still not lending enough.
“Both of us are worried that the banks have yet to respond in full to the situation that we have where industries and sectors are calling for help for the banks,” he said.
“We have a duty to our populations to do what we can to maintain jobs and create new jobs in difficult times.”
‘Ring of steel’
Under a deal agreed at the summit, the UK will provide £15m to pay for new technology to search vehicles and goods approaching its borders.
There are estimated to be about 1,000 migrants in makeshift camps in Calais, most hoping to enter Britain illegally.
A pilot scheme will be conducted out at Calais before being rolled out to cover Boulogne, Dunkirk and the Channel Tunnel terminal at Coquelles.
In the House of Commons, Home Secretary Alan Johnson said: “The investment will be made on the understanding that the French will, in return, effect significant returns of illegal migrants from northern French regions.”
Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said the French had promised to step up removal flights and pledged that “these changes will further strengthen the ring of steel that protects Britain”.
But shadow immigration minister Damian Green said the government had struck a bad deal for taxpayers.
He added: “We are apparently paying £15m so that the French agree to enforce their own laws. Surely they should be deporting illegal immigrants anyway?”
Meanwhile, in a parliamentary written answer, Mr Woolas said the UK government spent £26.8m on flights to remove immigrants in 2008/9 – including £18.6m for scheduled flights and £8.2m on charter services.
(More from Allen Welsh Dulles – CIA and national security groups efforts)
Dulles’ Plan
(Page in Russian about these texts)
These forgeries are poorly known in the West, e.g. there are no references to the Dulles’ Plan on English websites, except from Wikipedia.
The source of “Dulles’ Plan” text is never quoted. Some speculate it might have been Allen Dulles’ speech to the US Congress, a secret report by him or a passage from one of his books written between 1945 – 1953. There are no known speeches or writings of Dulles that contain portions or the entirety of the “Dulles’ Plan”. However, the entire text is repeated almost word-for-word by a character in the second edition of The Eternal Call (Russian: ?????? ???), a novel by Anatoly Ivanov.[5]
In modern Russia, despite the public knowledge of the fact of the forgery of the “Dulles’ Plan”, the text is quoted by prominent Russian politicians (e.g., Vladimir Zhirinovsky,[6][7] Nikolay Kondratenko,[8] Sergey Glazyev[9][10]), as well as the government press, TV, Russian Orthodox priests, writers, journalists, artists. (e.g. Sergey Kara-Murza). Based on so called “Dulles’ Plan facts”, Russian government-controlled TV channel RENTV in April 2008 created and aired a prime-time 50-minute TV “documentary” of the title “USSR: Ordered to Destroy” (Russian – “????. ????????? ??????????”).
In Russian mass-media, the term Dulles’ Plan may also refer to a series of excerpts from the program NSC 20/1 (U.S. objectives with respect to Russia) made by N.N. Yakovlev in his book CIA against USSR. The original program outlined by the National Security Council in 1948 established two basic goals for U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union: reduction of the power and influence of the U.S.S.R. to the point that it would no longer threaten international stability, as well as accomplishment of a fundamental change in the theory and practice of international relations as applied by the Soviet government.[11] This included promotion of the gradual retraction of undue Russian power and influence from Eastern Europe and of institutions of federalism in the Soviet Union which would permit a revival of the national life of the occupied Baltic peoples, termination of the projection of the subversive communist intellectual influence far abroad and attempts to compel the Soviets to recognize the practical undesirability of international antagonism. The text consists of possible measures to do this in a peace time and in a time of possible war and after it.
N. Yakovlev by choice of quotations, their “freestyle” translation into Russian and his biased comments changed the perception of the text. For example, original text
At the present time, there are a number of interesting and powerful Russian political groupings, among the Russian exiles, all of which do lip service to principles of liberalism, to one degree or another, and any of which would probably be preferable to the Soviet Government, from our standpoint, as the rulers of Russia. But just how liberal these groupings would be, if they once had power, or what would be their ability to maintain their authority among the Russian people without resort to methods of police terror and repression, no one knows. The actions of people in power are often controlled far more by the circumstances in which they arc obliged to exercise that power than by the ideas and principles which animated them when they were in the opposition.
10. Saddam Hussein once hired the James Bond director, Terence Young, to make a promotional Iraqi film.
More details (on their site at the time -)
10 things we didn’t know last week
10_things 15:06 UK time, Friday, 3 July 2009
***
300px-Elliptical_trajectory_on_ripples.svg.png
***
2. ^ “NIST Reference on Constants, Units, and Uncertainty.”(2006). National Institute of Standards and Technology. Retrieved February 22, 2008.
1 watt hour = 3600 J
100 W lightbulb = 100 x 3600 Joules
36, 000 joules to run one lightbulb (100 watts)
* The work required to continuously produce one watt of power for one second; or one watt second (WAs) (compare kilowatt hour). This relationship can be used to define the watt.
Kilojoule
The kilojoule (kJ) is equal to one thousand joules. Food labels in some countries express food energy in kilojoules. One kilojoule is about the amount of solar radiation received by one square metre of the Earth in one second.[4]
Joule
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the unit of energy. For other uses, see Joule (disambiguation).
Joule
Standard: SI derived unit
Quantity: Energy
Symbol: J
Named after: James Prescott Joule
Expressed in: 1 J =
SI base units 1 kgAm2/s2
CGS units 1H107 erg
The joule (symbol J), named for James Prescott Joule, is the derived unit of energy in the International System of Units. It is the energy exerted by the force of one newton acting to move an object through a distance of one metre. In terms of dimensions:
One joule is defined as the amount of work done by a force of one newton moving an object through a distance of one metre. Other relationships are:
* The work required to move an electric charge of one coulomb through an electrical potential difference of one volt; or one coulomb volt (CAV). This relationship can be used to define the volt;
* The work required to continuously produce one watt of power for one second; or one watt second (W/s) (compare kilowatt hour). This relationship can be used to define the watt.
Contents
* 1 Usage
* 2 Confusion with newton metre
* 3 Practical examples
* 4 Multiples
o 4.1 Nanojoule
o 4.2 Microjoule
o 4.3 Millijoule
o 4.4 Kilojoule
o 4.5 Megajoule
o 4.6 Gigajoule
o 4.7 Terajoule
* 5 Conversions
* 6 See also
* 7 References
* 8 External links
Usage
This SI unit is named after James Prescott Joule. As with every SI unit whose name is derived from the proper name of a person, the first letter of its symbol is uppercase (J). When an SI unit is spelled out in English, it should always begin with a lowercase letter (joule), except where any word would be capitalized, such as at the beginning of a sentence or in capitalized material such as a title. Note that “degree Celsius” conforms to this rule because the “d” is lowercase.
—Based on The International System of Units, section 5.2.
Confusion with newton metre
Main article: Newton metre
While it is dimensionally correct to express joules as newton metres or NAm, such use is discouraged[1] by the SI authority to avoid confusion with torque. Torque and energy are fundamentally different physical quantities. For example, adding 1 NAm of torque to 1 NAm of energy gives a dimensionally consistent result of 2 NAm, but this quantity is physically meaningless.
Practical examples
One joule in everyday life is approximately:
* the energy required to lift a small apple one meter straight up.
* the energy released when that same apple falls one meter to the ground.
* the energy released as heat by a person at rest, every hundredth of a second.
* one hundredth of the energy a person can receive by drinking a drop of beer.
* the kinetic energy of an adult human moving at a speed of about a handspan every second.
* the kinetic energy of a tennis ball moving at 23 km/h (14 mph).[2]
Conversions
Main article: Conversion of units#Energy, work, or amount of heat
1 joule is equal to:
* 1H107 ergs (exactly)
* 6.24150974H1018 eV (electronvolts)
* 0.2390 cal (thermochemical gram calories or small calories)
* 2.3901H10-4 kcal (thermochemical kilocalories, kilogram calories, large calories or food calories)
* 9.4782H10-4 BTU (British thermal unit)
* 0.7376 ftAlbf (foot-pound force)
* 23.7 ftApdl (foot-poundals)
* 2.7778H10-7 kilowatt-hour
* 2.7778H10-4 watt-hour
* 9.8692H10-3 liter-atmosphere
* 1H10-44 Foe (exactly)
Units defined exactly in terms of the joule include:
* 1 thermochemical calorie = 4.184 J[7]
* 1 International Table calorie = 4.1868 J[7]
* 1 watt hour = 3600 J
* 1 kilowatt hour = 3.6H106 J (or 3.6 MJ)
* 1 ton TNT = 4.184 GJ
See also
* Conversion of units
* Orders of magnitude (energy)
* Fluence
1. ^ From the official SI website: “A derived unit can often be expressed in different ways by combining base units with derived units having special names. Joule, for example, may formally be written newton metre, or kilogram metre squared per second squared. This, however, is an algebraic freedom to be governed by common sense physical considerations; in a given situation some forms may be more helpful than others. In practice, with certain quantities, preference is given to the use of certain special unit names, or combinations of unit names, to facilitate the distinction between different quantities having the same dimension.”
2. ^ Ristinen, Robert A., and Jack J. Kraushaar. Energy and the Environment. 2nd ed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006.
3. ^ CERN – Glossary
4. ^ “Construction of a Composite Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) Time Series from 1978 to present”. http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant. Retrieved 2005-10-05.
5. ^ IRS publication
6. ^ Los Alamos National Laboratory report LA-8819, The yields of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear explosions by John Malik, September 1985. Available online at http://www.mbe.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/publications/LANLHiroshimaNagasakiYields.pdf
2. ^ “NIST Reference on Constants, Units, and Uncertainty.”(2006). National Institute of Standards and Technology. Retrieved February 22, 2008.
8. ^ The International System of Units, Section 2.1 (8 ed.), Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, 2006, http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-1/, retrieved August 26, 2009
9. ^ International System of Units, 8th ed. (2006), Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, Section 4.1 Table 8.
Lorenzo H. Zambrano North American Deputy Chairman
Paul A. Volcker North American Honorary Chairman
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Peter Sutherland European Chairman
Hervé De Carmoy European Deputy Chairman
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Georges Berthoin European Honorary Chairman
Otto Graf Lambsdorff European Honorary Chairman
Paul Révay European Director
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European Group
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* *Vladimir Dlouhy, Senior Advisor, ABB; International Advisor, Goldman Sachs; former Czechoslovak Minister of Economy; former Czech Minister of Industry & Trade, Prague
* Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, President of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge Freemasons, England and has served Grand Master of the Order of St Michael and St George
* *Bill Emmott, Editor, The Economist, London
* Thomas Enders, Executive Vice President, Member of the Board of Management & Head of the Defence and Security Systems Division, EADS, Munich
* Pedro Miguel Echenique, Professor of Physics, University of the Basque Country; former Basque Minister of Education, San Sebastian
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* Loukas Tsoukalis, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, University of Athens; President of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP); Visiting Professor at the College of Europe
* Mario Vargas Llosa, Writer and Member of the Royal Spanish Academy, Madrid
* *George Vassiliou, Head of the Negotiating Team for the Accession of Cyprus to the European Union; former President of the Republic of Cyprus; Former Member of Parliament and Leader of United Democrats, Nicosia
* Franco Venturini, Foreign Correspondent, Corriere della Sera, Rome
* Friedrich Verzetnitsch, Member of Austrian Parliament; President, Austrian Federation of Trade Unions, Vienna; President, European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC)
* *Marko Voljc, General Manager of Central Europe Directorate, KBC Bank Insurance Holding, Brussels; former Chief Executive Officer, Nova Ljubljanska Banka, Ljubljana
* Alexandr Vondra, Managing Director of the Prague Office, Dutko Group Companies; former Czech Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs
* Joris Voorhoeve, Member of the Council of State; former Member of the Dutch Parliament; former Minister of Defence, The Hague
* Marcus Wallenberg, President and Chief Executive Officer, Investor AB, Stockholm
* Prince Charles of Wales, Duke of Cornwall of the House of Windsor, London
* *Serge Weinberg, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Weinberg Investissements; former Chairman of the Management Board, Pinault-Printemps-Redoute; former President, Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IRIS), Paris
* Heinrich Weiss, Chairman, SMS, Düsseldorf
* Nout Wellink, President, Dutch Central Bank, Amsterdam
* Arne Wessberg, Director General, YLE (Finnish Broadcasting Company) and Director General, YLE Group (YLE and Digits Oy), Helsinki; President, European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
* *Norbert Wieczorek, former Member of the German Bundestag & Deputy Chairman of the SPD Parliamentary Group, Berlin
* Hans Wijers, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Akzo Nobel, Arnhem
* Otto Wolff von Amerongen, Honorary Chairman, East Committee of the German Industry; Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Otto Wolff Industrieberatung und Beteiligung, Cologne
* *Emilio Ybarra, former Chairman, Banco Bilbao-Vizcaya, Madrid
Former Members in Public Service
* Marek Belka, Prime Minister, Warsaw; former Ambassador-at-Large and Chairman, Council for International Coordination, Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad
* John Bruton, European Union Ambassador & Head, Delegation of the European Commission to the United States
* Patrick Devedjian, Minister for Industry, France
* Lene Espersen, Minister of Justice, Denmark
* Pedro Solbes, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy and Finances, Spain
* Harri Tiido, Ambassador of Estonia and Head of the Estonian Mission to NATO, Brussels
* Karsten Voigt, Coordinator for German-American Cooperation, Federal Foreign Ministry, Germany
North American Group
* Madeleine K. Albright, Principal, The Albright Group LLC, Washington, DC; former U.S. Secretary of State
* Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
* Rona Ambrose, Member of Parliament, Ottawa, ON
* G. Allen Andreas, Chairman and Chief Executive, Archer Daniels Midland Company, Decatur, IL
* Michael H. Armacost, Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow, Asia/Pacific Research Center, Stanford University, Hillsborough, CA; former President, The Brookings Institution; former U.S. Ambassador to Japan; former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
* C. Michael Armstrong, Chairman, Comcast Corporation, Philadelphia, PA
* *Charlene Barshefsky, Senior International Partner, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, Washington, DC; former U.S. Trade Representative
* Alan R. Batkin, Vice Chairman, Kissinger Associates, New York, NY
* Maurizio Bevilacqua, Member of Parliament, Ottawa, ON
* Doug Bereuter, President, The Asia Foundation, San Francisco, CA; former Member, U.S. House of Representatives
* *C. Fred Bergsten, Director, Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs
* Catherine Bertini, Under-Secretary-General for Management, United Nations, New York, NY
* Dennis C. Blair, USN (Ret.), President, Institute for Defense Analyses, Alexandria, VA; former Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command
* Herminio Blanco Mendoza, Private Office of Herminio Blanco, Mexico City, NL; former Mexican Secretary of Commerce and Industrial Development
* Geoffrey T. Boisi, former Vice Chairman, JPMorgan Chase, New York, NY
* Stephen W. Bosworth, Dean, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, MA; former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea
* David G. Bradley, Chairman, Atlantic Media Company, Washington, DC
* Harold Brown, Counselor, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC; General Partner, Warburg Pincus & Company, New York, NY; former U.S. Secretary of Defense
* *Zbigniew Brzezinski, Counselor, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC; Robert Osgood Professor of American Foreign Affairs, Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; former U.S. Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
* George H.W. Bush, Former President, The United States of America, Texas
* Louis C. Camilleri, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Altria Group, Inc., New York, NY
* Gerhard Casper, President Emeritus, Stanford University, Stanford
* Lynne V. Cheney, Former Chairman, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington D.C.
* William Jefferson Clinton, Former President of the United States
* William T. Coleman III, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, Cassatt Corporation;
* Founder, former Chairman and CEO and Member, Board of Directors, BEA Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA
* William T. Coleman, Jr., Senior Partner and the Senior Counselor, O’Melveny & Myers, Washington, DC; former U.S. Secretary of Transportation
* Timothy C. Collins, Senior Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Ripplewood Holdings, New York, NY
* E. Gerald Corrigan, Managing Director, Goldman, Sachs & Co., New York, NY; former President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
* Michael J. Critelli, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Pitney Bowes Inc., Stamford, CT
* Gerald L. Curtis, Burgess Professor of Politcial Science and Visiting Professor, Graduate Research Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo
* Douglas Daft, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Coca Cola Company, Atlanta, GA
* Dennis D. Dammerman, Vice Chairman and Executive Officer, General Electric Company, Fairfield, CT
* Lynn Davis, Senior Political Scientist, The RAND Corporation, Arlington, VA; former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security
* Lodewijk J. R. de Vink, Chairman, Global Health Care Partners, Peapack, NJ; former Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Warner-Lambert Company
* Arthur A. DeFehr, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palliser Furniture, Winnipeg, MB
* André Desmarais, President and Co-Chief Executive Officer, Power Corporation of Canada, Montréal, QC; Deputy Chairman, Power Financial Corporation
* Jamie Dimon, President and Chief Operating Officer, JPMorgan Chase, New York, NY
* Peter C. Dobell, Founding Director, Parliamentary Centre, Ottawa, ON
* Wendy K. Dobson, Professor and Director, Institute for International Business, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON; former Canadian Associate Deputy Minister of Finance
* Kenneth M. Duberstein, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Duberstein Group, Washington, DC
* Robert Eckert, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mattel, Inc., El Segundo, CA
* Jessica P. Einhorn, Dean, Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC; former Managing Director for Finance and Resource Mobilization, World Bank
* Jeffrey Epstein, President, J. Epstein & Company, Inc., New York, NY; President, N.A. Property, Inc.
* Dianne Feinstein, Member (D-CA), U.S. Senate
* Sandra Feldman, President Emeritus, American Federation of Teachers, Washington, DC
* Martin S. Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of Economics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; President and Chief Executive Officer, National Bureau of Economic Research; former U.S.Chairman, President’s Council of Economic Advisors
* Stanley Fischer, President, Citigroup International and Vice Chairman, Citgroup, New York, NY; former First Deputy Managing Director, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC
* Richard W. Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Dallas, TX; former U.S. Deputy Trade Representative
* *Thomas S. Foley, Partner, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Washington, DC; former U.S. Ambassador to Japan; former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives; North American Chairman, Trilateral Commission
* Francis Fukuyama, Bernard L. Schwartz Professor International Political Economy, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC
* Dionisio Garza Medina, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, ALFA, Garza Garcia, NL
* Richard A. Gephardt, former Member (D-MO), U.S. House of Representatives
* David Gergen, Professor of Public Service, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Editor-at-Large, U.S. News and World Report
* Peter C. Godsoe, Chairman of Fairmont Hotels & Resorts; Retired Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Scotiabank, Toronto, ON
* *Allan E. Gotlieb, Senior Advisor, Stikeman Elliott, Toronto, ON; Chairman, Sotheby’s, Canada; former Canadian Ambassador to the United States; North American Deputy Chairman, Trilateral Commission
* Donald E. Graham, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Washington Post Company, Washington, DC
* Jeffrey W. Greenberg, Private Investor, New York, NY; former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Marsh & McLennan Companies
* Maurice R. Greenberg, Chairman, American International Group, Inc., New York, NY
* Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, NY; former Director, Policy Planning, U. S. Department of State; former Director of Foreign Policy Studies, The Brookings Institution
* William A. Haseltine, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Haseltine Associates, Washington, DC;
* President, William A. Haseltine Foundation for Medical Sciences and the Arts; former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Human Genome Sciences, Inc., Rockville, MD
* Charles B. Heck, Senior Adviser and former North American Director, Trilateral Commission, New Canaan, CT
* *Carla A. Hills, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Hills & Company, International Consultants, Washington, DC; former U.S. Trade Representative; former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
* Richard Holbrooke, Vice Chairman, Perseus LLC, New York, NY; Counselor, Council on Foreign Relations; former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; former Vice Chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston Corporation; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; and former U.S. Ambassador to Germany
* Karen Elliott House, Senior Vice President, Dow Jones & Company, and Publisher, The Wall Street Journal, New York, NY
* James A. Johnson, Vice Chairman, Perseus LLC, Washington, DC; former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae)
* Alejandro Junco de la Vega, President and Director, Grupo Reforma, Monterrery, NL
* Robert Kagan, Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC
* Charles R. Kaye, Co-President, Warburg Pincus LLC, New York, NY
* Henry A. Kissinger, Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc., New York, NY; former U.S. Secretary of State; former U.S. Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
* Michael Klein, Chief Executive Officer, Global Banking, Citigroup Inc.; Vice Chairman, Citibank International PLC; New York, NY
* Enrique Krauze, General Director, Editorial Clio Libros y Videos, S.A. de C.V., Mexico City, DF
* Jim Leach, Member (R-IA), U.S. House of Representatives
* Gerald M. Levin, Chief Executive Officer Emeritus, AOL Time Warner, Inc., New York, NY
* Winston Lord, Co-Chairman of Overseeers and former Co-Chairman of the Board, International Rescue Committee, New York, NY; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; former U.S. Ambassador to China
* E. Peter Lougheed, Senior Partner, Bennett Jones, Barristers & Solicitors, Calgary, AB; former Premier of Alberta
* Roy MacLaren, former Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom; former Canadian Minister of International Trade; Toronto, ON
* John A. MacNaughton, former President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Toronto, ON
* Antonio Madero, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, San Luis Corporacion, S.A. de C.V., Mexico City, DF
* *Sir Deryck C. Maughan, former Vice Chairman, Citigroup, New York, NY
* Jay Mazur, President Emeritus, UNITE (Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees); Vice Chairman, Amalgamated Bank of New York; and President, ILGWU’s 21st Century Heritage Foundation, New York, NY
* Hugh L. McColl, Jr., Chairman, McColl Brothers Lockwood, Charlotte, NC; former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bank of America Corporation
* Henry A. McKinnell, President and Chief Executive Officer, Pfizer, Inc., New York, NY
* Marc H. Morial, President and Chief Executive Officer, National Urban League, New York, NY; former Mayor, New Orleans, LA
* Anne M. Mulcahy, Chairman and CEO, Xerox Corporation, Stamford, CT
* Brian Mulroney, Senior Partner, Ogilvy Renault, Barristers and Solicitors, Montréal, QC; former Prime Minister of Canada
* *Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; former Dean, John F. Kennedy School of Government; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs
* David J. O’Reilly, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, ChevronTexaco Corp., San Ramon, CA
* Richard N. Perle, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC; member and former Chairman, Defense Policy Board, U.S. Department of Defense; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy
* Thomas R. Pickering, Senior Vice President, International Relations, The Boeing Company, Vienna, VA; former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs; former U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and the United Nations
* Franklin D. Raines, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association), Washington, DC; former Director, U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Office of the President
* Joseph W. Ralston, USAF (Ret)., Vice Chairman, The Cohen Group, Washington, DC; former Commander, U.S. European Command, and Supreme Allied Commander NATO; former Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Department of Defense
* Charles B. Rangel, Member (D-NY), U.S. House of Representatives
* Hartley Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, James Richardson & Sons, Ltd., Winnipeg, MB
* Joseph E. Robert, Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Office, J.E. Robert Companies, McLean, VA
* John D. Rockefeller IV, Member (D-WV), U.S. Senate
* Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Director, Center for International Development, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; former Chief Economist and Director, Research Department, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC
* David M. Rubenstein, Co-founder and Managing Director, The Carlyle Group, Washington, DC
* Luis Rubio, President, Center of Research for Development (CIDAC), Mexico City, DF
* Arthur F. Ryan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Prudential Financial, Inc., Newark, NJ
* Jaime Serra, Chairman, SAI Consulting, Mexico City, DF; former Mexican Minister of Trade and Industry
* Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
* Gordon Smith, Director, Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC; Chairman, Board of Governors, International Development Research Centre; former Canadian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Personal Representative of the Prime Minister to the Economic Summit
* Donald R. Sobey, Chairman Emeritus, Empire Company Ltd., Stellarton, NS
* George Soros, Chairman, Soros Fund Management LLC, New York, NY; Chairman, The Open Society Institute
* Ronald D. Southern, Chairman, ATCO Group, Calgary, AB
* James B. Steinberg, Vice President and Director of the Foreign Policy Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC; former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor
* Barbara Stymiest, Chief Operating Officer, RBC Financial Group, Toronto, ON
* Lawrence H. Summers, President, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury
* John J. Sweeney, President, AFL-CIO, Washington, DC
* Strobe Talbott, President, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC; former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State
* Luis Tellez, Managing Director, The Carlyle Group, Mexico City, DF; former Executive Vice President, Sociedad de Fomento Industrial (DESC); former Mexican Minister of Energy
* John Thain, Chief Executive Officer, New York Stock Exchange, Inc.; former President and Co-Chief Operating Officer, Goldman Sachs & Co., New York, NY
* G. Richard Thoman, Managing Partner, Corporate Perspectives and Adjunct Professor, Columbia University, New York, NY; formerly President and CEO, Xerox Corporation; formerly CFO and Nº 2 officer, IBM Corporation
* *Paul A. Volcker, former Chairman, Wolfensohn & Co., Inc., New York; Frederick H. Schultz Professor Emeritus, International Economic Policy, Princeton University; former Chairman, Board of Governors, U.S. Federal Reserve System; Honorary North American Chairman and former North American Chairman, Trilateral Commission
* William H. Webster, Senior Partner, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, Washington, DC; former U.S. Director of Central Intelligence; former Director, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation; former Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
* Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International, New York, NY
* *Lorenzo H. Zambrano, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, CEMEX, Monterrey, NL; North American Deputy Chairman, Trilateral Commission
* Ernesto Zedillo, Director, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Yale University, New Haven, CT; former President of Mexico
* Mortimer B. Zuckerman, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, U.S. News & World Report, New York, NY
* Robert S. McNamara, Lifetime Trustee, Trilateral Commission, Washington, DC; former President, World Bank; former U.S. Secretary of Defense; former President, Ford Motor Company
* David Rockefeller, Founder, Honorary Chairman, and Lifetime Trustee, Trilateral Commission, New York, NY
Former Members In Public Service
* Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States
* Paula J. Dobriansky, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs
* Bill Graham, Canadian Minister of National Defence
* William J. McDonough, Chairman, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board
* Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense
* Robert B. Zoellick, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State
* Philip Burdon, former Chairman, Asia 2000 Foundation; New Zealand Chairman, APEC; former New Zealand Minister of Trade Negotiations; Wellington
* Fujio Cho, President, Toyota Motor Corporation
* Cho Suck-Rai, Chairman, Hyosung Corporation, Seoul
* Chung Mong-Joon, Member, Korean National Assembly; Vice President, Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA); Seoul
* Barry Desker, Director, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Singapore
* Takashi Ejiri, Attorney at Law, Asahi Koma Law Office
* Jesus P. Estanislao, President and CEO, Institute of Corporate Directors/Institute of Solidarity in Asia; former Philippine Minister of Finance; Manila
* Ross Garnaut, Head, Department of Economics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra
* *Toyoo Gyohten, President, Institute for International Monetary Affairs; Senior Advisor, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Ltd.
* Han Sung-Joo, President, Seoul Forum for International Affairs; former Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs; former Korean Ambassador to the United States; Seoul
* *Stuart Harris, Professor of International Relations, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University; former Australian Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Canberra
* Tan Sri Dato’ Azman Hashim, Chairman, AmBank Group, Kuala Lumpur
* John R. Hewson, Member, Advisory Council, ABN AMRO Australia
* Earnest M. Higa, President and CEO, Higa Industries
* Shintaro Hori, Managing Partner, Bain & Company Japan, Inc.
* Murray Horn, Managing Director, Institutional Banking, ANZ Banking Group, Ltd.; former Parliament Secretary, New Zealand Treasury; Auckland
* Hyun Hong-Choo, Senior Partner, Kim & Chang, Seoul; former Korean Ambassador to the United Nations and to the United States; Seoul
* Hyun Jae-Hyun, Chairman, Tong Yang Group, Seoul
* Shin’ichi Ichimura, Counselor, International Centre for the Study of East Asian Development, Kitakyushu
* Nobuyuki Idei, Chairman and Group CEO, Sony Corporation
* K. Kesavapany, Director, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore
* Kim Kihwan, International Advisor, Goldman Sachs, Seoul; former Korean Ambassador-at-Large for Economic Affairs
* *Kim Kyung-Won, Adviser, Kim & Chang Law Office, Seoul; President Emeritus, Seoul Forum for International Affairs; former Korean Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations; Pacific Asia Deputy Chairman, Trilateral Commission; Seoul
* Kakutaro Kitashiro, Chairman of the Board, IBM Japan, Ltd.; Chairman, Japan Association of Corporate Executives
* Shoichiro Kobayashi, Advisor, Kansai Electric Power Company, Ltd.
* *Yotaro Kobayashi, Chairman of the Board, Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.; Pacific Asia Chairman, Trilateral Commission
* Akira Kojima, Chairman, Japan Center for Economic Research ( JCER )
* Koo John, Chairman, LS Cable Ltd.; Chairman, LS Industrial Systems Co.; Seoul
* Kenji Kosaka, Member, Japanese House of Representatives
* *Lee Hong-Koo, Chairman, Seoul Forum for International Affairs, Seoul; former Korean Prime Minister; former Korean Ambassador to the United Kingdom and the United States
* Lee In-ho, former President, Korea Foundation; former Korean Ambassador to Finland and Russia; Seoul
* Lee Jay Y., Vice President, Samsung Electronics, Seoul
* Lee Kyungsook Choi, President, Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul
* Adrianto Machribie, Chairman, PT Freeport Indonesia, Jakarta
* Masao Nakamura, President and Chief Executive Officer, NTT Docomo Inc.
* Masashi Nishihara, President, National Defense Academy
* Taizo Nishimuro, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Toshiba Corporation
* Roberto F. de Ocampo, President, Asian Institute of Management; Former Secretary of Finance, Manila
* Toshiaki Ogasawara, Chairman and Publisher, The Japan Times Ltd.; Chairman, Nifco Inc.
* Sadako Ogata, President, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA); former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
* *Shijuro Ogata, former Deputy Governor, Japan Development Bank; former Deputy Governor for International Relations, Bank of Japan; Pacific Asia Deputy Chairman, Trilateral Commission
* Sozaburo Okamatsu, Chairman, Research Institute of Economy, Trade & Industry (RIETI)
* *Yoshio Okawara, President, Institute for International Policy Studies; former Japanese Ambassador to the United States
* Yoichi Okita, Professor, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies
* Ariyoshi Okumura, Chairman, Lotus Corporate Advisory, Inc.
* Anand Panyarachun, Chairman, Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI); former Prime Minister of Thailand; Bangkok
* Ryu Jin Roy, Chairman and CEO, Poongsan Corp., Seoul
* Eisuke Sakakibara, Professor, Keio University; former Japanese Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs
* Sakong Il, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Institute for Global Economics; former Korean Minister of Finance; Seoul
* Yukio Satoh, President, The Japan Institute of International Affairs; former Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations
* Kiyoshi Tsugawa, Executive Advisor & Member of Japan Advisory Board, Lehman Brothers Japan, Inc.; Chairman, ARAMARK ASIA
* Junichi Ujiie, Chairman and CEO, Nomura Holdings, Inc.
* Sarasin Viraphol, Executive Vice President, Charoen Pokphand Co., Ltd.; former Deputy Permanent Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Thailand; Bangkok
* Cesar E. A. Virata, Director, Corporate Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC); former Prime Minister of Philippines; Manila
* *Jusuf Wanandi, Co-founder and Member of the Board of Trustees, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta
* Etsuya Washio, President, National Federation of Workers and Consumers Insurance Cooperatives (ZENROSAI): former President, Japanese Trade Union Confederation (RENGO)
* Koji Watanabe, Senior Fellow, Japan Center for International Exchange; former Japanese Ambassador to Russia
* Osamu Watanabe, Chairman, Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO)
* Taizo Yakushiji, Executive Member, Council for Science and Technology Policy of the Cabinet Office of Japan; Executive Research Director, Institute for International Policy Studies
* Tadashi Yamamoto, President, Japan Center for International Exchange; Pacific Asia Director, Trilateral Commission
* Hüsnü Dogan, General Coordinator, Nurol Holding, Ankara; former Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Development Foundation of Turkey; former Minister of Defence
* Jacob A. Frenkel, Vice Chairman, American International Group, Inc. and Chairman, AIG’s Global Economic Strategies Group, New York, NY; Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, G-30; former Chairman, Merrill Lynch International; former Governor, Bank of Israel; former Economic Counselor and Director of Research, IMF; former Chairman, Board of Governors of the Inter-American Development Bank; former David Rockefeller Professor of Economics, University of Chicago
* Victor K. Fung, Chairman, Li & Fung, Hong Kong
* Frene Ginwala, Speaker of the National Assembly, Parliament of the Republic of South Africa, Cape Town
* H.R.H. Prince El Hassan bin Talal, President, The Club of Rome; Moderator of the World Conference on Religion and Peace; Chairman, Arab Thought Forum, Amman, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
* Serhiy Holovaty, Member of the Supreme Rada; President of the Ukrainian Legal Foundation; former Minister of Justice, Kiev, Ukraine
* Enrique V. Iglesias, President, Inter-American Development Bank; former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay
* Wang Jun, Chairman, China International Trust & Investment Corp., China
* Sergei Karaganov, Deputy Director, Institute of Europe, Russian Academy of Sciences; Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Defense and Foreign Policy, Moscow, Russian Federation
* Richard Li, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Pacific Century Group Holdings Ltd., Hong Kong
* Itamar Rabinovich, President, Tel Aviv University, Israel; former Ambassador to the United States
* Rüsdü Saracoglu, President of the Finance Group, Koç Holding; Chairman, Makro Consulting, Istanbul; former State Minister and Member of the Turkish Parliament; former Governor of the Central Bank of Turkey
* Roberto Egydio Setubal, Director President, Banco Itaú S.A., Brazil
* Stan Shih, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Acer Group, Taipei
* Gordon Wu, Chairman and Managing Director, Hopewell Holdings Ltd., Hong Kong
* Grigory A. Yavlinsky, former Member of the State Duma; Leader of the “Yabloko” Parliamentary Group; Chairman of the Center for Economic and Political Research, Moscow, Russian Federation
* Yu Xintian, President, Shanghai Institute for International Studies, Shanghai
* Yuan Ming, Director, Institute of International Relations, Peking University, Peking
* Zhang Yunling, Director, Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Beijing
* Wang Jisi, Director, Institute for American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Beijing
When the Trilateral Commission was first launched, the plan was for an equal number of members from each of the three regions. The numbers soon began to grow, and ceilings were imposed about 1980. These ceilings have been raised somewhat since then as new countries came to be represented in the groups. The European group, which includes members from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Cyprus, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, now has a ceiling of 160 members. The ceiling for the North American group is 120, including 20 Canadian members, 13 Mexican members and 87 U.S. members. In 2000, the Japanese group of 85 members expanded to become a Pacific Asian group of 96 members, and includes 57 members from Japan, 15 members from Korea, 8 from Australia and New Zealand, 16 from the original five ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand). The new Pacific Asian group also includes participants from the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
To help preserve the Commission’s unofficial character, members who take up positions in their national administration give up Trilateral Commission membership. New members are chosen on a national basis. The procedures used for rotation off and for invitation of new members vary from national group to national group. Three chairmen (one from each region), deputy chairmen, and directors constitute the leadership of the Trilateral Commission, along with an Executive Committee including 36 other members. The current full membership list is available by e-mail or by contacting any of the regional offices.
Executive Committee
Erik Belfrage, Senior Vice President, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken; Director, Investor AB, Stockholm
C. Fred Bergsten, Director, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington DC; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs
Georges Berthoin, International Honorary Chairman, European Movement; Honorary Chairman, The Jean Monnet Association; Honorary European Chairman, The Trilateral Commission
Jorge Braga de Macedo, President, Tropical Research Institute, Lisbon; Professor of Economics, Nova University at Lisbon; Chairman, Forum Portugal Global; former Minister of Finance
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Counselor, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC; Robert Osgood Professor of American Foreign Affairs, Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
François Bujon de l’Estang, Ambassadeur de France; Chairman, Citigroup France, Paris; former Ambassador to the United States
Richard Conroy, Chairman, Conroy Diamonds & Gold, Dublin; Member of Senate, Republic of Ireland
Vladimir Dlouhy, Senior Advisor, ABB; International Advisor, Goldman Sachs; former Czechoslovak Minister of Economy; former Czech Minister of Industry & Trade, Prague
Bill Emmott, former Editor, The Economist, London
Nemesio Fernandez-Cuesta, Executive Director of Upstream, Repsol-YPF; former Chairman, Prensa Española, Madrid
Michael Fuchs, Member of the German Bundestag; former President, National Federation of German Wholesale & Foreign Trade, Berlin
Antonio Garrigues Walker, Chairman, Garrigues Abogados y Asesores Tributarios, Madrid
Toyoo Gyohten, President, The Institute for International Monetary Affairs; Senior Advisor, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, UFJ, Ltd., Tokyo
Stuart Harris, Professor of International Relations, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University; former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Canberra
Carla A. Hills, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Hills & Company, Washington, DC; former U.S. Trade Representative; former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Karen Elliott House, Writer, Princeton, NJ; Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; former Senior Vice President, Dow Jones & Company, and Publisher, The Wall Street Journal
Mugur Isarescu, Governor, National Bank of Romania, Bucharest; former Prime Minister of Romania
Baron Daniel Janssen, Honorary Chairman, Solvay, Brussels
Béla Kadar, Member of the Hungarian Academy, Budapest; Member of the Monetary Council of the National Bank; President of the Hungarian Economic Association; former Ambassador of Hungary to the O.E.C.D., Paris; former Hungarian Minister of International Economic Relations and Member of Parliament
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, Deputy Chairman and Senior Independent Non-Executive Director of Royal Dutch Shell; Member of the House of Lords; Director of Rio Tinto, the Scottish American Investment Trust, London; former Secretary General, European Convention, Brussels; former Permanent Under-Secretary of State and Head of the Diplomatic Service, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London; former British Ambassador to the United States
Sixten Korkman, Managing Director, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA) and Finnish Business and Policy Forum (EVA), Helsinki
Count Otto Lambsdorff, Partner, Wessing Lawyers, Düsseldorf; Chairman, Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Berlin; former Member of German Bundestag; Honorary Chairman, Free Democratic Party; former Federal Minister of Economy; former President of the Liberal International; Honorary European Chairman, The Trilateral Commission, Paris
Lee Hong-Koo, Chairman, Seoul Forum for International Affairs; former Prime Minister of Korea; former Korean Ambassador to the United Kingdom and the United States
Marianne Lie, Director General, Norwegian Shipowners Association, Oslo
Cees Maas, Honorary Vice Chairman of the ING Group and former Chief Financial Officer, Amsterdam; former Treasurer of the Dutch Government
Roy MacLaren, former Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom; former Canadian Minister of International Trade; Toronto, ON
Minoru Makihara, Senior Corporate Advisor, Mitsubishi Corporation, Tokyo
Sir Deryck C. Maughan, Managing Director and Chairman, KKR Asia, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., New York, NY; former Vice Chairman, Citigroup
Minoru Murofushi, Counselor, ITOCHU Corporation, Tokyo
Indra K. Nooyi, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, PepsiCo, Inc., Purchase, NY
Yoshio Okawara, President, Institute for International Policy Studies, Tokyo; former Japanese Ambassador to the United States
Susan Rice, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies and Global Economy and Development Programs, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC; former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs; former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs, National Security Council
Luis Rubio, President, Center of Research for Development (CIDAC), Mexico City, DF
Silvio Scaglia, Founder, Chairman and Financial Backer of Babelgum, London; Chairman, S.M.S. Finance S.A., Luxembourg
Carlo Secchi, Professor of European Economic Policy and former Rector, Bocconi University; Vice President, ISPI, Milan; former Member of the Italian Senate and of the European Parliament
Petar Stoyanov, former President of the Republic of Bulgaria; Member of the Bulgarian Parliament; Chairman, Parliamentary Group of United Democratic Forces; Chairman, Union of Democratic Forces; Sofia
Harri Tiido, Undersecretary for Political Affairs, Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tallinn; former Ambassador of Estonia and Head of the Estonian Mission to NATO, Brussels
George Vassiliou, former Head of the Negotiating Team for the Accession of Cyprus to the European Union; former President of the Republic of Cyprus, former Member of Parliament and Leader of United Democrats; Nicosia
Paul Volcker, former Chairman, Wolfensohn & Co., Inc., New York; Frederick H. Schultz Professor Emeritus, International Economic Policy, Princeton University; former Chairman, Board of Governors, U.S. Federal Reserve System; Honorary North American Chairman and former North American Chairman, The Trilateral Commission
Marko Voljc, Chief Executive Officer, K & H Bank, Budapest; former General Manager of Central Europe Directorate, KBC Bank Insurance Holding, Brussels; former Chief Executive Officer, Nova Ljubljanska Banka, Ljubljana
Jusuf Wanandi, Vice Chairman, Board of Trustees; Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta
Serge Weinberg, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Accor; Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Weinberg Capital Partners; former Chairman Management Board, Pinault-Printemps-Redoute; former President, Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IRIS), Paris
Heinrich Weiss, Chairman, SMS, Düsseldorf; former Chairman, Federation of German Industries, Berlin
The full membership list is available by e-mail or by contacting any of the regional offices.
This program was actually put together and put in place by the Bush administration and Republican agency representatives during the Bush administration although President Obama signed it . . . found it a couple years ago when I was looking at something else about the Persian Crescent -
Among these types of programs in the Middle Eastern oil rich countries are also SBA, Chamber of Commerce, Department of Commerce, State Department, USAID, and a number of other programs devised to make small business and expansion loans, grants and subsidies to the businesses of the Middle East using our money intended to support small businesses, expansion and innovation in the United States.
In a step toward a new era of partnership between the United States and the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, first called for by President Obama in his June 4, 2009, speech in Cairo, the U.S. Small Business Administration signed Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with two Middle Eastern nations this week.
The MOUs, which lay out broad frameworks of mutual engagement and support between the SBA and the governments of Oman and Bahrain, will be followed by detailed plans of action to promote entrepreneurship abroad and support good paying jobs in the U.S.
SBA will provide training and support in access to capital, entrepreneurial development and government procurement to strengthen the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises in the region.
***
(Further -)
The first agreement of this kind, the MOU between SBA and the Sultanate of Oman was signed on Feb. 16, at the opening of the Oman SME Financing Conference. More than 200 business owners and entrepreneurs attended the conference, where SBA Associate Administrator for Entrepreneurial Development Penny Pickett gave the keynote address. On Feb. 18, SBA and the Kingdom of Bahrain signed a similar agreement.
“The SBA has over 60 years of experience supporting small businesses as they start, grow, and thrive. We will draw on that experience to help the people of Oman and Bahrain as they work to expand small business ownership in the region,” Pickett said.
The MOUs are the result of an agreement between the SBA and the State Department’s Office of Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) to support entrepreneurial development and provide technical assistance in the Middle East and North Africa. MEPI creates vibrant partnerships between the U.S. and the citizens of the Middle East and North Africa to foster development of pluralistic, participatory, and prosperous societies throughout the region.
MEPI works with local and international non-governmental organizations, the private sector, academic institutions and governments to expand political participation, strengthen civil society and the rule of law, empower women and youth, create educational opportunities, and foster economic growth.
Steven R. Ayers, a Kentucky native, was named District Director of the Kentucky District of the Small Business Administration (SBA) on May 10, 2004. He is responsible for delivery of SBA’s loans, technical assistance, and contract coordination programs throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Steve was selected as a charter member of the SBA Administrator’s Field Advisory Council in FY 2006/07 and subsequentaly served as the first District Director to rotate to Washington, DC, on a 90-day special assignment reporting directly to the Administrator as an Advisor.
In this capacity, he played a key leadership role in the launch and implementation of a precedent setting training initiative—SBA University which provided mission critical training to more than half of SBA’s employees.
Steve has more than 20 years of highly diversified technical and administrative management experience that spans public, private, and international business sectors. Prior to joining SBA, he served more than 13 years with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in Chattanooga, TN. TVA is a $9 billion federal corporation that supplies electricity to more than 8 million people through 159 electric power distributors in a seven state service territory.
Key positions held at TVA include General Manager, Corporate Contracts, in Procurement, responsible for leading a contract management team in implementing cost effective,strategically sourced, contract solutions for TVA business units; General Manager, Materials Management, with enterprise-wide responsibility for inventory management and warehousing; Senior Manager, Supplier & Distributor Relations, responsible for the small business, mentoring, suncontracting, supplier performance management, and distributor procurement partnership programs; and Senior Manager, Contract Projects, in Transmission/Power Supply responsible for effective delivery (engineering and construction) of electric system capital projects across all product lines—transmission lines, substations, and telecom.
Steve played a key leadership role as a member of TVA’s Supply Chain Reengineering Team and made a significant contribution to both creating and implementing this team’s innovative vision which saved TVA more than $270 million in five years.
He also served as a consultant supporting TVA’s Business Transformation Initiative Teams and was a member of TVA’s Minority Economic Development and Corporate Contributions Committees, and Diversity Council. In addition, he led a team effort to donate over 2000 surplus computers to more than 125 needy schools throughout the Tennessee Valley.
Steve gained extensive private and international sector experience as an executive with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). SAIC, a high technology, Fortune 500 company, provides high-tech solutions to world-wide customers in the defense, energy, and environment industry sectors.
As a Vice President for SAIC’s Real Time System’s Group in Huntsville, AL, Steve led a company division responsible for delivery of supervisory control data acquisition/security systems to commercial, government, and international customers.
Other key positions held at SAIC include Assistant Vice President for Administration and Operations Administrator in Huntsville, AL, and Installation Project Manager for SAIC’s McLean, VA, office responsible for delivering a $365 million command/control/ communications system project to the Royal Saudi Navy through a contract with the U.S. Navy. This project included a 16 month assignment in Saudi Arabia.
Steve holds a Global Masters of Business Administration (GMBA) degree from National University, San Diego, CA, and a BA degree, Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine. He is a Vietnam veteran and served fours years in the United States Marine Corps (1968-72) achieving the rank of Platoon Sergeant. Steve and his wife Carol, reside in Louisville, KY.
European shares fell 1 percent in early trade after Asian stock markets slid again. Japan’s Nikkei average closed 2.5 percent down for a loss of 6.5 percent on the week, mostly driven by worries about the euro zone.
The German parliament was poised to approve the lion’s share of a $1 trillion safety net for troubled euro zone nations and an EU task force of policymakers in Brussels will look to toughen regulations within the bloc blighted by a debt crisis.
The lower house was to vote on the 750 billion euro rescue package that is unpopular with voters at around 1000 GMT after rejecting opposition motions to delay or shelve the decision.
Europe’s biggest economy may have to fork out up to 148 billion euros in guarantees, on top of an equally divisive 22.4 billion euro contribution to a package for debt-ridden Greece.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right coalition has the necessary votes to get the bill passed, but it wants as much cross-party backing as possible to ease public opposition to bailing out weaker euro zone states.
In an effort to rally broader public support, her government stunned markets this week by unilaterally banning speculative trades in some financial instruments. The move sent stocks and the euro plunging and drew sharp criticism from EU partners, including close ally France, which were not consulted.
However, Merkel failed to satisfy the opposition Social Democrats, who were threatening to abstain from Friday’s vote unless the government backed a motion to push for an international financial transaction tax.
The vote follows pledges by the leaders of Germany and France on Thursday to set aside differences and work together to solve the European debt crisis and support the euro.
Later on Friday, European finance ministers were to discuss tightening the bloc’s tattered budget discipline rules and improving economic policy coordination in the 16-nation euro zone at a working group meeting in Brussels.
Berlin wants harsher sanctions on deficit sinners and an unprecedented insolvency procedure for states crippled by debt. No immediate decisions were expected.
The talks were sensitive because some euro zone countries oppose a European Commission proposal to scrutinize member’s budget plans before they are submitted to their own parliaments, seen as a threat to national sovereignty.
Brief of CNTAC
China National Textile & Apparel Council (CNTAC), is the national Federation of all textile-related industries, and is a non-profit organization formed on volunteer basis……(Details)
Profits as Percent of GDP - US - 1959 through 2003
My apologies that I don’t know where I found this – but I will give it due credit and find where it originated, thankyou for your patience. – cricketdiane
***
Consumer Price Index Comparisons - International - from Agence France Tresor - statistical institutes - as of May 2010 - Comparisons of Japan, USA, UK, Euro Zone, France
According to “Vietnam Economic Times” reported on May 19, the ASEAN Secretariat, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Commodity Trade Agreement (ATIGA) 5 月 17 officially starts. This is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations coordination activities within the overall trade in goods agreement is based on CEPT / AFTA and its commitment to the basis of relevant agreements signed. Agreement specified the older 4 countries to eliminate tariffs Burma Cambodia postponed to 2018 time frame. (China Trade Remedy Information Network)
Trade: general for the better, variables still remain
Renewed growth in the coming months do not change the trend
This year’s “51″ holiday, Chongqing Customs Customs officers stationed in the port office is particularly busy. They not only did not break, but also overtime clearance 2454 TEUs import and export goods, the value of 102 million.
Chongqing Customs statistics show that this year, Chongqing, export-oriented economy gradually out of the shadow of the crisis, a strong rebound. April, 9277 the customs declarations were handled, up by 38.9%, to declare the import and export volume of a single month record high since 2008.
This year, the world economy continues to recover, Guonei good momentum of economic recovery to consolidate, to leave for China’s foreign trade Yan Xu 年底 since the restorative growth, showing Buduan better state, foreign trade rapidly towards Ping Heng.
According to customs statistics, from January to April, China’s import and export value of 855.99 billion U.S. dollars, up 42.7% over the same period last year. April, import and export value of 238.16 billion U.S. dollars, up 39.4%. Ago in April, China’s trade surplus decreased 16.2 billion year on year, down 78.6%. April trade surplus of 1.68 billion U.S. dollars, down 87%.
State Council Development Research Center of Foreign Economic Research Department, Minister Long Guoqiang said: “Although foreign trade returned to surplus in April, but remained stable in both import and export volume growth under the premise of continued distinct surplus narrowed sent a positive signal that out that foreign trade development will be more balanced. “
He believes that the next few months, import and export trends in restorative growth do not change.
Exports, global economic recovery and resumption of international trade, foreign trade growth to provide a good foundation. Not long ago, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) report released in the spring raised its forecast for world economic growth, world economic growth in 2010 4.2%, 3.1% growth in the U.S., euro zone growth of 1%, up 1.9% in Japan ; world trade in goods will grow by 8%.
Imports, despite the recent introduction of a series of domestic regulation of the real estate market moves, You Keneng steel and other industries will emerge some impact, short-term Nei will Yizhi on iron ore and other bulk commodities of Xu Qiu. But the regulation does not affect the property market fundamentals, as the steady recovery in domestic demand, imports will continue to be stable overall growth.
National Information Center on May 7 report released expects the second quarter of this year, China’s export growth will remain relatively high. Preliminary estimate of 25% export growth, import growth of 35%, the trade surplus continued to reduce the size.
*** U.S. Federal Reserve raised U.S. GDP growth expected in 2010
Newswire (press chapters into) the U.S. Federal Reserve Board by the end of April this year U.S. economic growth will be higher than originally expected growth, but slow the pace of the economy out of recession, inflation in 2012 is expected to remain moderate. Fed is expected to grow the U.S. economy in 2010 3.2% -3.7%. This increase was higher than in January gives -3.5% 2.8% growth forecast, although Fed officials are expected to enhance economic performance, it is expected that inflation will remain moderate and the unemployment rate will remain high next few years. This prompted the Fed to maintain the current policy stance unchanged, that for the time being will remain at historically low short-term interest rates to support the economic recovery.
The pace of the U.S. economy out of recession prompted the Federal Reserve is expected to slow this year, the unemployment rate will remain at 9% above the inflation rate before the end of 2012 will remain below 2%. Fed officials expect the fourth quarter of 2010, the unemployment rate will drop to between 9.1% -9.5%, slightly better than expected given this year in January. U.S. April unemployment rate was 9.9%.
So, when it comes to advanced economies we forecast growth to be 2.3 percent for 2010, and 2.4 percent for 2011, and this is just not enough to make up for the ground lost during the recession. Output for these countries is now 7 percent below its precrisis trend, and this output gap is expected to remain large for many years to come.
Associated with this prolonged output gap is persistent high unemployment. We forecast the unemployment rate in advanced economies to reach 8.4 percent in 2010, and to decline to only 8 percent in 2011.
What is the main factor behind this weak performance and this prolonged output gap? We think it is weak private demand. In the U.S., consumers, who were the drivers of the economy before the crisis, are being more prudent. In Europe, where banks play a central role in the financial intermediation, the weak banking sector limits credit supply. In Japan, deflation has reappeared, leading to higher real interest rates and putting in danger an already weak recovery.
Above excerpt from Mr. Olivier Blanchard, Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department, (with Jörg Decressin, Assistant Director, Petya Koeva Brooks, Chief of the World Economic Studies Division, and Abdul Abiad, Senior Economist in the World Economic Studies Division)
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Washington, DC
***
Transcript of a press Briefing by Caroline Atkinson, Director, External relations Department
I would just like to start by reminding you of some upcoming events. You probably don’t need too much reminding, but we will be having an IMF Board meeting on Greece this coming Sunday, May 9th. We expect that there will be press availability from the Managing Director. After that we will also have a press release.
After that, the Managing Director will be traveling to Zurich to participate in a high level seminar on the international monetary system, and at the end of that there will be a press release and a press conference with the Swiss National Bank Governor Philipp Hildebrand and the Managing Director.
. . .
And on May 12th, here at Fund Headquarters, Nicholas Stern, Lord Stern will deliver a speech and participate in a panel discussion on the topic of Climate Change from Copenhagen to Cancun: Prospects for Reaching a Global Agreement. This event, which is sponsored jointly by the World Bank and the IMF will be open to the press between, and it takes place between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. You can contact Media Relations at the IMF for details on all of these events.
So, maybe I can turn to your questions. I have one online straight away which maybe I’ll take although that’s a bit unusual. But I suspect that it deals with some of the questions that you all are going to ask. “How to assess the strong opposition by the Greek public to the EU/IMF program and are you concerned that extremists are trying to direct the peaceful legitimate protests towards violence?”
First of all I do want to emphasize that the program is the Greek authorities’ program. It’s not surprising that the Greek people are concerned and worried and upset. The program will involve sacrifices, but I think it is important to understand two things. First of all, the financial support from the EU and the IMF is aimed to help the Greek economy—to support it with this difficult adjustment and to focus on addressing the two problems that the Greek economy has been suffering from—on debt and competitiveness– and put the economy back onto a path of strong, sustainable growth with jobs and employment down the road. The other thing is that we are impressed by the determination of the Greek authorities, themselves, to carry through this difficult plan. Obviously, this is a very challenging situation, but we have seen a lot of determination from the authorities behind this plan.
On the second issue, of course legitimate protests are exactly that, legitimate, but violence is deplorable. And again, I think that Prime Minister Papandreou put it well yesterday when he said, “Protests and demonstrations are one thing and violence is quite another.”
QUESTIONER: I have heard from many economists today that the bailout package cannot prevent Greece from defaulting on their debts. What is your comment?
MS. ATKINSON: Our view is that, that is quite wrong. We have deliberately designed a package of financial support that gives Greece the ability to stay out of the markets for more than 18 months until 2012. If implemented, the package of the adjustments will address and it addresses both the fiscal issue and the competitiveness issue with structural reforms, and will put Greece, we believe, in a position to fully pay its debts as well as partly by allowing down the road growth, renewed growth in the Greek economy.
(etc.)
And also, that a number of other countries, which need to have some fiscal adjustment, are indeed considering or in some cases implementing already fiscal adjustment measures. I think that these fundamental steps are what is most important to fight contagion. And the markets, I think, are looking for –in a way we may be able to provide some assurance that there is unprecedented effort in the Greek program to address Greece’s problems and also unprecedented support from European countries and the IMF.
On your second question, we don’t know exactly yet which currencies will be used for the initial disbursements. We may have some more details on that next week. But I think the main point to stress is that when the IMF makes a loan, we’re a cooperative like a credit union. So every country’s contribution to that in some broad sense reflects their contribution to the IMF or their quota in the IMF. And that’s really the fundamental point rather than how we manage it financially.
(my note, there is also discussion here of the handling of the contagion that might result from the Greek crisis and national exposures as part of the IMF commitments of currency based exchange-rated exposures, etc. – cricketdiane, 05-22-10)
***
Real Disposable Personal Income and Real Consumer Spending - 2009 - Bureau of Economic Analysis
NASA’s International Space Station Program Wins Collier Trophy
Final STS-132 Spacewalk Complete; Hatch to New Module Opened
Mission Specialists Michael Good and Garrett Reisman completed the final STS-132 spacewalk at 1:13 p.m. EDT Friday. The spacewalk lasted 6 hours, 46 minutes.
International Space Station Expedition 23 Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineer Alexander Skvortsov opened the hatch of the Mini Research Module-1, named Rassvet, Thursday.
Actual entry into the module and transfer of the 3,086 pounds of cargo it holds will occur after space shuttle Atlantis departs.
The 11,000-pound module delivered by Atlantis was attached to its permanent home on the Russian segment of the station Tuesday.
The new module will host a variety of biotechnology and biological science experiments and fluid physics and educational research. Rassvet contains a pressurized compartment with eight workstations, including a glove box to keep experiments separated from the in-cabin environment; two incubators to accommodate high- and low-temperature experiments; and a special platform to protect experiments from onboard vibrations.
Attached to its exterior is an experiment airlock that will be used on another Russian laboratory module set for delivery in 2012.
NASA is offering a 2010 calendar that describes the work being done on the International Space Station and gives information about the crews that have lived there. The calendar contains photographs taken from the space station and highlights historic NASA milestones and fun facts about the international construction project of unprecedented complexity that began in 1998. (Please Note: To print this large calendar on 8.5 by 11 paper, printer may need to be set on a “shrink to printable area” option.)
The CGS system goes back to a proposal made in 1832 by the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss.[1] In 1874, it was extended by the British physicists James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson with a set of electromagnetic units.
The values (by order of magnitude) of many CGS units turned out to be inconvenient for practical purposes. For example, many everyday length measurements yield hundreds or thousands of centimetres, such as those of human height and sizes of rooms and buildings. Thus the CGS system never gained wide general use outside the field of electrodynamics and laboratory science. Starting in the 1880s, and more significantly by the mid-20th century, CGS was gradually superseded internationally by the MKS (metre-kilogram-second) system, which in turn became the modern SI standard.
From the international adoption of the MKS standard in the 1940s and the SI standard in the 1960s, the technical use of CGS units has gradually declined worldwide, in the United States more slowly than elsewhere. CGS units are today no longer accepted by the house styles of most scientific journals, textbook publishers, or standards bodies, although they are commonly used in astronomical journals such as the Astrophysical Journal. CGS units are still occasionally encountered in technical literature, especially in the United States in the fields of material science, electrodynamics and astronomy.
The units gram and centimetre remain useful as prefixed units within the SI system, especially for instructional physics and chemistry experiments, where they match the small scale of table-top setups. However, where derived units are needed, the SI ones are generally used and taught instead of the CGS ones today. For example, a physics lab course might ask students to record lengths in centimeters, and masses in grams, but force (a derived unit) in newtons, a usage consistent with the SI system.
Centimetre gram second system of units
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Cgs unit)
The centimetre-gram-second system (abbreviated CGS or cgs) is a metric system of physical units based on centimetre as the unit of length, gram as a unit of mass, and second as a unit of time. All CGS mechanical units are unambiguously derived from these three base units, but there are several different ways of extending the CGS system to cover electromagnetism.
The CGS system has been largely supplanted by the MKS system, based on metre, kilogram, and second. MKS was in turn extended and replaced by the International System of Units (SI). The latter adopts the three base units of MKS, plus the ampere, mole, candela and kelvin. In many fields of science and engineering, SI is the only system of units in use. However, there remain certain subfields where CGS is prevalent.
In measurements of purely mechanical systems (involving units of length, mass, force, energy, pressure, etc.), the differences between CGS and SI are straightforward and rather trivial; the unit-conversion factors are all powers of 10 arising from the relations 100 cm = 1 m and 1000 g = 1 kg. For example, the CGS derived unit of force is the dyne, equal to 1 gAcm/s2, while the SI derived unit of force is the newton, 1 kgAm/s2. Thus it is straightforward to show that 1 dyne=10-5 newton.
On the other hand, in measurements of electromagnetic phenomena (involving units of charge, electric and magnetic fields, voltage, etc.), converting between CGS and SI is much more subtle and involved. In fact, formulas for physical laws of electromagnetism (such as Maxwell’s equations) need to be adjusted depending on what system of units one uses. This is because there is no one-to-one correspondence between electromagnetic units in SI and those in CGS, as there is for mechanical units. Furthermore, within CGS, there are several plausible choices of electromagnetic units, leading to different unit “sub-systems”, including Gaussian, “ESU”, “EMU”, and Heaviside-Lorentz. Among these choices, Gaussian units are the most common today, and in fact the phrase “CGS units” is often used to refer specifically to CGS-Gaussian units.
In mechanics, the CGS and SI systems of units are built in an identical way. The two systems differ only in the scale of two out of the three base units (centimetre versus metre and gram versus kilogram, respectively), while the third unit (second as the unit of time) is the same in both systems.
There is a one-to-one correspondence between the base units of mechanics in CGS and SI, and the laws of mechanics are not affected by the choice of units. The definitions of all derived units in terms of the three base units are therefore the same in both systems, and there is an unambiguous one-to-one correspondence of derived units:
v = \frac{dx}{dt} (definition of velocity)
F=m\frac{d^2x}{dt^2} (Newton’s second law of motion)
E = \int \vec{F}\cdot \vec{dx} (energy defined in terms of work)
p = \frac{F}{L^2} (pressure defined as force per unit area)
\eta = \tau/\frac{dv}{dx} (dynamic viscosity defined as shear stress per unit velocity gradient).
Thus, for example, the CGS unit of pressure, barye, is related to the CGS base units of length, mass, and time in the same way as the SI unit of pressure, pascal, is related to the SI base units of length, mass, and time:
1 unit of pressure = 1 unit of force/(1 unit of length)2 = 1 unit of mass/(1 unit of lengthA(1 unit of time)2)
1 Ba = 1 g/(cmAs2)
1 Pa = 1 kg/(mAs2).
Expressing a CGS derived unit in terms of the SI base units, or vice versa, requires combining the scale factors that relate the two systems:
* CGS system avoids introducing new base units and instead derives all electric and magnetic units from centimeter, gram, and second based on the physics laws that relate electromagnetic phenomena to mechanics.
* The first is Coulomb’s law, F = k_C \frac{q \cdot q^\prime}{d^2}, which describes the electrostatic force F between electric charges q and q^\prime, separated by distance d. Here kC is a constant which depends on how exactly the unit of charge is derived from the CGS base units.
* The second is Ampère’s force law, \frac{dF}{dL} = 2 k_A\frac{I \, I^\prime}{d}, which describes the magnetic force F per unit length L between currents I and I’ flowing in two long parallel wires, separated by distance d. Since I = q / t and I^\prime=q^\prime/t, the constant kA also depends on how the unit of charge is derived from the CGS base units.
Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism relates these two laws to each other. It states that the ratio of proportionality constants kC and kA must obey kC / kA = c2, where c is the speed of light. Therefore, if one derives the unit of charge from the Coulomb’s law by setting kC = 1, it is obvious that the Ampère’s force law will contain a prefactor 2 / c2. Alternatively, deriving the unit of current, and therefore the unit of charge, from the Ampère’s force law by setting kA = 1 or kA = 1 / 2, will lead to a constant prefactor in the Coulomb’s law.
Indeed, both of these mutually-exclusive approaches have been practiced by the users of CGS system, leading to the two independent and mutually-exclusive branches of CGS, described in the subsections below. However, the freedom of choice in deriving electromagnetic units from the units of length, mass, and time is not limited to the definition of charge. While the electric field can be related to the work performed by it on a moving electric charge, the magnetic force is always perpendicular to the velocity of the moving charge, and thus the work performed by the magnetic field on any charge is always zero. This leads to a choice between two laws of magnetism, each relating magnetic field to mechanical quantities and electric charge:
* The first law describes the Lorentz force produced by a magnetic field B on a charge q moving with velocity v:
* The second describes the creation of a static magnetic field B by an electric current I of finite length dl at a point displaced by a vector r, known as Biot-Savart law:
d\mathbf{B} = \alpha_B\frac{I d\mathbf{l} \times \mathbf{\hat r}}{r^2}\;, where r and \mathbf{\hat r} are the length and the unit vector in the direction of vector r.
Physical constants in CGS units
Commonly used physical constants in CGS units[8] Constant Symbol Value
Elementary charge e 4.803 204 27 H 10-10 Fr (ESU, Gaussian)
1.602 176 487 H 10-20 abC (EMU)
Fine-structure constant ? ? 1/137 7.297 352 570 H 10-3
Gravitational constant G 6.674 28 H 10-8 cm3/(gAs2)
Planck constant h 6.626 068 85 H 10-27 ergAs
\hbar 1.054 5716 H 10-27 ergAs
Speed of light in vacuum c ? 2.997 924 58 H 1010 cm/s
Pro and contra
While the absence of explicit prefactors in some CGS subsystems simplifies some theoretical calculations, it has the disadvantage that sometimes the units in CGS are hard to define through experiment. Also, lack of unique unit names leads to a great confusion: thus “15 emu” may mean either 15 abvolt, or 15 emu units of electric dipole moment, or 15 emu units of magnetic susceptibility, sometimes (but not always) per gram or per mole. On the other hand, SI starts with a unit of current, the ampere, which is easier to determine through experiment, but which requires extra prefactors in the electromagnetic equations. With its system of unique named units, SI also removes any confusion in usage: 1 ampere is a fixed quantity of a specific variable, and so are 1 henry and 1 ohm.
A key virtue of the Gaussian CGS system is that electric and magnetic fields have the same units, 4??0 is replaced by 1, and the only dimensional constant appearing in the equations is c, the speed of light. The Heaviside-Lorentz system has these desirable properties as well (with ?0 equaling 1), but it is a “rationalized” system (as is SI) in which the charges and fields are defined in such a way that there are many fewer factors of 4? appearing in the formulas, and it is in Heaviside-Lorentz units that the Maxwell equations take their simplest form.
In SI, and other rationalized systems (e.g. Heaviside-Lorentz), the unit of current was chosen such that electromagnetic equations concerning charged spheres contain 4?, those concerning coils of current and straight wires contain 2? and those dealing with charged surfaces lack ? entirely, which was the most convenient choice for electrical-engineering applications. In those fields where formulas concerning spheres dominate (for example, astronomy), it has been argued that the non-rationalized CGS system can be somewhat more convenient notationally.
In fact, in certain fields, specialized unit systems are used to simplify formulas even further than either SI or CGS, by using some system of natural units. For example, the particle physics community uses a system where every quantity is expressed by only one unit, the eV, with lengths, times, etc. all converted into eV’s by inserting factors of c and \hbar. This unit system is very convenient for particle-physics calculations, but would be impractical in other contexts.
See also
* Scientific units named after people
* SI electromagnetism units
* SI units
* Units of measurement
[edit] References and notes
1. ^ Hallock, William; Wade, Herbert Treadwell (1906). Outlines of the evolution of weights and measures and the metric system. New York: The Macmillan Co. p. 200. http://books.google.com/books?id=NVZKAAAAMAAJ.
2. ^ For historical reasons, 1 ampere is chosen such that the magnetic force exerted by two infinitely long, thin, parallel wires 1 m apart and carrying this current is exactly 2H10–7 N/m. This definition makes all SI electromagnetic units consistent (up to some integer powers of 10) with the EMU CGS system described in further sections.
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Jackson, John David (1999). Classical Electrodynamics (3rd ed.). New York: Wiley. pp. 775–784. ISBN 0-471-30932-X.
4. ^ Cardarelli, F. (2004). Encyclopaedia of Scientific Units, Weights and Measures: Their SI Equivalences and Origins (2nd ed.). Springer. p. 20. ISBN 1-8523-3682-X. http://books.google.com/books?id=6KCx8Ww75VkC.
5. ^ a b Leung, P. T. (2004). “A note on the ‘system-free’ expressions of Maxwell’s equations”. European Journal of Physics 25 (2): N1–N4. doi:10.1088/0143-0807/25/2/N01.
6. ^ a b c d e f Cardarelli, F. (2004). Encyclopaedia of Scientific Units, Weights and Measures: Their SI Equivalences and Origins (2nd ed.). Springer. pp. 20–25. ISBN 1-8523-3682-X. http://books.google.com/books?id=6KCx8Ww75VkC.
7. ^ Bennett, L. H.; Page, C. H.; and Swartzendruber, L. J. (1978). “Comments on units in magnetism”. Journal of Research of the National Bureau of Standards 83 (1): 9–12.
8. ^ A.P. French, Edwind F. Taylor (1978). An Introduction to Quantum Physics. W.W. Norton & Company.
[edit] General literature
* Griffiths, David J. (1999). “Appendix C: Units”. Introduction to Electrodynamics (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-805326-X.
* Jackson, John D. (1999). “Appendix on Units and Dimensions”. Classical Electrodynamics (3rd ed.). Wiley. ISBN 0-471-30932-X.
* Littlejohn, Robert (Fall 2007). “Gaussian, SI and Other Systems of Units in Electromagnetic Theory” (pdf). Physics 221A, University of California, Berkeley lecture notes. http://bohr.physics.berkeley.edu/classes/221/0708/notes/emunits.pdf. Retrieved 2008-05-06.
[hide]
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Description Energy consumption versus GDP.png
English: Note: Data is 2004 in 2000 US dollars.
Author: Frank van Mierlo
Please credit the author if you are using this image. Graph was produced from data in the 2006 Key World Energy Statistics from the International Energy Agency.
Rate of world energy usage in terawatts (TW), 1965-2005[1]
Global energy usage in successively increasing detail[2][3]
Energy intensity of different economies The graph shows the ratio between energy usage and GNP for selected countries. GNP is based on 2004 purchasing power parity and 2000 dollars adjusted for inflation.[4]
Energy consumption per capita versus the GNP per capita The graph plots the per capita energy versus the per capita income for all countries with more than 20 million inhabitants, the data more than 90% of the world’s population. The image shows the broad relation between wealth and energy consumption.[5]
GDP and energy consumption in Japan from 1958 – 2000 The data shows the correlation between GDP and energy use; however, it also shows that this link can be broken. After the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 the energy use stagnated while Japan’s GDP continued to grow, after 1985, under the influence of the then much cheaper oil, energy use resumed its historical relation to GDP.[6]
Worldwide energy sources (TW)(2004)[4]
Remaining Oil Breakdown of the remaining 57 ZJ oil on the planet. The annual oil consumption was 0.18 ZJ in 2005. There is significant uncertainty surrounding these numbers. The 11 ZJ of future additions to the recoverable reserves could be optimistic.[7][8]
Renewable energy sources worldwide at the end of 2008 Source: REN21[9]
Available renewable energy The volume of the cubes represent the amount of available geothermal, hydropower, wind and solar energy in TW, although only a small portion is recoverable. The small red cube shows the proportional global energy consumption.[10]
Solar energy as it is dispersed on the planet and radiated back to space. Values are in PW =1015 watt.[11]
In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (5H1020 J) with 80 to 90 percent derived from the combustion of fossil fuels.[1] This is equivalent to an average power consumption rate of 15 terawatts (1.504H1013 W). Not all of the world’s economies track their energy consumption with the same rigor, and the exact energy content of a barrel of oil or a ton of coal will vary with quality.
Most of the world’s energy resources are from the sun’s rays hitting earth. Some of that energy has been preserved as fossil energy, some is directly or indirectly usable; for example, via wind, hydro- or wave power. The term solar constant is the amount of incoming solar electromagnetic radiation per unit area, measured on the outer surface of Earth’s atmosphere, in a plane perpendicular to the rays. The solar constant includes all types of solar radiation, not just visible light. It is measured by satellite to be roughly 1366 watts per square meter, though it fluctuates by about 6.9% during a year—from 1412 W m-2 in early January to 1321 W m-2 in early July, due to the Earth’s varying distance from the sun, and by a few parts per thousand from day to day. For the whole Earth, with a cross section of 127,400,000 km2, the total energy rate is 174 petawatts (1.740H1017 W), plus or minus 3.5%. This value is the total rate of solar energy received by the planet; about half, 89 PW, reaches the Earth’s surface.
The estimates of remaining non-renewable worldwide energy resources vary, with the remaining fossil fuels totaling an estimated 0.4 YJ (1 YJ = 1024J) and the available nuclear fuel such as uranium exceeding 2.5 YJ. Fossil fuels range from 0.6-3 YJ if estimates of reserves of methane clathrates are accurate and become technically extractable. Mostly thanks to the Sun, the world also has a renewable usable energy flux that exceeds 120 PW (8,000 times 2004 total usage), or 3.8 YJ/yr, dwarfing all non-renewable resources.
Contents
* 1 Consumption
o 1.1 Primary energy
+ 1.1.1 Fossil fuels
+ 1.1.2 Nuclear power
+ 1.1.3 Renewable energy
# 1.1.3.1 Hydropower
# 1.1.3.2 Biomass and biofuels
# 1.1.3.3 Wind power
# 1.1.3.4 Solar power
# 1.1.3.5 Geothermal
o 1.2 By country
o 1.3 By sector
o 1.4 Fossil fuel
+ 1.4.1 Coal
+ 1.4.2 Oil
+ 1.4.3 Sustainability
o 1.5 Nuclear power
+ 1.5.1 Nuclear fission
+ 1.5.2 Nuclear fusion
o 1.6 Renewable resources
+ 1.6.1 Solar energy
+ 1.6.2 Wind power
+ 1.6.3 Wave and tidal power
+ 1.6.4 Geothermal
+ 1.6.5 Biomass
+ 1.6.6 Hydropower
* 2 Alternative energy paths
* 3 See also
* 4 References
* 5 Further reading
* 6 External links
Consumption
Primary energy
The United States Energy Information Administration regularly publishes a report on world consumption for most types of primary energy resources.
Fuel type Average power in TW[12]
1980 2004 2006
Oil 4.38 5.58 5.74
Gas 1.80 3.45 3.61
Coal 2.34 3.87 4.27
Hydroelectric 0.599 0.933 0.995
Nuclear power 0.253 0.914 0.929
Geothermal, wind,
solar energy, wood 0.016 0.133 0.158
Total 9.48 15.0 15.8
Fossil fuels
Main article: Fossil fuel
The twentieth century saw a rapid twentyfold increase in the use of fossil fuels. Between 1980 and 2006, the worldwide annual growth rate was 2%.[1] According to the US Energy Information Administration’s 2006 estimate, the estimated 471.8 EJ total consumption in 2004 was divided as follows, with fossil fuels supplying 86% of the world’s energy:
Coal fueled the industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th century. With the advent of the automobile, airplanes and the spreading use of electricity, oil became the dominant fuel during the twentieth century. The growth of oil as the largest fossil fuel was further enabled by steadily dropping prices from 1920 until 1973. After the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, during which the price of oil increased from 5 to 45 US dollars per barrel, there was a shift away from oil.[13] Coal, natural gas, and nuclear became the fuels of choice for electricity generation and conservation measures increased energy efficiency. In the U.S. the average car more than doubled the number of miles per gallon. Japan, which bore the brunt of the oil shocks, made spectacular improvements and now has the highest energy efficiency in the world.[5] From 1965 to 2008, the use of fossil fuels has continued to grow and their share of the energy supply has increased. From 2003 to 2008, coal, which is one of the dirtiest sources of energy,[14] was the fastest growing fossil fuel.[15].
Nuclear power
In 2005 nuclear power accounted for 6.3% of world’s total primary energy supply.[16] The nuclear power production in 2006 accounted 2,658 TWh (23.3 EJ), which was 16% of world’s total electricity production.[17][18] In November 2007, there were 439 operational nuclear reactors worldwide, with total capacity of 372,002 MWe. A further 33 reactors were under construction, 94 reactors were planned and 222 reactors were proposed.[17]
Renewable energy
Main article: Renewable energy
In 2004, renewable energy supplied around 7% of the world’s energy consumption.[19] The renewables sector has been growing significantly since the last years of the 20th century, and in 2005 the total new investment was estimated to have been 38 billion US dollars. Germany and China lead with investments of about 7 billion US dollars each, followed by the United States, Spain, Japan, and India. This resulted in an additional 35 GW of capacity during the year.[3]
Hydropower
Main article: hydropower
Worldwide hydroelectricity consumption reached 816 GW in 2005, consisting of 750 GW of large plants, and 66 GW of small hydro installations. Large hydro capacity totaling 10.9 GW was added by China, Brazil and India during the year, but there was a much faster growth (8%) in small hydro, with 5 GW added, mostly in China where some 58% of the world’s small hydro plants are now located.[3]
In the Western world, although Canada is the largest producer of hydroelectricity in the world, the construction of large hydro plants has stagnated due to environmental concerns.[20] The trend in both Canada and the United States has been to micro hydro because it has negligible environmental impacts and opens up many more locations for power generation. In British Columbia alone the estimates are that micro hydro will be able to more than double electricity production in the province.
Biomass and biofuels
Main articles: biomass and biofuel
Until the end of the nineteenth century biomass was the predominant fuel, today it has only a small share of the overall energy supply. Electricity produced from biomass sources was estimated at 44 GW for 2005. Biomass electricity generation increased by over 100% in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain. A further 220 GW was used for heating (in 2004), bringing the total energy consumed from biomass to around 264 GW. The use of biomass fires for cooking is excluded.[3]
World production of bioethanol increased by 8% in 2005 to reach 33 billion litres (8.72 billion US gallons), with most of the increase in the United States, bringing it level to the levels of consumption in Brazil.[3] Biodiesel increased by 85% to 3.9 billion litres (1.03 billion US gallons), making it the fastest growing renewable energy source in 2005. Over 50% is produced in Germany.[3]
Wind power
Main article: Wind power
According to the World Wind Energy Association, the installed capacity of wind power increased by 29 % from the end of 2007 to the end of 2008 to total 121 GW, with over half the increase in the United States, Spain and China.[21] Doubling of capacity took about three years. The total installed capacity is approximately three to eight times that of the actual average power produced as the nominal capacity represents peak output; actual capacity is generally from 13[22]-40% of the nominal capacity.[23]
Solar power
Main article: Solar energy
The available solar energy resources are 3.8 YJ/yr (120,000 TW). Less than 0.02% of available resources are sufficient to entirely replace fossil fuels and nuclear power as an energy source. Assuming that our rate of usage in 2005 remains constant, we will run out of conventional oil in 40 years (2045), coal in 154 yrs (2159). In practice neither will actually run out, as natural constraints will force production to decline as the remaining reserves dwindle.[24][25][26]
In 2007 grid-connected photovoltaic electricity was the fastest growing energy source, with installations of all photovoltaics increasing by 83% in 2009 to bring the total installed capacity to 15 GW. Nearly half of the increase was in Germany, now the world’s largest consumer of photovoltaic electricity (followed by Japan). Solar cell production increased by 50% in 2007, to 3,800 megawatts, and has been doubling every two years.[27]
The consumption of solar hot water and solar space heating was estimated at 88 GWt (gigawatts of thermal power) in 2004. The heating of water for unglazed swimming pools is excluded.[3]
Geothermal
Main article: Geothermal power
Geothermal energy is used commercially in over 70 countries.[28] In the year 2004, 200 PJ (57 TWh) of electricity was generated from geothermal resources, and an additional 270 PJ of geothermal energy was used directly, mostly for space heating. In 2007, the world had a global capacity for 10 GW of electricity generation and an additional 28 GW of direct heating, including extraction by geothermal heat pumps.[3][29] Heat pumps are small and widely distributed, so estimates of their total capacity are uncertain and range up to 100 GW.[28] Heat pump capacity factors are low since demand is seasonal.
By country
See also: Energy by country and List of countries by energy consumption per capita
Energy consumption is loosely correlated with gross national product, but there is a large difference even between the most highly developed countries, such as Japan and Germany with 6 kW per person and United States with 11.4 kW per person. In developing countries such as India the per person energy use is closer to 0.7 kW. Bangladesh has the lowest consumption with 0.2 kW per person.
The US consumes 25% of the world’s energy with a share of global GDP at 22% and a share of the world population at 5%. The most significant growth of energy consumption is currently taking place in China, which has been growing at 5.5% per year over the last 25 years. Its population of 1.3 billion people (20% of the world population) is consuming energy at a rate of 1.6 kW per person.
Over the past four years, electricity consumption per capita in the U.S. has decreased about 1% per year between 2004 and 2008. Power consumption is projected to hit 4,333,631 million kilowatt hours by 2013, an annual growth rate of 1.93% for the next five years. Consumption increased from 3,715,949 in 2004 to an expected 3,937,879 million kilowatt hours per year in 2008, an increase of about 1.5% per year. The rate of increase has been steadily decreasing – it was 2.5% in the 1990s.[30] U.S. population has been increasing about 1.3% per year, a total increase of about 6.7% over five years.[31] The decrease has been mostly due to efficiency increases. Compact fluorescent bulbs, for example use about one third as much electricity as incandescents. LED bulbs, however, use about one tenth as much, and over their 50,000 to 100,000 hour lifetime are cheaper than compact fluorescents.
One metric of efficiency is energy intensity. This is a measure of the amount of energy it takes a country to produce a dollar of gross domestic product.
By sector
Industrial users (agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and construction) consume about 37% of the total 15 TW. Personal and commercial transportation consumes 20%; residential heating, lighting, and appliances use 11%; and commercial uses (lighting, heating and cooling of commercial buildings, and provision of water and sewer services) amount to 5% of the total. [32]
The other 27% of the world’s energy is lost in energy transmission and generation. In 2005, global electricity consumption averaged 2 TW. The energy rate used to generate 2 TW of electricity is approximately 5 TW, as the efficiency of a typical existing power plant is around 38%.[33] The new generation of gas-fired plants reaches a substantially higher efficiency of 55%. Coal is the most common fuel for the world’s electricity plants.[34]
Fossil fuel
Main article: Fossil fuel
Remaining reserves of fossil fuel are estimated as: Assessment Team |url= http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-060/ESpt4.html#Table | accessdate=2007-01-18}}</ref>
Fuel Energy reserves in ZJ
Coal 290.0
Oil 18.4
Gas 15.7
Significant uncertainty exists for these numbers. The estimation of the remaining fossil fuels on the planet depends on a detailed understanding of the Earth crust. This understanding is still less than perfect. While modern drilling technology makes it possible to drill wells in up to 3 km of water to verify the exact composition of the geology, one half of the ocean is deeper than 3 km, leaving about a third of the planet beyond the reach of detailed analysis. The Energy Watch Group reports suggest that supplying the demand for oil may be insufficient,[35] and that uranium resources would be exhausted within 70 years.[36] However, these views are greatly at variance with those of most industry observers.
Coal
Main article: World coal reserves
Coal is the most abundant fossil fuel. This was the fuel that launched the industrial revolution and has continued to grow in use; China, which already has many of the world’s most polluted cities,[37] was in 2007 building about two coal fired power plants every week.[38][39] Coal is the fastest growing fossil fuel and its large reserves would make it a popular candidate to meet the energy demand of the global community, short of global warming concerns and other pollutants.[40] According to the International Energy Agency the proven reserves of coal are around 909 billion tonnes, which could sustain the current production rate for 155 years,[41] although at a 5% growth per annum this would be reduced to 45 years, or until 2051. With the Fischer-Tropsch process it is possible to make liquid fuels such as diesel and jet fuel from coal. Citing concern for global warming, the Stop Coal campaign calls for a moratorium on the construction of any new coal plants and on the phase out of all existing plants.[42] In the United States, 49% of electricity generation comes from burning coal.[43]
Oil
See also: Oil reserves and Peak oil
It is estimated that there may be 57 ZJ of oil reserves on Earth (although estimates vary from a low of 8 ZJ,[1] consisting of currently proven and recoverable reserves, to a maximum of 110 ZJ) consisting of available, but not necessarily recoverable reserves, and including optimistic estimates for unconventional sources such as tar sands and oil shale. Current consensus among the 18 recognized estimates of supply profiles is that the peak of extraction will occur in 2020 at the rate of 93-million barrels per day (mbd). Current oil consumption is at the rate of 0.18 ZJ per year (31.1 billion barrels) or 85-mbd.
There is growing concern that peak oil production may be reached in the near future, resulting in severe oil price increases.[44] A 2005 French Economics, Industry and Finance Ministry report suggested a worst-case scenario that could occur as early as 2013.[45] There are also theories that peak of the global oil production may occur in as little as 2–3 years. The ASPO predicts peak year to be in 2010. Some other theories present the view that it has already taken place in 2005. World crude oil production (including lease condensates) according to US EIA data decreased from a peak of 73.720 mbd in 2005 to 73.437 in 2006, 72.981 in 2007, 73.697 in 2008.[46] According to peak oil theory, increasing production will lead to a more rapid collapse of production in the future, while decreasing production will lead to a slower decrease, as the bell-shaped curve will be spread out over more years.
In a stated goal of increasing oil prices to $75/barrel, which had fallen from a high of $147 to a low of $40, OPEC announced decreasing production by 2.2 mbd beginning January 1, 2009.[47]
Sustainability
Political considerations over the security of supplies, environmental concerns related to global warming and sustainability are expected to move the world’s energy consumption away from fossil fuels. The concept of peak oil shows that we have used about half of the available petroleum resources, and predicts a decrease of production.
A government led move away from fossil fuels would most likely create economic pressure through carbon emissions and green taxation. Some countries are taking action as a result of the Kyoto Protocol, and further steps in this direction are proposed. For example, the European Commission has proposed that the energy policy of the European Union should set a binding target of increasing the level of renewable energy in the EU’s overall mix from less than 7% today to 20% by 2020.[48]
The antithesis of sustainability is a disregard for limits, commonly referred to as the Easter Island Effect, which is the concept of being unable to develop sustainability, resulting in the depletion of natural resources.[49]
Nuclear power
See also: Nuclear power and Nuclear energy policy
Nuclear fission
See also: Nuclear fuel
The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates the remaining uranium resources to be equal to 2500 ZJ.[50] This assumes the use of breeder reactors which are able to create more fissile material than they consume. IPCC estimated currently proved economically recoverable uranium deposits for once-through fuel cycles reactors to be only 2 ZJ. The ultimately recoverable uranium is estimated to be 17 ZJ for once-through reactors and 1000 ZJ with reprocessing and fast breeder reactors.[51]
Resources and technology do not constrain the capacity of nuclear power to contribute to meeting the energy demand for the 21st century. However, political and environmental concerns about nuclear safety and radioactive waste started to limit the growth of this energy supply at the end of last century, particularly due to a number of nuclear accidents. Concerns about nuclear proliferation (especially with plutonium produced by breeder reactors) mean that the development of nuclear power by countries such as Iran and Syria is being actively discouraged by the international community.[52]
Nuclear fusion
Fusion power is the process driving our sun and other stars. It generates large quantities of heat by fusing the nuclei of hydrogen or helium isotopes, which may be derived from seawater. The heat can theoretically be harnessed to generate electricity. The temperatures and pressures needed to sustain fusion make it a very difficult process to control. The tantalizing potential of fusion is its theoretical ability to supply vast quantities of energy, with relatively little pollution.[53] Although both the United States and the European Union, along with other countries, are supporting fusion research (such as investing in the ITER facility), according to one report, inadequate research has stalled progress in fusion research for the past 20 years.[54]
Renewable resources
Main article: Renewable resource
Renewable resources are available each year, unlike non-renewable resources which are eventually depleted. A simple comparison is a coal mine and a forest. While the forest could be depleted, if it is managed properly it represents a continuous supply of energy, vs the coal mine which once it has been exhausted is gone. Most of earth’s available energy resources are renewable resources. Renewable resources account for more than 93 percent of total U.S. energy reserves. Annual renewable resources were multiplied times thirty years for comparison with non-renewable resources. In other words, if all non-renewable resources were uniformly exhausted in 30 years, they would only account for 7 percent of available resources each year, if all available renewable resources were developed.[55]
Solar energy
Main article: Solar energy
Renewable energy sources are even larger than the traditional fossil fuels and in theory can easily supply the world’s energy needs. 89 PW[56] of solar power falls on the planet’s surface. While it is not possible to capture all, or even most, of this energy, capturing less than 0.02% would be enough to meet the current energy needs. Barriers to further solar generation include the high price of making solar cells and reliance on weather patterns to generate electricity. Also, solar generation does not produce electricity at night, which is a particular problem in high northern and southern latitude countries; energy demand is highest in winter, while availability of solar energy is lowest. This could be overcome by buying power from countries closer to the equator during winter months. Globally, solar generation is the fastest growing source of energy, seeing an annual average growth of 35% over the past few years. Japan, Europe, China, U.S. and India are the major growing investors in solar energy. Advances in technology and economies of scale, along with demand for solutions to global warming, have led photovoltaics to become the most likely candidate to replace nuclear and fossil fuels.[57]
Wind power
Main article: Wind power
The available wind energy estimates range from 300 TW to 870 TW.[56][58] Using the lower estimate, just 5% of the available wind energy would supply the current worldwide energy needs. Most of this wind energy is available over the open ocean. The oceans cover 71% of the planet and wind tends to blow stronger over open water because there are fewer obstructions.
Wave and tidal power
Main articles: Wave power and Tidal power
At the end of 2005, 0.3 GW of electricity was produced by tidal power.[3] Due to the tidal forces created by the Moon (68%) and the Sun (32%), and the Earth’s relative rotation with respect to Moon and Sun, there are fluctuating tides. These tidal fluctuations result in dissipation at an average rate of about 3.7 TW.[59] As a result, the rotational speed of the Earth decreases, and the distance of the Moon to the Earth increases, on geological time scales. In several billion years, the Earth will rotate at the same speed as the Moon is revolving around it. So, several TW of tidal energy can be produced without having a significant effect on celestial mechanics.
Another physical limitation is the energy available in the tidal fluctuations of the oceans, which is about 0.6 EJ (exajoule).[60] Note this is only a tiny fraction of the total rotational energy of the Earth. Without forcing, this energy would be dissipated (at a dissipation rate of 3.7 TW) in about four semi-diurnal tide periods. So, dissipation plays a significant role in the tidal dynamics of the oceans. Therefore, this limits the available tidal energy to around 0.8 TW (20% of the dissipation rate) in order not to disturb the tidal dynamics too much.
Waves are derived from wind, which is in turn derived from solar energy, and at each conversion there is a drop of about two orders of magnitude in available energy. The total power of waves that wash against our shores add up to 3 TW.[61]
Geothermal
Main article: Geothermal power
Estimates of exploitable worldwide geothermal energy resources vary considerably, depending on assumed investements in technology and exploration and guesses about geological formations. According to a 1999 study, it was thought that this might amount to between 65 and 138 GW of electrical generation capacity ‘using enhanced technology’.[62] Other estimates range from 35 to 2000 GW of electrical generation capacity, with a further potential for 140 EJ/year of direct use.[29]
A 2006 report by MIT that took into account the use of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) concluded that it would be affordable to generate 100 GWe (gigawatts of electricity) or more by 2050, just in the United States, for a maximum investment of 1 billion US dollars in research and development over 15 years.[28] The MIT report calculated the world’s total EGS resources to be over 13 YJ, of which over 200 ZJ would be extractable, with the potential to increase this to over 2 YJ with technology improvements – sufficient to provide all the world’s energy needs for several millennia.[28] The total heat content of the Earth is 13,000,000 YJ.[29]
Biomass
Main articles: biomass and biofuel
Production of biomass and biofuels are growing industries as interest in sustainable fuel sources is growing. Utilizing waste products avoids a food vs fuel trade-off, and burning methane gas reduces greenhouse gas emissions, because even though it releases carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide is 23 times less of a greenhouse gas than is methane. Biofuels represent a sustainable partial replacement for fossil fuels, but their net impact on greenhouse gas emissions depends on the agricultural practices used to grow the plants used as feedstock to create the fuels. While it is widely believed that biofuels can be carbon-neutral, there is evidence that biofuels produced by current farming methods are substantial net carbon emitters.[63][64][65] Geothermal and biomass are the only two renewable energy sources which require careful management to avoid local depletion.[66]
Hydropower
Main article: hydropower
In 2005, hydroelectric power supplied 16.4% of world electricity.[67]
Alternative energy paths
Denmark and Germany have started to make investments in solar energy, despite their unfavorable geographic locations. Germany is now the largest consumer of photovoltaic cells in the world. Denmark and Germany have installed 3 GW and 17 GW of wind power respectively. In 2005, wind generated 18.5% of all the electricity in Denmark.[68] Brazil invests in ethanol production from sugar cane which is now a significant part of the transportation fuel in that country. Starting in 1965, France made large investments in nuclear power and to this date three quarters of its electricity comes from nuclear reactors.[69] Switzerland is planning to cut its energy consumption by more than half to become a 2000-watt society by 2050 and the United Kingdom is working towards a zero energy building standard for all new housing by 2016. In 2005, the Swedish government announced the oil phase-out in Sweden with the intention to become the first country to break its dependence on fossil fuel by 2020.
See also
Energy portal
Sustainable development portal
* Category: Energy by country
* Cubic mile of oil
* Domestic Energy Consumption
* Earth’s energy budget
* Electricity generation
* The End of Energy Obesity (book)
* Energy development
* Energy policy
* Energy use and conservation in the United Kingdom
* Energy use in the United States
* Kardashev scale
* List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions
* List of countries by energy intensity
* List of countries by electricity consumption
* List of countries by energy consumption per capita
* List of countries by electricity production
* List of countries by renewable electricity production
* Asian brown cloud
* Oil phase-out in Sweden
* Peak oil
* Sustainable energy
* A Thousand Barrels a Second: The Coming Oil Break Point and the Challenges Facing an Energy Dependent World (book)
References
1. ^ a b c d Energy – Consumption’!A1 “Consumption by fuel, 1965 – 2008″ (XLS). Statistical Review of World Energy 2009, BP. July 31, 2006. http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/reports_and_publications/statistical_energy_review_2008/STAGING/local_assets/2009_downloads/statistical_review_of_world_energy_full_report_2009.xls#’Primary Energy – Consumption’!A1. Retrieved 2009-10-24.
2. ^ “BP Statistical review of world energy June 2006″ (XLS). British Petroleum. June 2006. http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/reports_and_publications/statistical_energy_review_2006/STAGING/local_assets/downloads/spreadsheets/statistical_review_full_report_workbook_2006.xls. Retrieved 2007-04-03.
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i “Renewables, Global Status Report 2006″ (PDF). Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century. 2006. http://www.ren21.net/globalstatusreport/download/RE_GSR_2006_Update.pdf. Retrieved 2007-04-03.
4. ^ a b “World Energy Intensity: Total Primary Energy Consumption per Dollar of Gross Domestic Product using Purchasing Power Parities, 1980-2004″ (XLS). Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy. August 23, 2006. http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tablee1p.xls. Retrieved 2007-04-03.
5. ^ a b “Key World Energy Statistics” (PDF). International Energy Agency. 2006. http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2006/key2006.pdf. Retrieved 2007-04-03. pp. 48–57
6. ^ “Historical Statistics of Japan”. Japan Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/chouki/index.htm. Retrieved 2007-04-03.
7. ^ Smil, p. 204
* Tester, et al., p. 303
* “OPEC 2005 Annual Statistical Bulletin” (PDF). Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). 2005. http://www.opec.org/library/Annual%20Statistical%20Bulletin/pdf/ASB2005.pdf. Retrieved 2007-01-25.
8. ^ “USGS World Energy Assessment Team”. http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-060/ESpt4.html#Table. Retrieved 2007-01-18.
9. ^ Renewables Global Status Report 2009 (PDF).
10. ^ Exergy (the useful portion of energy) flow charts
11. ^ Data to produce this graphic was taken from a NASA publication.
12. ^ World Consumption of Primary Energy by Energy Type and Selected Country Groups December 31, 2008 Microsoft Excel file format]] table
13. ^ Yergin, p. 792
14. ^ Coal Pollution
15. ^ Yergin, p. ?
16. ^ “Key World Energy Statistics 2007″ (PDF). International Energy Agency. 2007. http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2007/key_stats_2007.pdf. Retrieved 2007-12-08.
17. ^ a b “World Nuclear Power Reactors 2006-07″. Uranium Information Centre. 2007-12-07. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html. Retrieved 2007-12-08.
18. ^ “Nuclear Power in the World Today. Briefing Paper 7″. Uranium Information Centre. August 2007. http://www.uic.com.au/nip07.htm. Retrieved 2007-12-08.
19. ^ “Photovoltaics” (PDF). U. S. Department of Energy—National Renewable Energy Laboratory. http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/power_databook/docs/pdf/db_chapter02_pv.pdf. Retrieved 2007-01-20.
20. ^ “Environmental Impacts of Renewable Energy Technologies (adapted from material in the UCS book Cool Energy: Renewable Solutions to Environmental Problems, by Michael Brower (MIT Press, 1992), 220 pp)”. Union of Concerned Scientists. 10 August 2005. http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/renewable_energy_basics/environmental-impacts-of-renewable-energy-technologies.html. Retrieved 2007-04-08.
26. ^ World Energy Consumption in Standard U.S. Physical Units
27. ^ Solar Cell Production Jumps 50 Percent in 2007
28. ^ a b c d “The Future of Geothermal Energy” (PDF). MIT. http://geothermal.inel.gov/publications/future_of_geothermal_energy.pdf. Retrieved 2007-02-07.
29. ^ a b c Fridleifsson,, Ingvar B.; Bertani, Ruggero; Huenges, Ernst; Lund, John W.; Ragnarsson, Arni; Rybach, Ladislaus (2008-02-11). O. Hohmeyer and T. Trittin. ed (pdf). The possible role and contribution of geothermal energy to the mitigation of climate change. Luebeck, Germany. pp. 59–80. http://iga.igg.cnr.it/documenti/IGA/Fridleifsson_et_al_IPCC_Geothermal_paper_2008.pdf. Retrieved 2009-04-06.
30. ^ Electricity Demand retrieved 8 June 2009
31. ^ March 2008, Cashing in on Climate Change, IBISWorld
32. ^ “International Energy Outlook 2007″. United States Department of Energy – Washington, DC. http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/index.html. Retrieved 2007-06-06.
33. ^ “Energy efficiency measures and technological improvements.”. e8.org. http://www.e8.org/index.jsp?numPage=138. Retrieved 2007-01-21. Article by group of ten leading electricity companies
34. ^ “Coal Facts 2006 Edition” (PDF). World Coal Institute. September 2006. http://www.worldcoal.org/assets_cm/files/PDF/coal_fact_card_2006.pdf. Retrieved 2007-04-08.
35. ^ Energy Watch Group Oil Report
36. ^ Energy Watch Group Uranium Report
37. ^ The Middle Landfill
38. ^ China building more power plants
39. ^ COAL: Scrubbing its future
40. ^ Pollution From Chinese Coal Casts a Global Shadow accessed 14 October 2007
41. ^ IEA (2006), p. 127
42. ^ Want to stop global warming? STOP COAL!
43. ^ EIA sources of electricity
44. ^ Gold Russell, Davis Ann (2007-11-10). “Oil Officials See Limit Looming on Production”. The Wallstreet Journal. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3265.
46. ^ International Petroleum Monthly Retrieved 10 November 2009
47. ^ Opec agrees record oil output cut retrieved 21 December 2008
48. ^ “Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council: Renewable Energy Roadmap: Renewable Energies in the 21st century; building a sustainable future – COM(2006) 848″ (PDF). Commission of the European Communities. January 10, 2007. http://ec.europa.eu/energy/energy_policy/doc/03_renewable_energy_roadmap_en.pdf. Retrieved 2007-01-27.
49. ^ Basic Concepts of Sustainable Development for Business Students
50. ^ “Global Uranium Resources to Meet Projected Demand: Latest Edition of “Red Book” Predicts Consistent Supply Up to 2025″. International Atomic Energy Agency. June 2, 2006. http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2006/uranium_resources.html. Retrieved 2007-02-01.
51. ^ Nakicenovic, Nebojsa et al.. “IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios”. Inergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc/emission/071.htm. Retrieved 2007-02-20.
52. ^ Syria ‘had covert nuclear scheme’
53. ^ Fusian Energy: Safety European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA). 2006. Retrieved on 2007-04-03
54. ^ Fifty years of U.S. fusion research – An overview of programs
55. ^ Renewable Resources in the U.S. Electricity Supply
56. ^ a b Tester, Jefferson W.; et al. (2005). Sustainable Energy: Choosing Among Options. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-20153-4.
57. ^ Why PV is important.
58. ^ Exergy Flow Charts
59. ^ Munk & Wunsch, 1999
60. ^ Marchuk, G.I. and Kagan, B.A. (1989) “Dynamics of Ocean Tides”, Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 978-9027725523. See page 225.
61. ^ Tester, et al., p. 593
62. ^ “All About Geothermal energy”. Geothermal Energy Association – Washington, DC. http://www.geo-energy.org/aboutGE/potentialUse.asp#world. Retrieved 2007-02-07.
63. ^ Rosenthal, Elisabeth (2008-02-08). “Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat”. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/science/earth/08wbiofuels.html. Registration required. “Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.
” “In the wake of the new studies, a group of 10 of the United States’s most eminent ecologists and environmental biologists today sent a letter to President Bush and the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, urging a reform of biofuels policies. “We write to call your attention to recent research indicating that many anticipated biofuels will actually exacerbate global warming””
“International environmental groups, including the United Nations, responded cautiously to the studies, saying that biofuels could still be useful. “We don’t want a total public backlash that would prevent us from getting the potential benefits,” said Nicholas Nuttall, spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program, who said the United Nations had recently created a new panel to study the evidence.
“There was an unfortunate effort to dress up biofuels as the silver bullet of climate change,” he said.” “the papers published Thursday suggested that, if land use is taken into account, biofuels may not provide all the benefits once anticipated. Dr. Searchinger said the only possible exception he could see for now was sugar cane grown in Brazil, which take relatively little energy to grow and is readily refined into fuel.”
64. ^ Farigone, Joseph; Hill, Jason; Tillman, David; Polasky, Stephen; Hawthorne, Peter (2008-02-29), “Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt”, Science 319: 1235–1238, doi:10.1126/science.1152747
65. ^ Searchinger, Timothy; Heimlich, Ralph; Houghton, R. A.; Dong, Fengxia; Elobeid, Amani; Fabiosa, Jacinto; Tokgaz, Simla; Hayes, Dermot et al. (2008-02-29), “Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land-Use Change”, Science 319: 1238–1240, doi:10.1126/science.1151861
66. ^ The New Math of Alternative Energy
67. ^ Key World Energy Statistics 2007
68. ^ “Danish Annual Energy Statistics” (XLS). Danish Energy Authority. December 2006. http://www.energistyrelsen.dk/graphics/UK_Facts_Figures/Statistics/yearly_statistics/Figures2005.xls. Retrieved 2007-01-27.
69. ^ Smil, p. ?
[edit] Further reading
* International Energy Agency. (2006) World Energy Outlook 2006. ISBN 92-64-10989-7
* MacKay, David J C. (2008) Sustainable Energy – without the hot air UIT Cambridge. ISBN 978-0-954452933. Also available free online
* Smil, Vaclav. (2003) Energy at the crossroads MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-19492-9
* Tester, Jefferson W. et al.. (2005) Sustainable Energy: Choosing Among Options. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-20153-4
* Yergin, Daniel (1993). The Prize. Simon & Schuster: New York. ISBN 0-671-79932-0
[edit] External links
* World Energy Outlook
* Official Energy Statistics from the US government
* Energy Statistics and News from the European Union
* Annual Energy Review 2006, DOE/EIA-0384(2006), by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (PDF)
* Statistical Review of World Energy 2007, annual review by BP
* Energy Export Databrowser – A visual review of production and consumption trends for individual nations; data from the British Petroleum Statistical Review.
v • d • e
Topics on human population
Major articles
World population A Family planning A Green revolution A Overpopulation A Over-consumption (water crisis) A Reproductive rights A Sustainable development
Biological topics
Population biology A Population control (one-child policy A Immigration reduction) A Population decline A Population density A Population growth A Population pyramid
Population ecology
Carrying capacity A Ecological footprint A I = P • A • T A Malthusian growth model A World3 model A Food security A World energy resources and consumption A Habitat destruction A Optimum population
Literary works
A Modest Proposal A An Essay on the Principle of Population A Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth A How Much Land Does a Man Need? A The Limits to Growth A The Population Bomb A The Ultimate Resource A The Skeptical Environmentalist
Lists
Most highly populated countries A Metropolitan areas by population
Events and
organizations
International Conference on Population and Development A Optimum Population Trust A United Nations Population Fund A World Population Foundation
Related articles
World Population Day A “The Day of Six Billion” A Easter Island downfall A Classic Maya collapse A Holocene extinction
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption”
Categories: Energy development | Energy policy | Alternative energy | Sustainability | Development | Energy economics | Peak oil | Energy use comparisons
William King “Bill” Harvey (September 13, 1915 in Danville, Indiana – June 1976) was a CIA officer, best known for his role in Operation Mongoose.
Harvey was the son of a lawyer and graduated from Indiana University School of Law – Bloomington and then opened a one person law firm in Kentucky. He joined the FBI in December 1940. He resigned from the FBI in July 1947 after breaking a FBI regulation and refusing a resulting re-assignment to Indianapolis, Indiana. He joined the CIA shortly thereafter.
Operation Mongoose was a CIA operation from Miami, Florida, that enlisted the help of the Mafia to plot an assassination attempt against Fidel Castro, the Cuban president. Harvey was one of case officers who dealt with John Roselli.[1]
Harvey was also posted to Berlin, Germany as station chief in the 1950s, where he led the operation that built an underground tunnel to the Russian sector, to spy on Russian communication channels. This operation was called PBJOINTLY.
Harvey died in 1976 from a heart attack. The previous year he testified before the Church Committee on the some of the CIA’s past operations.
* Bayard Stockton (2006). Flawed Patriot: The Rise and Fall of CIA Legend Bill Harvey. Dulles: Potomac Books.
In fiction
* Norman Mailer (1992). Harlot’s Ghost: A Novel. New York: Random House.
In Robert Littell (author)’s novel The Company, the character Harvey Torritti (portrayed by Alfred Molina in the 2007 miniseries adaptation) bears a number of resemblences to the real-life Bill Harvey. Torriti served at the FBI before joining CIA, after being fired by J. Edgar Hoover for wearing a loosened tie at FBI headquarters. Torriti also serves as the station chief in Berlin in the early 1950s, as a mentor to the major character Jack McAullife. During this part of the novel, Harvey Torriti has an antagonistic relationship with real life CIA counterintelligence chief, James Angleton over his suspicion that Kim Philby, a wartime friend of Angleton, was a Soviet mole. Further in the novel Harvey Torriti acts as the cutout between the CIA and Mafia for the latter to assassinate Fidel Castro, on behalf of the former.
References
* Spartacus Educational – William King Harvey
1. ^ Jack Anderson (1971-01-18). “6 Attempts to Kill Castro Laid to CIA”, The Washington Post.
External links
* Codshit – William King Harvey
* New York Times Review of Harlot’s Ghost
United States This United States biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_King_Harvey”
Categories: 1915 births | 1976 deaths | People of the Central Intelligence Agency | FBI agents | Deaths from cardiovascular disease | American spies | American anti-communists | American people stubs
Parents Everette Howard Hunt Sr. and Ethel Jean Totterdale
Children Saint John Hunt, David Hunt, Kevan Spence (nee Hunt), Lisa Hunt
Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. (October 9, 1918 – January 23, 2007) was an American author and spy. He worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and later the White House under President Richard Nixon. Hunt, with G. Gordon Liddy and others, was one of the White House’s “plumbers” — a secret team of operatives charged with fixing “leaks.” Information disclosures had proved an embarrassment to the Nixon administration when defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg sent a series of documents, which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, to The New York Times.
Hunt, along with Liddy, engineered the first Watergate burglary. In the ensuing Watergate Scandal, Hunt was convicted of burglary, conspiracy, and wiretapping, eventually serving 33 months in prison. In 2007 his son released audio tape of Hunt naming President Lyndon B. Johnson and others as the orchestrators of the John F. Kennedy assassination.[1]
Contents
* 1 Early life and career
* 2 CIA and anti-Castro efforts
* 3 Watergate
* 4 Later life
* 5 JFK assassination allegations by family member
* 6 Audio-taped testament regarding the JFK assassination plot
* 7 Books
* 8 Notes
* 9 Trivia
* 10 External links
Early life and career
Hunt was born in Hamburg, New York, United States, of English and Welsh descent.[1] An alumnus of Nichols School in Buffalo, New York and a 1940 graduate of Brown University, Hunt during World War II served in the U.S. Navy on the destroyer USS Mayo, United States Army Air Forces, and finally, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) which he worked for in China [1] . During and after the war, he also wrote several novels under his own name — East of Farewell (1942), Limit of Darkness (1944), Stranger in Town (1947), Bimini Run (1949) (with a hero named “Hank Sturgis”), and The Violent Ones (1950) — and, more famously, several spy and hardboiled novels under an array of pseudonyms, including Robert Dietrich, Gordon Davis and David St. John.
CIA and anti-Castro efforts
Warner Bros. had just bought rights to Hunt’s novel Bimini Run when he joined the CIA in October 1949. He became station chief in Mexico City in 1950, and supervised William F. Buckley, Jr., who worked for the CIA in Mexico during the period 1951–1952. Buckley and Hunt remained lifelong friends.[2]
In Mexico, Hunt helped devise Operation PBSUCCESS, the covert plan to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz, the elected president of Guatemala. Following assignments in Japan and as station chief in Uruguay, Hunt was assigned to forge Cuban exile leaders in the United States into a broadly representative government-in-exile that would, after the Bay of Pigs Invasion, form a provisional government to take over Cuba.[3] The failure of the invasion damaged his career.
After the Bay of Pigs, Hunt became a personal assistant to Allen Dulles.[4] Tad Szulc states that Hunt was asked to assist Dulles in writing a book, The Craft of Intelligence, that Dulles wrote following his involuntary retirement in 1961.[5] The book was published in 1963.
Hunt told the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973 that he served as the first Chief of Covert Action for the CIA’s Domestic Operations Division. He told the New York Times in 1974 that he spent about four years working for the division, beginning shortly after it was set up, in 1962, over the “strenuous opposition” of Richard Helms and Thomas H. Karamessines. He said that the division was assembled shortly after the Bay of Pigs operation, and that “many men connected with that failure were shunted into the new domestic unit.” He said that some of his projects from 1962 to 1966, which dealt largely with the subsidizing and manipulation of news and publishing organizations, “did seem to violate the intent of the agency’s charter.”[6]
According to Tad Szulc, Hunt was assigned to temporary duty as the acting CIA station chief in Mexico City for the period of August and September 1963,[7] at the time of Lee Harvey Oswald’s alleged visit there.[8][9] In his 1978 testimony, however, Hunt denied having been in Mexico at all between 1961 and 1970.[10]
Hunt was undeniably bitter about what he saw as President John F. Kennedy’s lack of spine in overturning the Castro regime.[11] In his semi-fictional autobiography, Give Us this Day, he wrote: “The Kennedy administration yielded Castro all the excuse he needed to gain a tighter grip on the island of Jose Marti, then moved shamefacedly into the shadows and hoped the Cuban issue would simply melt away.”[12] Disillusioned, he retired from the CIA on May 1, 1970. The following year, he was hired by Charles Colson, chief counsel to President Richard Nixon, and joined the President’s Special Investigations Unit (alias White House Plumbers) [1].
Watergate
Main article: Watergate scandal
Hunt testifies before the Watergate Committee
Hunt’s first assignment for the White House was a covert operation to break into the Los Angeles office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis J. Fielding.[13] In July 1971, Fielding had refused an FBI request for psychiatric data on Ellsberg.[14] Hunt and Liddy cased the building in late August.[15] The burglary, on September 3, 1971, was not detected, but no Ellsberg files were found.[16]
Also in the summer of 1971, Colson authorized Hunt to travel to New England to seek potentially scandalous information on Senator Edward Kennedy. Hunt sought and used CIA disguises and other equipment for the project.[17]
Hunt’s White House duties included assassinations-related disinformation. In September 1971, Hunt forged and offered to a Life magazine reporter top-secret State Department cables designed to prove that President Kennedy had personally and specifically ordered the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu.[18] Hunt told the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973 that that he had fabricated the cables to show a link between President Kennedy and the assassination of Diem, a Catholic, to estrange Catholic voters from the Democratic party, after Colson suggested he “might be able to improve upon the record.”[19]
According to Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker, Nixon White House tapes show that after presidential candidate George Wallace was shot on May 15, 1972, Nixon and Colson agreed to send Hunt to the Milwaukee home of the gunman, Arthur Bremer, to place McGovern presidential campaign material there. The intention was to link Bremer with the Democrats. Hersh writes that, in a taped conversation, “Nixon is energized and excited by what seems to be the ultimate political dirty trick: the FBI and the Milwaukee police will be convinced, and will tell the world, that the attempted assassination of Wallace had its roots in left-wing Democratic politics.” Hunt did not make the trip, however, because the FBI had moved too quickly to seal Bremer’s apartment and place it under police guard.[20]
Hunt organized the bugging of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office building.[21]
A few days after the break-in, Nixon was recorded saying, to H. R. Haldeman, “This fellow Hunt, he knows too damn much.”[22]
[V]ery bad, to have this fellow Hunt, ah, you know, ah, it’s, he, he knows too damn much and he was involved, we happen to know that. And that it gets out that the whole, this is all involved in the Cuban thing, that it’s a fiasco, and it’s going to make the FB, ah CIA look bad, it’s going to make Hunt look bad, and it’s likely to blow the whole, uh, Bay of Pigs thing which we think would be very unfortunate for CIA and for the country at this time, and for American foreign policy, and he just better tough it and lay it on them.[23]
Hunt and fellow operative G. Gordon Liddy, along with the five arrested at the Watergate, were indicted on federal charges three months later.
Hunt’s wife, Dorothy, was killed in the December 8, 1972 plane crash of United Airlines Flight 553 in Chicago. Congress, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated the crash, and found it to be an accident caused by crew error.[24] Over $10,000 in cash was found in Dorothy Hunt’s handbag in the wreckage.[25]
Hunt eventually spent 33 months in prison on a conspiracy charge, and said he was bitter that he was sent to jail while Nixon was allowed to resign.
Later life
“Give Us This Day”, Hunt’s book on the Bay of Pigs Invasion, was published late in 1973. In the book’s foreword, he commented on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as follows:
Once again it became fashionable to hold the city of Dallas collectively responsible for his murder. Still, and let this not be forgotten, Lee Harvey Oswald was a partisan of Fidel Castro, and an admitted Marxist who made desperate efforts to join the Red Revolution in Havana. In the end, he was an activist for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. But for Castro and the Bay of Pigs disaster there would have been no such “Committee.” And perhaps no assassin named Lee Harvey Oswald.[26]
On November 3, 1978, Hunt gave a security-classified deposition for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) released the deposition in February 1996.[27]
Two newspaper articles published a few months before the deposition stated that a 1966 CIA memo linking Hunt to the assassination of President Kennedy had recently been provided to the HSCA. The first article, by Victor Marchetti—author of the book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974)—appeared in the Liberty Lobby newspaper The Spotlight on August 14, 1978. According to Marchetti, the memo said in essence, “Some day we will have to explain Hunt’s presence in Dallas on November 22, 1963.”[28] He also wrote that Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and Gerry Patrick Hemming would soon be implicated in a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy.
The second article, by Joseph J. Trento and Jacquie Powers, appeared in the Wilmington, Delaware Sunday News Journal six days later. It alleged that the purported memo was initialed by Richard Helms and James Angleton and showed that, shortly after Helms and Angleton were elevated to their highest positions in the CIA, they discussed the fact that Hunt had been in Dallas on the day of the assassination and that his presence there had to be kept secret. However, nobody has been able to produce this supposed memo, and the United States President’s Commission on CIA activities within the United States determined that Hunt had been in Washington, DC on the day of the Assassination.[29]
Hunt sued Liberty Lobby but not the Sunday News Journal—for libel. Liberty Lobby stipulated, in this first trial, that the question of Hunt’s alleged involvement in the assassination would not be contested.[30] Hunt prevailed and was awarded $650,000 damages. In 1983, however, the case was overturned on appeal because of error in jury instructions.[31] In a second trial, held in 1985, Mark Lane made an issue of Hunt’s location on the day of the Kennedy assassination.[32] Lane successfully defended Liberty Lobby by producing evidence suggesting that Hunt had been in Dallas. He used depositions from David Atlee Phillips, Richard Helms, G. Gordon Liddy, Stansfield Turner, and Marita Lorenz, plus a cross-examination of Hunt. On retrial, the jury rendered a verdict for Liberty Lobby.[33] In spite of Lane’s claim that he convinced the jury that Hunt was a JFK assassination conspirator, most of the jurors who were interviewed by the media said they disregarded the conspiracy theory and judged the case (according to the judge’s jury instructions) on whether the article was published with “reckless disregard for the truth.”[34] Lane outlined his theory about Hunt’s and the CIA’s role in Kennedy’s murder in a 1991 book, Plausible Denial.[35]
Many conspiracists have believed that two of the three tramps marched through Dealey Plaza in the wake of the assassination to be Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis, although several other men, Charles Harrelson for example, were also identified as tramps. The mystery was apparently solved in the early 1990s when researcher Mary LaFontaine discovered documents identifying the men as Harold Doyle, John Forester Gedney, and Gus W. Abrams. Both the F.B.I. and independent researchers confirmed the identifications.[36]
The Mitrokhin Archive[37] by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, on the evidence supplied by Mitrokhin’s transcribed versions of Top Secret KGB files, allege the Soviet Union was principal in falsely connecting E. Howard Hunt to the Kennedy Assassination. Among its allegations are the recruitment and secret financial support for Mark Lane and other conspiracy theorist authors, including Carl Aldo Marzani and Joachim Joesten[38].
Hunt was also the addressee of a forged letter, purportedly from Oswald, dated two weeks before the assassination. Intended to raise suspicion of the CIA, and Hunt in particular, it was based upon the erroneous belief that Hunt had been in Dallas on the day of the assassination. The carefully-created letter was accepted as genuine by Oswald’s widow, and left the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1978) unable to verify or discredit its authenticity. Eventually, it appeared in the American press, although the “Mr. Hunt,” it was addressed to, was mistakenly assumed to be the oil magnate H. L. Hunt. Ironically, it was H. L. Hunt whom the Kremlin first suspected of plotting the assassination[39].
Hunt was a prolific author, primarily of spy novels.[40] He declared bankruptcy in 1995 and lived in Biscayne Park, Florida. [41]
A fictionalized account of Hunt’s role in the Bay of Pigs operation appears in Norman Mailer’s 1991 novel Harlot’s Ghost.
Canadian journalist David Giammarco interviewed Hunt for the December 2000 issue of Cigar Aficionado magazine.[42] Writing later in Controversy magazine,[43] Giammarco related an interview with a “former high-ranking CIA officer” in Miami who was “intrinsically involved in the CIA’s disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 and the many plots to kill Castro.” The subject, whose description closely resembles Hunt’s, is not identified by name. However, the individual reportedly told Giammarco that “he would confess to his part in the JFK assassination for a price tag of $14 million.”[44] E. Howard Hunt also wrote the foreword to David Giammarco’s best-selling book “For Your Eyes Only: Behind the Scenes of the James Bond Films” (ECW Press, 2002). Over the course of their long friendship, the elder spy Hunt apparently shared many secrets with David Giammarco. However, the exact details have not been publicly disclosed by Giammarco.
Hunt died on January 23, 2007 in Miami, Florida of pneumonia[45][46] and is buried in Prospect Lawn Cemetery, Hamburg, New York. His son Saint John delivered a eulogy at a memorial service.[47] Hunt’s memoir American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond was published by John Wiley & Sons in March 2007.[48]
JFK assassination allegations by family member
Main article: Kennedy assassination theories
The April 5, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone contained an extensive article on Hunt, based in large part on an interview with his eldest son, Howard (nicknamed Saint John by his mother). It describes Hunt’s alleged deathbed confessions of his supposed knowledge and indirect complicity in the JFK assassination.[1]
Among other things, the article claims that Hunt, in hand-written notes and a voice recording to Saint John, implicated Lyndon B. Johnson and CIA operative Cord Meyer as the key players in the JFK assassination conspiracy.
According to Hunt’s son, Hunt claimed the other assassin was a French gunman on the grassy knoll, often identified in other assassination theories as Lucien Sarti.
Among the materials provided by Hunt to his son are several handwritten documents detailing the participants and chronology of events involved with the assassination plot, including a “Chain of Command” indicating the involvement of several CIA agents and placing then Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson as the head of command. [2]
Audio-taped testament regarding the JFK assassination plot
On the April 28, 2007 edition of Coast to Coast Live hosted by Ian Punnett, a portion of an audio tape sent by Saint John containing his father’s January 2004 recounting of activities of several of fellow operatives played on-air for the first time. In the tape, Hunt named Cord Meyer, Frank Sturgis, David Sánchez Morales, and David Atlee Phillips as participants in the assassination with Vice-President Lyndon Johnson apparently approving the assassination for political gain.
A clip of this tape can be heard here.
The following is a transcript of Hunt’s testament on the audio tape clip:
I heard from Frank that LBJ had designated Cord Meyer, Jr. to undertake a larger organization while keeping it totally secret. Cord Meyer himself was a rather favored member of the Eastern aristocracy. He was a graduate of Yale University and had joined the Marine Corps during the war and lost an eye in the Pacific fighting.
I think that LBJ settled on Meyer as an opportunist like himself and a man who had very little left to him in life ever since JFK had taken Cord’s wife as one of his mistresses. I would suggest that Cord Meyer welcomed the approach from LBJ, who was after all only the Vice President at that time and of course could not number Cord Meyer among JFK’s admirers—quite the contrary.
As for Dave Phillips, I knew him pretty well at one time. He worked for me during the Guatemala project. He had made himself useful to the agency in Santiago, Chile where he was an American businessman. In any case, his actions, whatever they were, came to the attention of the Santiago station chief and when his resume became known to people in the Western hemisphere division he was brought in to work on Guatemalan operations.
Sturgis and Morales and people of that ilk stayed in apartment houses during preparations for the big event. Their addresses were very subject to change, so that where a fellow like Morales had been one day, you’d not necessarily associated [sic] with that address the following day. In short, it was a very mobile experience.
Let me point out at this point, that if I had wanted to fictionalize what went on in Miami and elsewhere during the run up for the big event, I would have done so. But I don’t want any unreality to tinge this particular story, or the information, I should say. I was a benchwarmer on it and I had a reputation for honesty.
I think it’s essential to refocus on what this information that I’ve been providing you — and you alone, by the way — consists of. What is important in the story is that we’ve backtracked the chain of command up through Cord Meyer and laying [sic] the doings at the doorstep of LBJ. He, in my opinion, had an almost maniacal urge to become President. He regarded JFK, as he was in fact, an obstacle to achieving that. He could have waited for JFK to finish out his term and then undoubtedly a second term. So that would have put LBJ at the head of a long list of people who were waiting for some change in the executive branch.
This is only a portion of the tape, and Saint John Hunt states that his father provided more specific information related to the assassination during this and other sessions.[49] These other sessions, however, were not taped, and the totality of this particular audio tape has yet to be aired or publicly disclosed.
Books
Nonfiction
* Give Us This Day: The Inside Story of the CIA and the Bay of Pigs Invasion—by One of Its Key Organizers (1973)
* Undercover: memoirs of an American secret agent / by E. Howard Hunt (1974)
* “For Your Eyes Only: Behind the Scenes of the James Bond Films” / by David Giammarco; foreword by E. Howard Hunt (2002)
* American spy: my secret history in the CIA, Watergate, and beyond / E. Howard Hunt; with Greg Aunapu; foreword by William F. Buckley, Jr. (2007)
Novels published as Howard Hunt or E. Howard Hunt:
* East of Farewell (1943)
* Limit of darkness, a novel by Howard Hunt (1944)
* Stranger in town (1947)
* Calculated risk: a play / by Howard Hunt (1948)
* Maelstrom / Howard Hunt (1948)
* Bimini run / by Howard Hunt (1949)
* The Violent Ones (1950)
* Berlin ending; a novel of discovery (1973)
* Hargrave deception / E. Howard Hunt (1980)
* Gaza intercept / E. Howard Hunt (1981)
* Cozumel / E. Howard Hunt (1985)
* Kremlin conspiracy / E. Howard Hunt (1985)
* Guadalajara / E. Howard Hunt (1990)
* Murder in State / E. Howard Hunt (1990)
* Body count / E. Howard Hunt (1992)
* Chinese Red / by E. Howard Hunt (1992)
* Mazatlán / E. Howard Hunt (1993) (lists former pseudonym P. S. Donoghue on cover)
* Ixtapa / E. Howard Hunt (1994)
* Islamorada / E. Howard Hunt (1995)
* Paris edge / E. Howard Hunt (1995)
* Izmir / E. Howard Hunt (1996)
* Dragon teeth: a novel / by E. Howard Hunt (1997)
* Guilty knowledge / E. Howard Hunt (1999)
* Sonora / E. Howard Hunt. (2000)
As Robert Dietrich:
* Cheat (1954)
* Be My Victim (1956)
* Murder on the rocks: an original novel (1957)
As P. S. Donoghue:
* Dublin Affair (1988)
* Sarkov Confession: a novel (1989)
* Evil Time (1992)
As David St. John
* Hazardous Duty (1966)
* Mongol Mask (1968)
* Sorcerers (1969)
* Diabolus (1971)
* Coven (1972)
As Gordon Davis:
* I Came to Kill (1953)
* House Dick (1961)
* Counterfeit Kill (1963)
* Ring Around Rosy (1964)
* Where Murder Waits (1965)
As John Baxter:
* A Foreign Affair
Notes
1. ^ a b c d Hedegaard, Erik (April 5, 2007). The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt Rolling Stone
2. ^ William F. Buckley, Jr. (January 26, 2007), “Howard Hunt, RIP”. Buckley describes their early friendship in Mexico in his introduction to Hunt’s posthumously-published memoir, American Spy.
3. ^ Tad Szulc, Compulsive Spy: The Strange Career of E. Howard Hunt (New York: Viking, 1974), 78.
4. ^ HSCA Deposition (November 3, 1978), Part II, p. 6:10–17
5. ^ Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 95
6. ^ Seymour M. Hersch, “Hunt Tells of Early Work For a CIA Domestic Unit,” New York Times (December 31, 1974), p. 1, col. 6.
7. ^ Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 96, 99: “Hunt spent August and September 1963 in Mexico City in charge of the CIA station there.”
8. ^ Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 99: “Through an extraordinary coincidence, Lee Harvey Oswald also visited Mexico City during September 1963.”
9. ^ John Armstrong, “Mexico City—Pandora’s Box” – pp. 614–706 of Harvey & Lee (Arlington, Texas: Quasar Press, 2003).
10. ^ HSCA Deposition (November 3, 1978), Part I, p. 7:14–16
11. ^ Rosenberg, Carol (June 28, 2001). Plotter of Bay of Pigs, Watergate conspirator: ‘File and forget’ Castro. Miami Herald
12. ^ Hunt, Give Us This Day, 13–14
13. ^ Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 128
14. ^ Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 127
15. ^ Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 130
16. ^ Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 131
17. ^ Marjorie Hunter, “Colson Confirms Backing Kennedy Inquiry but Denies Knowing of Hunt’s CIA Aid,” New York Times (June 30, 1973), p. 15.
18. ^ Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 134–135.
19. ^ David E. Rosenbaum, “Hunt Says He Fabricated Cables on Diem to Link Kennedy to Killing of a Catholic; Testifies Colson Sought To Alienate Democrats,” New York Times (September 25, 1973), p. 28.
20. ^ Molotsky, Irvin (December 7, 1992). Article Says Nixon Schemed to Tie Foe to Wallace Attack. “[T]he agent picked for the mission was E. Howard Hunt.” The New York Times
21. ^ Reynolds, Tim (January 23, 2007). Watergate Figure E. Howard Hunt Dies. Associated Press
22. ^ Weiner, Tim (January 24, 2007). E. Howard Hunt, Agent Who Organized Botched Watergate Break-In, Dies at 88. The New York Times
23. ^ Transcript of a Recording of a Meeting Between the President and H. R. Haldeman, the Oval Office, June 23, 1972
24. ^ NTSB report
25. ^ CNN Live Today, “Deadly Plane Skid in Chicago” Aired December 9 2005.
26. ^ Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 99. Szulc, writing in 1974, calls this “a bizarre passage.”
27. ^ HSCA Deposition (November 3, 1978)
28. ^ Victor Marchetti, “CIA to Admit Hunt Involvement in Kennedy Slaying,” The Spotlight (August 14, 1978)
29. ^ Were Watergate Conspirators Also JFK Assassins?
30. ^ Hunt v. Marchetti, 824 F.2d 916 (11th Cir. 1987). “In arguing that the stipulation should be binding on retrial, Hunt attempts to characterize the statements of the Liberty Lobby attorney as stipulating to the fact that Hunt was not in Dallas on the day of the Kennedy assassination. The statements, however, are more accurately viewed as a stipulation that the question of Hunt’s alleged involvement in the assassination would not be contested at trial. They thus served merely to narrow the factual issues in dispute.” Id. at 917–18 (citations omitted).
31. ^ Hunt v. Liberty Lobby, 720 F.2d 631 (11th Cir. 1983). “Libel Award for Howard Hunt overturned by appeals court,” New York Times (December 4, 1983).
32. ^ Hunt v. Marchetti, 824 F.2d 916 (11th Cir. 1987). “Hunt was aware throughout discovery prior to the retrial that Liberty Lobby intended to make Hunt’s location on the day of the Kennedy assassination an issue on retrial.” Id. at 928.
33. ^ Hunt v. Marchetti, 824 F.2d 916 (11th Cir. 1987). “The jury on retrial rendered a verdict for Liberty Lobby. We affirm.” Id. at 918.
34. ^ Implausible Assertions
35. ^ Isaacs, Jeremy (1997). Cold War: Howard Hunt interview excerpts and full transcript. CNN
36. ^ JFK Assassination a Hobo Hit?
37. ^ [ISBN_0-713-99358-8]
38. ^ [The Mitrokhin Archive, Pp. 293-297]
39. ^ [The Mitrokhin Archive, Pp. 293-299]
40. ^ Vidal, Gore (December 13, 1973), The Art and Arts of E. Howard Hunt. New York Review of Books
44. ^ Buell, Gary, in The Education Forum (August 17, 2005)
45. ^ Cabron, Lou (January 25, 2007), 20 Secrets of an Infamous Dead Spy. 10 Zen Monkeys
46. ^ Cornwell, Rupert (January 25, 2007). E. Howard Hunt obituary. The Independent
47. ^ Eulogy – E. Howard Hunt
48. ^ Reed, Christopher (January 25, 2007). E Howard Hunt obituary. The Guardian
49. ^ Saint John Hunt, Chain of Command
Trivia
* Hunt was portrayed by Ed Harris in the 1995 biopic Nixon.
External links
* “The secrets and lies that a Cold-War warrior took to his grave” — Erik Hedegaard’s Rolling Stone article, as republished in The Sunday Times (April 15, 2007)
* Don Fulsom, Blowing Smoke From the Grave: E. Howard Hunt and the JFK Assassination, Crime Magazine (June 6, 2007)
* Don Fulsom, Richard Nixon’s Greatest Coverup: His Ties to the Assassination of President Kennedy, Crime Magazine (May 28, 2007)
* “Howard Hunt’s Final Mission” — Review of American Spy by James Rosen in The Politico (February 7, 2007)
* “Watergate plotter may have a last tale” Los Angeles Times (March 20, 2007)
* “E. Howard Hunt – Testament” — Audio of E. Howard Hunt’s Testament regarding CIA agents’ involvement in JFK Assassination.
* “Chain of Command” — Handwritten document, provided by Hunt to his eldest son Saint John Hunt, purporting to reveal the JFK assassination “Chain of Command”
* “The Eulogy for E. Howard Hunt” — Presented at Hunt’s Memorial Service
* “The Art and Arts of E. Howard Hunt” 1973 review by Gore Vidal in the New York Review of Books
* “Literary Agent” Review essay by Rachel Donadio in the New York Times Sunday Book Review (February 18, 2007)
* E. Howard Hunt at the Internet Movie Database
* Video of Nixon discussing Hunt in the Watergate tapes
* Deposition for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1978) — Released in 1996
* Hunt’s Ties to JFK & Nixon
* “Howard Hunt and the JFK Assassination” — Discussion of the 1978 Spotlight and Sunday News Journal articles
* “If This Is Hunt Are There Any Other Photos?” — Discussion of proposal identifying Hunt in photographs of Dealey Plaza
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Howard_Hunt”
Categories: American spies | Cold War spies | People of the Central Intelligence Agency | Watergate-break-in team members | Watergate figures | CREEP alumni | American criminals | American spy fiction writers | American military personnel of World War II | Brown University alumni | Office of Strategic Services | John F. Kennedy assassination | People from Buffalo, New York | 1918 births | 2007 deaths
This page was last modified on 18 September 2008, at 12:26.
Bernard Leon Barker (born 17 March 1917) was a former member of the Cuban secret police under the Batista regime. He joined Operation 40 and the Bay of Pigs invasion. Later, he was recruited by his former CIA boss, E. Howard Hunt, as one of the “Plumbers”, the Nixon White House’s so-called “Special Investigations Unit”. In 1972, Barker was one of the five burglars paid by the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP), Nixon’s re-election campaign fundraising committee, for a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, and subsequently was convicted in the Watergate scandal. The others were Frank Sturgis, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez and James McCord.
Along with the other Watergate burglars, G. Gordon Liddy, and E. Howard Hunt, Barker was charged with, and pled guilty to, wiretapping, planting electronic surveillance equipment, and theft of documents.
Barker also worked with CRP to get money into the Nixon campaign coffers off the books; it was via his bank account that twenty-five thousand dollars from Archer Daniels Midland Chief Executive Dwayne Andreas was obtained by CRP in violation of campaign finance laws.
Barker was said by some to be implicated in the JFK assassination, together with other Watergate figures like Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt, after a Dallas police officer supposedly recognized him during the time of the Watergate scandal, however this theory is not widely held.
Frank Sturgis and Bernard Barker, 1960 (top) and 1972
In September 1971, Barker had begun his work for the Nixon administration when he was recruited by Hunt for obtaining background information on Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg was under watch for releasing what came to be known as the “Pentagon Papers”, a series of articles featured in the New York Times in 1971 detailing administration secrets concerning the Vietnam War. Barker had been recruited along with Eugenio Martínez to help Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy break into the office of Dr. Lewis J. Fielding, Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. The mission’s purpose was to find discrediting information on Ellsberg. The mission was completed, but largely unsuccessful in finding any damaging information about Ellsberg. On March 2, 1974 Barker was indicted for the break-in. [1] He was released pending appeal after serving one year of a two-and-a-half to six-year sentence.
After Barker’s release from prison, he worked as a building inspector for the city of Miami, Florida, earning $18,512 per year. He elected early retirement in 1982 rather than fight proceedings seeking his dismissal for loafing on the job.
External links
* “Bernard Barker to Retire From Miami Job Early”, New York Times, Jan. 28, 1982
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Barker”
Categories: Watergate-break-in team members | American criminals | 1917 births | Living people
CIA officials and freelance agents such as William Harvey, Thomas G. Clines, Porter Goss, Gerry Patrick Hemming, E. Howard Hunt, David Sánchez Morales, Carl Elmer Jenkins, Bernard Barker, Barry Seal, Frank Sturgis, William Robert Plumlee (“Tosh” Plumlee), and William C. Bishop also joined the project.
Dulles went on to be successful with the CIA’s first attempts at removing foreign leaders by covert means. Notably, the elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran was deposed in 1953 (via Operation Ajax), and President Arbenz of Guatemala was removed in 1954. The Guatemalan coup was called Operation PBSUCCESS. Dulles was on the board of the United Fruit Company. Dulles saw these kind of clandestine activities as an essential part of the struggle against communism.
During the Kennedy Administration, Dulles faced increasing criticism. The failed Bay of Pigs Invasion and several failed assassination plots utilizing CIA-recruited operatives from the Mafia and anti-Castro Cubans directly against Fidel Castro undermined the CIA’s credibility, and pro-American but unpopular regimes in Iran and Guatemala that he helped put in place were widely regarded as brutal and corrupt. The reputation of the agency and its director declined after the Bay of Pigs Invasion fiasco; he and his staff (including Director for Plans Richard Bissell and Deputy Director Charles Cabell) were forced to resign (September 1961). President Kennedy did not trust the CIA, and he reportedly intended to dismantle it after the Bay of Pigs failure. Kennedy said he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”[3] Ironically, Dulles was later appointed to the Warren Commission, the official government investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Beginning in 1939 and lasting for five years, the Council achieved much greater prominence with government and the State Department when it established the strictly confidential War and Peace Studies, funded entirely by the Rockefeller Foundation.[20] The secrecy surrounding this group was such that the Council members (total at the time: 663) who were not involved in its deliberations were completely unaware of the study group’s existence.[20]
It was divided into four functional topic groups: economic and financial, security and armaments, territorial, and political. The security and armaments group was headed by Allen Welsh Dulles who later became a pivotal figure in the CIA’s predecessor, the OSS. It ultimately produced 682 memoranda for the State Department, marked classified and circulated among the appropriate government departments. As a historical judgment, its overall influence on actual government planning at the time is still said to remain unclear.[20]
War and Peace Studies was a project carried out by the Council on Foreign Relations between 1939 and 1945 before and during American involvement in World War II. It was intended to advise the U.S. Government on conduct in the war and the subsequent peace.
The project was divided into four major areas: economic and financial, security and armaments, territorial, and political. Over 100 men took part. Funding was provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, which provided almost $350,000 over the course of the project. A steering committee was created in December 1939 chaired by U.S diplomat Norman Davis with Foreign Affairs editor Hamilton Fish Armstrong as vice-chairman. Initial area heads were:[1]
* Alvin Hansen and Jacob Viner led the economic and financial group
* Whitney Shepardson, who led the political group
* Allen Welsh Dulles and Hanson W. Baldwin, who led the armaments group, and
* Isaiah Bowman, who led the territorial group.
A research secretary was appointed to each group:
* William Diebold, for the economic and financial group
* Walter R. Sharp, for the political group, and
* Grayson L. Kirk, for the armaments group
* William P. Maddox, for the territorial group
From March 1942, the project supplied research secretaries to the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy, with each group’s secretary serving the corresponding subcommittee at the State Department. Meetings were scheduled to allow secretaries to carry out Council work during the first half of each week with the remainder of the week spent at the Department of State.[2]
References
1. ^ Laurence H. Shoup, William Minter (1977). Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy. ISBN 0595324266.
2. ^ Imperial Brain Trust, p. 156.
[edit] External links
* The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996 – War and Peace
This organization-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_Peace_Studies”
The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996 – War and Peace
John Foster Dulles
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John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles
52nd United States Secretary of State
In office
January 26, 1953 – April 22, 1959
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Preceded by Dean Acheson
Succeeded by Christian Herter
United States Senator
from New York
In office
July 7, 1949 – November 8, 1949
Preceded by Robert F. Wagner
Succeeded by Herbert H. Lehman
Born February 25, 1888(1888-02-25)
Washington, D.C.
Died May 24, 1959 (aged 71)
Washington, D.C.
Political party Republican
Profession Lawyer, Diplomat, Politician
Religion Presbyterian
John Foster Dulles (February 25, 1888 – May 24, 1959) served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism around the world. He advocated support of the French in their war against the Viet Minh in Indochina and it is widely believed that he refused to shake the hand of Zhou Enlai at the Geneva Conference in 1954. He also played a great part in the CIA operations to overthrow the democratic Mossadegh government of Iran in 1953 (Operation Ajax) and the democratic Arbenz government of Guatemala in 1954 (Operation PBSUCCESS). Many believe his former role on the Board of the United Fruit Company led him to support the American-backed coup in this small Central American country.
Contents
* 1 Biography
* 2 Political career
* 3 Secretary of State
* 4 Death and legacy
* 5 Bibliography
* 6 See also
* 7 References
* 8 External links
Biography
Born in Washington, D.C., he was one of five children and the eldest son born to Presbyterian minister Allen Macy Dulles and his wife Edith (Foster). He attended public schools in Watertown, New York. After attending Princeton University and The George Washington University Law School he joined the New York City law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, where he specialized in international law. He tried to join the United States Army during World War I but was rejected because of poor eyesight. Instead, Dulles received an Army commission as Major on the War Industries Board.
Both his grandfather John W. Foster and his uncle Robert Lansing served as Secretary of State. He was also the older brother of Allen Welsh Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence under Eisenhower. On June 26, 1912, he married Janet Avery, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. One of their sons, Avery Dulles, converted to Catholicism, entered the Jesuit order and became the first American priest to be directly appointed Cardinal. He currently teaches and resides at Fordham University in The Bronx, New York. His other son, John W. F. Dulles (1913-2008), was a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.[1]
Political career
In 1918, Woodrow Wilson appointed Dulles as legal counsel to the United States delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference where he served under his uncle, Robert Lansing, then Secretary of State. Dulles made an early impression as a junior diplomat by clearly and forcefully arguing against imposing crushing reparations on Germany. Afterwards, he served as a member of the War Reparations Committee at the request of President Wilson. Dulles, a deeply religious man, attended numerous international conferences of churchmen during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1924, he was the defense counsel in the church trial of Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, who had been charged with heresy by opponents in the denomination, a case settled when Fosdick, a liberal Baptist, resigned his pulpit in the Presbyterian Church, which he had never joined. Dulles also became a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, an international law firm.
According to Karlheinz Deschner’s book The Moloch Dulles gave assets of 1 bio. $ to the Nazi party in 1933 after Hitler’s election, and according to Stephen Kinzer’s 2006 book Overthrow, the firm benefited from doing business with the Nazi regime, and throughout 1934, Dulles was a very public supporter of Hitler. However, the junior partners, led by his brother Allen[2], were appalled by Nazi activities and threatened to revolt if Dulles did not end the firm’s association with the regime. In 1935, Dulles closed Sullivan & Cromwell’s Berlin office; later he would cite the closing date as 1934, no doubt in an effort to clear his reputation by shortening his involvement with Nazi Germany.[3]
Dulles was a close associate of Thomas E. Dewey, who became the presidential candidate of the United States Republican Party in the 1944 election and 1948. During the elections Dulles served as Dewey’s chief foreign policy adviser. In 1944 as Dewey’s adviser Dulles took an active role in establishing the Republican plank calling for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine.[4]
In 1945, Dulles participated in the San Francisco Conference and worked as adviser to Arthur H. Vandenberg and helped draft the preamble to the United Nations Charter. He subsequently attended the United Nations General Assembly as a United States delegate in 1946, 1947 and 1950. Dulles was appointed to the United States Senate as a Republican from New York on July 7, 1949, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Democrat Robert F. Wagner. Dulles served from July 7, 1949, to November 8, 1949, when a successor, Herbert Lehman, was elected, having beaten Dulles in a special election to fill the senate vacancy.
In 1950, Dulles published War or Peace, a critical analysis of the American policy of containment, which at the time was favored by many of the foreign policy elites in Washington. Dulles criticized the foreign policy of Harry S. Truman. He argued that containment should be replaced by a policy of “liberation”. When Dwight Eisenhower became President in January, 1953, he appointed Dulles as his Secretary of State. As Secretary of State, Dulles still carried out the “containment” policy of neutralizing the Taiwan Strait during the Korean War, which had been established by President Truman in the Treaty of Peace with Japan of 1951.
Secretary of State
Dulles with president Eisenhower in 1956
As Secretary of State, Dulles spent considerable time building up NATO as part of his strategy of controlling Soviet expansion by threatening massive retaliation in event of a war, as well as building up friendships, including that of Louis Jefferson, who would later write a good-humored biography on Dulles. In 1950, he helped instigate the ANZUS Treaty for mutual protection with Australia and New Zealand. One of his first major policy shifts towards a more aggressive posture against communism, Dulles directed the CIA at this point now under the directorship of John Foster Dulles’ brother Allen Dulles, in March 1953, to draft plans to overthrow the Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran [1]. This led directly to the Coup d’état via Operation Ajax in support of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran.
After the war, the United Nations conducted a lengthy inquiry regarding the status of Eritrea, with the superpowers each vying for a stake in the state’s future. Britain, the last administrator at the time, put forth the suggestion to partition Eritrea between Sudan and Ethiopia, separating Christians and Muslims. The idea was instantly rejected by Eritrean political parties as well as the UN.[5] The United States point of view was expressed by its then chief foreign policy advisor John Foster Dulles who said:
From the point of view of justice, the opinions of the Eritrean people must receive consideration. Nevertheless, the strategic interests of the United States in the Red Sea Basin and considerations of security and world peace make it necessary that the country [Eritrea] be linked with our ally, Ethiopia.
—John Foster Dulles, 1952
A UN plebiscite voted 46 to 10 to have Eritrea be federated with Ethiopia which was later stipulated on December 2, 1950 in resolution 390 (V). Eritrea would have its own parliament and administration and would be represented in what had been the Ethiopian parliament and would become the federal parliament. In 1961 the 30-year Eritrean Struggle for Independence began, following the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I’s dissolution of the federation and shutting down of Eritrea’s parliament. The Emperor declared Eritrea the fourteenth province of Ethiopia in 1962.[6]
Dulles was also the architect of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) that was created in 1954. The treaty, signed by representatives of Australia, Britain, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and the United States provided for collective action against aggression. In that same year, due to his relationship with his brother Allen Dulles, a member of the Board Of Directors of the United Fruit Company, based in Guatemala, Foster Dulles was pivotal in promoting and executing the CIA-led Operation PBSUCCESS that overthrew the democratically elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.
Dulles was one of the pioneers of massive retaliation and brinkmanship. In an article written for Life Magazine Dulles defined his policy of brinkmanship: “The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art.” His critics blamed him for damaging relations with Communist states and contributing to the Cold War.
Dulles upset the leaders of several non-aligned countries when on June 9, 1956, he argued in one speech that “neutrality has increasingly become an obsolete and, except under very exceptional circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception.”
Dulles provided some consternation and amusement to the British, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand ambassadors by his repeated attempts to tell substantially different versions of events to them. Apparently, unbeknownst to Dulles, the men had all attended Cambridge together and followed up meetings with Dulles by comparing notes and reporting the discrepancies to their home countries.[citation needed]
In 1956, Dulles strongly opposed the Anglo-French invasion of the Suez Canal, Egypt (October–November 1956). However, by 1958, he was an outspoken opponent of President Gamal Abdel Nasser and stopped him from receiving weapons from the United States. This policy seemingly backfired, enabling the Soviet Union to gain influence in the Middle East.
Dulles also served as the Chairman and Co-founder of the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America (succeeded by the National Council of Churches), the Chairman of the Board for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1935 to 1952, and was a founding member of the Council of Foreign Relations.
Death and legacy
Suffering from cancer, Dulles was forced by his declining health to resign from office in April 1959. He died in Washington, D.C. on May 24, 1959, at the age of 71, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Sylvanus Thayer Award in 1959. A central Berlin road was (re-)named “John-Foster-Dulles-Allee” in 1959 in presence of Christian Herter, Dulles’ successor as Secretary of State.
The Washington Dulles International Airport (located in Dulles, Virginia) and John Foster Dulles High, Middle and Elementary School (Sugar Land, Texas) were all named in honor of Dulles. Watertown, NY named the Dulles State Office Building in his honor.
In 1954, Dulles was named Man of the Year in Time Magazine.[7]
Carol Burnett first rose to prominence in the 1950s singing a novelty song, I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles; more recently, Gil Scott Heron commented “John Foster Dulles ain’t nothing but the name of an airport now” in the song B-Movie. In the book Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, Switters and Case both spit whenever they refer to John Foster Dulles. Dulles’ rollback policy was later implemented by the Reagan Administration during the 1980s and it is sometimes credited with the collapse of, the Soviet Empire, the Communist Bloc in eastern Europe as well as the Soviet Union itself.[8][9]
On December 1958, Dulles and Dr. Milton Eisenhower attended Mexico’s new president Adolfo Lopez Mateos’ inauguration, where Dulles made the candid quote, “The United States of America does not have friends; it has interests”. At the time the quote was actually interpreted positively, but has with time become infamous in some sectors due to the country’s future foreign policies.
Bibliography
* Biographies
o Power and Peace: The Diplomacy of John Foster Dulles by Frederick Marks (1995) ISBN 0-275-95232-0
o John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy by Richard H. Immerman (1998) ISBN 0-8420-2601-0
o Devil and John Foster Dulles by Hoopes Townsend (1973) ISBN 0-316-37235-8. Most famous book on Dulles.
o The actor; the true story of John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, 1953-1959 by Alan Stang, Western Islands (1968)
o The John Foster Dulles Book of Humor by Louis Jefferson (1986), St. Martin’s Press, ISBN 0-312-44355-2
o John Foster Dulles: The Road to Power. by Ronald W. Pruessen (1982), The Free Press ISBN 0-02-925460-4
* General History
o Kinzer, Stephen, Overthrow. Henry Holt and Company (2006). ISBN 0-8050-8240-9
See also
* Vietnam War
* Brinkmanship
* New Look
References
1. ^ “90-year-old Still Active at University, The Daily Texan”
2. ^ Grose, Peter. 1994. Gentleman Spy, The Life of Allen Dulles. Houton Mifflin. New York.ISBN 0-395-51607-2
3. ^ Kinzer, Stephen, Overthrow. Henry Holt and Company (2006), p. 114, ISBN 0-8050-8240-9
4. ^ Isaac Alteras 1993 Eisenhower and Israel: U.S.-Israeli Relations, 1953-1960 University Press of Florida ISBN 0813012058 pp 53-55
5. ^ 1950:Eritrea’s Future : IN OUR PAGES:100, 75 AND 50 YEARS AGO – International Herald Tribune
6. ^ Semere Haile The Origins and Demise of the Ethiopia-Eritrea Federation Issue: A Journal of Opinion, Vol. 15, 1987 (1987), pp. 9-17
7. ^ TIME.com: Man of the Year — Jan. 3, 1955 — Page 1
8. ^ Coulter, Ann. 2003. Treason. Crown Forum. New York. pp. 156-157, ISBN 1-4000-5030-8
9. ^ “Kennan and Containment, 1947″. U.S. Department of State. Retrieved on 2008-03-26.
[edit] External links
* Papers of John Foster Dulles, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
* Works by John Foster Dulles at Project Gutenberg
* John Foster Dulles page at Arlington National Cemetery.
* John Foster Dulles at Find A Grave
* Annotated bibliography for John Foster Dulles from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
United States Senate
Preceded by
Robert F. Wagner United States Senator (Class 3) from New York
1949
Served alongside: Irving Ives Succeeded by
Herbert H. Lehman
Political offices
Preceded by
Dean Acheson United States Secretary of State
1953 – 1959 Succeeded by
Christian Herter
Honorary titles
Preceded by
Ernest O. Lawrence Sylvanus Thayer Award recipient
1959 Succeeded by
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
v • d • e
United States Senators from New York
Class 1
Schuyler • Burr • Schuyler • Hobart • North • Watson • Morris • Bailey • Armstrong • Mitchill • German • Sanford • Van Buren • Dudley • Tallmadge • Dickinson • Fish • P. King • Morgan • Fenton • Kernan • Platt • Miller • Hiscock • Murphy • Depew • O’Gorman • Calder • Copeland • Mead • Ives • Keating • Kennedy • Goodell • Buckley • Moynihan • H. Clinton
United States Senate
Class 3
R. King • Laurance • Armstrong • D. Clinton • Armstrong • Smith • R. King • Sanford • Marcy • Wright • Foster • Dix • Seward • Harris • Conkling • Lapham • Evarts • Hill • Platt • Root • Wadsworth • Wagner • Dulles • Lehman • Javits • D’Amato • Schumer
Participants NATO A Non-Aligned Movement A People’s Republic of China A Warsaw Pact
1940s
Yalta Conference * Operation Unthinkable * Potsdam Conference * Gouzenko Affair * Iran crisis * Chinese Civil War * Greek Civil War * Restatement of Policy on Germany * Truman Doctrine * Marshall Plan * Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia * Tito-Stalin split * Berlin Blockade * Western Betrayal
1950s
Korean War A First Indochina War A 1953 Iranian coup d’état A 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état A Uprising of 1953 in East Germany A First Taiwan Strait Crisis A Poznan’ 1956 protests A Hungarian Revolution of 1956 A Suez Crisis A Sputnik crisis A Second Taiwan Strait Crisis A Cuban Revolution A Kitchen Debate A Bandung Conference
1960s
Congo Crisis * Sino-Soviet split * U-2 Crisis of 1960 * Bay of Pigs Invasion * Cuban Missile Crisis * Berlin Wall * Vietnam War * 1964 Brazilian coup d’état * U.S. Invasion of Dominican Republic * South African Border War * Transition to the New Order *8 Domino Theory * Bangkok Declaration * Laotian Civil War * Greek military junta of 1967-1974 * Cultural Revolution * Prague Spring * Goulash Communism * Sino-Soviet border conflict
1970s
Détente * Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty * Black September in Jordan * Cambodian Civil War * Ping Pong Diplomacy * Four Power Agreement on Berlin * 1972 Nixon visit to China * 1973 Chilean coup d’état * Yom Kippur War * Strategic Arms Limitation Talks * Angolan Civil War * Mozambican Civil War * Ogaden War * Sino-Vietnamese War * Iranian Revolution
1980s
Soviet war in Afghanistan * Olympic boycotts * Polish Solidarity Movement * Central American Crisis * Able Archer 83 * Strategic Defense Initiative * Invasion of Grenada * Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 * Singing Revolution * Fall of the Berlin Wall * Revolutions of 1989
1990s
Breakup of Yugoslavia * Dissolution of the USSR
See also
Bricker Amendment * Glasnost * Iron Curtain * McCarthyism * Operation Condor * Operation Gladio * Perestroika * Soviet espionage in US A Soviet-United States relations
Establishments
Central Intelligence Agency * Comecon * European Community * KGB * Stasi
Mohammed Mosaddeq (1951) A Elizabeth II (1952) A Konrad Adenauer (1953) A John Foster Dulles (1954) A Harlow Curtice (1955) A Hungarian Freedom Fighter (1956) A Nikita Khrushchev (1957) A Charles de Gaulle (1958) A Dwight D. Eisenhower (1959) A U.S. Scientists: George Beadle / Charles Draper / John Enders / Donald A. Glaser / Joshua Lederberg / Willard Libby / Linus Pauling / Edward Purcell / Isidor Rabi / Emilio Segrè / William Shockley / Edward Teller / Charles Townes / James Van Allen / Robert Woodward (1960) A John F. Kennedy (1961) A Pope John XXIII (1962) A Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963) A Lyndon B. Johnson (1964) A William Westmoreland (1965) A The Generation Twenty-Five and Under (1966) A Lyndon B. Johnson (1967) A The Apollo 8 Astronauts: William Anders / Frank Borman / Jim Lovell (1968) A The Middle Americans (1969) A Willy Brandt (1970) A Richard Nixon (1971) A Henry Kissinger / Richard Nixon (1972) A John Sirica (1973) A King Faisal (1974) A American Women: Susan Brownmiller / Kathleen Byerly / Alison Cheek / Jill Conway / Betty Ford / Ella Grasso / Carla Hills / Barbara Jordan / Billie Jean King / Carol Sutton / Susie Sharp / Addie L. Wyatt (1975)
Complete roster A 1927–1950 A 1951–1975 A 1976–2000 A 2001–present
Persondata
NAME Dulles, John Foster
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION United States Secretary of State
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, D.C.
DATE OF DEATH May 24, 1959
PLACE OF DEATH Washington, D.C.
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Foster_Dulles”
Categories: 1888 births | 1959 deaths | American anti-communists | American people of the Vietnam War | Burials at Arlington National Cemetery | Cold War diplomats | George Washington University alumni | New York Republicans | People from Washington, D.C. | People from Watertown, New York | Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients | Princeton University alumni | Rockefeller Foundation | Time magazine Persons of the Year | United States Secretaries of State | United States Senators from New York | American Presbyterians | Cancer deaths in Washington, D.C.
That was 20 – 40 million gallons a year in natural seepage in the Gulf of Mexico which your guy was comparing to his friendly estimate of 9 million gallons (in a month) – aside from the fact that his math is wrong, his estimate of 7,000 barrels a day rather than 70,000 barrels a day is wrong – and I might be wrong – but even 9 million gallons in a month isn’t the same volume dispersal rate that can be assimilated by those “bacteria” he said will do the job. Y’all might wanna go down there to the Gulf and explain it to those “bacteria” because apparently they are gonna have to gorge on it everyday using up all the oxygen in the Gulf as they go in order to do what you are suggesting.
Please don’t disappoint me now.
- cricketdiane
note too cnn bait group
and the weather guy today giving his explanation about the good bacteria in the Gulf that is going to magically fix this little oil problem we have out there.
05-21-10
Who told him that/ Never mind, let me guess . . .
***
Okay to correct that note above – CNN’s weather guy was trying to say not to fix the Gulf of Mexico oil spill with floods of dispersants that might damage that “bacteria” mentioned above – alrighty then.
I got this better now. .. .. .
However, I do want to say that there are some people who believe the oil taking over the Gulf of Mexico will magically go away because of the “bacteria” and little organisms that feed on it but it won’t happen that way.
1. They don’t use light to metabolize the oil – or hydrocarbons – or whatever it is – they do use oxygen from the water in the process of doing it. Hypoxia.
2. When people talk about 20 – 40 million gallons of oil coming into the entire Gulf area from natural seepage in a year from a multitude of relatively scarce seeps here and there across a vast ocean floor – a little here and a little there at a time – it doesn’t compare with the quantity that we have now in the Gulf of Mexico all coming from one single spot in the ocean floor from two constantly gushing sources. They look like geysers or the clouds from the volcano in Iceland in the way they are forcing out in a rush against the huge pressures at a mile deep in the ocean. I don’t know which one we are seeing in the live feed – but that is a lot of oil and it has been coming from that one source, even at the most conservative estimate 9 million barrels total or how many tonnes, over the course of 30 days – not a year. It isn’t scattered across the sea floor in little seeps here and there.
3. I apologize for jumping to the wrong conclusion about the things that were intended from what was said on this CNN sequitur however, I do want to say that I was trying to follow it and it sounded an awful lot like some of these arguments I’ve seen all over the internet for not making such a big deal out of all this.
4. Lastly, I’m sorry that the choices were made to put that drill out there in the Gulf with the risks that were being taken. I’m ashamed that eleven men died there, that 29 men died in the mine explosion and I’m saddened that more were killed last week when another mine accident happened in the US. If the tourism and fishing are suffering right now – I do understand how terrible that is, but the choice was made a long time ago that the revenues from the oil industry were more important than these other industries, businesses, people, communities, environments, oceans, fisheries, wildlife, marine eco-systems or anything else.
The trade was already made and none of us can change that. In all honesty, that is the most terrible of all and I am ashamed that it is so. I wish it had never happened ever, but here is that precious black gold spewing throughout the Gulf of Mexico destroying everything it touches instead of helping our nation with our energy needs nor doing one good thing at all.
So, I do say a tremendous apology of making a genuine error when I misunderstood the intent of what was being conveyed on CNN earlier today. I’ll try to do better.
- cricketdiane
***
And here is a quick note I found about whiskey doing the energy thing – I told you moonshine would work – which I just had to say on my Facebook page, too.
This month, Bruichladdich — one of eight distilleries to be found on the Scottish isle of Islay — will take delivery of an anaerobic digester which will start turning their whisky waste into electricity.
Mark Reynier, owner of Bruichladdich Distillery, hopes the digester will meet around 80 percent of its electricity needs and save the company up to £120,000 ($175,000) every year.
Reynier told CNN: “Our waste product is basically water left over after you’ve stripped all the alcohol out. It’s called, rather unromantically, pot ale.”
Every year, several hundred thousand liters of pot ale waste are taken away by a tanker and poured down a pipeline that feeds it into the Sound of Islay off the eastern coast of the island.
***
(my note – so they are taking that pot ale and making an energy source out of it – amazing – you just oughta read this – its great.)
Author – By Clive Cookson, FT
May 21, 2010 — Updated 0247 GMT (1047 HKT)
(FT) — Scientists have turned inanimate chemicals into a living organism in an experiment that raises profound questions about the essence of life.
Craig Venter, the U.S. genomics pioneer, announced on Thursday that scientists at his laboratories in Maryland and California had succeeded in their 15-year project to make the world’s first “synthetic cells” — bacteria called Mycoplasma mycoides.
“We have passed through a critical psychological barrier,” Dr. Venter told the FT. “It has changed my own thinking, both scientifically and philosophically, about life, and how it works.”
The bacteria’s genes were all constructed in the laboratory “from four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information on a computer,” he said.
The research — published online by the journal Science — was hailed as a landmark by many independent scientists and philosophers.
Well that was fun – a two hour relaxing bath – warm and comfortable -
And I was just watching the cnbc show whatever it is – and they had a ticker note about Toyota buying into Tesla and Tesla getting a Toyota factory – wowsa – and wowsa!
That is the best news – I don’t know if it was about 5.44 am maybe or – I don’t know – but that is so nifty -
I have got to look that up – maybe a Google news moment –
The size of Toyota’s stake in Tesla hasn’t been fixed ahead of a share sale by Tesla, Musk said in an interview. Daimler AG in May 2009 invested about $50 …
What happens when you gather 65 electric Tesla Roadsters in one spot and turn them all on at the same time? Well, nothing really. …
***
very nifty -
and earlier I had seen the stuff about the Senate passing something like financial reform – probably yesterday sometime, although I saw it in the middle of the night somewhere – and I think I’ll look up what they did with that right quick too -
US financial reform adds to market woes: Davy’s Stephen Lyons commented; “Concern over US financial reform yesterday added to market woes after the US …
Hmmm ………
They are already at it. Too late – Spin, spin, spin, spin, spin
- cricketdiane
***
They are talking about it right this minute on bloomberg – 5.55 am
Well alrighty then – they promised to say something about the Senate passing the US financial reform package in whatever measure they passed it and then didn’t barely say a sentence about it – Okay then.
I’ll go back to the search for it on the Google news – I put in
Senate financial reform
and then put (by date) in the left hand sidebar – rather than the other one -
… a big step closer to the most comprehensive overhaul of Wall Street rules since the 1930s after a financial reform bill cleared a final Senate vote. …
***
My Note – on my other computer – but there is a storm here – so I don’t know how long that connection will last –
I was looking at the search for news in Spain on the EMM Explorer and found the IHT article about the “Stocks Flat in Europe After Declines in Asia and US – it says Friday, May 21 – but that can’t be right – the DAX was down and FTSE was down – so the IHT isn’t right for some reason.
Oh well – what fun
Spain Approves first wage cuts – in the bloomberg ticker – that is probably with the new financial modifications they are struggling to do – okay – let me get this one up and then the IHT article to see why its headline is off -
(Reuters) – Stocks slid further around the world on Friday on fears Europe’s debt crisis and tougher financial regulation will hurt a global economic recovery, as Germany prepared to vote on a massive standby package to stabilize the euro.
European shares fell 1 percent in early trade after Asian stock markets slid again. Japan’s Nikkei average closed 2.5 percent down for a loss of 6.5 percent on the week, mostly driven by worries about the euro zone.
The German parliament was poised to approve the lion’s share of a $1 trillion safety net for troubled euro zone nations and an EU task force of policymakers in Brussels will look to toughen regulations within the bloc blighted by a debt crisis.
(etc., etc., etc., – and that is not exactly true – that first group of information is making a connection that isn’t exactly there. – I think it is something that is evident – people who play in those markets are making the rounds with the money around in that big international circle again trying to offset any open losses they took the other day when the Euro dropped to $1.24 or what ever it ended up being – just my opinion, my note – cricketdiane)
Going over to the IHT site -
They just had a cute winners and losers segment on cnbc – maybe they have it all the time and I managed to miss it – with the comments going on in the audio of “its great” etc. and then the other “its terrible” etc. – that’s a nice way to express it . . .
And, they’ve gone to having “task force” to explain everything to us in the audience world now – isn’t that nice – just what I need -
This is the IHT article from the entries about Spain on the EMM Explorer -
Stocks Flat in Europe After Declines in Asia and U.S.
By MATTHEW SALTMARSH and MARK McDONALD
Published: May 21, 2010
PARIS — Stocks were mostly unchanged in choppy trading in Europe on Friday following declines in Asia and on Wall Street and amid continued fears that the debt crisis in the euro zone could soon threaten economic recovery globally.
( . . . )
Mr. Savary said the actions of euro-zone politicians — notably Angela Merkel of Germany — “have destroyed, partly, confidence in financial markets and also in the recovery.”
He was referring to the decision in Berlin this week to curb naked short selling of euro-zone sovereign debt and related transactions in credit default swaps, as well as certain financial stocks. In addition, she warned this week that the existence of the euro was under threat from speculative attacks.
Offsetting that, there was some confidence that German lawmakers would vote late Friday on Berlin’s contribution to the €750 billion, or nearly $1 trillion, E.U.-I.M.F. bail-out package. Also Friday, finance ministers from the euro zone will meet in Brussels to discuss their strategy to support the most beleaguered countries on Europe’s fringe.
Also Friday, finance ministers from the euro zone will meet in Brussels to discuss their strategy to support the most beleaguered countries on Europe’s fringe.- cricketdiane
I’ve got to stop watching the Squawk Box and see what is over on something else – like anywhere else right now -
***
Bundstag has passed the $1 Trillion package – yeah – that is good hope – maybe it will all get better now. The folks on the Squawk box (cnbc) also said so – we’ll see. Depends on Brussels today
- cricketdiane
***
On my other computer – I’ve brought up the EMM News Brief – it is updated every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day and it has the S. Korea story – I wish N. Korea would just apologize for doing something that was in all likelihood an accident rather than intention – it all depends on China now.
my opinion – take it or leave it.
***
And the US Senate thing -
And the BA mess – between the volcano grounding them and the threats of strike that seem beyond their measure to assimilate – it is recording annual losses of a record 531 million – pounds – there is no key for it on this new keyboard – that’s what I get for spending $6.00 on it instead of $30
Well, there hasn’t been much on the news explorer about the oil spill – but there is now – about 17 stories – the first says Oil fouls Louisiana, BP scrambles to contain spill -
I have CNN on the CNN Live American Morning show for a few minutes now – and I said earlier in a previous post – that I would say a thing or two about Dennis Blair leaving the Director of National Intel spot where had he not been there – many things would’ve been done better – sorry but that is the truth.
The EMM News Brief has about 74 stories about it – must be something everybody has something to say – I guess it is a big deal but I still can’t believe it took them that long to realize where the problem has been.
And Japan launches Venus probe and solar-sailed ‘space yacht’ – summary on earthtimes – 9 other articles are available
- there were 23 deaths in South India from the cyclone Laila over the last several days of torrential rain -
Now back to the Dennis Blair thing -
- cricketdiane
Oh yeah and where the futures had been holding and moving slightly up and then slightly down all night – they are now moving slightly down again – I’m watching bloomberg with its little ticker thing and then I’ll pop back over to the CNN coverage again.
Note – I already checked the local Channel ABC news – it is raining here and people are still shooting each other about as usual.
***
Quickly over on the IHT -
“Questions have been raised that go to the heart of this institution’s most fundamental value: how we treat our clients.” — Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman Sachs’s C.E.O., at the firm’s annual meeting in May
Note – I bumped over to the New York Times article from the Most Emailed group on the right hand side of the first page I had open – to go here -
As the housing crisis mounted in early 2007, Goldman Sachs was busy selling risky, mortgage-related securities issued by its longtime client, Washington Mutual, a major bank based in Seattle.
Although Goldman had decided months earlier that the mortgage market was headed for a fall, it continued to sell the WaMu securities to investors. While Goldman put its imprimatur on that offering, traders in the same Goldman unit were not so sanguine about WaMu’s prospects: they were betting that the value of WaMu’s stock and other securities would decline.
Goldman’s wager against its customer’s stock — a position known as a “short” — was large enough that it would have generated at least $10 million in profits if WaMu collapsed, according to documents recently released by Congress. And by mid-May, Goldman’s bet against other WaMu securities had made Goldman $2.5 million, the documents show.
Goldman’s bets against WaMu, wagers that took place even as it helped WaMu feed a housing frenzy that Goldman had already lost faith in, are examples of conflicting roles that trouble its critics and some former clients.
(etc. – I’m sure there is more good stuff here – will come back to it in a minute and add it here – )
WaMu is not the only Goldman client the firm bet against as the mortgage disaster gained steam. Documents released by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations show that Goldman’s mortgage unit also wagered against Bear Stearns and Countrywide Financial, two longstanding clients of the firm. These documents are only related to the mortgage unit and it is unknown what other bets the rest of the firm made.
Goldman also bet against the American International Group, which insured Goldman’s mortgage bonds, and National City, a Cleveland bank the firm had advised on a sale of a big subprime mortgage lender to Merrill Lynch.
While no one has accused Goldman of anything illegal involving WaMu, National City, A.I.G. or the other clients it bet against, potential conflicts inherent in Wall Street’s business model are at the core of many of the investigations that state and federal authorities are conducting. Transactions entered into as the mortgage market fizzled may turn out to have been perfectly legal. Nevertheless, they have raised concerns among investors and analysts about the extent to which a variety of Wall Street firms put their own interests ahead of their clients’.
“Now it’s all about the score. Just make the score, do the deal. Move on to the next one. That’s the trader culture,” said Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University and former counsel to the Federal Reserve Board. “Their business model has completely blurred the difference between executing trades on behalf of customers versus executing trades for themselves. It’s a huge problem.”
(from Kuwait News Agency) Dennis Blair steps down as US National Intelligence Director
Politics 5/21/2010 9:00:00 AM
WASHINGTON, May 21 (KUNA)– US National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair announced late on Thursday that he will step down after a 16-month tenure marked by intelligence failures.
Blair, a retired Navy Admiral, said in a message to his staff that he will step down on May 28. He is the third director of national intelligence, a position that was created after the failure to prevent the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“Dennis Blair has a remarkable record of service to the United States, and I am grateful for his leadership as Director of National Intelligence. Over the course of many decades, Admiral Blair has served with great integrity, intellect, and commitment to our country and the values that we hold dear,” said President Barack Obama in a statement released by the White House.
His resignation comes two days after a Senate report criticizing the national intelligence and other intelligence agencies for failing to detect ahead Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to board a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day.
“During his time as DNI, our intelligence community has performed admirably and effectively at a time of great challenges to our security, and I have valued his sense of purpose and patriotism. He and I both share a deep admiration for the men and women of our intelligence community, who are performing extraordinary and indispensable service to our nation,” concluded Obama. (end) jm.ema KUNA 210900 May 10NNNN
***
My Note -
How great – the CNN crew gave me a good view of the Statue of Liberty this morning just a couple minutes ago – way nifty – And she’s beautiful . . . and so is New York this morning – that’s great.
- cricketdiane
***
I was on my other computer looking at this Telegraph UK story and noticed the cutest little boo-boo – so I just have to share it and no I didn’t change it any -
“But the oversights that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board a plane to Detroit and attempt to detonate explosives hidden in his explosives on Dec 25 prompted sharp criticisms of the department for failing to “join the dots”. Its work was back under the spotlight following the recent Times Square bombing attempt.:
Now – isn’t that cute – “explosives hidden in his explosives.” That really does describe it well although I doubt it was intentional.
- cricketdiane
I was taking a popcorn break – watching CNN’s story about CBRAT4 dispersant sitting in the Houston sun not being used that was ordered by BP on May 4 – 100,000 gallons of it apparently and more could’ve been being made every single day – but there it sits.
And, my thought I had earlier about why would these men from BP be willing to lie to Congress even though they were under oath. Who do they work for? Who can fire them? Who do they answer to that is so powerful in their lives that they would lie to the American people (well, maybe I could see that) – but that they would lie to Congress and other government agencies and authorities? Would the board of directors at BP be that powerful? Would old Chairmen and large shareholders be that strong still – would the petroleum industry organizations for the trade be that strong in these men’s lives – what would cause that? Any other questions, I could just about answer better.
Hey bloomberg guy over in Brussels didn’t say the truth – the other Euro ministres of finance were consulted about naked short selling – he said they weren’t – and the Financial Stability Forum Board, the G-20 has talked about it – and it has been on the plans the whole time – all of them have been consulted about it – even as recently as last week before the day they did it – he said things that weren’t true.
I wish they wouldn’t do that on the news channels – and now I want to know who that jackass talked to in Brussels who told him that – and kick their butt.
Oh well.
While taking my popcorn break and watching the CNN story about the safer dispersants that BP saved to use later – after killing every last bit of marine life in the Gulf of Mexico while not doing as much about dispersing the oil as anything would do that wasn’t that, I pulled up on my other computer one of the documents about the time I was researching the DNI – in this case Blair – but I found some stuff that might be very interesting to add here, under the circumstances.
- cricketdiane
***
I’m changing computers to post it over without as much bother as using this one –
just a minute –
Geithner is going to Europe and China next week – I guess that should be interesting – maybe something will get done this time. At least there are more facts available to work with now – that is a combination of my note on the end and the info about Secretary Geithner on the front from bloomberg just now.
Here is some of the start of the info from my document – it is being posted from the middle so please forgive me – it has things that are important parts of it starting at this part – and then there’s more – this is from parts of one doc out of several – well, a number of them, you are probably already figuring that out by now –
Startup right here –
***
In January 2001, Daniels accepted President George W. Bush’s (that’s George, Jr. – my note), invitation to serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He served as Director from January 2001 through June 2003. In this role he was also a member of the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council.
During his time as the director of the OMB, President Bush admiringly called him the Blade, for his noted acumen at budget cutting.[8] Daniels instituted a first-of-its-kind accountability system for all governmental entities. Daniels came under fire for overseeing a $236 billion annual surplus turn into a $400 billion deficit during his 29-month tenure.
Daniels served as Lugar’s chief of staff during his first term from 1977 to 1982. When Lugar was elected chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Daniels was appointed its executive director. He served in that position in 1983 and 1984, playing a major role in the successful effort to keep the GOP in control of the U.S. Senate. Daniels was also manager of three successful Senate campaigns for Lugar. Daniels was part of the Reagan Administration when he became chief political advisor and liaison to President Ronald Reagan in August 1985.[3]
Private sector work
In 1987, Daniels returned to Indiana as chief executive of the Hudson Institute, restoring the organization back to financial health. He then left Hudson in 1990 for the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company. From 1993 until 1997, Daniels was President of North American operations, and promoted to Senior Vice President for Corporate Strategy and Policy at Eli Lilly in 1997 where he served until leaving the company in 2001.[6][3]
In January 2001, upon his appointment as Director of federal Office of Management and Budget (see below), Daniels resigned as a member of the board of Indianapolis Power & Light Co. and sold the $1.45 million he held in company stock, donating the proceeds to charity. Later, that year, Indianapolis Power & Light Co. was bought by Virginia-based AES Corp.[6] After the stocks dropped, the Indiana Securities Division investigated the sale and found no wrongdoing, but political opponents in his 2004 gubernatorial campaign charged that Daniels got rich while other employees suffered financial hardship. A state investigation also found no wrongdoing.
When AIG suffered rating downgrades, the resulting collateral calls on the credit default swaps proved ultimately to be much more than AIG could handle and became the main reason the company was bailed out – with government commitments that now exceed $150 billion.
The counterparties to the swaps were 25 financial institutions spread around the world. Many of them would have been vulnerable to a domino effect if they hadn’t received, first, the collateral AIG paid them and, later, billions of dollars from the U.S. government that made the counterparties whole.
In this whole disaster that began to play out last September, neither AIG nor the government has ever divulged the names of the counterparties – and that’s what infuriates Bunning and other senators.
Committee chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., describes the counterparties as less than innocent victims who used AIG’s rating (then AAA) to take enormous, irresponsible risks. He complains, It is not clear who we are rescuing.
The Fed’s Kohn argued that he couldn’t give out the names because the counterparties had entered into contracts with AIG not expecting their identity ever to be disclosed. Naming them, he said, might deter them from doing business with AIG again.
A reliable source, however, has given FORTUNE a list of 15 counterparties, with no dollar figures attached. The list contained the names in the following order. FORTUNE sought comment from all of the financial institutions and none said their inclusion on the list was inaccurate.
Société Générale (France)
Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500)
Merrill Lynch International
Deutsche Bank (Germany)
Calyon, Crédit Agricole (France)
UBS (Switzerland)
Barclays (England)
Coral Purchasing, DZ Bank (Germany)
Bank of Montreal (Canada)
Rabobank (the Netherlands)
Royal Bank of Scotland
Bank of America
Wachovia
HSBC (England)
Barclays Global Investors
What is the significance of the rank order of the list? Since it is not alphabetical, one possible interpretation is that the banks are listed in order of the amount of CDOs they insured with AIG.
Goldman Sachs’ No. 2 position fits several press reports that it was an important counterparty, perhaps having insured $20 billion of CDOs with AIG. Goldman has never confirmed that figure, but it has said that its net exposure to AIG – after collateral it received and hedging it did – was minimal.
If indeed France’s Société Générale ranks No. 1 by exposure, it’s a distinction the bank certainly didn’t need. Early last year, the company was staggered by the news that a rogue trader had lost $7.5 billion. Had a domino effect ensued from AIG’s collapse, Société Générale would have been in an especially vulnerable position.
The Fed’s Kohn admitted in the Senate hearings that paying off these counterparties in the course of the AIG rescue will reduce their incentive to be careful in the future, which helps explain why the names have become such sought-after information in the political debate over moral hazard.
But the transcript says not microcosm, but microchasm. And that’s what AIG has proved to be, a money pit of gaping proportions.
Supply Side Economics At Its Best – A Complete Failure
Supply Side Economics At Its Best – A Complete Failure
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* Ford Administration: During the Gerald Ford presidency, Deputy Assistant Dick Cheney suggested in a now infamous memo to Donald Rumsfeld that the White House use the United States Justice Department to conduct opposition research and retaliate against political opponents and critical journalists such as Seymour Hersh and the New York Times, arguing that the executive branch had the power to prosecute journalists as they saw fit, under the provisions of the Espionage Act of 1917.[32]
* Reagan Administration: In 1984, during the Ronald Reagan presidency, the Republican National Committee formed The Opposition Research Group, with its own budget of $1.1 million. These staff amassed information on eight Democratic presidential candidates based on data from voting records, Congressional Record speeches, media clippings and transcripts, campaign materials, all of which was stored on a computer for easy access. In this way Reagan was able to track inconsistencies and attack them. This original data base evolved into a network that linked information gleaned by Republicans in all 50 states, creating a master data base accessible to high-ranking Republican staff, even aboard Air Force One.[33]
* George W. Bush Administration: Two former opposition researchers for the RNC appointed to Justice Department posts, Timothy Griffin and Monica Goodling, were implicated in efforts to use data collected on Democratic-appointed federal attorneys as ground for dismissal. See Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy. See also Karl Rove.
Also during this administration, CIFA (Counterintelligence Field Activity) , an intelligence gathering arm of the Pentagon was disbanded in 2008, after investigations into the bribery activities directed at Duke Cunningham revealed that the U.S. government kept a sizeable database of information about 126 domestic peace activist groups, including Quakers, about 1,500 suspicious incidents including peace demonstrations outside armed forces recruiter offices, even though the groups posed no specified threat to national security.
The program was known as Talon. About two years elapsed between the program’s disbanding and the Post report. The Washington Post quoted an unnamed official as saying, On the surface, it looks like things in the database that were etermined not to be viable threats were never deleted but should have been, the official said. You can also make the argument that these things should never have been put in the database in the first place until they were confirmed as threats. [35]
Opposition Research and Mass media ethics
* In 1992, Floyd Brown headed up the Presidential Victory Committee, which backed the candidacy of George H. W. Bush. CBS Evening News reported that Floyd Brown was observed to be in the company of NBC news producer Ira Silverman as they stalked the family of Susan Coleman, a former law student of Bush’s opponent Bill Clinton. Coleman had committed suicide, and Brown was attempting to disseminate a rumor that she had had an affair with Clinton. Brown and associate David Bossie reportedly stalked the family of a suicide victim. In April 1992, 30 news organizations received an anonymous and untraceable letter by fax claiming Clinton had had an affair with a former law student who committed suicide 15 years ago. Floyd Brown attempted to link Clinton to the 1977 suicide of this, emotionally distraught young woman, seven-months pregnant, Susan Coleman.[42]
The Bush-Quayle campaign eventually filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Brown, seeking to distance itself from his tactics.[43][44] The group had filed its intent to air the ad with the Republican Party, and Bush’s campaign director James A. Baker III, who waited 25 days before responding to the letter, after the ad had been airing continuously. Brown has said of the incident, If they were really interested in stopping this, do you think they would have waited that long to send us a letter? [45]
The practice of using tips from sources such as Brown was examined in 1994 by Howard Kurtz, media analyst for the Washington Post. Kurtz surveyed the major networks, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and other influential media outlets, and found varying levels of use of Brown’s information on David Hale as a witness in the Whitewater controversy. At this time, Brown confirmed that he had been the source of four mainstream media stories that had received attention from the Columbia Journalism Review because they bore striking resemblance to the opposition research being disseminated by Citizens United.[46] In 2008, Floyd unveiled a new attack ad against Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, on the Fox News network, while also appearing as a real estate investor commenting on the mortgage fraud crisis.[47]
Opposition research and public opinion in the United States
The Atwater-Rove style drew sharp scrutiny and criticism, and opened a new venue for study of executive management style, as scholars sought to examine to what extent incumbent politicians who used black ops to gain power would also deploy the same staff and techniques to maintain power and control once they are elected. The public now weighs a candidate or organization’s viability by how they conduct their campaigns, and to many voters, a negative campaign means that if elected, that candidate will possibly transfer opposition research into retaliatory operations against dissenters.
FTSE just dropped below 5,000 for the first time since whenever – Nov. 2009, apparently, and the S& P futures fall below level reached at bottom of May 6 plunge said the banner on cnbc just now – the losses are across the board and DOW futures are now below the 10,000 mark – should be interesting . I was seeing the bloomberg and CNN stuff and just thought I better pop over and check this – sure enough – it just keeps getting better and better – figures.
Trading sessions are nearing their lows – it says – (cnbc)
Hmmm…………
Back to my docs
- cricketdiane
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Congressional response
Main article: Congressional response to the NSA warrantless surveillance program
Three days after news broke about the warrantless wiretapping program, a bipartisan group of Senators–Democrats Dianne Feinstein of California, Carl Levin of Michigan, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republicans Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine, sent a letter dated December 19, 2005 to Judiciary and Intelligence Committees chairmen and ranking members requesting the two committees to seek to answer the factual and legal questions about the program.
On January 25, 2006, in response to the administration’s asserted legal justification of the NSA program being based in part on the AUMF, Senators Leahy (D-VT) and Kennedy (D-MA) introduced Resolution 350 to the Judiciary Committee that purported to express a sense of the Senate that the AUMF does not authorize warrantless domestic surveillance of United States citizens . Resolution 350 has not been reported out of committee and has no effect.
In introducing their resolution to committee,[138] they quoted Justice O’Connor’s opinion that even war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens.
Additionally, they asserted their opinion that the US DOJ legal justification for the NSA program was a manipulation of the law similar to other overreaching and twisted interpretations in recent times. Leahy and Kennedy also asserted that Attorney General Gonzales admitted at a press conference on December 19, 2005, that the Administration did not seek to amend FISA to authorize the NSA spying program because it was advised that it was not something we could likely get.
Math whiz James Simons scores top spot on Alpha’s list
By Carol Eisenberg
March 26, 2009 at 10:06am
There’s a reason they’re called Masters of the Universe.
The 25 top hedge fund managers took home a sweet $11.6 billion last year, even in a time of tightening credit and falling stock prices which shuttered many less-nimble funds.
Of course, the price of admission to the club was sharply lower: To make the cut, a hedge fund hotshot needed to earn $75 million, down from the $360 million required for 2007’s top 25, according to Alpha Magazine’s annual rankings.
This is America – (THE ARTICLES ABOVE AND THESE TWO BELOW – MY NOTE)
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Autopsy: Bay City man froze inside his home
(WWII Veteran – my note)
by Tom Gilchrist | The Bay City Times
Monday January 26, 2009, 8:28 AM
Ryan Hernden, 15, and his father, Jim Hernden, 41, stand in front of the yellow Bay City home where their neighbor, 93-year-old Marvin Schur, froze to death.
City manager says utility followed policy on limiting man’s electricity
A pathologist said a 93-year-old Bay City man froze to death inside his home – his body found days after city workers said they limited electricity flowing to the house.
Marvin E. Schur suffered “a slow, painful death” inside his home at 1600 S. Chilson St. on Bay City’s southwest side, said Dr. Kanu Virani, who performed an autopsy on the body.
UPDATE: Bay City raises electric rates as Marvin Schur’s death spurs anger
ALSO: Marvin Schur’s death was preventable, Lansing officials say
“Hypothermia shuts the whole system down, slowly,” Virani said. “It’s not easy to die from hypothermia without first realizing your fingers and toes feel like they’re burning.”
Funeral services for Schur, a retired pattern-maker who lived alone, are at 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Gephart Funeral Home, 201 W. Midland St. Schur’s wife, retired elementary-school teacher Marian I. (Meisel) Schur, died several years ago, and the couple had no children.
Virani, Oakland County’s deputy chief medical examiner, performs autopsies for Bay County and numerous other Michigan counties. Of about 15,000 autopsies Virani has conducted, he said Marvin Schur’s autopsy “is the first one I can remember doing on someone who froze to death indoors.”
Virani said the temperature inside Schur’s home was less than 32 degrees when neighbors George A. Pauwels Jr. and his wife, Shannon, found Schur’s body Jan. 17.
George Pauwels Jr. said Schur owed almost $1,100 in electricity bills to the city of Bay City, though Pauwels said he noticed money clipped to those bills on Schur’s kitchen table the day he found Schur’s body.
Bay City Manager Robert V. Belleman said a worker with Bay City Electric Light & Power placed a “limiter” device outside Schur’s home, between Schur’s electricity meter and electrical service, on Jan. 13.
The device restricts the amount of electricity reaching the home and if a homeowner tries to draw more electricity than the limiter allows, “it blows the limiter, just like blowing a fuse, and then you go outside and reset it,” Belleman said.
Belleman said he doesn’t know if a city worker made one-on-one contact with Schur to explain the limiter’s operation. Virani said he doesn’t know if Schur suffered from dementia, which could have interfered with his ability to know how to reset a limiter.
Pauwels said Schur couldn’t hear well, and said he believed Schur “had a little bit” of dementia.
Belleman said city workers keep the limiter on a residence for 10 days, at which point the city shuts off all electricity if the homeowner hasn’t paid his utility bill or arranged to do so.
Jim Hernden, 41, a neighbor of Marvin Schur, said Bay City Electric Light & Power workers should insist on meeting face to face with a homeowner, or a homeowner’s neighbors, before installing a limiter or shutting off power.
“We’re a small enough town where someone like Marvin should get a little bit extra care,” he said.
Bay City Police Department officers investigated Schur’s death, but declined comment, referring all questions to Belleman.
Pauwels said he blames the city for Marvin Schur’s death.
“His furnace was not running – the insides of his windows were full of ice the morning we found him,” Pauwels said. “This (limiter) is supposed to regulate the amount of electricity he was using, but still allow enough power to run the furnace.Obviously, it didn’t work.”
Belleman said city officials will review Electric Light & Power policies in the wake of Schur’s death. Belleman said he doesn’t believe the city did anything wrong.
BAY CITY, Mich. — Officials in Mid-Michigan said the 93-year-old man who owed more than $1,000 in unpaid electric bills froze to death inside his home — where the municipal power company had restricted his use of electricity.Neighbors and friends of Schur want answers as to how this could happen.“Now that we do know it was hypothermia, there’s a whole bunch of feelings that I’ve got going through me,” said Jim Herndon, a neighbor of Schur’s. “There’s anger, for the city and the electrical company.”
LOS ANGELES, April 14 (UPI) — The American Civil Liberties Union Tuesday called for an end to what it calls dangerous overcrowding in the Los Angeles County’s central jail for men.
In a statement, the ACLU said conditions at the facility cause or contribute to violence and mental illness among inmates.
“Men’s Central Jail is so grossly overcrowded, dangerous and dungeon-like that it puts intolerable stress on the prisoners, as well as the jailers,” said Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “The county must do whatever it takes to stop subjecting people to the nightmarish conditions in this jail, and stop denying basic mental health treatment to those who need it.”
The ACLU’s comments came as county officials are investigating the death of John Horton, 22, who was found hanging from a noose in his cell March 30, after spending more than a month in the jail.
In a 50-page report submitted to Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca last year, an expert said he found that idleness and massive overcrowding at the jail leads to violence and ultimately psychotic breakdown even in relatively healthy people.
The report was made public Tuesday.
With 20,000 detainees, the Los Angeles County jail system is the largest in the nation. Men’s Central Jail, which is nearly 50 years old, houses an average of 5,000 detainees.
One third of our population has been in jails, and prisons, and institutions since the Republican administrations made a business out of them. That means whenever there is any unemployment numbers – they are missing nearly a third of the employable adult population – while money is being made from this process by counties, cities, businesses and states. Most of the highly dangerous criminals are never caught and the majority of our jails are filled with the poor, the homeless, the disabled, and the misdemeanors, small drug possessions and non-violent felonies. There seems to be no real system in place for national concerns about it either. Many of the jails are overcrowded in every city and county in America, but it is just a business. It is one more revenue stream for the county or the city or the state. Its a shame.
- cricketdiane
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This is America – the one we’ve all been enduring – (my note)
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Jailers indicted in Ohio inmate’s death
Published: April 14, 2009 at 10:54 PM
CLEVELAND, April 14 (UPI) — Lucas County (Ohio) Sheriff James Telb and three other jailers were indicted Tuesday in the death of a prisoner, federal officials said.
The men are accused in the 2004 death of Carlton Benton and a subsequent 4-year cover-up, a U.S. Justice Department statement said.
Federal authorities allege that on May 30, 2004, former Deputy Sheriff John Gray assaulted and strangled Benton and left him lying unconscious without seeking medical help for him.
Shortly before Benton died, the indictment said Jay Schmeltz, who was a chief deputy, also assaulted him. Both deputies are also accused of writing false reports of the incident and lying to federal agents.
The indictment also alleges Lt. Robert McBroom, who was in the jail’s Internal Affairs Department and Telb concealed their knowledge of Gray’s felonies from federal authorities.
“Police officers are given tremendous authority and responsibility so that they can protect and serve the public trust. Those who abuse that authority face serious consequences,” said Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division.
If convicted, Gray faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, Schmeltz faces a maximum of 10 years behind bars, while McBroom and Telb will each face a maximum of three years.
Telb, 70, is serving his seventh term as sheriff, The (Toledo) Blade said.
“I didn’t do anything wrong and I’m not going to walk away,” Telb said at a news conference. “We’re going to be vindicated in this … . This is serious stuff. I’m not backing away from it.”
Benton, 24, was facing two counts of aggravated murder when attacked.
Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs joins executives from the financial institutions who received TARP funds testifying before the House Financial Services Committee about how the the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds were used on Capitol Hill in Washington on February 11, 2009. (UPI Photo/Roger L. Wollenberg)
NEW YORK, April 14 (UPI) — New York financial firm Goldman Sachs said it would try to raise $5 billion in cash to begin paying back bailout money to the U.S. government.
The bank accepted $10 billion from Troubled Asset Relief Program funds in October. If given permission to begin paying the loan back, it would be the first large bank to take that step.
Goldman, which posted a $1.66 billion first quarter profit, said it would sell common shares to raise funds, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
“We view it as our duty to return the funds as long as we can do it without negatively impacting our financial profile,” Goldman’s Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said in a statement.
However, some doubted the bank’s sincerity and others questioned the timing, given Goldman’s loss of more than $2 billion in the final quarter of 2008.
“Goldman can walk the halls of Congress waving a check, but is it in the best interest of the marketplace for them to pay it back?” asked Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.
“If you look at most of the conditions in place that forced TARP onto the banks, those conditions have not changed,” said Roger Freeman, an analyst with Barclays Capital.
The directors of American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AFF) triggered a perfect storm of national anger and rage Sunday when they released a list of $100 billion they have paid out to around 80 recipients out of the $173 billion they received in a gigantic bailout payment from the U.S. government.
Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Wachovia, Societe Generale (OTCPK:SCGLF), Deutsche Bank, Barclays and UBS all received billions of dollars. Senior AIG executives, who had run the gigantic financial structure into the ground and imperiled the entire U.S. economy by their actions, nevertheless paid themselves $450 million in bonuses as if they deserved them.
They didn’t earn them: Shares in the group now stand at 1 percent of the value they held two years ago, and 80 percent of the group is now owned by the U.S. government.
AIG defends the bonuses by claiming that it is contractually obligated to pay them. But that isn’t sitting well with the people who agreed to give AIG billions in the first place — the American people.
The scandal is a tremendous embarrassment for inexperienced young U.S. President Barack Obama. He has repeatedly said he doesn’t want to govern from anger. Obama, his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his Chairman of the National Economic Council Lawrence Summers have already been outspoken about the shameless greed and arrogance of the AIG executives and other Wall Street bigwigs like them.
However, mouthing that kind of language while simultaneously complaining that nothing can be done about such behavior is hardly an exercise in inspiring and confidence-building leadership, especially as the administration’s own economic measures have manifestly failed to even slow the dangerous economic decline. Last week Wall Street stock indexes rallied a bit at least. But they have still lost almost 20 percent in value in the less than seven weeks since Obama took the oath of office.
The New York Times reported Monday that Obama and his political advisers were concerned that anger at the AIG financial payouts and other documented scandals, corruption and outrageous behavior in the financial sector could set off an angry populist backlash across the United States.
The haunting new song from country and western singer John Rich captures the mood of rising proto-populism across America perfectly:
“While they’re living up on Wall Street
“In that New York City town,
“Here in the real world they’re
“Shutting Detroit down.”
Any real populist backlash would take years to have any direct political impact on the composition of Congress, and if the economy shows signs of stabilizing and recovering this year or even next year, it will probably fizzle out. That has been the pattern throughout U.S. history.
The Grangers of the mid-1870s briefly proliferated following the Wall Street crash of 1873. The ferocious depression of 1893-96, the worst in American history to that date, led to the great prairie-populism cruise of William Jennings Bryan when he seized control of the Democratic Party at its 1896 convention in Chicago, Obama’s hometown. However, a quarter century of prosperity and boom began right after the election that year of Republican William McKinley.
Even in the Great Depression of the 1930s, the fires of populism were tamed and channeled by the successful and charismatic leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Obama, however, has shown no sign as yet of commanding the economic story. As financial analyst Martin Hutchinson has pointed out in his Bear’s Lair columns, only about 11 percent of the Obama-Democrats stimulus package will actually directly produce any real benefits to the U.S. economy and national infrastructure. The bill is packed with the most absurd pork barrel self-indulgence, such as the funding plan for a maglev train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid’s home state of Nevada.
If the Democrats continue to fiddle as America burns and the Republicans praise bailouts of bankers while opposing comparable aid to what’s left of the once fabled American industrial sector, a neo-populist movement fired by the rage of hundreds of millions of smashed dreams is going to be inevitable. All that anger has to go somewhere.
(haven’t found the Dennis Blair and DNI stuff yet – if you stop reading, I don’t blame you – sorry about that but understanding the significance of this day – it seems like this information is very important right now to keep some perspective – so I’m posting as I look for the other – from my documents – this first part is a note I sent to the online Washington, External website for the White House – )
my note – above
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When President Obama makes a speech especially the one today at Georgetown, would you please put the entire thing online at the White House website such that it can be saved and read and shared by those of us who are interested.
It is history – I don’t need a few bits from it, nor an explanation about it. I don’t want it interpreted, excerpted or have to go to the Chinese websites to find the speech in its entirety.
and, in this case particularly, this speech clearly expressed the current economic situation in its context and described the methods by which it is being solved. It calls upon each of us to participate, to educate ourselves and to engage in the process. It is history and I for one, want to keep it close to my mind for reference and share it with my family members and my children.
Thankyou, CricketDiane
about speech made to Georgetown students – 04-14-09, USA
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China’s PM Wen nervous over holding U.S. Treasury bonds
By MARTIN SIEFF
Published: March. 13, 2009 at 12:09 PM
Reaction: Wen worried about U.S. investments
WASHINGTON, March 13 (UPI) — A fire bell tolled in the night for the American economy Friday: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said his country is worried about just how safe its estimated $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds are.
Wen told Friday’s session of the National People’s Congress in Beijing he was “definitely a little worried” about China’s investments in the United States.
“China is indeed the largest creditor of the United States, which is the world’s biggest economy. We are extremely interested in developments in the U.S. economy,” Wen said, according to a report from China’s official Xinhua news agency.
“The Obama administration has adopted a series of measures to counter the international financial crisis. We are expecting these measures to take effect,” Wen said. He stressed what he called China’s principle of guaranteeing the “safety, liquidity and good value” of the nation’s foreign exchange reserves — the largest of any nation in the world — and the importance of cautiously investing the reserves and diversifying in many different places.
“On the foreign-reserves issue, the first consideration is our national interest,” Wen said. “But we also have to consider the stability of the overall international financial system, as the two factors are interlinked.”
Wen did add a reassuring note: “Currently, our reserves are generally safe.”
As long as the dollar is strengthening, as it has been lately, China can feel good about its position. However, economists have raised concerns that U.S. President Barack Obama’s gigantic economic stimulus package, backed as it is with a massive increase in government debt, could weaken the dollar — and threaten China’s investment.
Xinhua noted that China’s foreign exchange reserves soared to an all-time high of $1.95 trillion at the end of 2008, a far higher figure than Japan, which has the second-highest national reserves, worth $1.03 trillion — just more than half the Chinese figure.
The U.S. Treasury listed China as owning $681.9 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds in November. This figure was far higher than the $585 billion in U.S. bonds it held in September, an increase of well more than 15 percent in only two months.
On the one hand, this increase appeared to mark a boost in confidence in the future of the U.S. economy, even after the September economic crisis erupted on Wall Street and then spread around the world. But on the other hand, it also indicated that the U.S. financial system and government are now far more dependent on Beijing than they were six months ago.
And as one commentator has observed, the effect of China staying away from even one auction of U.S. Treasury bonds would likely be dramatic; it would certainly send a message.
It seems unlikely China will do that in the immediate future as long as the U.S. dollar continues to rise relative to other major international currencies.
Wen has been critical of U.S. economic behavior before on several occasions. He expressed his concern strongly at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month.
Ultimately, this is in large part a problem of China’s making, too. China’s economic model has been intimately tied to buying U.S. debt so that U.S. consumers can drive China’s growth by funding its exports.
China was happy to benefit from the growing bubble but doesn’t now like the results of it bursting. As a result, the country is now going to have to readjust its development model, relying more on domestic consumption. That will require developing a better social safety net so that Chinese can more confidently spend some of their savings.
President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton certainly recognize the crucial importance of staying on good terms with China. Clinton visited Beijing on her first trip overseas after taking office. And discussing ways to manage trade and financial relations was at the top of her negotiating list.
Human-rights activists and supporters of the Dalai Lama have decried Clinton’s unwillingness to publicly champion their concerns in Beijing, but as the old saying goes, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” Anyone who wants the United States to be able to lecture China and put pressure on it about such issues has to recognize that can’t happen as long as the U.S. government and economy are so dependent on Chinese financial support and cheap industrial and manufactured imports.
Obama has said he hopes to cut the record annual government deficit that he inherited from President George W. Bush by 50 percent within the next four years. And there is no doubt that senior Obama administration officials take the issue of national fiscal solvency far more seriously than their predecessors under Bush did.
However, Obama’s gigantic spending package is far from reassuring to the Chinese and to other major governments around the world. Financial ministers from the Group of 20 are gathering in London this weekend to lay the groundwork for next month’s economic summit. There are differences in how they see fit to handle the crisis.
Japan has backed a U.S. position of coordinated moves to support the world economy, but European ministers have been pushing instead for regulation of the financial sector.
Banque de France Gov. Christian Noyer told the Financial Times in comments published Friday that the United States needs to fix its financial system. Noyer said Europe was more advanced in that regard than the United States.
Therefore, Wen’s warning, while measured, was of vast importance. It serves notice to the Democratic masters of the 111th Congress as well as to their Republican opponents that their bipartisan, still-dominant ways of doing business through reckless pork-barrel spending as if there were no tomorrow cannot continue. Tomorrow has just arrived.
In comparison, the LM-5D stands 2 meters taller and weighs over 100k kilograms more than the Atlas V rocket pictured here. In recent years, China’s export of space technology, including satellites and satellite-launching services, has been closely tied to its attempts to acquire natural resources globally. The LM-5D will put China in a more favorable position, capable of competing with the United States and Russia. (UPI Photo/Joe Marino – Bill Cantrell)
In comparison, the LM-5D stands 2 meters taller and weighs over 100k kilograms more than the Atlas V rocket pictured here. In recent years, China’s export of space technology, including satellites and satellite-launching services, has been closely tied to its attempts to acquire natural resources globally. The LM-5D will put China in a more favorable position, capable of competing with the United States and Russia. (UPI Photo/Joe Marino – Bill Cantrell)
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HONG KONG, April 10 (UPI) — China has created a new, powerful carrier rocket with military capabilities that can launch multiple satellites into space.
The rocket supports China’s strategy of marketing satellites, communications technologies and launch services overseas, especially to oil-producing countries.
At the most recent Zhuhai Air Show, China introduced a high-capacity LM-5D carrier rocket with a diameter of 5 meters at the core section, bundled with one 2.25-meter-diameter booster and two 3.35-meter-diameter boosters.
The carrier rocket has a length of 60 meters, a takeoff weight of 675,000 kilograms and the capacity to send targets of 10,000 kilograms into geostationary transfer orbit. The initial flight of the rocket is expected no later than 2014.
This type of carrier rocket deserves attention, as its advanced upper stage can be integrated with a CZ-5 carrier rocket to directly blast designated equipment to medium Earth orbit and geostationary Earth orbit, or even lunar orbit. The rocket is capable of deploying multiple satellites and has outstanding capability for orbit maneuvering and orbit transfer. It can function in orbit for seven to 10 days.
This advanced-upper-stage rocket is of critical importance for the People’s Liberation Army in its research of orbit transfers and orbital killer satellites. The advanced upper stage of the rocket has a diameter of 3.8 meters, and the thrust power of the engine is 35 kilonewtons.
The CZ-5 is likely to be deployed on Hainan Island, where conditions are favorable for the launch of satellites into geosynchronous or geostationary orbits. Most of the United States’ ballistic missile early-warning satellites and communications satellites are deployed in this orbit range. The CZ-5 is capable of sending a 25-ton-class satellite into low Earth orbit and a 12-ton-class satellite into geosynchronous orbit.
By the time the rocket is ready for launch, the quality of China’s image-reconnaissance satellite will have improved greatly.
At a weight of around 14 tons, it will be on par with the technological standard of the KH-12 image-reconnaissance satellite of the U.S. military.
In recent years, China’s export of space technology, including satellites and satellite-launching services, has been closely tied to its attempts to acquire natural resources globally. The LM-5D will put China in a more favorable position, capable of competing with the United States and Russia.
China’s sales of space technologies overseas have so far focused on its traditional allies, such as Pakistan, and oil-rich countries like Venezuela and Nigeria. On Oct. 17, China signed a contract with Pakistan to provide a PakSat-1 communications satellite and launching service.
This is China’s third such foreign contract. It produced a communications satellite for Nigeria and launched it in May 2007, and it did the same for Venezuela with a successful launch in October 2008.
In comparison, the LM-5D stands 2 meters taller and weighs over 100k kilograms more than the Atlas V rocket pictured here. In recent years, China’s export of space technology, including satellites and satellite-launching services, has been closely tied to its attempts to acquire natural resources globally. The LM-5D will put China in a more favorable position, capable of competing with the United States and Russia. (UPI Photo/Joe Marino – Bill Cantrell)
China-takes-giant-step-with-new-super-rocket2.jpg
A Chinese soldier marches past a rocket on display outside the barracks in central Beijing, China, on January 21, 2007 China has come under growing pressure to explain the shooting-down of a satellite as condemnation continued to pour in from around the globe. (UPI Photo/Stephen Shaver)
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Israel sells spy drones to Russian air force
By MARTIN SIEFF, UPI Senior News Analyst
Published: April 13, 2009 at 6:23 PM
WASHINGTON, April 13 (UPI) — Russia has closed a deal with Israel’s largest aerospace company to buy new state-of-the-art unmanned aerial vehicles.
Russian Deputy Defense Minister Vladimir Popovkin, who directs all military procurement programs, confirmed the deal in an announcement Friday, RIA Novosti reported. Previously, the Moscow daily business newspaper Kommersant had published what it said were details of the deal on April 7.
“We have closed a deal with an Israeli company on the delivery of a range of UAVs,” Popovkin announced, according to the report.
According to the Kommersant report, the Russian government has concluded an agreement with Israel Aerospace Industries to buy the Bird-Eye 400 mini-UAV, the I-View MK150 tactical UAV and the Searcher Mk II medium-range UAV. The Bird-Eye 400 weighs 11 pounds and has a range of 6 miles. The I-View MK150 weighs 352 pounds and has a range of 60 miles. The Searcher Mk II weighs 937 pounds and has a range of 150 miles.
The tactical importance of the contract with Israel Aerospace Industries is very great. The Russian army in general performed very impressively in its blitzkrieg occupation of one-third of the territory of the former Soviet republic of Georgia in the Caucasus last August.
However, Russian military analysts and reports published after the conflict stressed the weakness of battlefield intelligence and a grave weakness in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technology. Several Russian air force combat aircraft were also lost to unexpectedly effective U.S.-supplied Georgian air defenses.
RIA Novosti noted that Russian analysts had concluded that “the effectiveness of Russian military operations was severely hampered by the lack of reliable intelligence.”
Israel has prioritized UAV development in recent years and is regarded as a world leader in advancing the technology.
The Russian air force has already started high-priority UAV development programs of its own. The RIA Novosti report noted that last year, three-star Col. Gen. Alexander Zelin, the air force commander, announced the goal of putting UAVs into operational use by 2011 that could fly as far as 240 miles and could stay in the air as long as 12 hours.
However, this ambitious target appears to be beyond the current resources and technical capabilities of the Russian defense industry. “Russian defense companies, including the MiG corporation, the Russian Helicopters and the Vega Radio Engineering Corp., have failed so far to provide the military with effective spy drones,” RIA Novosti said.
Popovkin revealingly remarked that the purchase of the UAVs — spy drones — from Israel was a temporary bridging measure. But he also indicated that the Israeli UAVs would be reverse-engineered and carefully studied “to show our industry what it (a spy drone) is.”
“We will rely on our own equipment to fight wars,” he added.
RIA Novosti said that recent studies had concluded the Russian armed forces require at least 100 UAVs using a minimum of 10 guidance systems to reach the required level of battlefield reconnaissance in any future conventional war it may have to fight.
WASHINGTON, April 9 (UPI) — Israel’s Arrow-3 anti-ballistic missile may be one of the first victims of U.S. President Barack Obama’s defense spending cuts.
Ynet, the Web site of the respected Tel Aviv daily Yediot Aharonot, reported Monday that U.S. funding for the Arrow-3 program is likely to be eliminated.
However, in compensation, the Obama administration is prepared to help Israel buy the U.S. Navy’s Standard Missile 3 anti-ballistic missile system instead, the report said. The SM-3 is built by Raytheon as its primary contractor.
Ynet said the U.S. Congress is expected to take up the issue soon, possibly as early as its next session.
Offering the SM-3 makes a lot of sense and could prove a wiser course of action for Israel than pushing ahead with the Arrow-3. The SM-3 is far more expensive per unit at $10 million to $12 million each, compared with the individual projected cost of the Arrow-3 at only $1.5 million to $2 million each. But the SM-3 is a mature technology whose costs will not rise unexpectedly. The Arrow-3 is still in the developmental stage, and no one knows how high its real costs will reach as opposed to the optimistic projections made for it.
Far more important from Israel’s point of view, SM-3s can be sold and deployed quickly, while the Arrow-3 is still at least three years away from operational deployment by the most optimistic assessment. But Iran already has a formidable intermediate-range ballistic missile arsenal and is now developing a far higher and faster intercontinental ballistic missile capability as well.
The SM-3 showed last year when it shot down a plunging U.S. satellite on Feb. 21, 2008, that it has the capability to destroy targets following the ballistic flight paths and with the speed and acceleration of an incoming ICBM. Ynet noted that the USS Lake Erie, a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, destroyed the satellite by firing only a single SM-3, even though the target was plunging to Earth with a combined closing velocity of 22,780 mph at an altitude of 133 nautical miles above the Pacific Ocean.
Also, as we have noted in our analyses of the problems with Israel’s Iron Dome very-short-range anti-ballistic missile defense system, the Jewish state, with a land area comparable to New Jersey and a population of only around 6 million, is world-class at upgrading existing military technologies, but it does not have the resources to develop many new systems of its own.
This problem may be less in the case of the Arrow-3, which is planned as an exoatmospheric interceptor that can hit and destroy intermediate-range ballistic missiles 60 miles above the surface of Earth. But the Raytheon SM-3 is already an established, reliable technology with a long record of successful IRBM interceptions under its belt.
The threat Israel faces from a potentially nuclear-armed Iran became imminent in February when Tehran successfully launched its first communications satellite on its own multistage ballistic missile. In effect, as we have often noted, any nation with the capability to launch a satellite into orbit on its own multistage booster already has the intercontinental ballistic missile capability to send a nuclear weapon, not just to Israel, but also 9,000 miles to the Eastern Seaboard cities of the United States.
Ending U.S. funding for the Arrow-3 would be consistent with President Obama’s well-documented skepticism about ballistic missile defenses. Defense Secretary Robert Gates proposed Monday a slashing of funding for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s Kinetic Energy Interceptor and Airborne Laser programs — moves that would in effect kill both of them.
However, Ynet suggested that Raytheon may have applied pressure as well to try to kill the Arrow-3.
Ynet reported that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a strong enthusiast for the Arrow-3 program, recently met with a delegation of visiting U.S. senators and congressmen; following that meeting, he briefed a private meeting of his Labor Party, in which he warned of the pressures to kill the Arrow-3.
Judge OKs Chrysler financing over lenders’ protest
By BREE FOWLER and VINNEE TONG, AP
5 hours ago
finance-20090504-US.Chrysler.Bankruptcy
Boxes of documents related to the Chrysler bankruptcy case are brought into …
NEW YORK — A bankruptcy judge on Monday gave Chrysler access to a crucial $4.5 billion to fund the carmaker’s operations through the end of June, creating a “bridge” to the sale of the company’s most valuable assets to Italy’s Fiat Group SpA.
Chrysler LLC won the interim approval for the government loan and immediate use of $1.8 billion, staving off the immediate threat of liquidation for now. Access to the full $4.5 billion requires final approval in a later hearing.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez overruled objections from a dissident group of Chrysler LLC lenders, who argued that the loan was too closely tied to the sale, setting Chrysler on an irreversible path to complete the deal at the lenders’ expense.
“As the court is aware, we’re concerned that’s we’re starting construction of a bridge that may turn out to be a pier,” said Tom Lauria, an attorney for the lenders.
Lauria argued the sale planned by Chrysler and the government favors other stakeholders such as the United Auto Workers union, which would get a 55 percent stake in the “new Chrysler” when a deal is consummated and billions of dollars in cash payments later. His clients would get about 29 cents on the dollar to dissolve what they’re owed.
But four banks holding 70 percent of Chrysler’s $6.9 billion in secured debt had agreed to the government’s deal to wipe out the debt.
At an event in Sterling Heights, Mich., on Monday, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said critics who think the union is getting a better deal than Chrysler’s secured debtholders are wrong because the UAW is taking a big risk with Chrysler equity that is currently worthless.
Gonzalez also ruled Monday that Chrysler can pay $8 billion in taxes and costs to suppliers, dealers and employees.
The Fiat deal is a key pillar of Chrysler’s plan for a quick and “surgical” exit from court protection. Without the sale, the government had been unwilling to offer $4.1 billion in loans to fund Chrysler’s operations. Chrysler also has the use of another $400 million in cash.
The biggest obstacle appears to be Lauria’s clients, who may be forced to disclose their identities Tuesday. Gonzalez is set to rule on whether the list of lenders can remain private. Disclosure of their identities may cause some of them to drop their objections.
The group of holdout lenders refused to take the four banks’ deal and go along with the government’s restructuring plan for Chrysler, and President Barack Obama blamed them for pushing the automaker into filing for bankruptcy protection Thursday.
“I’ve never represented a group of creditors who were called out by the president of the United States just for standing up for their rights,” Lauria said.
Obama said Thursday that the lenders were seeking an “unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout” after Chrysler and his auto task force cleared the company’s other hurdles, including the Fiat deal and a cost-cutting pact that the UAW ratified last week.
Lauria, whose group includes lenders such as OppenheimerFunds Inc. and Stairway Capital Management, said some of the holdout lenders have asked to remain anonymous because of fears about their safety. Some in the group have gotten death threats, he said.
Gonzalez delayed until Tuesday afternoon the hearing that will determine how Chrysler’s assets will be transferred to the new entity tied to Fiat. Attorneys for the lenders group said they needed more time to review the proposed deal and the 300-page filing that went with it. Chrysler lawyers did not file its motion until late Sunday.
Also on Monday, one of the top financial advisers overseeing Chrysler’s restructuring testified in bankruptcy court Monday that there is a “low likelihood” that the automaker will be able pay back its billions of dollars in government loans.
But Robert Manzo, an executive director with the restructuring group Capstone Advisory Group LLC, said he doesn’t view the government financing as “free money.”
“They’re offering financing with a low likelihood of being repaid,” he said.
Chrysler executives testified during the afternoon about the relationships between Chrysler and its suppliers and dealers. A Chrysler dealer also took the stand to talk about how vehicle sales tumbled in the months leading up to the Chapter 11 filing, along with his concerns about how the bankruptcy filing will affect dealers’ sales in the future.
Scott Garberding, Chrysler’s executive vice president for procurement, testified that a prolonged Chrysler bankruptcy could have a disastrous effect on the company’s about 1,300 production suppliers.
“I think the extreme case we could have multiple suppliers, probably the very specialized ones, file for bankruptcy or liquidate,” Garberding said. “It’s really already a tough environment for them.”
Chrysler, the nation’s third-largest car manufacturer, filed for bankruptcy protection Thursday with plans to emerge in 30 to 60 days as a leaner company and with Fiat potentially becoming the majority owner.
___
AP Auto Writer Kimberly S. Johnson in Sterling Heights, Mich., contributed to this report.
Blind Amputee Fights AIG for Leg, Wheelchair – Iraq Contractor who worked with KRB
April 17, 2009 – video
found this video – couldn’t operate share button or other email options but watched it
at the same time, on air – there was the continuing saga of the credit card companies and banks raising interest on credit cards to untenable levels, changing rules of the game on those who have credit cards without notice and changing minimum payment requirements – they are also taking accounts and closing them whether the individual has a high credit score or not (currently)
***
“I got your ‘special ops’ for yah.” – cricketdiane comment
- Ollie North special on special ops on foxnews sometime this week (or later today)
((from the day I was taking these notes – I’m going to check another doc – this isn’t it, – cricketdiane – today’s note, 05-21-10))
***
updated 3 hours, 12 minutes ago
13-year-old’s school strip-search case heads to Supreme Court
* Story Highlights
* The justices in January accepted the Safford school district case for review
* Justices will decide if campus gives administrators greater discretion
* Administrators strip-searched honor student, 13, looking for ibuprofen
* The court could now be asked to clarify the extent of student rights involving searches
* Next Article in U.S. »
(CNN) — The case of a 13-year-old Arizona girl strip-searched by school officials looking for ibuprofen pain-reliever will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this week.
The Supreme Court has a mixed record when it comes to students’ rights.
The Supreme Court has a mixed record when it comes to students’ rights.
The justices in January accepted the Safford school district case for review, and will decide whether a campus setting gives school administrators greater discretion to control students suspected of illegal activity than police are allowed in cases involving adults in general public spaces.
The case is centered around Savana Redding, now 19, who in 2003 was an eighth-grade honors student at Safford Middle School, about 127 miles from Tucson, Arizona. Redding was strip-searched by school officials after a fellow student accused her of providing prescription-strength ibuprofen pills.
The school has a zero-tolerance policy for all prescription and over-the-counter medication, including the ibuprofen, without prior written permission.
“In this case, the United States Supreme Court will decide how easy it is for school officials to strip search your child,” Adam Wolf, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing Redding, told CNN Radio on Sunday.
Wolf told CNN Radio his client was traumatized by the search.
“School officials undoubtedly have difficult jobs, but sometimes they overreact — and this was just a clear overreaction,” he said.
Redding was pulled from class by a male vice principal, escorted to an office, where she denied the accusations.
A search of Redding’s backpack found nothing. Then, although she never had prior disciplinary problems, a strip search was conducted with the help of a school nurse and Wilson’s assistant, both females. According to court records, she was ordered to strip to her underwear and her bra was pulled out. Again, no drugs were found.
In an affidavit, Redding said, “The strip search was the most humiliating experience I have ever had. I held my head down so that they could not see that I was about to cry.”
At issue is whether school administrators are constitutionally barred from conducting searches of students investigated for possessing or dealing drugs that are banned on campus.
A federal appeals court found the search “traumatizing” and illegal.
Some parents say older children deserve the same constitutional rights as adults, but educators counter a school setting has always been treated differently by courts, and a ruling against them could jeopardize campus safety.
While a federal magistrate and a three-panel appeals court found the search was reasonable, the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Redding last year.
“Common sense informs us,” wrote the court, “that directing a 13-year-old girl to remove her clothes, partially revealing her breasts and pelvic area, for allegedly possessing ibuprofen … was excessively intrusive.”
The court said the school went too far in its effort to create a drug- and crime-free classroom. “The overzealousness of school administrators in efforts to protect students has the tragic impact of traumatizing those they claim to serve. And all this to find prescription-strength ibuprofen.”
In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the school district said restrictions on conducting student searches would cast a “roadblock to the kind of swift and effective response that is too often needed to protect the very safety of students, particularly from the threats posed by drugs and weapons.”
School officials said the court was “wholly uninformed about a disturbing new trend” — the abuse of over-the-counter medication by teenagers.
The high court has a mixed record over the years on students’ rights.
In a famous 1969 ruling, the justices said students do not “shed their constitutional rights … at the schoolhouse gate.” But decisions in the 1980s gave administrators greater discretion, including one case that said officials need not be required to have a warrant to search a student’s locker. Such a search was permitted if there were “reasonable” grounds for believing it would turn up evidence and when the search was not “excessively intrusive.”
Opinions in 1995 and 2001 allowed schools to conduct random drug testing of high school athletes, and those participating in other extracurricular activities.
And in a well-publicized 2007 ruling from Alaska, the Supreme Court upheld the suspension of a student who displayed a large “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner at an off-campus, but school-sponsored, event. The decision did not endorse a broader argument that students in general have limited free-speech rights when they interfere with a school’s vaguely defined “educational mission.”
The court could now be asked to clarify the extent of student rights involving searches, and the discretion of officials regarding those they have responsibility over.
The case is Safford United School District No. 1 v. Redding (08-479).
U.S. bank lending drops in February despite bailouts: report
Mon Apr 20, 2009 2:26am EDT
(Reuters) – Banks that received the most U.S. government aid made or refinanced 23 percent less in new loans in February, than in October 2008, when the U.S. Treasury launched its Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Wall Street Journal said, citing its own analysis of Treasury Department data.
In three of the four months that the U.S. government reported this data, the total dollar amount of new loans declined, according to the paper.
Some 16 of the 19 largest TARP recipients with comparable data originated fewer loans in February than they did at the time they received federal infusions, the paper said.
The Treasury has not released its own tally of the October to February decline, according to the paper.
“No one metric can accurately capture lending activity across the nation,” a Treasury spokesman told the paper. “That’s why we provide the data set in full.”
“The declining levels of lending obviously reflect current economic conditions,” the paper cited the spokesman as saying. “But Treasury firmly believes that lending levels would be much lower” without the government’s capital injections.
(Reporting by Ajay Kamalakaran in Bangalore; Editing by David Fox)
in one of the news clips over the weekend, President Bush was shown at the time of his responses to the whether the US tortures prisoners or not – and in this clip, he says something about how our “troops” have undergone these techniques and they are not torture.
They damn well better not have subjected our soldiers to these techniques and I think somebody better find out because I bet they did. There is no good sense to raising our children, teaching them, praying over them, hoping for them, working to provide for them, and then watch our government take them into the military and subject them to the procedures that have been described that were used in CIA interrogations. I don’t care what anybody says – that is evil. There is no other word for it. Those that engaged in it are evil and every person that supported doing it to our soldiers is also evil – (in order to prove what?) -
I don’t want people who don’t know any better than that working in our CIA, NSA or in our military and certainly not working in our government with any position where a decision has to be made. That would be stupid.
When the “good guys” aren’t acting any different than Satan himself – then something is wrong with the judgment that they are the “good guys”. It takes a really sick, twisted mind to have come up with some of this stuff but it takes an even sicker, more twisted personality to have authorized it.
On CNN, in a report about the US torture program – there was a mention that over 100 prisoners had died in US custody also. As if it isn’t bad enough that the United States has treated their disabled populations and citizens to much the same insane abuses of authority and forcibly administered tortures, it looks like the same denial of culpability, especially in the event of deaths, occurs in both cases. There is an inherent evil in handling people’s lives in these ways. It belies a deeply rooted lack of respect for human life, dignity, freedom, and human rights. It is pure evil which means they are not the good.
***
“Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture. … We have further found that if a defendant acts with the good faith belief that his actions will not cause such suffering, he has not acted with specific intent,” Bybee wrote, said an August 2002 memo from then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee to John Rizzo, who was acting general counsel for the CIA.
Other memos allowed the use of such tactics as keeping a detainee naked and in some cases in a diaper, and putting detainees on a liquid diet.
On waterboarding, in which a person gets the sensation of drowning, the memo said, “although the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death, prolonged mental harm must nonetheless result” to violate the law.
Authorities also were allowed to slap a detainee’s face “to induce shock, surprise or humiliation” and strike his abdomen with the back of the hand in order to disabuse a detainee’s notion that he will not be touched, the memos said.
Another memo to Rizzo, from Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury on May 10, 2005, noted that nudity could be used as an interrogation technique.
“Detainees subject to sleep deprivation who are also subject to nudity as a separate interrogation technique will at times be nude and wearing a diaper,” it said, noting that the diaper is “for sanitary and health purposes of the detainee; it is not used for the purpose of humiliating the detainee and it is not considered to be an interrogation technique.”
“The detainee’s skin condition is monitored, and diapers are changed as needed so that the detainee does not remain in a soiled diaper,” the memo said.
Another Bradbury memo laid out techniques and when they should be used in a “prototypical interrogation.”
“Several of the techniques used by the CIA may involve a degree of physical pain, as we have previously noted, including facial and abdominal slaps, walling, stress positions and water dousing,” it said. “Nevertheless, none of these techniques would cause anything approaching severe physical pain.”
All of the CIA techniques were adapted from military “survival evasion resistance escape” training, according to a May 30, 2005, memo from Bradbury to Rizzo.
“Although there are obvious differences between training exercises and actual interrogations, the fact that the United States uses similar techniques on its own troops for training purposes strongly suggests that these techniques are not categorically beyond the pale,” the memo said.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Bill of Rights prohibits Congress from making any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise therof, forbids infringement of the right to keep and bear arms, by Congress or citizens in a federal territory [3] and prohibits the federal government from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
Of course they’re not lending money – they are a black hole that sucks money in. The same banks are engaging in practices that undermine the financial health and opportunities of American consumers that hold credit cards with them and generally, taking every advantage in the situation while taking taxpayers money to the tune of billions of dollars. What would happen if we didn’t have them? Wouldn’t other more competitive and fair sources of loans and provisions through social lending and investors / venture capitalists move into the gap? Banks are using depositors’ money to do all their finagling in the first place – they obviously don’t lend out $7 for every $1 the taxpayers are putting into their businesses.
*** tyranny***
***
My note -
How dare they do these things to us? How dare they do these things in our name and using the power of the United States of America to do them?
No amount of profit is an excuse to be as evil as this. No amount of power is a safe harbor for the evil they’ve done with it.
There is no way that anyone excused other tyranny because they were operating in fear.
And there is no way that the United States leadership can honestly stand there on the world stage and claim they want civil and human rights abuses to stop in other countries when they are allowing those abuses in the United States to go unchallenged and unstopped, while promoting those abuses and harboring those that have engaged in them with protections and failure to prosecute them appropriate to their extraordinary crimes against humanity.
- cricketdiane
(and I would note today about this part I wrote in 2009 above, that it applies to BP and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico today that is endangering people, wildlife, marine animals, and every future day in America – maybe even to farther reaches of the world around us. There is no excuse for any amount of profit to promote or create what they have done both with the spill after it happened and in the things that caused it in the first place, my note today, 05-21-10 – cricketdiane)
***
One seminal document repudiated by the government was an August 2002 memo by the Justice Department. It concluded that interrogators could use extreme techniques on detainees in the effort to prevent terrorism.
The memo suggested that the president could authorize a wide array of coercive interrogation methods in the campaign against terrorism without violating international treaties or the federal torture law. It did not specify any particular procedures but suggested that there were few limits short of causing the death of a prisoner.
Among the reviews, intelligence officials say, are an examination of what a military investigation described as eight “ghost” detainees who were incarcerated at Abu Ghraib, but who were kept off the prison’s roster at the C.I.A.’s request. In one of those cases, in November 2003, a detainee brought to the prison by C.I.A. employees but never formally registered with military guards died at the site, and his body was removed after being wrapped in plastic and packed in ice.
The man had been detained by Navy Seals, who had hit him in the head with a rifle butt during his arrest, and the military investigation said that blow apparently led to his death. But the investigation suggested that the detainee might have survived if he had been screened by doctors, as would have been required had he been properly registered with the military.
Source: New York Times
Date: 29 August 2004
C.I.A. Expands Its Inquiry
Into Interrogation Tactics
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON
***
The Face of Evil -
(of course, they made him a judge – this just gets better and better)
Bush Administration legal mentor to justify torture
Jay Bybee, a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has been criticized for his role in formulating Bush administration torture policy. The New York Times called for his impeachment in a April 19, 2009 editorial. (Official photo)
My note -
now that shows what happens when the determining factor of intelligence and good judgment is how good a person looks or how well connected they are. This man could not possibly have the conscience of a rock to have done what he did legally assuring that obscene violations of human rights and torture would be conducted by the United States government and its agencies.
(cricketdiane – April 2009)
***
Medical researchers face conflicts of interest
Mon Apr 13, 2009 9:31am EDT
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Dr. Bruce Psaty of University of Washington in Seattle knows how easy it can be to fall under the spell of a friendly relationship with drug companies.
Fed contractor, cell phone maker sold spy system to Iran
Dissidents monitored
By Eli Lake (Contact) | Monday, April 13, 2009
Two European companies — a major contractor to the U.S. government and a top cell-phone equipment maker — last year installed an electronic surveillance system for Iran that human rights advocates and intelligence experts say can help Iran target dissidents.
Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), a joint venture between the Finnish cell-phone giant Nokia and German powerhouse Siemens, delivered what is known as a monitoring center to Irantelecom, Iran’s state-owned telephone company.
A spokesman for NSN said the servers were sold for “lawful intercept functionality,” a technical term used by the cell-phone industry to refer to law enforcement’s ability to tap phones, read e-mails and surveil electronic data on communications networks.
The sale also highlights a rift between the government of Germany, which has endorsed diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran to curb its nuclear program, and German corporations that continue to export sensitive technology to Iran. On March 31, NSN sold the portion of its business that services the monitoring center to a private German holding company called Perusa Partners Fund LLP.
Since 2005, Siemens had done more than $900 million worth of business with the U.S. government and employs about 70,000 people in the United States. Nokia is one of the leading mobile handset providers in the United States.
Promotional literature says the monitoring center’s “modular architecture allows the monitoring and interception of all types of voice and data communication in all networks, i.e. fixed, mobile, Next Generation Network (NGN) and the Internet. The MC’s [monitoring center's] unified view-concept greatly facilitates investigative work and opens completely new and efficient ways to pursue leads.”
Ben Roome, a spokesman for NSN, said, “We provide these systems to be used under the applicable laws in their countries and make sure we are abiding by U.N. and [European Union] export regulations and code of conduct. We provided the monitoring center to Irantelecom. We are not going to comment on the use of it. It is there to record lawful intercepts.”
But William Daly, a former CIA signal-intelligence officer for the agency’s Office of Science and Technology who retired in 2000, said the monitoring center in Iran will be used to “monitor dissidents and those ayatollahs who oppose the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei].”
Mr. Daly, who provided technical assistance on surveillance missions for the CIA, said that lawful intercept as a concept was created by the cell-phone industry to provide law enforcement agencies the ability to track criminals and terrorists.
Indeed, the telecommunications industry’s own international standards require that data networks allow law enforcement to intercept phone calls, e-mails and other electronic data.
“This functionality is offered by all major mobile and fixed network system vendors,” Mr. Roome said. “Such functionality can provide the proper authorities with an important tool for the investigation of serious criminal activities, such as terrorism, child pornography or drug trafficking. The use of such surveillance is based on local legislation and typically overseen by high-level independent government bodies, such as courts.”
Mr. Daly said, however, that the technical switches telecommunications companies embed in their systems can easily be abused.
“The concept of ‘lawful intercept’ came about with the development of cellular phones,” he said. “They had no way of monitoring them if it did not go through a landline switch. With [Global System for Mobile communications, or GSM], it is possible to communicate in the cell without going to the switch. This was part of the basic argument for why they developed it. But the real answer is that governments want to know what their people are doing.”
Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said the monitoring center NSN sold to Iran last year should be regulated as though it were “dual-use technology” – items that can have military as well as civilian applications.
“There are a lot of export controls in place in Western countries on technology that might have a dual military purpose,” he said. “But there are virtually no restrictions on the export of high-tech equipment that can be used to monitor or control free expression.”
“They facilitate a regime which easily violates human rights in Iran and the privacy of the people of Iran. They have facilitated the regime with a high technology that allows them to monitor every student activist, every women’s rights activist, every labor activist and every ordinary person.”
Hadi Ghaemi, spokesman for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said 12 women´s rights activists were arrested late last month at a private meeting to celebrate the Persian New Year. He said the raid suggested the state had access to private communications.
Reports of sudden deaths of children and adolescents treated with psychotropic medications have raised concerns regarding the appropriateness of this therapy, as well as the advisability of baseline and periodic electrocardiographic (ECG) monitoring of such patients.1 2 3 4 What follows is a review of the drug effects on the ECG, cardiovascular effects of the commonly used psychotropic medications in children and adolescents, a summary of potentially dangerous drug interactions, and recommendations for cardiovascular monitoring.
Cardiovascular Monitoring of Children and Adolescents Receiving Psychotropic Drugs
A Statement for Healthcare Professionals From the Committee on Congenital Cardiac Defects, Council on Cardiovascular Disease in the Young, American Heart Association
Howard Gutgesell, MD, Chair; Dianne Atkins, MD; Robyn Barst, MD; Marcia Buck, PharmD; Wayne Franklin, MD; Richard Humes, MD; Richard Ringel, MD; Robert Shaddy, MD; members; Kathryn A. Taubert, PhD; AHA Staff
***
My note -
and right this very minute there is an Eli Lilly spokesman bragging on bloomberg about the Zyprexa market status and how excited they are – which is disgusting considering how much damage that drug has been proven to have done, including deaths, physical damage to children and elderly and disabled populations, – that is – there are no words for it – after all the efforts – including that article above which was from 1999 when it was already well known in the medical community that these drugs were causing deaths. What kind of good mental health is that – dead?
These are valuable irreplaceable human lives they have taken from all of us and from their families and from the human race in its potential to survive – what right did they have to do that just so they could make money?
- cricketdiane, April 2009
***
Johnson said the city would spend about $1 million to relocate those in the camp, expand shelters and provide more permanent housing.
Mayoral spokesman Steve Maviglio said Wednesday there were at least 35 open beds at three city shelters, including one at the state fairgrounds. “We are not at capacity,” he said.
Others, however, disputed whether the city had provided enough beds to accommodate the closing of the tent city.
“They’ve tried to help, just not enough,” said Garren Bratcher, co-director of Loaves & Fishes, the nearby food bank.
Stephanie Hayes, 39, who is eight months pregnant, and her husband Brian, 43, said they were turned away Tuesday from a shelter at the state fairgrounds because there were no beds.
“They want to move us around, but they don’t want to help us with anything. They have a shelter, but those rooms were full,” Stephanie Hayes said.
The camp about a mile northeast of the state Capitol has for years been home to about 150 homeless people, most of them chronically homeless.
It became an embarrassment for the capital city after it was featured on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” earlier this year.
During last year’s mayoral campaign, Mayor Kevin Johnson had pledged to deal with Sacramento’s homeless problem. The tent city held a fraction of the city’s estimated 2,700 homeless.
Sacramento homeless tent city pulls up stakes; advocates set protest for more services
By CYNTHIA HUBERT – McClatchy Newspapers
Saturday, Apr. 18, 2009
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sacramento’s homeless tent city is no more.
The last occupants of a sprawling encampment near the American River Parkway north of the downtown area of the California capital city pulled up stakes Friday, scattering to other outdoor areas and shelters.
“I’m moving out of sight, out of mind,” said Eve Deutsch, who has camped in the area for about three years. “Some place where no one will bother me.”
Residents of the encampment, which drew international media attention and sparked a $1 million city effort to find alternative shelter for 150 to 200 people, began leaving earlier in the week. Tensions between residents and police were high as some campers balked at leaving and others simply moved further east, down the parkway. But by Friday, emotions had cooled.
“It’s not them versus us,” said Sacramento Police Sgt. Norm Leong, who along with about a dozen other officers defused minor altercations Friday and helped homeless men and women load their remaining belongings into trucks. “Camping is illegal in Sacramento and we have to clear this area. But we are trying to do it in a compassionate way.”
Construction crews erected fence posts Friday along the site of the original encampment. Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which owns the property, plans to upgrade a substation there. The private land that Leong watched over on Friday the property east of the original camp also is scheduled to be fenced, as early as this week.
Former residents of the encampments are being offered overnight beds at the Cal Expo winter shelter through June 30, and later will be eligible for more permanent housing. But not all of the campers want to live inside.
Advocates argue, meanwhile, that more work needs to be done to accommodate some 1,200 people who are without shelter in Sacramento on any given night.
To that end, they are organizing a protest this week to demand a legal “safe ground” where homeless people can camp and have access to basic services such as portable toilets and garbage pickup.
The protest is scheduled for 2 p.m. Tuesday on the south steps of the state Capitol.
Just before the recession hit, the gap between the Sacramento region’s richest and poorest households grew to its widest point in decades, with the top 1 percent of local earners making more than the bottom 50 percent, a Bee analysis of new financial data has found.
From 2001 to 2007, the number of households in the four-county area earning north of $1 million a year doubled, from 739 households to 1,477, according to Franchise Tax Board data.
But while the Sacramento region was generating a lot more income, most of its residents weren’t seeing their pay rise. The median household income for both 2001 and 2007, after adjusting for inflation, was about $60,000, U.S. census data show.
“The top has grown a lot relative to everyone else,” said Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at University of California, Berkeley, co-author of a study on income inequality. “If your situation hasn’t changed and you see other people doing better than you or poverty rising, it affects you. People have a sense of fairness.”
Many local residents making a million or more before the recession are taking a bath now as the stock and real estate markets plummet. But economists said the gap between them and everyone else may not be shrinking much as those at the low end of the earnings scale lose jobs in droves.
“You have 10 percent or more of people with almost no income,” said Deborah Reed, director of research at Princeton, N.J.-based Mathematica’s Oakland office.
Mention executive salaries to the unemployed workers waiting in line at the crowded Employment Development Department service center on Broadway and 50th Street and get an earful:
“I was hot when I heard about AIG (executives) getting bonuses,” said Juan Horcasitas, a Sacramento truck driver waiting his turn to apply for unemployment assistance.
Horcasitas saved up money a couple of years back to leave his warehouse job and go to truck driving school. But as one of his company’s newest employees, he was let go after a year on the job.
“It’s been so bad, I’m just thankful I’m not homeless,” he said.
Standing next to Horcasitas was John “Bud” Reichert, a 49-year-old unemployed forklift operator. Every morning, he waits in line with about 1,000 other people at a day labor site, hoping someone will need his help. He said he wishes he could get the second and third chances many CEOs seem to enjoy.
Of course, the rich are a boon to their communities in many ways. In 2006, for instance, the 1,400 or so local residents earning more than $1 million accounted for about one-fifth of state taxes collected in the region, largely because they paid a higher tax rate than most others, state figures show.
And Sacramento’s income distribution remains more equal than other parts of California, census figures show.
Los Angeles has the highest rate of income inequality in the state. Its Gini Index – the measure statisticians use to gauge income distribution – is more than 10 percent above Sacramento’s, meaning that fewer households in L.A. control a larger portion of its income, census figures show.
So while the income differences between Granite Bay and Meadowview may be large, they are smaller than the differences between Bel Air and Watts.
But generally, statewide and nationwide earnings trends applied here.
In the years leading up to the recession, the income of the Sacramento region’s minorities, particularly Latinos, increased slower than that of whites, census figures show. The gap between those with a college degree and those without also grew.
Eclipsing both of those trends was the widening chasm between the very rich and everyone else.
After adjusting for inflation, the total attributed to local households that earned more than a million rose by 90 percent from 2001 to 2006. The total earned by everyone else – including those making several hundred thousand dollars a year – rose 10 percent.
Before the 1990s, several experts said, income inequality wasn’t driven primarily by raises to the top 1 percent of earners.
Interactive Map of increase homelessness across the US – January 2009
***
Sanitation Crisis Brewing in U.S. Tent Cities
March 16, 2009
homeless
As hundreds of thousands lose their jobs and homes monthly, a new population of internally displaced persons (IDPs) haunts the American landscape. From Sacramento to Seattle, water and sanitation conditions within the resulting camps and shantytowns fall far below par.
Between the river and the railway tracks of Sacramento Depression-era history repeats itself, reports the Times. The so-called tent cities are now home to hundreds of once stable middle class wage earners – such as construction workers, farm laborers, restaurant staff and store clerks. They lack sanitation and running water. Rubbish piles up by the day. Heavy rains help little.
According to the World Health Organization, such conditions as found in the emerging tent communities are conducive to the rampant spread of diseases. Local charity organizations fear that if something is not soon done to address the growing population of IDPs, cities could face sanitation issues as well as security concerns.
Homeless shelters in Sacramento are at full capacity, some turning away hundreds nightly. Unemployment soars past ten percent and home repossessions rank in the hundreds.
Dirty Equipment May Have Infected Veterans With HIV More than 3,200 veterans asked to visit their doctor
By TODD WRIGHT
Updated 7:30 PM EDT, Mon, Mar 23, 2009
A VA Hospital mishap could result in infectious diseases for colonoscopy patients
Doctors at a Miami Veterans Administration hospital may have operated on over 3,200 patients with dirty equipment that may have infected them with deadly diseases.
Officials said Monday colonoscopy patients should meet with a doctor to get screened for HIV, hepatitis and other diseases. That’s probably not the best way to pay back people who laid their life on the line for this country.
“It is outrageous and unacceptable that our veterans would be subjected to such shocking mistreatment,” Congressman Ron Klein said. “There must be a full investigation – beginning today – into how this could possibly happen, who was responsible and how we can ensure our hospitals are safe going forward.”
Patients from May 2004 through March 12, 2009 should rush to see a doctor and get tested.
It’s unclear how the infectious equipment made it into operating rooms, but VA officials said the problem was things were sterilized properly. Still, VA officials claim the threat is minimal and that no tools that actually made contact with the patients was contaminated.
The announcement is becoming a disturbing trend for the government-funded hospitals aimed at helping veterans, especially those who needed to get their colons checked out.
Last month, a similar red alert was sounded for 6,400 veterans who had a colonoscopy at a VA hospital.
VA officials also said 1,800 veterans treated at an ear, nose and throat clinic in Augusta, Ga., were alerted they could have been exposed to an infection due to improper disinfection of an instrument.
FRESNO, Calif. — As the operations manager of an outreach center for the homeless here, Paul Stack is used to seeing people down on their luck. What he had never seen before was people living in tents and lean-tos on the railroad lot across from the center.
“They just popped up about 18 months ago,” Mr. Stack said. “One day it was empty. The next day, there were people living there.”
Like a dozen or so other cities across the nation, Fresno is dealing with an unhappy déjà vu: the arrival of modern-day Hoovervilles, illegal encampments of homeless people that are reminiscent, on a far smaller scale, of Depression-era shantytowns. At his news conference on Tuesday night, President Obama was asked directly about the tent cities and responded by saying that it was “not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as ours.”
While encampments and street living have always been a part of the landscape in big cities like Los Angeles and New York, these new tent cities have taken root — or grown from smaller enclaves of the homeless as more people lose jobs and housing — in such disparate places as Nashville, Olympia, Wash., and St. Petersburg, Fla.
In Seattle, homeless residents in the city’s 100-person encampment call it Nickelsville, an unflattering reference to the mayor, Greg Nickels. A tent city in Sacramento prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to announce a plan Wednesday to shift the entire 125-person encampment to a nearby fairground. That came after a recent visit by “The Oprah Winfrey Show” set off such a news media stampede that some fed-up homeless people complained of overexposure and said they just wanted to be left alone.
The problem in Fresno is different in that it is both chronic and largely outside the national limelight. Homelessness here has long been fed by the ups and downs in seasonal and subsistence jobs in agriculture, but now the recession has cast a wider net and drawn in hundreds of the newly homeless — from hitchhikers to truck drivers to electricians.
“These are able-bodied folks that did day labor, at minimum wage or better, who were previously able to house themselves based on their income,” said Michael Stoops, the executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group based in Washington.
The surging number of homeless people in Fresno, a city of 500,000 people, has been a surprise. City officials say they have three major encampments near downtown and smaller settlements along two highways. All told, as many 2,000 people are homeless here, according to Gregory Barfield, the city’s homeless prevention and policy manager, who said that drug use, prostitution and violence were all too common in the encampments.
“That’s all part of that underground economy,” Mr. Barfield said. “It’s what happens when a person is trying to survive.”
He said the city planned to begin “triage” on the encampments in the next several weeks, to determine how many people needed services and permanent housing. “We’re treating it like any other disaster area,” Mr. Barfield said.
Mr. Barfield took over his newly created position in January, after the county and city adopted a 10-year plan to address homelessness. A class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of homeless people against the city and the California Department of Transportation led to a $2.35 million settlement in 2008, making money available to about 350 residents who had had their belongings discarded in sweeps by the city.
The growing encampments led the city to place portable toilets and security guards near one area known as New Jack City, named after a dark and drug-filled 1991 movie. But that just attracted more homeless people.
“It was just kind of an invitation to move in,” said Mr. Stack, the outreach center manager.
On a recent afternoon, nobody seemed thrilled to be living in New Jack City, a filthy collection of rain- and wind-battered tents in a garbage-strewn lot. Several weary-looking residents sat on decaying sofas as a pair of pit bulls chained to a fence howled.
Northwest of New Jack City sits a somewhat less grim encampment. It is sometimes called Taco Flats or Little Tijuana because of the large number of Latino residents, many of whom were drawn to Fresno on the promise of agricultural jobs, which have dried up in the face of the poor economy and a three-year drought.
Guillermo Flores, 32, said he had looked for work in the fields and in fast food, but had found nothing. For the last eight months, he has collected cans, recycling them for $5 to $10 a day, and lived in a hand-built, three-room shack, a home that he takes pride in, with a door, clean sheets on his bed and a bowl full of fresh apples in his propane-powered kitchen area.
“I just built it because I need it,” said Mr. Flores, as he cooked a dinner of chili peppers, eggs and onions over a fire. “The only problem I have is the spiders.”
An encampment of tents under an overpass in Fresno. More Photos >
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Angelo R. Mozilo (born 1938 in New York City) was the chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Countrywide Financial until July 1, 2008[1].
He is the son of a Bronx butcher. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Fordham University in 1960 and holds an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Pepperdine University.[citation needed]
In 1978 he and his former mentor David S. Loeb, who had already started a mortgage lending company, founded Countrywide Credit Industries in New York. They later moved the headquarters to Calabasas, California in Los Angeles County. Mozilo and Loeb also cofounded IndyMac Bank, which was founded as Countrywide Mortgage Investment, before being spun off as an independent bank in 1997. IndyMac collapsed and was seized by federal regulators on July 11, 2008.[2]
Since Countrywide was listed on the NYSE in 1984, Mozilo has sold $406 million worth of its stock, mostly obtained through stock option grants. $129 million of this was realized in the 12 months ending August 2007.[3]
Insider Sales
Over many years, Mozilo sold hundreds of millions of dollars in stock personally[4], even while publicly touting the stock and using shareholder funds to buy back stock to support the share price.
References
1. ^ Countrywide’s Mozilo exits stage a fallen hero – Los Angeles Times
2. ^ LA Biz Observed: *IndyMac taken over
3. ^ Gretchen Morgenson (2007-08-29). “Inside the Countrywide Lending Spree”. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/business/yourmoney/26country.html?hp=&pagewanted=all. Retrieved on 2007-08-29.
< Previous: Aubrey K McClendon Next: Howard D Schultz >
Total Compensation
$102.84 5 mil
5-Year Compensation Total
$391.88 mil
Angelo R Mozilo has been CEO of Countrywide Financial ( CFC) for 10 years. Mr. Mozilo has been with the company for 39 years and is its Founder. The 69 year old executive ranks 1 within Diversified Financials
Education
College: Fordham University BS ’60
Graduate School:
See Org Chart for CFC
Performance Vs. Pay
Rank: 175 / 175 Countrywide Financial
6-Year Annual Total Return -9%
Mr. Mozilo
6-Year Average Compensation
$66.43 mil 6-Year Return Relative to Industry 84
6-Year Return Relative to Market 86
Relative returns: 100 equals the market or industry.
Angelo R Mozilo’s Compensation Vs. Diversified Financials Medians
Salary Angelo R Mozilo’s Compensation $2.87 mil Diversified Financials Industry CEO Compensation $0.85 mil
Bonus $20.46 mil $2.00 mil
Other $7.30 mil $1.87 mil
Stock Gains $72.21 mil $0.00 mil
Total Compensation $102.84 5 mil $8.99 mil
Countrywide Financial
(CFC: quote, news, org chart)
4500 Park Granada
Calabasas, CA 91302
California
818-225-3000
818-225-4051
www.countrywide.com
Angelo R Mozilo’s Ownership Of Countrywide Financial
A struggling borrower sends an email to Countrywide Financial Corp. pleading for help.
“My number one goal is to keep my home that I have lived in for sixteen years, remodeled with my own sweat equity and I would really appreciate the opportunity to do that. My home is not large or in an upscale neighborhood, it is a “shotgun” bungalow style of only 900 sq. ft. built in 1921. I moved into this home in May of 1992…this was the same year I got clean and sober from drugs and alcohol, and have been ever since, this home means the world to me.”
The borrower soon gets a response from the very top, the company’s chairman, Angelo Mozilo. But it’s not a very nice response:
“This is unbelievable. Most of these letters now have the same wording. Obviously they are being counseled by some other person or by the Internet. Disgusting.”
Disgusting?
Listen, Angelo Mozilo is a good candidate for “The One Person with The Most Responsibility for The Mortgage Crisis.”
His company became the nation’s largest mortgage lender largely by discarding every traditional reason for denying loan applications, an art that reached its apex with the invention of NINA loans, which stands for No Income No Assets and meant that borrowers didn’t have to present proof they had either income or assets. (Other finalists for this noble prize might include Ameriquest’s Roland Arnall, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan and Wall Street bankers such as Ralph Cioffi and Christopher Ricciardi.)
Countrywide, which Bank of America has agreed to buy, now is under fire for its anemic efforts to help borrowers who can’t afford its loans. The company also has some recurring problems playing nicely with its customers.
Now, Mozilo’s response wasn’t meant to reach the customer. The LA Times reports this morning that Mozilo apparently meant to forward the message, with his thoughts, to a colleague, but hit reply instead. More details are available here and here.
31893826 If he engineers a sale of battered Countrywide Financial to Bank of America, Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo stands to walk away with a severance package worth more than $110 million, the Los Angeles Times’ Kathy Kristof reports tonight.
Such a payout would come on top of huge gains Mozilo has made selling Countrywide stock during the mortgage crisis. As the mortgage industry went into a nose dive in late 2006 and 2007, Mozilo cashed out about $140 million in stock options, becoming one of the highest-paid executives in the country, the L.A. Times reported in November.
The newspaper reports tonight that in his contract agreement, which extended the 69-year-old’s employment contract through 2009, Mozilo was guaranteed three times his base salary, plus a cash payment equal to three times the greater of his average bonus or the incentive bonus paid the previous year. Net value: $87.8 million.
In addition, Mozilo has two pensions that his severance agreement gives him the right to receive as a lump sum upon his departure. Those pensions were worth $24 million as of December 2006, the last time the company was required to report their value.
There is more. The Times reports Mozilo would receive continuing health benefits for life for himself and his spouse, three years of life and financial planning benefits, and “tax-gross-up payments” to compensate him for any penalties he’d have to pay for receiving payments the IRS might consider excessive.
Given the slashing of 10,900 jobs at Countrywide this year, and the 81% decline in Countrywide stock over the last year, it is likely Mozilo’s severage package will prove more controversial than his previous stock sales.
Your thoughts? Comments? Insights? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com
Photo Credit: Bloomberg
Posted by Peter Viles on January 10, 2008 in Countrywide Financial | Permalink
Police investigating death of Freddie Mac official
By ALAN ZIBEL and MATTHEW BARAKAT, AP
3 hours ago
finance-20090422-US.Freddie.Mac.Official.Dead
This undated photo provided by Freddie Mac shows David Kellermann, the acting…
WASHINGTON — David Kellermann, the acting chief financial officer of money-losing mortgage giant Freddie Mac was found dead at his home Wednesday morning in what police said was an apparent suicide.
The Fairfax County police responded to a 911-call at 4:48 a.m. at the suburban Virginia home Kellermann shared with his wife and a daughter. The police would not release the cause of death or say if a suicide note was found.
Kellermann, 41, lived in Hunter Mill Estates, a well-off neighborhood of large single-family homes with manicured lawns. County records show Kellermann’s home is worth about $900,000.
Paul Unger, who lives across the street from the Kellermanns, called the family a “solid, salt-of-the-earth kind of family” that hosted the neighborhood’s Halloween party. “He was just a nice guy … You cannot imagine what kind of pressures he must have been under,” Unger said.
Kellermann, a University of Michigan graduate who went to business school at George Washington University, worked for Freddie Mac for the past 16 years and was named acting chief financial officer last September when the government seized control of the company and ousted top executives. Freddie Mac lost more than $50 billion last year, and the government has pumped in $45 billion to keep the company afloat.
Kellermann’s death is the latest in a string of blows to Freddie Mac, which owns or guarantees about 13 million mortgages and us the No. 2 mortgage finance company after sibling Fannie Mae. The company has been criticized for financing risky mortgage loans that fueled the real estate bubble, and its first government appointed CEO, David Moffett, resigned last month after six months on the job.
Federal prosecutors in Virginia have been investigating Freddie Mac’s business practices. But two U.S. law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the Freddie Mac investigation, said Kellermann was neither a target nor a subject of the investigation and had not been under law enforcement scrutiny.
News of Kellermann’s death came as a shock to employees of the McLean, Va.-based company, with those who knew Kellermann tearing up on Wednesday morning and a quiet mood prevailing.
Early Wednesday, Sharon McHale, a Freddie Mac spokeswoman, said senior executives at the company heard the news on local radio before going to work. “It’s just so awful,” she said.
John Koskinen, the company’s interim chief executive, said in a statement that Kellermann, “was a man of great talents …. His extraordinary work ethic and integrity inspired all who worked with him.”
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement that “our deepest sympathies are with his family and his colleagues at Freddie Mac during this difficult time.”
Freddie Mac and sibling company Fannie Mae have both come under fire from lawmakers as they plan to pay more than $210 million in bonuses through next year to give workers the incentive to stay in their jobs. While Fannie Mae has disclosed the names of executives in line for the bonuses, Freddie Mac has yet to do so.
____
Associated Press Writers Matt Small, Devlin Barrett and Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.
Congress’s Transformative ‘Republican Revolution’ in 2001-2006 and the Future of One-Party Rule
Charles Tiefer
University of Baltimore School of Law
Journal of Law and Politics, Vol. 23, p. 233, 2007
Abstract:
In 2001 – 2006, Republican leadership in the legislature circumvented procedural norms to implement an ideological agenda that precluded the minority party from making alternative proposals and voicing criticisms. With the Republican majority in the Senate falling to 50-50 in 2000, President Bush’s assumption of office, despite having lost the popular vote, set the tone for what would become an era of illegitimate procedural reform cloaked in secrecy and deniability. Through closed-door conferences and closed-rules, Republican leadership in the House and Senate turned the clock back on civil liberties, passed unfavorable and convoluted tax cuts, and used transformed health care law.
In this article, the author traces the history of the 2001-2006 “Republican Revolution,” and discusses the numerous factors that allowed the majority party to overcome procedural safeguards and push their ideological agenda in the House, Senate, and Court. Tracing the history of Congressional procedure and analyzing key examples of recent Republican abuse, the author suggests that the Republican 2001 – 2006 control over Congressional procedure resulted in democratic unaccountability, imposing upon the new Democratic majority numerous political challenges – and the incentive to conduct themselves differently.
Date posted: February 19, 2009 ; Last revised: February 19, 2009
Suggested Citation
Tiefer, Charles,Congress’s Transformative ‘Republican Revolution’ in 2001-2006 and the Future of One-Party Rule(Summer 2007). Journal of Law and Politics, Vol. 23, p. 233, 2007. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1346060
President George W. Bush was a proponent of the unitary executive theory and cited it within his signing statements about legislation passed by Congress.[17] The administration’s interpretation of the unitary executive theory was called seriously into question by Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, where the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 that the President does not have sweeping powers to override or ignore laws through his power as commander in chief,[18] stating “the Executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law that prevails.”[19] Following the ruling, the Bush administration has sought Congressional authorization for programs started only on executive mandate, as was the case with the Military Commissions Act, or abandoned illegal programs it had previously asserted executive authority to enact, in the case of the National Security Agency domestic wiretapping program.
GSA Office of Governmentwide Policy – Real Property Policysite – June 2006
***
(AND other stuff – my note today 05-21-10, cricketdiane )
Keith Hennessey is the former Assistant to the U.S. President for Economic Policy and Director of the U.S. National Economic Council. He was appointed to the position in November 2007 by President George W. Bush, and served until the end of Bush’s second term in office. Mr. Hennessey served in the White House since August 2002, when he was appointed to his previous position of Deputy Assistant to the U.S. President for Economic Policy and Deputy Director of the U.S. National Economic Council.
Prior to joining the White House staff, Hennessey worked for Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott from February 1997 to August 2002. While in Senator Lott’s office, he was involved in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and all budget resolutions since 1997, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and all tax legislation since 1998, Trade Promotion Authority, all health legislation, the Transportation Equity Act, FAA authorization bills and many other smaller bills. Prior to joining Senator Lott, Hennessey worked as a health economist for the Senate Budget Committee, from January 1995 to February 1997. Hennessey was a research assistant for the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform from June 1994 to January 1995. From 1990 and 1992 he tested the database program Q&A for Symantec Corporation in Cupertino, California.
Hennessey holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Political Science from Stanford University as well as a Master of Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The title of his Harvard public policy thesis was Unintended Consequences: Critical Assumptions in the Clinton Health Plan.
Allan Hubbard finished his term as the Assistant to President George W. Bush for Economic Policy and Director of the National Economic Council at the end of 2007.
Biography
Hubbard received his B.A. degree from Vanderbilt University cum laude in 1969. In 1975, Mr. Hubbard received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, also cum laude, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where he was a classmate of Bush’s. He was previously the director of E & A Industries, a conglomerate in Indiana that owns three chemical companies, among others. A major fundraiser for Bush, from 1993 to 1994, Hubbard served as the volunteer chairman of the Indiana State Republican Party and from 1990 to 1992 as deputy chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, and previously as executive director of the President’s Council on Competitiveness, which was chaired by Quayle. Hubbard currently serves as an Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director, National Economic Council. He was also one of the Members of the 2006 Bilderberg Meeting in Ottawa, Canada.
References
* Biography at whitehouse.gov
* Personnel Announcement as Director of the National Economic Council at whitehouse.gov
Stephen Friedman (born December 21, 1937[1]) is the current Chairman of the United States President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He was nominated on October 27, 2005 to replace Brent Scowcroft in the position.
Biography
Friedman graduated from Cornell University in 1959, where he was a member of the Quill and Dagger society. He received his law degree from Columbia Law School in 1962 (Law Review). He worked for much of his career with investment bank Goldman Sachs, holding numerous executive roles. He served as the company’s co-chief operating officer from 1987 to 1990, was the company’s co-chairman from 1990 to 1992, and the sole chairman from 1992 to 1994; he still serves on the company board.
From 1998 to 2002, he served as a senior principal of Marsh & McLennan Capital Corp. He was from 2002 to 2005 United States Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and director of the National Economic Council. Among other public service activities, Friedman is the Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Columbia University, Chairman Emeritus of the Executive Committee of the Brookings Institution, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Friedman’s brother is Richard Friedman, a law professor at the University of Michigan, and a leading expert in the Confrontation Clause of the United States Constitution.
Friedman’s son is screenwriter David Benioff, who is married to actress Amanda Peet.
References
1. ^ McGeehan, Patrick (December 13, 2002). “Man in the News; Economic Adviser From Other Side of the Deficit — Stephen Friedman”. New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CEFD9103AF930A25751C1A9649C8B63.
External links
* Steve Friedman, Director of the National Economic Council
* Stephen Friedman, Director, National Economic Council at opensecrets.org
* Stephen Friedman Cornell ’59 named Bush’s chief economic adviser
Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc. (MMC) is a US-based global professional services and insurance brokerage firm. In 2007, it had over 57,000 employees and annual revenues of $12.069 billion. Marsh & McLennan Companies was ranked the 207th largest corporation in the United States by the 2007 Fortune 500 list, and the 5th largest U.S. company in the diversified financial industry. [2]
Subsidiaries
Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc. (MMC) is a diversified risk, insurance and professional services firm composed of:
* Marsh Inc., a risk and insurance brokerage;
* Mercer, a collection of consulting and services firms (including Mercer Human Resource Consulting, Mercer HR Services, and Mercer Investment Consulting);
* Guy Carpenter & Company, a reinsurance intermediary;
* Oliver Wyman Group, a collection of management consulting firms (including Oliver Wyman – formerly Mercer Management Consulting, Mercer Oliver Wyman and Mercer Delta, as well as Lippincott and NERA Economic Consulting); and,
* Kroll Inc., a risk and specialized technology services firm.
* The Medisure Group Ltd, a medical administration company.
History
Burrows, Marsh & McLennan was formed by Henry W. Marsh and Donald R. McLennan in Chicago in 1905, becoming the world’s largest insurance agency with annual premiums of $3 million ($59 million consumer price index adjusted). It was renamed Marsh & McLennan in 1906. In 1997, the company merged with Johnson & Higgins.
In August 2007, Marsh completed the sale of its Putnam Investments division to Great-West Lifeco Inc., a financial services holding company controlled by Canada-based Power Financial Corp.[2].
Marsh Inc.
Marsh Inc. is a global risk and insurance services firm. It is a subsidiary of MMC. In 2003, Marsh employed about 40,000 people, with annual revenues of $6.9 billion, up from $4.8 billion in 2001.
Marsh operates by collecting advisory fees from its clients — mainly large corporations but also small and mid-size businesses, municipal governments, school districts and some individuals — in exchange for locating property and casualty insurance coverage for them. At all relevant times, the Company stated that its “guiding principle is to consider (its) clients’ best interests in all placements,” and that it “(does not) represent the (companies)” and held itself out as a “trusted adviser and advocate, in effect representing their best interests in the market place.”
Marsh in the news
* 295 employees & 60 contractors were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks; they were working in Marsh’s One World Trade Center offices located in the heart of the impact zone.[3]
* On September 11, 2001 Marsh established a crisis consulting practice specializing in terrorism, with Ambassador L. Paul Bremer as Chairman and Andrew R. Daniels as President and COO. Marsh also announced a partnership with Control Risks Group to provide political risk assessment.
* On July 8, 2004 completed the acquisition of Kroll Inc. Jeffrey W. Greenberg called it an important strategic step. The company had employed terrorism expert John O’Neill, formerly of the FBI.
* On October 14, 2004, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer announced the initiation of a civil action against Marsh, alleging impropriety in the steering of clients to insurers with whom the company maintained payoff agreements, and for soliciting rigged bids for insurance contracts from the insurers. The Attorney General announced that two AIG executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges in connection with this illegal course of conduct and stated, “There is simply no responsible argument for a system that rigs bids, stifles competition and cheats customers.” Former CEO Jeffrey W. Greenberg resigned several weeks later. The suit was ultimately settled out of court.
* In July 2007 Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc. was ranked first in Business Insurance’s world’s largest brokers list.[4]
* On September 14, 2007, Brian M. Storms, the CEO of Marsh’s insurance brokerage unit, resigned. As Michael G. Cherkasky explained his departure, “we now need a different set of leadership and operational skills.”[5]
MMC Management
* President, CEO: Brian Duperreault
* Chairman: Stephen R. Hardis (non-executive Chairman of the Board 2006-Present)
* CFO: Matthew B. Bartley
* SVP, Executive Resources and Development: Francis N. Bonsignore
Former Chairs of the Board
* Chairman Henry W. Marsh (1923-1935)
* Chairman Donald R. McLennan (1935-1944)
* Chairman Charles Ward Seabury (1944-1955)
* Chairman Laurence S. Kennedy (1955-1955)
* Chairman William D. Maus (1955-1963)
* Chairman Hermon D. Smith (1963-1966)
* Chairman Albert A. Morey (1966-1970)
* Chairman Henry W. Otis (1970-1971)
* Chairman William F. Souder, Jr. (1971-1975)
* Chairman John M. Regan Jr. (1975-1986)
* Chairman Frank J. Tasco (1986-1992)
* Chairman A.J.C. Smith (1992-2000)
* Chairman Jeffrey W. Greenberg (2000-2004)
* Chairman Michael Cherkasky (2004-2005)
* Chairman Robert F. Erburu (non-executive Chairman 2005-2006)
Former CEO
* CEO: Jeffrey W. Greenberg (- Oct 25, 2004)
References
1. ^ “Milestones of Marsh & McLennan Companies”. http://mmc.com/about/history.php. Retrieved on 2007-05-31.
Lawrence B. Lindsey was director of the National Economic Council (2001-2002), and the assistant to the president on economic policy for the U.S. President George W. Bush. He played a leading role in formulating President Bush’s $1.35 trillion tax cut plan, convincing candidate Bush that he needed an “insurance policy” against an economic turndown. He left the White House in December 2002 and was replaced by Stephen Friedman after he estimated the cost of the Iraq war could reach $200 billion.
Lindsey, his wife, Susan, and children Troy, Emily, and Thomas reside in Clifton, Virginia.
Lindsey was born on July 18, 1954 in Peekskill, New York. He graduated from Lakeland Senior High School in Shrub Oak, New York in 1972. He received his A.B. magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Bowdoin College and his A.M. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
He is the author of The Growth Experiment: How the New Tax Policy is Transforming the U.S. Economy (Basic Books, New York, 1990) and Economic Puppetmasters: Lessons from the Halls of Power (AEI Press, Washington, D.C., 1999), and What A President Should Know …but most learn too late: An Insiders View On How To Succeed In The Oval Office (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Maryland, 2008), and has contributed numerous articles to professional publications. His honors and awards include the Distinguished Public Service Award of the Boston Bar Association, 1994; an honorary degree from Bowdoin College, 1993; selection as a Citicorp/Wriston Fellow for Economic Research, 1988; and the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award from the National Tax Association, 1985.
During the Reagan Administration, he served three years on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers as Senior Staff Economist for Tax Policy. He then served as Special Assistant to the President for Policy Development during the first Bush administration
Lindsey served as a Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for five years from November 1991 to February 1997. Additionally, Lindsey was Chairman of the Board of the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, a national public/private community redevelopment organization, from 1993 until his departure from the Federal Reserve.
From 1997 to January 2001, Lindsey was a Resident Scholar and holder of the Arthur F. Burns Chair in Economics at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. He was also Managing Director of Economic Strategies, an economic advisory service based in New York City. During 1999 and throughout 2000 he served as then-Governor George W. Bush’s chief economic advisor for his presidential campaign. He is a former associate professor of Economics at Harvard University.
Lindsey is presently Chief Executive Officer of the Lindsey Group, which he runs with a former colleague from the National Economic Council and writes for The Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard and other publications. He is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
**
The Iraq controversy
On September 15, 2002, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Lindsey estimated the high limit on the cost of the Bush administration’s plan in 2002 of invasion and regime change in Iraq to be 1-2% of GNP, or about $100-$200 billion.[1] Mitch Daniels, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, subsequently discounted this estimate as “very, very high” and stated that the costs would be between $50-$60 billion.[2] This lower figure was endorsed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld[2] who called Lindsey’s estimate “baloney”.[3]
As of 2007 the cost of the invasion and occupation of Iraq exceeded $400 billion, and the Congressional Budget Office in August 2007 estimated that appropriations would eventually reach $1 trillion or more.[4] On September 20, 2007, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the future annual costs of continuing occupation in Iraq to be between $25 and $30 billion.[5]
Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz predicted in 2006 that the war would cost between $1-2 trillion.[6]
In October 2007, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that by 2017, the total costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could reach $2.4 trillion. In response, Democratic Representative Allen Boyd criticized the administration for firing Lindsey, saying “They found him a job outside the administration.”[7]
Other controversy
Lindsey is famous for spotting the emergence of the late 1990s U.S. stock market bubble back in 1996 while a Governor of the Federal Reserve. According to the meeting transcripts for September of that year, Lindsey challenged the expectation that corporate earnings would grow 11 1/2 percent a year continually. He said, “Readers of this transcript five years from now can check this fearless prediction: profits will fall short of this expectation.” According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, corporate profits as a share of national income eroded from 1997 until 2001. Stock prices eventually collapsed, starting their decline in March of 2000.
In contrast to Chairman Greenspan, Lindsey argued that the Federal Reserve had an obligation to prevent the stock market bubble from growing out of control. He argued that “the long term costs of a bubble to the economy and society are potentially great…As in the United States in the late 1920s and Japan in the late 1980s, the case for a central bank ultimately to burst that bubble becomes overwhelming. I think it is far better that we do so while the bubble still resembles surface froth and before the bubble carries the economy to stratospheric heights.” During the 2000 Presidential campaign, Governor Bush was criticized for picking an economic advisor who had sold all of his stock in 1998.[citation needed]
According to the Washington Post,[8] Lindsey was on an advisory board to Enron along with Paul Krugman before joining the White House. Lindsey and his colleagues warned Enron that the economic environment was riskier than they perceived.
References
1. ^ “Bush Economic Aide Says Cost Of Iraq War May Top $100 Billion”. Wall Street Journal. 2002-09-16.
2. ^ a b Wolk, Martin (2006-05-17). “Cost of Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion”. MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11880954/. Retrieved on 2008-03-10. “Back in 2002, the White House was quick to distance itself from Lindsey’s view. Mitch Daniels, director of the White House budget office, quickly called the estimate “very, very high.” Lindsey himself was dismissed in a shake-up of the White House economic team later that year, and in January 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the budget office had come up with “a number that’s something under $50 billion.” He and other officials expressed optimism that Iraq itself would help shoulder the cost once the world market was reopened to its rich supply of oil.”
3. ^ Bryne, John (2008-03-18). “Price of Iraq war now outpaces Vietnam”. The Raw Story. http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Price_of_Iraq_war_now_outpaces_0318.html. Retrieved on 2008-03-18.
4. ^ Bender, Bryan (2007-08-01). “Analysis says war could cost $1 trillion”. The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/08/01/analysis_says_war_could_cost_1_trillion/. Retrieved on 2008-03-10.
5. ^ Congressional Budget Office
6. ^ Wilson, Jamie (2006-01-07). “Iraq war could cost US over $2 trillion, says Nobel prize-winning economist”. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jan/07/usa.iraq. Retrieved on 2008-03-10.
7. ^ “Congress told of war costs up to $2.4 trillion by 2017″. The Register-Guard. October 25, 2007. http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.cms.support.viewStory.cls?mid=6868. Retrieved on 2007-10-25.
8. ^ Washington Post
External links
* Official White House biography.
* Biography from American Enterprise Institute.
* U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky’s page on cost estimates for the Iraq war
* National Priorities Project page purporting to show a running total of the U.S. taxpayer cost of the Iraq war
Mitchell Elias “Mitch” Daniels, Jr. (born April 7, 1949 in Monongahela, Pennsylvania) is the current Governor of the U.S. state of Indiana. A Republican, he began his four-year term as Indiana’s 49th Governor on January 10, 2005 and was elected to his second term on November 4, 2008. Previously he was the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush and also worked for Eli Lilly and Company.
Mitchell Elias Daniels Jr. was born on April 7, 1949 in Monongahela, Pennsylvania to Mitch and Dorothy Daniels,[2] spending his early childhood years in Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Georgia. Daniels moved to Indiana from Pennsylvania in 1959 while still in grade school.
Upon graduating from North Central High School in Indianapolis in 1967, Daniels was named Indiana’s Presidential Scholar – the state’s top male high school graduate that year – by President Lyndon Johnson.[3] Daniels earned a bachelor’s degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1971 and a Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1979. Daniels is a first generation Arab American[4] and is a supporter of the Arab-American Institute, having been honored by them for his work in the community.[5][6]
While a student at Princeton in 1970, he was arrested for possession of marijuana and spent two nights in jail. Throughout his career, he has been forthcoming about his arrest; disclosing it on job applications and in a 1989 Indianapolis Star column.[7]
Entry into public service
Daniels had his first experience in politics while still a teenager when, in 1968, he worked on the unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of William Ruckelshaus. While in college he interned in the office of then-Indianapolis Mayor Richard Lugar. In 1971, Daniels joined Lugar’s re-election campaign, then joined the mayor’s staff and within three years became Lugar’s principal assistant. After Lugar was elected to the U.S. Senate, Daniels followed him to Washington, D.C., in 1977, as administrative assistant.[3]
Daniels served as Lugar’s chief of staff during his first term from 1977 to 1982. When Lugar was elected chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Daniels was appointed its executive director. He served in that position in 1983 and 1984, playing a major role in the successful effort to keep the GOP in control of the U.S. Senate. Daniels was also manager of three successful Senate campaigns for Lugar. Daniels was part of the Reagan Administration when he became chief political advisor and liaison to President Ronald Reagan in August 1985.[3]
[edit] Private sector work
In 1987, Daniels returned to Indiana as chief executive of the Hudson Institute, restoring the organization back to financial health. He then left Hudson in 1990 for the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company. From 1993 until 1997, Daniels was President of North American operations, and promoted to Senior Vice President for Corporate Strategy and Policy at Eli Lilly in 1997 where he served until leaving the company in 2001.[6][3]
**
In January 2001, upon his appointment as Director of federal Office of Management and Budget (see below), Daniels resigned as a member of the board of Indianapolis Power & Light Co. and sold the $1.45 million he held in company stock, donating the proceeds to charity. Later, that year, Indianapolis Power & Light Co. was bought by Virginia-based AES Corp.[6] After the stocks dropped, the Indiana Securities Division investigated the sale and found no wrongdoing, but political opponents in his 2004 gubernatorial campaign charged that Daniels got rich while other employees suffered financial hardship. A state investigation also found no wrongdoing.
Public career
Office of Management and Budget
In January 2001, Daniels accepted President George W. Bush’s invitation to serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He served as Director from January 2001 through June 2003. In this role he was also a member of the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council.
During his time as the director of the OMB, President Bush admiringly called him “the Blade,” for his noted acumen at budget cutting.[8] Daniels instituted a first-of-its-kind accountability system for all governmental entities. Daniels came under fire for overseeing a $236 billion annual surplus turn into a $400 billion deficit during his 29-month tenure. Supporters argued that Daniels was one of the few in the administration working toward restraint, and that ultimately he had to take marching orders from the administration.[3]
In 2002, Daniels helped discredit a report by Assistant to the President on Economic Policy Lawrence B. Lindsey estimating the cost of the Iraq War at between $100-$200 billion. Daniels called this estimate “very, very high” and stated that the costs would be between $50-$60 billion.[9] It was later misreported that Daniels underestimated the cost of the Iraq conflict. [10] In March, as Congress considered H.R. 1559, “Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2003,” OMB was ordered to prepare an estimate for the defeat of the Iraqi Army and a six-month aftermath ending with the 2003 fiscal year on September 30. [11] Daniels’ estimate referred only to this period,[12] an estimate that proved largely accurate.
Governor
While campaigning, governor Daniels traveled the state in a white RV covered with signatures of supporters and his trademark “My Man Mitch” campaign slogan. “My Man Mitch” was a reference to a nickname President George W. Bush called him while he was OMB Director. He visited all 92 counties at least three times. On 2 November 2004, Daniels was elected Governor of Indiana garnering about 53% of the vote compared to 46% to Democratic incumbent Governor Joe Kernan, who had assumed power after Frank O’Bannon’s death. In his first State of the State address on January 18, 2005, Daniels sought to improve the state’s fiscal situation by calling for strict controls on all state spending increases and proposed a one year 1% tax increase on all individuals and entities earning over $100,000. The move was controversial for a conservative governor and the state legislature did not act on it. As governor, Daniels has pushed through controversial proposals that had the state adopt Daylight Saving Time and lease the Indiana Toll Road.
On his first day in office, Governor Daniels created Indiana’s first Office of Management and Budget to look for efficiencies and cost savings across state government. In 2005, Governor Daniels led the state to its first balanced budget in eight years and, without a tax increase, turned the $600 million deficit he inherited into a $300 million surplus in a single year. Governor Daniels used this surplus to repay hundreds of millions of dollars the state had borrowed from Indiana’s public schools in previous administrations.[6]
Daniels, as part of a 12-day trade mission in Asia, visited Indiana soldiers serving in the Korean Demilitarized Zone on the 56th anniversary of the start of the Korean War and laid a bouquet of white flowers at the base of a plaque listing 900 soldiers from Indiana who died in the war. Daniels also stopped in Japan.[13]
On Nov. 4, 2008, Daniels defeated Democratic candidate Jill Long Thompson and was reelected to a second term as governor.[14] Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza named the Daniels reelection campaign “The Best Gubernatorial Campaign of 2008″ and noted that some Republicans were already bandying about the Indiana governor’s name for the 2012 presidential election due to his success.[15]
Indiana Economic Development Corporation
When Daniels was elected, he claimed his number one priority was job creation.[6] Daniels created the public-private Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), became chairman of its board, and ordered it to “act at the speed of business, not the speed of government,” to attract new jobs. During its first year, the IEDC closed more transactions than in the previous two years combined. In 2006, the IEDC topped its 2005 results in only ten months while becoming the only state in the nation to land three high profile automotive investments – Toyota, Honda, and Cummins. In 2007, the IEDC announced its third consecutive record-breaking year for new investment and job commitments in Indiana while the Governor’s continued focus on renewing the state’s agricultural sector and strengthening rural communities moved Indiana to the forefront in biofuel and clean energy.
In his first year as governor he was able to get 485 businesses to commit to creating more than 60,000 new jobs and invest $14.5 billion into the Indiana economy. Unemployment has dropped during his governorship with 100,000 more Indiana residents being employed than before he was elected. Daniels push for clean energy has moved Indiana to become one of the leading states in bio-fuel with 15 plants, including the worlds largest soybean bio-diesel plant.[6]
Healthy Indiana Plan
In 2007, Governor Daniels signed landmark health care legislation, called the Healthy Indiana Plan, that provides 132,000 uninsured Hoosiers with coverage. The plan promotes health screenings, early prevention services, smoking cessation, and entrusts Hoosiers to become value-conscious consumers of health care. It also provides tax credits for small businesses that create qualified wellness and Section 125 plans. The plan was paid for by an increase in the state’s tax on cigarettes.
In a September 15, 2007 Wall Street Journal column, Fred Barnes quoted Daniels talking about the Healthy Indiana Plan and cigarette tax increase saying, “A consumption tax on a product you’d just as soon have less of doesn’t violate the rules I learned under Ronald Reagan.”[16] The plan allowed for spending to assist 130,000 Indiana residents with health care costs.[6]
For the 132,000 Hoosiers eligible for the Healthy Indiana Plan, a POWER health savings account is available to help pay medical expenses. A health savings account was first offered to state employees in 2006 and thousands of workers now participate. In 2005, Governor Daniels signed a bill allowing citizens to waive coverage for pre-existing conditions on individual and some group policies. With the barriers now removed, it’s easier for Hoosiers to obtain health insurance coverage.
Property Tax Reform
In 2008, “Daniels proposed one percent cap of assessed home value would be instituted as the highest yearly property tax on homes. Property tax ceilings would be two percent for rental properties and three percent for businesses. The move would be permanent, making Indiana one of the lowest property tax states in the country,” according to reporter Seth T. Whitecotton of the Connersville News-Examiner.
The plan was approved by the Indiana House of Representatives on March 14, 2008 and signed by Daniels on March 19, 2008, locking in low rates for homeowners, businesses, and rental properties. According to Whitecotton, voters will decide in 2010 whether to adopt the property tax caps into the Indiana Constitution.
In 2008, Indiana homeowners will have an average property tax cut of more than 30 percent; a total of $870 million in relief will be provided. Beginning in 2010, homeowner property taxes will be capped at 1 percent of a home’s assessed value, apartments and agriculture land will be capped at 2 percent of assessed value, and business property will be capped at 3 percent of assessed value. Once fully implemented, the plan delivers $1.72 in tax cuts for each $1 of new sales tax. To offset the loss in revenues the state raised the sales tax from 6% to 7% effective April 1, 2008.[17]
Electoral History
Main article: Indiana gubernatorial election, 2008
1. ^ “Governor’s Residence”. IN.gov. http://www.in.gov/gov/2571.htm. Retrieved on 2008-07-17.
2. ^ “Governor Fun Facts”. State of Indiana. http://www.in.gov/gov/2550.htm. Retrieved on 2009-01-04.
3. ^ a b c d e “Mitch Daniels”. IndyStar. 01-11-2005. http://www2.indystar.com/library/factfiles/people/d/daniels_mitch/daniels.html. Retrieved on 2008-07-09.
6. ^ a b c d e f g “Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels”. National Governors Association. http://www.nga.org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.29fab9fb4add37305ddcbeeb501010a0/?vgnextoid=ac6e224971c81010VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD. Retrieved on 2008-07-09.
7. ^ Mitch Daniels – a Star Library biography
8. ^ Slevin, Peter (2004-10-04). “In Indiana Race, Bush’s Budget Blade Becomes ‘My Man Mitch’”. Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4516-2004Oct3.html. Retrieved on 2008-12-28. “President Bush admiringly called him “the Blade,” for the gleam in his budget-cutting eye.”
9. ^ Wolk, Martin (2006-05-17). “Cost of Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion”. MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11880954/. Retrieved on 2008-03-10. “Back in 2002, the White House was quick to distance itself from Lindsey’s view. Mitch Daniels, director of the White House budget office, quickly called the estimate “very, very high.” Lindsey himself was dismissed in a shake-up of the White House economic team later that year, and in January 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the budget office had come up with “a number that’s something under $50 billion.” He and other officials expressed optimism that Iraq itself would help shoulder the cost once the world market was reopened to its rich supply of oil.”
10. ^ “Background Briefing by a Senior Administration Official on the Supplemental”. The White House. 2003-03-24. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/speeches/senior_admin032403.html. Retrieved on 2009-02-09.
11. ^ “Conference Report on H.R. 1559, Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2003″. The Library of Congress. 2003-04-12. http://Thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?rl108:./temp/~r108dpXMUJ. Retrieved on 2009-02-09.
12. ^ “Background Briefing by a Senior Administration Official on the Supplemental”. The White House. 2003-03-24. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/speeches/senior_admin032403.html. Retrieved on 2009-02-09.
13. ^ “Governor visits Indiana troops in South Korea”. Indystar.com. 25 June 2006. http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060625/LOCAL/60625002.
14. ^ “Indiana election results”. Fox News. http://elections.foxnews.com/states_map/index.html?stateAbbr=IN. Retrieved on 2008-11-05.
15. ^ The Best Gubernatorial Campaign of 2008
16. ^ Greene County Indiana Information – Articles
17. ^ “Governor Signs Property Tax Relief and Reform Bill” (PDF). IN.gov. http://www.in.gov/gov/files/031908_Governor_signs_property_tax_relief_and_reform_bill.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-07-09.
[edit] External links
Sister project Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mitch Daniels
* Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels official state site
o biography
* Governor Mitch Daniels official campaign site
* Biography at the National Governors Association
* Biography, interest group ratings, public statements, vetoes and campaign finances at Project Vote Smart
* Issue positions and quotes at On The Issues
* Collected news and commentary at The New York Times
* Collected news and commentary at The Washington Post
Marsh & McLennan to Replace Chief Michael Cherkasky (Update6)
By Zachary R. Mider
Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) — Marsh & McLennan Cos. ousted Chief Executive Officer Michael Cherkasky, the ex-prosecutor brought in to clean up a bid-rigging scandal at the insurance broker, for failing to restore profit lost because of the investigation.
Marsh & McLennan rose the most in two years in New York Stock Exchange composite trading today after directors said they would replace the 57-year-old CEO and signaled they may break up the insurance industry’s biggest brokerage. Cherkasky will stay at Marsh & McLennan while a successor is sought, the New York- based company said in a statement.
Cherkasky, named to the top job in 2004 after former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer began his probe, sought to revive sales and win back clients by getting the brokerage, consulting and investigations units to sell each other’s services. The strategy didn’t work, and the stock fell 5.8 percent during his tenure through yesterday while No. 2 Aon Corp. more than doubled.
“He was not the right man for the job,” said Stanley Nabi, who helps oversee about $8 billion at New York-based Silvercrest Asset Management Group and sold most of his Marsh & McLennan shares in the past two years. “He cleaned up the company there legally, but he’s not an insurance person.”
Marsh & McLennan gained $1.32, or 5.3 percent, to $26.21 at 4:26 p.m. New York time, leaving the stock down 14.5 percent for the year.
The company’s 2007 performance “has fallen far short of our expectations,” Chairman Stephen Hardis said in the statement. The directors plan to review the “mix of businesses,” which may lead to the breakup advocated by shareholders including Jim Harrison of Toronto-based K.J. Harrison & Partners Inc.
Shrinking Rival
While Cherkasky pursued his diversified strategy, Gregory Case, CEO of Chicago-based Aon, spent two years shrinking his company, capped by the sale last week of two underwriting units for $2.9 billion.
Marsh & McLennan will be worth more than $30 a share if it spins off the Mercer human resources and Oliver Wyman consulting units and Kroll investigations arm, even without any improvements in the underlying businesses, Harrison estimates.
“There’s a lot of hidden value there,” he said in an interview. Harrison holds about 1 million shares, or less than 1 percent of the company.
Some of Marsh & McLennan’s largest shareholders have complained, Hardis said in the statement, without identifying them. Baltimore-based T. Rowe Price Group Inc., which owned a 6.7 percent stake as of Sept. 30, voted against the two incumbent directors seeking re-election at the annual shareholders meeting in May, according to its Web site. Zachary Carter and Oscar Martin Fanjul prevailed anyway.
Putnam Sale
After pressure from investors, Cherkasky sold the company’s Putnam Investments mutual fund unit in August to Montreal-based Power Financial Corp. for $3.9 billion. He resisted calls for a further breakup, arguing that his strategy of “cross-selling” makes the units more valuable together than they are alone.
Cherkasky, a veteran prosecutor who once served as Spitzer’s boss in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, entered the business world in 1994 when he joined Kroll. He rose to chief executive in 2001, and remained when Marsh & McLennan bought the company in 2004.
His background proved useful when Spitzer, now New York’s governor, opened an investigation into bid-rigging and sued the company. CEO Jeffrey Greenberg was forced out after Spitzer refused to negotiate with him. Cherkasky got the job and reached an $850 million settlement.
Customers Leave
The financial damage continued as Marsh & McLennan lost about $845 million a year in payments from insurers that Spitzer had labeled “kickbacks.” The probe also hurt the company’s reputation and scattered Marsh’s customers at the same time that falling prices for commercial insurance reduced commissions for helping corporations find coverage.
Cherkasky cut more than 6,000 jobs, or about 10 percent of the workforce, and vacated some floors of the firm’s Manhattan headquarters. His choice to lead the flagship Marsh Inc. brokerage business, Brian Storms, replaced a third of the 65 U.S. office heads and launched the company’s biggest advertising campaign.
The increase in revenue at Marsh didn’t come as Cherkasky had promised.
“First was the get-over-the-crisis phase, second was the stabilization phase, and now it’s the growth phase,” Cherkasky said on an Aug. 3, 2006, conference call.
`Year to Invest’
A year later, on another call, he said “2005 was a year of survival, 2006 was a year to stabilize and put plans and people in place. 2007 is a year to invest in growth.”
Cherkasky fired Storms in September after two years of stagnating brokerage revenue and replaced him with Daniel Glaser of American International Group Inc., the world’s biggest insurer by assets.
Marsh & McLennan spokeswoman Christine Walton said Cherkasky and Hardis declined to be interviewed. Cherkasky’s three-year employment contract expires on July 20. He’s entitled to as much as $19 million in cash and stock if he’s fired, according to a March regulatory filing.
The next CEO has “got to consider breaking up the company,” said Robert Haines, an analyst at CreditSights Inc. in New York. “They’re still a hodgepodge of businesses pushed together. I don’t see the synergy of having a world-class insurance broker as part of a consulting firm.”
Mercer, Oliver Wyman and Kroll together contributed $1.48 billion, or 52 percent, of third-quarter sales. Together, they could be worth as much as $20.19 a share, or about $10.5 billion, according to Keith Walsh, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in New York. He values the whole company at $30.48 a share, or about $15.8 billion. He rates the shares “hold.”
Marsh & McLennan had the most 2006 revenue from brokerage and consulting, according to a ranking by Business Insurance magazine, ahead of Chicago-based Aon and London’s Willis Group Holdings Ltd.
To contact the reporter on this story: Zachary R. Mider in New York at zmider1@bloomberg.net
Gene B. Sperling is an American economist and political expert, currently serving as a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is also on the staff of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he serves as Senior Fellow for Economic Policy and Director of the Center on Universal Education, and is economic advisor for Hillary Clinton.[1] Even though he has no degrees in economics, he has held several high-level economic policy positions and was chief economic advisor to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.[2]
Sperling became National Economic Adviser to President Clinton and director of the National Economic Council from 1996 to 2000. From 1992-1996, he served as deputy director of the National Economic Council while the Council was directed by Robert Rubin, who was promoted to Treasury Secretary. Sperling had been an architect of the Clinton economic plans while serving on the Clinton-Gore 1992 presidential campaign. He was known for his long hours, passionate commitment to his work, and detailed knowledge of economic policy.
Sperling is the author of The Pro-Growth Progressive, a book arguing that liberals should seek to harness market forces in pursuing progressive goals, and co-author of What Works In Girls’ Education?.
Sperling attended the alternative Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and received his B.A. in political science from the University of Minnesota, his J.D. from Yale Law School, and attended The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
He was also a consultant for the television series The West Wing.
References
1. ^ The Advisers Are Writing Our Future David Leonhardt, The New York Times, April 18, 2007.
2. ^ A look at the Clinton economic plan , Kai Ryssdal interviews Gene Sperling, Marketplace, January 31, 2008
Works
* The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity, Gene Sperling, Simon & Schuster (November 1, 2005), ISBN 978-0743237536
* What Works In Girls’ Education?: Evidence And Policies From The Developing World, Barbara Herz and Gene Sperling, Council on Foreign Relations Press (December 15, 2004), ISBN 978-0876093443
External links
* Official page on the site of the Council on Foreign Relations
* Commonwealth Club of California, archived speech
* “The Pro-Growth Progressive” – Gene Sperling speaks at Google
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008)
Case Western Reserve University Franklin Thomas Backus School of Law
Established 1892
School type Private
Dean Dean Gary J. Simson
Location Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Enrollment 704
Faculty 116 (total)
USNWR ranking 63rd
Bar pass rate 85% (OH)
Annual tuition $36,150
Homepage www.law.case.edu
The “Bridge”
The Library 3rd Floor
The Entrance to the Law School
Case Western Reserve University Franklin Thomas Backus School of Law is the law school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. It opened in 1892, making it one of the oldest law schools in the country. It was one of the first schools accredited by the American Bar Association and was a charter member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). Students of color were admitted with the first entering class in 1892; women were admitted in 1918. It currently has a curriculum of more than 200 courses, over 150 of which were newly added since 1997. In addition to the Juris Doctor degree, Case Western offers an LL.M. in U.S. Law to foreign lawyers. The student/faculty ratio is 13.8. 98.6% of graduates are employed or in post-J.D. degree programs. The median starting salary is 18% above the national average.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Rankings
* 2 Journals
* 3 Institutes & Centers of Academic Excellence
* 4 Notable faculty
* 5 Notable graduates
o 5.1 Government and politics
o 5.2 Business and industry
o 5.3 Judicial
o 5.4 Academia
o 5.5 Other
* 6 References
* 7 External links
Rankings
It is ranked:
* #63 in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report graduate school rankings.[1]
* #4 U.S. News & World Report Specialty Area Rankings for Medical Law Program.
* #16 U.S. News & World Report Specialty Area Rankings for International Law Program.
* Brian Leiter Law School Reports: “obviously underrated”
* #14 in America’s 25 Most Underrated Law Schools (2007–2008) as compiled by LawTV and Law School 100.
* #17 in Vault’s Top 25 Most Underrated Law Schools.
* Among the top twenty law schools in the country in alumni giving.
* #31 by the “Internet Legal Research Group” (ILRG) for Cost-Benefit Analysis of American Law Schools.
* #36 by the “Internet Legal Research Group” (ILRG) for Law School Rankings by Median Salary.
* #46 by the “Internet Legal Research Group” (ILRG) for 2008 Law School Rankings of Employment Rate at Graduation.
* #39 by the “Internet Legal Research Group” (ILRG) for 2008 Law School Rankings of Employment Rate 9 months after Graduation.
* #47 by “The Ranking Game”
* #48 in “The Law School 100: The Best Law Schools in the United States.”
Journals
* Canada-United States Law Journal
* Case Western Reserve Law Review
* Health Matrix: Journal of Law-Medicine
* Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law
* The Internet Law Journal
[edit] Institutes & Centers of Academic Excellence
* Canada-United States Law Institute (with Western Law School)
* Frederick K. Cox International Law Center
* Center for Business Law and Regulation
* The Law-Medicine Center
* CISCDR (Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Conflict and Dispute Resolution)
* Center for Law, Technology, and the Arts
* Institute for Global Security Law and Policy
* The Center For Professional Ethics
* Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic Center
Notable faculty
* Arthur D. Austin, II – An expert on Antitrust and Contract Law. A prolific author, he has published frequently-cited articles in leading law reviews and three books: Antitrust: Law, Economics, Policy (1976), Complex Litigation Confronts the Jury System (1984), and The Empire Strikes Back: Outsiders and the Struggle over Legal Education (1998).
* Paul Gianelli – One of the country’s foremost evidence experts, Gianelli has co-authored several leading evidence and scientific evidence texts.
* Richard Gordon – Former Senior Counsel of the International Monetary Fund. Gordon Advised the government of Indonesia on the reform of tax, company, and securities laws. Following September 11, 2001 he was appointed to the select IMF Task Force on Terrorism Finance and was a principal author of the report on the role of the IMF and World Bank in countering terrorism finance and money laundering.
* Sidney Jacoby – a Nuremberg prosecutor.
* Lewis Katz – An expert on criminal law and author of significant portions of the Ohio criminal code, Katz was a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives 14th District seat in Ohio.
* Henry T. King – King is a former Nuremberg prosecutor.
* Juliet Kostritsky – An expert on promissory estoppel, Kostritsky was the former chair of the contracts division of the AALS.
* Michael P. Scharf – An expert on international law, Scharf assisted in the training of the judges in Iraq’s Saddam Hussein trial.
Notable graduates
Alumni are part of a network of over 12,000 professionals worldwide.
Government and politics
* Thomas A. Burke, former Mayor of Cleveland and Ohio Senator.
* Nicholas E. Calio, President George H. W. Bush’s Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs; member of the White House Iraq Group.
* Marc Dann, former Attorney General of Ohio.
* Lincoln Diaz-Balart, U.S. Congressman.
* Lee Fisher, former attorney general of Ohio and Democratic lieutenant governor of Ohio.
* Tim Grendell, Ohio State Senator.
* Martin Hoke, U.S. Congressman.
* Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, lawyer, diplomat, politician and academic from Ghana. He is the current Executive Secreteary of ECOWAS.
* Ron Klein, U.S. Congressman.
* Donald L. Korb, Chief Counsel for the Internal Revenue Service.
* Capricia Marshall, Deputy Assistant to President Clinton; Social Secretary at the Clinton White House. Currently National Finance Director for Hillary Clinton campaign.
* Roscoe C. McCulloch, former Ohio U.S. Congressman and Senator.
* Kevin G. Nealer, Senior Fellow of The Forum for International Policy.
* Jim Petro, Former Ohio Attorney General.
* Stephanie Tubbs Jones, U.S. Congresswoman (1999–2008).
* Michael Turner, U.S. Congressman.
* Mark A. Weinberger, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy from 2001 to 2002 and as Chief of Staff and Counsel to the President’s 1994 Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform.
* Charles Z. Wick, Former Director of the USIA under Ronald Reagan (1981-1988).
* Ann Womer Benjamin, Director of the Northeast Ohio Council on Higher Education. Former director of the Ohio Department of Insurance.
Business and industry
* Gregory J. Adams, Patent Counsel, Energizer.
* Diego Archer, Global Manager, Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP.
* Gayle T. Bassick, Executive Counsel, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
* Tammy S. Bawnik, Deputy General Counsel, UBS Financial Services.
* Bertram Bell, Associate General Counsel, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company.
* Timothy A. Beverick, Vice President, Dynegy Inc.
* Scott G. Brown, Vice President, Bayer Corporation.
* Nicholas E. Calio, Citigroup Senior Vice-President for Global Government Affairs. He is responsible for government relations for Citigroup and all of its subsidiaries.
* Michael G. Cherkasky, former CEO and Board Member at Marsh & McLennan Companies.
* Mark Costello, Patent Counsel, Xerox Corporation.
* Angela B. Cox, Assistant General Counsel, The Coca-Cola Company.
* Steven E. Davis, Corporate Counsel, Jacuzzi Brands, Inc.
* Suzanne F. Day, Deputy General Counsel, The Lubrizol Corporation.
* Austin Fragomen Jr., Managing Partner and founder of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP and Fragomen Global Immigration Services LLC.
* Victor S. Garber, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley.
* Thomas Geczik, Tax Counsel, ConocoPhillips Company.
* George S. Goodridge, Assistant General Counsel, Bayer Corporation.
* Mark A. Guinn, Assistant General Counsel, Bank of America.
* Robert E. Hathaway, Counsel, General Motors Corporation.
* Brian R. Henry, Senior Counsel, The Coca-Cola Company.
* Michelle L. Herwald, International Tax Counsel, ALCOA Inc.
* Michael G. Holmquist, Associate General Counsel, Bank of America.
* J. Robert Horst, Former Vice President and General Counsel, Eaton Corporation.
* Andrean Horton, Vice President, YRC Worldwide Inc.
The United States Information Agency (USIA), which existed from 1953 to 1999, was a United States agency devoted to “public diplomacy”. Its critics[who?], however, described its goal as propaganda.
Mission
The USIA’s mission was “to understand, inform, and influence foreign publics in promotion of the national interest, and to broaden the dialogue between Americans and U.S. institutions, and their counterparts abroad”.[1]
Its stated goals were:
* To explain and advocate U.S. policies in terms that are credible and meaningful in foreign cultures;
* To provide information about the official policies of the United States, and about the people, values, and institutions which influence those policies;
* To bring the benefits of international engagement to American citizens and institutions by helping them build strong long-term relationships with their counterparts overseas;
* To advise the President and U.S. government policy-makers on the ways in which foreign attitudes will have a direct bearing on the effectiveness of U.S. policies.[1]
The USIA was established in August 1953, although cultural and educational exchange functions remained in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the Department of State until 1978, when they were shifted to USIA. Following a brief period during the Carter administration, when it was called the International Communications Agency (ICA), to avoid confusion with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) the agency’s name was restored to USIA in August 1982. The agency was known as United States Information Service (USIS) overseas but could not use that abbreviation domestically to avoid confusion with the United States Immigration Service.
There were two basic statutes authorizing the programs of the Agency. The first was the Smith-Mundt Act, which authorized information programs including Voice of America as well as the Radio and TV Martí broadcasts to Cuba. Voice of America was intended as an unbiased and balanced “Voice from America” as originally broadcast during World War II. The Smith-Mundt Act established a so-called “Charter” which required balanced news, dual sourcing, etc. Other broadcasts supported by the U.S. Government (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) were more specific in their anti-communist intent and might more closely resemble propaganda.
The second statute authorizing USIA’s activities was the Fulbright-Hays Act, which authorized the international cultural and educational exchanges (the Fullbright Scholarship Program). Thus “Fulbrighters” were grant recipients under the USIA educational and cultural exchange program. To ensure that those grant programs would be fair and unbiased there were a series of grantees of educational and cultural expertise who chose the actual grantee recipients.
As part of the increased dialogue between people of the U.S. and people of foreign countries, USIA was also the agency principally responsible for U.S. participation at World’s Fairs outside the United States.
The Foreign Affairs and Restructuring Act abolished the U.S. Information Agency effective 1999-10-01, when its information (but not broadcasting) and exchange functions were folded into the Department of State’s Bureau of Public Affairs, headed by the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.
Broadcasting functions, including Voice of America, Radio and TV Marti as well as other U.S. Government supported broadcasting such as Radio Free Europe (Eastern Europe) and Radio Liberty (the former Soviet Union) were consolidated as an independent entity under the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which continues independently (as a separate entity from the State Department) today.
Possible reestablishment
2008 presidential candidate Senator John McCain (R-AZ) announced his support for bringing the agency back.[2]
In 2008, Christian Whiton, an official in the George W. Bush administration involved with promoting democracy, called publicly for the establishment of a USIA-like strategic communications agency focused on the nonviolent practice of political warfare.[1]
See also
* Public Diplomacy
* Propaganda
* U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Information Programs
* Committee on Public Information
* Project Pedro
References
1. ^ a b “USIA: an overview”. USIA. August 1998. http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/usia/usiahome/oldoview.htm#overview. Retrieved on November 24 2008.
2. ^ McCain, John (2007-06-28). “Hone U.S. Message Of Freedom”. Orlando Sentinel. http://www.johnmccain.com/informing/news/NewsReleases/d6b2c71d-dfd2-4468-bed6-edc192dd3949.htm. Retrieved on 2008-03-10.
Further reading
* Bardos, Arthur, “‘Public Diplomacy’: An Old Art, a New Profession”, Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 2001
* Bogart, Leo, Premises For Propaganda: The United States Information Agency’s Operating Assumptions in the Cold War, ISBN 0029043905
* Snow, Nancy, Propaganda, Inc.: Selling America’s Culture to the World, ISBN 1888363746
* Kiehl, William P. (ed.) “America’s Dialogue with the World”, ISBN 0-9764391-1-5
* Sorensen, Thomas C. “Word War: The Story of American Propaganda” (1968) ISBN-10: 3530827509 ISBN-13: 978-3530827507
* Tobia, Simona “Advertising America. The United States Information Service in Italy (1945-1956)”, LED Edizioni Universitarie, ISBN 978-88-7916-400-9
External links
* Archive of agency Web site
* Papers of Abbott Washburn (Special Assistant to the Director of the USIA, 1953 & Deputy Directior of the USIA, 1953-1961), Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
***
Charles Z. Wick (October 12, 1917 – July 20, 2008)[1][2] was director of the United States Information Agency (USIA) under President Ronald Reagan (1981–1989). As USIA director, Wick launched the first live global satellite television network.
Wick also established the Voice of America’s Radio Marti broadcasting to Cuba; created RIAS TV in Berlin; headed the International Youth Exchange Initiative; established an office within USIA to implement the General Exchanges Agreement between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union; and created the Artistic Ambassador Program with its international young artists’ exchanges.
Wick was an independent businessman involved in the financing and operation of motion picture, television, radio, music, health care, and mortgage industries in the United States and abroad. He was president and chief executive officer of Wick Financial Corp., and Mapleton Enterprises, which he founded in the early 1960s. He was co-chairman of the 1981 Presidential Inaugural Committee.
Wick graduated from the University of Michigan (B.M.) and Case Western Reserve University School of Law (J.D.). He was a member of the California and Ohio Bar Associations.
Wick was on the Advisory Board of USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Prior to his entering into governmental affairs, he produced such films as Snow White and the Three Stooges.
He died of natural causes at his Los Angeles home at age 90,[1] according to his son, movie producer Douglas Wick, and a report issued by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.[2]
Notes and references
1. ^ a b “”Services to be held for former Reagan appointee Wick”". Los Angeles Daily News. 2008-07-22. http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_9960325. Retrieved on 2008-07-22.
2. ^ a b The Associated Press (2008-07-22). “Former USIA chief Charles Wick dies at 90 in LA”. Associated Press. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hchqm62l9x-4RhKQpdzRdYfF2wlAD92350Q80. Retrieved on 2008-07-22.
* “Charles Wick: director of the US Information Agency”. Times, The (London). July 24, 2008. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4392268.ece. Retrieved on 2008-07-27.
Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs)
James K. Glassman, the most recent Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.
Photo courtesy of American Enterprise Institute.
The Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs is a position within the U.S. Department of State that is intended to help ensure that public diplomacy is practiced in combination with public affairs and traditional diplomacy to advance U.S. interests and security. The Under Secretary oversees three bureaus at the Department of State: Educational and Cultural Affairs, Public Affairs, and International Information Programs. Also reporting to the Under Secretary are the Office of Policy, Planning and Resources for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs and the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.
The position was created on October 1, 1999, during the Clinton administration after Title XIII, Section 1313 of the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 (112 Stat. 2681-776). Section 2305 of the Act (112 Stat. 2681-825) increased the number of Under Secretaries of State from five to six. Subdivision A of the Act, also know as the Foreign Affairs Agencies Consolidation Act of 1998, abolished the United States Information Agency and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
List of Under Secretaries of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs
Name Term of Office President(s) served under
Evelyn Lieberman October 1, 1999-January 19, 2001 Bill Clinton
Charlotte Beers October 2, 2001–March 28, 2003 George W. Bush
Margaret D. Tutwiler December 16, 2003–June 30, 2004 George W. Bush
Karen Hughes September 9, 2005– December 14, 2007 George W. Bush
James K. Glassman June 10, 2008– January 15, 2009 George W. Bush
External links
* Website of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs
* Publicdiplomacy.org
* Margaret D. Tutweiler leaves the Department of State for the New York Stock Exchange
* The Office of the Historian’s list of former Under Secretaries
***
Agencies under the United States Department of State
Secretary of State
Deputy Secretary of State
Executive Secretariat A Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism A Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization A National Foreign Affairs Training Center A Office of the Legal Adviser A Office of Protocol A Office of War Crimes Issues A Bureau of Intelligence and Research A Bureau of Legislative Affairs A Bureau of Resource Management
United States Department of State Seal
Under Secretary for
Political Affairs
Bureau of African Affairs A Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs A Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs A Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs A Bureau of International Organization Affairs A Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs A Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs A Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs
Under Secretary for Management
Bureau of Administration A Bureau of Consular Affairs A Bureau of Diplomatic Security A Bureau of Human Resources A Bureau of Information Resource Management A Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations A Office of Management Policy, Rightsizing, and Innovation
Under Secretary for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs
Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs
Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs
Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs A Bureau of Public Affairs A Bureau of International Information Programs
Under Secretary for
Arms Control and
International Security Affairs
Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation A Bureau of Political-Military Affairs A Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation
Under Secretary for
Democracy and Global Affairs
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor A Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs A Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration A Office of the Science and Technology Adviser A Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Secretary_of_State_for_Public_Diplomacy_and_Public_Affairs”
Categories: United States Department of State officials
Margaret DeBardeleben Tutwiler (born December 28, 1950 in Birmingham, Alabama) is a former Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the US State Department, serving from December 16, 2003 to June 30, 2004. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on December 9, 2003 to replace outgoing Under Secretary Charlotte Beers. Tutwiler was given the task of leading “the government’s public-relations drive to build a favorable impression abroad.” Tutwiler was the ambassador to Morocco from March 2001 until 2003. In July 2004, Tutwiler began directing communications for NYSE Euronext. On December 11, 2007, it was announced that she was appointed head of communications for Merrill Lynch & Co.
External links
* USC Center on Public Diplomacy Profile
* Interview in Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.
Charlotte Beers (born July 26, 1935 in Beaumont, Texas) is an American businesswoman and former Under Secretary of State.
She was the first female vice-president at the JWT advertising firm, then CEO of Tatham-Laird & Kudner until 1992, and finally CEO of Ogilvy & Mather until 1996. In 1997, Fortune magazine placed her on the cover of their first issue to feature the most powerful women in America, for her achievements in the advertising industry. In 1999, Beers received the “Legend in Leadership Award” from the Chief Executive Leadership Institute of the Yale School of Management.
From October 2001 until March 2003, she worked for the Bush Administration administration as the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Beers attended Baylor University and graduated from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then called the University of Southwestern Louisiana, with a bachelor of science in liberal arts.
Evelyn S. Lieberman is an American public affairs professional who, during the Clinton administration, became the first woman to serve as Deputy White House Chief of Staff and the first United States Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. She has been Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the Smithsonian Institution since 2002 [1], taking time off to serve as chief operating officer of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign. [2]
Lieberman first joined the White House in 1993 as Assistant to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Chief of Staff. She rose to the rank of Deputy Assistant to the President with the job title of Deputy Press Secretary. On January 10, 1996, Chief of Staff Leon Panetta announced her appointment as Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff. [1]
While another Deputy Chief of Staff managed policy and politics, Lieberman oversaw White House operations and administrative functions: the Office of Scheduling and Advance, the Office of Management and Administration, the Office of Presidential Personnel, and the Office of the Staff Secretary, as well as Director of Oval Office Operations. She focussed on bringing discipline to the young, energetic White House staff; in announcing her appointment, Panetta said “she brings the perfect mixture of chicken soup and a kick in the butt that we need in this job.” [3]
While serving as Deputy Chief of Staff, Lieberman, with the approval of Panetta, transferred Monica Lewinsky–the former intern later found to have had an inappropriate relationship with the President–out of the White House into the United States Defense Department Public Affairs office. In subsequent grand jury testimony, Lieberman recalled removing Lewinsky for “spending too much time around the West Wing.” [4]
The story of Lewinsky’s firing reportedly contributed to Lieberman’s “cult status” as a tough enforcer among the Hillary Clinton supporters collectively known as “Hillaryland.” “If Lieberman invites you for a walk,” Hillaryland members joke, “don’t go. It means you’re fired.”[5]
At the beginning of Clinton’s second administration, Lieberman wanted to return to public affairs, and Clinton appointed her director of the Voice of America. When VOA’s parent organization, the U.S. Information Agency, was folded into the State Department in 1999 (minus VOA, which became a unit of the separate Broadcasting Board of Governors) she was appointed senior adviser to the United States Secretary of State. She was then nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, overseeing the Department’s spokesman, its international public information operations, and its education and cultural programs. Her overall mission was improving the image of the United States internationally.
Prior to joining the Clinton Administration, Lieberman was press secretary to Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-DE) (1988-1993); Director of Public Affairs for the Children’s Defense Fund; and Communications Director for the National Urban Coalition. She is also a director of the Trust for Early Education, an advocacy group devoted to ensuring that children in America receive pre-Kindergarten preparation for education. [6]
Lieberman, a native New Yorker, graduated from Buffalo State College. She is married to attorney Edward H. Lieberman. [1]
References
1. ^ a b c http://newsdesk.si.edu/admin/bios/lieberman.pdf
2. ^ Deseret News | Clinton enlists outside consultants
3. ^ William J. Clinton Foundation “Press Briefing by Leon Panetta”
4. ^ IV. April 1996: Ms. Lewinskys Transfer to the Pentagon
5. ^ Gatekeepers of Hillaryland – washingtonpost.com
Karen Parfitt Hughes (born December 27, 1956) is a Republican political adviser from the state of Texas. She served as the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the U.S. Department of State with the rank of ambassador. She resides in Austin, Texas.
Born in Paris, France, she is the daughter of Patricia Rose Scully and Harold Parfitt,[1] the last U.S. Governor of the Panama Canal Zone. After graduating from W. T. White High School, Hughes received her bachelor’s degree from Southern Methodist University in 1977 where she was a member of Alpha Delta Pi sorority. She worked as a television news reporter from 1977 to 1984. As a reporter, Hughes followed the 1980 presidential campaign. In 1984, she went to work as the Texas press coordinator for the Reagan-Bush campaign in the 1984 election. She later became executive director of the Republican Party of Texas.
Work with George W. Bush
Karen Hughes with First Lady Laura Bush
Since the 1990s, Hughes has worked with George W. Bush, first as director of communications while he was governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000, and then as a counselor from 2001 to 2002, while he was President of the United States.
Hughes left the Bush administration in July 2002 to return to Texas, but remained in daily contact with the Bush reelection campaign by telephone and e-mail, and spoke personally with Bush several times a week. In 2002, Hughes was a member of the White House Iraq Group, the task force charged with increasing public support for war in Iraq. In August 2004, Hughes returned to full-time service with the Bush campaign, setting up office on Air Force One, from where she planned the 2004 Republican National Convention and the late stages of the 2004 election. She has been decorated by The Dallas Morning News as “the most powerful woman ever to serve in the White House”, and by ABC News as Bush’s “most essential advisor.”
Ten Minutes from Normal
In March 2004, Hughes published Ten Minutes from Normal, an account of her work in the Bush administration. While promoting her book, she appeared on CNN on April 25, 2004 – the same day as the March for Women’s Lives – and said “I think after September 11th the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life. And President Bush has worked to say, let’s be reasonable, let’s work to value life, let’s try to reduce the number of abortions, let’s increase adoptions. And I think those are the kind of policies that the American people can support, particularly at a time when we’re facing an enemy, and really the fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life. It’s the founding conviction of our country, that we’re endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, the right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”[2]
As Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy
Karen Hughes (L) at White House luncheon with President George Bush (C) and United States National Security Advisor and United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (R).
On March 14, 2005, Bush announced his intention to nominate Hughes for the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy with the rank of ambassador — a job focused on changing foreigners’ perceptions about America. The Senate confirmed her nomination in July 2005. Prior to being officially sworn in on September 9, 2005, Hughes took an extended leave of absence, which she described as a much needed vacation. During this period Hughes also spent time involved in the Texas senatorial campaign of John Cornyn as well as other state races.
In her new capacity, Hughes spoke of improving the world’s perception of the United States via creation of a “rapid-response unit” and a plan to “forward-deploy regional SWAT teams”. During a town hall meeting on September 8, 2005, a State Department employee complained that “recently, we’ve had tremendous amount of difficulty in some cases getting clearance for our ambassadors to speak.” Hughes replied, “If they make statements based on something I sent them, they’re not going to be called on the carpet.”[3]
In May 2005, the State Department Media Affairs Director and a 17-year veteran Price Floyd resigned, citing difficulties and disagreements with the Bush administration and Karen Hughes.[4] In an interview, Floyd said: “She is one of the most dynamic people I have ever been around. She is truly impressive. But she comes at it from a press/media angle, and public diplomacy — I don’t think — is that. I mean, this is bigger than Karen Hughes, it’s bigger than the State Department. It’s going to mean an administration change: someone new is going to have to come in.” Among other things, Floyd commented on the difference between public diplomacy during the Vietnam War, when the State Department was allowed to send dissenting speakers abroad to discuss America, and public diplomacy during the Bush administration.
Hughes stated that one of her greatest accomplishments has been “transforming public diplomacy and making it a national security priority central to everything we do in government”. [5] Hughes was the keynote speaker at the October 22, 2007 Public Relations Society of America’s International Conference and discussed, “Waging Peace — The New Paradigm for Public Diplomacy.” [6]
2005 tour of the Middle East
Starting with a September 26, 2005 stop in Egypt, Hughes went on a tour of the Middle East to speak with leaders and people from the region.[7] The goal of the tour was to promote pro-American sentiment in the region. This was a response to growing fears in America about rampant anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Hughes asked two Citizen Ambassadors to accompany her on this tour. Following an apparently non-selective process, Hughes chose a college student, Tina Karima Daoud, and William O’Brien, a retired high school geography teacher, as the first two Citizen Ambassadors. In her press briefing, Hughes detailed the process by which Ms. Daoud was added to the tour: “I have brought along with me on this trip, as a symbol of things to come, two citizens, one a young Muslim American, Tina Karima who met the very first week in my office when I asked to meet with a group of Muslim students from universities in the Washington area, and she came to that meeting and she followed up and sent me an email and said she was really interested in some of the things I said and could we have lunch? So we had lunch and I talked with her and learned more about her, and discovered that she was already working at the State Department on a small project — she could tell you exactly what it was — a fellowship project, but it was in something like — it was very administrative. And so I said maybe we could get her to come help us with public diplomacy, and so she in fact is now working with us on public diplomacy on that fellowship and is traveling with us on this trip, but I think it’s – to show again the importance of our own American young people reaching out to young people across the world, which I hope to foster more of.”
On her September 27 stop in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia during a talk with female students, she expressed her wish that women could “fully participate in society” as they do in the United States. In response one of the women said “The general image of the Arab woman is that she isn’t happy [...] Well, we’re all pretty happy.”[8].
In a press conference in Jakarta, Indonesia Hughes incorrectly stated that Saddam Hussein “had murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people using poison gas.”[9] Conventional sources attest that Saddam did order the deaths of several hundred thousand Iraqis during the al-Anfal Campaign and other violent suppressions, but causalties from his infamous gas attack on Halabja numbered in the thousands.
Breast cancer advocacy
Hughes met business representatives from the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) to create the U.S.-U.A.E. Partnership for Breast Cancer Awareness and Research.
It will develop breast cancer awareness campaigns and expand research in the Middle East by linking U.S. medical experts, fundraisers, health research activists and businesses with their U.A.E. counterparts.[10]
Resignation
In late October 2007, Hughes made it known that she would be resigning from her position in the Bush White House[11]. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was quoted as saying she accepted the resignation “with a great deal of sadness but also a great deal of happiness for what she has achieved”.
Footnotes
1. ^ 1
2. ^ CNN.com – Transcripts
3. ^ Hughes Is Varnishing the Nation’s Tarnish
4. ^ On The Media: Transcript of “Scuttle Diplomacy” (June 1, 2007)
5. ^ BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Key Bush image adviser to leave
6. ^ 2007 PRSA International Conference
7. ^ Briefing En Route Ankara, Turkey
8. ^ Saudi Women Have Message for U.S. Envoy – New York Times
9. ^ Hughes Misreports Iraqi History
10. ^ State’s Hughes Joins Dubai Businesswomen To Fight Breast Cancer
11. ^ BBC NEWS | Americas | Key Bush image adviser to leave
References
1. Rootsweb.com. Record on Karen (Parfitt) Hughes.
2. Kerry Lauerman. You burn out fast when you demagogue, Salon.com, September 13, 2003.
3. Interview of Karen Hughes. Transcript of Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, CNN.com, Aired April 5, 2004.
4. Dana Milbank. Hughes is Varnishing the Nation’s Tarnish, The Washington Post, September 9, 2005.
5. Transcript of Interview of Bob Garfield. Scuttle Diplomacy, On the Media, June 1, 2007.
6. U.S. Department of State Transcript. Briefing En Route Ankara, Turkey. September 26, 2005
7. Steven R. Weisman. Saudi Women Have Message for U.S. Envoy, New York Times, September 28, 2005.
8. Alan Sipress. Hughes Misreports Iraqi History, Washington Post, October 22, 2005.
9. Elizabeth Kelleher. State’s Hughes Joins Dubai Businesswomen To Fight Breast Cancer, U.S. Department of State, November 1, 2006.
10. USME Partnership for Breast Cancer Awareness and Research. US Middle East Partnership Website.
External links
* Special Report on Karen Hughes’ nomination to Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy
* USC Center on Public Diplomacy Wiki profile on Hughes and her new position
* Testimony at confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington, DC (July 22, 2005)
James K. Glassman (born January 1, 1947 in Washington, D.C.) is an American libertarian conservative editorialist, journalist and author.He is president of the World Growth Institute, which promotes global economic development. Glassman is known for his market analyses and commentary on economics and equities investing. As a syndicated columnist, Glassman’s articles have appeared in newspapers around the world, including the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Atlantic Monthly, Reader’s Digest, and The Times Literary Supplement (London). He was co-author of Dow 36,000, published in 1999, which erroneously predicted that the stock market was greatly undervalued and would at least triple within a few years. On December 11, 2007 Glassman was nominated by President George W. Bush to replace Karen Hughes as the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy.[1]
Glassman attended private Quaker school, Sidwell Friends School, in Washington, DC, and graduated cum laude from Harvard College with a B.A. in government in 1969.
Journalism
* Served as managing editor of The Harvard Crimson while at Harvard.
* Held first job as a Sunday writer for the Boston Herald Traveler. (1969-70)
* Became editor and publisher of The Advocate in Provincetown, MA (1970-72).
* Co-Founder with Mary Hanby Glassman, Jack W. Davis, jr. and Robin von Breton of the weekly newspaper publication, Figaro, in New Orleans, Louisiana (1972-78).
* After selling Figaro, Glassman became executive editor of Washingtonian magazine (1979-81).
* Publisher of The New Republic (1981-84).
* President of The Atlantic Monthly as well as executive vice-president of U.S. News & World Report (1984-1986).
* Part-owner and editor of Roll Call, later sold to The Economist (1987-1993).
* Started television career as moderator of CNN’s Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98).
* Wrote a syndicated column in the Washington Post business section (1993-99, 2001-04).
* Hosted PBS’s TechnoPolitics (1995-99).
* Founded Tech Central Station (now TCS Daily), an online magazine (2000).
* Chief columnist of FolioFN (2001).
* Analyst for Left, Right & Center on KCRW (2001-02).
* Currently a columnist for Kiplinger Investing Magazine
* Currently a columnist for Townhall.com (2000-)
* Currently a columnist for Scripps Howard News Service (2004-)
* Founded and served as editor-in-chief and executive publisher of The American, a printed and online bimonthly “magazine of ideas for business leaders”[2] (2006-2008).
Politics
A libertarian conservative, Glassman (with Virginia Postrel) wrote an oft-cited rejoinder to a call for a conservative policy of “national greatness” by Bill Kristol and David Brooks.
* Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
* Served on the U.S. government’s Advisory Board on Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World (2003).
* Confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Chairman, Broadcasting Board of Governors. (2007)[3]
* In June 2008, Glassman became Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the Bush administration.
Books
* Dow 36,000 (co-author). In this book, published in 1999, near the peak of the late 1990s stock market bubble, Glassman and his co-author declared that the stocks making up the Dow Jones Industrial Average, then around 10,000, were undervalued and that the stock prices would rise sharply, with the index reaching 36,000 within three to five years. In its introduction, Glassman and his co-author wrote that the book “will convince you of the single most important fact about stocks at the dawn of the twenty-first century: They are cheap….If you are worried about missing the market’s big move upward, you will discover that it is not too late. Stocks are now in the midst of a one-time-only rise to much higher ground–to the neighborhood of 36,000 on the Dow Jones industrial average.”[4] During the next three years the index declined by over 30%, bottoming at under 7,200 in the fall of 2002.[5] And nearly ten years later, the Dow hovers around 6800.
* The Secret Code of the Superior Investor
Awards and honors
* Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism (1998) from the American Legislative Exchange Council
* Norman B. Ture Award (1997) from the Tax Foundation for service toward sound tax policy.
[edit] Personal
Having lived in New York City, Falls Village, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C., Glassman commutes often between these three locations.
[edit] References
1. ^ Nominations and Withdrawals Sent to the Senate
2. ^ [1]
3. ^ “NOMINATIONS CONFIRMED (CIVILIAN)”. United States Senate website. 2007-06-05. http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/one_item_and_teasers/nom_confc.htm. Retrieved on 2007-07-10. “James K. Glassman, of Connecticut, to be Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.”
4. ^ [2]
5. ^ [3]
[edit] External links
Sister project Wikimedia Commons has media related to: James K. Glassman
Creation of Position: This position was authorized by Title XIII, Section 1313 of the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 (112 Stat. 2681-776). Section 2305 of the Act (112 Stat. 2681-825) increased the number of Under Secretaries of State from 5 to 6. Subdivision A of the Act, also know as the Foreign Affairs Agencies Consolidation Act of 1998, abolished the U.S. Information Agency and transferred its functions to the Department of State. The integration took place on Oct 1, 1999.
Christian Whiton was a State Department political appointee in the George W. Bush administration. He served as the Deputy Special Envoy focused primarily on the promotion of human rights in North Korea. Whiton advised senior administration officials on policy, communications and programmatic activities related to democracy efforts.
Whiton has criticized the governments of North Korea and China for their human rights records. He has called for weakening the regime of Kim Jong-il via expanded radio broadcasts and information operations. [1] He has also appealed for other governments to intervene. [2]
Whiton implicitly criticized career officials at the State Department for not adhering to the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004. [3] After leaving the State Department, he criticized former Secretary Condoleezza Rice for her policies on North Korea, China and Russia. [4]
Whiton also was a speechwriter and special advisor to the Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, who led democracy efforts throughout the Bush administration. Whiton is an advocate of political warfare as a means of national security, as has called for establishing a U.S. government agency focused on undermining the jihadist ideology. [5]
Prior to government, Whiton worked for the investment banking practice of KPMG LLP. He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management and an undergraduate degree from Tulane University.
Other
Quotes: “The U.S. champions the aspirations of freedom of those abroad because it has been a part of our heritage since our founding. But it is also a calculated means to advance our national security interests–and those of our democratic allies.”
Paula J. Dobriansky (born September 14, 1955) is a neo-conservative politician, pundit, and author.
Contents
* 1 Parents and education
* 2 Current role
* 3 Previous roles
* 4 Bali conference
* 5 Notes
Parents and education
She was born in Alexandria, Virginia, the daughter of Ukrainian-American anti-communist activist Lev Dobriansky, the initiator of Captive Nations Week [1] and Julia Kusy Dobriansky, his wife [2].
She is a graduate of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and of Harvard University. Her Ph.D. thesis was entitled “The military determinants of Soviet foreign policy, 1945-1988″ and was accepted in 1991.
Current role
She currently is the Under-Secretary of State for Democracy & Global Affairs, a position to which she was appointed 1 May 2001 by US President George W. Bush. She is also a member of the Trilateral Commission. On February 15, 2007 Dobriansky became the Special Envoy on Northern Ireland, taking over for Mitchell Reiss who held that position for three years. [3].
Dobriansky has acted as a spokesperson for the United States on the issue of climate change and global warming, representing the United States at the 2006 United Nations climate change conference in Kenya as well as the 2007 talks in Bali. She has been a stalwart defender of the Bush Administration’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and has assisted the administration in blocking international agreements that would cap carbon dioxide emissions. [4] Dobriansky has advocated voluntary reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, based on partnerships between developing and wealthy nations and has been opposed to caps that would require reductions based on specific timetables.
According to her official Department of State biography, she was “unanimously confirmed” by the Senate. Dobriansky’s responsibilities include “a broad range of foreign policy issues, including democracy, human rights, labor, counter-narcotics and law enforcement, refugee and humanitarian relief matters and environmental/scientific issues. [5]
Previous roles
Dobriansky has served as Senior Vice President and Director of the Washington Office of the Council on Foreign Relations, including operations relating to all groups and meetings. She has been designated the Special Coordinator for Tibet.
She is a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signatories to the January 26, 1998, PNAC Letter sent to US President Bill Clinton, in which a group of conservatives advocated a US military attack on Iraq.
Dobriansky served as Senior International Affairs and Trade Advisor at the law firm of Hunton & Williams and as Co-Chair of the International TV Council at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Paula J. Dobriansky at FPC briefing
Dobriansky has held other government positions including the Associate Director for Policy and Programs at the United States Information Agency (1990–1993), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs (1987–1990); Deputy Head of the U.S. Delegation to the 1990 Copenhagen Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe CSCE; Advisor to the U.S. Delegation to the 1985 UN Decade for Women Conference in Nairobi, Kenya; and Director of European and Soviet Affairs at the United States National Security Council (1983-1984). She also was a coordinator of Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign.
Dobriansky has served on the Western NIS Enterprise Fund, National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, American Council of Young Political Leaders, the American Bar Association Central, East European Law Initiative, and the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.
She previously hosted Freedom’s Challenge, and co-hosted Worldwise, and has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN Headline News, CNN, Fox Morning News, John McLaughlin’s One-on-One, The McLaughlin Group, C-SPAN, MSNBC, PBS, National Public Radio, and has testified before the Senate Foreign Relations and House International Relations Committees. She is also on the advisory board of the Independent Women’s Forum.
Bali conference
In December, 2007 at the Bali summit on climate change she was booed when developing nations sought to strengthen requirements for richer nations to help poorer with technology to limit emissions and adapt to climate change’s impacts.
As head of the U.S. delegation, Undersecretary of State Paula J. Dobriansky objected, and was met with a chorus of long and loud booing, almost unprecedented at a diplomatic summit of this kind.
Delegate after delegate took aim at the United States recalcitrant attitude. South Africa proclaimed Dobriansky’s intervention was “most unwelcome and without any basis.” Meanwhile Uganda said “We would like to beg them” to relent.
Then Kevin Conrad, the delegate from Papua New Guinea, addressed the US delegate directly. “We seek your leadership,” he said “But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.”[6] Following these remarks, Dobriansky declared that the U.S. would agree to the consensus and be involved in the climate treaty.
Notes
1. ^ Lev Dobriansky died on January 30, 2008, at the age of 89. Washington Times editorial, February 9, 2008 (accessed 11 February 2008)
2. ^ Washington Times obituary of Lev Dobriansky, 5 February 2008 (accessed 11 February 2008).
3. ^ Under Secretary Paula Dobriansky Designated Special Envoy on Northern Ireland
4. ^ Big Conference on Warming Ends, Achieving Modest Results – New York Times
5. ^ U.S. State Department Biography of Paula J. Dobriansky – released 11 December 2007 (accessed 11 February 2008)
6. ^ Bali Climate Talks – Kevin Conrad – Papua New Guinea – New York Times January 22, 2008
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Dobriansky”
Categories: 1955 births | Living people | Georgetown University alumni | Ukrainian-Americans | Climate change in the United States
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was an American neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that lasted from early 1997 to 2006. It was co-founded as a non-profit educational organization by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The PNAC’s stated goal was “to promote American global leadership.”[1] Fundamental to the PNAC were the view that “American leadership is both good for America and good for the world” and support for “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.”[2] Critics claimed that it exerted strong influence on high-level U.S. government officials in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush and strongly affected the George Bush administration’s development of military and foreign policies, especially involving national security and the Iraq War.[3][4]
Contents
* 1 Background and history
o 1.1 Open letter to President Clinton on Iraq
o 1.2 Rebuilding America’s Defenses
o 1.3 End of the organization
* 2 Controversy
o 2.1 US World Dominance (“American Empire”)
o 2.2 Excessive focus on military strategies, neglect of diplomatic strategies
o 2.3 Inexperienced in realities of war
o 2.4 PNAC role in promoting invasion of Iraq
* 3 Persons associated with the PNAC
o 3.1 Project directors
o 3.2 Project staff
o 3.3 Former directors and staff
o 3.4 Signatories to Statement of Principles
o 3.5 Signatories or contributors to other significant letters or reports[21]
o 3.6 Associations with Bush administration
* 4 See also
* 5 Notes
* 6 References
o 6.1 External links
o 6.2 Further reading and media programs: Analysis and criticism
Background and history
The goal of regime change in Iraq remained the consistent position of PNAC throughout the Iraq disarmament crisis.[5] They followed that up with a letter to Republican members of the U.S. Congress Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott.[6]
On November 16, 1998, citing Iraq’s demand for the expulsion of UN weapons inspectors and the removal of Richard Butler as head of the inspections regime, Kristol called again for regime change in an editorial in his online magazine, The Weekly Standard: “…any sustained bombing and missile campaign against Iraq should be part of any overall political-military strategy aimed at removing Saddam from power.”[7] Kristol states that Paul Wolfowitz and others believed that the goal was to create “a ‘liberated zone’ in southern Iraq that would provide a safe haven where opponents of Saddam could rally and organize a credible alternative to the present regime … The liberated zone would have to be protected by U.S. military might, both from the air and, if necessary, on the ground.”
The PNAC also supported the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (H.R.4655), which President Clinton had signed into law.[8]
In January 1999, the PNAC circulated a memo that criticized the December 1998 bombing of Iraq in Operation Desert Fox as ineffective, questioned the viability of Iraqi democratic opposition which the U.S. was supporting through the Iraq Liberation Act, and referred to any “containment” policy as an illusion.[9]
In September 2000, the PNAC published a controversial 90-page report entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century.
From 2001 through 2002, the co-founders and other members of the PNAC published articles supporting the United States’ invasion of Iraq.[10]. On its website, the PNAC promoted its point of view that leaving Saddam Hussein in power would be “surrender to terrorism.”[11][12][13][14]
On September 20, 2001 (nine days after the September 11, 2001 attacks), the PNAC sent a letter to President George W. Bush, advocating “a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq,” or regime change:
…even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.[15][4]
In 2003, during the period leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the PNAC had seven full-time staff members in addition to its board of directors.[1] According to Tom Barry, “The glory days of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) quickly passed but the website is still functioning and was updated as of Feb 8, 2007.[16][17]
As quoted in Paul Reynolds’ BBC News report, David Rothkopf states:
Their [The Project for the New American Century's] signal enterprise was the invasion of Iraq and their failure to produce results is clear. Precisely the opposite has happened. The US use of force has been seen as doing wrong and as inflaming a region that has been less than susceptible to democracy. Their plan has fallen on hard times. There were flaws in the conception and horrendously bad execution. The neo-cons have been undone by their own ideas and the incompetence of the Bush administration.[17]
Its original “Statement of Principles” of June 3, 1997, posted on its current website, begins by framing a series of questions, which the rest of the document proposes to answer:
As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world’s pre-eminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?[18]
In response to these questions, the PNAC states its aim to “remind America” of “lessons” learned from American history, drawing the following “four consequences” for America in 1997:
* we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
* we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
* we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad; [and]
* we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.
While “Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today [1997],” the “Statement of Principles” concludes, “it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.”[18]
[edit] Open letter to President Clinton on Iraq
On January 16, 1998, following perceived Iraqi unwillingness to co-operate with UN weapons inspections, members of the PNAC, including Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Robert Zoellick drafted an open letter to President Bill Clinton, posted on its website, urging President Clinton to remove Saddam Hussein from power using U.S. diplomatic, political, and military power. The signers argue that Saddam would pose a threat to the United States, its Middle East allies, and oil resources in the region, if he succeeded in maintaining what they asserted was a stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction. They also state: “we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections” and “American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.” They argue that an Iraq war would be justified by Hussein’s defiance of UN “containment” policy and his persistent threat to U.S. interests.[19]
Rebuilding America’s Defenses
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century (2000), which lists as Project Chairmen Donald Kagan and Gary Schmitt and as Principal Author Thomas Donnelly, quotes from the PNAC’s June 1997 “Statement of Principles” and proceeds “from the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of U.S. military forces.”[20][21]
The report argues:
The American peace has proven itself peaceful, stable, and durable. It has, over the past decade, provided the geopolitical framework for widespread economic growth and the spread of American principles of liberty and democracy. Yet no moment in international politics can be frozen in time; even a global Pax Americana will not preserve itself.[20]
After its title page, the report features a page entitled “About the Project for the New American Century”, quoting key passages from its 1997 “Statement of Principles”:
“
[What we require is] a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States’ global responsibilities. Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership of the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of the past century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.[20]
”
In its “Preface”, in highlighted boxes, Rebuilding America’s Defenses states that it aims to:
ESTABLISH FOUR CORE MISSIONS for the U.S. military:
* defend the American homeland;
* fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
* perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
* transform U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs”;
and that
To carry out these core missions, we need to provide sufficient force and budgetary allocations. In particular, the United States must:
MAINTAIN NUCLEAR STRATEGIC SUPERIORITY, basing the U.S. deterrent upon a global, nuclear net assessment that weighs the full range of current and emerging threats, not merely the U.S.-Russia balance.
RESTORE THE PERSONNEL STRENGTH of today’s force to roughly the levels anticipated in the “Base Force” outlined by the Bush Administration, an increase in active-duty strength from 1.4 million to 1.6 million.
REPOSITION U.S. FORCES to respond to 21st century strategic realities by shifting permanently-based forces to Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia, and by changing naval deployment patterns to reflect growing U.S. strategic concerns in East Asia. (iv)
A table from the second page of Rebuilding Americas Defenses which emphasizes the goal of perpetuating the post-Cold War ‘Unipolar Moment’ and targets East Asia as the region of new global competition.
It specifies the following goals:
MODERNIZE CURRENT U.S. FORCES SELECTIVELY, proceeding with the F-22 program while increasing purchases of lift, electronic support and other aircraft; expanding submarine and surface combatant fleets; purchasing Comanche helicopters and medium-weight ground vehicles for the Army, and the V-22 Osprey “tilt-rotor” aircraft for the Marine Corps.
CANCEL “ROADBLOCK” PROGRAMS such as the Joint Strike Fighter, CVX aircraft carrier,[22] and Crusader howitzer system that would absorb exorbitant amounts of Pentagon funding while providing limited improvements to current capabilities. Savings from these canceled programs should be used to spur the process of military transformation.
DEVELOP AND DEPLOY GLOBAL MISSILE DEFENSES to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world.[23]
CONTROL THE NEW “INTERNATIONAL COMMONS” OF SPACE AND “CYBERSPACE,” and pave the way for the creation of a new military service – U.S. Space Forces – with the mission of space control.
EXPLOIT THE “REVOLUTION IN MILITARY AFFAIRS” to insure the long-term superiority of U.S. conventional forces. Establish a two-stage transformation process which
• maximizes the value of current weapons systems through the application of advanced technologies, and,
• produces more profound improvements in military capabilities, encourages competition between single services and joint-service experimentation efforts.
INCREASE DEFENSE SPENDING gradually to a minimum level of 3.5 to 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, adding $15 billion to $20 billion to total defense spending annually. (v)
The report emphasizes:
Fulfilling these requirements is essential if America is to retain its militarily dominant status for the coming decades. Conversely, the failure to meet any of these needs must result in some form of strategic retreat. At current levels of defense spending, the only option is to try ineffectually to “manage” increasingly large risks: paying for today’s needs by shortchanging tomorrow’s; withdrawing from constabulary missions to retain strength for large-scale wars; “choosing” between presence in Europe or presence in Asia; and so on. These are bad choices. They are also false economies. The “savings” from withdrawing from the Balkans, for example, will not free up anywhere near the magnitude of funds needed for military modernization or transformation. But these are false economies in other, more profound ways as well. The true cost of not meeting our defense requirements will be a lessened capacity for American global leadership and, ultimately, the loss of a global security order that is uniquely friendly to American principles and prosperity. (v-vi)
In relation to the Persian Gulf, citing particularly Iraq and Iran, Rebuilding America’s Defenses states that “while the unresolved conflict in Iraq provides the immediate justification [for U.S. military presence], the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein” and “Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region.”[20]
One of the core missions outlined in the 2000 report Rebuilding America’s Defenses is “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars.”[24][4]
End of the organization
By the end of 2006, PNAC was “reduced to a voice-mail box and a ghostly website”, with “a single employee” “left to wrap things up”, according to the BBC News. Gary Schmitt, former executive director of the PNAC, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and director of its program in Advanced Strategic Studies, stated that PNAC had come to a natural end:
When the project started, it was not intended to go forever. That is why we are shutting it down. We would have had to spend too much time raising money for it and it has already done its job. We felt at the time that there were flaws in American foreign policy, that it was neo-isolationist. We tried to resurrect a Reaganite policy. Our view has been adopted. Even during the Clinton administration we had an effect, with Madeleine Albright [then secretary of state] saying that the United States was ‘the indispensable nation’. But our ideas have not necessarily dominated. We did not have anyone sitting on Bush’s shoulder. So the work now is to see how they are implemented.[17]
Controversy
US World Dominance (“American Empire”)
According to its critics, the PNAC promotes American “hegemony” and “full-spectrum” dominance in its own publications featured on its website.[25][26][27][28]
Ebrahim Afsah, in “Creed, Cabal, or Conspiracy – The Origins of the Current Neo-Conservative Revolution in US Strategic Thinking”, published in the German Law Journal, cites Jochen Bölsche’s view that the goal of the PNAC is world dominance or global hegemony by the United States.[29][30] According to Bölsche, Rebuilding America’s Defenses “was developed by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Libby, and is devoted to matters of ‘maintaining US pre-eminence, thwarting rival powers and shaping the global security system according to US interests.’”[29][30]
William Rivers Pitt, editorial director of Progressive Democrats of America, writes, in an editorial published by Truthout.org, that the PNAC is motivated by an imperial agenda of US military expansionism, which will bring negative side effects to ordinary citizens of the United States, while it enriches some industries: “defense contractors who sup on American tax revenue will be handsomely paid for arming this new American empire.”[31]
George Monbiot, a political activist from the United Kingdom, observes: “…to pretend that this battle begins and ends in Iraq requires a willful denial of the context in which it occurs. That context is a blunt attempt by the superpower to reshape the world to suit itself.”[32]
PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan counters such criticism in his statement during a debate on whether or not “The United States Is, and Should Be, an Empire”:
“There is a vital distinction between being powerful–even most powerful in the world–and being an empire. Economic expansion does not equal imperialism, and there is no such thing as “cultural imperialism”. If America is an empire, then why was it unable to mobilize its subjects to support the war against Saddam Hussein? America is not an empire, and its power stems from voluntary associations and alliances. American hegemony is relatively well accepted because people all over the world know that U.S. forces will eventually withdraw from the occupied territories. The effect of declaring that the United States is an empire would not only be factually wrong, but strategically catastrophic. Contrary to the exploitative purposes of the British, the American intentions of spreading democracy and individual rights are incompatible with the notion of an empire. The genius of American power is expressed in the movie The Godfather II, where, like Hyman Roth, the United States has always made money for its partners. America has not turned countries in which it intervened into deserts; it enriched them. Even the Russians knew they could surrender after the Cold War without being subjected to occupation.”[33]
Excessive focus on military strategies, neglect of diplomatic strategies
Jeffrey Record, of the Strategic Studies Institute, in his monograph Bounding the Global War on Terrorism, Gabriel Kolko, research professor emeritus at York University in Toronto, and author of Another Century of War? (The New Press, 2002), in his article published in CounterPunch, and William Rivers Pitt, in Truthout.org, respectively, argue that the PNAC’s goals of military hegemony exaggerate what the military can accomplish, that they fail to recognize “the limits of US power”, and that favoring pre-emptive exercise of military might over diplomatic strategies can have “adverse side effects.”[34][35][31] (Paul Reynolds and Max Boot have made similar observations.[25][26])
The Sydney Morning Herald publishes an English translation of an article published in German in Der Spiegel summarizing former President Jimmy Carter’s position and stating that President Carter:
judges the PNAC agenda in the same way. At first, argues Carter, Bush responded to the challenge of September 11 in an effective and intelligent way, “but in the meantime a group of conservatives worked to get approval for their long held ambitions under the mantle of ‘the war on terror’.” The restrictions on civil rights in the US and at Guantanamo, cancellation of international accords, “contempt for the rest of the world”, and finally an attack on Iraq “although there is no threat to the US from Baghdad” – all these things will have devastating consequences, according to Carter. “This entire unilateralism”, warns the ex-President, “will increasingly isolate the US from those nations that we need in order to do battle with terrorism”.[29]
Though not arguing that Bush administration PNAC members were complicit in those attacks, other social critics such as commentator Manuel Valenzuela and journalist Mark Danner,[36][37][38] investigative journalist John Pilger, in The New Statesman,[39] and former editor of The San Francisco Chronicle Bernard Weiner, in CounterPunch,[40] all argue that PNAC members used the events as the “Pearl Harbor” that they needed––that is, as an “opportunity” to “capitalize on” (in Pilger’s words) in order to enact long-desired plans.[41]
“When the Towers came down,” William Rivers Pitt writes in his editorial in Truthout.org, “these men saw, at long last, their chance to turn their White Papers into substantive policy.”[31]
Inexperienced in realities of war
Former US Congressman Lionel Van Deerlin and UK Labour MP and Father of the House of Commons, Tam Dalyell, have criticized PNAC members for promoting policies which vociferously support an idealized version of war, even though only a handful of PNAC members have served in the military or, if they served, seen combat.[42]
In discussing the PNAC report Rebuilding America’s Defenses (2000), Neil MacKay, investigations editor for the Scottish Sunday Herald, quotes Tam Dalyell: “‘This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks — men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world.’”[43]
Eliot A. Cohen, a signatory to the PNAC “Statement of Principles”, responded in The Washington Post: “There is no evidence that generals as a class make wiser national security policymakers than civilians. George C. Marshall, our greatest soldier statesman after George Washington, opposed shipping arms to Britain in 1940. His boss, Franklin D. Roosevelt, with nary a day in uniform, thought otherwise. Whose judgment looks better?”[44]
PNAC role in promoting invasion of Iraq
Commentators from divergent parts of the political spectrum––such as Democracy Now! and American Free Press, including Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams and former Republican Congressmen Pete McCloskey and Paul Findley––have voiced their concerns about the influence of the PNAC on the decision by President George W. Bush to invade Iraq.[45][46] Some have regarded the PNAC’s January 16, 1998 letter to President Clinton, which urged him to embrace a plan for “the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power,”[19] and the large number of members of PNAC appointed to the Bush administration as evidence that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a foregone conclusion. [37][41][47]
The television program Frontline, broadcast on PBS, presents the PNAC’s letter to President Clinton as a notable event in the leadup to the Iraq war.[48]
Media commentators have found it significant that signatories to the PNAC’s January 16, 1998 letter to President Clinton (and some of its other position papers, letters, and reports) include such Bush administration officials as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Richard Armitage, and Elliott Abrams.[31][36][48][25]
Persons associated with the PNAC
Project directors
[as listed on the PNAC website:]
* William Kristol, Co-founder and Chairman[1]
* Robert Kagan,[1]Co-founder
* Bruce P. Jackson[1]
* Mark Gerson[1]
* Randy Scheunemann[1]
[edit] Project staff
* Ellen Bork, Deputy Director[1]
* Gary Schmitt, Senior Fellow[1][49]
* Thomas Donnelly, Senior Fellow[1]
* Reuel Marc Gerecht, Senior Fellow[1]
* Mitch Jackson, Senior Fellow
* Timothy Lehmann, Assistant Director[1]
* Michael Goldfarb, Research Associate[1]
[edit] Former directors and staff
* Daniel McKivergan, Deputy Director[50]
[edit] Signatories to Statement of Principles
* Elliott Abrams[18]
* Gary Bauer[18]
* William J. Bennett[18]
* John Ellis “Jeb” Bush[18]
* Richard B. Cheney[18]
* Eliot A. Cohen[18]
* Midge Decter[18]
* Paula Dobriansky[18]
* Steve Forbes[18]
* Aaron Friedberg[18]
* Francis Fukuyama[18]
* Frank Gaffney[18]
* Fred C. Ikle[18]
* Donald Kagan[18]
* Zalmay Khalilzad[18]
* I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby[18]
* Norman Podhoretz[18]
* J. Danforth Quayle[18]
* Peter W. Rodman[18]
* Stephen P. Rosen[18]
* Henry S. Rowen[18]‘
* Donald Rumsfeld[18]
* Vin Weber[18]
* George Weigel[18]
* Paul Wolfowitz[18]
[edit] Signatories or contributors to other significant letters or reports[21]
* Elliott Abrams[19][6]
* Kenneth Adelman[51]
* Richard V. Allen[15]
* Richard L. Armitage[19]
* Gary Bauer[15][51]
* Jeffrey Bell[15][51]
* William J. Bennett[19][6][15][51]
* Jeffrey Bergner[19][6][15]
* John R. Bolton[19][6]
* Ellen Bork[51]
* Rudy Boschwitz[15]
* Linda Chavez[51]
* Eliot Cohen[20][15][51]
* Seth Cropsey[15]
* Midge Decter[15][51]
* Paula Dobriansky[19][6]
* Thomas Donnelly[20][15][51]
* Nicholas Eberstadt,[15][51][52]
* Hillel Fradkin[15][51][53]
* Aaron Friedberg[15]
* Francis Fukuyama[19][6][15]
* Frank Gaffney[15][51]
* Jeffrey Gedmin[15][51]
* Reuel Marc Gerecht[15][51]
* Charles Hill[15][51]
* Bruce P. Jackson[15][51]
* Eli S. Jacobs[15]
* Michael Joyce[15]
* Donald Kagan[20][15][51]
* Robert Kagan[19][6][20][15][51]
* Zalmay Khalilzad[19][6]
* Jeane Kirkpatrick[15]
* Charles Krauthammer[15]
* William Kristol[19][6][20][15]
* John Lehman[15][51]
* I. Lewis Libby[20]
* Tod Lindberg[51][54]
* Rich Lowry[51]
* Clifford May[15][51]
* John McCain[55]
* Joshua Muravchik[51]
* Michael O’Hanlon [56][57]
* Martin Peretz[15][51]
* Richard Perle[19][6][15][51]
* Daniel Pipes[51]
* Norman Podhoretz[15][51]
* Peter W. Rodman[19][6][15]
* Stephen P. Rosen[20][15][51]
* Donald Rumsfeld[19][6]
* Randy Scheunemann[15][51]
* Gary Schmitt[20][15][51][49]
* William Schneider, Jr.[19][6][15][51]
* Richard H. Shultz[15][58]
* Henry Sokolski[15]
* Stephen J. Solarz[15]
* Vin Weber[19][6][15]
* Leon Wieseltier[15]
* Marshall Wittmann[15][51]
* Paul Wolfowitz[19][6][20]
* R. James Woolsey[19][6][51]
* Dov Zakheim[20][59]
* Robert B. Zoellick[19][6]
Associations with Bush administration
After the election of George W. Bush in 2000, a number of PNAC’s members or signatories were appointed to key positions within the President’s administration:
Name Position(s) held
Elliott Abrams Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations (2001–2002), Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs (2002–2005), Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy (2005-2009) (all within the National Security Council)
Richard Armitage Deputy Secretary of State (2001-2005)
John R. Bolton Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs (2001-2005), U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (2005-2006)
Dick Cheney Vice President (2001-2009)
Eliot A. Cohen Member of the Defense Policy Advisory Board (2007-2009)[60]
Seth Cropsey Director of the International Broadcasting Bureau (12/2002-12/2004)
Paula Dobriansky Under-Secretary of State for Global Affairs (2001-2007)
Francis Fukuyama Member of the The President’s Council on Bioethics (2001-2005)
Zalmay Khalilzad U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (11/2003 – 6/2005), U.S. Ambassador to Iraq (6/2005 – 3/2007) U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (2007-2009)
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States (2001-2005) under Dick Cheney
Richard Perle Chairman of the Board, Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee (2001-2003)
Peter W. Rodman Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security (2001-2007)
Donald Rumsfeld Secretary of Defense (2001-2006)
Randy Scheunemann Member of the U.S. Committee on NATO, Project on Transitional Democracies, International Republican Institute
Paul Wolfowitz Deputy Secretary of Defense (2001-2005)
Dov S. Zakheim Department of Defense Comptroller (2001-2004)
Robert B. Zoellick Office of the United States Trade Representative (2001-2005), Deputy Secretary of State (2005-2006), 11th President of the World Bank (2007-2009)
[edit] See also
* American Century
* A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm
* Committee for the Liberation of Iraq
* Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
* Office of Special Plans
* The Power of Nightmares
[edit] Notes
1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m “About PNAC”, newamericancentury.org, n.d., accessed May 30, 2007: “Established in the spring of 1997, the Project for the New American Century is a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership. The Project is an initiative of the New Citizenship Project (501c3); the New Citizenship Project’s chairman is William Kristol and its president is Gary Schmitt.”
2. ^ Home page of the Project for the New American Century, accessed May 30, 2007.
4. ^ a b c The PNAC was often identified as a “neo-con” or “right-wing think tank” in profiles featured on the websites of “left-wing” and “progressive” “policy institute” and “media watchdog” organizations, which were highly critical of it; see, e.g., “Profile: Project for the New American Century”, Right Web (International Relations Center), November 22, 2003, accessed June 1, 2007.
5. ^ See, e.g., op-eds by PNAC co-founders William Kristol and Robert Kagan, “Bombing Iraq Isn’t Enough”, The New York Times January 30, 1998 and “A ‘Great Victory’ for Iraq”, The Washington Post, February 26, 1998, online postings, newamericancentury.org, n.d., both accessed May 30, 2007.
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Elliott Abrams, et al.,Letter to Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott, May 28, 1998, newamericancentury.org, web.archive.org, accessed May 30, 2007.
7. ^ William Kristol, “How to Attack Iraq”, The Weekly Standard, November 16, 1998, editorial, online posting, newamericancentury.org, web.archive.org, accessed May 30, 2007.
8. ^ “ENR H.R. 4655: Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Enrolled as Agreed to or Passed by Both House and Senate)”, 105th Congress of the United States, thomas.loc.gov (THOMAS online database at the Library of Congress), January 27, 1998, accessed June 1, 2007.
9. ^ “MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS, FROM: MARK LAGON, SUBJECT: Iraq”, January 7, 1999, newamericancentury.org, web.archive.org, accessed May 30, 2007.
10. ^ For example, William Kristol, “Liberate Iraq”, The Weekly Standard, May 14, 2001, online posting, newamericancentury.org, accessed May 28, 2007.
11. ^ Neil MacKay, “Former Bush Aide: US Plotted Iraq Invasion Long Before 9/11″, The Wisdom Fund, Scottish Sunday Herald January 11, 2004, accessed June 1, 2007.
12. ^ Gary Schmitt, “State of Terror: War by any other name . . .”, The Weekly Standard November 20, 2000, newamericancentury.org, web.archive.org, accessed June 1, 2007.
13. ^ Gary Schmitt, “MEMORANDUM: TO: OPINION LEADERS, FROM: GARY SCHMITT, SUBJECT: Iraq – al Qaeda Connection”, August 6, 2002, newamericancentury.org, web.archive.org, accessed June 1, 2007.
14. ^ Gary Schmitt, “MEMORANDUM: TO: OPINION LEADERS, FROM: WILLIAM KRISTOL, SUBJECT: Iraq and the War on Terror”, August 21, 2002, newamericancentury.org, web.archive.org, accessed June 1, 2007.
15. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq William Kristol, et al., Letter to George W. Bush, September 20, 2001, newamericancentury.org, n.d., accessed June 1, 2007.
16. ^ Tom Barry, “Special Report: Rise and Demise of the New American Century”, International Relations Center, June 28, 2006, accessed May 29, 2007.
17. ^ a b c Paul Reynolds, “End of the Neo-con Dream: The Neo-conservative Dream Faded in 2006″, BBC News, December 21, 2006, accessed May 29, 2007.
18. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa Elliott Abrams, et al., “Statement of Principles”, June 3, 1997, newamericancentury.org, accessed May 28, 2007.
19. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t “Open Letter to President Bill Clinton”, January 16, 1998, accessed May 28, 2007.
20. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century”. September 2000. Archived from the original on 24 January, 2009. http://www.webcitation.org/5e3est5lT. Retrieved on May 30, 2007.
21. ^ a b At the end of the list of “Project Participants”, on page 90 of Rebuilding America’s Defenses, there appears the following statement: “The above list of individuals participated in at least one project meeting or contributed a paper for discussion. The report is a product solely of the Project for the New American Century and does not necessarily represent the views of the project participants or their affiliated institutions.”
22. ^ For additional information and projected building schedule [as updated]), see CVX aircraft carrier, Federation of American Scientists, updated October 15, 2000, accessed June 1, 2007.
23. ^ In its emphasis on developing and deploying “Global Missile Defenses”, the PNAC renews its call for the United States to abandon the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, from which the U.S. withdrew in 2002.
24. ^ Why Another Defense Review
25. ^ a b c Paul Reynolds, “Analysis: Power Americana: The US Appears to Be Heading to War with Iraq Whatever Happens, with Implications for the Future Conduct of American Foreign Policy”, BBC News, March 2, 2003, accessed May 29, 2007.
26. ^ a b Max Boot, “Doctrine of the ‘Big Enchilada’”, The Washington Post, October 14, 2002, online posting, newamericancentury.org, accessed May 31, 2007.
27. ^ William Kristol and Robert Kagan, “Reject the Global Buddy System”, The New York Times, October 25, 1999, online posting, newamericancentury.org, accessed May 31, 2007.
28. ^ Robert Kagan, “Multilateralism, American Style”, The Washington Post, September 13, 2002, online posting, newamericancentury.org, accessed May 31, 2007.
29. ^ a b c Jochen Bölsche, “Bushs Masterplan – Der Krieg, der aus dem Think Tank kam”, Der Spiegel March 4, 2003; English translation, “This War Came from a Think Tank”, trans. Alun Breward, published in Margo Kingston,”A Think Tank War: Why Old Europe Says No”, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 7, 2003, accessed May 28, 2007.
30. ^ a b Ebrahim Afsah, “Creed, Cabal, or Conspiracy – The Origins of the Current Neo-Conservative Revolution in US Strategic Thinking”, The German Law Journal, No. 9 (September 2003), n. 5, citing Jochen Bölsche, “Bushs Masterplan – Der Krieg, der aus dem Think Tank kam”, Der Spiegel March 4, 2003.
31. ^ a b c d William Rivers Pitt, “Of Gods and Mortals and Empire” (“Editorial: Truthout Perspective”), Truthout.org, February 21, 2003, accessed May 31, 2007.
32. ^ George Monbiot, “A Wilful Blindness” (“Those who support the coming war with Iraq refuse to see that it has anything to do with US global domination”), monbiot.com (author’s website archives), reposted from The Guardian, March 11, 2003, accessed May 28, 2007.
33. ^ Qtd. by Gary Schmitt, “Response to Asmus and Pollack”, newamericancentury.org, July 24, 2003, quoting Kagan’s remarks in “A New Atlantic Initiative Debate” on “The United States Is, and Should Be, an Empire”, held at the American Enterprise Institute on July 17, 2003.
34. ^ Jeffrey Record, Bounding the Global War on Terrorism, online posting via washingtonpost.com, January 12, 2004, accessed May 30, 2007.
35. ^ Gabriel Kolko, “”The Perils of the Pax Americana”, CounterPunch, January 15, 2003, accessed May 30, 2007.
36. ^ a b Qtd. in the film Hijacking Catastrophe, discussed in “Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire” (Transcript), Democracy Now!, September 10, 2004, accessed May 29, 2007.
37. ^ a b Manuel Valenzuela, “The Enemy Within: The NeoCon Hijacking of America”, axisoflogic.com, December 15, 2003, rpt. Scoop, December 18, 2003, accessed June 1, 2007; provides URL to Axis of Logic.
38. ^ Cf. Manuel Valenzuela, “Cabal of Criminality”, OpEdNews.com December 1, 2005, and the author’s page for Manuel Valenzuela, OpEdNews.com, both accessed June 1, 2007.
39. ^ John Pilger, “John Pilger Reveals the American Plan”, New Statesman, December 16, 2002, accessed June 1, 2007.
40. ^ Bernard Weiner,”A PNAC Primer: How We Got Into This Mess”, CounterPunch May 28, 2003, accessed June 1, 2007.
41. ^ a b Christopher Bollyn, “America ‘Pearl Harbored’: Fanatical Warhawks Drafted Blueprint for Bloody U.S. World Domination Years Ago”, American Free Press, December 24, 2002, accessed June 1, 2007: “The cabal of war fanatics advising the White House secretly planned a ‘transformation’ of defense policy years ago, calling for war against Iraq and huge increases in military spending. A ‘catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor’—was seen as necessary to bring this about.”
42. ^ Lionel Van Deerlin, Commentary, SignOnSanDiego.com, September 4, 2002, accessed June 1, 2007.
43. ^ Neil MacKay, “Lets (sic) Not Forget: Bush Planned Iraq ‘Regime Change’ Before Becoming President”, Scottish Sunday Herald, September 15, 2002, rpt. Information Clearing House (ICH), accessed June 1, 2007.
44. ^ Eliot A. Cohen, “Hunting ‘Chicken Hawks’”, The Washington Post, September 5, 2002: A31, rpt. sais.jhu.edu (School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)), accessed June 1, 2007.
45. ^ Amy Goodman, “The New Pearl Harbor: A Debate On A New Book That Alleges The Bush Administration Was Behind The 9/11 Attacks”, Democracy Now!, May 26, 2004, accessed May 31, 2007. (Interviews with guests David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 and professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology at the Claremont School of Theology, in Claremont, California; and Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst at Senior Research Associates, in Summerville, Massachusetts.
46. ^ “What They Said: Former Congressmen Assess U.S. Foreign Policy:, inc. “A Republican’s Case Against George W. Bush”, by Paul Findley, and “The Need to Refocus Our Policy Priorities in The War on Terror”, by Paul N. “Pete” McCloskey”, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA), April 2004: 20-25, accessed June 1, 2007.
47. ^ Margie Burns, “Connecting the Dolts: Warriors Behind the Scenes Coached the Stars On Stage”, The Washington Spectator, May 1, 2004, accessed June 1, 2007. (1 of 3 pages.)
48. ^ a b “Chronology: The Evolution of the Bush Doctrine”, The War Behind Closed Doors. Frontline, WGBH-TV (Boston, Massachusetts), Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), online posting February 20, 2003, accessed June 1, 2007. (“Home page” includes menu of links to “Analysis”, “Chronology”, “Interviews”, and “Discussion” as well as link to streaming video of the program.)
49. ^ a b Gary J. Schmitt is currently Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Director of its program in Advanced Strategic Studies.
50. ^ “Daniel McKivergan”, newamericancentury.org, web.archive.org, accessed May 30, 2007.
51. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag William Kristol, et al.,Letter to President G.W. Bush, April 3, 2002, newamericancentury.org, accessed May 30, 2007.
52. ^ Nicholas Eberstadt is Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute.
53. ^ Hillel Fradkin is Director, Center for Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World, and Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute.
54. ^ Tod Lindberg is a Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Editor of its publication Policy Review, founded by the Heritage Foundation.
55. ^ A Complete List of PNAC Signatories and Contributing Writers
56. ^ Letter to Congress on Increasing U.S. Ground Forces, January 28, 2005, newamericancentury.org, accessed August 2, 2007.
57. ^ Second Statement on Postwar Iraq, March 28, 2003, newamericancentury.org, accessed August 2, 2007.
58. ^ Richard H. Shultz, Jr. is Professor of International Politics at Tufts University and Director, International Security Studies Program, which includes the Jebsen Center for Counterterrorism Studies at The Fletcher School.
59. ^ Letter to President Clinton on Kosovo and Milosevic, The Project for the New American Century, September 1998, accessed May 30, 2007.
60. ^ Glenn Kessler, “Rice Names Critic Of Iraq Policy to Counselor’s Post”, The Washington Post, March 2, 2007: A05, accessed June 1, 2007.
References
External links
* Project for the New American Century Website – Its home page includes a menu of links to full texts of its “Statement of Principles”; its history (“About PNAC”); its “Publications/Reports” and “Letters/Statements”; and various related documents
Further reading and media programs: Analysis and criticism
* “An American Empire?” Talk of the Nation. National Public Radio. Broadcast September 10, 2001. Accessed May 29, 2007. (Audio link.) [Inc. interviews with three guests: Tom Donnelly, Senior Fellow, Project for the New American Century; Joseph Nye, Dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and Victor Davis Hanson, former Professor of Greek, California State University, Fresno.
* Barry, Tom, "Special Report: Rise and Demise of the New American Century". International Relations Center June 28, 2006. Accessed May 29, 2007.
* Donnelly, Thomas. RealPlayer Media. BBC News. Video file of PNAC member Donnelly advocating war in Iraq (September 2002).
* Gonyea, Don. "The U.S. As an Empire, Revisited". National Public Radio. Broadcast September 10, 2002. National Public Radio. September 10, 2002. Accessed May 29, 2007. Update of program with same guests broadcast the previous year on same day (September 10, 2001). (Cf. "An American Empire?", as listed above.)
* Jones, Terry. "Could Tony Blair Look At the Internet Now, Please? Why Is the British Prime Minister the Only Person Who Seems to Be Unaware of the US Hawks' Agenda'". The Observer, March 2, 2003. Accessed May 29, 2007.
* –––. "Why Look in the Crystal Ball?" The Observer, May 4, 2003. Accessed May 29, 2007.
* Kristol, William. NPR.org Interview with PNAC Chairman. National Public Radio. Broadcast April 1, 2003.
* Meacher, Michael. "Comment: This War On Terrorism Is Bogus: The 9/11 Attacks Gave the US an Ideal Pretext to Use Force to Secure Its Global Domination". The Guardian, September 6, 2003. Accessed May 29, 2007.
* Olbermann, Keith. "Critique of Administration policy in Iraq: MSNBC Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment, links to video and text; references Robert Draper’s biography “Dead Certain.” Accessed September 5, 2007.
* "Profile: Project for the New American Century". Right Web (International Relations Center), November 22, 2003. Accessed June 1, 2007.
* "Project for the New American Century", Information Clearing House (ICH) (Article No. 1665)
* "Project for the New American Century: Info and Sources". OpEdNews.com, n.d. Accessed June 1, 2007. [Includes sources of information about the PNAC, its members, and their letters.]
* Reynolds, Paul. “Analysis: Power Americana: The US Appears to Be Heading to War with Iraq Whatever Happens, with Implications for the Future Conduct of American Foreign Policy”. BBC News, March 2, 2003. Accessed May 29, 2007.
* –––. “End of the Neo-con Dream: The Neo-conservative Dream Faded in 2006″. BBC News, December 21, 2006. Accessed May 29, 2007.
* The War Behind Closed Doors. Frontline. WGBH-TV (Boston, Massachusetts). Public Broadcasting Service. (Features menu of links to “Analysis”, “Chronology”, “Interviews”, and “Discussion” as well as link to streaming video of the program.) Online posting. pbs.org February 20, 2003. Accessed June 1, 2007.
* Vann, Bill. “Meacher: Terrorism a Pretext for Conquest: British Official Charges US ‘stood down’ on 9/11″. World Socialist Web Site, September 8, 2003. [Comments on article by Meacher, listed above.]
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century”
Categories: Neoconservative think tanks | Imperialism | New Right (United States) | 1997 establishments | Foreign policy and strategy think tanks in the United States | Political and economic think tanks in the United States | Conservative organizations in the United States | Conservative think tanks based in the United States | Causes and prelude of the 2003 Iraq conflict
Charles Paul “Chuck” Blahous III (born 1963) is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, focusing on Social Security, and a former (2001-2007) Special Assistant to US President George W. Bush for Economic Policy within the National Economic Council whose Deputy Director he was in 2007-2008. He lives in Rockville, Maryland.
Blahous was born in 1963 in Alexandria, Virginia, USA, the second of three children of Charles Paul Blahous II of Czech descent and Marjorie Alice Robertson of Scot/English ancestry. He was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Princeton University in 1985, and a Ph.D. in computational quantum chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in in 1989.
Between 1989 and 1996, Blahous worked as a legislative aide to Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming; he was his Congressional Science Fellow in 1989-1990 and Legislative Director in 1994-1996 (sponsored by the American Physical Society). After Simpson’s retirement, Blahous served from 1996 to 2000 as a Policy Director for Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. From June 2000 through February 2001 he served as the Executive Director of the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security. From 2001 to 2007, he served as a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, during which time he also served as Executive Director of the bipartisan President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security.[1] From 2007 to 2008, he held the position of the Deputy Director of the National Economic Council. After the end of George W. Bush’s second term in office in January 2009, Blahous joined the Hudson Institute as a Senior Fellow and continues his research there.[2]
His ideas about Social Security reform issues are explained in Reforming Social Security for Ourselves and Our Posterity, a book he published in September 2000. Presently[update], Blahous is working on another book, to be called Social Security: The Unfinished Work.[3]. Apart from politics, he is also a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and has published several articles on baseball in renowned American baseball journals. His publications cover also federal entitlements, demographics and chemistry.
References
1. ^ Personnel Announcement as Executive Director of the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security at whitehouse.gov
2. ^ Outgoing Deputy Director of the National Economic Council Chuck Blahous to Join Hudson Institute
3. ^ Social Security Fix Demands Honest Numbers: Charles P. Blahous
[edit] External links
* Hudson Insitute Biography for Chuck Blahous
* Biography of Charles P. Blahous at whitehouse.gov (archival copy)
* Biography from The Wall Street Journal at PolicyBytes.org
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Blahous”
Categories: United States presidential advisors | Princeton University alumni | University of California, Berkeley alumni | 1963 births | Living people
Larry Lindsey is President and Chief Executive Officer of The Lindsey Group. He has held leading positions in government, academia, and business. Prior to forming The Lindsey Group, he held the position of Assistant to the President and Director of the National Economic Council at the White House and was the chief economic adviser to candidate George W. Bush during the 2000 Presidential campaign.
Dr. Lindsey also served as a Governor of the Federal Reserve System from 1991 to 1997, as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Economic Policy during the first Bush Administration, and as Senior Staff Economist for Tax Policy at the Council of Economic Advisers during President Reagan’s first term. Dr. Lindsey served five years on the Economics faculty of Harvard University and held the Arthur F. Burns Chair for Economic Research at the American Enterprise Institute. From 1997 until 2001 he was Managing Director of Economic Strategies, a global consulting firm.
Dr. Lindsey earned his A.B. Magna Cum Laude from Bowdoin College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He was awarded the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award by the National Tax Association and named the Citicorp Wriston Fellow for Economic Research at the Manhattan Institute. He is the author of numerous articles and three books: The Growth Experiment, Economic Puppet Masters and What a President Should Know…but Most Learn Too Late.
Marc Sumerlin
Marc Sumerlin is Managing Director and co-founder of The Lindsey Group. Previously, Mr. Sumerlin served as Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council for President George W. Bush. Prior to the White House, Mr. Sumerlin was the Economic Policy Advisor at the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign where he advised then-Governor Bush on economic matters. He has also worked as a Senior Analyst and Assistant Economist to the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, a Research Assistant to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and an Accountant with KPMG Peat Marwick.
Mr. Sumerlin holds Master of Arts in Applied Economics from Johns Hopkins University and has a Master of Public Policy from Duke University, where he was a Senator Jacob Javits Fellow. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Georgetown University with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. He is a member of Beta Gamma Sigma, the honor society for business school students, and is a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of numerous articles and the co-author of What a President Should Know…but Most Learn Too Late.
Tim Adams
Tim Adams is Managing Director of The Lindsey Group. Previously, Mr. Adams served as Under Secretary of Treasury for International Affairs. As Under Secretary, Mr. Adams was the Administration’s point person on international financial issues, including exchange rate policy, G-7 meetings, and IMF and World Bank issues. He regularly interacted with counterparts in key emerging markets including China, India, and Brazil and traveled extensively throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
Prior to assuming his post as Under Secretary, Mr. Adams had served as Chief of Staff to both Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and Treasury Secretary John Snow. He was Policy Director for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign from November 2003 through the end of 2004 and also served as a full time member of the Bush-Cheney campaign staff in Austin in the 2000 campaign. Mr. Adams also served in the White House under the first President Bush at the Office of Policy Development.
In 1993, Mr. Adams co-founded the G-7 Group, a Washington-based advisory firm. He later headed their Washington operation as Managing Director.
Mr. Adams holds a B.S. in Finance and a Masters in Public Administration and an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Kentucky.
Andrew D. Sacher
Andrew Sacher is an Associate at The Lindsey Group. Prior to joining The Lindsey Group, Mr. Sacher was an economist at Caxton Associates where he worked closely with the portfolio managers analyzing the U.S. economy and government policies. Prior to that, Mr. Sacher worked at the National Economic Council, where he developed internal models of the Social Security and tax systems.
Mr. Sacher graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard with a Bachelors of Science in Economics.
Sally Katzen (born November 22, 1942) is a law scholar and teacher who has served in the United States Government in numerous capacities. Katzen is currently a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Project’s Agency Review Working Group responsible for the Executive Office of the President and government operations agencies.[1]
She is also currently a Lecturer at Michigan Law School and teaches American Government at the ‘Michigan in Washington Program’.
Government
Sally Katzen was a United States government official during the Clinton Administration, serving as Deputy Director for Management in the Office of Management and Budget from 1999 through 2001, as Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council during 1998 and 1999, and as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 through 1998. Katzen also served in the Carter Administration as General Counsel and then as Deputy Director for Program policy of the Council on Wage and Price Stability in the Executive Office of the President.
She has served on National Academies of Science panels and is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
Biography
Katzen was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School, and graduated magna cum laude from Smith College and the University of Michigan Law School, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Law Review. She was the first female to hold such a position for a major law review. Following graduation from law school, she clerked for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Prior to joining the Clinton Administration, she was a partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, specializing in regulatory and legislative matters. She has worked extensively in the field of administrative law in her personal law practice and in other professional activities. In 1988, she was elected Chair of the Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice of the American Bar Association; she has held various other offices in the ABA, including serving two terms as a Washington delegate to the House of Delegates. She served as a Public Member and Vice-Chairman of the Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law Center. In 1990 she was elected President of the Women’s Legal Defense Fund.
She has also taught at Smith College, George Mason University School of Law, the University of Michigan Law School, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Johns Hopkins University. This spring she will be teaching at The George Washington University Law School.
Personal Life
Sally Katzen is married to U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit judge Timothy B. Dyk, and they have one child, Abraham Benjamin Dyk.
Daniel Tarullo is a professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and a member of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve Board since January 28th, 2009. His areas of specialty are international economic regulation, banking law, and international law.
Education
Tarullo graduated summa cum laude in 1977 from the University of Michigan Law School. He received an A.B. from Georgetown University in 1973 and an M.A. at Duke University in 1974.
Career
Tarullo worked in the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department and as Special Assistant to the Undersecretary of Commerce. He taught at Harvard Law School early in his career and later served as Chief Counsel for Employment Policy on the staff of Senator Edward M. Kennedy while practicing law in Washington.
He served in the Clinton Administration as Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and later as Assistant to the President for International Economic Policy where he was responsible for coordinating the international economic policy of the administration. He was a member of the National Economic Council and the National Security Council. He was also Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs from 1993 to 1996.
Tarullo served as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and as a senior fellow at American Progress. During 2005 he was the chair the Economic Security group of the Princeton Project on National Security.
On December 18 2008, President Elect Barack Obama nominated Tarullo to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.
Articles and editorial work
Editorial
* Runs the bi-monthly World Economic Update, a forum sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations for debate on the U.S. and global economies among leading economists.
* Serves on the editorial advisory board of The International Economy and the Advisory Committee of Transparency International.
Articles
* Reforming the World Bank and IMF, August 2, 2007
* Laboring for Trade Deals: Trade Agreements and Labor Rights, March 28, 2007
* The Case for Reviving the Doha Trade Round, January 8, 2007
References
***
v • d • e
Current members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System of the United States
Ben Bernanke (chairman) • Donald Kohn (vice-chairman) • Randall Kroszner • Kevin Warsh • Elizabeth A. Duke • Daniel Tarullo •Vacant
Seal of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve
***
v • d • e
Obama Administration personnel
‹ The template below is being considered for deletion. See templates for deletion to help reach a consensus. ›
***
v • d • e
Cabinet and cabinet-level
Office Name Term
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 2009 – present Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner 2009 – present
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates† 2006 – present Attorney General Eric Holder 2009 – present
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar 2009 – present Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack 2009 – present
Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke* 2009 – present Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis 2009 – present
Secretary of Health and
Human Services 2009 – present Secretary of Education Arne Duncan 2009 – present
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan 2009 – present
Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood 2009 – present
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu 2009 – present Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki 2009 – present
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano 2009 – present
Vice President Joe Biden 2009 – present White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel 2009 – present
Director of the Office of Management and
Budget Peter Orszag 2009 – present Administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency Lisa Jackson 2009 – present
Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice 2009 – present Chair of the Council of Economic
Advisers Christina Romer 2009 – present
Director of the Office of National
Drug Control Policy Gil Kerlikowske* 2009 – present Trade Representative Ron Kirk* 2009 – present
*Senate-confirmation pending. †Remained from previous administration. •Below line: Granted Cabinet rank although not automatically part of the Cabinet.
***Executive Office of the President
Office Name
Senior Adviser to the President
Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs
Public Liaison Valerie Jarrett
Senior Adviser to the President Pete Rouse
Deputy White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina
Staff Secretary Lisa Brown
Personal Secretary Katie Johnson
Personal Aide to the President Reggie Love
Cabinet Secretary Chris Lu
Chief of Staff to the First Lady Jackie Norris
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs
White House Social Secretary
Special Assistant to the President Desirée Rogers
Assistant to the President for Economic Policy
(Director of the White House National Economic Council) Lawrence Summers
Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy
(Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council) Melody Barnes
Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner
Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget Rob Nabors
Chair of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board Paul Volcker
Director of Speechwriting Jon Favreau
Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
(National Security Adviser) Jim Jones
Director of Public Liaison Christina Tchen
Director of White House Office of Health Reform Nancy DeParle
Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Heather Zichal
Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisers on
Science and Technology Eric Lander
Deputy White House Counsel with a Focus on Domestic Policy and Ethics Cassandra Butts
Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs for the Senate Shawn Maher
Special Assistant to the President
Director of Communications for the First Lady Camille Johnston
Deputy Press Secretary for the First Lady Semonti Mustaphi
White House Director of Presidential Personnel Don Gips
Associate Counsel to the President Susan Sher
***
Office Name
Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs Phil Schiliro
Deputy White House Chief of Staff Mona Sutphen
Senior Adviser to the President David Axelrod
White House Counsel Greg Craig
Director of the White House Office of Political Affairs Patrick Gaspard
Assistant to the President for Communications
(White House Director of Communications) Ellen Moran
Deputy Assistant to the President for Communications
(Deputy White House Director of Communications) Dan Pfeiffer
Deputy Chief of Staff to the First Lady Melissa Winter
Deputy Chief of Staff to the First Lady David Medina
Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy Gil Kerlikowske*
Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy
(Deputy Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council) Heather Higginbottom
White House Director of Scheduling and Advance Alyssa Mastromonaco
Staff Director and Chief Economist of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers Austan Goolsbee
Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Cecilia Muñoz
Director of the White House Military Office Louis Caldera
Chief of Staff to the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations
Public Liaison Michael Strautmanis
Deputy Director of White House Office of Health Reform Jeanne Lambrew
Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality Nancy Sutley
Assistant to the President for Science and Technology
(Director of the White House Office of Science
and Technology Policy)
Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisers on
Science and Technology John Holdren
Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisers on
Science and Technology Harold Varmus
Deputy Cabinet Secretary Liz Sears Smith
Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs for the House of Representatives Dan Turton
Press Secretary for the First Lady Katie
McCormick
Lelyveld
Director of the Office of Management and Administration Bradley Kiley
Chief Performance Officer/
Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget TBA
Director of White House Office of Urban Policy Adolfo Carrion
***
Other
Office Name
Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission Mary Schapiro
Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Daniel Tarullo
Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere
(Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Jane
Lubchenco
Solicitor General Elena Kagan
Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Dawn Johnsen
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Leon Panetta
Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn
***
Office Name
Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Gary Gensler
Administrator of the Small Business Administration Karen Mills
Deputy Attorney General David Ogden
Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli
Surgeon General Sanjay Gupta*
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg
Jacob Lew
Special Assistant to the President Eugene Kang
Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services William Corr
* Although identified by sources to the press, selection awaits official announcement by the White House.
***
Office of the Vice President
Office Name
Chief of Staff to the Vice President Ron Klain
Counsel to the Vice President Cynthia Hogan
Counselor to the Vice President Mike Donilon
Assistant to the Vice President for Intergovernmental Affairs
Public Liaison Evan Ryan
Assistant to the Vice President
Director of Communications Jay Carney
Deputy Chief of Staff to the Vice President Alan Hoffman
Deputy National Security Adviser to the Vice President Brian McKeon
Director of Communications for the Second Lady Courtney O’Donnell
***
Office Name
Chief of Staff to the Second Lady Catherine Russell
Director of Administration for the Office of the Vice President Moe Vela
Domestic Policy Adviser to the Vice President Terrell McSweeny
Chief Economist and Economic Policy Adviser to the Vice President Jared Bernstein
Press Secretary to the Vice President Elizabeth Alexander
Deputy Press Secretary to the Vice President Annie Tomasini
Director of Legislative Affairs Sudafi Henry
Residence Manager and Social Secretary for the Vice President and the Second Lady Carlos Elizondo
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tarullo”
Categories: American businesspeople | Duke University alumni | Federal Reserve System governors | Clinton Administration personnel | Obama Administration personnel
* This page was last modified on 28 February 2009, at 10:12.
When the bankers appeared before Congress a couple days ago, the moment that a moratorium on foreclosures was requested, their demeanor changed. There was a genuine hesitation and then the CEO of Bank of America, Ken Lewis insisted on a closed time period in which it would be in effect.
This tells me that the bankers did not want to stop the foreclosure process and that may be why they are dragging their feet about helping people to stay in their homes and avoid foreclosure.
What if there is an income stream coming directly from the foreclosure process that would be unavailable to the banks in any other manner? It would then be in their best interest as a business to pursue full foreclosures on each of the properties rather than anything else.
What if the “lenders mortgage insurance” whose premiums are being paid either by the property purchaser directly or through higher interest rates being paid by them, is actually paying out the full principle of these residential properties at the previous appraised value or at the value of the actual mortgage? That wouldn’t happen if the banks worked with people to arrange repayment of the mortgage in some reasonable or reappraised package. And, since property values have declined, this would be the only way that the mortgage lenders would receive the previous high values for these properties.
On top of that, what if the banks derive further benefit from the foreclosure process by writing off whatever depreciated value of the mortgage that did not go to its maturity? That would offset other profits, taxes, fees and tax liabilities which would represent real money to their corporations’ bottom line, also.
And, the auction process restores a certain cash value directly and immediately to the bank as an assured income stream to help recapitalize their extraordinary losses from other risky ventures and toxic assets.
If these are even part of the income stream coming from the process of foreclosures into the banks’ coffers, then it is little wonder that they are pursuing the process of foreclosure rather than working with individual families to keep their homes. It wouldn’t serve the banks’ interests to do anything else as it is set up now.
I would guess that the lenders mortgage insurance would not be paying anything to cover the mortgages if a deal is struck with the home buyers.
Beyond that, there was a note yesterday by someone on the cable news business coverage that the bankers don’t want to write down their CDOs and other toxic assets, mortgage-backed securities, default swaps and structured investment vehicles (SIVs). Although a degree of write-downs have occurred, is it possible that they are sitting on the remaining portion that would require substantial write-downs if the government at taxpayers’ expense don’t buy them out of the mess?
That means, these banks and investment bankers, mortgage lenders and other holders of these financial products are operating with the knowledge that sooner or later, a more sizable write-down on these assets will have to occur. The faster they can get an income stream to cover these losses, the better their chances of survival will be in their estimation of it. But, maybe it only looks that way from where they are sitting.
It also means that they are essentially insolvent, even with the additional US government bailout funds, purchases of toxic assets up till now, TARP funds and availability at the discount window for huge sums of moneys. And, even with the substantial purchases of commercial paper that the US government has been making for them since several months ago – it still isn’t enough to reasonably account for their balance sheets’ disparities.
They are insolvent and they know it. That is why the black hole they have become is eating its way through everything the government is giving them which the taxpayers are providing and pursuing every opportunity to foreclose properties and sucking in everything else they can get as well.
It is why they have raised interest rates on credit cards, raised fees, added fees and found ways to hinder people’s ability to pay a reasonable minimum on time (by changing due dates and minimum payments beyond reason.) I would guess they are protected by some kind of insurance that pays the full amount if and when it is not paid by the borrower, just as the mortgages are covered for them.
My guess is that the CDO’s and other credit derivatives will have brought down the entire system by the time they are done. What it means for me is that, I and my children and grandchildren along with everyone in America like us will be among those who suffer for it because I can almost guarantee that the bankers and Wall Street groups that created this mess won’t even notice the difference in their worlds, aside from an odd and uncomfortable question or two from the news media or Congressional committee members. They are without consequence from their actions while each and everyone of us are paying for it.
- cricketdiane, 02-13-09
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Lenders mortgage insurance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Private Mortgage Insurance)
Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI), also known as Private mortgage insurance (PMI) in the US, is insurance payable to a lender or trustee for a pool of securities that may be required when taking out a mortgage loan. It is insurance to offset losses in the case where a mortgagor is not able to repay the loan and the lender is not able to recover its costs after foreclosure and sale of the mortgaged property.[1]
IMF Data and Projections portal for United States – current and historic data
***
United States foreclosures are apparently a bankers / bank income maker for 2009 – US economic crisis facts, figures and statistics
(my note from the date of the information above February 2009)
***
My note – (today, 05-21-10)
Well, now we know why the bankers weren’t willing to change any of the foreclosure processes – they were making money on it by foreclosing in about fourteen different ways – and all those people and families and communities that were and continue to be destroyed by it – school children uprooted, families and communities destroyed – churches and scout troops and every other community resource leveled and now over 6,000 houses torn down in Detroit while people are homeless and the same thing happening in community after community across America where our tax moneys and money intended to help homeowners stay in their homes simply paid for their homes to be bought after foreclosure and sitting empty to be bulldozed to the ground – also with our tax money.
In one California neighborhood, brand new houses were razed to the ground because they couldn’t be sold for half the market value – banks wouldn’t lend on them since they were likely overpriced even at that rate. And thousands upon thousands of people in America hungry, unemployed, without home or community – literally homeless and lost to an entire three generations again that loom out before us. It is insane.
And, Mr. Mozilla along with all the others who caused it and profited from it are living the high life where money flows like water wherever they are and our tax dollars paid for every personal loss they may have had to endure so they wouldn’t have to -
I’m tired. That’s enough for now. There is more here already than anyone would read – and I never did find the information about the DNI – which is across over five documents and I might have to find it from the paper documents sitting around here to start to know which dates I was naming the files with them on the computer. Need a better system, I suppose.
- cricketdiane, 05-21-10
***
And the live feed from the oil leaks (two still there) gushing into the Gulf of Mexico are absolutely buggared from the massively heavy traffic – but the pix do not look like 70,000 barrels a day is close to right either / it is too low an estimate also – there is a dark cloud of oil next to the white methane that is evidently beyond all imagination – damn.
Carl Henric Svanberg’s biography
Emergency and Spill Response Preparedness
Rusty Costanza / The Times-PicayuneWorkers clean oil from Fourchon Beach on Saturday.
The first thought is prompted by the endless parade of Louisiana politicos who can’t seem to get enough face time lately showing their concern for the potentially horrendous harm oil poses to our coastal wetlands, all the while stressing how important that habitat is to our economy, culture and future. . . .
Friday May 07, 2010 23:29
by Patricia McKenna –<
