Entries from October 2009 ↓

Great Power Confrontation in the Indian Ocean: The Geo-Politics of the Sri Lankan Civil War

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Global Research, October 23, 2009

by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

The support and positions of various foreign governments in regards to the diabolic fighting between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan military, which cost the lives of thousands of innocent civilians, says a great deal about the geo-strategic interests of these foreign governments. The position of the governments of India and a group of states that can collectively be called the Periphery, such as the U.S. and Australia, were in support of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) or Tamil Tigers, either overtly or covertly. Many of these governments also provided this support tacitly, so as not to close any future opportunity of co-opting Sri Lanka after the fighting was over.

In contrast, the governments of a group of states that can jointly be called Eurasia as a collective entity, such as Iran and Russia, supported the Sri Lankan government. The polar nature of the support by Eurasia and the Periphery for the two different combating sides in the Sri Lankan Civil War betrays the scent or odour of a much broader struggle. This is a struggle that extends far beyond the borders of the island of Sri Lanka and its region.

Why is this so? Much of the answer to such a question has to do with the formation of a growing alliance in the Eurasian landmass against the international domination of the U.S. and its allies. This Eurasian alliance was formed on the basis of the growing cohesion between Moscow, Tehran, Beijing, and their allies that has seen the animation of the Primakov Doctrine. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a security body with real military dimensions that has been called “the NATO of the East” within some foreign policy circles is a real symbol of this geo-political dynamic. In 2009, the last chapter of the Sri Lankan Civil War was very much a theatre within this process.

Enter the Chinese Dragon: The start of Sri Lankan Estrangement from the U.S. and India

2007 was a milestone year for Sri Lanka. On March 12, 2007, Colombo agreed to allow the Chinese to build a massive naval port on its territory, at Hambantota. An agreement on the construction of the port was finalized and signed by the Sri Lankan Port Authority with two Chinese companies, the China Harbor Engineering Company and the Sino Hydo Corporation. [1] The Sri Lankan government’s decision was mostly formed on the basis of economic benefits and Chinese support to end the fighting on their island.

What followed was the estrangement of Sri Lanka from the U.S. and India. It has been a U.S. policy to encircle China and to prevent it from building any ports or bases outside of Chinese territory. As a result, the U.S. shortly cut its military assistance to the Sri Lankan military. [2] Indian support for the Tamil Tigers also increased through pressure on Colombo to make Sri Lanka a federal state with autonomy for the Tamils. Beijing threw its political weight behind Colombo and also began sending large arms shipments to Sri Lanka. As an additional comparison, Chinese aid to Sri Lanka in 2008 was about a billion U.S. dollars, while U.S. aid was only 7.4 million U.S. dollars. [3]

It is from 2007 onward that Sri Lanka became a part of the alliance in Eurasia through its agreement with China and its subsequent estrangement from the U.S. and India. By the end of 2007, Sri Lanka had entrenched itself in the geo-strategic trenches with Russia, Iran, and China. These reasons and not humanitarian concern(s) are the primary rationale for support provided, in one way or another, to the Tamil Tigers by the governments of India, the U.S., Britain, Japan, Australia, Canada, and the European Union.

Sri Lankan Military ties to the Moscow-Beijing-Tehran Axis

Chinese military ties with Sri Lanka started in the 1990s, but it was in  2007 that Chinese and Sri Lankan military relations started to flower. According to Brahma Chellaney of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, India: “China’s arms sales [were] the decisive factor in ending the military stalemate [in the Sri Lankan Civil War.]” [4] In April, just one month after the 2007 agreement between the Sri Lankan Port Authority and both the China Harbor Engineering Company and the Sino Hydo Corporation, China signed a major ammunition and ordnance deal with the Sri Lankan military. [5] Beijing also transferred, free of charge, several military jets to the Sri Lankan military, which were decisive in defeating the Tamil Tigers. [6]

Iran and Russia also began to rapidly develop their military ties with Sri Lanka after Colombo agreed to host the Chinese port in Hambantota. In this regard, Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran all have cooperation and military agreements with Sri Lanka. The visits of Sri Lankan leaders and military officials to Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing in 2007 and 2008 were all tied to Sri Lankan preparations to militarily disarm the Tamil Tigers with the help of these Eurasian states.

China, Russia, and Iran all ultimately helped arm the Sri Lankan military before the last phase of the Sri Lankan Civil War. For the Eurasian alliance the aim of ending the Sri Lankan Civil War was to ensure the materialization of the Chinese port and to prevent any possibility of regime change in Colombo, which would ensure the continuity of a Sri Lankan government allied to China, Russia, and Iran. Along with Sri Lankan officials, the governments of Iran, Russia, and China believed that unless the Tamil Tigers were neutralized as a threat that the U.S. and its allies, in possible league with India, could make attempts to overthrow the Sri Lankan government in order to nullify the Sri Lankan naval port agreement with China and to remove Sri Lanka from the orbit of Eurasia. In this context, they all threw their weight behind Sri Lanka during the fighting in 2009 and in the case of China and Russia at the U.N. Security Council.

Associated Press (AP) reported on December 23, 2007:

In the wake of the United States Senate slashing military assistance to Sri Lanka, the Russian Federation has stepped in to fill the vacuum, sending the first ever top level military delegation to Colombo to discuss military cooperation. A high level Russian military delegation led by [Colonel-General] Vladimir Moltenskoy last week met Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Army Commander [Lieutenant-General] Sarath Fonseka and Air Force Commander, Roshan Goonathilake and had visited several major military installations in the island. [Colonel-General] Molpenskoy, a veteran combat General in the Russian Army was formerly the operational commander of the Russian Forces in Chechnya. [7]

The Russian Federation, China, and Iran also all face their own separatist movements like Sri Lanka. All four nations see these movements as being supported by outside players for geo-strategic reasons. In 2007, not only did Moscow, like China, move in to fill the vacuum of military supplies left by the U.S. government after Sri Lanka agreed to build the Chinese naval port; the Kremlin also sent Colonel-General Vladimir Moltenskoy who oversaw the Russian military campaign against the separatist movement in Chechnya. Moltenskoy arrived in Sri Lanka as a military advisor to Colombo.

The aid of Tehran was also crucial for the Sri Lankan military. The Island, a Sri Lankan news source reported: “Iran had come to Sri Lanka’s rescue (…) when an LTTE [or Tamil Tiger] offensive had threatened to overwhelm the [Sri Lankan] army in Jaffna [P]eninsula. Sources said that several plane loads of Iranian [military] equipment were made available immediately after Sri Lanka sought assistance from the Iranian leadership.” [8] The Island also reported, before the arrival of a high level Iranian military delegation to Sri Lanka in 2009, that Iran, which is “widely believed to [sic.; be] a leading strategist in” the use of tactical boats, and Sri Lanka “have over the year developed strategies relating to small [tactical] boat operations.” [9]

The extent of the help Iran, Russia, and China provided to Sri Lanka also included economic support within the framework of the Sri Lankan military preparations leading to the assaults on the Tamil Tigers in 2009. The Hindu on September 21, 2009 published an article partially revealing the depth of the level and importance of the help that Sri Lanka had been receiving from Iran alone:

Iran has extended by another year the four-month interest-free credit facility granted to Sri Lanka after President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s visit to Iran in November 2007, state-run Daily News reported on Monday.

It said that consequent to talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian government granted the facility from January 2008 to August 31.

In 2008, Sri Lanka imported crude oil under this facility to the tune of $1.05 billion, nearly all of its requirements, easing the pressure on the country’s foreign exchange requirements in a year of significance for the government’s war with the LTTE [or the Tamil Tigers].

An additional three-month credit package at a concessionary rate of interest was also accommodated in Sri Lanka’s favour on September 3 [2009] at a meeting between the representatives of the countries in Tehran. [10]

Chinese Naval Interests and Energy Security Concerns and Sri Lanka

Why a Chinese port in Sri Lanka? Why in Sri Lanka of all places? Sri Lanka is situated at a vital maritime corridor in the Indian Ocean. This position is at a vital juncture in the maritime shipping paths of the Indian Ocean that is important for trade, security, and energy supplies. This is why Moscow, Tehran, and Beijing stand behind Colombo.

The Chinese naval port under construction and at Hambantota is part of a New Cold War to secure energy routes. [11] Most of the energy supplies going to Asia pass the southern tip of Sri Lanka.  It is for this reason that the Chinese have included Sri Lanka within their project of establishing a chain of naval bases in the Indian Ocean to protect their energy supplies coming from the Middle East and Africa. Myanmar (Burma) is also part of this project and in many cases the pressure on the governments in both states is linked to their agreements to build Chinese ports with Beijing.

In league with China, Iran also has naval ambitions in Sri Lanka and the broader Indian Ocean as part of an initiative to protect the maritime routes between itself and China. China and Iran have both been expanding their naval forces. This is part of a growing trend. The seas and bodies of water around all Eurasia from the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Persian Gulf, and the the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal, the South China Sea, and the East China Sea have all been under heavy militarization over the years. In no point in history have the oceans seen such large numbers of warships at one time. This militarization process on the waves of Eurasia is ultimately tied to controlling movement and encircling the Eurasian landmass in a coming showdown.

Sri Lanka enters the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)

In 2009, Sri Lanka joined the SCO, as did Belarus. The entry of Sri Lanka into the Eurasian organization was announced at the SCO conference in Yekaterinburg, where the light was on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad following the election riots in Iran. While the SCO put its weight behind the re-election of the Iranian President, Sri Lanka thanked the organization for its collective support against the Tamil Tigers.

Both Sri Lanka and Belarus, which is also a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), entered the SCO as dialogue partners. [12] The entry of Sri Lanka into the SCO as a dialogue partner confirms its strategic ties and alliance with Russia, China, and Iran. Dialogue partner status in the SCO puts Sri Lanka under the umbrella of China and Russia. Although it is not spelled out in Article 14 of the SCO Charter, a dialogue partner can request protection and defensive aid under such a relationship. Dialogue partners are also financially tied to the SCO, which facilitates their integration into the coming Eurasian Union that will emerge from the cohesion of Russia, China, Iran, and their partners.

Sri Lanka and the Broader Conflict in Eurasia

In the so-called Western World double-standards were applied to the final chapter of the Sri Lankan Civil War. While the U.S. and its allies supported the military actions of Georgia to secure its territorial integrity by bringing South Ossetia and Abkhazia under its control through force in 2008 they did not do this in regards to Sri Lanka in 2009. In essence the actions of the Sri Lankan and Georgian governments were almost exactly the same: establishing government control of break-away territory through the use of military force. Yet, the reaction of the U.S. and its allies were contrastingly different in both cases. Georgia received support and Sri Lanka did not.

In addition, Georgia was legally obligated under international agreement not to use any military force to solve its internal conflict, but Sri Lanka was not. In legal terms, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, before the conflict, also enjoyed autonomous statuses within the framework of Georgia as a polity. This in no means justifies any of the deaths in Sri Lanka or the fighting in Georgia, but it does illustrate that double-standards were applied.

The reason that the U.S. and its allies supported Georgia and not Sri Lanka is tied to the encirclement of Eurasia. If there was no Chinese port being built in Sri Lanka or any ties between the Sri Lankan government and China the reaction of the U.S. government would have been much different. Most probably the American reaction would have been the same as when Israel acts against Palestinian civilians or when Saddam Hussein, as an American ally, gased the Iraqi Kurds.

The people of Sri Lanka from the Tamils to the Sinhalese are in the cross-hairs of a much larger and all enveloping global struggle. In the scenario of a possible conflict with the U.S. and the Periphery the maritime route that passes by Sri Lanka would be vital as an energy lifeline to the Chinese. The U.S. and its allies would ensure that this sea route is less secure for the Chinese by taking Sri Lanka out of the orbit of China and its allies. Even the balkanization of Sri Lanka could lead to a Tamil state that would most likely be allied to the U.S. and India, which may grant them military bases that would be in close proximity to Chinese positions in Sri Lanka.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) specializing in geopolitics and strategic issues.

NOTES

[1] Sri Lankan gov’t, Chinese companies sign port building agreement, Xinhua News Agency, March 13, 2007.

[2] US out, enter Russia, Associated Press (AP), December 23, 2007.

[3] Jeremy Page, Chinese billions in Sri Lanka fund battle against Tamil Tigers, The Times (U.K.), May 2, 2009.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] B. Muralidhar Reddy, Iran extends credit facility to Sri Lanka, The Hindu, September 21, 2009.

[8] Shamindra Ferdinando, High level Iranian military delegation due in Colombo, The Island, October 9, 2009.

[9] Ibid.

[10] US out, enter Russia, Op. cit.

[11] Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, The Globalization of Military Power: NATO Expansion, Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), May 17, 2007.

[12] B. Muralidhar Reddy, SCO dialogue partner status for Sri Lanka, The Hindu, July 18, 2009.

CIA Invests in Software Firm Monitoring Blogs

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/22/cia_invests_in_software_firm_monitoring
Wired magazine has revealed the investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency has invested in a software firm called Visible Technologies that specializes in monitoring social media sites, including blogs, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. Wired reporter Noah Shachtman writes, “America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates—even check out your book reviews on Amazon.”

JUAN GONZALEZ: “America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates—even check out your book reviews on Amazon.” That’s the lead sentence to a new article on the website of Wired magazine titled “US Spies Buy Stake in Firm that Monitors Blogs, Tweets.”

The article reveals how the investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency has invested in a software firm called Visible Technologies that specializes in monitoring social media sites, including blogs, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon.

AMY GOODMAN: Noah Shachtman joins us here in our firehouse studio. He broke the story. He’s a contributing editor at Wired and editor of “Danger Room,” the magazine’s national security blog.

OK, lay it out for us, Noah. What did you find?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: So, the CIA, in 1999, set up an investment arm called In-Q-Tel that sort of makes investments in technologies that the spy agencies would like to see grow. And their latest investment is in this company called Visible, which basically takes blog posts and takes Twitter updates and takes comments on YouTube videos and sort of sorts them out and decides which people have the most weight in the blogosphere, which people are the most influential, and also filters out, you know, certain key words, decides whether certain posts are hostile or positive. And it’s basically a way for them to sort of keep track on what’s going on in Twitter, on the blogs, etc., etc.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And who does this firm normally supply this information to?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Usually to companies like Microsoft. Right now they’re tracking the buzz on their Windows 7 release. They also do the work for Hormel, the processed meat company. When PETA was going after Hormel for some of their business practices, they kept track on the sort of anti-processed food activists. So it’s usually corporate clients, although there’s sort of a political spin to some of the work they do, as well.

JUAN GONZALEZ: So, in essence, they’re sort of like an intelligence operation for the corporate world on a normal—

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Yeah. They would say they try to spot trends and keep tabs on things, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: But In-Q-Tel, you say, is the investment arm of the CIA. I think a lot of people would just be surprised by the CIA having an investment arm.

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Yeah, that’s right. In 1999, the CIA set up this sort of separate agency that would make investments on behalf of the intelligence agencies. It was a way to sort of develop certain technologies without going through the formal contracting process. Remember, back in 1999, that was like sort of the height of the dotcom boom. And there were a lot of these business incubators that were growing small businesses into something bigger. And In-Q-Tel was the CIA’s attempt to do the same thing.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Is it reporting it’s making money for the government?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: I don’t—it’s a not-for-profit—

JUAN GONZALEZ: Oh, not-for-profit, I see.

NOAH SHACHTMAN: —company, but I do believe that it has—many of its investments have panned out.

AMY GOODMAN: So, explain how Visible works. You talk about how it crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day.

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain exactly. And then, how do people protect their privacy?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Well, first they protect their privacy by not tweeting or not blogging. I mean, that’s the way they would have to protect their privacy, or to do it within a closed password-protected system. If you leave it out there, not only is the government going to read it, but Microsoft and Google just signed deals with Twitter and Facebook yesterday, where all the—all your tweets and all your blog updates will be very easily searchable by either Microsoft’s Bing search engine or by Google.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s the deal?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: The deal is basically that all your Facebook updates will be sort of fed into Microsoft’s new search engine, and people will be able to see what you post on Facebook or Twitter, or what have you.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, of course, for the CIA, given the fact—the recent reports of how tweets and other social networking are used around the world sometimes to give advance notice on popular insurrections or—

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Mm-hmm.

JUAN GONZALEZ: For the CIA, this would be a sort of a normal direction for them to take, if they want to collect more intelligence.

NOAH SHACHTMAN: It would be. They’re probably already doing so, but just in a less elegant way. So this is probably—for them, they view it as a smarter way to get information they’re already interested in. The question is whether it’s aimed out at international audiences or whether it’s aimed in at domestic ones.

AMY GOODMAN: Noah Shachtman, you’ve also written about the US military using a fleet of unmanned spy blimps to keep tabs on would-be enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq.

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain.

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Well, you know, the US military in Afghanistan—I just got back from there in September—is very interested in what’s called ISR—Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. The idea is to see as much of what’s going on in Afghanistan as possible and to hear as much of what’s going on in cell phone conversations, or what have you. And so, these blimps are another tool to do it. There’d be cameras and listening equipment installed in these blimps in Afghanistan. It’s another way to kind of keep tabs on what’s going on.

AMY GOODMAN: And tell us what’s going on in New Jersey. In New Jersey, you have written about the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division in Lakehurst.

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Oh, oh, yeah, right, right, right. So, in New Jersey, there is a—the Navy’s got a sort of R&D arm, and they’re looking to upgrade what’s in those spy blimps and really kind of update the surveillance equipment, make it much more powerful.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to get back for a second to this—you just happened to mention that remark that depending on whether this is being done, the social networking intelligence is being mined, internationally or domestically. Can the CIA conduct surveillance of Americans at home here, in terms of their communications?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Well, they’re not supposed to. But, I mean, given the recent history of the US intelligence agencies looking inward as well as outward, it’s tough to imagine they wouldn’t. Also, remember, on the internet, it’s very tough to discern whether it’s a purely international conversation or whether a purely domestic conversation.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you say, “In-Q-Tel says it wants Visible to keep track of foreign social media, and give spooks ‘early-warning detection on how issues are playing internationally,’” but that tool can just be used inward?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: I mean, obviously, right? It’s the internet. There’s no—there’s no hard national borders, and all this stuff is already out in the public. So it’s a little hard to fathom that there wouldn’t at least be the temptation to use it domestically.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s the military’s policy on soldiers using Twitter?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: The policy right now is up for grabs, but there should be a declared policy in the next, I would say, two to three weeks. And surprisingly, the Pentagon looks to be having a fairly liberal policy when it comes to Twitter and Facebook and other social networks. There was a lot of confusion over the years about whether soldiers could use it or not. Some commands banned it, others allowed it to happen. But it looks like the Pentagon is actually going to come out with something that says, “Hey, look, use YouTube and use Twitter, but just do it smart.”

JUAN GONZALEZ: But that has, certainly during the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war now, opened up a whole new level of communication that didn’t exist before, of ordinary soldiers being able to get information out to their family or to people here in the United States that normally would not happened in previous wars.

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And in this period of confusion where it wasn’t clear what the regulations were, a lot of times insecure commanders would sort of slap down their soldiers if they printed something that maybe was a little bit subversive or, you know, didn’t quite hew to the party line. But hopefully these new regulations are going to sort that out, and you really should be able to have those soldiers take to YouTube, take to Twitter, you know, with a great deal of freedom.

AMY GOODMAN: Back to what you said at the beginning, saying the uses for Visible before, Visible tracking animal rights activists’ online campaigns against the company that was Hormel?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: When it was working for Hormel. So, I see here you’ve got trillions of dollars being spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, actually trillions. And it seems like it’s very ripe and open money that can’t be tracked. It can also develop the spy technology under the guise of just war.

NOAH SHACHTMAN: That’s true, although the Pentagon also has plenty of money to—independent of the war costs, to develop spy technology. And the intelligence agencies, remember, their budgets are largely a black box. We don’t know how much they spend. And so, you know, there’s plenty of places where money for spy technology can be funded out of.

AMY GOODMAN: And this issue of how Hormel used Visible, now In-Q-Tel buying into it?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, I don’t know too much more than the fact that they used it. I don’t have a lot of details. But, you know, the way Visible works is it kind of grabs all the blogs and all the tweets out there, then it sorts for certain key words, it sorts for a sentiment about whether things are positive or negative, and then it also sorts based on which bloggers and which tweeters are really important or not. And you can sort of see over time how a conversation develops. Technology then allows companies or the government to respond directly within a blog or within a Facebook page to those people. So, who knows? The commenter—the next commenter on your blog might be the CIA.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we will leave it there. Noah Shachtman, I want to thank you for being with us. Noah Shachtman is a contributing editor at Wired magazine, and he’s editor of “Danger Room,” the magazine’s national security blog.

danger room

danger room/2009/10/spies

From, Democracy Now with New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/22/toxic_waters_regulatory_absence_allows_chemical

JuAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg. For the past several months, he has been working on a series titled “Toxic Waters,” examining the worsening pollution in the nation’s water systems. Charles Duhigg joined us last month to discuss how chemical companies have violated the Clean Water Act more than 500,000 times in the last five years. Most of the violations have gone unpunished, with state regulators taking significant action in just three percent of all cases.

Since then, he has written articles focusing on how coal-fired power plants and large farms are threatening the nation’s drinking water. The Times revealed that 313 coal-fired power plants have violated the Clean Water Act since 2004, but 90 percent of those plants were not fined or otherwise sanctioned. No federal regulations specifically govern the disposal of power plant discharges into waterways or landfills.

AMY GOODMAN: As for farms, runoff from all but the largest farms is essentially unregulated under the Clean Water Act. Agricultural runoff is the single largest source of water pollution in the nation’s rivers and streams. Nearly 20 million Americans fall ill each year from waterborne parasites, viruses or bacteria, including those stemming from human and animal waste.

Well, Charles Duhigg of the New York Times joins us here in our firehouse studio.

We welcome you to Democracy Now!

CHARLES DUHIGG: Thank you so much for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: Your articles are also supported by an editorial today in the New York Times about the significance of the 1972 Clean Water Act, how it has to be improved, and the significance of your pieces. Start off by talking about Allegheny Energy, the coal-fired plant in Masontown, Pennsylvania.

CHARLES DUHIGG: This is one of the largest and, for a long time, one of the dirtiest coal-fired power plants in the United States. And over the last couple of years, we’ve made great advances in how we clean air pollution. So Allegheny, this plant which is called Hatfield’s Ferry, as well as a number of other plants across the nation, have installed these things called scrubbers. And what scrubbers are is it’s basically they spray water and chemicals through the chimneys and take out a lot of the air pollution before it escapes into the sky.

The problem is that when you spray that stuff in there, and sort of the water and the pollution collects at the bottom, you have to do something with it. And what we found is that, increasingly, that pollution and waste is being dumped into nearby rivers and lakes, or it’s being put into large ponds or landfills, where it can also seep through the ground into drinking water supplies. So what the concern is, is that we’re moving pollution perhaps just from the air to the water, and we’re not really solving the problem as robustly as the nation should.

JUAN GONZALEZ: But then, in terms of being able to regulate these plants in terms of water discharges, what has the federal government done?

CHARLES DUHIGG: Well, the federal government—there are solutions out there. There are systems called zero discharge emission systems that would prevent any pollution from making it into the water or the air. But the federal government has not created any rules for power plants, and this has been a big issue. Way back in 2000, the EPA was poised, and in fact had drafted a rule, to specially regulate pollution, water pollution and other types of pollution, from power plants, but the energy industry pushed back pretty significantly. That rule was shelved, and there’s been no rules designed for power plants since then.

Now, Lisa Jackson, who’s the new head of the EPA under President Obama, has said that by the end of this year she will issue new rules on water pollution from power plants and that she’s going to make a determination whether the waste that comes out of power plants should be considered hazardous waste. If it’s considered hazardous waste, a whole new set of rules will be applied to it. But as for right now, there’s no special rules for power plants.

AMY GOODMAN: You write that only one in forty-three power plants across the nation must limit how much barium that they dump into nearby waterways—talk about the significance of barium—and that 90 percent of hundreds of coal-fired power plants have violated the Clean Water Act and were not fined or otherwise sanctioned. But start with the barium.

CHARLES DUHIGG: That’s exactly right. Barium is a chemical. The waste from power plants is essentially what is left over when you burn coal. And as we all know, coal is a relatively dirty mineral. It’s very dense. When you burn it, a lot of bad stuff comes off, a lot of minerals—barium, arsenic, other minerals. Barium is one that the government has said causes health problems. It can affect your organs. It can cause skin rashes and other problems. Arsenic is another mineral that we see a lot in the byproduct, the waste from coal. Because the Clean Water Act doesn’t say you must limit certain types of chemicals, a lot of power plants emit barium, arsenic and other things, but there’s no limit in the law on how much they can put out. And so, as a result, they can essentially dump as much as they want into nearby rivers. And power plants are usually by rivers, because they need a lot of water to produce energy.

Now, the point that you raise is that a lot of regulators have tried to use the Clean Water Act to regulate and rein in the pollution, the water pollution, that comes out of power plants. But the Clean Water Act, like any law, is only as good as you enforce it. And what we found by looking at our records—and we had built this big database—was that hundreds and hundreds of plants have violated their Clean Water Act permit and have never been punished for it. Or if they have been punished, they’ve been punished to the tune of about, you know, couple thousand dollars or maybe $20,000, when these are firms that bring in billions of dollars in profits.

JUAN GONZALEZ: You mentioned arsenic. And in some cases, you found, in Ohio and North Carolina, that there were releases of arsenic as much as eighteen times above federal limits?

CHARLES DUHIGG: Well, actually, this comes from EPA data. And what they found was that near landfills where power plants have dumped the waste from generating electricity, arsenic has seeped into the groundwater. And you’re exactly right, sometimes the level of arsenic detected in the groundwater was eighteen times higher than the federal limit. They said that for some populations, they were at an exposed cancer risk that was 2,000 times higher than the approved—than what EPA says we should be exposed to.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s an EPA report itself.

CHARLES DUHIGG: That’s EPA data, right.

AMY GOODMAN: Says that people living near some power plant landfills have a 2,000 times higher rate of cancer?

CHARLES DUHIGG: Risk of cancer.

AMY GOODMAN: Risk of cancer.

CHARLES DUHIGG: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: Than federal health standards.

CHARLES DUHIGG: Right. This is a huge—and the reason why we wrote about power plants and why we’re talking about power plants today is, power plants are the single largest source of toxic pollution in the nation. I mean, when you think about it, it’s kind of hard to believe, because we assume that garbage or, you know, sort of what comes out of our house, but it’s actually power plants. They burn coal all day long. Coal is—has a lot of byproducts. So, creating special rules for power plants would make sense, because it is such a big source of toxic emissions, more than chemical plants, more than concrete plans, anything else.

AMY GOODMAN: And the power of the coal lobby?

CHARLES DUHIGG: The power of the coal lobby and the energy lobby is fairly significant. They—I mean, it’s one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, DC. Now, that being said, it’s important to always remember, everything that we do in a large part is powered because of coal. America is the Saudi Arabia of coal. When we’re able to plug in our Blackberry and turn on the lights and not think about it, it’s because we have so much coal and because we burn it. But there are very serious environmental byproducts from that, and if they’re not regulated, people suffer.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Another issue that you’ve been touching on in your articles has been farming and the impact especially of factory farms on drinking water. You went to Morrison, Wisconsin—

CHARLES DUHIGG: Right.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —where there’s 41,000 dairy cows in Brown County. And you talked to Lisa Barnard, who says, “Sometimes it smells like a barn coming out of the faucet.”

CHARLES DUHIGG: Yeah.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What are these factory farms doing to the drinking water?

CHARLES DUHIGG: Well, one of the biggest—these large farms, one of the biggest byproducts is, cows produce a lot of manure. And particularly now, because cows are fed high-protein grains, they produce liquid manure. You’ve got to do something with this manure. You’ve got to sweep it away and put it to—dispose of it. And so, what a lot of farmers do is they spray it on fields, and they use it to grow corn that they feed to the cows, and so there’s kind of a nice cycle there. But when you have so many cows producing so much manure—and each cow produces the amount of manure in a year equivalent to about nineteen people, so in Brown County, which is a relatively sparsely populated county, they produce as much manure as a huge, huge city—they have to do something with it. And so, they spray it on the ground. Some people—some regulators there feel that they spray too much of it on the ground. The soil can only absorb so much of the manure. And so, when the soil reaches capacity, the bacteria and the other bad stuff in the manure filters through into drinking water supplies. And then, when people go to their wells, they drink water that smells like manure.

There was a woman—one woman told me a story of—she was giving her six-month-old daughter a bath, and she only breastfed her. She didn’t drink any water, but the infant sucked the dish rag that had bacteria in it and ended up being hospitalized. A field across the street has spread manure a couple days earlier. Particularly in winter months—Wisconsin is very cold. In winter months the ground freezes. They have to continue applying the manure, because they’ve got to put it someplace. And then if there’s an early thaw, it just can seep through the ground very, very quickly.

AMY GOODMAN: And you write that nineteen-and-a-half million Americans fall ill each year as a result of the waterborne parasites, the viruses, the bacteria.

CHARLES DUHIGG: That’s right. That was a study that was done that tried to estimate how many people become ill.

AMY GOODMAN: Twenty-million people?

CHARLES DUHIGG: I mean—and when you think about it, most of us who do get sick, we probably don’t realize it, right? You go out, you have an upset stomach for a couple days, and you say, “Oh, I must have eaten something bad the other night.” And you don’t even think about your water, because we don’t assume that water contains bad things in America. And for most of us, it’s just a couple days’ inconvenience. But for some populations—the elderly, the young, people with diseases or people with immune problems—these diseases, this exposure can be enormously dangerous. And over a lifetime, as you’re exposed to other things, to arsenic, to carcinogens that are in water, they end up impacting our health in ways that we probably don’t understand.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And what were, from what you can tell, the efforts of the Bush administration over the past eight years to deal with some of these problems, as I’m sure EPA scientists and other government scientists were discovering the spread of the problem?

CHARLES DUHIGG: The Bush administration was notably inactive on environmental issues. Now, I will say the reductions in enforcement of the Clean Water Act started under the Clinton administration. So this isn’t a purely Democrat versus Republican issue. That being said, and this has been fairly well documented by my colleagues in other papers as well as at the New York Times, the EPA under the Bush administration was notably inactive on enforcing a lot of environmental regulations.

Lisa Jackson, the new head of the EPA, has said that reversing this is a huge priority for her. And so, we’re seeing a lot more science-based standards coming into the agency. But the problem is that, you know, it takes a long time to build up a robust system. I mean, you can—it’s like, you know, building a newspaper or building a company. It takes a long time to build it up. You can destroy it in just a couple of years. And so, we’re probably a couple years away from really having the powerful regulation that the Clean Water Act depends on to survive.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Charles Duhigg, you’ve done this series of pieces. Summarize again—you were on for the first pieces, but summarize the trajectory you’ve taken in each of these pieces—

CHARLES DUHIGG: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: —and what you’ve looked at of the nation’s water.

CHARLES DUHIGG: We started by looking at a chemical named atrazine, which is a pesticide, that is the most prevalent pesticide in American waters, and basically looked at whether the EPA was regulating this strongly enough. There’s a lot of new science that says that even at very small doses this can cause —atrazine is related to, or seems somehow connected to, birth defects. And so, the basic question there was, is the scientific system at the EPA working? And some people suggest no.

Then we looked at the Clean Water Act and whether it’s being enforced. And we found that the Clean Water Act is being violated hundreds of thousands of times every year and that those aren’t being punished. And so, as a result, the law doesn’t have any teeth.

Then we started looking at the biggest sources of pollution. We looked at farms and power plants, which we’ve discussed. We’re going to be doing a piece on sewer overflows, which is a huge source of water pollution.

And then, finally, later this year we’ll look at the Safe Drinking Water Act and issues around that law and whether it’s working. And we’re just going through the data now, but there’s a lot of reasons to believe that in the last ten or fifteen years the world has been transformed, in terms of the chemicals that we can now use and that we have at our disposal, in terms of how dangerous they are at very, very small concentrations, and that these laws that were created in the 1970s have not been updated to deal with these new threats.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, in fact, I recall when I did a lot of research on the toxic releases as a result of the World Trade Center collapse, there’s thousands and thousands of chemicals for which there are no safety limits that the federal government has.

CHARLES DUHIGG: That’s exactly right.

JUAN GONZALEZ: There’s only a very few number of them that are actually regulated in that sense.

CHARLES DUHIGG: That’s absolutely right. And a number—I mean, what’s interesting is that we have lived through the greatest chemical revolution in the history of the world. Right? I mean, we’ve really solved—and this has been wonderful in many, many ways. We’ve solved how to create new chemicals and have used that power to really improve the world. But chemicals are dangerous things. And the more complex the chemical, the more dangerous it is at smaller and smaller concentrations. So a lot of these laws, a lot of these protections that were created the 1970s that dealt with arsenic or barium or things that we knew were dangerous and have existed for thousands of years or since the world began, those laws were designed for those chemicals, and they weren’t designed for these new things that are emerging.

So, as a result, the EPA system, which is called TSCA, for analyzing new chemicals and analyzing the threats they represent, is completely broken. The GAO has said that it’s broken. Congress has said that it’s broken. Lisa Jackson has said that it’s broken. They’re trying to redesign that system, but there are thousands and thousands of chemicals that essentially the government has never analyzed, which are part of our daily life and are part of our daily environment.

AMY GOODMAN: And the power of the lobbyists, I go back to, because we see it with the health insurance industry now, we see it operating overtime and overdrive in Washington, DC. In 2000 they had a tremendous effect when the Bush administration was going to issue stricter controls. Their lobbying efforts gutted that, scuttled that. What makes you think the same won’t happen now?

CHARLES DUHIGG: Well, I think what’s happening now is, there’s been a lot of meetings. And, you know, no industry wants more regulation. It just creates more cost, right? I mean, I think anyone who works in any industry thinks, oh, we do a pretty good job, we don’t need the government coming in. So it’s understandable that every industry would fight back against regulation.

What’s happened in the last year—and part of this is just President Obama has been elected, they see the writing on the wall, and they know they have to change, but also a realization on the part of industry itself that there has to be a cop at the table. Is it—the chemical manufacturers and the industry has actually sat down with a number of the environmental groups to say we need a more rational system here. So I think there’s a lot of reasons to believe that we’re going to see reform, in part because the EPA has said reform’s coming, whether you want it or not, but in part because the chemical industry has said, “We either have to get on the bus, or we’re going to be left behind.” And there seem to be a lot of good faith efforts on their part to come up with a system.

Now, obviously they want to influence, right? You want to have a seat at the table, because otherwise you don’t get to say what the outcome looks like. But the environmentalists that I respect, that I speak to, say that they have these conversations, and they think that there is a real dialogue happening.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you for being with us. And as you head back to the Times, how is the mood there with a hundred people about to be—

CHARLES DUHIGG: Yeah, it’s—you know, it’s—

AMY GOODMAN: —pushed out of the newsroom? How many do you have in the newsroom?

CHARLES DUHIGG: I think we have almost—over 1,200, I believe.

AMY GOODMAN: And a hundred are going to be axed by December?

CHARLES DUHIGG: A hundred are going to be either voluntarily or take a buyout. You know, it’s—this project that we’ve done—and we’ve spoken about this before—we spent ten months building a database, and there were probably seven or eight people involved in it.

AMY GOODMAN: More extensive than the EPA.

CHARLES DUHIGG: More extensive than the EPA. And one of the things that readers said that was really encouraging is they said, you know, “Thank goodness the Times is doing this type of work. It’s expensive.” We’re living in this new world, and we’re trying to figure out how the newspaper can be economically viable in this new world. For anyone who’s watching who thinks that what the Times does is important, it’s important to—we don’t do a very good job of saying, “Buy a subscription,” but if you buy a subscription, you’re supporting the Times, or the Journal or Democracy Now! or anything. You have to economically support the media institutions that you believe in. And what we’re seeing right now is that if people forget to support those institutions, we have to fire journalists.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And the reality is that there are virtually no media companies left in America that could spare seven people to work for months and months—

CHARLES DUHIGG: That’s exactly right.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —on one project to be able to come up with a story.

CHARLES DUHIGG: Yeah, I mean, there’s a hand—it used to be, every major city used to have a newspaper that did genuine investigative reporting. Now there’s, you know, two or three newspapers in this nation that really do it. And you don’t know the stories you don’t see, right? Nobody wakes up and says, “Oh, gosh, there was an important story on water, but nobody wrote it.” It’s very important that people support—we’re so used to, at this point, getting our media for free over the internet and saying it’s such a wonderful world that we don’t have to pay for the news. But when you don’t pay for the news, people suffer, or the journalists suffer. And I know that public radio is dealing with this. You guys are dealing with this. We’re dealing with this. If readers and viewers believe in media, buy a subscription, send in donations.

AMY GOODMAN: And thanks also for helping to explain why people regularly now, every week, are being arrested throughout places like—states like West Virginia, being arrest protesting, for example, mountaintop removal, coal power plants, etc.

CHARLES DUHIGG: Yeah. And there’s no one to cover it.

AMY GOODMAN: Charles Duhigg, we want to thank you for being with us.

CHARLES DUHIGG: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Award-winning reporter for the New York Times, the author of the new series about the worsening pollution in American waters. It’s called “Toxic Waters.”

The Breaking of a Nation

The Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex: A Deadly Fairy Tale

by Dr. Doug Henderson and Dr. Gary Null
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15758

It has been a particularly bad month for the pharmaceutical industrial complex in its ongoing litigation’s in American courts. Among the main pharmaceutical headlines, Merck’s Gardasil vaccine for HPV, now being widely administered to pre-teens, was found to be linked to amyltrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease; following a $1.4 billion fine in promoting one of its blockbuster drugs Zyprexa off-label, deceptive correspondence was uncovered by Eli Lilly gaming the system again by promoting another one of its drugs, Cymbalta, off-label for fibromyalgia; AstraZeneca was fined $160 million for scamming the Medicaid system in Kentucky after being fined $215 million for ripping off Alabama; Glaxo lost a Pennsylvania trial for failing to warn doctors and pregnant women of the dangers of its antidepressant drug Paxil related to birth defects; and Pfizer scored a record-breaking fine of $2.3 billion for illegally marketing several drugs over the years: Bextra, Zyvox, Geodon and Lyrica. These kinds of charges, among the many others, have become a habit for drug makers for the past dozen years.

When we speak of the pharmaceutical industry complex, it does not refer solely to private drug manufacturers. The complex, like a Matrix that holds captive the health of the nation in medical slavery by its own design and manipulation, is a consortium, a spiders’ web woven with financial attachments throughout the medical profession. In addition to the pharmaceutical and medical device firms, this complex includes every government health agency—the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and or course the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—as well as drug lobbying firms now employing a large number of former Congresspersons, insurance and HMO companies, all of the leading professional medical associations such as the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the majority of medical schools and their research departments who are heavily funded by drug money, many of the most prestigious medical journals, and ultimately all of this filtering downward to the physicians who diagnose our illnesses and prescribe our medications and treatments.

America is rightly regarded as having led much of the world in many qualitative innovations in all fields. That reputation is duly deserved. However, there is a new dynamic at work that is causing this reputation to be challenged. We are a nation that prides itself in our humanity, our sense of fairness, but today there is a growing concern that we are now being monikered as a country held hostage to a national security complex, which includes the largest military complex in the world, an obscenely expensive healthcare system and self-serving bureaucracies and private industries that serve their own financial ends. So it is not surprising that after spending this year $2.6 trillion on healthcare, we have such little health to show for it. There are second world countries where people live longer and healthier lives. And we have the worst healthcare among developed nations. So what have we received for our $2.6 trillion.

As the current health care debate continues to rage over in sundries—the $200 billion net profit health insurance industry—the entire deliberation over disease prevention and treatment has been overshadowed. And amidst this partisan and ideological anarchy, perpetuated by our elected officials, the media, and fueled by the pharmaceutical complex, two other areas America excels as a leader above all other developed nations is in being the premier breeding ground for the pharmaceutical industrial complex’s greatest profits and, second, as the world’s exemplar in medical fraud and corruption. The fairy tale of America’s health as being best served by drugs is a creation of this complex, a lullaby that brings ill citizens repeatedly to their doctors and hospitals for diagnosis and treatment, or simply to deny health care altogether to the uninsured.

The country is pacified by a blind belief that the drugs being prescribed to them have been proven safe because our government health agencies have our physical health and well-being in their best intentions. This is a lie, an extraordinarily deadly lie. Iatrogenesis, medically induced injury and death, is the number one cause of death in American medicine annually, since only a small percentage of these deaths are actually reported. Each year more Americans die from preventable deaths due to our medical system than all military causalities in the two world wars combined. This is tantamount to medical genocide. One of the major causes of these deaths is the over medication of Americans in all ages. The constant need for profits has created an environment that allows the pharmaceutical industrial complex to use their enormous financial and political clout to literally make normal life experiences into new diseases, such as social anxiety disorder, in order to sell its drugs. The pharmaceutical industry has been given the authority to pathologize life, with the drugging of our children, seniors, etc. For example, the leading cause of AIDS deaths today is a result of liver failure. This is not a condition of HIV infection, but a direct result of the anti-HIV drug AZT. Is it little wonder then that we are being intimidated and frightened into believing that mandatory vaccination is being touted even though the science of efficacy and safety, even the need, for these new swine flu vaccines is patently unproven. It is perhaps one of the largest falsehoods ever perpetuated on humanity that dwarfs the sleaze on Wall Street.

If any one of us committed manslaughter, we would be behind bars instead of walking a crimson carpet into the offices of our elected officials in the Congress and Senate or past the gates guarded by the nation’s Cerberus, Rahm Emmanuel, to lobby the White House. Yet if we are a pharmaceutical executive, or a lobbyist representing a drug company who has collected a litany of charges including medical fraud, criminal salesmanship, gaming the insurance industries, repeated lying to federal officials, and manipulation of data regarding life-threatening adverse effects of drugs that have killed so many people, we can walk away with a fine, a surge in the stock market after a settlement, a financial bonus, and the personal satisfaction in not having to apologize so we can continue business as usual. This is the power the pharmaceutical industrial complex possesses and its usurped right to disdain every noble principle in the Hippocratic Oath that every physician dedicates her or himself to live by, “That I will exercise my art solely for the cure of my patients, and will give no drug and perform no operation for a criminal purpose.”

Every American who is prescribed a drug by a physician has the belief that that pill has undergone rigorous trials to scrutinize its safety. And when there are known potential adverse effects, we blindly assume these are known to the attending physician. However, this is a myth perpetuated not only by drug makers, but by our own federal health agencies. A 2003 investigation published in The Independent in the UK reported that “under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA routinely conceals information it considers commercially sensitive, leaving medical specialists unable to assess the true risks [of approved drugs].” One case involved a very popular over-the-counter drug, the painkiller ibuprofen. The investigators’ search uncovered concealed data showing that ibuprofen increased heart attack risks by 25 percent. Even Freedom of Information (FOI) filings to the FDA do not produce all the information being requested. For example, a group of Swiss investigators filed an FOI to procure trial data about the musculoskeletal pain drug Celecoxib and received back only 16 of the 27 trials conducted on it. A separate FOI concerning a similar drug, Valdecoxib, had pages and paragraphs deleted because sections of the document were marked as “trade secrets.” An even worse case involving a leaked report concerning internal memos and secret FDA reports provided detailed evidence that the FDA approved 9 different antidepressants, representing a total of 22 studies enrolling 4,250 children, while knowing full well that the risk of “suicide-related events” was twice as high as children taking a placebo. These are just several examples among numerous others.

The pharmaceutical industrial complex is perhaps the largest, most influential cartel in the world. This becomes evident after considering the billions of dollars and other currencies drug companies have been forced to pay for a wide variety of corruption charges. Our analysis of 724 legal settlements from a random sampling among the over one hundred thousand by pharmaceutical corporations totally $87 billion is just a small indication about how pervasive Big Pharma’s criminality since the vast majority of settlements are concluded outside of court and remain confidential.

It is extremely difficult to comprehend why the United States principle federal health agencies, particularly the FDA and National Institutes of Health (NIH), with the specific mandate to provide oversight on all pre-approved drug applications and delegated with the task to assure drugs are safe or at least specify clearly their known dangers, are so reprehensible and inept. There is only one rational answer and that is the pharmaceutical industry is the FDA’s largest client, and this relationship goes much deeper than the FDA functioning as an objective regulator investigating pharmaceutical products before being released upon the American population. It is not to far afield to suggest that as it stands now the US regulatory agencies are an extension of corporate America.

As serial offenders of product safety cover-ups for over a decade, drugs have injured and killed millions. In the case Merck’s Vioxx, this one drug has killed 44,000 people and injured 120,000 others. Only in America could you kill 44,000 and not go to jail and get a raise. Should we assume, therefore, that the pharmaceutical complex should be trusted without challenge? We have also been asked to believe that the manufacturers were guided by a sense of public service. But when examining the top ten drugs sold, the facts reveal otherwise. In one example, manufacturers marked up a drug an astounding 500,000% over its equivalent generic version. Six other drugs were marked up 2000%. Pharmaceutical companies make profits higher than oil companies.

Big Pharma’s impact is felt almost everywhere. But nowhere is it felt more than in the legal system. In a recently concluded, short-term study, we found 724 cases involving Big Pharma in which either the case ended in a verdict against the pharmaceutical company or the company settled. The number of cases is staggering, as are the dollar amounts. These cases cover practically every type of civil and criminal case. From products that kill, harm and maim, to false claims, to not paying taxes, to patent infringements, to bribery, to publishing false scientific journals. Yet, in spite of the tens of thousands of lawsuits won against Big Pharma, it still conducts business as usual.

Eli Lilly flooded state Medicaid programs with Zyprexa: its superstar, antipsychotic drug. In 2003, worldwide sales of Zyprexa grossed $4.28 billion, amounting to almost one third of Lilly’s total sales. In the United States, during the same year, Zyprexa grossed $2.63 billion. A whopping 70 percent of these sales were directly related to government agencies—principally Medicaid. Fast-forward six years to 2009, Eli Lilly pleaded guilty for having illegally marketed Zyprexa for an unapproved use to treat dementia, and will pay $1.42 billion to settle civil suits and end the criminal investigation. Lilly agreed to pay $800 million to settle civil suits. It will pay $615 million to resolve the criminal probe, and plead guilty to a misdemeanor in violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act for promoting Zyprexa as a dementia treatment.

Did Lilly also know of the possibility that Zyprexa could cause diabetes, which was also kept concealed under the protection of the FDA? They most certainly did, which makes their behavior all the more reprehensible. In 2002, British and Japanese regulatory agencies issued a warning that Zyprexa may cause diabetes. In addition, even after the FDA issued a similar warning in 2003, Lilly did not pull Zyprexa from the market. This becomes all the more understandable after it is taken into consideration that Lilly is also the largest maker of diabetes medications.

An article by Mike Adams, the Natural News editor, states that Merck employees had a “hit list” of doctors they sought to “neutralize.” This allegation was confirmed when documents that had been secret were revealed during a Vioxx court case. The Australian revealed that the documents surfaced in the Federal Court in Melbourne and exposed the criminal intent of Merck employees who admitted they were going to “stop funding to institutions” and “interfere with academic appointments.” One Merck employee testified (about the doctors on the hit list), “We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live.” Merck threatened or intimidated at least eight clinical investigators, testimony in court revealed. There are other, similar stories in which Merck deals with dissent by attempting to destroy the lives and careers of academics who don’t review their drugs favorably.

Merck is steeped in a well-documented record of criminality. Such actions include, but are not limited to, intentionally hiding the liver-damaging effects of its cholesterol drug, intentionally withholding the release of clinical data that revealed the failures of another cholesterol drug; it has dumped vaccine waste and manufacturing chemicals into water supplies; it opened up offshore banking accounts to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. taxes, and it was caught in a huge scheme of scientific fraud when it was discovered that the company used in-house writers to secretly write so-called “independent” studies that were published in peer-reviewed medical journals.

Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which the U.S. Department of Justice and the SEC enforce, it is illegal to bribe a foreign government official in order to obtain or retain business. Apparently, Bristol-Myers and Schering Plough were unaware of this law. According to the Associated Press, both drug makers were engaged in influencing government officials in Germany and Poland respectively.

Earlier this year, an article in the Boston Business Journal reported that a former drug company sales executive pleaded guilty in Boston federal court to telling the roughly 100 representatives she supervised that they should promote a pain drug for uses she knew had been rejected by the FDA. Bextra was the drug she pleaded guilty to inappropriately selling. Pfizer has since pulled it from the market. According to a press release from U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan’s office, “Holloway was aware of the FDA’s safety concerns, but…she nonetheless had her sales staff of approximately 100 employees sells Bextra for precisely the uses that the FDA refused to approve.”

The pharmaceutical complex has also infiltrated the majority of American medical schools and medical research departments. A recent survey in the Journal of the American Medical Association discovered that 60% of academic department chairs have personal ties to industry (as consultants, board members, or paid speakers), while 66% of the academic departments had institutional ties to industry. Researchers who receive funding from drug and medical-device manufacturers are up to 3.5 times as likely to state their study drug or medical device works than are researchers without such funding.

In America, one can hardly turn on the television or pick up a newspaper without reading about the hot button issue of health care reform. Why such emotion? Why are, seemingly, rational people so intransigent and unwilling to budge from their positions? Could lobbyists have anything to do with this? According to OpenSecrets.org, there are 3093 lobbyists in the health field and Big Pharma now spends approximately $1.2 million daily to persuade Congress to act according to their script. An investigation conducted by Medical Verdicts & Law Weekly found that 30 key lawmakers are involved in health legislation totaling $11 million in health investments. Three of every four major health firms have at least one lobbyist who worked for a congressman. Startlingly, nine lobbyists employed by Big Pharma are former congressional staffers who are still well-connected to Capitol Hill. The conflicts of interest are everywhere. Judd Gregg (R-NH), the Obama nominee for Commerce Secretary, who withdrew because of opposition to the Administration’s agenda, is a senior member of the Health Committee. He revealed that he has $254,000-$560,000 in health stocks.”

In 2000, Mylan Labs settled a case for $100 million. What the numbers don’t tell you is the story behind the numbers. In 1998, Mylan raised the wholesale price of clorazepate, a generic tranquilizer, to $377.00 (for 500 tablets) from $11.36 in one year. This represents a 3000% increase on a generic drug.

It was subsequently revealed that Mylan conspired with the main manufacturer of the active, indispensible ingredient to have an exclusive agreement. The agreement prevented any other manufacturers from producing the drug, for without the active ingredient, the drug could not be made. Mylan’s deception was uncovered and it had to pay $100 million to settle an FTC antitrust case. But Mylan represents only an infinitesimal percentage of such examples. In all likelihood, the vast majority of similar cases remain undetected. The FDA’s under-regulation and erroneous oversight encourages this type of corruption.

Another case included in our study states, “TAP [Taketa-Abbott Pharmaceutical] Pharmaceutical Products Inc. — $875,000,000 under the False Claims Act.” TAP agreed to pay $875 million to resolve criminal charges and civil liabilities in connection with its fraudulent drug pricing and marketing conduct regarding the drug Lupron, according to a press release from the Department of Justice. Lupron is used by male cancer patients to suppress the production of testosterone. Another drug worked as well, so to make Lupron the drug of choice for this condition, TAP played dirty by giving kickbacks to physicians prescribing the drug, thus ensuring its ridiculously high price would be maintained. Even though criminal indictments were filed against TAP Pharmaceutical officials, Lupron’s price remains overly inflated.

Ever wonder why Big Pharma would engage in all manner of illegal activity? In light of the steady stream of articles detailing how the elderly are oftentimes forced to choose between purchasing their medication and buying food, a good place to begin is to examine what it costs to make a drug and what Big Pharma sells it for. Life Extension magazine conducted an original investigative report in which it compared the actual price of a popular drug and how much the generic version of its active ingredients costs. Examine these figures:

In order to understand how we can spend 2.6 trillion this year on health care, but not reduce the incidence of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, mental conditions, arthritis, etc., we must realize this is a game. With each piece of the puzzle, feeding into a single picture of a massively corrupt, unethical, and frequently illegal system controlled by relatively few corporations within the pharmaceutical complex and the health insurance industry, are the ring leaders. They in turn influence thousands of lobbyists, paid-off scientists and academicians, and policymakers, especially those who rule on important health oversight committees. Health officials and legislators in turn solicit expert witnesses, preselected by the cartels, to position their drug agendas in the most favorable manner. The pharmaceutical cartel also has direct connections with its supporting scientific advisory boards and key foundations. These foundations, supported by policy think tanks who supply the so-called independent experts, then lobby the upper echelon within the FDA, NIH, CDC, NIMH, HHS. Ideally they hire former health commissioners and legislators previously players in the game to assist those same federal agencies to see their drugs guided through the regulatory process. Public relations and advertising firms are contracted to give the public impression that these drugs are effective and safe for the sole reason they have received official licensing. In addition, the cartel creates front organizations with consumer-friendly titles whose representatives appear at national conferences and seminars beholden to special drug interests. Finally, the drug corporations set money aside to be paid out in settlements. With the exception of class action suits, the majority of cases for injury and death are accompanied by confidentiality clauses to prevent public disclosure of data the companies wish to remain secret.

This is how the medical system is rigged and it is why we can watch 60 Minutes or read the New York Times serving as pharmaceutical shills to encourage vaccination, yet refusing to air or print the dissenting voices who have the scientific evidence to show it is a massive fraud. Therefore, the public is misled every step of the way. Victims of injury, such as the tens of thousands of children, now at 1 in 91 children, with autism spectrum disorder, are forced to fend for themselves. Parents know far better than the FDA and CDC, when their perfectly normal child after a vaccination or a series of vaccines shortly thereafter is lost, withdrawn into the dark corners of autism. And yet the pediatrician and psychologist will say the child must have had a genetic defect. The CDC, FDA and NIH, with an orchestrated voice, say it is not the vaccine. Everyone within the pharmaceutical industrial complex denies the truth. Only now, during the healthcare debate, are we seeing clearly the rampant politics of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. The veils are finally being removed. If it were not for the healthcare debacle, we might still not know how the game is rigged and why our politicians and health officials will not tolerate any real reform and accountability at any level.

If we want to clean up American medicine, the corporate shield must be removed and politicians, health officials and pharmaceutical executives must be held accountable. If they are threatened with jail time for manslaughter by pushing dangerous drugs, then we will see less life-threatening drugs go to market.

We are in a perfect storm without a life raft. We much take back our freedoms of choice and demand legal accountability or nothing will change.
Doug Henderson, JD is a legal mediator specializing in civil rights and Director of Gary Null and Associates in New York City.

Dr. Gary Null
is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on nutrition and natural health and a multi-award-winning director of progressive documentary films, including Vaccine Nation and Autism: Made in the USA. Dr. Null is also the plaintiff on a law suit against the FDA to prevent the launch of the swine flu vaccine until safety studies have been thoroughly conducted.

Explorations Into Darkness Lead to Light

Dear friends,

Though there are many exciting things happening in our world, these are intense times for many people. It is easy to slip into fear and be overwhelmed with all of the darkness out in the world and in our lives. Yet what if we choose not to be afraid of this darkness? What might happen if in the face of darkness we choose to open to opportunities for growth, even as we endeavor to bring light to that darkness? The insightful essay below provides some rich inspiration along these lines. Enjoy, and have a beautiful day!

Best Wishes, Fred Burkes

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

These are very strange times on planet Earth. You sit at the precipice. You sit at the edge of a great event. You have placed yourself here specifically at this moment, and many of you know that deep in your hearts. You know somewhere there is one thing that you came to do above everything else. We tell you that you are now getting the opportunity to do that. It is happening!

Yes, there are difficult times ahead as you go through these changes, partly because of your own perceptions of what you believe to be difficult, and what you perceive as lack of support. We wish to speak to you about this, because in these times, this is when fear begins.

You have shown incredible strength at your willingness to release old belief systems. Yet the first time you get scared, you jump back into the old belief systems. There is nothing wrong with that, it is simply the human way of advancing three steps forward followed by one step back. As long as you do not judge yourself there is no problem, for it is your perception of yourself that creates your experience of reality.

How Do You Wish to See Your World?

You will see darkness. You will also see fear. Let us speak for a moment about fear and darkness … and evil. We think it so humorous that even some world leaders have used the word ‘evil.’  What a silly thing to do, for they are looking in the mirror when they do that. Can your right hand call your left hand evil? It does not work.

So, what is evil? What is darkness, and what is fear? That is what we wish to address today, because as you move forward into your own evolution you will begin to perceive darkness, fear, loneliness and a lack of support differently than you ever have before. That is where you stand today – right at the edge of this door that is opening.

Many of you will see darkness. We hope you will consider a different perception of it, because an empowered human sees darkness differently. They see fear differently. It is not right. It is not wrong. It is not black. It is not white. It is not good. It is not bad. Those are the polarities that have confused people up to this point.

What we wish to ask you today is, how do you wish to see your world? These same darknesses can be viewed as opportunities for light. These same dark challenges can be viewed as the door opening to a whole new arena for you. These are opportunities for lightworkers to shine their light in new energetic ways.

Darkness is Only a Lack of Light

Darkness is only a lack of light. If you block the sun with your hand, a shadow results on the ground. Artists look at those shadows and say, “Ooooh, I can do all sorts of things with these!” Photographers look at that shadow and say, “Wouldn’t this be fascinating to capture?” Many of you look at the shadows and say, “Oh. That is darkness, and I only choose light in my life.” There are even times when you turn and run from darkness which is actually there to feed your spirit.

Darkness gives you an opportunity to shine your light, your confidence, your knowingness … in a way that you have never done before. Yes, it will be scary the first time, but remember that you are not alone. Look around you. There is a huge family that is awakening to this at this time. This is no longer on the fringe of societies.

You will not find that one day everyone has suddenly awakened from the dream, or see a lead story on the news about how the light came to Earth. It is going to be a very gradual process that filters into humanity very quietly from several sources to reach a critical mass, when it can then naturally reach the level of general consciousness. It is different this time, and if you look at these opportunities for light, you will find things that you never dreamed were possible in your own world today.

This is the reason we have been giving healing modalities; there are many more healing modalities coming to this Earth at this time. The good news is that all of them work. The bad news is that you will have to find out which ones work best for you. Nobody can do that except for you.

So, why healing in the first place? In order for you to carry the light that you are going to do your work, it is important to release your own restrictions to that light. Heal and clear the energetic structures within so that you can anchor, as spirit, fully in the physical body.

That is difficult, for spirits are not of the physical body. Your spirit is pretending to have a human experience right now, and that is what we wish to finally bring you this day – that human experience. It includes light and dark. It includes sadness. It includes finding the beauty in the darkness.

Activating the Network of Light

People in general try to avoid sadness, difficulties, and dark energies. However, we tell you that most music on this planet has been inspired by these dark energies. Most of the beauty that you truly find comes from the shadows hitting light in a certain way. Finding the beauty in the darkness will be a key role as empowered beings and lightworkers. Finding those opportunities for light is now at hand for all people.

You have placed yourself in key positions all over the world to be there at the right time with the right energy. You have made it. You are here! The time is right, and now we ask you to look at the darkness for all the beauty that it holds. Look at those restrictions, those negativities, the horrible things that are being reported in your news. See them as opportunities for light, because these are the things that will catalyze your further growth.

Keep in mind as you do this that you are not the physical body at all. Many of you push away those physical parts and deny those pieces of yourself in order to be spirits. We tell you, however, that in fact you have no problem being spirits. It is being human that is the problem.

You are here as spirits to have a human experience, and that includes light and dark, failure and success. Those are only labels placed upon your journey as you go forward, but they mean nothing when you get Home. The parts you will re-member are how you found beauty in the darkness – how you found your part of your world to share. That is the piece you came to do, and we tell you now is the time.

Earth Hologram

There is a total re-working of many events that will happen over the next seven to ten years. As a result, this hologram of light is overimprinting the original hologram of Earth. The Earth that you are creating through your own thoughts and your own process is creating a hologram that will now over imprint the original hologram of Earth.

As that begins to happen, organizations and gatherings of souls that are not in harmony with this advanced state will start to fall apart and crumble. Some systems will not make it from one level to the next, yet that does not mean collapse. Much the same way we have shown you that as one system leaves, another comes right in to take that place, so will it be with your economic systems. You simply have to keep your eyes open for the possibilities, because that is what will create it. When you expect a miracle, it happens.

We tell you that is more difficult to do because your ideas and concepts of miracles put limitations on the fulfillment of them. Many times when you say, “I want this so I need to be specific. I have to say exactly what it is I want, I have to mention the color, how much it will cost and all the details.”

But specifics are the old energy. You actually limit spirit’s fulfillment of your dreams when you are specific. Grab the essence of your heart energy around that creation and let Spirit fulfill it for you, because it will fulfill it in ways that will grow with you and not limit you to your belief systems. Those are the possibilities that are starting to happen right now.

You are not accustomed to seeing the daily negativity in the news as opportunities for spreading light, so this message may be difficult for some. If you would simply step in that direction and look for those potentials and possibilities, you will find heaven being created on Earth as you speak. That is the new hologram of Earth, and that is where you are moving.

You will also see many who will come to the forefront during difficult times, who will specifically request to be the new healers with ‘the’ answers. Please understand that as you move forward, you do not need leaders to lead you in the ways they once did. It is no longer necessary to have the types of leaders you have had on this planet. It is time for you to take power yourselves, in your own reality first, and then your leaders will see what you need for support. Those are the potentials and the direction humanity is heading at the moment.

An Overview

As all of you change your evolutionary structure, you will step further into what you came to do, and you raise the collective vibrations of humanity on all levels. That is what is taking place right now. We see the times that you cry because you are lonely for soul family, and have few who understand and empower you. We see the times you think you do not have anything to say, and all the dreams you have of something important you came to do here.

You cannot be hurt in the ways that you think you can. It is like sending you out in the backyard of Earth to play. There are certain toys you might hurt yourself with, but yet you are not restricted from those toys. You go find yourself. You go play. You find your light. You find your darkness. You find a blend of a spirit being human. That is the most important part of the next stage of work – being fully grounded in your own physical being means that your spirit is anchored in the physical being. That is hard to do because you were not born that way.

The reality is, you were never born. You simply evolved from one energy to the next and took another form, because as you leave one form, you enter another. There is no such thing as time on the other side of the veil. The illusion of time only exists here, so it is possible for you to weave many paths as a soul pretending to be a human. Our only concern for you is that your beliefs and judgments may tell you something is wrong, and you would place a polarity label of right or wrong on that. You could not fall if you tried, and we would appreciate it if you would stop trying so hard!

Laughter will bring you back to center. It is the language of angels. It is how we speak to you through your own hearts. Re-member us when you see the darkness. Smile, and laugh. Jump into it because it is an opportunity for light.

You come to have your life changed in some way to re-member who you are. We cannot have words or energy that can convey to you how much it means to us that you are there listening. That has never happened before. You are the empowered humans that are moving forward, and we honor you more than you will ever know. Take pride in that. You are the chosen ones. You have chosen to pretend to be human. Enjoy the ride.

It is with the greatest of honor that we leave you with three simple reminders. Treat each other with the greatest respect. Nurture one another at every opportunity, and play well together.

Copyright 2006. Steve Rother. This information is meant to circulate and may be freely disseminated, in whole or in part, provided that this notice is included. This material may be used with the condition that all rights, including copyrights of translated material, remain with the original copyright holder. Further information from the Group may be found at: http://www.Lightworker.com.

“Passage of resolutions by towns often leads to their passage by states and support for their substance by congress , as well as public education and a shift in media discourse….”

By David Swanson

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/47195

Most city council members take oaths to defend the Constitution. The Constitution makes the rights and standards in its amendments and in international treaties the supreme law of the land. Our nation has a rich tradition of local governments lobbying state and national governments through the passage of resolutions. Under Clause 3, Rule XII, Section 819, of the Rules of the U.S. House of Representatives local governments may petition Congress. Under the First Amendment, we all can.

Just in recent years, on issues of peace and justice, hundreds of cities have passed resolutions in favor of peace, diplomacy, restraint from launching wars, and the cessation of wars in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, including 287 cities, 4 counties, and 17 states on Iraq alone. Through this and many other means, we have thus far prevented an attack on Iran, and we’ve won over a majority of the country to support ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — which we will eventually end if we keep up the struggle.

Over 100 cities passed resolutions urging the impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney. They have yet to be impeached, but an impeachment push drove Alberto Gonzales out of town, may yet nail Jay Bybee and bring down the whole criminal power structure, and has solidly laid the groundwork for prosecutions. In fact, three cities have already passed ordinances committing their police to arresting Bush or Cheney should they dare to visit. I strongly recommend that your town do the same, as well as publicly backing the impeachment of torture-memo author Jay Bybee.

Meanwhile, Berkeley, Calif., has now joined United Nations human rights treaties that are not supported or complied with by the United States as a whole. And Amherst, Mass., may invite released Guantanamo victims to settle within its welcoming borders.

Perhaps most impressively, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) has led a campaign that has seen 414 local, county, and state resolutions passed defending our civil rights against abuses in the PATRIOT Act, and committing local police to noncooperation with federal violations of rights that were created by the U.S. Constitution.

Now the BORDC is launching a campaign to pass a pair of new ordinances, which I cannot recommend more strongly. These are powerful tools for restoring the rule of law and defending our civil rights. Passage of resolutions by towns often leads to their passage by states and support for their substance by congress , as well as public education and a shift in media discourse.

The first model resolution offered by BORDC (which you can alter to suit local needs) limits local law enforcement efforts in support of federal warrantless spying. Of course, local and state police, as Americans, are required to comply with the Fourth Amendment anyway. But what happens when the feds say otherwise? This explicit legislation backs up those who take a stand.

The second model resolution is even more important. It places your town on record supporting federal and requiring local criminal investigations into torture. It includes an optional clause requiring the arrest of accused torturers as in the three ordinances noted above.

A third resolution that I can imagine but have not drafted would be modeled on this torture accountability resolution and require a criminal investigation of warrantless spying, which is not only unconstitutional but also illegal under state law in most states.

While we understand that there is strength in numbers in the abstract, too seldom do we employ that power through our levels of government from the smallest and most democratic up to the largest and most corrupt. Together, our towns can save our country, if we force our local representatives to take action.

David Swanson is the author of the new book “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union” by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book.

Medicare Drug Planners Now Lobbyists, With Billions at Stake…

by Olga Pierce, ProPublica – October 20, 2009 5:12 pm EDT
http://www.propublica.org/ion/health-care-reform/item/medicare-drug-planners-now-lobbyists-with-billions-at-stake-1020

Six years ago, a group of lawmakers and aides crafted Medicare Part D, the prescription drug program for seniors that has produced billions of dollars of profits for pharmaceutical companies.

Today, at least 25 of those key players are back, but this time they’re lobbyists, trying to persuade their former colleagues to protect the lucrative system during the health care reform negotiations.

The role of big players like Billy Tauzin — the former Republican representative from Louisiana who is now president of PhRMA, the drug industry’s lobbying group — has been long understood. But a ProPublica analysis shows that the drug industry’s position is also being promoted by other foot soldiers from the Part D legislative process, from committee aides to top Bush administration officials.

The most prominent members of this group include:

• Tauzin, former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who was instrumental in ensuring Part D’s passage. As PhRMA’s president he reportedly earns more than 10 times what he was paid as a member of Congress
• Former Sen. John Breaux, D-La., who fought against allowing drug prices to be negotiated in Medicare Part D. A year after the bill passed, he left the Senate to begin his lobbying career. He now has his own lobbying firm, Breaux Lott Leadership Group, which this year has received $300,000 to lobby for the pharmaceutical industry.
• Former Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., who helped negotiate the final version of Part D, then left to form his own lobbying firm. Bristol Myers-Squibb paid the Nickles Group $120,000 this year to lobby for, among other things, “health care reform issues related to Medicaid and Medicare.”
• Thomas Scully, the former Medicare chief who helped design Part D. Scully obtained a waiver allowing him to discuss job offers before he left his government post. Less than two weeks after the bill passed, he went to work for the lobbying firm Alston & Bird, where he works on behalf of drug companies.

Less familiar names also made the leap to lobbying for the pharmaceutical industry.

• Raissa Downs was once a top legislative aide in the Department of Health and Human Services, where she helped spearhead the agency’s efforts to shape Part D. Now she’s a partner at Tarplin, Downs & Young consulting firm, where she is lobbying against changes to Part D.
• Michelle Easton has gone through the revolving door several times, working for Breaux, then the industry, then for Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who is a key player in the current reform debate. Now Easton works in Downs’ firm.
• John McManus, who was staff director of the House Ways and Means health subcommittee when Part D was created, now has his own lobbying firm. Between 2004 and June 2009 the McManus Group earned about $6 million lobbying for PhRMA and various drug companies.

None of this is illegal as long as the former officials abide by a cooling off period —two years for senators and their staff, one year for representatives and their staff, as well as for senior agency staffers — before they personally lobby the Hill. In the interim they are free to accept jobs with lobbying firms and offer advice about strategy, tactics and the intricacies of the law.

“This is a phenomenon that is prevalent throughout Congress,” said Dave Levinthal, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group in Washington that tracks lobbying activity. “They’re in Congress, out of Congress – then back lobbying their former colleagues.”

One former Congressional staffer who now works for the pharmaceutical industry refused to be quoted by name but said he sees nothing wrong with a revolving door between the public and private sectors.

“Every time a major bill passes, there is an exodus of Hill staffers,” the former staffer said in an e-mail to CBS News, which worked with ProPublica on this story. “In many cases, they have worked for 2-3 years on the legislation and then they go to work for firms with a stake in the implementation. These staffers, obviously, have a unique understanding of the issue and people are willing to pay a premium for that knowledge – even more so than for their so-called ‘connections.’”

Creating Part D

To understand how the pharmaceutical industry is helping to shape the nation’s health care policies, it helps to understand how the industry’s interests prevailed when Part D was created in 2003.

As ideas for the prescription drug benefit were being debated, several proposals were introduced that would have allowed the government to negotiate for lower drug prices, as it does for the drugs it buys for Medicaid and for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

But after intense lobbying by pharmaceutical companies, and strong-arm tactics by House leaders, the final bill instead specifically barred the government from negotiating lower drug prices. It also banned importation of cheaper drugs from Canada and gave drug companies stronger protections against their generic competitors.

Congressional leaders pulled no punches in making sure the bill passed. In violation of House rules, members were given less than 24 hours to read the 850-page document, and the final vote was called about 3 a.m.

Instead of closing the vote 15 minutes after voting began, as required by House rules, leaders kept the vote open for almost three hours, the longest roll call vote in the history of the House of Representatives, while they worked the floor.

In 2006, Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., called that night “the worst abuse of the legislative process I have seen during my 20 years in Congress.”

Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton also recalls the night as being ugly. “The votes were there to defeat the bill for two hours and 45 minutes and we had leaders going around and gathering around individuals, trying to twist their arms to get them to change their votes,” Burton told CBS’s 60 Minutes in 2007.

Today, the prices the government pays for drugs through Part D are about 30 percent higher on average than the prices it pays for drugs for Medicaid recipients, according to a 2008 report by the House Committee on Oversight. Another study by an economist at the University of Maryland also found a significant price difference.

Preserving Part D

Now the pharmaceutical industry is fighting for its bottom line again.

Its lobbyists are working against the House version of the health care reform bill, which would require drug companies to give up some of the windfall they gained as low-income seniors were transferred from Medicaid to Medicare during the Part D launch. Unlike Part D, Medicaid has strict rules to make sure it gets the lowest possible drug prices.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates such a requirement would save taxpayers $63 billion over the next 10 years. In the House bill, that money would be used to close the Part D “doughnut hole,” a nearly $3,500 gap in coverage plans that leaves seniors responsible for the full cost of their drugs.

The industry is also fighting a similar but more stringent proposal in the Senate – advocated by two Democratic Senators, Bill Nelson of Florida and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia – that would save taxpayers more than $100 billion over the next 10 years, according to projections by the Congressional Budget Office.

Instead, the pharmaceutical industry supports the bill passed by the Senate Finance Committee, which apparently reflects an agreement negotiated between committee chairman Baucus, the White House and Tauzin, the former senator turned lobbyist.

Under that agreement, PhRMA would give seniors a discount on drugs they purchase while in the doughnut hole, a concession worth about $30 billion over the next 10 years. But in exchange two of the industry’s biggest legislative worries – any attempt to recover its windfall profits when seniors were moved from Medicaid to Medicare, and the legalization of re-importing cheaper drugs from Canada – would be off the table.

The two bills must still pass their respective houses of Congress. Then they will collide in conference committee negotiations before a final vote is taken.

Calling on former government workers

The skills of government workers turned lobbyists are invaluable to the pharmaceutical industry during these negotiations.

John McManus, for instance, is described on his firm’s Web site as the “chief staff architect” of Part D, who “led the policy development, drafting and negotiations with interest groups” associated with the bill. That claim is based on his years as staff director for the House Ways and Means health subcommittee, including during the original Part D debate.

Before McManus went to work for the committee, he was a senior associate at pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly & Co. from 1993 to 1997. After he left the government, he founded the McManus Group, a lobbying firm that specializes in health matters. His latest lobbying disclosure indicates he is lobbying in “opposition to Medicare rebates” in the “House Tri-Committee health reform draft.”

Michelle Easton’s career took even more twists and turns.

She started her Hill career in Breaux’s office as legislative director and staff director for the Senate Special Committee on Aging. According to her biography, she “worked extensively on the Medicare and Medicaid programs while working in the Congress, including instrumental work on the Medicare Modernization Act,” the bill that established Part D.

In February 2005, Easton left to become a vice president at PhRMA, where her job was maximizing enrollment as Part D was rolled out. Less than a year later, she returned to the public sector as chief health counsel to Baucus, who opposed price negotiations during the original Part D debate and is now the lead sponsor of the bill that PhRMA supports.

Last year Easton joined Tarplin, Downs & Young, which specializes in health lobbying. So far in 2009, she has lobbied on behalf of Amgen, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, Boston Scientific, Genzyme, Vertex Pharma, Wyeth, AstraZeneca and PhRMA, according to disclosures filed with the House of Representatives.

One disclosure says her work for PhRMA involves “Medicare and Medicaid drug reimbursement, Medicaid rebate.” On behalf of drug maker AstraZeneca she is advocating “Medicare Part D non-interference.”

To advance the pharmaceutical industry’s agenda, lobbyists meet with their former colleagues, attend hearings —and also funnel campaign donations.

Just over a week after moderate Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski voted against a version of health care reform being considered by the Senate health committee, Easton’s colleague, lobbyist Downs, co-hosted a $1,000-a-person fundraising breakfast for Murkowski at Charlie Palmer Steak.

The Capitol Hill restaurant, where Washington’s elite can choose from a breakfast menu that includes quail eggs and fig risotto, is a world away from the Department of Health and Human Services, the dowdy concrete fortress where Downs once spearheaded the agency’s efforts to shape Part D.

Downs’ former boss Thomas Scully — the former Medicare chief who is now senior counsel at Alston & Bird — was the only person mentioned in this article who agreed to be quoted by name. He said he sees nothing wrong with such lobbying efforts.

He also said he has no regrets about his role in getting Part D passed or about his career change. He’s listed in the firm’s disclosures as a lobbyist for drug maker CSL Behring on the topic of the “Medicaid rebate,” but said he isn’t lobbying much for industry these days.

“So much of this is politics,” Scully said. “People took lots of shots at me while I was in government, but it was people trying to get a political gain for five minutes.”

As for the other staffers who are now lobbying, he said, “Generally the people who understand these programs the best are the ones who have been working on them.

“They’re all good people,” he added. If they are lobbying, “they have every right to do it.”

Correction: This post originally stated lawmakers and aides crafted the Medicare Part D plan four years ago. It should have said six years ago.