Monday, December 22, 2008

Where'd the bailout money go? Shhhh, it's a secret

By MATT APUZZO

WASHINGTON — It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going?

But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.

"We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,'" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to."

The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest?

None of the banks provided specific answers.....

The U.S. may need a new crystal ball

by John Brady Kiesling

Through the miracle of email I know I have at least one regular reader outside my immediate family. I therefore dedicate this column to Dr David Green, who suggested that I discuss "Global Trends 2025", a 120-page opus just released by the US National Intelligence Council (the text is free at http://www. dni. gov/nic/NIC-2025-project.html). As the title suggests, the report sets out to describe the global trends that will shape the world in 2025.

The NIC was created to coordinate and, where possible, popularise the work of the 16 official members of the "US Intelligence Community". Hollywood notwithstanding, this does not mean that 13 other agencies - the really secret ones, unlike CIA, DIA, and NSA ­ are tunnelling under the Acropolis to upload mind-control software into key Greek politicians and their spiritual advisers. Instead, the majority of intelligence community employees belong to overt outfits like the Treasury Department and Coast Guard, with jobs depressingly like my current one. They surf the internet, read newspapers, have coffee with each other, sneak off to the gym, and then write articles that will one day, if they are lucky, be honoured by an email from Dr Green.

In his email to me, Dr Green summarised the NIC study well enough that I don't need to.

"It paints an emergent global canvas uncannily like the decline of the British empire, eg decreasing American leverage in world politics, a paradigm economic shift from West to East, increased local nationalist disputes and a decline in the power of the dollar. It envisages a multipolar world by 2025 with increasing conflicts over water, oil, food etc."

Of course, what Dr Green was too polite to say was that this is not a description of what the world will look like in 2025; it is a description of the world looked like a few months ago, precisely when the NIC undertook its latest crash program of dining out with eminent international pundits. Pundits figured out centuries ago that the safest way to maintain a reputation for punditry is to predict the present rather than the future. And since, as Voltaire's Dr Pangloss (or maybe it was Leibniz) pointed out, we live in the best of all possible worlds, it would be impious to foresee a different world in any case.

Anti-Americanism will fade of its own accord, the NIC opines, collateral damage from America's shrinking power. Yes, but in that case so what? America needs global popularity only if it wants to be a global player. Terrorism will also subside, the NIC tentatively suggests, unless it doesn't. Unfortunately, when it comes to terrorism the NIC has a short, America-centred memory. It sees terrorism as a Middle Eastern phenomenon, the product of religious fanaticism and lack of democracy. If the NIC understood that terrorism is a tactic routinely used by the weaker side in power struggles, it would take a less languid stance towards the intensifying competition for resources within states already on the verge of failure.

If the weakness of the NIC is its parochialism, its strength is the leisure, money, and prestige to cozy up to actual scientists in possession of actual data. I was hoping, therefore, to learn what the US government really thinks will happen to global sea levels, at least a consensus guesstimate. But Vice President Cheney's icy claw apparently still loiters perilously close to Washington's collective windpipe. On global climate change, therefore, the NIC offered an uncontroversial Hollywood scenario, a freak hurricane putting Wall Street under water. This will happen some day, but worse things will have happened first.

What good are pundits if they have only weasel words for the impact of migration patterns that are already undermining European and American commitments to democratic values? How many millions of people will be put on the march by climate change is a question with deadly-serious implications for the future of democracy. Nor does the NIC seriously address the question of who will run out of irrigation water when. If an enlightened democracy like Greece cannot impose groundwater conservation on a few thousand cotton and citrus farmers, we can extrapolate the certainty of civil war and humanitarian catastrophe due to groundwater depletion in parts of Africa and Asia.

When a pundit washes his hands of catastrophe by saying the world will be multipolar, it is time to change the channel on your crystal ball. Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, "bipolarity" was a psychiatric disorder, not a description of the international scene. Viewed in enough detail to be meaningful, the world has never been anything but multipolar. At the height of US "unipolarity" in 2002, a dozen tribal chieftains, militant mullahs, Pakistani intel officers, or narco-traffickers still possessed the same capability as the US government to project power (eg, fifteen armed men or $20,000) into a given Afghan village. Adding Chinese or Indians to the mix, an important but also obvious NIC prediction for 2025, only reinforces the common-sense message that what proved impossible for a rich and self-confident superpower may also be difficult for a Iraq-scalded and indebted one. So we must build international institutions sturdy enough to cope with the huge, complex emergencies that will be taking place simultaneously in many parts of the globe.

The main point of making dire predictions is to change our behaviour enough to make our predictions turn out wrong. The NIC staff timidly invites the next US president to take measures to change the future, but is not brave enough to suggest how. Perhaps this fuzzy, harmless report will help President-elect Obama forgive the NIC's 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction." But unless the experts go out on a limb by suggesting pragmatic solutions to a few of the perfectly predictable demographic/envi- ronmental, economic/political crises looming before our noses, new secretary of state Hillary Clinton will end up stuck in a present no less ugly for the remarkable ability of US-sponsored pundits to "predict" it accurately.

Terrorism spurs interest in Israeli tech



The Defense Ministry and Israeli security companies have received a growing number of requests for homeland security technology since the terror attacks in Mumbai last month, top defense officials said Thursday, leading to speculation that Israeli defense exports will increase dramatically in 2009.
"With more than 200 tall buildings in Atlanta, we need to consider revolutionary rescue and evacuation solutions, like Escape Rescue System," he said.

Since the attack, which killed over 170 people, including a number of Israelis, India and other countries have turned to Israeli defense industries and consultants.

One example was a visit to Israel last week by a high-level delegation from the US state of Georgia to view a new evacuation platform that could be used to rescue hostages in an attack like that in Mumbai.

Designated by the US Department of Homeland Security as a Qualified Anti-terrorism Technology, the external evacuation platform, manufactured by Escape Rescue Systems, provides fight and flight capabilities for emergencies in high-rise buildings.

In a full five-cabin configuration, the system can deliver up to 25 SWAT personnel and rescue 150 people every eight minutes, according to the company.

"The tragic events in Mumbai and the changed skyline of New York are reminders of the pride we have in our cities and of the necessity to prepare for another 9/11, a fire or a terrorist hostage-taking situation," said John Oxendine, insurance and safety fire commissioner of Georgia.

India has reportedly decided to purchase four Israeli EL/M-2083 aerostat radar systems to help defend the country against a 9/11-type attack.

According to reports in the Indian press, the radar, manufactured by Elta Systems of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), would be deployed in strategic areas to provide early warning against incoming enemy aircraft and missiles.

The phased-array aerostat system is a simpler version of the Green Pine radar, made by IAI and used by the Arrow missile defense system. It is mounted on tethered blimps, which enables it to detect intrusions earlier than ground-based systems.

Defense officials have said that the Mumbai attacks raised awareness around the world for the need to obtain advanced surveillance equipment and counter-terrorism capabilities. They added that it was possible that arms sales in 2009 would surpass the $4.1 billion in sales in 2008.

"Countries are more aware of their vulnerabilities," one official said. "There is more interest today in Israeli products since we have loads of experience in combating terrorism."

Officials said that India was specifically interested in procuring basic weaponry that could be used in counter-terror operations. It has already purchased Tavor assault rifles made by Israel Weapon Industries as well as night-vision goggles made by Israel Military Industries.

"They are interested in getting more basic supplies for operations such as the one launched against [the] Mumbai attackers," the official said.

US report urges better foodborne disease monitoring

By Jane Byrne
A new US report concludes that major gaps remain in many critical areas of preparedness for health emergencies, including foodborne disease reporting.

Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) have released the sixth annual Ready or Not? Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism report.

This edition of the report found that 20 states did not meet or exceed the national US average rate for being able to identify the pathogens responsible for foodborne disease outbreaks in their states, and it references some of the more serious 2008 US health emergencies including the Salmonella outbreak in jalapeno and Serrano peppers that sickened 1,442 people in 43 states and the largest beef recall in US history in February.

"Monitoring the public’s food supply is a real world example of public health preparedness as it requires the same skills and technologies needed to detect and mitigate bioterrorism and infectious disease outbreaks,” states the report.

Foodborne disease reporting

According to the Ready or Not? report, between 2004 and 2006, the last year for which US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data was available at the time of publication, state public health departments reported a total of 3,548 foodborne disease outbreaks that sickened 74,077 individuals.

Of the 3,548 reported outbreaks, state public health departments were only able to confirm the etiology, or causative pathogen, in 1,552 cases, or 44 per cent of outbreaks,” said the authors.

Identifying foodborne disease outbreaks requires regular submission of clinical isolates and specimens to state public health labs, continued the report.

The publication states that, in the opinion of the US Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL), hospital and clinical laboratories are sometimes reluctant to send isolates of foodborne pathogens to a state public health laboratory due to cost and time issues.

“Failure by these nongovernmental laboratories to submit isolates, specimens and samples could delay timely identification of an outbreak, prolonging exposure to the contaminated product and leading to increased incidence of disease,” claims the APHL.

State and local level invovlement

The authors of the Ready or Not? report argue that while much of the food safety debate has been over the reforms needed at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the focus should also be on coordination and collaboration with food safety regulators and health officials at the state and local level.

In order to strengthen the roles of state and local agencies, in both their community-based food safety efforts and as integral parts of the nation’s food safety system, the report draws attention to the planned series of RWJF funded meetings among state and local officials, their federal counterparts, and food industry and consumer groups.

Participants at these meetings, according to the report, will focus on:

  • Formulating and expressing a modern vision of the role of state and local government in an integrated, prevention-oriented food safety system;
  • Identifying gaps or constraints in current law, policy and practice at the federal, state and local levels that inhibit fulfilment of that vision;
  • Recommending changes in law, policy, and practice that are needed to enhance the effectiveness of state and local agencies in addressing food safety problems at the local, state, and national level;
  • Identifying specific opportunities to improve collaboration among state, local, and federal agencies; and
  • Describing current funding patterns and resource needs at the state and local level.

The project will disseminate a report in 2009, according to the Ready or Not? authors.

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