Live video of TEPCO Nuclear Plant: http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/f1-np/camera/index-e.html

Government officials launched a PR campaign to ensure the accident at the Fukushima nuclear facility in Japan did not derail plans for new nuclear power stations in the UK.

by Rob Edwards

British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known.

Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse to try to ensure the accident did not derail their plans for a new generation of nuclear stations in the UK.

“This has the potential to set the nuclear industry back globally,” wrote one official at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), whose name has been redacted. “We need to ensure the anti-nuclear chaps and chapesses do not gain ground on this. We need to occupy the territory and hold it. We really need to show the safety of nuclear.”

Officials stressed the importance of preventing the incident from undermining public support for nuclear power.

The Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, who sits on the Commons environmental audit committee, condemned the extent of co-ordination between the government and nuclear companies that the emails appear to reveal.

“The government has no business doing PR for the industry and it would be appalling if its departments have played down the impact of Fukushima,” he said.

Louise Hutchins, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace, said the emails looked like “scandalous collusion”. “This highlights the government’s blind obsession with nuclear power and shows neither they, nor the industry, can be trusted when it comes to nuclear,” she said.

The Fukushima accident, triggered by the Japan earthquake and tsunami on 11 March, has forced 80,000 people from their homes. Opinion polls suggest it has dented public support for nuclear power in Britain and around the world, with the governments of Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Thailand and Malaysia cancelling planned nuclear power stations in the wake of the accident.

The business department emailed the nuclear firms and their representative body, the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA), on 13 March, two days after the disaster knocked out nuclear plants and their backup safety systems at Fukushima. The department argued it was not as bad as the “dramatic” TV pictures made it look, even though the consequences of the accident were still unfolding and two major explosions at reactors on the site were yet to happen.

“Radiation released has been controlled – the reactor has been protected,” said the BIS official, whose name has been blacked out. “It is all part of the safety systems to control and manage a situation like this.”

The official suggested that if companies sent in their comments, they could be incorporated into briefs to ministers and government statements. “We need to all be working from the same material to get the message through to the media and the public.

“Anti-nuclear people across Europe have wasted no time blurring this all into Chernobyl and the works,” the official told Areva. “We need to quash any stories trying to compare this to Chernobyl.”

Japanese officials initially rated the Fukushima accident as level four on the international nuclear event scale, meaning it had “local consequences”. But it was raised to level seven on 11 April, officially making it a major accident” and putting it on a par with Chernobyl in 1986.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has released more than 80 emails sent in the weeks after Fukushima in response to requests under freedom of information legislation. They also show:

• Westinghouse said reported remarks on the cost of new nuclear power stations by the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, were “unhelpful and a little premature”.

• The company admitted its new reactor, AP1000, “was not designed for earthquakes [of] the magnitude of the earthquake in Japan”, and would need to be modified for seismic areas such as Japan and California.

• The head of the DECC’s office for nuclear development, Mark Higson, asked EDF to welcome the expected announcement of a safety review by the energy secretary, Chris Huhne, and added: “Not sure if EDF unilaterally asking for a review is wise. Might set off a bidding war.”

• EDF promised to be “sensitive” to how remediation work at a UK nuclear site “might be seen in the light of events in Japan”.

• It also requested that ministers did not delay approval for a new radioactive waste store at the Sizewell nuclear site in Suffolk, but accepting there was a “potential risk of judicial review”.

• The BIS warned it needed “a good industry response showing the safety of nuclear – otherwise it could have adverse consequences on the market”.

On 7 April, the office for nuclear development invited companies to attend a meeting at the NIA’s headquarters in London. The aim was “to discuss a joint communications and engagement strategy aimed at ensuring we maintain confidence among the British public on the safety of nuclear power stations and nuclear new-build policy in light of recent events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant”.

Other documents released by the government’s safety watchdog, the office for nuclear regulation, reveal that the text of an announcement on 5 April about the impact of Fukushima on the new nuclear programme was privately cleared with nuclear industry representatives at a meeting the previous week. According to one former regulator, who preferred not to be named, the degree of collusion was “truly shocking“.

A spokesman for the DECC and BIS said: “Given the unprecedented events unfolding in Japan, it was appropriate to share information with key stakeholders, particularly those involved in operating nuclear sites. The government was very clear from the outset that it was important not to rush to judgment and that a response should be based on hard evidence. This is why we called on the chief nuclear inspector, Dr Mike Weightman, to provide a robust and evidence-based report.”

A DECC source played down the significance of the emails from the unnamed BIS official, saying: “The junior BIS official was not responsible for nuclear policy and his views were irrelevant to ministers’ decisions in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake.”

Tom Burke, a former government environmental adviser and visiting professor at Imperial College London, warned that the British government was repeating mistakes made in Japan. “They are too close to industry, concealing problems, rather than revealing and dealing with them,” he said.

“I would be much more reassured if DECC had been worrying about how the government would cope with the $200m-$300m of liabilities from a catastrophic nuclear accident in Britain.”

The government last week confirmed plans for eight new nuclear stations in England and Wales. “If acceptable proposals come forward in appropriate places, they will not face unnecessary holdups,” said the energy minister, Charles Hendry.

The NIA did not comment directly on the emails. “We are funded by our member companies to represent their commercial interests and further the compelling case for new nuclear build in the UK,” said the association’s spokesman.

More…  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/30/british-government-plan-play-down-fukushima

*UPDATE 10/11/11

UK Nuclear Programme Gets Go-Ahead Despite Fukushima Disaster

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News

The Fukushima disaster provides no reason to restrict UK nuclear reactors or stop building new ones, the official nuclear regulator has concluded.

Dr Mike Weightman, the UK’s chief nuclear inspector, found no fundamental weaknesses in the current licensing regime or safety principles.

But “continuous improvement” should be sought, he said in his report.

The government commissioned the report after the March tsunami damaged Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Dr Weightman released a set of preliminary conclusions in May, including recommendations that plant operators should review issues such as ventilation, electrical backup systems, storage of spent fuel rods, and flood protection.

His final report expands on those recommendations, but finds no reason to curtail the new build programme that the government wants to fulfil energy and climate change targets.

“I remain confident that our UK nuclear facilities have no fundamental safety weaknesses,” he said.

“But we are not complacent. No matter how high our standards, the quest for improvement must never stop.

“Action has already been taken in many cases, with work under way to further enhance safety at UK sites.”

A priority, he said, was to press ahead with clean-up plans for “legacy” sites such as Sellafield.

Earlier this year, Dr Weightman led a fact-finding mission to Japan under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

He said that his findings on this trip, and the conclusions contained in a separate Japanese government review, had fed into the new report.

But, the report warns: “The detailed circumstances of the accident in Japan are not yet fully known, and some may not be possible to determine given the loss of control and of certain instrumentation.”

This point was picked up by critics of the nuclear industry including Greenpeace, whose campaigner Louise Hutchins described the report as “rushed”.

“It’s designed with one objective – to give the green light to a new generation of nuclear power stations, irrespective of the safety, environmental or rising financial costs of those nuclear stations,” she said.

And Paul Dorfman from Warwick University, a member of the NuclearConsult academic grouping, described it as “complacent”.

“That the report says that our UK nuclear facilities have no fundamental safety weaknesses is a clear abrogation of regulatory responsibility,” he said.

“An accident is by definition accidental; and when things go wrong, as we’ve learned in Fukushima and Chernobyl, the human and environmental impact can be very, very great.”

Dr Dorfman pointed to the interim report’s conclusion that flooding risks remained to be completely evaluated by regulators.

However, Dame Sue Ion, a long-time nuclear engineer and now Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said the report endorsed nuclear new build, with some enhanced safety features.

“Mike Weightman points out that the industry and others have responded constructively and responsibly to the recommendations made in the interim report and instigated, where necessary, significant programmes of work,” she said.

“This shows an on-going commitment to the principle of continuous improvement and the maintenance of a strong safety culture.”

Powering ahead

The government will press ahead with plans to establish the Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR) as a self-standing entity.

Dr Weightman intends to produce a further report in a year’s time, to evaluate how far the industry has moved on the recommendations he has made.

Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, thanked the chief inspector for his work.

“The report makes clear that the UK has one of the best nuclear safety regimes in the world, and that nuclear power can go on powering homes and businesses across the UK, as well as supporting jobs,” he said.

“We must however continue to improve where we can, not just with operating power stations and new sites, but by dealing with our nuclear legacy in a robust and effective manner too.”

More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15256981

President Barack Obama will be able to send any mobile phone in the United States a text message warning of imminent danger, from a terror attack to a natural disaster, under plans announced on Tuesday.
From next year, new phones and other hand-held devices will be required to be fitted with special chips to receive the alerts, which will also be sent by state and local authorities. Users will be able to opt out of every type of alert except those from the president, said the Federal Communications Commission.

The system will include alerts about missing children and will supersede all other phone traffic to avoid delays.

Mr Obama, who has been dubbed the “texter-in-chief” thanks to his devotion to his BlackBerry and heavy use of text messages during his 2008 campaign, may face criticism from libertarians for the compulsory nature of the presidential alerts.

But officials see the system, known as Personal Localized Alerting Network, or Plan, as a logical progression from alerting the public via radio and television.

“The lesson that was reinforced on 9/11 was the importance of getting clear and accurate information to the public during a crisis,” said Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, where the scheme will be deployed first next year. It will then move to Washington and most other large cities.

More… http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8506093/Barack-Obama-to-be-able-to-text-terror-warnings-to-all-US-phones.html

Paul Joseph Watson (Prison Planet.com)

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Senator James Inhofe(R) has revealed that Henry Paulson was behind the threats of martial law and a new great depression prior to the passage of the bailout bill, having made such warnings during a conference call on September 19th, around two weeks before the legislation was eventually approved by both the Senate and Congress.

“That’s Henry Paulson,” responded Inhofe, “We had a conference call early on, it was on a Friday I think – a week and half before the vote on Oct. 1. So it would have been the middle … what was it – the 19th of September, we had a conference call. In this conference call – and I guess there’s no reason for me not to repeat what he said, but he said – he painted this picture you just described. He said, ‘This is serious. This is the most serious thing that we faced.’

By Richard B. Schmitt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

EARLY WARNING: Chris Swecker in 2005. In charge of criminal probes for the FBI, he believed the agency would prevent upheaval in the mortgage industry.

WASHINGTON — Long before the mortgage crisis began rocking Main Street and Wall Street, a top FBI official made a chilling, if little-noticed, prediction: The booming mortgage business, fueled by low interest rates and soaring home values, was starting to attract shady operators and billions in losses were possible.

“It has the potential to be an epidemic,” Chris Swecker, the FBI official in charge of criminal investigations, told reporters in September 2004. But, he added reassuringly, the FBI was on the case. “We think we can prevent a problem that could have as much impact as the S&L crisis,” he said.

Today, the damage from the global mortgage meltdown has more than matched that of the savings-and-loan bailouts of the 1980s and early 1990s. By some estimates, it has made that costly debacle look like chump change. But it’s also clear that the FBI failed to avert a problem it had accurately forecast.

Banks and brokerages have written down more than $300 billion of mortgage-backed securities and other risky investments in the last year or so as homeowner defaults leaped and weakness in the real estate market spread.

In California alone, lenders have foreclosed on $100 billion worth of homes over the last two years and are foreclosing at a rate of 1,300 houses every business day, according to a recent report from ForeclosureRadar.com.

Most observers have declared the mess a gross failure of regulation. To be sure, in the run-up to the crisis, market-oriented federal regulators bragged about their hands-off treatment of banks and other savings institutions and their executives. But it wasn’t just regulators who were looking the other way. The FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, are supposed to act as the cops on the beat for potentially illegal activities by bankers and others. But they were focused on national security and other priorities, and paid scant attention to white-collar crimes that may have contributed to the lending and securities debacle.

Now that the problems are out in the open, the government’s response strikes some veteran regulators as too little, too late.

Swecker, who retired from the FBI in 2006, declined to comment for this article.

But sources familiar with the FBI budget process, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the growing fraud problem, say that he and other FBI criminal investigators sought additional assistance to take on the mortgage scoundrels.

They ended up with fewer resources, rather than more.

In 2007, the number of agents pursuing mortgage fraud shrank to around 100. By comparison, the FBI had about 1,000 agents deployed on banking fraud during the S&L bust of the 1980s and ’90s, said Anthony Adamski, who oversaw financial crime investigations for the FBI at the time.

The FBI says it now has about 200 agents working on mortgage fraud, but critics say the agency might have averted much of the problem had it heeded its own warning.

“The FBI correctly diagnosed that mortgage fraud was epidemic, but it did not come close to meeting its announced goal,” said William K. Black, who was a federal regulator during the S&L crisis and now teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

“It used everyday procedures and woefully inadequate resources to deal with an epidemic,” he said. “The approach was certain to bring symbolic prosecutions and strategic defeat.”

The mortgage debacle has laid bare a system marked by dubious practices at every stage of the process. Lenders often made loans to borrowers who had limited ability to repay them but little desire to pass up the dream of homeownership. Many loans lacked basic documentation, such as information about borrowers’ incomes.

Still, mortgage companies could hardly sell them fast enough, packaging the loans as investment securities and peddling them to eager buyers on Wall Street.

The FBI defends its handling of the crisis, with officials contending that as home prices were rising several years ago, the trouble brewing in the mortgage market — and the potential crimes behind it — was not immediately apparent.

Officials said they began approaching mortgage companies and others in an attempt to raise awareness about the growing fraud problem. But the lenders had little incentive to cooperate because they were continuing to make money. Black says that in many cases, they were part of the fraud.

“Nobody wanted to listen,” Sharon Ormsby, the chief of the FBI’s financial crimes section, said in an interview. “We were dealing with the issue as best we could back then.”

Over the last three years, the FBI and other agencies have brought dozens of mortgage-fraud cases. The bureau has rooted out foreclosure rescue schemes in which homeowners are tricked into signing over the deeds to their homes to operators who buried the properties even deeper in debt. Agents have disrupted cases of identity theft in which criminals open — and exhaust — home equity lines of credit and leave homeowners stuck with the bill.

Many of the cases have been relatively small, however, with about half the investigations involving losses of less than $1 million — the size of two or three loans.

But the tepid response also reflects a broad realignment of law-enforcement priorities at the Justice Department in which mortgage fraud and other white-collar crimes have been subordinated to other Bush administration dictatorship priorities.

That has reflected, in part, the ramp-up in national security and terrorism investigations after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the administration has also put more support behind efforts against illegal immigration and child pornography.

In a way, the mortgage debacle could not have come onto the FBI radar screen at a worse time. Just as Swecker was making his doomsday forecast, the FBI, under pressure from Congress and the White House, was creating a crime-fighting brain drain, transferring hundreds of agents from its criminal investigations unit into its anti-terrorism program. About 2,500 agents doing criminal work — 20% or so of the entire force — were affected.

Even as the number of new white-collar cases started declining, the Justice Department did pursue some high-profile corporate prosecutions, such as those arising from the collapse of Enron Corp. But some former prosecutors question the administration’s current commitment to pursuing complex, high-stakes cases.

“I think most sitting U.S. attorneys now staring at the subprime crisis find scant resources available to pursue sophisticated financial crimes,” said John C. Hueston, a Los Angeles lawyer who was a lead federal prosecutor in the trials of Enron executives Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling.

Absent a major shift in priorities and resources, he said, it is likely that the Justice Department and the FBI will continue on their current path of focusing on simple cases “that don’t go to the heart of the problem.”

The FBI says it has 21 open investigations into possible large-scale fraud related to the subprime meltdown. The Times reported last month that a federal grand jury in Los Angeles had subpoenaed records from three large California lenders: Countrywide Financial Corp. (now part of Bank of America Corp.), New Century Financial Corp. and IndyMac Federal Bank.

Among other possible targets, the FBI has said, are investment firms that sold billions in securities backed by shaky subprime mortgages and credit rating agencies that gave high marks to the now-worthless securities and failed to protect investors.

But it may be hard to jump-start such probes. Trying to prove that a major mortgage company intended to defraud buyers of its securities, for example, could take years of digging into records and testimony.

Moreover, some of those involved may have special legal protection: Credit rating firms have in other cases successfully asserted that, their opinions about the values of securities are protected by the 1st Amendment.

“I am happy to have investigations going on, but these investigations should have taken place years ago,” said Blair A. Nicholas, a San Diego lawyer representing investors who lost money in the collapse of several subprime mortgage lenders. “They seem to always get involved after the horse has left the barn. It is always cleaning up the mess rather than being proactive.”

Could the crisis have been averted, or at least mitigated, if the FBI had intervened more forcefully?

“Until there is a catastrophic loss, there is no incentive to investigate criminal conduct,” said Cynthia Monaco, a former federal prosecutor in New York. “Nor are there people coming forward with evidence” such as angry investors or whistle-blowing corporate employees, she said.

Even now, Monaco added, it is far from clear whether the damage — suffered by investors and homeowners alike — was the product of clear-cut fraud.

Ormsby says the FBI is more actively working with other federal investigative agencies in the hope they will pick up the slack. The Secret Service, for example, in a departure from its traditional missions of protecting presidents and heads of state and investigating counterfeiting, has assigned more than 100 agents to examine mortgage fraud, said spokesman Edwin Donovan.

The Justice Department is also starting to mobilize. The department offered what it described as a “basic seminar” on mortgage fraud cases to about 100 prosecutors last week at its national training academy in South Carolina.

More: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mortgagefraud25-2008aug25,1,4792318.story

By ERIC RUTH, The News Journal

You can fight terror with bombs, or guns, or even with tough words. It’s a battle that has taken Americans to foreign lands and into the realm of cyberspace.

In Delaware, the struggle has entered the classroom. The weapon of choice is knowledge.

Across the nation and around the world, colleges are increasingly creating degree programs and other courses to prepare students for work in “homeland security,” the broadly defined realm of protecting communities and businesses against terror attacks and natural disasters.

At Wilmington College, a master’s degree concentration in the field will begin in September, and has attracted about 25 students. At Delaware Technical & Community College, officials are exploring a two-year degree in homeland security and emergency management.

“We saw regional need for homeland security at the master’s level,” said Chris Trowbridge, an assistant professor and the coordinator of Wilmington College’s graduate administration of justice programs. Increasingly, he said, business and law enforcement professionals see the benefit of studying the dynamics of terrorism and the complexities of assessing risk.

Many firms and government agencies already have people in place who are working to cope with these security issues, said Bill Esposito, a former deputy director of the FBI who will be teaching two of the four courses included in Wilmington College’s yearlong homeland security program. “The question is, how much training do these people really have and how much education do they have in those programs?” he said.

Across the country, schools have been addressing that question by adding homeland security classes, from the bachelor’s degree available since last fall at Virginia Commonwealth University to the four-year curriculum at Joppatowne High School in Maryland.

Across the country, such programs are showing “dramatic growth,” said Todd I. Stewart, director of the National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security, an organization that encourages collaboration among schools. The alliance now includes more than 330 universities and community colleges, including some overseas.

…”I am not surprised by the overwhelming response,” said William H. Parrish, a professor in Virginia Commonwealth’s program and a former associate director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Americans remain acutely aware of the uncertainties created by 9/11, but “not everybody is ready to raise their right arm and put on a uniform and serve their country,” he said.

…”When the homeland security [program] came, I said, ‘That’s it,’ ” he said. “The academic side of it is a complement to the first-responder training we’re getting.”

With college certification, experts said, students and even current workers can burnish their appeal to prospective employers who have a big stake in emergency preparedness, from law enforcement agencies to corporations.

Wilmington College’s programs include classes in modern terrorism, risk assessment, and management and legal aspects of homeland security. The concentration is also available as a post-master’s certificate.

“Our program is designed for working practitioners, so the vast majority of our students are already working in the criminal justice system, in the field,” Trowbridge said.

“They’re always looking at ways to be on the front end of what’s happening in society,” said Dominic Murgido, vice president and director of loss prevention for the Boscov’s department store chain. A member of the college’s criminal justice advisory board, he said businesses also have a crucial interest in the homeland security process.

“It helps corporations and businesses to be part of the whole makeup of the national effort for homeland security,” he said of the college programs.
For the community, the growth in such programs may even help create a more secure society, experts said. “Five years ago, we probably wouldn’t have been talking about this kind of stuff in the classroom,” Parrish said. “But times have changed.”

Original link:  http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060824/NEWS/608240373/1006/NEWS

The FBI has begun permitting police investigators to pursue some criminal suspects by tracking the DNA of close relatives who have been convicted of other offenses.

A study published in May in the journal Science concluded that such “partial-match searches” could greatly increase the number of cases solved through the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS. The system solves crimes by matching genetic profiles drawn from blood, semen and other forensic evidence to a database of convicted criminals and other people who have been arrested.

Near-match searching, however, is drawing fire from privacy activists, who say it places innocent relatives of criminals and non-relatives with similar DNA profiles under a form of genetic surveillance.

“It’s a major privacy intrusion in the life of families,” says Tania Simoncelli, who studies DNA database issues for the American Civil Liberties Union in New York City. “And we’re effectively expanding the already huge (DNA) databases to include potentially hundreds of thousands of relatives and non-relatives. It’s the worst kind of privacy intrusion.”

Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey says the FBI has given him the name and other identifying information of an Oregon felon whose DNA profile shows that he is a “likely” close relative of a man who raped a woman in Denver in 2003. Morrissey plans to use the information, he says, as an “investigative lead” to identify the Denver suspect.

The case is the first time the FBI has permitted near-match information to be shared between states, Morrissey says.

“I’ve got a brutal rapist out there and a very traumatized victim,” he says. “How can I not pursue a lead?”

Morrissey dismisses the idea that such searches violate privacy rights. “Law enforcement always is investigating people who are later proven to be innocent and exonerated,” he says. “This is no different.”
…Near-match searching takes advantage of the fact that close biological relatives — children, parents, siblings — often have similar DNA profiles.

It also builds on research that suggests crime may cluster in families. A 1996 federal study found that 46% of jail inmates had a close relative who had been incarcerated.

More: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/genetics/2006-08-22-dna-partial-matches_x.htm

Borders are a key element of national identity. When borders are violated, the result is often crisis and war. Look no further than this summer’s conflict in the Middle East, set off by a cross-border kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah militants. Protection and defense of borders is, for most nations, a high priority.

Thus, it is troubling to see our government intent upon passing control over its borders to private companies. 

Immigration control is a fundamental exercise of sovereignty, and sovereign powers are considered almost inviolable. As a legacy of its plenary powers over immigration, Congress has enacted some of this country’s most racist and arbitrary policies, which the Supreme Court has never struck down. Examples include Chinese exclusion, national origins restrictions and expedited removals.

Turning over immigration powers to private companies further endangers democracy. Immigration policy, programs and current proposals are replete with references to privatization – enforcement, detention, inspections and services – that would place the fate of potential immigrants in the hands of private mercenaries and military contractors.

The Customs and Border Protection’s Expedited Removal Program has contracted with Halliburton to oversee the expansion of the federal government’s capacity to detain immigrants. Rep. Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican, has proposed deploying private “Ellis Island Centers” in foreign countries for the purpose of recruiting and managing guest workers.

Privatization, a neoliberal trend begun in the 1970s, means policy is driven by profit-seeking. During the early 1980s, the federal government began experimenting with incarcerating people for profit, using immigrant detention as its canary in the coal mine. In 1984, the Corrections Corporation of America, the private-incarceration leader, cut its first deal with the federal government to operate Immigration and Naturalization Service detention centers in Houston and Laredo, Texas. Since then, private incarceration has become a boom industry as well as a lightning rod for credible human-rights abuse litigation.

U.S.-Mexico border control is also being privatized. After more than a decade of border militarization with “Operation Gatekeeper” and “Operation Hold the Line,” the deployment of the National Guard and plans for 700 miles of fencing, in May the government solicited bids from military contractors Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Ericsson and Northrop Grumman for a multibillion-dollar contract to build a “virtual fence” of unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment along the border. With final awarding of the Secure Border Initiative Network set for September, the arrival of military contractors at the border is imminent.

Add Blackwater Inc., a private security firm that has run mercenaries in Iraq and New Orleans, and is negotiating a contract to train U.S. Border Patrol officers, and you get a virtual fence that has guns for hire welcoming newcomers at ports of entry.

Military contractors and private mercenaries as immigration policymakers represent a foreboding prospect for any democracy.

Another issue is the use of technologies of power to help manage a cheap postindustrial labor force. Guest worker proposals are helping to frame immigration within a neoliberal trade context, which opens another door to privatized control.

For example, Mode 4 of the recent proposed General Agreement on Trade in Services, negotiated in the World Trade Organization, would accomplish what the North American Free Trade Agreement couldn’t achieve, reducing migrant workers to the status of commodities.

Mode 4 would hasten the demise of Human-rights protections for border crossers, while the Senate’s guest-worker provision would help make Mode 4 binding on domestic policy. As an outcome, guest-worker provisions would expedite the movement of temporary workers, secure private “bantustans” for border crossers in northern Mexico, and control guest-worker populations in this country while further marginalizing efforts by NGOs to hold the process accountable.

Finally, guest-worker policies would provide additional opportunities for the security-industrial complex at the border. With CCA, Blackwater, Lockheed Martin and others as gatekeepers, guest workers would come face to face with law-and-order activities twice removed from public scrutiny.

The looming presence of “virtual” technologies, mercenaries and military contractors as front-line defenders for U.S. sovereignty is cause for alarm well beyond the potential for individual human rights violations. It suggests this country’s “deciders” are less interested in physical border fences that would harm trade and impede the flow of cheap labor than in securing a system of “virtual fence” and paramilitary strategies that would facilitate wholesale control over migrants in the name of profit.

Original link:  http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.borders21aug21,0,1798499.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines

https://goucher.edu/documents/MediaHits/A%20corporate%20takeover%20of%20American%20borders.pdf

British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny – refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.

The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic.

Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it.

The incident fuels the row over airport security following the arrest of more than 20 people allegedly planning the suicide-bombing of transatlantic jets from the UK to America. It comes amid growing demands for passenger-profiling and selective security checks.

It also raised fears that more travellers will take the law into their own hands – effectively conducting their own ‘passenger profiles’.

The passenger revolt came as Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary was accused of using the terror crisis to make money. Government sources say he boasted to an official at the Transport Department: “Every time I appear on TV, I get a spike in sales.”

The Tories said the Government’s failure to reassure travellers had led the Malaga passengers to ‘behave irrationally’ and ‘hand a victory to terrorists’.

Websites used by pilots and cabin crew were yesterday reporting further incidents. In one, two British women with young children on another flight from Spain complained about flying with a bearded Muslim even though he had been security-checked twice before boarding.

The trouble in Malaga flared last Wednesday as two British citizens in their 20s waited in the departure lounge to board the pre-dawn flight and were heard talking what passengers took to be Arabic. Worries spread after a female passenger said she had heard something that alarmed her.

Passengers noticed that, despite the heat, the pair were wearing leather jackets and thick jumpers and were regularly checking their watches.

Initially, six passengers refused to board the flight. On board the aircraft, word reached one family. To the astonishment of cabin crew, they stood up and walked off, followed quickly by others.

The Monarch pilot – a highly experienced captain – accompanied by armed Civil Guard police and airport security staff, approached the two men and took their passports.

Half an hour later, police returned and escorted the two Asian passengers off the jet.

‘There was no fuss or panic’

Soon afterwards, the aircraft was cleared while police did a thorough security sweep. Nothing was found and the plane took off – three hours late and without the two men on board.

Monarch arranged for them to spend the rest of the night in an airport hotel and flew them back to Manchester later on Wednesday.

College lecturer Jo Schofield, her husband Heath and daughters Emily, 15, and Isabel, 12, were caught up in the passenger mutiny.

Mrs Schofield, 38, said: “The plane was not yet full and it became apparent that people were refusing to board. In the gate waiting area, people had been talking about these two, who looked really suspicious with their heavy clothing, scruffy, rough, appearance and long hair.

“Some of the older children, who had seen the terror alert on television, were starting to mutter things like, ‘Those two look like they’re bombers.’

“Then a family stood up and walked off the aircraft. They were joined by others, about eight in all. We learned later that six or seven people had refused to get on the plane.

“There was no fuss or panic. People just calmly and quietly got off the plane. There were no racist taunts or any remarks directed at the men.

“It was an eerie scene, very quiet. The children were starting to ask what was going on. We tried to play it down.”

Mr Schofield, 40, an area sales manager, said: “When the men were taken off they didn’t argue or say a word. They just picked up their coats and obeyed the police. They seemed resigned to the fact they were under suspicion.

“The captain and crew were very apologetic when we were asked to evacuate the plane for the security search. But there was no dissent.

“While we were waiting, everyone agreed the men looked dodgy. Some passengers were very panicky and in tears. There was a lot of talking about terrorists.”

Patrick Mercer, the Tory Homeland Security spokesman, said last night: “This is a victory for terrorists. These people on the flight have been terrorised into behaving irrationally.

“For those unfortunate two men to be victimised because of the colour of their skin is just nonsense.”

Monarch said last night: “The captain was concerned about the security surrounding the two gentlemen on the aircraft and the decision was taken to remove them from the flight for further security checks.

“The two passengers offloaded from the flight were later cleared by airport security and rebooked to travel back to Manchester on a later flight.”

A spokesman for the Civil Guard in Malaga said: “These men had aroused suspicion because of their appearance and the fact that they were speaking in a foreign language thought to be an Arabic language, and the pilot was refusing to take off until they were escorted off the plane.”

More: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-401419/Mutiny-passengers-refuse-fly-Asians-removed.html#

‘Downright Criminal.’ That’s the verdict of a report into New Orleans’ reconstruction, and the huge contracts handed to non-local firms.
by Andrew Buncombe in Washington

A year after Hurricane Katrina, the reconstruction of the devastated Gulf coast is being severely hampered by waste and inefficiency overseen by “disaster profiteers” who are making million of dollars, according to a watchdog group. The group claims the inefficiency – along with the companies’ political connections – follows a pattern similar to what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq.

With much of New Orleans still in ruins and its population half of what it was before the hurricane, a new report claims millions of dollars has been squandered by wasteful processes that have seen 90 per cent of the first wave of reconstruction contracts awarded to firms outside Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Local firms have been frozen out while immigrant workers have been exploited and often unpaid.

“One year after the disaster, the slow-motion rebuilding of the region looks identical to what has happened in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Pratap Chatterjee, the director of Corpwatch. “The process of getting Katrina-stricken areas back on their feet is needlessly behind schedule, in part, due to the shunning of local business people in favour of politically connected corporations from elsewhere in the US that have used their clout to win lucrative no-bid contracts with little or no accountability.”

When President George Bush addressed America from floodlit Jackson Square in New Orleans on 15 September last year, he said: “Our goal is to get the work done quickly. And taxpayers expect this work to be done honestly and wisely…. And in the work of rebuilding, as many jobs as possible should go to the men and women who live in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.”

Yet the report details how the overwhelming majority of initial contracts for construction went to companies – “usually large, politically connected corporations – based outside these three states”. Among the biggest winners of contracts were Florida-based Ashbritt, which received a $500m contract; Bechtel of San Francisco, which has received $575m worth; and Texas-based Fluor Corp – $1.4bn. One Louisiana company that received a large contract was the Shaw Group, which was awarded $950m worth.

…The report’s author, Rita King, said: “The devastation of the Gulf coast is tragic enough but the scope of the corporate greed that followed, facilitated by government incompetence and complicity is downright criminal. Sadly, disaster profiteering has become commonplace in America. Corporations are growing rich off no-bid contracts while the sub-contractors [get] peanuts.”

Another aspect highlighted is the failure to pay immigrant workers, who do much of the reconstruction work. It details the efforts of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance which has had to fight for $300,000 in wages owed to immigrant workers.

Rosana Cruz of the National Immigration Law Centre said: “The level of assault against workers feels like war. There is vulnerability in each successive layer of sub-contracting. This is a microcosm of what is happening around the world. If you’re poor and you’re brown we can do what we want with you.”

…Golden Pyramid: How dust and debris turns into dollars 

The report claims many large companies established ‘contracting pyramids’, with each layer skimming money. It highlighted the $500m contract awarded to Ashbritt to remove debris, which worked out at $23 per cubic metre of rubbish moved. In turn, it hired C&B Enterprises to do the work for $9 per cubic metre, which in turn hired Amlee Transportation which was paid $8 per cubic metre. Amlee hired another company for $7 a cubic metre. Finally, the work was done at $3 per cubic metre by a haulier from New Jersey.

Katrina contracts (as of 10/4/05)
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2005/10/04/GR2005100400038.html

More… http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0820-04.htm

(original link)  http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1220475.ece

Published by Agence France Presse

When US President George W. Bush stepped forward to announce his new treasury secretary on May 30, a few Goldman Sachs friends likely knew Henry Paulson had the job.

Paulson was not the first Goldman executive to join the Bush administration from the 137-year-old investment bank described by the president as one of America’s “most respected firms”.

In fact, he was following in the well-heeled footsteps of three other former Goldman alumni who answered Bush’s call, although Stephen Friedman who briefly headed the White House National Economic Council, has since returned to “the firm” as it is known on Wall Street.

Aside from running a billion-dollar bank, it is also likely that Paulson’s political donations of tens of thousands of dollars to Republican senators added to his luster.

The “revolving door” between the corporate world and government is nothing new, but Goldman leads the way by far in terms of its managers infiltrating the White House and other top government posts.

“It appears to be, for whatever reason, that Goldman Sachs sometimes has a disproportionate share of former employees in and out of government at any one time,” said former White House spokesman Trent Duffy, who observed personnel decisions.

“Some companies are more welcoming of government officials and maybe that’s how Goldman has been a little more successful in putting its people in there,” Duffy said.

…Young said Goldman benefits when executives return to the firm, as they would be expected to bring back a BlackBerry bursting with influential contacts.

Goldman does not publicly trumpet the appointments, but it does celebrate top managers who have served in the government.

One of the oil paintings hanging in the executive suite at Goldman’s New York headquarters portrays Robert Rubin, a former vice chairman who became then-president Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary.

But Bush has hired far more heavily from the bank that was founded in a New York basement by German immigrant Marcus Goldman in 1869.

The president’s chief of staff, Josh Bolten, and the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Jeffery Reuben, are Goldman alumni.

But the flow goes both ways. Goldman recently hired Robert Zoellick, who stepped down as the US deputy secretary of state, and Faryar Shirzad, who worked as one of Bush’s national security advisors.

“They must do a great job of maintaining their presence in Washington,” said Jerry Swerling, a public relations profesor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, who has advised General Motors and Cisco Systems.

“When you look at the appointments that these Goldman people have been getting it certainly says ‘yes’ to all those criteria” that Goldman’s clients would desire in terms of inside knowledge and government access,” Swerling said.

A securities law expert, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “They’re very attentive at Goldman to what school you went to,” noting that “the firm” recruits from “Ivy League” universities like Harvard and Yale.

This creates a “network” of individuals who have friends in high government office, the expert said. A Goldman Sachs spokesman said the firm is proud of executives who enter public service and that it welcomes former government officials.

“We are doing business at the intersection of so many markets around the world, that people with a global perspective are immensely useful,” the spokesman said.

More…  http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0820-06.htm