Undernews For 10 July 2009

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10 July 2009

WORD
Television is a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything - Fred Allen

PAGE ONE MUST

WORLD'S POPULATION WILL DOUBLE IN NEXT 40 YEARS AT CURRENT BIRTHRATES

IPS - The world's population - already at least 6.7 billion people - will double in the next 40 years if current growth rates are left unchecked, warns the United Nations Population Fund.

The effects of overpopulation are being felt across the globe, but the fastest growing regions are also some of the poorest. Sub-Saharan Africa has the most rapid overall growth, exacerbating existing problems like famine, disease and violent conflict over resources.

"What we see is countries like Kenya, which had stabilized its growth, are now growing faster again," Alex Ezeh, executive director of the Africa Population and Health Research Centre, told IPS. "By 2050 Kenya is projected to have 87 million people." Kenya currently has a population of 39 million.

The countries with the fastest individual growth rates also have marked concentrations of urban poor populations, such as India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Indonesia. . .

While fertility rates overall have fallen in every region in the past 30 years, they have fallen the slowest in Africa. . .

Despite the agreement of 179 countries on the importance of family planning at the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, the funding for family planning programmes targeted at the poor has stagnated over the past 15 years. . .

"Family planning is important because it has been shown with absolutely no doubt to empower women," Fatima Mrisho of the Tanzania Commission for AIDS, who attended the conference, told IPS.

"It gives women more opportunities for development, it makes herself as an individual survive better, it makes her children survive better, but as importantly, it also improves the general condition of a country," she stressed.

Worldwide, over 500,000 women die every year during pregnancy and childbirth, many of them from preventable or treatable medical problems. And for every death, another 20 women suffer lifelong injuries and disabilities.

Maternal mortality rates in Africa are at least 100 times those in developed countries. . .

LEADERS OF INDUSTRIAL NATIONS AGREE TENTATIVELY TO TRY TO HOLD TEMPERATURE RISE DOWN

Washington Post - The world's leading industrial nations tentatively agreed to try to prevent global temperatures from rising above a fixed level, after a more far-reaching proposal to slash production of greenhouse gases fizzled, according to U.S. and European negotiators.

Leaders meeting here for the Group of Eight summit said they would pledge to keep temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above average levels of more than a century ago, before large-scale industrial pollution occurred.

Temperatures have already risen by nearly half that amount, leaving little wiggle room. It was unclear what mechanisms, if any, would be adopted to enforce the target.

Some environmental groups saw the announcement as a weak nod at the obvious.

"This was such an opportunity," said Tobias Muenchmeyer, a Berlin-based activist with the group Greenpeace. "We are very disappointed that the result is so limited."

For other groups, the best that could be said of Wednesday's declaration was that, although it did not commit countries to specific cuts in greenhouse gases, it appeared to create a moral imperative to do so eventually.

WONDERS OF OBAMA'S HEALTH PLAN UPDATE

Kyung M. Song, Seattle Times - In what is becoming an annual ordeal for policyholders, Regence Blue Shield is raising premiums for 135,000 individual health-plan members in Washington by an average 17 percent on Aug. 1.

It is the third consecutive year that the state's largest provider of individual coverage has boosted rates by double digits. And it comes after two other insurers, Group Health Cooperative and LifeWise Health Plan of Washington, recently imposed similarly steep premium increases.

North Seattle resident Gail Petersen said having more choices won't make health plans any more affordable. Petersen, 55, and her husband pay more than $1,400 a month to Regence to cover their family of five and will pay $300 more starting in August.

Don McCanne, Physicians for a Public Health Plan - Once Congress passes a mandate for individuals to purchase health plans, presumably non-profit Regence Blue Shield, as the largest provider of individual plans in the state of Washington, would be a provider of those plans. Also, Group Health Cooperative is the co-op that has been proposed to serve as a model for the public option.

Group Health has been shifting more costs to patients through consumer-directed high deductible plans and HSAs, and still has a double digit hike in premiums. Some model.

Can anyone seriously state, with a straight face, that mandating purchase of these plans will somehow magically end the double digit increases in premiums for these plans?

The answer to this question is actually quite complex, but the fundamental truth is that the cost containment measures under consideration in Congress will have very little impact in slowing the escalation of health care costs.

All other nations have health care financing systems that are much more effective in containing costs and without leaving people out, as we do.

HORRORS OF SOCIALIZED MEDICINE UPDATE

Press Association - The number of people dying from three of the most common cancers has fallen to its lowest level in nearly 40 years, figures show. UK death rates from breast, bowel, and male lung cancer are at their lowest since 1971.

The fall in deaths, compiled by Cancer Research UK, is being put down to improved screening and better care. Experts said the decline in smoking had also played a key part in the drop in lung cancer. . .

The figures come despite the rising number of diagnoses because of the ageing population.

PANETTA KILLS 8 YEAR OLD SECRET PROGRAM

Politico - The ongoing tussle between Congress and the CIA deepened Friday as a congresswoman said that CIA Director Leon Panetta had killed an eight-year-long covert spy program that had operated without the knowledge of Congress. . .

WAS THIS IT?

Sam Stein, Huffington Post - The revelation from seven Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee that they were misled about a critical CIA program has sparked a debate that touches on the most sensitive areas of national security policy. What program, exactly, was being kept secret? No one is answering the question, citing the sensitivities that come when discussing classified intelligence matters. But in various conversations with sources on and off the Hill, two general theories have emerged. The first is that the CIA was keeping quiet about the use of waterboarding on terrorist . . .

Another theory being bandied about concerns an "executive assassination ring" that was allegedly set up and answered to former Vice President Dick Cheney. The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, building off earlier reporting from the New York Times, dropped news of the possibility that such a ring existed in a March 2009 discussion sponsored by the University of Minnesota [and reported in the Review - TPR]

"It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently," Hersh said. "They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it," he added. "It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths. Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us."

GERALD WALPIN CASE UPDATE

Bryon York, Washington Examiner - A top official of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the government agency that oversees AmeriCorps, has refused to answer questions from congressional investigators about the White House's role in events surrounding the abrupt firing of inspector general Gerald Walpin.

Frank Trinity, general counsel for the Corporation, met with a bipartisan group of congressional investigators. When the investigators asked Trinity for details of the role the White House played in the firing, Trinity refused to answer, according to two aides with knowledge of the situation.

"He said that's a prerogative of the White House, so he didn't feel at liberty to disclose anything regarding White House communications," says one aide.

Investigators asked Trinity whether he was claiming executive privilege, something that could only be authorized by the president. Trinity answered again that it was a White House "prerogative." When the investigators pointed out that, in the words of one aide, "there is no legal basis whatsoever" for such a claim, Trinity still declined to answer.

According to the knowledgeable sources, Trinity refused to say what contacts the Corporation had with the White House prior to the firing, or after the firing. He refused to say who at the Corporation had spoken to whom at the White House. He refused to say whether Corporation officials had discussed the specific reasons for the firing with the White House.

The last topic is particularly important to investigators, who believe the Obama administration may be constructing an after-the-fact rationale for canning Walpin.

When Walpin was fired on June 10, a White House lawyer told him that the president no longer had confidence in him. When congressional Democrats asked for a more detailed reason, the White House said Walpin had become "confused" and "disoriented" at a May 20 meeting with the board of the Corporation. Now, the story has shifted again, to emphasize allegations of racial and gender insensitivity in a parody newsletter produced to mark the retirement of a worker in Walpin's office in May 2008.

The newsletter, which was not written by Walpin, said that the departing worker, who handled procurement for the office, had "finally procured her federal retirement" from a "retirement vendor" who was a "qualified minority-female-veteran-disabled person." The newsletter also joked that the procurement official would be replaced by disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who specialized in "the procurement of blondes, brunettes, and redheads."

The newsletter was written more than a year before Walpin was fired. The board of the Corporation did not cite it as a reason for its unhappiness with Walpin. The White House did not mention the newsletter in earlier versions of its reasons for firing Walpin. Yet at the meeting with congressional investigators on Monday, Trinity pointed to the newsletter as one of the main reasons for Walpin's dismissal. When asked whether anyone at the Corporation had discussed the newsletter with anyone at the White House, Trinity refused to answer.

WHAT IT WAS LIKE WORKING WITH NEW YORK'S NEW LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR

Catherine Austin Fitts, Solari - The Governor of New York just appointed Richard "Dick" Ravitch to serve as his lieutenant governor.

I served as the Dillon Read officer responsible for our senior underwriting responsibilities to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority when Ravitch was Chairman. Once upon a time, he introduced me as his banker.

When I ran Hamilton Securities Group, I made the mistake of putting Dick on one of my advisory boards and hiring him as a consultant. After he helped smear me and engineer the housing bubble, he ended up with Paul Volker as an office mate in Rockefeller Center, while I slugged through thirteen years of litigation. That's another story.

Dick is someone who is not entirely trusted by the top guy-he has a temper and requires a lot of stroking. After years of lobbying the first Bush Administration to become head of the Resolution Trust Corporation, they gave him the nod. At that point he started making demands and then turned it down. However, he is a capable workout guy who loves drama and stress and being at the center of highly ugly political situations and will do whatever horrible thing needs doing in exchange for some power and prestige.

He has traditionally been very loyal to Bob Rubin, who served as his finance chairman when Dick ran for Mayor, hedge fund manager Mickey Steinhardt, and a variety of NY real estate and financial interests, including Goldman Sachs. Hence, from their point of view, he would be an excellent person to manage a NY state bankruptcy, bond default or significant government re-engineering. . .

One of my favorite Dick Ravitch quotes was in 1988, when I picked him up at his Park Avenue apartment for a black tie dinner. I told him that President-elect Bush had asked me to serve as FHA Commissioner. He looked at me in formal evening attire, surprised at the notion that a 38 year old woman, even his banker, could be the FHA Commissioner and said, "You don't look like an FHA Commissioner."

Another was a statement he made to me in 1997 about his government subsidized apartment buildings in New York over a steak dinner at the Jockey Club in Washington: "As long as I can get government subsidies, what do I care if people have education or jobs?"

I believe this appointment means that Wall Street and the Rockefeller interests want their workout guy in place to deal with the state budget and re-engineering New York government. It also means that Dick is going to grapple with what happens to his city and state when a generation of real estate owners don't care if people have education or jobs.

You see real estate does not have much value when the people living in it don't have an education and jobs. And it is hard to balance a government budget when the aristocracy makes money by destroying the local tax base and tax payers.

Very few people were more instrumental in creating our current mess than Dick Ravitch and his allies. It will be interesting to see how they propose to deal with it and how that dovetails with their already considerable personal fortunes.

TIP FOR NEWSPAPER EDITORS & PUBLISHERS

John Temple - What would happen if publishers and editors read only on the Web for two weeks? Now that I'm on the outside of the news business, I've had more time on my hands and more time has meant more of an opportunity to explore everything from Twitter and Facebook to iGoogle and the Web sites of numerous news outlets. . .

The experience has made me realize something I should have done when I was an editor/publisher. I should have gone cold turkey on the print edition of my own and other newspapers for two weeks or a month and determined what life was like for those who were living solely in a digital world. . .

If they would try this, I think newspaper executives would quickly see flaws in their offerings and would also more clearly understand the flood tide that is running. I'm not writing to criticize specifically what papers are doing online. Only to say that my experience being outside a newspaper tells me that other executives while they still have a chance might want to experience the world without their newspaper. I believe it would hasten their sense of urgency. . .

They could consider this exercise a competitive analysis if they must. But whatever they call it, weaning themselves from the paper for a brief period could be a big help.

Temple is the former editor, president and publisher of the now closed Rocky Mountain News

MID EAST NOTES

Haaretz, Israel - Netanyahu appears to be suffering from confusion and paranoia. He is convinced that the media are after him, that his aides are leaking information against him and that the American administration wants him out of office. Two months after his visit to Washington, he is still finding it difficult to communication normally with the White House. To appreciate the depth of his paranoia, it is enough to hear how he refers to Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, Obama's senior aides: as "self-hating Jews.". . .

At a recent meeting with with Netanyahu, ostensibly about the understandings with the U.S. on the settlements, former prime minister Ehud Olmert was shocked to see the prime minister focusing mainly on the media. "Is this what he called me in for?" a source close to Olmert quoted him as saying.

Behind closed doors, Netanyahu's coalition partners - including Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman - have also expressed shock at his behavior. One senior minister told an aide that he is finding it very difficult to work with the premier. "He drives us mad," the minister said. "Every minute things change, and I am constantly busy doing maintenance on Netanyahu."

Anti-War - Uzi Arad, the National Security Adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, [raised] the specter of the nation's mutually assured destruction doctrine, and said that Israel would need to dramatically strengthen its arsenal to ensure that the nation has the ability to totally destroy Iran in case they decide to attack.

Arad insisted that Israel must "become tremendously powerful, and create a situation in which no one will dare to realize the ability to harm us." The Israeli government has a significant undeclared nuclear arsenal which it occasionally accidentally admits too.

Iran, by contrast, is a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, has no nuclear arsenal, and though it has a growing civilian nuclear program aimed at energy generation, officials concede that there is no evidence they are attempted to produce any nuclear weapons.

BREVITAS

CYBER NOTES

Independent, UK - New York's attorney general says that Tagged.com stole the identities of more than 60 million internet users worldwide - by sending emails that raided their private accounts. Andrew Cuomo said he plans to sue the social networking website for deceptive marketing and invasion of privacy. "This company stole the address books and identities of millions of people," Cuomo said in a statement. "Consumers had their privacy invaded and were forced into the embarrassing position of having to apologize to all their email contacts for Tagged's unethical - and illegal - behavior." Started in 2004 by Harvard math students Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith, Tagged calls itself a "premier social-networking destination." The California-based company claims to be the third-largest social networking site after Facebook and MySpace, with 80 million registered users. Cuomo said Tagged acquired most of them fraudulently, sending unsuspecting recipients emails that urged them to view private photos posted by friends. When recipients tried to access the photos, Cuomo said they would in effect become new members of the site - without ever seeing any photos. Recipients' email address books would then be lifted, the attorney general said.

POLICE BLOTTER

Reuters - In a case in New York one juror accused another of threatening to cut off his finger. The allegation was made on the sixth day of deliberations in the Manhattan federal court trial of a lawyer accused of involvement in the fraud of collapsed commodities broker Refco Finance. "In a loud and belligerent manner" the juror "threatened to 'cut off your finger,'" the juror wrote in a note to the jury foreman that was included in a court transcript. "She made that statement twice. In the same tirade she stated, 'I will have my husband take care of you,'" said the note, which was given to U.S. District Court Judge Robert Patterson. The judge denied a mistrial request by defence counsel William Schwartz who spoke of the "chilling effect of the altercation on the other jurors." The note said the threat was made on Wednesday. The 12 jurors were still deliberating on Thursday. In a separate note the jury foreman told the judge that he believed the "altercation yesterday could be traced to both parties involved."

MEDIA

Ad Week - Nearly two in three Americans said news organizations gave too much coverage to the sudden death of Michael Jackson in the days following his June 25 heart attack in Los Angeles, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. While 64 percent deemed media attention to the 50-year-old pop superstar excessive, 29 percent thought it was appropriate and only 3 percent thought there was not enough coverage. . . 30 percent of those surveyed during June 26-29 said they followed those stories "very closely," with that level similar to the 28 percent who said they followed the death of NBC newsman Tim Russert very closely in June 2008 and the 30 percent who followed the death of crocodile hunter Steve Irwin very closely in September 2006. Nonetheless, interest in Jackson's death is far less than the 54 percent who said they followed the sudden deaths of John F. Kennedy Jr. in July 1999 and Princess Diana in September 1997. . . Eight in 10 African Americans said they followed news about Jackson's death very closely, compared with 22 percent of whites.

ON CAMPUS

Inside Higher Ed - The University of Colorado won just about everything it wanted, and Ward Churchill lost just about everything he wanted, in a ruling Tuesday by a state judge in Colorado. Judge Larry J. Naves ruled that the University of Colorado Board of Regents had "quasi-judicial immunity" when it voted to fire Churchill from his tenured position teaching ethnic studies, after faculty panels found that he had committed multiple instances of research misconduct. Naves vacated an April ruling by a jury in the case that found that Churchill had been inappropriately fired. Based on that ruling, Naves could have ordered Churchill reinstated or ordered Colorado to pay him -- issues that would have been moot given that Naves vacated the jury's decision. But Naves went on and said that, even based on the jury's findings, Churchill was not entitled to his job back, or to any money.

THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW

A Wells Fargo spokesman said that "Banks are not and cannot be the solution to California's budget problems."

FURTHERMORE. . .

Reuters - A hippopotamus that escaped three years ago from a zoo built by the late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar has been spotted living in the wild near the Magdalena river, according to a local magazine. Preferring the wetlands of northern Colombia to luxurious captivity after being imported from Africa, two of Escobar's hippos ran from the zoo in 2006. Not seen since, they became something of a local legend until photographer Julian Lineros and reporter Diana Pachon recently went searching for them.

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