EADS winning for Newport

Corruption exposed

It’s a fascinating inside story.

EADS is probably Newport’s biggest employer after the Civil Service. In July they will be opening a very large facility at Celtic Springs Newport .

They are locked in an extraordinary struggle to win a multi billion contract in America for tanker planes to fuel other aircraft. But EADS are changing their image. All their employees wear Star and stripes badges interlocked with an EADS flag. Nationalism is a key driver in the contract that EADS has already won. But a protest from Boeing is exploiting American patriotism. The bumper sticker shrieks the message on American jobs.

Previously a corruption scandal wrecked the bid. A woman has been jailed for favouring Boeing with leaks and accepting jobs offers. EADS has assembled a clutch of American companies to assemble the planes in Mobile, Alabama and manufacture key parts here. The task is to convince Congress that EADS is really an American company.

The splendid General Accounting Office may announce a key decision tomorrow.  They are the highly regarded arbiters for decisions on this kind. They are science based and objective. Tomorrow our committee will be visiting them to discuss the mad irrational world of buying defence equipment.

As in Europe decisions on vast spending are taken on political muscle. The Eurofighter farce is a key example of wastes being manufactured on four sites. Here in the USA, the incredible former Senator Trent Lott is on the lobbying books of EADS. I came across him in my select committee’s probe into lobbying. He resigned from his generously rewarded job as a Senator two years early to take up a job as a vastly over-rewarded job as a lobbyist.

The case for EADS is supreme on the ground of value and sense. The sentimental nationalistic case for Boeing may elbow its way through the political bun fight on Capitol Hill.

Soldier Lab-rats

Not another Government bashing story!

I winced when I saw this morning story that the Government had been using military veterans as lab-rats to test drugs that have lethal side effects.

Happily it is the US Government this time. But what a story. Perhaps no other news report involving unethical human experimentation demonstrates how far along the slippery slope the American government and the pharmaceutical industry have plunged. The report is about the exploitation of the vulnerability of disabled U.S. veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The veterans are being enrolled in an unethical drug experiment with the approval of the Department of Veterans Affairs, an experiment that exposes them to Pfizer's  controversial anti-smoking drug, Chantix, whose documented serious risks include psychotic episodes, violence and suicide.

The FDA acknowledges that nearly 40 suicides and more than 400 incidents of suicidal behavior have since been linked to Chantix.

There will be an almighty storm of a reaction to this. No more than the Big Pharmas deserve.

Pointy-heads humbled

The South Wales Argus had a brief moment of attention in the Pentagon this morning.

Our European Defence Committee were welcome by the think tank of the Neo-Cons. These were the pointy-headed intellectuals who gave the justification for the Iraq war. The American Enterprise Institute seemed slightly apologetic.

Here is another group with a rosy view of the continuing disaster of Afghanistan. They talked of the conflict continuing beyond ten years and perhaps continuing ‘for generations’. They were critical of the Germans and French for not putting their soldiers in the line of fire that is slaying British, American and Canadian troops.

This is provocative stuff. I quoted the Argus web poll that was showing 71% support for withdrawing British troops from Afghanistan this morning. Pity the question was not withdrawal from Helmand Province. That would have shown even stronger approval.

Public opinion will not long tolerate the blood price of hundreds of British lives lost in a meaningless war without end. It is heartening that the French, German, Belgium and Italian MPs present all agreed. A bad day for the pointy-heads.

Congratulations to a Tory MP Adam Holloway who made similar points in Westminster Hall today.  Would that I could be in two places at the same time. If teleporting had progressed I could have appeared as a hologram in the Commons in backing his sensible plea. One day it will happen.

Tomorrow, it’s off to New York to do some more missionary work.

Comments

[rwendland]

Well done for your good work with the European Defence Committee. It's interesting that media coverage of Afghanistan in Europe is so very different to the UK. e.g. this very realistic English language article in Der Spiegel:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,556304,00.html

One amusing(?) comment is that US Ambassador William Wood, previously ambassador to Columbia, has the "nickname "Chemical Bill," because he doggedly champions a policy of large-scale aerial spraying of the poppy fields with pesticides to destroy the crops." Hopefully we will be out before the U.S. succeed in getting that agreed.