Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday November 29 2006 - (813)

Wednesday November 29 2006 edition
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Analysis: As Iraq Deteriorates, Officials Blame Iraqis 2006-11-29 02:47:54 From troops on the ground to members of Congress, Americans increasingly blame the continuing violence and destruction in Iraq on the people most affected by it: the Iraqis. Even Democrats who have criticized the Bush administration's conduct of the occupation say the people and government of Iraq are not doing enough to rebuild their society. The White House is putting pressure on the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group have debated how much to blame Iraqis for not performing civic duties. This marks a shift in tone from earlier debate about the responsibility of the United States to restore order after the 2003 invasion, and it seemed to gain currency in October, when sectarian violence surged. Some see the talk of blame as the beginning of the end of U.S. involvement. Read The Full Story 5 Years After Enron, Big Business Wants Less Regulation 2006-11-29 02:46:40 Business interests, seizing on concerns that a law passed in the wake of the Enron scandal has overreached, are advancing a broad agenda to limit government oversight of private industry, including making it tougher for investors to sue companies and auditors for fraud. A group that has drawn support from Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., plans to issue a report Thursday that argues that the United States may be losing its preeminent position in global capital markets to foreign stock exchanges because of costly regulations and nettlesome private lawsuits. Interest groups are trying to build political support to review long-standing rules that govern companies, as well as parts of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law, which imposed stringent responsibilities on accountants, boards of directors and corporate executives. Some key members of Congress have recently expressed concern that U.S. companies may be over-regulated. Read The Full Story Opinion: Freedom Of Speech - Non-Negotiable 2006-11-29 02:44:48 Intellpuke: The following opinion column is written by Mark Jeffrey and appeared on the Huffington Post (HuffPo) website on Tuesday, November 28, 2006. It deals, as the headline states, with Freedom of Speech. Mr. Jeffrey's column follows: As regular readers of HuffPo no doubt have seen today, former Speaker and presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich recently made the interesting assertion that we "need to re-examine freedom of speech" in this post 9/11 world. Well, listen up, Newt: Freedom of speech is non-negotiable. It is a core American value. It is a core value of free societies in every time and place. It's bad enough that expression in the US and A has been recently restricted to "free speech zones" (I had previously been under the impression that in the Land of the Free, the whole place from Sea to Shining Sea was one big honkin' free speech zone). Read The Full Story Mexico Shocked By Surge In Violence 2006-11-29 02:43:24 Andres Sauzo collects newspapers, astoundingly grisly newspapers. There's the one with the close-up shot of a severed human head. There's the one with the wide-angle of a man hacked to death with a machete. But the worst in his bulky archive of drug-war gore rolled off the presses the day after someone found pieces of what used to be Sauzo's 24-year-old namesake. A hit man had decapitated Sauzo's son, then chopped off his arms and legs. The killer was so unconcerned about being brought to justice that he scrawled his own name and nickname - "El Barby" - on a note left with the mutilated corpse. Still, Sauzo's mother, Cristina Gomez, didn't bother to go to the police. "Why waste my time?" she said in an interview. "This is the way it is in a town without laws." Read The Full Story Slaughter In The Mosque: A New Terror For Iraqis 2006-11-28 15:42:47 Hassan Mahmoud has the build of a bouncer, but as he sits on a couch and talks about Iraq’s secret religious prisons his broad frame shakes, he clutches himself and weeps. “It hurts me when I remember what happened,” he says, recalling his brush with death inside a Shia prayer room where he witnessed the beheading of a fellow kidnap victim. In the war for Baghdad, mosques serve as garrisons. Sunnis use religious sanctuaries as strongholds to fight for mixed neighborhoods. Shia extremists convert their mosques and prayer rooms, called husseiniyas, into execution chambers. As Iraq falls apart, people like Mahmoud are now terrified by Baghdad’s places of worship, which they regard as potential gulags and gallows in the Sunni-Shia war. Read The Full Story Pope Seeks Brotherhood In Hostile Turkey 2006-11-28 15:41:32 "No red carpet for the Pope" said one Turkish headline today - and indeed there were no banners, portraits or flag waving crowds of the kind you normally see on papal trips abroad as Pope Benedict XVI arrived for the most hazardous and delicate trip of his pontificate so far. But equally, despite noisy protests against the Pope's visit over the past few days and threats of violence, the streets of Ankara were also devoid of demonstrators, partly because of a ferocious security clampdown by Turkish police. The Pope stepped from his Alitalia plane to meet Tayyip Erdogan, the pro-Islamic Prime Minister, wearing a heavy white topcoat which may or may not conceal a bullet proof vest. Vatican officials admit the question of whether he should wear one was raised, but that the pontiff was reluctant to do so. Read The Full Story Bush Blames Al-Qaeda For Iraq Violence 2006-11-28 15:40:18 U.S. President George Bush Tuesday denied that Iraq is descending into civil war and said al-Qaeda was behind the violence sweeping the country. Speaking in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, prior to a two-day NATO meeting in neighboring Latvia, Bush also appeared to indicate his resistance to involving Iran in efforts to stabilize Iraq, ruling out direct talks with Tehran unless it suspended its program of uranium enrichment. At the same time, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, blamed unspecified "U.S. agents" for creating insecurity in Iraq. Addressing a news conference with the Estonian president, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Bush rejected the idea that the recent scale of violence in Iraq, which saw more than 200 people killed in a series of bombings in Baghdad last week, represented a new and perilous period. Read The Full Story Polonium Detected At Berezovsky's London Offices 2006-11-28 03:29:33 Detectives have found traces of polonium 210 at the London offices of the exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, it was revealed Monday night. Officers were searching 7 Down Street, Mayfair, after the discovery of the radioactive substance that killed Berezovsky's friend and former employee, Alexander Litvinenko. A uniformed officer and at least one plain clothes policeman were stationed inside the lobby of the property last night. Outside another 15 officers were on standby in two marked police vans and the area was cordoned off. Sources confirmed that traces of polonium 210 had been found at the address. Berezovsky, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, refused to comment Monday on the revelations. "I don't want to comment anything about it," he told the Guardian. "I don't know anything about police at my office." Read The Full Story Marine Corps Report: No Way To Defeat Insurgency, Al-Qaeda's Rising Popularity In West Iraq 2006-11-28 03:28:33 The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report that set off debate in recent months about the military's mission in Anbar province. The Marines recently filed an updated version of that assessment that stood by its conclusions and stated that, as of mid-November, the problems in troubled Anbar province have not improved, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday. "The fundamental questions of lack of control, growth of the insurgency and criminality" remain the same, said the official. The Marines' August memo, a copy of which was shared with the Washington Post, is far bleaker than some officials suggested when they described it in late summer. The report describes Iraq's Sunni minority as "embroiled in a daily fight for survival," fearful of "pogroms" by the Shiite majority and increasingly dependent on al-Qaeda in Iraq as its only hope against growing Iranian dominance across the capital. Read The Full Story Commentary: Europe Must Shoulder Its Share Of The NATO Burden 2006-11-28 03:27:39 Intellpuke: The following commentary is written by French President Jacques Chirac. In it, Mr. Chirac argues that NATO has relied on its U.S. allies for far too long, that Europe must strengthen it national contributions to NATO and for a larger role in NATO for the European Union. Mr. Chirac's column, which appears in the Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006, edition of the Guardian newspaper, follows: Peace can never be taken for granted, and the first responsibility of any government is security. That is why France wishes to contribute to a political structuring of the world that averts perils. It wishes to help in the exercise of shared responsibility within the framework of strong, legitimate and accepted international institutions, particularly through reforms of the U.N. and the security council. It is working to build a political Europe capable of meeting its international responsibilities in the service of peace. The Atlantic alliance has a central place in this project. For 10 years France has been involved in the effort to adapt it to the new realities while preserving its original mission. That is why, at tomorrow's summit in Riga, I shall reaffirm the pre-eminent role of NATO, a military organization, guarantor of the collective security of the allies, and a forum where Europeans and Americans can combine their efforts to further peace. The threat of generalized war in Europe has disappeared; NATO has been profoundly adapted and enlarged to include the new democracies. It is building a trusting relationship with Russia, one we must constantly strengthen because preserving peace means first avoiding the creation of new fault lines. In this same spirit, we want a partnership between NATO and Ukraine, and we hope that NATO will welcome candidate states from the western Balkans once they are ready. Read The Full Story U.S. Justice Department To Probe Wiretaps ... Sort Of 2006-11-28 03:25:16 The Justice Department's inspector general Monday announced an investigation into the department's connections to the government's controversial warrantless surveillance program, but officials said the probe will not examine whether the National Security Agency (NSA) is violating the Constitution or federal statutes. In a letter to House lawmakers, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said his office decided to open the probe after conducting "initial inquiries" into the program. Under the initiative, the NSA monitors phone calls and e-mails between people in the United States and others overseas without court oversight if one of the targets is suspected of ties to terrorism. The "program review" will examine how the Justice Department has used information obtained from the NSA program, as well as whether Justice lawyers complied with the "legal requirements" that govern it, according to Fine's letter. Officials said the review will not examine whether the program itself is legal. Read The Full Story Canadian Parliament Recognizes Quebec As A Nation Within Canada 2006-11-28 03:23:55 The Canadian Parliament formally recognized the French-speaking people of Quebec as a nation within Canada, a seemingly symbolic gesture that has led to a Cabinet resignation and ignited concerns over a renewed push for the province's sovereignty. The motion presented by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Monday, which says the Quebecois form a nation within a united Canada, is largely symbolic in that it requires no constitutional amendment or change of law. The opposition Liberals and New Democrats supported the motion, so it passed easily through the House of Commons. It was devised by Harper to pre-empt a similar attempt by the Bloc Quebecois, the party in Parliament that represents Quebec, whose members also reluctantly backed the resolution once they realized they had been outflanked by Harper. Read The Full Story	Cracks Showing In Three Of U.S. Economy's Pillars 2006-11-29 02:47:09 Three pillars of the economy - consumer confidence, orders for manufactured goods and home prices - showed surprising cracks on Tuesday, flashing signals that growth may slow more heading into the important holiday shopping season. The New York-based Conference Board said its widely watched consumer confidence index fell to 102.9 in November from a revised reading of 105.1 in October. November’s figure was the lowest since August’s 100.2 and well below economists’ expectations of a 106 reading. That news arrived on the heels of a government report on durable goods that showed orders for big-ticket manufactured goods plunged 8.3 percent in October - the largest drop in more than six years. Read The Full Story 'Step Away From The Constitution, Mr. Gingrich, And Put Your Hands Where We Can See Them' 2006-11-29 02:45:20 Intellpuke: The following opinion column is written by Bob Cesca and was posted on the Huffington Post website on Tuesday, November 28, 2006. As you may have guessed, Mr. Cesca's column deals with Freedom of Speech, specifically Newt Gingrich's suggestion that America needs to curtail it. Mr. Cesca's column begins here: I don't think it can be said more clearly: we should be willing to die at the hands of a thousand terrorist attacks before giving up our liberties. Actually, it can be said more clearly - by Patrick Henry. But at no time in present memory has that declaration been more applicable. You, me and every human being who calls him- or herself an American ought to be willing to sacrifice ourselves before acquiescing to the tyranny of those who advocate such unconstitutional laws as the USA Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act and other yet-to-be-proposed ideas put forth by reactionary Republican cowards. And "reactionary Republican cowards" includes Newt Gingrich who said, according to the Union Leader, we need to "reexamine freedom of speech" in order to "get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade." The irony is that he said this at an event honoring the First Amendment. The scary side of this statement isn't the idea of losing a city but rather the notion that Mr. Gingrich wants to be our next president. Read The Full Story NYC Mayor Bloomberg Meets With Groom's Family In NYPD Slaying 2006-11-29 02:44:09 New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg met with the family of a black man who was killed on his wedding day in a barrage of police gunfire as he and two of his friends left his bachelor party. All three men were unarmed. Three days after the fatal encounter, it remained unclear Tuesday why four detectives and one police officer opened fire while conducting an undercover operation at a strip club. Police also questioned an unidentified witness who was on a darkened block in Queens when five police officers killed 23-year-old Sean Bell and injured two friends as the three sat inside a car, said officials. There are two other civilian witnesses: One woman on the street who says she saw officers firing their weapons, and a second woman who from her window spotted a man running away from the area around the time of the shooting. Investigators tried to determine if that man had been with the three who were shot. Read The Full Story Fight Breaks Out In Mexico's Congress 2006-11-29 02:42:30 Mexican President-elect Felipe Calderon named a hard-line conservative as interior minister Tuesday, and lawmakers slapped and pushed one another in a deepening political crisis three days before Calderon takes power. Francisco Ramirez Acuna was chosen to spearhead the new government's handling of unrest, with Mexico reeling from leftist street protests over Calderon's election, violence in the popular tourist city of Oaxaca and a spate of bombings in the capital. Ramirez Acuna, a close ally of the president-elect from the right wing of the ruling National Action Party, also will play a key role in trying to win support in Congress for tax, energy and labor reforms. Read The Full Story News Blog: The Quiet Death Of Malachi Ritscher 2006-11-28 15:42:16 Intellpuke: The following news blog is written by Matthew Weaver and asks why Malachi Ritscher's public suicide over the war in Iraq went largely unnoticed by the U.S. news media. Good question. Mr. Weaver's news blog appears in the Guardian edition for Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006. It begins here: Before burning himself to death, Malachi Ritscher wrote in a suicide note that his fellow Americans had become "more concerned with sports on television and ring-tones on cellphones than the future of the world". He didn't realize how prophetic his words would turn out to be. His self-immolation on Chicago's Kennedy expressway was intended as a high-profile anti-war protest that could not be ignored. He set up a sign saying "Thou shalt not kill" and he explained on his website: "If I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world." But at the time of his gruesome protest, which occurred on November 3, no one (with the odd exception) paid much attention to the story. Read The Full Story Blair Vows Nothing Will Hamper Spy Murder Investigation 2006-11-28 15:40:57 Tony Blair vowed today that "no diplomatic or political barrier" would be allowed to hamper the police investigation into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who died of radiation poisoning last week. Speaking in Copenhagen, before he travelled to Riga, Latvia, for a NATO summit, the Prime Minister described the case as "very serious". If necessary, he said that he would take up the matter with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "I have not spoken to President Putin but I will do so at any time that is appropriate," said Blair."There is no diplomatic or political barrier in the way of (the) investigation going wherever it needs to go." Read The Full Story Meteor 'Fireball' Lights Up Australian Sky 2006-11-28 03:41:31 People in the western Australia state of Victoria and the state of South Australia have deluged police and media with reports of a spectacular meteor sighting. Police in South Australia said they took calls from just after 8 p.m. local time (8.30 p.m. AEDT) Monday from Renmark and Loxton in the Riverland, most Adelaide suburbs and then from people living south of the city, with reports of something looking like a fireball in the sky. In Victoria, callers to Australia Broadcast Company (ABC) radio, from Bendigo to Horsham in the state's northwest down to Colac in the southwest, reported seeing a bright green colored object shooting westward in the sky. One caller, Jeff, said he saw what he thought was a comet as he was driving into Horsham. "It was green like a meteorite or shooting star," he said on ABC radio. Read The Full Story Editorial: Global Warming Goes To Court 2006-11-28 03:29:00 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Tuesday, November 28, 2006: The Bush administration has been on a six-year campaign to expand its powers, often beyond what the Constitution allows. So it is odd to hear it claim that it lacks the power to slow global warming by limiting the emission of harmful gases. But that is just what it will argue to the Supreme Court tomorrow, in what may be the most important environmental case in many years. A group of 12 states, including New York and Massachusetts, is suing the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to properly do its job. These states, backed by environmental groups and scientists, say that the Clean Air Act requires the E.P.A. to impose limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by new cars. These gases are a major contributor to the “greenhouse effect” that is dangerously heating up the planet. The Bush administration insists that the E.P.A. does not have the power to limit these gases. It argues that they are not “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act. Alternatively, it contends that the court should dismiss the case because the states do not have “standing,” since they cannot show that they will be specifically harmed by the agency’s failure to regulate greenhouse gases. Read The Full Story Annan Urges Action To Avert Imminent Civil War In Iraq 2006-11-28 03:28:01 United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said Monday that Iraq was on the brink of a civil war that would ignite unless something was done "drastically and urgently" to stop it. He issued his warning on a day marked by a flurry of efforts around the world to stem the violence. Asked Monday if he thought a civil war had begun, Annan said: "Given the developments on the ground, unless something is done drastically and urgently to arrest the deteriorating situation, we could be there. We are almost there." Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, arrived in Tehran, Iran, to talk to Iranian leaders about what role they might play in stabilizing the situation. President George Bush left on a foreign trip that is due to include a meeting with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, Wednesday in Jordan. Read The Full Story Israel Offers Prisoner Exchange To Palestinians 2006-11-28 03:26:37 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert held out the rare possibility of a return to Middle East peace talks Monday when he offered for the first time to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the return of a captured soldier. In his most important policy speech since the Lebanon war, Olmert said if the Palestinians halted violence and recognized Israel, there could be negotiations that culminated in the creation of a Palestinian state and an Israeli withdrawal from some of the occupied West Bank. His comments came on the second day of a ceasefire in Gaza. Within hours of the ceasefire, Palestinian militants fired two rockets from Gaza into Israel, underlining the fragility of the agreement, which went into effect on Sunday at dawn and only covers Gaza. Earlier in the day, Israeli troops killed two Palestinians in Qabatiya, in the West Bank, at least one of whom was a militant. Read The Full Story U.S. Retail Fears And Weak Dollar Send Stock Markets Sliding 2006-11-28 03:24:28 Stock markets on both sides of the Atlantic lurched downward yesterday as retail anxieties clouded the American economy and the US currency slipped closer to a rate of $2 against the pound. In London, the FTSE 100 index dropped to its lowest close in seven weeks, losing 72 points to 6,050 in spite of upbeat UK housing data. A more dramatic sell-off took place in America. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped 158 points to 12,121, its biggest fall for four months. The broader S&P 500 fell by 1.3% and the technology-dominated Nasdaq index lost 2.2%, hit by a sudden downturn in Google's shares. Read The Full Story Philip Zelikow, Senior Aide To Rice, Resigns 2006-11-28 03:23:10 Two months ago, the State Department's counselor, Philip D. Zelikow, offered an oblique criticism of the administration's failure to push strongly for an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan in the Middle East. In a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Zelikow, an intellectual known for peppering his statements with historical references, said progress on the Arab-Israeli dispute was a “sine qua non” (Editor: an indispensable thing) in order to get moderate Arabs “to cooperate actively with the United States on a lot of other things that we care about”. A State Department spokesman was quick to distance the department officially from Zelikow's remarks, which ruffled the feathers of American Jewish groups and Israeli officials. But the administration may soon be doing what Zelikow advised, starting a renewed push for a Middle East peace initiative, in part to shore up support in the Arab world for providing help in Iraq. Read The Full Story
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