Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday December 23 2006 - (813)

Saturday December 23 2006 edition
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Old Allegiances Crumble In The Battle For Palestinian Hearts And Minds 2006-12-23 03:34:48 Zuhair Abu Latifa's toyshop is the first in a row of shops inside the Qalandia refugee camp, not far from the tall concrete wall that cuts off the occupied West Bank from Jerusalem. It is a single street in a tightly connected community, but it cuts across the entire spectrum of Palestinian politics. In the past, refugee camps like this one, housing families that fled Israel in 1948, would have been strongholds of Fatah, the secular movement that for the past generation has been at the forefront of the Palestinian struggle for independence. But Abu Latifa, 51, having been a lifetime Fatah supporter, voted for Hamas, the hardline Islamic movement that won the last elections. It was his way of punishing Fatah for its many failings. "They were crooks, thieves and warlords," he said, sitting on a plastic chair in the sun outside his shop. "They still haven't cleaned themselves up." The rest of his family, including his four teenage children and his brother and sister, are still Fatah supporters. A few yards farther along the street are others who vow to remain lifelong Fatah loyalists. Working next to them are overtly religious families who back Hamas. At least one other shopkeeper in the street refuses to vote at all. All speak anxiously about the factional violence and fear of civil war that has gripped the Palestinian territories in the past weeks, but many also share a profound frustration with all their political leadership. Read The Full Story From Scum, Scientists Find, Perhaps, The Tiniest Form Of Life 2006-12-23 03:33:55 The smallest form of life known to science just got smaller. Four million of a newly discovered microbe - assuming the discovery, reported Friday in the journal Science, is confirmed - could fit into the period at the end of this sentence. Scientists found the microbes living in a remarkably inhospitable environment, drainage water as caustic as battery acid from a mine in Northern California. The microbes, members of an ancient family of organisms known as archaea, formed a pink scum on green pools of hot mine water laden with toxic metals, including arsenic. “It was amazing,” said Jillian F. Banfield of the University of California, Berkeley, a member of the discovery team. “These were totally new.” In their paper, the scientists call the microbes “smaller than any other known cellular life form.” Read The Full Story Royal Intrigue, Unpaid Bills Preceded Saudi Ambassador's Departure 2006-12-23 03:32:53 For more than a year, Saudi Arabia's ambassador journeyed to college campuses, chambers of commerce, town halls and world affairs councils across the United States in an ambitious campaign to improve his country's image. Instead, Prince Turki al-Faisal's goodwill tour produced millions of dollars in unpaid bills - and a tale of murky intrigue in the enigmatic desert kingdom. The debts by one of the world's wealthiest countries - owed to the very lobbyists, advisers and event organizers hired to promote the kingdom - have left a trail that weaves together bitter princely rivalries, diplomatic subterfuge and a policy clash over one of the thorniest issues of the day: what to do about Iran. Read The Full Story They're Home: Space Shuttle Lands In Florida 2006-12-23 03:31:37 The shuttle Discovery returned to Earth at 5:32 p.m. Friday in a gentle sunset landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “Wheels stop,” said the shuttle commander, Mark L. Polansky, as the Discovery rolled to a stop on the 15,000-foot runway. After returning a greeting from mission managers, he said, “It’s going to be a great holiday.” For much of the day - which concluded a 13-day mission to rewire the International Space Station - the astronauts were not sure where they were headed. Read The Full Story Some Denver Flights Resume, Backlog Could Last For Days 2006-12-22 18:22:30 Denver’s snowbound airport reopened Friday afternoon to limited flights, chipping away at a national travel backlog but leaving thousands of travelers in Denver and elsewhere days behind their Christmas travel schedules. The first passenger flight in two days was a Frontier Airlines Airbus A-319, carrying a full load of 132 passengers to Atlanta. Airline officials weren’t offering much cheer to the thousands of still-stranded travelers, though: It could take days to clear out the backlog, and some passengers might not make it home for Christmas. “We’re asking for their patience as we work to get people where they need to be as soon as we safely can,” said United Airlines spokesman Jeff Kovick. Read The Full Story Judge: Iran Owes $254 Million For Khobar Towers Attack 2006-12-22 18:21:27 The Iranian government financed a 1996 terrorist attack that killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia and must pay $254 million to the victims' families, a federal judge ruled Friday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth allows families of the victims of the Khobar Towers bombing to seek their compensation from assets that have been seized from the conservative Islamic regime in Tehran. On June 25, 1996, a truck bomb exploded in a military housing area known as the Khobar Towers dormitory near Dhahran. U.S. authorities have long alleged that the bombing was carried out by a Saudi wing of the militant group Hezbollah, which receives support from Iran and Syria. Though Lamberth has previously ruled that a survivor of the blast could seek payment from Iran, Friday's ruling was the first time Tehran has been blamed for the deaths of the Americans in the bombing. Read The Full Story Toyota Projected To Pass GM In 2007 As World's No. 1 Carmaker 2006-12-22 15:46:19 Toyota Motor Corp. today announced a global production target that appears likely to make the Japanese firm the world's largest auto manufacturer next year, surpassing Detroit's troubled General Motors Corp. for the first time. In a press release issued in Japan on its 2007 plans, Toyota said it expects worldwide production next year to reach 9.42 million vehicles, up 4 percent from this year, with sales rising to 9.34 million vehicles, a 6 percent increase. The figures include Toyota's Hino Motors and Daihatsu Motor Co. subsidiaries, which make trucks and small cars respectively. Although General Motors has not announced targets for next year, it has been forced to cut back as it struggles to reverse a tide of red ink. The company, which has ranked as the world's largest automaker for 81 years, is projected to end this year with production of about 9.17 million vehicles and is considered unlikely to match Toyota's output in 2007. With $10.6 billion in losses last year and $3 billion more in the first three-quarters of this year, GM has been scaling back production as it tries to restructure itself. Faced with declining demand for its trucks and sport-utility vehicles, the company is buying out 34,400 union workers as part of a plan to cut costs by $9 billion this year, and it plans to close 12 manufacturing plants in North America by 2008. Read The Full Story Study: Incentives On Oil Barely Help U.S. 2006-12-22 03:38:36 The United States offers some of the most lucrative incentives in the world to companies that drill for oil in publicly owned coastal waters, but a newly released study suggests that the government is getting very little for its money. The study, which the Interior Department refused to release for more than a year, estimates that current inducements could allow drilling companies in the Gulf of Mexico to escape tens of billions of dollars in royalties that they would otherwise pay the government for oil and gas produced in areas that belong to American taxpayers. The study predicts that the inducements would cause only a tiny increase in production even if they were offered without some of the limitations now in place. It also suggests that the cost of that additional oil could be as much as $80 a barrel, far more than the government would have to pay if it simply bought the oil on its own. Read The Full Story Report: TSA Data Screening Program Violated Passengers' Privacy 2006-12-22 03:37:23 Secure Flight, the U.S. government's stalled program to screen domestic air passengers against terrorism watch lists, violated federal law during a crucial test phase, according to a report to be issued today by the Homeland Security Department's privacy office. The agency found that by gathering passenger data from commercial brokers in 2004 without notifying the passengers, the program violated a 1974 Privacy Act requirement that the public be made aware of any changes in a federal program that affects the privacy of U.S. citizens. "As ultimately implemented, the commercial data test conducted in connection with the Secure Flight program testing did not match [the Transportation Security Administration's] public announcements," the report states. The finding marks the first time that the Homeland Security Department has acknowledged that the problem-plagued Secure Flight program has violated the law. It comes at a time when a separate program to screen international passengers is under attack for officials' failure to disclose until recently that they were creating passenger profiles that would be stored for 40 years. Read The Full Story Iraqi Factions Try To Undercut A Plan To Isolate Extremists 2006-12-22 03:36:28 Several Iraqi political groups on Thursday maneuvered to undercut an American-backed initiative that would create a multisectarian bloc intended to isolate extremists like the Shiite cleric and militia leader Moktada al-Sadr. The bloc would consist of Sunni Arab, Shiite Arab and Kurdish parties in an alliance that would be novel in Iraq's  highly sectarian political environment. This week, Iraqi and Western officials said that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a highly influential Shiite cleric, had given a tentative go-ahead to the coalition. On Thursday, Saleem Abdullah, a Sunni Arab lawmaker who is a senior member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, said his party had set tough new conditions for its participation in the bloc. Read The Full Story U.S. Judge Orders Saudi Princess Deported 2006-12-22 03:35:25 A Saudi Arabian princess accused of breaking U.S. immigration laws by locking up her domestics' passports and forcing them to work for low pay was ordered to be deported, prosecutors said Thursday. Hana F. Al Jader, of Winchester, Virginia, was sentenced to two years of probation, the first six months of which must be served in home confinement, after which she'll be deported to Saudi Arabia, said prosecutors. An after hours call to Samantha Martin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office, was not returned. It was unclear if the six months' home confinement Al Jader received included time she has already served while on bail in home confinement. Read The Full Story 8 Marines Charged In Haditha Civilian Massacre 2006-12-22 03:34:02 Eight Marines were charged Thursday in the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha last year. Four Marines were charged with murder in the biggest U.S. criminal case involving civilian deaths to arise from the war in Iraq. The other four charged were officers who were not there but were accused of failures in investigating and reporting the deaths, said the Marine Corps. A squad leader was charged with murdering 12 people and ordering other Marines to murder six people in the hours after a roadside bomb killed one Marine and injured two others. Read The Full Story	U.K. Poll: Religion Does More Harm Than Good 2006-12-23 03:34:21 More people in Britain think religion causes harm than believe it does good, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published Saturday. It shows that an overwhelming majority see religion as a cause of division and tension - greatly outnumbering the smaller majority who also believe that it can be a force for good. The poll also reveals that non-believers outnumber believers in Britain by almost two to one. It paints a picture of a skeptical nation with massive doubts about the effect religion has on society: 82% of those questioned say they see religion as a cause of division and tension between people. Only 16% disagree. The findings are at odds with attempts by some religious leaders to define the country as one made up of many faith communities. Most people have no personal faith, the poll shows, with only 33% of those questioned describing themselves as "a religious person". A clear majority, 63%, say that they are not religious - including more than half of those who describe themselves as Christian. Read The Full Story U.S. Selective Service System Gets Flurry Of Calls About Draft 2006-12-23 03:33:34 As the de facto media contact for the Selective Service System, Dick Flahavan is the Maytag repairman of government press people. With the military draft out of business since 1973, the Selective Service just doesn’t get a lot of calls these days. Yet by midday Friday, Flahavan’s office had fielded dozens of inquiries, not just from reporters but from some anxious parents as well, all with some variation of the same urgent question: Are you reinstituting the draft? So adamant was the denial that Flahavan, a bit beleaguered, had his staff members post an unplanned update Friday morning at the top of Selective Service’s Web site: “No Draft on Horizon!” Read The Full Story Appeals Court Reverses Judge, Says FEMA Can Hold Off On Funding Housing For Katrina Victims 2006-12-23 03:32:04 A federal appeals court told the Bush administration Friday that it does not need to immediately restart a housing program for thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims. The ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit puts a restart on hold at least until March, when the court will hear arguments in the case. The court suspended an order by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, who said last month that the Federal Emergency Management Agency violated the Constitution when it eliminated short-term housing assistance. Leon said the agency did not explain its reasoning and provided victims only confusing computer-generated codes to explain its decisions. Read The Full Story Congress Closes With A Pork-Filled Flourish 2006-12-22 18:22:55 Christmas arrived Wednesday for the kidney dialysis industry. That's when President Bush signed into law the last major piece of legislation approved by the outgoing Congress. It was a lavish hodgepodge that included a $100 million-a-year boost in the Medicare reimbursement rates for dialysis providers who proved to be generous contributors to important legislators, notably House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas of Bakersfield, California. The dialysis folks were among many special interests benefiting from a piece of legislation that was designed to simply extend existing tax cuts and credits - but ended up freighted with billions of dollars in new spending earmarks for the coal industry, Brooks Brothers and various other interests. There have been more outrageous end-of-session bills, but following this election - when corruption and fiscal incompetence were campaign themes - some lawmakers found the latest package particularly offensive. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) termed the legislative spectacle "embarrassing." He offered a scathing review of the final bill on the Senate floor, citing its myriad earmarks and other expenditures that had never been reviewed by a congressional committee or subjected to debate. Read The Full Story War Profits Trump The Rule Of Law 2006-12-22 18:22:04 Intellpuke: The following article is written by veteran journalist and columnist Chris Floyd. Floyd is an American journalist. His weekly political column, "Global Eye," ran in the Moscow Times from 1996 to 2006. His work has appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including The Nation, Counterpunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Bergen Record and many others. His story on Pentagon plans to foment terrorism won a Project Censored award in 2003. He is the author of Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium, and is co-founder and editor of the "Empire Burlesque" political blog. Mr. Floyd is the U.K. correspondent for the truthout.org web site where I found this article today. The article follows: I. The Wings of the Dove Slush funds, oil sheiks, prostitutes, Swiss banks, kickbacks, blackmail, bagmen, arms deals, war plans, climbdowns, big lies and Dick Cheney - it's a scandal that has it all, corruption and cowardice at the highest levels, a festering canker at the very heart of world politics, where the War on Terror meets the slaughter in Iraq. Yet chances are you've never heard about it - even though it happened just a few days ago. The fog of war profiteering, it seems, is just as thick as the fog of war. But here's how the deal went down. On December 14, the UK attorney general, Lord Goldsmith (Pete Goldsmith as was, before his longtime crony Tony Blair raised him to the peerage), peremptorily shut down a two-year investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into a massive corruption case involving Britain's biggest military contractor and members of the Saudi royal family. SFO bulldogs had just forced their way into the holy of holies of the great global back room - Swiss bank accounts - when Pete pulled the plug. Continuing with the investigation, said His Lordship, "would not be in the national interest." Read The Full Story Cyber Crime Hits Big Time In 2006 - 2007 To Be Worse 2006-12-22 15:46:39 Call it the "year of computing dangerously." Computer security experts say 2006 saw an unprecedented spike in junk e-mail and sophisticated online attacks from increasingly organized cyber crooks. These attacks were made possible, in part, by a huge increase in the number of security holes identified in widely used software products. Few Internet security watchers believe 2007 will be any brighter for the millions of fraud-weary consumers already struggling to stay abreast of new computer security threats and avoiding clever scams when banking, shopping or just surfing online. One of the best measures of the rise in cyber crime this year is spam. More than 90 percent of all e-mail sent online in October was unsolicited junk mail messages, according to Postini, a San Carlos, California-based e-mail security firm. The volume of spam shot up 60 percent in the past two months alone as spammers began embedding their messages in images to evade junk e-mail filters that search for particular words and phrases. Read The Full Story Federal Court Cuts Exxon Valdez Judgment In Half 2006-12-22 15:45:51 A federal appeals court on Friday cut in half a $5 billion jury award for punitive damages against Exxon Mobile Corp. in the 1989 Valdez oil spill that smeared black goo across roughly 1,500 miles of Alaskan coastline. The case, one of the nation's longest-running, non-criminal legal disputes, stems from a 1994 decision by an Anchorage jury to award the punitive damages to 34,000 fishermen and other Alaskans. Their property and livelihoods were harmed when the Valdez oil tanker struck a charted reef, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil. It's the third time the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court ordered the Anchorage court to reduce the $5 billion award, the nation's largest at the time, saying it was unconstitutionally excessive considering U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Read The Full Story Steven Wright Charged With Murder Of 5 Ipswich Sex Workers 2006-12-22 03:37:54 Police Thursday night charged Steven Wright with the murder of five young women who worked as prostitutes in Ipswich's red light district. Wright, 48, will appear Friday morning at Ipswich magistrate's court, charged with the murder of Tania Nicol, 19, Gemma Adams, 24, Anneli Alderton, 24, Paula Clennell, 24 and Annette Nicholls, 29. Wright, a truck driver, was arrested at his home in the heart of Ipswich's red light district on Tuesday at 5 a.m.  Another man, Tom Stephens, 37, who was arrested on Monday at his home near Felixstowe, was released last night on police bail. Read The Full Story U.N. Poised To Pass Iran Sanctions Despite Retaliation Threat 2006-12-22 03:36:56 The United Nations security council is finally expected to pass a resolution Friday to impose international sanctions on Iran for the first time since the 1979 revolution, a punitive move that will heighten diplomatic tensions and risks a military confrontation in the Gulf. Iran has threatened immediate retaliation, even though the proposed sanctions have been significantly watered down this week. Tehran's options include withdrawal from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.  nuclear watchdog, which would mean Iran would conduct its nuclear program free from international monitoring, and possible closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the channel for 20% of the world's oil supplies. Western diplomats think that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his colleagues are bluffing but, just in case, the U.S. announced this week it is reinforcing its fleet in the Gulf. Read The Full Story Court Deals Blow To Campaign Finance Law By Overturning Limits On Political Ads 2006-12-22 03:35:54 A three-judge panel on Thursday overturned a key segment of the campaign finance law that banned issue advertisements paid for by corporate or union money in the critical weeks before federal elections. The case, which was heard by a special federal court panel in Washington, D.C., now heads to the Supreme Court. If upheld, the ruling would unravel one of the tougher restrictions on the use of unregulated donations that interest groups pumped by the millions of dollars into political commercials. The case was brought by Wisconsin Right to Life, which has been fighting the restrictions since 2004, claiming they infringe on its First Amendment guarantee of free speech, among other grounds. Read The Full Story Study: World Death Toll Of Flu Pandemic Would Be 62 Million 2006-12-22 03:34:47 An influenza pandemic of the type that ravaged the globe in 1918 and 1919 would kill about 62 million people today, with 96 percent of the deaths occurring in developing countries. That is the conclusion of a study published Thursday in the Lancet medical journal, which uses mortality records kept by governments during the time of "Spanish flu" to predict the effect of a similarly virulent outbreak in the contemporary world. The analysis, the first of its kind, found a nearly 40-fold difference in death rates between central India, the place with the highest recorded mortality, and Denmark, the country with the lowest. The reason for the huge variation is not known, but it may reflect differences in nutrition and crowding. Read The Full Story
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