Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday January 8 2007 - (813)

Monday January 8 2007 edition
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Romania's First Gift To The European Union - A Caucus Of Neo-Fascists And Holocaust Deniers 2007-01-08 03:15:57 In France, the group's prospective leader has been barred from teaching at his university and is awaiting a court verdict for questioning the Nazis' mass murder of Europe's Jews. His Bulgarian colleague brags that his country has the "prettiest Gypsies" and says he knows where to buy 12-year-old Gypsy brides for "up to €5,000" (£2,250 or about $5,500). Then there is the Polish professor who uses public office to pay tribute to General Franco, the late Spanish dictator. Or the intellectual strategist of an Austrian party whose ideology, according to a Vienna court, is similar to that of Hitler's "national socialism". Such are the leading lights of "Europe of the Fatherlands", the world of politically organized European far-right extremism who are expected to form their first transnational organization next week by establishing a formal caucus in the European parliament. Read The Full Story Venezuela's Chavez Lays Ground For Steps To Socialism 2007-01-08 03:14:55 Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's president, has promoted loyalists to key positions and said he will shut down a pro-opposition television station on the eve of his third term in office. Chavez has signalled more radical policies by tightening his grip in the run-up to his inauguration on Wednesday, the start of what he said would be a new phase in his "socialist revolution". Since being re-elected to a six-year term last month he has moved to unite the ruling coalition into a single party, reshuffled the cabinet and fired a shot across the bows of media critics. The former paratrooper told a gathering of army officers last week that the broadcast licence of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) would not be renewed when it expires in March. He accused the channel of backing a coup against him in 2002. Read The Full Story DOH! New U.S. Commander Says Iraq War Could Last For Years 2007-01-08 03:12:49 The new American operational commander in Iraq said Sunday that even with the additional American troops likely to be deployed in Baghdad under President Bush's new war strategy it might take another "two or three years" for American and Iraqi forces to gain the upper hand in the war. The commander, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, assumed day-to-day control of war operations last month in the first step of a makeover of the American military hierarchy here. In his first lengthy meeting with reporters, General Odierno, 52, struck a cautious note about American prospects, saying much will depend on whether commanders can show enough progress to stem eroding support in the United States for the war. "I believe the American people, if they feel we are making progress, they will have the patience," he said. Right now, he added, "I think the frustration is that they think we are not making progress". Read The Full Story Communist-Era Links Force Warsaw's New Archbishop To Resign 2007-01-08 03:11:27 One of the most senior clerics in Poland's Roman Catholic church was forced to resign Sunday, 48 hours after becoming archbishop of Warsaw, because of revelations that he had collaborated with communist security services for decades. Draped in gold vestments and wearing a bishop's mitre, Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus told hundreds of worshippers at Warsaw's St. John's Cathedral that he was stepping down, a decision applauded by the Vatican only a month after Pope Benedict XVI appointed him. The cathedral Mass was to have been a ceremony of investiture for the cleric who took up the post on Friday. Read The Full Story Class Action Lawsuit Starts In U.K. Over Toxic Waste Dumped In Africa 2007-01-08 03:10:39 Lawyers Monday will begin preparing the ground for one of the largest class actions heard in the U.K. over 400 tons of allegedly highly toxic waste dumped in the Ivory Coast city of Abidjan from a cargo ship chartered by a London-based company. The legal team will start taking statements from thousands of witnesses. At least 10 people died and more than 40,000 sought medical advice after suffering from sickness and nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting, breathlessness, headaches, skin damage, and swollen stomachs. Hospitals, health centers and the Red Cross were overwhelmed after noxious fumes drifted over the city. Amid angry protests and panic, the government temporarily collapsed. According to Leigh Day, the British law firm which arrived Sunday in Abidjan, Ivory Coast's economic capital, up to 5,000 people may sue those to blame. Read The Full Story Israel Denies Reports Of Plan To Attack Iran With Nukes ... Sort Of 2007-01-07 15:14:53 A British newspaper reported Sunday that Israel has drafted plans to strike as many as three targets in Iran with low-yield nuclear weapons, aiming to halt Tehran's uranium enrichment program. The Israeli Foreign Ministry denied the report. Citing multiple unidentified Israeli military sources, The Sunday Times said the proposals involved using so-called "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons to attack nuclear facilities at three sites south of the Iranian capital. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said it would not respond to the claim. "We don't respond to publications in the Sunday Times," said Miri Eisin, Olmert's spokeswoman. Israeli Minister of Strategic Threats Avigdor Lieberman also declined to comment on the report. Read The Full Story Bird Flu Drug Carries A Lethal Threat 2007-01-07 03:43:00 Britain faces an ecological catastrophe that could wreak havoc on wildlife populations when the first outbreak of Asian flu hits the country. Scientists say they fear that tons of the anti-viral agent Tamiflu - taken by Britons trying to combat the disease - would be flushed down sewers into rivers and lakes. Natural populations of microbes would be killed off by a deluge of water polluted with concentrated amounts of the anti-viral drug. As a result, birds, fish and other creatures that rely on these bacteria and viruses for their survival could be devastated. In addition, waters containing Tamiflu would provide ideal conditions for the evolution of drug-resistant strains of bird flu virus. These strains would then infect wildfowl and ultimately human beings, triggering a second outbreak of the disease - although this time Tamiflu would provide no protection against the virus. Read The Full Story Starving Afghanis Selling Their Daughters - As Young As 8 - As Brides 2007-01-07 03:42:07 Afghani villagers whose crops have failed after a second devastating drought are giving their young daughters in marriage to raise money for food, according to the relief organization Christian Aid. Azizgul is 10 years old, from the village of Houscha in western Afghanistan. This year the wheat crop failed again following a devastating drought. Her family was hungry. So, a little before Christmas, Azizgul's mother "sold" her to be married to a 13-year-old boy. "I need to sell my daughters because of the drought," said her mother Sahatgul, 30. "We don't have enough food and the bride price will enable us to buy food. Three months ago my 15-year-old daughter married. "We were not so desperate before. Now I have to marry them younger. And all five of them will have to get married if the drought becomes worse. The bride price is 200,000 afghanis [£2,000 or $4,000]. His father came to our house to arrange it. The boy pays in instalments. First he paid us 5,000 afghanis, which I used to buy food." Read The Full Story Britons To Be Scanned For FBI Data Base 2007-01-07 03:41:15 Millions of Britons who visit the United States are to have their fingerprints stored on the FBI database alongside those of criminals, in a move that has outraged civil rights groups. The Observer has established that under new plans to combat terrorism, the U.S. government will demand that visitors have all 10 fingers scanned when they enter the country. The information will be shared with intelligence agencies, including the FBI, with no restrictions on their international use. U.S. airport scanners now take only two fingerprints from travellers. The move to 10 allows the information to be compatible with the FBI database. "We are going to start testing at several airports," a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman confirmed. "It will begin some time this summer." Read The Full Story 30 Dead In Baghdad Clash; Bodies Hanged On Lampposts 2007-01-07 03:40:19 A fierce clash left at least 30 people dead in central Baghdad late Saturday night as Iraqi Army forces fought with gunmen in an area where several residents had been killed and their bodies hanged from street lampposts, said the Iraqi military. The fighting took place in the neighborhood around Haifa Street, a mostly Sunni Arab enclave with a small Shiite population. A spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Muhammad al-Askari, said that an Iraqi Army unit had gone into the area after receiving reports that Sunni fighters had set up a fake security checkpoint and were taking Shiites aside and shooting them. The bodies of many of those killed at the roadblock were then hanged from the lampposts, said Askari. Read The Full Story U.S. Dollar Could Slip Some More In 2007 2007-01-07 03:39:36 The dollar fell more than 11 percent last year compared with the euro and rose slightly against the yen. A lower dollar helps boost U.S. exports, by making them relatively cheaper in overseas markets, and attracts more foreign tourists to the United States. Many economists think the dollar will slip a bit lower this year for the same reasons it slid last year: the huge U.S. trade deficit, slower U.S. economic growth and robust growth abroad. Many analysts think the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates by midyear, while other governments are raising borrowing costs, which tends to diminish the demand for dollars. Read The Full Story	China: Power, Corruption And Lies 2007-01-08 03:15:32 Intellpuke: To the west, China is a waking economic giant, poised to dominate the world. Yet British writer Will Hutton begs to differ, and argues in the following extract from his new book, "The Writing On The Wall", that the west has consistently exaggerated and misunderstood the threat - and the consequences could be grave. The extract from Mr. Hutton's book, which appears on the Guardian Unlimited's website for Jan. 8, 2007, follows: The emergence of China as a $2 trillion economy from such inauspicious beginnings only 25 years ago is such a giddy accomplishment that the temptation to see its success as proof positive of your own prejudices is overwhelming. And the west's broad prejudice is that China is growing so rapidly because it has abandoned communism and embraced capitalism. China's own claim - that it is building a very particular economic model around what it describes as a socialist market economy - is dismissed as hogwash, the necessary rhetoric the Communist party must use to disguise what is actually happening. China proves conclusively that liberalization, privatization, market freedoms and the embrace of globalization are the only route to prosperity. China is on its way to capitalism but will not admit it. But the closer you get to what is happening on the ground in China, its so-called capitalism looks nothing like any form of capitalism the west has known and the transition from communism remains fundamentally problematic. The alpha and omega of China's political economy is that the Communist party remains firmly in the driving seat not just of government, but of the economy - a control that goes into the very marrow of how ownership rights are conceived and business strategies devised. The western conception of the free exercise of property rights and business autonomy that goes with it, essential to any notion of capitalism, does not exist in China. Read The Full Story War's Toll On Iraqi's In 2006 Put At 22,950 - Give Or Take Several Thousand 2007-01-08 03:13:16 More than 17,000 Iraqi civilians and police officers died violently in the latter half of 2006, according to Iraqi Health Ministry statistics, a sharp increase that coincided with rising sectarian strife since the February bombing of a landmark Shiite shrine. In the first six months of last year, 5,640 Iraqi civilians and police officers were killed, but that number more than tripled to 17,310 in the latter half of the year, according to data provided by a Health Ministry official with direct knowledge of the statistics. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to release the information, said those numbers remained incomplete, suggesting the final tally of violent deaths could be higher. Much of last year's politically motivated bloodshed unfolded in Baghdad. The Bush administration is considering sending more U.S. troops there, as the newly ascendant Democrats in Congress press for a military withdrawal. Bringing stability and rule of law to the capital is a cornerstone of the administration's strategy to exit Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced over the weekend his own security push to tame Baghdad's sectarian strife. Read The Full Story Fatah Faithful Gather In Gaza To Confront Hamas Rivals 2007-01-08 03:11:56 Tens of thousands of Fatah supporters packed Gaza's main football stadium Sunday in a show of strength to boost the movement in its increasingly violent struggle with the Islamic militant group Hamas. Fatah's strongman in Gaza, Muhammad Dahlan, was given a hero's welcome as he entered the stadium. The gathering was the largest Fatah demonstration in Gaza since 1994, when Yasser Arafat returned triumphantly to Gaza from exile in the framework of a partial peace deal with Israel. Fatah and Hamas have been locked in a bloody struggle for control of the Palestinian government since the Islamic group won parliamentary elections last year. The victory ended four decades of Fatah political domination, though the group still controls the powerful Palestinian presidency. Read The Full Story Science Blog: Long Shot For A Deep Impact 2007-01-08 03:11:03 Intellpuke: The following Science Blog was written by Daniel Dasey for the Sydney Morning Herald's January 6, 2007 edition. It deals with an asteroid that NASA says will pass within 5,000 kilometers of Earth in 2041 and is estimated to have a 1-in-48,000 chance of hitting the planet. Mr. Dasey's blog follows: It's more than 1 kilometer long, made of rock and may - just may - collide with the Earth later this century. NASA has excited amateur star gazers by revealing an asteroid discovered late last year could make a heart-stoppingly close fly-by of the Earth in 2041. Asteroid 2006 XG1, which measures 670 metres across its diametre, is expected to pass as close as 5,000 kilometers to the Earth and latest estimates suggest it has 1-in-48,000 chance of actually striking the planet. The impact of such a collision would be catastrophic to the region affected. Read The Full Story 20 Injured As Washington, D.C., Subway Derails 2007-01-08 03:09:37 Twenty people were injured yesterday when a Metro train carrying more than 100 passengers jumped the tracks at the Mount Vernon Square Station in Northwest Washington, said officials. The passenger injury total appeared to be one of the highest in 31 years of subway operation and raised new questions about the system's safety. With little warning, the northbound Green Line train began to shake and bump as the wheels of one of its rear cars left the tracks about 3:45 p.m. Part of one car hit the wall of the tunnel. Shattered glass and chunks of fiberglass tumbled to the floor of at least one car. Lights went out and shouting passengers ran through darkened cars, according to witnesses. "It was real scary because we thought something would happen to us," said Erica Paris, 16, who was not injured. "The lights turned off and people started looking at each other and screaming." Almost all the injuries were described as minor, but one passenger suffered a head injury, and a pregnant woman began to experience contractions, according to a Washington, D.C., fire department official. Washington Hospital Center said seven injured people were brought there. A spokeswoman said she expected five would be released Sunday night. Others were treated elsewhere. Read The Full Story Israel Plans Tactical Nuclear Strike On Iran 2007-01-07 03:43:20 Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear "bunker-busters", according to several Israeli military sources. The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons wold have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb. Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open "tunnels" into the targets. "Mini-nukes" would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout. Read The Full Story Litvinenko's Radiation Poisoning Sets Off Alarm Bells 2007-01-07 03:42:38 Ninety-seven percent of the legal production of one of the world's rarest industrial products - the intensely radioactive isotope polonium-210 - takes place at a closely guarded nuclear reactor near the Volga River 450 miles southeast of Moscow. In an average year, about three ounces of the substance is made at the Avangard facility, a former nuclear weapons plant, then sold under strict controls to Russian and foreign companies that prize it for its abilities to reduce static electricity. This fall, a microscopic quantity of polonium-210, from somewhere, found its way into the body of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian internal security agent living in London. He died an agonizing death in a hospital 22 days later. Now an international investigation is trying to track that dose back to its source. Detectives from Scotland Yard have said nothing about where the trail of evidence may be leading; Russian officials have been more willing to talk, saying that Avangard is tightly audited and that illicit production of polonium-210 is technically possible at many of the world's reactors. Read The Full Story Colorado Avalanche Buries Highway, Vehicles 2007-01-07 03:41:39 An avalanche roared across a mountain highway on the Continental Divide on Saturday morning, sweeping two cars off the road near Berthoud Pass, Colorado, onto a steep downward slope but causing only one serious injury. People from nearby cars dug frantically into the instant mound of snow and debris on the road to free the eight passengers in the two cars that were hit, said police. The cascade of snow, rocks and trees that came rushing down the side of Stanley Mountain about 10:30 a.m. covered all three lanes of U.S. 40. That was just after the normal Saturday "rush hour" on the road, a key thoroughfare linking Denver and Interstate 70 with the ski resorts of Winter Park and Steamboat Springs. "We have recovered two vehicles that were driven over the edge of the highway," said Colorado State Patrol spokesman Eric Wynn. The state patrol said eight people were taken to hospitals, but the worst injury incurred was apparently a broken leg. Read The Full Story Critics Say Troops 'Surge' More Of The Same 2007-01-07 03:40:38 President Bush is putting the final touches on his new Iraq policy amid growing skepticism inside and outside the administration that the emerging package of extra troops, economic assistance and political benchmarks for the Baghdad government will make any more than a marginal difference in stabilizing the country. Washington's debate over Iraq will intensify this week as Bush lays out his plans, probably on Wednesday or Thursday, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other administration officials face tough questions from Democrats in congressional hearings. Although officials said the president has yet to settle on an exact figure of new troops, senior military leaders and commanders are deeply worried that a "surge" of as many as five brigades, or 20,000 troops, in Iraq and Kuwait would tax U.S. ground forces already stretched to the breaking point - and may still prove inadequate to quell sectarian violence and the Sunni insurgency. Some senior U.S. officials think it could even backfire. "There is a lot of concern that this won't work," said one military official not authorized to speak publicly about the debate at the Pentagon. Read The Full Story Abbas Wants Hamas Military Police Disbanded 2007-01-07 03:40:00 After two days of intense fighting between Hamas and his Fatah faction, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, demanded Saturday that Hamas-run paramilitary police be integrated into Fatah-dominated security forces. Hamas warned Abbas that he was making a mistake and that it would resist any effort to disband the group, known as the Executive Force. The Hamas Interior Ministry immediately announced that it had plans to double the size of the Executive Force to 12,000 men and called on Palestinians to join it. Abbas made his demand after the deaths of many Fatah men in clashes with the Executive Force over the last two days. In his statement on Saturday, Abbas called the force illegal and said it "will be treated as such if it is not immediately integrated into legal security services as stipulated by basic law." It is not clear whether Abbas' statement is simply declaratory or whether he would order his security forces to take action against the paramilitary group if Hamas did not meet his demands. Read The Full Story
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