Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday January 2 2007 - (813)

Tuesday January 2 2007 edition
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As Troops' Lives Are Changed Forever By Iraq, Much Of U.S. Remains Unaffected 2007-01-02 03:39:03 "Grenade!" Manning a .50-caliber machine gun in the turret of a Humvee, Pfc. Ross McGinnis could see the insurgent on a rooftop fling a hand grenade at his vehicle. He shouted and tried to deflect it, but it fell inside. Four of his buddies were down there. What followed was a stunning act of self-sacrifice. McGinnis, a 19-year-old from rural Pennsylvania and the youngest soldier in his unit, threw himself backward onto the grenade, absorbing the blast with his body. He was killed instantly. The others escaped serious injury. With the death toll for U.S. service members in Iraq past the 3,000 mark, McGinnis's heroism, on Dec. 4, stands as one extreme in the vast spectrum of how Americans are experiencing the Iraq war. Like an emotional manifestation of the laws of physics, the casualties have rippled across the American psyche - those close to the events have been profoundly moved, while those at some distance, the majority of Americans, have been largely unaffected. Concentric circles of loss spread outward, starting with grieving parents, spouses and children - many so young they will not remember the father or mother who was killed in war. Families of the severely wounded face a future they never planned for and financial hardships they never imagined. In small towns, which supply much of the nation's fighting force, one death can send an entire community into mourning. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops continue to brave the war zone, while their friends, families and sweethearts worry at home. Read The Full Story Iraq's Shiites Fear Betrayal By U.S. 2007-01-02 03:37:51 As a dull winter sun nibbled away at the chilly morning, Hussein Lefta stood beside the Rahman Mosque. Before him, Shiite Muslim worshipers passed through an emerald green gate and shuffled across a stone-covered field. Behind him the giant gray shrine rose above Mansour, a mainly Sunni Arab neighborhood that was once home to the elite of the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Built to proclaim Hussein's glory, the mosque is one of the most visible symbols of his fall. Thousands of oppressed Shiites took control of the unfinished building following the U.S.-led invasion. On that day in April 2003, Shiites say, their history was reshaped, their politics reborn and their faith reinvigorated . Lefta, 42, was among the many Shiites who thanked the Americans for their freedom. He dreamed that his community, Iraq's majority, would exert the political influence the Sunnis had long denied it. Today, the mosque is still incomplete, as are Lefta's dreams. "The Americans are afraid the Shia will take over Iraq," he explained. Read The Full Story Concerns Raised As More U.S. Police Departments Empower Private Police To Protect Public 2007-01-02 03:36:37 Kevin Watt crouched down to search the rusted Cadillac he had stopped for cruising the parking lot of a Raleigh apartment complex with a broken light. He pulled out two open Bud Light cans, an empty Corona bottle, rolling papers, a knife, a hammer, a stereo speaker, and a car radio with wires sprouting out. "Who's this belong to, man?" Watt asked the six young Latino men he had frisked and lined up behind the car. Five were too young to drink. None had a driver's license. One had under his hooded sweat shirt the tattoo of a Hispanic gang across his back. A gang initiation, Watt thought. With the sleeve patch on his black shirt, the 9mm gun on his hip and the blue light on his patrol car, he looked like an ordinary police officer as he stopped the car on a Friday night last month. Watt works, though, for a business called Capitol Special Police. It is one of dozens of private security companies given police powers by the state of North Carolina - and part of a pattern across the United States in which public safety is shifting into private hands. Read The Full Story 12 Deaths Blamed On Record Winter Storm 2007-01-01 15:08:54 The Civil Air Patrol conducted another aerial sweep of southeastern Colorado on Monday to see if any more travelers were still marooned by the blizzard that created 10-foot snowdrifts. At least 12 deaths were blamed on the huge storm in four states, most in accidents on icy roads. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of customers were still without power in the Plains. Plow crews in Colorado are working to dig some roads out from the thick blanket of snow left by the storm, the second to hammer the region during the holidays. "Life and safety are still the No. 1 priorities. We need to get the roads open so people can get out and deal with the situation," said Dick Vnuk, chief of operations for the state Division of Emergency Management. Read The Full Story Jetliner, Carrying 102 People, Disappears Over Indonesia 2007-01-01 15:08:20 An Indonesian passenger plane carrying 102 people disappeared in stormy weather on Monday, and rescue teams were sent to search in the area where the aircraft sent out a distress signal. Transport Minister Hatta Radjasa said a radio communication was picked up over central Sulawesi, a major island in the Indonesian archipelago about 470 miles from the Adam Air flight's destination. He said emergency crews were on their way to search for survivors. "Let's hope the plane had an emergency landing," he told El-Shinta radio. It was unknown if the Boeing 737-400 passenger plane disappeared over sea or land, but the Navy was contacted about a possible sea rescue operation. Read The Full Story Ethiopian Forces Take Islamic Stronghold 2007-01-01 15:06:18 Ethiopian forces backing Somalia's weak transitional government took control of Kismaayo, the last stronghold of the country's Islamic movement, and on Monday chased the remnants of the Islamic militia along the Indian Ocean coast toward the Kenyan border about 100 miles to the south. In the final stage of a dramatic power shift inside a fragile nation of great strategic importance to the United States, the Islamic fighters abandoned their heaviest weapons early Monday morning and took off for villages in the forest with Ethiopian and government troops in hot pursuit of key leaders, including three suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. "Our forces have captured Kismaayo," Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi told reporters in Mogadishu, where Ethiopian forces essentially installed his secular, internationally recognized government just days ago. "The warlord era in Somalia is now over." Read The Full Story The Dangling Corpse of Saddam Hussein and a Bit of Context 2007-01-01 13:05:39     On 17 December 1983, President Reagan’s special Middle East envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, flew into Baghdad bearing a hand written note to Saddam. In it Reagan offered to renew diplomatic relations and to expand military and business ties with Baghdad. Howard Teicher, who traveled to Baghdad with Rumsfeld, said that it was this letter that paved the way for the U.S. tilt to Iraq: “Here was the U.S. government coming hat-in-hand to Saddam Hussein and saying, ‘We respect you, we respect you. How can we help you? Let us help you.’”   In 1995, I wrote a case study entitled, The Tilt that Backfired - Historical Perspectives on the Persian Gulf Crisis. If you’re interested in placing the dangling corpse of Saddam Hussein into a bit of context, I’d still recommend that paper. If you want more than a bit of context, there’s not a finer source on the subject than the almost entirely unknown, forgotten and out of print, Spider’s Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq written by Alan Friedman. Read The Full Story Deadline Looms At U.S. Death Toll In Iraq Reaches 3,000 2007-01-01 02:13:09 As George Bush hacked down brushwood and rode his bike at his Crawford, Texas, ranch this weekend, he gave the impression of a U.S. president little preoccupied by two Iraq milestones that complicate his deliberations on a change of strategy. The first, the hanging of Saddam Hussein, found Bush asleep, and according to advisers he spent only a short time discussing the execution. The second, the reports of the 3,000th U.S. fatality in Iraq, evinced a only general remark. "The most painful aspect of the presidency is the fact that I know my decisions have caused young men and women to lose their lives," said Bush at an end-of-year press conference in Texas. A White House spokesman added simply that the president "will ensure their sacrifice was not made in vain". The 3,000 figure was arrived at by the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an internet-based monitoring group, and by the Associated Press, which keeps its own tally of U.S. military deaths. The Pentagon disputed the figures, saying that the total of confirmed dead was 2,983. Nonetheless, the widespread reporting of the grim milestone appeared set to offset whatever boost Bush will get from the news about Saddam's death. Read The Full Story Bombs In Bangkok Kill 2, Wound At Least 34 2007-01-01 02:12:34 A volley of nine bombs shattered year-end celebrations in Bangkok last night, killing two people and wounding at least 34, including two Britons. Six near-simultaneous bombs at various points across the capital in the early evening were followed by three explosions shortly before midnight at Central World Plaza, a chic shopping mall with designer stores popular with expatriates. The location was close to where the main countdown celebration for New Year had been due to take place before officials called it off. The injured Britons were named as Alistair Graham, 47, and Paul Hewitt, 55. Hewitt told the Guardian he had been hailing a taxi when an explosion ripped across the street. "There was a huge flash and then I saw blood pouring out of my arm," he said. "Funnily enough I didn't feel anything." Neither was seriously hurt. The other injured foreigners were a Hungarian, an American and two Serbs. Read The Full Story 180 Survivors Of Indonesian Ferry Sinking Rescued, Hundreds Still Missing 2007-01-01 02:11:39 More survivors from an Indonesian ferry sinking were being brought ashore on Monday, but hundreds are still missing and bodies were scattered for miles on beaches along Java's coastline. Rescuers had found nearly 180 survivors from the ferry that went down in stormy seas around midnight on Friday with close to 700 people on board, one official said late on Sunday. Confirmed deaths were just five. There were reports of scores more bodies recovered or sighted but officials were having difficulty compiling definitive data. "We are having problems because the victims are spread all across the beaches from Jepara to Rembang to Tuban and a lot of people are looking for victims, including sailors," said Toni Syaiful, spokesman for the navy's eastern fleet. The area he described stretches some 175 kilometers (110 miles) long. Read The Full Story	Commentary: Betrayal Of The Big Easy 2007-01-02 03:38:31 Intellpuke: The following commentary is written by Dr. Giles Fraser and is posted at the Guardian Unlimited's website for Tuesday, January 2, 2007. In his column, Dr. Fraser writes that Hurricane Katrina forced out New Orleans poor residents and now developers don't want them back. Dr. Fraser is the vicar of Putney, in Britain, and a lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford. His column follows: It's well over a year since the levees collapsed and billions of gallons of water flooded into New Orleans, trashing the city and displacing several thousand residents, most of them black and poor. Many may not return. For Hurricane Katrina produced acres of empty real estate that are being eyed up as a promising opportunity for corporate developers. Mayor Ray Nagin wants the new New Orleans to be "market driven". The Episcopalian Bishop of Louisiana thinks differently. Once a conservative, he was rebaptized with dirty water. He now speaks for many in condemning the mayor's words as "a blow against the poor and needy", and says developers threaten "the soul of the city". Last August two-thirds of New Orleans was under water. In low-lying areas - such as the lower ninth ward, where many of the city's musicians originate - almost no reconstruction work is being done. Insurance companies won't cover new buildings unless the levees are reinforced to withstand another big storm, and the government won't cough up the $30 billion-plus the work is expected to cost. So the powers that be are effectively abandoning the lower-lying areas, offering precious little hope of return to the Katrina diaspora spread over the south. A city that had a population of nearly half a million has been reduced by 300,000. Some are whispering that this is a way of rebalancing the city's ethnic mix, which has been majority black for some time. Read The Full Story Only 12 Of 102 Survive Indonesian Jet Liner Crash 2007-01-02 03:37:15 Rescuers on Tuesday found the smoldering wreckage of an Indonesian jetliner that disappeared during a storm. Officials said 90 people were killed, while the remaining 12 aboard survived. "The plane is destroyed, and many bodies are around there," said the local police chief, Col. Genot Hariyanto. Air force Rear Cmdr. Eddy Suyanto told el-Shinta radio that the plane, operated by local carrier Adam Air, had crashed in a mountainous region of Polewali in western Sulawesi island. Adam Air spokesman Hartono, who goes by one name, said 90 people were killed and 12 survived in Monday's crash of the Boeing 737-400. The survivors' conditions were not immediately known. Read The Full Story Free Internet Press - Mobile Version 2007-01-01 23:17:48   We've added a new feature to Free Internet Press.   If you'd like to view FIP from wherever you may be, you may browse directly to http://freeinternetpress.com from your web enabled mobile device.  You should be automatically directed to the mobile version of the page.  If not, you can use the link on the left (http://freeinternetpress.com/mobile.index.php).    We'd like anyone with a web enabled cell phone to test this new feature, and let us know how it goes.  Email us at editor@freeinternetpress.com with your comments.   This new feature should also be useful to any vision impared browsers, as it leaves off all menus and graphics, other than the logo. Read The Full Story GOP Lawmakers Di! vided On 'Surge' In U.S. Troops In Iraq 2007-01-01 15:08:39 Republican lawmakers appear uneasy about - and in some cases outright dismissive of - the idea of sending many more troops to Iraq,as President Bush contemplates such a "surge" as part of his new strategy for stabilizing the country. Sen. John McCain (Arizona), a leading GOP presidential contender for 2008, has been aggressively promoting a plan to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq, and the idea has been gaining traction at the White House as a way to improve security in Baghdad. Yet the proposition generates far less enthusiasm among rank-and-file Republicans, many of whom must face the voters again in 2008, presenting a potential obstacle for Bush as he hones the plan, according to lawmakers, aides and congressional analysts. Read The Full Story 81 Journalists Killed In 2006 2007-01-01 15:08:05 At least 81 journalists were killed in 2006, the highest annual toll in more than a decade, with Iraq again the deadliest place for journalists, the media watchdog organization Reporters Without Borders announced Sunday. In its annual report, the group said 32 media assistants were also killed in 2006, at least 871 reporters were arrested and at least 1,472 attacks or threats against the news media were registered around the world. Reporters Without Borders said the year was the most dangerous for journalists since 1994, when 103 reporters died as a direct result of their work, almost half of them during the genocide in Rwanda. In 2005, 63 reporters were killed; 53 were killed in 2004 and 40 in 2003. For the fourth year in row, Iraq had the highest number of deaths, with 39 journalists killed there, compared with 24 in 2005. About 25 media assistants died in Iraq in 2006. Read The Full Story News Photographer, Palestinian Gunmen Abducted In Gaza 2007-01-01 15:04:40 Palestinian gunmen kidnapped a Peruvian photographer working for Agence France-Presse in Gaza on Monday, while several militants were seized in separate abductions that sparked new violence between rival factions. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the abduction of the photographer, named by the French news agency and Palestinian security sources as Jaime Razuri. In north Gaza, tensions between rival Palestinian factions flared as unknown assailants abducted 10 Hamas members, including several from a security force led by the group, and three from Fatah, including the brother of the senior commander of the faction's armed wing, said security sources. The kidnappings sparked gunbattles between the factions, which wounded three Palestinians caught in the crossfire, including a boy, Palestinian rescue workers said. It was unclear whether the others were militants, as previously reported. Read The Full Story Submission/Op-Ed: The Saddam Execution Video 2007-01-01 12:51:06 Submitted via email by Peter Rost The "Question Authority with Dr. Peter Rost" blog was one of the first displaying the uncensored and complete version of the Saddam Hussein execution video, here. The video showed an undignified spectacle, with Mr. Hussein appearing more composed than his killers. I have no tears for Mr. Hussein; yet, I also have no respect for his executioners, who made the state-orchestrated execution appear like an assassination by thugs. And of course, our self-censored television news just couldn't bring themselves to show the end result of thousands of sacrificed American soldiersâ€"one dictator falling to his death, his head twisted horribly to the side as he was swinging at the end of the rope. Out of thousands of visitors viewing the video on my site, those visitors included CBS News, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security. After all, they couldn’t view what happened through any official channel. I guess 2006 will be remembered as the year when the blog world truly took over as the most important source for useful, uncensored reporting. Read The Full Story Planet-Hunter Searches For Second 'Earth' 2007-01-01 02:12:51 The hunt for a second Earth began in earnest late last week with the launch of a space probe that will peer beyond the solar system to distant planets warmed by the faintest of stars. At 2:23 p.m. U.K. time a modernized soyuz rocket tore into the sky over Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying Corot, the first space telescope designed to find habitable planets orbiting stars in remote solar systems. The mission, which will take place over a two-and-a-half-year period, will look for rocky worlds about twice the size of Earth that lie in what space scientists call habitable zones, the "Goldilocks" regions of space in every solar system where heat from the nearest star is neither too hot nor too cold to sustain liquid water - believed to be the essential ingredient for life. Warm rocky planets similar in size to Earth are astronomers' best hope of finding extraterrestrial life, and any spotted by Corot will be studied intensely by future missions scheduled for the next decade. The mission will also prove invaluable for scientists hoping to understand how planets form and how common other "Earths" may be. Read The Full Story Belarus Avoids Cold New Year By Capitulating To Russia On Gas Price Increase 2007-01-01 02:12:05 Belarus narrowly escaped a winter energy crisis last night after a last-minute deal on gas prices was struck with Russian gas monopoly Gazprom. Gazprom had said it would cut off supplies to Belarus, also threatening fuel supplies to European countries served by the Belarus pipeline, if a deal was not reached by midnight last night. The five-year contract will require Belarus to pay $100 per 1,000 cubic meters, a steep rise on the previous tariff of $45, but a reduction from the $105 that Gazprom had demanded. The agreement requires Belarus to pay gradually increasing prices after the current contract until world market levels are reached by 2011. "A mid-term agreement was reached on gas prices to Belarus and on transit shipments to Europe," Gazprom boss Alexei Miller told a press briefing at the Russian gas monopoly's headquarters. Read The Full Story Scientists Genetically Engineer Cattle Without Mad Cow Protein 2007-01-01 02:11:09 Scientists said Sunday that they have used genetic engineering techniques to produce the first cattle that may be biologically incapable of getting mad cow disease. The animals, which lack a gene that is crucial to the disease's progression, were not designed for use as food. They were created so that human pharmaceuticals can be made in their blood without the danger that those products might get contaminated with the infectious agent that causes mad cow. That agent, a protein known as a prion (pronounced PREE-on), can cause a fatal human ailment, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, if it gets into the body. More generally, said scientists, the animals will facilitate studies of prions, which are among the strangest of all known infectious agents because they do not contain any genetic material. Prions also cause scrapie in sheep and fatal wasting diseases in elk and minks. Read The Full Story
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