Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday April 24 2007 - (813)

Tuesday April 24 2007 edition
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Commentary: Fascist America In 10 Easy Steps 2007-04-24 02:30:15 Intellpuke: The following commentary is by Naomi Wolf who writes that from Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. Ms. Wolfe argues that Mr. Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all. Some of you will read this and start looking over your shoulders, others will be angry. Either way, it is well worth the read. Ms. Wolf's commentary, which appears in the Guardian edition for Tuesday, April 24, 2007, follows: Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody. They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps. As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration. Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognize the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have. It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realize. Read The Full Story Car Bomb Kills 9 U.S. Soldiers In Diyala, Iraq 2007-04-23 21:49:11 Nine U.S. soldiers were killed and 20 were wounded Monday in a suicide car bombing against a patrol base northeast of Baghdad, said the military. An Iraqi civilian was also wounded in the attack on Task Force Lightning soldiers in Diyala province, a volatile area that has been the site of fierce fighting involving U.S. and Iraqi troops, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias. Of the 20 wounded, 15 soldiers were treated and returned to duty while five others and the Iraqi were evacuated to a medical facility for further care, said the military. Identities were not released pending notification of relatives. Read The Full Story Palestinian Interior Minister's Resignation Rejected 2007-04-23 21:48:35 The first cracks in the Palestinian unity government appeared Monday when the independent interior minister, who has been trying to tame lawlessness in the Gaza Strip, submitted his resignation. Hani al-Qawasmeh, the consensus choice for the post in a power-sharing government that brings together the Islamic Hamas and secular Fatah movements, has told Palestinian officials he is frustrated by a lack of cooperation from Fatah-controlled security forces loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas declined to accept his resignation, averting for the moment a destabilizing departure little more than a month after the power-sharing cabinet took office. Read The Full Story Pentagon May Be Shorting Troops' Benefits 2007-04-23 13:58:49 An injured soldier's disability should be determined by Veterans Affairs officials - and not the Pentagon - because the Army might be shortchanging troops, a presidential commission was told on Monday. At a public meeting, the nine-member commission on veterans care chaired by former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kansad, and former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala delved into ways to cut down on paperwork and problems in the disability ratings system. Under the current system, each of the armed services assign ratings to service members when they become injured. The ratings determine whether the service member is discharged from active service and if so, the amount of disability benefits to which he or she is entitled. The V.A. operates a separate system to determine benefits for retired veterans. Read The Full Story U.S. Knew Of China Missile Test, Kept Silent 2007-04-23 13:57:52 After a Chinese interceptor smashed into a target satellite in January, Bush administration officials criticized the test as a destabilizing development. It was the first successful demonstration of an antisatellite missile by any country in more than 20 years. Pentagon officials warned that the test had increased the threat to American satellites. Space experts fretted that it had spawned a cloud of orbiting debris. American diplomats complained to their counterparts in Beijing. What administration officials did not say is that as the Chinese were preparing to launch their antisatellite weapon, American intelligence agencies had issued reports about the preparations being made at the Songlin test facility. In high-level discussions, senior Bush administration officials debated how to respond and even began to draft a protest, but ultimately decided to say nothing to Beijing until after the test. Three months after the Chinese launching, a new debate has developed as to whether the administration properly handled the episode or missed an opportunity to discourage the Chinese from crossing a new military threshold. Read The Full Story U.S. Officials Backing Off On Building Walls In Baghdad 2007-04-23 12:04:40 American and Iraqi officials appeared Monday to be moving away from a plan to build a wall around a mostly Sunni neighborhood here. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Sunday he was ordering a halt to construction of the wall around the Adhamiya neighborhood. And American officials, who did not immediately concur, indicated Monday they would go along with Maliki. “Obviously we will respect the wishes of the government and the prime minister,” the American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, said in a news conference Monday. Large crowds gathered today in Adhamiya, near the mosque of Abu Hanifa, overlooking the Tigris River, and marched through the streets of the Sunni Arab enclave bordered by Shiite areas to protest the planned wall. Read The Full Story Sen. Specter Says Gonzales Is Hurting Justice Department 2007-04-23 11:43:29 Sen. Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales is hurting the Justice Department and the Bush administration by not resigning. Gonzales testified before the committee last week, addressing questions about whether the Justice Department dismissed federal prosecutors for partisan purposes. Specter did not call directly for the attorney general to step down, but said Gonzales's testimony "was very, very damaging to his own credibility. It has been damaging to the administration." Read The Full Story Congressional Critics Say FDA Unable To Protect U.S. Food Supply 2007-04-23 00:50:46 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show. Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, according to agency documents. Congressional critics and consumer advocates said both episodes show that the agency is incapable of adequately protecting the safety of the food supply. Read The Full Story Democrats Craft New Tax Rules To Shift Burden To The Wealthy 2007-04-23 00:49:53 House Democrats, aiming to seize taxes from Republicans as a political issue, have come up with a plan to shift the burden of the hated alternative minimum tax onto the shoulders of the nation's richest households. The proposal, still in its preliminary stages, would attempt to restore the original purpose of the parallel tax structure, which was created in 1969 to nab 155 super-rich tax filers who were using loopholes and deductions to wipe out their tax bills. Because it was not indexed for inflation, the AMT delivered a significant tax increase to an estimated 3 percent of households this year. Unless the law is changed, it is projected to strike nearly 20 percent of taxpayers when they file returns next spring, many earning as little as $50,000 a year. House Democrats are trying to craft legislation that would spare those households while providing relief to many current AMT payers. Under a proposal presented last week to Democrats on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, families making less than $250,000 a year - about 98 percent of taxpayers - would be exempt from the tax. Those earning between $250,000 and about $500,000 would see lower AMT bills, according to Democratic sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan is not final. Read The Full Story Jordanian Security Agents Seize Al-Jazeera Tape 2007-04-23 00:49:09 Jordan's pro-western government is embroiled in an embarrassing row with al-Jazeera television after Amman confiscated the videotape of an interview in which the former crown prince attacked the United States and Saudi Arabia for pursuing "destructive" Middle East policies. The Qatar-based satellite channel protested an infringement of media freedoms after its Beirut, Lebanon, bureau chief, Ghassan Ben Jeddou, filmed an interview with Prince Hassan, uncle of King Abdullah and previous heir to the throne, for the channel's Open Dialogue program. Prince Hassan was asked about allegations in a recent article by the New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh, suggesting that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were bankrolling Sunni Muslim groups - some with links to al-Qaeda - to counterbalance the weight of Hezbollah, the Shia political and paramilitary organization based in Lebanon and backed by Iran and Syria. The prince is said to have commented, characteristically: "If this is true, we have a big problem." But even this anodyne response was deemed too explosive for an Arab audience. The 60-year-old prince is an engaging and highly articulate intellectual who is active on the international conference circuit, but no longer has any real power. Read The Full Story	Blair Administration Tries To Sabotage BAE Bribes Investigation 2007-04-24 02:29:46 The U.K. is covertly trying to oust the head of the world's main anti-bribery watchdog to prevent criticism of ministers and Britain's biggest arms company, BAE, the Guardian has learned. The effort to remove Mark Pieth comes as his organization has stepped up its investigation into the British government's decision to kill off a major inquiry into allegations that BAE paid massive bribes to land Saudi arms deals. British diplomats are seeking to remove Professor Pieth, a Swiss legal expert who chairs the anti-corruption watchdog of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), claiming he is too outspoken. At the OECD meeting in Paris, France, last month, British officials tried to stop Prof. Pieth addressing a press conference at which he announced his agency was to conduct a formal inquiry into the Blair Administration's  decision to terminate the BAE investigation. They then privately briefed other diplomats involved with the OECD, saying he should be removed. Read The Full Story Pulitizer Prize Winning Author David Halberstam Dies In Crash 2007-04-23 21:48:52 David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who chronicled the Washington press corps, the Vietnam War generation and baseball, was killed in a car crash early Monday, a coroner said. He was 73. Halberstam, of New York, was a passenger in a car that was broadsided by another vehicle in Menlo Park, south of San Francisco, said San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault. The accident occurred around 10:30 a.m. Monday, and the driver of the car carrying Halberstam identified him as the victim, said Foucrault. The driver, a student at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, was taken to Stanford Medical Center. Two others were injured. A call to Menlo Park police wasn't immediately returned. Read The Full Story Scientists Unearth Kryptonite - Really 2007-04-23 21:48:18 Kryptonite, which robbed Superman of his powers, is no longer the stuff of comic books and films. A mineral found by geologists in Serbia shares virtually the same chemical composition as the fictional kryptonite from outer space, used by the superhero's nemesis Lex Luther to weaken him in the film "Superman Returns". "We will have to be careful with it - we wouldn't want to deprive Earth of its most famous superhero!," said Dr. Chris Stanley, a mineralogist at London's Natural History Museum. Stanley, who revealed the identity of the mysterious new mineral, discovered the match after searching the Internet for its chemical formula - sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide. Read The Full Story Rove's Celebrity Encounter Turns Into Global Warming Run-In 2007-04-23 13:58:25 Put celebrity environmental activists in a room with top Bush administration officials and a meeting of the minds could result. At least that is a theoretical possibility. The more likely outcome is that an argument will break out, as it did at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night between Karl Rove, the president’s deputy chief of staff, and the singer Sheryl Crow and Laurie David, a major Democratic donor and a producer of the global warming documentary  "An Inconvenient Truth", featuring Al Gore. Ms. Crow and Ms. David, who have been visiting campuses in an event billed as the Stop Global Warming College Tour, approached Rove to urge him to take “a fresh look” at global warming, they said later. Recriminations between the celebrities and the White House carried over into Sunday, with Ms. Crow and Ms. David calling Rove “a spoiled child throwing a tantrum” and the White House criticizing their “Hollywood histrionics.” Read The Full Story Gates Presses Russia On Missile Defense Plan, Initial Response 'Nyet' 2007-04-23 13:57:36 U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates pressed the Kremlin’s top leaders today to accept a detailed new plan for cooperation on missile defense that he said would make Russia a full partner in the American effort by sharing information, jointly developing new technology and even combining their defensive radar systems. The immediate answer from Russia’s new defense minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, was a firm statement that the Kremlin had not dropped its strong opposition to American proposals for anti-missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. “The Russian position with respect to this issue remains unchanged,” Serdyukov said in brief comments to reporters. “We do believe that deploying all the strategic elements of the ballistic missile defenses is a destabilizing factor that may have a great impact upon global and regional security.” Read The Full Story Former Russian Leader Boris Yeltsin Dies At 76 2007-04-23 11:43:57 Boris Yeltsin was once asked to name his greatest goal as president. He answered that more than anything, he wanted tranquility for Russia. Ultimately, Yeltsin failed to achieve it in his own term. The burly Siberian who was Russia's first freely elected leader in 1,000 years did more than anyone to raze the rotting communist superstructure of the former Soviet Union and build from its ruins the framework of a newly democratic and capitalist country. Yeltsin died Monday at 76, a Kremlin official announced, without providing further details. The Interfax news agency quoted an unidentified medical source as saying Yeltsin died of heart failure. Like Peter the Great, the 18th century czar he once mentioned as his model, Yeltsin was no great democrat. In ordering the war on the breakaway southern region of Chechnya in 1994, he was responsible for the violent deaths of more Russian citizens than any Kremlin leader since Joseph Stalin. As president he tolerated - and even authorized - the excesses of a system in some ways as corrupt and morally adrift as the one it replaced. Read The Full Story Iraqi Premier Al-Maliki Calls For U.S. To Halt Construction Of Baghdad Wall 2007-04-23 00:51:03 Iraq's premier, Nouri al-Maliki, Sunday called for a halt to the U.S. military's construction of a three-mile wall in Baghdad separating Sunni and Shia Muslims. Speaking in Egypt, he said: "I asked yesterday that it be stopped and that alternatives be found to protect the area ... I fear this wall might have repercussions which remind us of other walls, which we reject," he added, referring to misgivings that the wall would take on the symbolic status of similar barriers in Northern Ireland and the West Bank. Dubbed the Great Wall of Adhamiya by the U.S. soldiers who started building the 4-meter high (12-feet) barrier in six-ton sections under cover of darkness on April 10, it is designed to protect a mainly Sunni area in eastern Baghdad surrounded on three sides by Shia communities. U.S. military authorities said it would create one of several "gated communities". Read The Full Story Few Specifics Evident As Padilla Trial Nears 2007-04-23 00:50:15 The trial of Jose Padilla, the "dirty bomber" whose alleged plotting was used to justify extraordinary presidential power, will get underway next month, and the prosecution's case is rich in atmospherics. The evidence against Padilla and his two co-defendants includes wiretapped recordings in which the men seem to speak in code; someone spent $3,500 to buy "zucchini." They speak obliquely of travel to Kosovo, Chechnya and "the area of Usama." A "mujahideen data form" bearing Padilla's fingerprints and information was discovered at a reputed al-Qaedahideout in Afghanistan, said prosecutors. But for all its suggestion of jihadist intent, the indictment on charges of a "conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim" lacks anything about the defendants being involved in any particular plot in the United States or anywhere else. That absence of violent specifics - no who, what or when - is expected to be critical in the trial's outcome and is a reflection of troubles in the high-profile prosecution. Read The Full Story 2 Missing Australian Girls Found Hanged Together 2007-04-23 00:49:29 A week-long search for two teenage girls missing in Australia ended Sunday when their bodies were found hanging from a tree in bushland after an apparent suicide pact. Stephanie Gestier and Jodie Gater, both 16, were last seen alive the previous Sunday morning when they told their parents they were meeting friends to go shopping. Their families said they appeared to have no worries or personal problems. But it was later discovered that a MySpace entry from Jodie contained the line: "Let Steph n me b free", and she had recently recorded a worrying message on her mobile phone. Police confirmed Sunday that two bodies had been found by a man out walking in thick scrub in the Dandenong Ranges national park, east of Melbourne, about five miles from the suburb of Belgrave, where the girls lived. Read The Full Story
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