Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday May 12 2007 - (813)

Saturday May 12 2007 edition
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U.S. Study: Billions In Iraqi Oil Missing 2007-05-12 03:05:34 Between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq's declared oil production over the past four years is unaccounted for and could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling, according to a draft American government report. Using an average of $50 a barrel, the report said the discrepancy was valued at $5 million to $15 million daily. The report does not give a final conclusion on what happened to the missing fraction of the roughly two million barrels pumped by Iraq each day, but the findings are sure to reinforce longstanding suspicions that smugglers, insurgents and corrupt officials control significant parts of the country’s oil industry. The report also covered alternative explanations for the billions of dollars worth of discrepancies, including the possibility that Iraq has been consistently overstating its oil production. Read The Full Story Colleagues Cite Partisan Focus By Goodling 2007-05-12 03:03:54 Two years ago, Robin C. Ashton, a seasoned criminal prosecutor at the Department of Justice, learned from her boss that a promised promotion was no longer hers. “You have a Monica problem,” Ms. Ashton was told, according to several Justice Department officials. Referring to Monica M. Goodling, a 31-year-old, relatively inexperienced lawyer who had only recently arrived in the office, the boss added, “She believes you’re a Democrat and doesn’t feel you can be trusted.” Ashton’s ouster - she left the Executive Office for United States Attorneys for another Justice Department post two weeks later - was a critical early step in a plan that would later culminate in the ouster of nine United States attorneys last year. Goodling would soon be quizzing applicants for civil service jobs at Justice Department headquarters with questions that several United States attorneys said were inappropriate, like who was their favorite president and Supreme Court justice. One department official said an applicant was even asked, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?” Read The Full Story U.S. Won't Limit Detainees Visits With Attorneys 2007-05-12 03:02:06 The Justice Department Friday withdrew one of its proposals to tighten restrictions on lawyers representing detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,but said it would continue to press a federal appeals court for other limitations on the lawyers. In a court filing Friday morning, department lawyers said they were no longer asking the appeals court in Washington to limit the lawyers to three visits with detainees at the Guantanamo naval base, where about 380 men are now held. A series of department proposals to curtail detainees’ lawyers drew wide attention and was criticized by legal groups and in Congress, with opponents saying the Bush administration was denying detainees the most rudimentary tools to challenge their confinement. Read The Full Story The Cold War's Cancerous Legacy 2007-05-12 02:59:38 Walter McKenzie's assignment toward the end of the Cold War was to mop up after mishaps at a nuclear weapons factory. With a crew of other laborers from rural Georgia, he swabbed away leaks and spills inside the secret buildings, until one day his body became so contaminated with radiation that alarms at the factory went off as he passed. "They couldn't scrub the radiation off my skin - even after four showers," McKenzie, 52, recalled of his most terrifying day at the Savannah River nuclear weapons plant near Aiken, South Carolina. "They took my clothes, my watch and even my ring, and sent me home in rubber slippers and a jumpsuit." Later, when doctors discovered the first of 19 malignant tumors on his bladder, McKenzie followed the same torturous path as thousands of nuclear weapons workers with cancer: He filed a claim for federal compensation. It was denied. Unable to access secret government files, or even some of his own personnel records, McKenzie could not sufficiently prove that he was exposed to something that may have made him sick. Nor can most of the 104,000 other workers, retirees and family members who have sought help from a federal program intended to atone for decades of hazardous working conditions at scores of nuclear weapons facilities around the country. Read The Full Story U.S. Army Tries Incentives To Keep Officers 2007-05-12 02:57:46 The Army will offer incentives to keep midlevel officers as it faces another decade or so in combat around the world, its chief of staff said Friday. Gen. George Casey, who took over as the Army's chief just a month ago, said the United States will "be in a period of conflict for, I believe, another five or ten years." And the Army, which has been stretched and stressed by five difficult years at war, must be organized and equipped to deal with that challenge, he said. The general said he is not suggesting that the Iraq or Afghanistan wars will last five more years. But Casey, who was the top commander in Iraq until February, acknowledged that building a stable, self-governing Iraq is a "long-term proposition." "We have been attacked and are at war with an insidious group of transnational terrorists who are attacking our way of life, and are going to continue to attack our way of life until we beat them, because I don't see them giving up," he said. Read The Full Story Pope Canonizes First Brazilian Saint 2007-05-11 14:25:11 Pope Benedict XVI canonized an 18th-century monk - a friar who handed out tiny rice-paper pills inscribed with a prayer - as Brazil's first native-born saint Friday, as hundreds of thousands cheered and waved flags from all corners of South America. Holding up Friar Antonio de Sant'Anna Galvao as a model of rectitude and humility ''in an age so full of hedonism,'' Benedict said the world needs clear souls and pure minds, adding: ''It is necessary to oppose those elements of the media that ridicule the sanctity of marriage and virginity before marriage.'' It was a message that reflected Benedict's uneasiness with the effects of popular culture on young people. He has warned that some video games and animated films promote violence and trivialize sexuality. Read The Full Story U.S. House Approves Phased-Funding Bill For Iraq War 2007-05-11 02:30:29 The U.S. House of Representatives last night pushed through its second plan to fund the Iraq war and reshape war policy, approving legislation that would provide partial funding for the conflict but hold back most of the money until President Bush  reports on the war's progress in July. Coming only a week after the Democrats' first war funding bill was vetoed, the House's 221 to 205 vote defied a fresh veto threat and even opposition from Democrats in the Senate. "The president has brought us to this point by vetoing the first Iraq Accountability Act and refusing to pay for this war responsibly," declared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California). "He has grown accustomed to the free hand on Iraq he had before January 4. Those days are over." Read The Full Story Iraqi Lawmakers Back Bill On U.S. Withdrawal 2007-05-11 02:30:00 A majority of members of Iraq's parliament have signed a draft bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels. The development was a sign of a growing division between Iraq's legislators and prime minister that mirrors the widening gulf between the Bush administration and its critics in Congress. The draft bill proposes a timeline for a gradual departure, much like what some U.S. Democratic lawmakers have demanded, and would require the Iraqi government to secure parliament's approval before any further extensions of the United Nations mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of 2007. "We haven't asked for the immediate withdrawal of multinational forces; we asked that we should build our security forces and make them qualified, and at that point there would be a withdrawal," said Bahaa al-Araji, a member of parliament allied with the anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters drafted the bill. "But no one can accept the occupation of his country." Read The Full Story Michael Moore Under Investigation For Cuba Film Trip 2007-05-11 02:27:26 Michael Moore, film-maker and scourge of the Bush administration, has been handed a timely gift of pre-release publicity for his new documentary, SiCKO, by the U.S. Treasury Department which is investigating him for filming in Cuba in violation of a travel ban. A letter from the treasury posted on Moore's website asked him to explain how he came to be in Cuba in March without authorization. Dated May 2, the letter requested information on his travel dates, a list of people who went with him and justification for his presence in Cuba in apparent contravention of the terms of the U.S. embargo of the country imposed since 1962. By deciding to investigate Moore, government officials seemed unaware that he has consistently thrived on such confrontation. His last film, "Fahrenheit 9/11", hit the headlines in 2004 when Walt Disney refused to let its subsidiary Miramax release it because of its attack on the Bush administration. Miramax went ahead anyway, and the film took the top prize at Cannes, the Palme d'Or. Read The Full Story Peruvians Sue Occidental Petroleum Over Amazon Pollution 2007-05-11 02:24:49 Members of an indigenous tribe from the Peruvian Amazon sued the oil giant Occidental Petroleum Thursday in California's superior court, alleging that the company knowingly put the health of the Achuar people at risk and damaged their habitat. The claim alleges that over the course of three decades Oxy, as it is known, engaged in "irresponsible, reckless, immortal and illegal practices" in an "unchecked effort to profit from Amazonian oil". It adds: "These practices were below accepted industry standards, prohibited by law, and Oxy knew they would result in the severe contamination of water and land." Marco Simons, a lawyer for EarthRights International, which is representing the Achuar, said: "If you think about the harm that was done here, the widespread lead poisoning of hundreds of children and the exposure of hundreds of adults and children to contamination, you're certainly looking at substantial damages. But more important than that, the Achuar want injunctive relief to clean up the mess." Read The Full Story	U.S. General Asks For More Troops For Northern Iraq 2007-05-12 03:04:54 The commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq said Friday that he did not have enough troops to bring stability, sharpening the debate in America about the effectiveness of George Bush's war plan. Major General Benjamin Mixon told a video press conference that his region was a haven for militants fleeing a crackdown by U.S. forces in Baghdad, and that the local Iraqi authorities were virtually non-functioning. "I am going to need additional forces in Diyala province to get the situation there to an acceptable level," he said. There are 3,500 troops in the region. The appeal comes amid multiplying signs of disillusion in America over President Bush's plan to take control of the situation with an infusion of 30,000 extra troops. On Thursday Congress voted to fund the war only until mid-July, at which point it would look at a progress report. Bush said he would veto the measure. Read The Full Story Car Bombings Kill 23 At Baghadad Bridges 2007-05-12 03:03:08 Twin suicide car bombers struck police checkpoints at bridges in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 23 people just hours after a series of U.S. raids on car bomb networks around the capital killed four suspected insurgents. The blasts underscored the difficulty U.S.-led forces were having in destroying the presumably Sunni insurgent cells that have stepped up car bombings in the capital since the U.S. began its security crackdown 12 weeks ago. "They have actually pushed back," U.S. spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said, referring to the insurgents. "We've been saying this all along, the enemy is determined." In a sign of that determination, the top U.S. commander in northern Iraq said he doesn't have enough troops to crush al-Qaida-led insurgents in Diyala, a province northeast of Baghdad and scene of recent sharp fighting. Read The Full Story Venezuelan Oil Losing Share Of Key U.S. Market 2007-05-12 03:00:44 When the state oil company recently took over the last privately run oil fields in Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez declared it a victory against Washington and a giant leap toward a new energy policy that would diversify the market for Venezuelan crude to include rising powers like China. "Down with the American Empire!" shouted Chavez, who often warns that he'll shut off the oil spigot to the United States if the Bush administration invades Venezuela or hatches an assassination plot against him. But new study of trade and oil consumption data shows that Venezuela appears ever more dependent on selling its oil to the country Chavez calls "the cruelest, most terrible, most cynical, most murderous empire that has existed." And U.S. government energy trade data show the United States is slightly less dependent on Venezuela, which at one time challenged Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia as the No. 1 provider of foreign oil but now tussles with up-and-coming Nigeria for the fourth spot. Read The Full Story Gloomy Greenspan Warns Of U.S. Economic Recession 2007-05-12 02:58:58 Further gloom gathered over the U.S. economy Friday as retail sales lurched lower while former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan issued a fresh warning that the world's largest economy could be heading for recession. New figures showed retail sales in the U.S. unexpectedly tumbled last month, hit by a double whammy of higher petrol (gasoline) prices and a crumbling housing market. Retail sales are being closely watched since U.S. consumers have helped keep the world economy afloat in recent years, borrowing against the rising value of their houses to finance spending. Retail sales fell 0.2% in April from March, according to the U.S. Commerce Department, against expectations of a 0.4% rise. They follow weak gross domestic product growth figures for the first quarter and poor employment, or non-farm payroll, numbers for April which showed the slowest growth for more than two years. Read The Full Story New York Closes Coal-Fired Plant That Failed To Limit Emissions 2007-05-11 14:25:30 Four years ago, a company that owns two local power plants settled a lawsuit with New York State by agreeing to install $100 million worth of pollution control technology at one of them, its coal-fired plant here, or shut it down. At the time, the company, Mirant New York, said it would move forward with the upgrades at its Lovett plant but,  on Thursday, state officials announced a different outcome. In a news conference here, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo said the state was forcing the plant to close after Mirant failed to reduce emissions with new technology. One unit of the plant closed on Monday, while the other will close in one year, as stipulated by a 2003 consent decree. The emissions from the 350-megawatt Lovett plant are linked to acid rain and smog. At the time of the settlement, state environmental officials said the emissions from Lovett alone, which looms over the west bank of the Hudson River, represented a quarter of the sulfur dioxide and almost a third of the nitrogen oxide released by electric generators in seven counties in the Hudson Valley. Read The Full Story Hamas, Fatah Gunfight Leaves 10 Wounded 2007-05-11 14:24:57 In the worst factional violence in nearly two months, Hamas and Fatah gunmen shot at each other today in the Gaza Strip, wounding at least 10 people and putting new strains on the Palestinian “unity” government in which both parties participate. The fighting erupted after a disagreement on Thursday over how to implement a new plan for improving security on Gaza’s streets. Fatah, which dominates the security forces in the Palestinian Authority, deployed a few thousand men without coordinating the move with Hamas - or with the government’s Interior Minister, Hani al-Qawasmeh, who has threatened to resign. The Executive Force, a parallel police force organized by Hamas to rival the Fatah-dominated security forces, did not take part. Seeing the Fatah forces being deployed, the Hamas gunmen opened fire at the national security building in central Gaza and at some of the Fatah men who were running roadblocks. Read The Full Story Wildfire Threatens Santa Catalina Resort City 2007-05-11 02:30:15 A wind-driven wildfire threatened Santa Catalina Island's main city of Avalon Thursday, and residents and visitors were urged to leave the resort isle more than 20 miles off Southern California. Flames towered at the edge of Avalon at dusk as hundreds of people lined up at its harbor to board a ferry back to the mainland. Many covered their faces with towels and bandanas as ashes fell. "The city is threatened right now," said Los Angeles County fire Capt. Ron Haralson. The blaze scorched more than 500 acres, including a commercial building and several storage buildings, but no homes had been destroyed as of Thursday night. Read The Full Story Europeans Press Wolfowitz To Quit As World Bank Chief 2007-05-11 02:29:41 European leaders have told the Bush administration that Paul D. Wolfowitz must resign as president of the World Bank in order to avoid a vote next week by the bank’s board declaring that he no longer has its confidence to function as the bank’s leader, European officials said Thursday. The officials said the board is drafting a resolution reflecting its view that the relationship between Wolfowitz and the governing body of the bank had “broken beyond repair.” They noted that, if he remained in office, some European countries were planning to reduce contributions to the World Bank that would aid poor countries and instead would channel the money to European agencies and other groups for distribution. “The administration has been told that its battle to save Wolfowitz cannot be won,” said a European official, who like others who discussed the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is confidential. “His relationship with the board is not only damaged. It is broken.” Read The Full Story As Gas Prices Rise, Democrats Blame Big Oil 2007-05-11 02:25:16 A week after U.S. gasoline prices hit a near-record $3.05 a gallon, Democrats in Congress are promoting legislation taking aim at the big oil companies, although industry experts say that the efforts aren't likely to have any effect. Standing in front of an Exxon station near the Capitol on Wednesday with the posted $3.05-a-gallon price for unleaded regular in the background, half a dozen senators railed against the oil industry. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said Congress would look into breaking up the giant companies. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) promoted her anti-price-gouging bill, which the Senate Commerce Committee adopted on Tuesday; and Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vermont) backed a windfall profits tax, pointing to $440 billion in profits over the past six years for the nation's five biggest oil companies. "I think it's time to say to these people, 'Stop ripping off the American people'," said Sanders. Read The Full Story Navy's Olson Picked To Head Special Ops Command 2007-05-11 02:23:15 President Bush Friday nominated Navy Vice Adm. Eric T. Olson to lead U.S. Special Operations Command, replacing Army Gen. Bryan "Doug" Brown, according to a Pentagon release. Olson would be the first Navy officer to head Socom. The command is responsible for about 48,000 elite troops, such as Army Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force operatives, Navy SEALs and Air Force rescue teams. Olson is now Socom's deputy commander. Socom's influence and budget - projected at more than $6 billion for 2008 - have grown since Sept. 11, 2001. In 2004, Bush designated Socom as the lead military organization for combating terrorism. In recent years, about 80 percent of deployed Special Operations forces have been engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. Olson, a longtime Navy SEAL, has served in Israel, Egypt and Tunisia. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1973 and received the Distinguished Service Medal and the Silver Star. Read The Full Story
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