Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday June 9 2007 - (813)

Saturday June 9 2007 edition
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Cities Take Lead On Environment As Debate Drags At Federal Level 2007-06-09 02:20:56 To the long list of evils being blamed on global warming - hurricanes, heat waves, melting ice caps - tack on the smaller interior of Steve Benesoczky's cab. Inside, his passengers can already feel the squeeze of climate change in their knees. "Of course it's less comfortable. Look, there's less leg room," said Benesoczky, 55, as he pointed to the back of his new taxi - a hybrid Ford Escape. The company Benesoczky works for has started complying with a new directive ordering New York'sentire fleet of 13,000 yellow cabs to go green over the next five years - part of an effort by the nation's largest city to cut its carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030. Most taxis here are now roomy-if-gas-guzzling Ford Crown Victorias, but hundreds of boxy hybrid cabs have already hit the roads, gradually altering the autoscape o Manhattan's glittering byways. Read The Full Story U.S. Supreme Court Ruling Likely to Spur Convictions In Capital Cases - But Will Justice Be Served? 2007-06-09 02:20:11 A decision by the Supreme Court on Monday that made it easier for prosecutors to exclude people who express reservations about the death penalty from capital juries will make the panels whiter and more conviction-prone, experts in law and psychology said this week. The jurors who remain after people with moral objections to imposing the death penalty are weeded out, studies uniformly show, are significantly more likely to vote to find defendants guilty than jurors as a whole. It has long been the law in every state with capital punishment that only people who are prepared to apply the death penalty may serve on capital juries. Monday’s decision, which involved a juror’s equivocation about the death penalty on learning that life without parole was an option, has the potential to make capital juries even less representative. Read The Full Story Chairman Of Joint Chiefs Of Staff On Way Out 2007-06-09 02:19:02 U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced Friday that Marine Gen. Peter Pace will step down as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September, a move that Gates said will avert the contentious congressional hearings that would be needed to reconfirm the nation's top military officer. Pace will leave after just two years in the post, the shortest stint as chairman in more than four decades. The surprise announcement Friday at the Pentagon amounts to Pace being fired before a customary second two-year term. He has served as the top military adviser to President Bushand the defense secretary since 2005, leading a war effort that has frustrated the American public and appears no closer to a conclusion. Gates said that his decision was rooted in political considerations and that he took guidance from members of Congress who warned that Pace could face a maelstrom on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers would dissect the military's failures in Iraq. Pace has been at the center of war planning and policy since the days immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when he started as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Read The Full Story Israel's Olmert 'In Secret Deal To Return Golan Heights To Syria' 2007-06-09 02:18:01 The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has passed a secret message to Syria offering to return the Golan Heights as part of a broad peace deal, a well-connected Israeli newspaper reported Friday. There was no confirmation of the claim and Syrian diplomats were reported as saying their government had received no such overture. Meir Sheetrit, an Israeli cabinet minister, said that any future agreement with Syria would involve Israel handing over sovereignty of the Golan back to Damascus, but retaining the territory under a lease of at least 25 years. In return, Israel wants Syria to end its support for Iran, Hezbollah and armed Palestinian groups. A number of Palestinian groups have leaders in Damascus, including Khaled Meshal, head of the Hamas political bureau. Read The Full Story Worsening Morale At U.S. State Department Blamed On Rice 2007-06-08 15:05:29 Intellpuke: The following article appears in the Arab News edition for Friday, June 8, 2007. The Arab News is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The rumbling at the State Department is amplifying. With 19 months left in her term as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice has no major diplomatic deal to her credit. Now a panel of diplomats is blaming her for the department’s “worsening morale,” while insiders say Vice President Cheney has her hamstrung. Word is that State Department’s morale and staffing resources are being drained. This - not from naysayers, but from an independent study that places the blame directly on the slim shoulders of Secretary Rice. The influential Foreign Affairs Council, an organization of retired American diplomats and ambassadors that monitors United States diplomacy and State Department management, published a report saying the department faces a staff shortage crisis amid “worsening morale.” Read The Full Story Editorial: It's Subpoena Time 2007-06-08 15:04:35 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times for Friday, June 8, 2007. For months, senators have listened to a parade of well-coached Justice Department witnesses claiming to know nothing about how nine prosecutors were chosen for firing. This week, it was the turn of Bradley Schlozman, a former federal attorney in Missouri, to be uninformative and not credible. It is time for Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to deliver subpoenas that have been approved for Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and their top aides, and to make them testify in public and under oath. Mr. Schlozman was appointed United States attorney in Missouri while the state was in the midst of a hard-fought Senate race. In his brief stint, he pushed a lawsuit, which was thrown out by a federal judge, that could have led to thousands of Democratic-leaning voters being wrongly purged from the rolls. Just days before the election, he indicted voter registration workers from the liberal group Acorn on fraud charges. Republicans quickly made the indictments an issue in the Senate race. Mr. Schlozman said it did not occur to him that the indictments could affect the campaign. That is hard to believe since the Justice Department’s guidelines tell prosecutors not to bring vote fraud investigations right before an election, so as not to affect the outcome. He also claimed, laughably, that he did not know that Acorn was a liberal-leaning group. Read The Full Story Nearly 50 Dead In Iraq Bloodshed 2007-06-08 15:03:31 At least 49 people have died in a two-day surge of violence in Iraq, including 16 in two car bombs Friday, as an American general admitted the US military surge would likely only have temporary impact. Two near simultaneous vehicle explosions killed 16 people and wounded another 32 early Friday in the town of Al-Khurna, north of Iraq's southern city of Basra where the British troops are based. Police and medical officials said the explosions - a bomb in a minibus at a bus station and a car bomb in a market - rocked the town at around 7:30 am (0330 GMT). "First, a minibus exploded at a bus station in Al-Khurna and around the same time another car bomb exploded in a market in the town," said First Lieutenant Imad Abdul Wahid with the Khurna police. Read The Full Story U.S. Border Passport Rules Suspended 2007-06-08 11:27:10 The Bush administration on Friday suspended some of its new, post-Sept. 11 requirements for flying abroad, hoping to placate Congress and irate summer travelers whose vacations have been thwarted by delays in processing their passports. The proposal would temporarily lift a requirement that U.S. passports be used for citizens flying to and from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. The rule, and its suspension, does not affect Americans driving across the Canadian or Mexican borders or taking sea cruises, although those travelers are expected to need passports beginning next year. The suspension should allow the State Department to catch up with a massive surge in applications that has overwhelmed passport processing centers since the rule took effect this year. The resulting backlog has caused up to three-month delays for passports and ruined or delayed the travel plans of thousands of Americans. Read The Full Story Complaints About NASA Inspector General Pile Up 2007-06-08 11:26:28 Former top associates of embattled NASA Inspector General Robert "Moose" Cobb accused him in an unusual House-Senate congressional inquiry yesterday of being abusive, vulgar, unprofessional and seemingly beholden to top management of the agency he oversees. Cobb gave little ground, however, and made clear that he believes those complaints and the criticisms voiced by two probes into his actions are unfair and their conclusions misguided. He said that he is proud of his five-year stewardship of the office and that NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin  fully supports him. He also said an independent ethics committee investigation - which concluded earlier this year that Cobb should be punished or dismissed - was "a complete and de facto exoneration of me." Read The Full Story Global Inflation Fears Continue To Chill Markets 2007-06-08 02:36:22 U.S. stocks plunged for the third consecutive day as fears of rising inflation worldwide swept into the markets. The worries Thursday erupted early in New Zealand, where the inflation-wary central bank boosted interest rates to 8 percent. New Zealand's action came on the heels of a rate increase by the European Central Bank on Wednesday. In the United States, traders pushed the rate on the benchmark U.S. Treasury 10-year note to 5.13 percent Thursday on concern that signs of inflation are creeping into the economy. Investors are worried that the Federal Reserve's next move might be a rate increase, not a cut that they had been counting on for weeks. The major stock indicators fell Thursday by 1.5 percent or more. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 198.94, or 1.5 percent, to finish at 13266.73. It was the worst single-day sell-off since March 13 for the Dow, which comprises 30 blue-chip stocks. Thursday, every component finished in the red. Read The Full Story Isolated Musharraf Backs Down On Media Curbs As Anger Grows On Streets And In Ruling Party 2007-06-08 02:35:34 The Pakistani government was forced into a dramatic reversal Thursday as the political crisis surrounding President Pervez Musharraf deepened, with international condemnation of harsh new media laws and the first signs of serious dissent within his own party. As thousands of people demonstrated in four cities - some in defiance of a ban - the government overturned a decree signed by Musharraf on Monday empowering the government to close television stations, revoke licenses and impose large fines. The decree brought international protests. Human Rights Watch said it would "muzzle" the free press and European ambassadors issued a rare statement of concern. The prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, responded by suspending the decree Thursday. Article continues Musharraf appears increasingly isolated as he battles through the greatest political challenge of his career. Lawyers, journalists and opposition parties were already openly hostile when, two days ago, he rounded on his Pakistan Muslim League party for failing to support him. "You always leave me alone in time of trial and tribulation," he berated followers at a party meeting, according to the News newspaper. Read The Full Story Investigation: CIA Ran Secret Prisons For Detainees In Europe 2007-06-08 02:34:37 The CIA operated secret prisons in Europe where terrorism suspects could be interrogated and were allegedly tortured, an official inquiry will conclude Friday. Despite denials by their governments, senior Polish and Romanian security officials have confirmed to the Council of Europe that their countries were used to hold some of America's most important prisoners captured after 9/11 in secret. None of the prisoners had access to the Red Cross and many were subject to what George Bush has called the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation, which critics have condemned as torture. Although suspicions about the secret CIA prisons have existed for more than a year, the council's report, seen by Britain's Guardian newspaper, appears to offer the first concrete evidence. It also details the prisons' operations and the identities of some of the prisoners. Read The Full Story	Indian Reservation Reels In Wake Of Youth Suicides And Attempts 2007-06-09 02:20:37 The two suicides struck the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota like a random virus. No one saw them coming. The young man, 19 years old, played varsity football and basketball at Todd County High School. He was admired across the reservation, in that way small towns follow and celebrate their teenage athletes. The girl, weeks shy of her 14th birthday, made straight A’s at Todd County Middle School, played volleyball and basketball and led a traditional Lakota drum corps. They hanged themselves. This happened at the end of a particularly brutal two-and-a-half months, from Jan. 1 to March 13, when tribal authorities were called to three suicides and scores of attempts. The next day, with the reservation (population 13,000) reeling, tribal officials declared a state of emergency. Read The Full Story Bush Criticized On Immigration Defeat 2007-06-09 02:19:53 President Bush awoke in Germany Friday to find his immigration compromise on life support and facing fresh criticism that he failed to exert the leadership needed to save what is likely to be the last major domestic agenda item of his presidency. Although congressional aides and GOP strategists said it was unfair to blame Bush alone, the collapse of the immigration bill late Thursday was a reflection of the weakened state of his presidency. Those aides said the bill's troubles were exacerbated by Bush's deteriorating relations with congressional Republicans and his inability to combat an unexpectedly fierce attack on the bill by grass-roots conservatives. "This is sort of what his life is going to be like for the rest of his term," said veteran GOP strategist Ed Rollins.  "There are Republicans defecting from him now. He's not going to have any great success on anything that's controversial." Read The Full Story The Bandar Cover-Up, Who Knew What, And When? 2007-06-09 02:18:42 The British government was last night fighting to contain the fallout over £1 billion ($2 billion) in payments to a Saudi prince as the attorney general came under renewed pressure to explain how much he knew about the affair. While in public the government was issuing partial denials about its role in the controversy, in private there were desperate efforts to secure a new BAE £20 billion ($40 billion) arms deal with Saudi Arabia. And any hopes that the furore could be halted were dashed last night when the Guardian learned that the world's anti-corruption organization, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), was poised to resume its own inquiry into why the British government suddenly abandoned its investigations into the £43 billion ($86 billion) al-Yamamah arms deal. The OECD's anti-bribery panel will meet in Paris on June 19 and is expected to discuss the disclosures. When it travels to London, its inspectors are likely to ask ministers for a full explanation of their conduct. Read The Full Story Iran Confirms That California Businessman Is In Tehran Jail 2007-06-09 02:17:40 A semi-official Iranian news agency reported yesterday that California businessman Ali Shakeri is in custody in Tehran and is under investigation for possible national security violations. It is the first confirmation by Iran of his detention after repeated statements from the Tehran regime that it had no information on Shakeri. Shakeri, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen and University of Texas graduate who has lived in the United States since the 1970s, disappeared from Tehran's international airport on May 8 as he was preparing to return to the United States after the death of his mother in Tehran. His wife told the Washington Post that he had called her at least three times from Iran's notorious Evin Prison. The confirmation Friday of his detention came from the ISNA news agency. Read The Full Story Rate Of Mortgage Debt To Housing Value Hits New High 2007-06-08 15:05:17 Intellpuke: The following article is by Dean Baker, co-director of the Center For Economic Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Mr. Baker's article follows: The quarterly Flow of Funds data from the Federal Reserve Board show that homeowners are still taking on mortgage debt at a healthy pace even as their homes have largely stopped appreciating in value. Homeowners increased their mortgage debt at a 5.4 percent annual rate in the first quarter, adding debt at an annual rate of $510 billion. This is rate of borrowing is down from the 9.3 percent growth rate in 2006, but it is considerably more rapid than the 2.0 percent rate of house appreciation reported for the first quarter. As a result, the ratio of equity to home value continued to fall. At the end of the first quarter of 2007, the ratio of equity to home value stood at 52.7 percent, another record low. This ratio stood at 54.3 percent at the end of 2005. It had been at 57.9 percent as recently as 2000, and was close to 70 percent until the nineties. This drop in the ratio of equity to value is especially disconcerting given the country's demographics. With much of the baby boom cohort at the edge of retirement, it would be expected that the ratio of equity to value would be near record highs. There is reason to believe that the ratio of equity to value will continue to decline for the foreseeable future. The inventory of unsold new and existing homes both stand at record highs. The 4,200,000 stock of unsold existing homes is more than a year's supply at the pre-bubble sales rates of the mid-nineties. Furthermore, the surge in foreclosures ensures that a large additional supply will be entering the market well into 2008. This will put substantial downward pressure on prices, which are already falling in many areas. With slowing productivity growth and rising material prices putting upward pressure on inflation, mortgage rates are also moving higher, which is yet another negative for the housing market. Read The Full Story Blackwater Sues Families Of Slain Employees To Shut Them Up 2007-06-08 15:03:55 Intellpuke: The following article is by Daniel J. Callahn and Marc P. Miles, the lawyers representing the families of four American contractors who worked for Blackwater and were killed in Fallujah. After Blackwater refused to share information about why they were killed, the families were told they would have to sue Blackwater to find out. Now Blackwater is trying to sue them for $10 million to keep them quiet. This article was first posted on AlterNet.org's website. The families of four American security contractors who were burned, beaten, dragged through the streets of Fallujah and their decapitated bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River on March 31, 2004, are reaching out to the American public to help protect themselves against the very company their loved ones were serving when killed, Blackwater Security Consulting. After Blackwater lost a series of appeals all the away to the U.S. Supreme Court, Blackwater has now changed its tactics and is suing the dead men's estates for $10 million to silence the families and keep them out of court. Following these gruesome deaths which were broadcast on worldwide television, the surviving family members looked to Blackwater for answers as to how and why their loved ones died. Blackwater not only refused to give the grieving families any information, but also callously stated that they would need to sue Blackwater to get it. Left with no alternative, in January 2005, the families filed suit against Blackwater, which is owned by the wealthy and politically-connected Erik Prince. Blackwater quickly adapted its battlefield tactics to the courtroom. It initially hired Fred F. Fielding, who is currently counsel to the President of the United States. It then hired Joseph E. Schmitz as its in-house counsel, who was formerly the Inspector General at the Pentagon. More recently, Blackwater employed Kenneth Starr, famed prosecutor in the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, to oppose the families. To add additional muscle, Blackwater hired Cofer Black, who was the Director of the CIA Counter- Terrorist Center. Read The Full Story Immigration Bill, Short 15 Votes, Stalls In Senate 2007-06-08 11:27:24 The sweeping immigration overhaul endorsed by President Bush crumbled in the Senate on Thursday night, leaving the future of one of the administration’s chief domestic priorities in serious doubt. After a day of tension and fruitless maneuvering, senators rejected a Democratic call to move toward a final vote on the compromise legislation after Republicans complained that they had not been given enough opportunity to reshape the sprawling bill. Supporters of cutting off debate got only 45 of the 60 votes they needed; 50 senators opposed the cutoff. “We are finished with this for the time being,” said Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and the majority leader, as he turned the Senate to work on energy legislation. Read The Full Story House Democrats May Subpoena NSA Wiretap Documents 2007-06-08 11:26:49 Senior House Democrats threatened Thursday to issue subpoenas to obtain secret legal opinions and other documents from the Justice Department related to the National Security Agency's domestic wiretapping program. If the Democrats take that step, it would mark the most aggressive action yet by Congress in its oversight of the wiretapping program and could set the stage for a constitutional showdown over the separation of powers. The subpoena threat came after a senior Justice Department official told a House judiciary subcommittee on Thursday that the department would not turn over the documents because of their confidential nature. The official, Steven G. Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general and head of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel, did not assert executive privilege during the hearing. Read The Full Story U.S. War 'Czar' Offer Grim Iraq View 2007-06-08 02:36:35 President Bush's nominee to be war czar said yesterday that conditions in Iraq have not improved significantly despite the influx of U.S. troops in recent months and predicted that, absent major political reform, violence will continue to rage over the next year. Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, tapped by Bush to serve as a new high-powered White House coordinator of the war, told senators at a confirmation hearing that Iraqi factions "have shown so far very little progress" toward the reconciliation necessary to stem the bloodshed. If that does not change, he said, "we're not likely to see much difference in the security situation" a year from now. Lute's dour assessment mirrored the views of U.S. intelligence officials, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee in a closed session last month that trends in Iraq remain negative and that the prospect for political movement by the nation's feuding Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds appears marginal. The secret intelligence conclusions were disclosed during Thursday's hearing by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Indiana) and confirmed by a Republican official. Read The Full Story Commentary: In Iraq, The Allies Have Become The Vandals 2007-06-08 02:35:54 Intellpuke: In the following commentary, Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins, a journalist for several publications and an author, writes that British and American collusion in the pillaging of Iraq's heritage is a scandal that will outlive any passing conflict. Mr. Jenkins' column follows: Fly into the American air base of Tallil outside Nasiriya in central Iraq and the flight path is over the great ziggurat of Ur, reputedly the earliest city on earth. Seen from the base in the desert haze or the sand-filled gloom of dusk, the structure is indistinguishable from the mounds of fuel dumps, stores and hangars. Ur is safe within the base compound. But its walls are pockmarked with wartime shrapnel and a blockhouse is being built over an adjacent archaeological site. When the head of Iraq's supposedly sovereign board of antiquities and heritage, Abbas al-Hussaini, tried to inspect the site recently, the Americans refused him access to his own most important monument. Thursday Hussaini reported to the British Museum on his struggles to protect his work in a state of anarchy. It was a heart breaking presentation. Under Saddam you were likely to be tortured and shot if you let someone steal an antiquity; in today's Iraq you are likely to be tortured and shot if you don't. The tragic fate of the national museum in Baghdad in April 2003 was as if federal troops had invaded New York City, sacked the police and told the criminal community that the Metropolitan police was at their disposal. The local tank commander was told specifically not to protect the museum for a full two weeks after the invasion. Even the Nazis protected the Louvre. Read The Full Story Britain's Attorney General Knew Of BAE Payments To Saudi Prince. Then Concealed It. 2007-06-08 02:35:08 British investigators were ordered by the attorney-general Lord Goldsmith to conceal from international anti-bribery watchdogs the existence of payments totalling more than £1 billion ($2 billion) to a Saudi prince, the Guardian  disclosed. The money was paid into bank accounts controlled by Prince Bandar for his role in setting up BAE Systems with Britain's biggest ever arms deal. Details of the transfers to accounts in the U.S. were discovered by officers from the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) during its long-running investigation into BAE. But its inquiry was halted suddenly last December. The Guardian newspaper established that the attorney-general warned colleagues last year that "government complicity" in the payment of the sums was in danger of being revealed if the SFO probe was allowed to continue. Read The Full Story
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