Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday June 14 2007 - (813)

Thursday June 14 2007 edition
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Hamas Forces Seize Control Over Much Of Gaza 2007-06-13 19:33:08 Hamas forces consolidated control over much of Gaza on Wednesday, taking command of the main north-south road and blowing up a Fatah headquarters in Khan Yunis, in the south. In northern Gaza and Gaza City, Hamas military men, many of them in black masks, moved unchallenged through the streets as Fatah fighters ran short of arms and ammunition and abandoned their posts. Hamas controlled all of Gaza City except for the presidential compound of Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, and the Suraya headquarters of the National Security Forces, the Palestinian army. Hamas has surrounded Al Suraya, calling on the occupants to surrender. The powerful Hamas move to exert authority in Gaza, and the poor performance and motivation of the larger security forces supposedly loyal to Fatah, raised troubling questions for Abbas and Israel, and left the White House with a dwindling menu of policy options. Read The Full Story Commentary: Brown's Bane Will Be Getting Dragged Into An American Attack On Iran 2007-06-13 19:32:38 Intellpuke: The following commentary by columnist Jonathan Freedland was posted on the Guardian's edition for Wednesday, June 13, 2007. In it, Mr. Freedland writes the Gordon Brown, soon to succeed Tony Blair as Britain's prime minister, would be wise to avoid dragging the U.K. into an American military attack on Iran. Mr. Freedland's commentary follows: In the deserts of Iraq on Monday, Gordon Brown was coy: he would give no clue as to when British troops would be coming home. On current plans, their number will fall to 5,500 by midsummer, but after that? Brown wasn't saying. There will be high-minded, constitutional reasons for his reticence. For 14 more days it's not his decision to take. But it was politically convenient too. This way the Labour left is allowed to nurse the hope that Brown is going to do a Zapatero - and, like the Spanish leader, announce a dramatic, rapid pullout from Iraq, thereby drawing the sharpest possible line between his new government and the old. It's an appealing thought - but almost certainly a false one. For Brown has already reassured the United States he will do no such thing. I'm told by a high-ranking Bush administration official that Brown has used "multiple channels", including meetings between defense secretary Des Browne and his U.S. counterpart Robert Gates, to reassure the Americans that no surprises are on the way. After the "drawdowns" that have already been announced, any further British moves will be "conditions-based" - dependent on the situation on the ground - and taken only in consultation with Washington. Brown said as much when he met Bush face to face in April, my source hints. Of course, that still leaves plenty of wriggle room if Brown decides to make a hasty exit. He could simply tell Washington the "conditions" have changed. But for now, the Americans are happy - and Labor's antiwar left is set to be disappointed. Still, there could be a much graver blow to come, as Iraq and Afghanistan come to look like the relatively simple files in Brown's foreign policy in-tray. Knottier and more urgent will be the one marked "Iran". The evidence is mounting that Brown could suffer the turmoil that came to define his predecessor - and be asked by a U.S.  president to join in a military adventure. Read The Full Story BREAKING NEWS: 6.8 Earthquake Strikes 70 Miles From Guatemala City 2007-06-13 18:20:51 A 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck Wednesday just off the Pacific coast of Guatemala, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Early reports indicated some homes were damaged and people may be missing, journalist Patzy Vazquez told CNN en Espanol. Hugo Hernandez, the executive director of the National Coordination for Disaster, said there were no immediate reports of injuries, but all phone lines were down. Officials were using radios to communicate, according to Benedicto Giron, a spokesman for the disaster coordination agency. Read The Full Story Justice Dept. Officials Rebuked For Disclosing Rove Connection To Fired U.S. Attorney 2007-06-13 15:56:09 The White House's former political director was furious at Justice Department officials for disclosing to Congress that the administration had forced out the U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, to make way for a protege of Karl Rove, President Bush's political adviser, according to documents released late Tuesday. Then-White House political affairs director Sara Taylor spelled out her frustrations in a Feb. 16 e-mail to Kyle Sampson, then the chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. She sent the message after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told the Senate that unlike other federal prosecutors, U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins wasn't fired for performance reasons, but to make way for former Republican political operative Tim Griffin. Griffin, serving as the interim U.S. attorney, then announced that he wouldn't seek confirmation to the Arkansas post, but would remain until the Senate confirmed someone else. Griffin has since resigned. Read The Full Story Commentary: 'Like Outlaws, Like Rustlers, Like Thieves' 2007-06-13 15:55:18 Intellpuke: The following commentary by journalist and photographer David Bacon was posted on truthout.org's website edition for Wednesday, June 13, 2007. In his commentary, Mr. Bacon provides a good overview of the history of immigration policies in the U.S. and their ties to big U.S. businesses through U.S. trade policies such as the World Trade Organization and NAFTA. He also makes it clear that the driving force behind those policies is large corporations who want cheap labor so they can maximize their profits. After reading it, I thought it deserved a wider audience and I hope that truthout.org and Mr. Bacon agree. Mr. Bacon's commentary follows: "They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves." Those were the words Woody Guthrie used to describe the braceros of the 1940s, as he sang about the plane carrying them back to the Mexican border, which fell out of the sky over Los Gatos Canyon, killing all the nameless deportees aboard. Today Congress is creating more workers displaced like the braceros of old. Legislators would push them into the mobile global workforce, while at the same time, proposing immigration laws ensuring that they will still be the excluded outlaws and deportees of Guthrie's song. The comprehensive immigration bill may have stalled in the Senate last week, but the debate over immigration policy will undoubtedly continue - especially over the status of the millions of undocumented workers presently in the United States, as well as those who will come in the next few years. In fact, that continued flow of workers is inevitable, since Congress is also considering new trade legislation that is guaranteed to increase the number of undocumented workers in the United States. Our nation's trade and immigration policies have never been as closely connected as they are today. Four new agreements are currently being considered, while President Bush is pushing for "fast track" authority to negotiate even more of them. All will exacerbate our current immigration issues by displacing thousands of workers and farmers, most of whom will join the cross-border flow of migrant labor that already tops 200 million people worldwide. Read The Full Story Judiciary Committees Issue Subpoenas To Former Bush Aides 2007-06-13 13:58:43 The U.S. House and Senate Judiciary committees issued subpoenas Wednesday for former White House counsel Harriet Miers and former White House political director Sara M. Taylor, escalating the legal showdown between Democrats in Congress and the Bush administration over the Justice Department's firing of nine U.S. attorneys last year. The House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena for testimony and documents from Miers, while the Senate Judiciary panel demanded the same from Taylor. Both panels also issued separate subpoenas for White House documents related to the dismissals. "By refusing to cooperate with congressional committees, the White House continues its pattern of confrontation over cooperation," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vermont), chairman of the Senate panel. "The White House cannot have it both ways - it cannot stonewall congressional investigations by refusing to provide documents and witnesses while claiming nothing improper occurred." Read The Full Story Anti-Syrian Lawmaker In Lebanon Killed Along With 9 Others In Beirut Explosion 2007-06-13 13:58:08 An explosion rocked Beirut's popular sea-front area today, killing at least 10 people, including a vocal, anti-Syrian lawmaker who was close to slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, said security officials. The explosion, apparently from a bomb-rigged car, killed Walid Eido, his son and two bodyguards, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Six others were also killed and at least 11 were wounded, said the officials. Eido, 65, was an ally of Saad Hariri, the leader of the parliamentary majority and son of Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated on Feb. 14, 2005, in a suicide truck bombing in Beirut. Eido is the seventh opponent of Damascus to be killed in two years in this conflict-ridden country. The explosion occurred less than a mile from the site of blast that killed Rafik Hariri and 22 others. Read The Full Story Shimon Peres Elected President Of Israel 2007-06-13 13:57:16 After six decades in public life, Shimon Peres had led Israel's government three times and held nearly every senior post but never won an election, failing so often that he was branded an "accomplished loser." Today, the country's most senior statesman finally got his due. By a vote of 86 to 23, parliament elected him over two rivals to the largely ceremonial job of president. "No matter how much I thought of this, I was caught unprepared," the 83-year-old Peres told parliament in an emotional acceptance speech. He promised to play a "spiritual role" as a unifier and speak "in a strong voice to expel despair from our midst." Read The Full Story Federal Grant Winds Up As 2 Ships Gone Awry 2007-06-13 02:40:31 In theory, it was simple: Congress gave two decommissioned Coast Guard cutters to a faith-based group in California, directing that the ships be used only to provide medical services to islands in the South Pacific. Coast Guard records show that the ships have been providing those services in the South Pacific since the medical mission took possession of them in 1999. In reality, the ships never got any closer to the South Pacific islands than the San Francisco Bay. The mission group quickly sold one to a maritime equipment company, which sold it for substantially more to a pig farmer who uses it as a commercial ferry off Nicaragua. The group sold the other ship to a Bay Area couple who rent it for eco-tours and marine research. The gift of the two cutters was one of almost 900 grants Congress has made to faith-based organizations since 1987 through the use of provisions, called earmarks, that are tucked into bills to bypass normal government review and bidding procedures. Read The Full Story	Britain's BAE Faces U.S. Criminal Investigation Over $2 Billion Payments To Prince Bandar 2007-06-13 19:32:53 The U.S. Department of Justice is preparing to open a corruption investigation into the arms company BAE, the Guardian has learned. It would cover the alleged £1 billion ($2 billion) arms deal payments to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia. Washington sources familiar with the thinking of senior officials at the justice department said Wednesday it was "99% certain" that a criminal inquiry would be opened under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Such an investigation would have potentially seismic consequences for BAE, which is trying to take over U.S. arms companies and make the Pentagon its biggest customer. The sources say U.S. officials are particularly concerned by the allegations in the Guardian that U.K. Ministry of Defense (MoD) officials actively colluded in the payments. One said: "The image of all these Bob Cratchits in Whitehall sitting at their high stools processing invoices from Bandar has been a startling one to us." Read The Full Story Giant Bird-Like Dinosaur Fossil Found In China 2007-06-13 19:32:16 Scientists have uncovered a huge surprise in the Inner Mongolia region of northern China: the fossil skeleton of an unusually robust bird-like dinosaur that lived 70 million years ago. The animal appeared to be a young adult 25 feet long and weighing 3,000 pounds and, if it had lived longer, would probably have grown even larger. Paleontologists said the discovery contradicted widely-held theories that carnivorous dinosaurs got smaller as they evolved more bird-like characteristics, but they emphasized that the new specimen did not challenge the theorized dinosaur-bird link. The Chinese scientists who made the discovery, being reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, said the skeleton belonged to a dinosaur family that included the beaked, bird-like Oviraptor. This family was not closely related to the dromaeosaurid dinosaurs generally thought to be ancestors of modern birds. Read The Full Story FBI Terror Watch List 'Out Of Control', Swells To Half A Million Names 2007-06-13 15:56:20 A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million names. Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror. The bureau says the number of names on its terrorist watch list is classified. A portion of the FBI's unclassified 2008 budget request posted to the Department of Justice Web site, however, refers to "the entire watch list of 509,000 names," which is utilized by its Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force. Read The Full Story Cheney's Iran-Arms-To-Taliban Gambit Rebuffed 2007-06-13 15:55:55 A media campaign portraying Iran as supplying arms to the Taliban guerrillas fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, orchestrated by advocates of a more confrontational stance toward Iran in the George W. Bush administration, appears to have backfired last week when Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeil, issued unusually strong denials. The allegation that Iran has reversed a decade-long policy and is now supporting the Taliban, conveyed in a series of press articles quoting "senior officials" in recent weeks, is related to a broader effort by officials aligned with Vice President Dick Cheney to portray Iran as supporting Sunni insurgents, including al-Qaeda, to defeat the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan. An article in the Guardian published May 22 quoted an anonymous U.S. official as predicting an "Iranian-orchestrated summer offensive in Iraq, linking al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgents to Tehran's Shia militia allies" and as referring to the alleged "Iran-al-Qaeda linkup" as "very sinister". Read The Full Story Sunni Mosques Attacked Following Blasts At Shiite Golden Mosque 2007-06-13 14:55:05 Hours after a revered Shiite mosque was bombed Wednesday, Sunni houses of worship came under attack, said Iraq's Interior Ministry. The bombing destroyed two towers at at Al-Askariya Mosque in Samarra. The same holy site was attacked in February 2006, causing the top of the mosque's dome to collapse. That attack sparked Iraq's current wave of deadly Shiite-Sunni violence. There was no immediate word on casualties in the city north of Baghdad. Authorities said they believe Sunni insurgents hit the mosque. At the Pentagon, Army Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey said that "it clearly seems to me to be a signature attack of al-Qaeda." Read The Full Story No Birth Certificate, No Vacation 2007-06-13 13:58:22 Just when it seemed the passport logjam was starting to ease, passengers faced another obstacle Tuesday: Some airlines refused to let them board planes because they didn't have birth certificates. In yet another embarrassment for the State Department, a temporary measure enacted Friday to reduce a huge backlog of passports is now leading to more unexpected aggravation. "It's a real bummer," said Alex Alvarado, a 10-year-old Needles, California, resident who was blocked from boarding a plane to Mexico City for a summer soccer camp because he didn't have a birth certificate - something that Mexico requires if you don't have a passport. In a move to lessen passport backlogs nationwide last week, the U.S. government told travelers that they could visit Mexico, Canada, Bermuda and the Caribbean this summer with only a government-issued photo I.D. and a receipt showing that they had applied for a passport. Read The Full Story UPDATE: Blasts Destroy Remnants Of Samarra Shiite Shrine 2007-06-13 13:57:40 Early morning blasts Wednesday destroyed two minarets at the same Shiite shrine in Samarra where an attack last year demolished the mosque's gilded dome and plunged the country into a wave of deadly sectarian violence. No one was injured in the 9 a.m. explosions at the revered Askariya shrine in Samarra, about 65 miles north of Baghdad. But officials said it was just the sort of event that could spark a spiral of retaliatory attacks and make it harder to reduce the violence that has brought the addition of thousands of extra U.S. troops stationed at high-profile posts on the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere. The Feb. 22, 2006, attack on the shrine - historically known as the Golden Mosque because of its brilliant dome - was a seminal moment in the four-year Iraq war, sparking a vicious cycle of bloodshed that has never fully stopped. In the 16 months since, thousands of Iraqis - and perhaps tens of thousands - have been killed in Sunni-Shiite fighting. Read The Full Story BREAKING NEWS: Insurgent Blast Damages Two Minarets Of Golden Mosque In Samarra 2007-06-13 02:40:45 A series of loud explosions have destroyed two minarets at an already damaged Shia shrine in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra.   The explosions were heard in the vicinity of the Askiriya shrine, also known as the Golden Mosque, at about 9 a.m. (0500 GMT) on Wednesday. "The explosion targeted the two golden minarets. They have been damaged ... This is a criminal act which aims at creating sectarian strife," Saleh al-Haidari, the head of the Shia endowment in Iraq, said.   The two minarets toppled on Wednesday even as security forces were guarding the holy site. Read The Full Story
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