Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday July 30 2007 - (813)

Monday July 30 2007 edition
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More Republicans Want Iraq Military Limits 2007-07-30 01:01:08 Republicans increasingly are backing a new approach in the Iraq war that could become the party's mantra come September. It would mean narrowly limited missions for U.S. troops in Iraq but let President Bush decide when troops should leave. So far, the idea has not attracted the attention of Democratic leaders. They are under substantial pressure by anti-war groups to consider only legislation that orders troops from Iraq. Yet the GOP approach quickly is becoming the attractive alternative for Republican lawmakers who want to challenge Bush on the unpopular war without backtracking from their past assertions that it would be disastrous to set deadlines for troop withdrawals. "This is a necessary adjustment in the national debate to reintroduce bipartisanship, to stop the 'gotcha' politics that are going on that seem to be driven by fringes on both sides and change the terms of the discussion," said Rep. Phil English, R-Pennsylvania. Read The Full Story Montana Wildfire Spreads Nearly Unchecked 2007-07-30 01:00:26 Hot, dry and windy weather helped a wildfire near Glacier National Park grow to roughly 5,000 acres on Sunday and continue to threaten an evacuated lodge. The blaze had grown from 1,000 acres a day earlier and was just 2 percent contained, said fire information officer Dale Warriner. The fire was running into heavy timber. On Sunday, authorities reopened a highway near the park in northwestern Montana, but they warned that U.S. 2 could be closed again if the blaze flared up. Guests and 18 workers at the Summit Station Lodge along the highway remained evacuated as flames burned within a mile, said owner Jorge Simental. The number of guests was not immediately available. Read The Full Story Number Of Tropical Storms In Atlantic Have Doubled 2007-07-30 00:59:49 The number of tropical storms developing annually in the Atlantic Ocean more than doubled over the past century, with the increase taking place in two jumps, researchers say. The increases coincided with rising sea surface temperature, largely the byproduct of human-induced climate warming, researchers Greg J. Holland and Peter J. Webster concluded. Their findings were being published online Sunday by Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. An official at the National Hurricane Center called the research "sloppy science" and said technological improvements in observing storms accounted for the increase. From 1905 to 1930, the Atlantic-Gulf Coast area averaged six tropical cyclones per year, with four of those storms growing into become hurricanes. Read The Full Story Iran Opens Doors To Nuclear Facility 2007-07-30 00:59:18 The rush to process uranium is to generate electricity, Iranian official in Isfahan say - but there are no power stations. In the bowels of Iran's uranium conversion facility in Isfahan strands of black and red wire stretch from the concrete wall to giant white tanks full of a volatile uranium compound. It is by these slender cords that the international community hopes to hold Iran's atomic ambitions in check. The wires pass through a brass seal that has been soldered and marked in such a way that any attempt to divert the fuel to making a bomb would be spotted by United Nations inspectors. It is a nuclear trigger the world hopes will never be pulled. With global tensions rising over Iran's nuclear intentions, the doors of the Isfahan plant were opened last week to a small group of journalists from Europe and America in a rare bid for transparency by the embattled but determined government in Tehran. Read The Full Story British Prime Minister Brown Tries To Shift Bush Talks To Trade And Darfur 2007-07-30 00:58:14 British Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrived in Washington, D.C., Sunday night for his first meeting as prime minister with George Bush, determined to shift the focus from Iraq towards less divisive issues such as trade and Darfur. Brown, who is scheduled to hold formal talks Monday with Bush and his team at Camp David, the presidential weekend retreat, praised Bush and commended his leadership in the fight against international terrorism - but failed to mention the war in Iraq. In a statement to journalists on the plane, Brown said the U.S.-British relationship was founded on common values of liberty, opportunity and the dignity of the individual. "And because of the values we share, the relationship with the United States is not only strong, but can become stronger in the years ahead," he said. Brown is intent on sustaining a juggling act in which he maintains the alliance with the U.S. while showing it is not as tight as under Tony Blair. Read The Full Story Japan Polls Show Huge Elections Loss For Prime Minister Abe's Ruling Party 2007-07-29 13:50:34 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling party suffered humiliating losses in parliamentary elections Sunday after a string of political scandals, exit polls showed, but Abe said he did not plan to resign. The Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan almost without interruption since 1955, was set to lose its majority in the upper house while the leading opposition party made huge gains, according to exit polls broadcast by Japanese television networks. Abe told reporters at his party's headquarters that he intends to stay on despite the disappointing results, and accepts responsibility for the defeat. "We tried our best and felt we made some progress, so the results are extremely disappointing ... I must push ahead with reforms and continue to fulfill my responsibilities as prime minister," he said. "The responsibility for this utter defeat rests with me." Read The Full Story U.S. House Members Say They Will Try To Block Sale Of U.S. Arms To Saudis 2007-07-29 02:27:52 The Bush administration's plan to sell $20 billion in advanced weaponry toSaudi Arabia and five other Persian Gulf  countries is running into congressional opposition and criticism from human rights and arms control groups. Members of Congress vowed Saturday to oppose any deal to Saudi Arabia on grounds that the kingdom has been unhelpful in Iraq and unreliable at fighting terrorism. King Abdullah has called the U.S. military presence in Iraq an "illegitimate occupation," and the Saudis have been either unable or unwilling to stop suicide bombers who have ended up in Iraq, congressional sources say. Human rights groups warned that new U.S. arms meant to contain Iran's rising influence could backfire, allowing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to rally greater support for his hard-line faction in the run-up to parliamentary elections next spring. Arms control groups said Bush's strategy would accelerate an already-dangerous trend that could increase tensions rather than generate a greater sense of security. Read The Full Story Former Rendition Victim Reveals MI5's Role In 'Torture Flight' Hell 2007-07-29 02:27:10 An Iraqi who was a key source of intelligence for MI5 has given the first ever full insider's account of being seized by the CIA and bundled on to an illegal "torture flight" under the program known as extraordinary rendition. In a remarkable interview for The Observer, British resident Bisher al-Rawi has told how he was betrayed by the security service despite having helped keep track of Abu Qatada, the Muslim cleric accused of being Osama bin Laden's "ambassador in Europe". He was abducted and stripped naked by U.S. agents, clad in nappies (diapers), a tracksuit and shackles, blindfolded and forced to wear ear mufflers, then strapped to a stretcher on board a plane bound for a CIA "black site" jail near Kabul in Afghanistan. He was taken on to the jail at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba before being released last March and returned to Britain after four years' detention without charge. "All the way through that flight I was on the verge of screaming," said al-Rawi. "At last we landed, I thought, thank God it's over. But it wasn't - it was just a refuelling stop in Cairo. There were hours still to go .. My back was so painful, the handcuffs were so tight. All the time they kept me on my back. Once, I managed to wriggle a tiny bit, just shifted my weight to one side. Then I felt someone hit my hand. Even this was forbidden." Read The Full Story Editorial: Mr. Gonzales' Never-Ending Story 2007-07-29 02:26:26 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Sunday, July 29, 2007. President Bush often insists he has to be the decider - ignoring Congress and the public when it comes to the tough matters on war, terrorism and torture, even deciding whether an ordinary man in Florida should be allowed to let his wife die with dignity. Apparently that burden does not apply to the functioning of one of the most vital government agencies, the Justice Department. Americans have been waiting months for Mr. Bush to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who long ago proved that he was incompetent and more recently has proved that he can’t tell the truth. Mr. Bush refused to fire him after it was clear Mr. Gonzales lied about his role in the political purge of nine federal prosecutors. And he is still refusing to do so - even after testimony by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller, that suggests that Mr. Gonzales either lied to Congress about Mr. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping operation or at the very least twisted the truth so badly that it amounts to the same thing. Mr. Gonzales has now told Congress twice that there was no dissent in the government about Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize the National Security Agency to spy on Americans’ international calls and e-mails without obtaining the legally required warrant. Mr. Mueller and James Comey, a former deputy attorney general, say that is not true. Not only was there disagreement, but they also say that they almost resigned over the dispute. Read The Full Story Taliban Spokesman: No More Talks On S. Korean Hostages 2007-07-29 02:25:27 Taliban rebels on Sunday ruled out more talks with the Afghan government over their remaining 22 South Korean hostages and pressed for the release of militant prisoners as the only way out of the crisis. An Afghan team that was supposed to have held more negotiations with the Taliban on Saturday could not reach the group because of security concerns in Ghazni province, said provincial sources. The team hoped to persuade the insurgents to free without condition the Christian volunteers they kidnapped from a bus 10 days ago in Ghazni, south of Kabul. A deputy interior minister on Saturday told Reuters that force might be used if talks fail. Read The Full Story New Space Probe To Measure Earth's Gravity With 'Unprecedented Accuracy' 2007-07-29 02:23:26 Scientists unveiled a new weapon in the battle against global warming last week: a 16ft torpedo-shaped probe that will swoop over the atmosphere to measure Earth's gravity with unprecedented accuracy. The Gravity and Ocean Circulation Explorer, or GOCE, has been dubbed the "Ferrari" of space probes because of its elegant design and will be launched early next year on a Russian SS-19 missile. Scientists say its data on Earth's gravitational field will be vital in understanding how ocean currents react to the heating of our planet over the next few decades. "Gravity is the force that drives the circulation of the oceans," said Dr. Mark Drinkwater, GOCE's project scientist. "Until we understand its exact role we cannot predict how the seas - and planet - will behave as the climate gets warmer. That is why GOCE is being launched." Read The Full Story Florida's Everglades Park Rangers Battle Invasion Of Giant Pythons 2007-07-29 02:22:55 The Everglades stretch for hundreds of swampy miles across south Florida, home to hordes of snakes, alligators and assorted creepy-crawlies. But now an invasion by deadly giant pythons is threatening the eco-system of the famous park. The pythons, thought to have been released into the wild by careless pet owners, are no ordinary snakes. They are Burmese pythons, native to South Asia, which can grow 6 meters (18 feet) long, weigh 100 kilograms (220 lbs.)  and live for 20 years or more. The pythons have established breeding pairs in the swamps and are racing to the top of the food chain, even ousting alligators that were the Everglades' top predator. Two years ago a photographer snapped a picture that appeared to show a python so big it had eaten an alligator whole. Read The Full Story	Gonzales' Disputed Honesty To Shield Bush Stretches Back A Decade 2007-07-30 01:00:53 When Alberto R. Gonzales was asked during his January 2005 confirmation hearing whether the Bush administration would ever allow wiretapping of U.S. citizens without warrants, he initially dismissed the query as a "hypothetical situation." When Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisconsin) pressed him further, Gonzales declared: "It is not the policy or the agenda of this president to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes." By then, however, the government had been conducting a secret wiretapping program for more than three years without court oversight, possibly in conflict with federal intelligence laws. Gonzales had personally defended the effort in fierce internal debates. Feingold later called his testimony that day "misleading and deeply troubling." Read The Full Story British National Health Service Doctors Challenge High-Priced Drugs 2007-07-30 01:00:05 British doctors are to rebel against high prices set by pharmaceutical companies for their products by giving patients a cheap but unlicensed drug that prevents blindness, the Guardian newspaper reports. Unable to afford to treat all those losing their sight with a licensed and extremely expensive drug, Lucentis, some primary care trusts are giving National Health Service (NHS) doctors the green light to use tiny shots of a similar drug, Avastin, which is marketed for bowel cancer, but costs a fraction of the price. Avastin is widely used for eye complaints in the United States. A call from the former health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, for Avastin's manufacturer to put the drug through trials for wet age-related macular degeneration went unheeded. Now the NHS is funding a groundbreaking trial which will compare Avastin directly with Lucentis. Both drugs are manufactured by Genentech. Read The Full Story Afghan Leaders: Free Female S. Korean Hostages 2007-07-30 00:59:30 Afghanistan's top political and religious leaders invoked Afghan and Islamic traditions of chivalry and hospitality Sunday in attempts to shame the Taliban into releasing 18 female South Korean captives. A purported Taliban spokesman shrugged off the demands and instead set a new deadline for the hostages' lives, saying the hardline militants could kill one or all of the 22 captives if the government didn't release 23 militant prisoners by 3:30 a.m. EDT Monday. Several other deadlines have passed without killings. Afghan officials, meanwhile, reported no progress in talks with tribal elders to secure hostages' freedom. In his first comments since 23 Koreans were abducted on July 19, Karzai criticized the Taliban's kidnapping of "foreign guests", especially women, as contrary to the tenets of Islam and national traditions. Read The Full Story Commentary: We Need A New Attentiveness To Nature To Understand Our Own Humanity 2007-07-30 00:58:32 Intellpuke: The following commentary is written by Madeleine Bunting and appears in the Guardian edition for Monday, July 30, 2007. Ms. Bunting is a Guardian columnist and associate editor. She writes on a wide range of subjects including politics, work, Islam, science and ethics, development, women’s issues and social change. She has written two books. Most recently, "Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture is Ruling Our Lives", an analysis of the British work culture, published by HarperCollins. Ms. Bunting's commentary follows: Here's a slim book to squeeze into that last corner of the holiday suitcase. It coins a new word for a new enthusiasm - corvophile - and it's guaranteed to ensure that you never look at a crow in quite the same way again. Published this week, Mark Cocker's "Crow Country" is the latest addition to a new genre of writing. It doesn't quite fit to call it "nature writing", because what makes these books so compelling - and important - is that they put center stage the interconnections between nature and human beings. So Cocker doesn't just write about crows - breeding, feeding habits, patterns of flight and roosting - but the impact of his fascination with these big, raucous birds on him, his family and, in turn, the impact of humans on crows. (They've cracked the art of opening bin liners on the M4 to rifle through leftovers). The point is that nature is no longer something to be studied from a position of scientific detachment, but an experience, a relationship in which human beings are as much part of nature as any so called wildlife. It was "Findings", a book by the Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie in 2004, that first brought my attention to this genre. In her essays on Scottish landscapes, she charts her observation of a peregrine nesting in the hills above her house between loading the washing machine and looking after her children. Since then I've devoured these books - for example, Richard Mabey's "Nature Cure" or Robert Macfarlane's "The Wild Places", published next month - which map a British landscape as rich and as full of wonder as anything we might find by catching a flight abroad, if we only are attentive enough to notice. That is one of Cocker's central points. A long-standing ornithologist, he challenges the bird twitchers' preoccupation with scarcity by writing a whole book about one of our most common birds - and least liked, because no one claims there is anything cute about a corvid. As he writes, "a really significant element in ascribing beauty to a thing lies not within itself but in the quality of our attention to it". Stop for a moment to examine closely a leaf or a blade of grass, and even these commonplace things become extraordinary. We share these islands with well over a million corvids and yet we have learned to ignore them, so Cocker's task is to try and get us to look again. After his description of the spectacle of 40,000 gathered at the rookery near his home in Norfolk, it will be hard to ever treat them with dismissive contempt again. Read The Full Story Australian Police Hit Back - Accuse Scotland Yard Of Sending Wrong Information On Bomb Plot Suspect 2007-07-30 00:57:51 Australian police Sunday said they held an innocent doctor as a suspect in the plot to bomb London and Glasgow because they were initially sent wrong information by Scotland Yard. Mohammed Haneef arrived home in Bangalore, India, Sunday to a hero's welcome from crowds waiting at the airport. He held a brief press conference outside his home, saying: "It's an emotional moment for me being with my family and home after a long wait of 27 days. I'm going through the trauma of being a victim. I was being victimized by the Australian authorities and the Australian federal police." He thanked his legal team and his supporters around the world. Read The Full Story European Group's Report Warns Of Lack Of 'Net Freedom 2007-07-29 13:50:20 Kazakhstan and Georgia are among countries imposing excessive restrictions on how people use the Internet, a new report says, warning that regulations are having a chilling effect on freedom of expression. “Governing the Internet,” issued Thursday by the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, called the online policing “a bitter reminder of the ease with which some regimes - democracies and dictatorships alike - seek to suppress speech that they disapprove of, dislike, or simply fear.” “Speaking out has never been easier than on the Web. Yet at the same time we are witnessing the spread of Internet censorship,” the report said. Miklos Haraszti, who heads the OSCE's media freedom office (http://www.osce.org/fom/), said about two dozen countries practice censorship, and others have adopted needlessly restrictive legislation and government policy. Read The Full Story Bush Appointee Blocked Surgeon General's Global Health Report 2007-07-29 02:27:28 A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials. The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate. A copy of the report was obtained by the Washington Post.  Three people directly involved in its preparation said its publication was blocked by William R. Steiger, a specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Since 2001, Steiger has run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  Richard H. Carmona, who commissioned the "Call to Action on Global Health" while serving as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, recently cited its suppression as an example of the Bush administration's frequent efforts during his tenure to give scientific documents a political twist. At a July 10 House committee hearing, Carmona did not cite Steiger by name or detail the report's contents and its implications for American public health. Read The Full Story Amputations Bring Health Care, Social Crisis To Iraq 2007-07-29 02:26:40 Iraq is facing a hidden healthcare and social crisis over the soaring number of amputations, largely of lower limbs, necessitated by the daily explosions and violence gripping the country. In the north of Iraq, the Red Crescent Society and the director general for health services in Mosul have told U.S.  forces, there is a requirement for up to 3,000 replacement limbs a year. If that estimate is applied across the country, it suggests an acute and looming long-term health challenge that has been largely ignored by the world. The revelation of the scale of limb loss suffered by Iraqi civilians is not entirely surprising, even though it has gone unreported. Levels of amputations performed by military surgeons on U.S. troops in Iraq are twice as high as those recorded in previous wars: the most recently available figures suggest 6 per cent of wounded U.S. troops require an amputation, compared with 3 per cent in other conflicts. The problem is the nature of the war itself, which has involved a very high incidence of blast injuries from car bombs and suicide bombers, as well as collateral injuries caused to civilians by blasts from U.S. airstrikes, numbers of which have increased fivefold since early 2006. Read The Full Story Data Mining Prompted Fight Over NSA Warrantless Suveillance Program 2007-07-29 02:25:49 A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency's secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program. It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate, but such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues. The N.S.A.’s data mining has previously been reported. But the disclosure that concerns about it figured in the March 2004 debate helps to clarify the clash this week between Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senators who accused him of misleading Congress and called for a perjury investigation. Read The Full Story Tillman Comrade Recalls Final Moments 2007-07-29 02:24:21 As bullets flew above their heads, the young soldier at Pat Tillman's side started praying. "I thought I was praying to myself, but I guess he heard me," Sgt. Bryan O'Neal recalled in an interview Saturday with the Associated Press. "He said something like, 'Hey, O'Neal, why are you praying? God can't help us now.'" Tillman's intent, O'Neal said, was to "more or less put my mind straight about what was going on at the moment." "He said, 'I've got an idea to help get us out of this,'" said O'Neal, who was an 18-year-old Army Ranger in Tillman's unit when the former NFL player was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in April 2004. O'Neal said Tillman, a corporal, threw a smoke grenade to identify themselves to fellow soldiers who were firing at them. Tillman was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!" again and again when he was killed, said O'Neal. Read The Full Story Germany And Israel United To Film Movie Based On Holocaust Novel 2007-07-29 02:23:13 German and Israeli filmmakers have come together to tackle the subject of the Holocaust for the first time in an ambitious screen adaptation of a bestselling novel. Their groundbreaking collaboration over the highly sensitive topic has attracted a star-studded cast in what has been described as a "tightrope walk" of a project. "Adam Resurrected", based on a darkly comic 1969 novel by popular Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk, tells the story of Adam Stein, a Jewish-German clown who is forced to entertain inmates in a Nazi concentration camp. His life is spared only because he plays his violin for the prisoners being sent to the gas chamber. Jeff Goldblum is to play the part of Adam, while Willem Dafoe will play the concentration camp commandant who forces him to act like a dog. Goldblum has described it as "the most difficult role I have ever had to play". Directed by Paul Schrader, who is best known for his screenplay for "Taxi Driver", and produced by the Israeli Ehud Bleiberg and the German Werner Wirsing, the harrowing film has been compared to Roberto Benigni's Oscar-winning Holocaust black comedy "Life is Beautiful". Read The Full Story
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