Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday September 17 2007 - (813)

Monday September 17 2007 edition
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Shootout Involving U.S. Security Contractors Kills 9 Iraqi Civilians 2007-09-16 22:57:46 Security contractors were guarding U.S. State Department convoy that was attacked in Baghdad. A U.S. State Department motorcade came under attack in Baghdad Sunday, prompting security contractors guarding the convoy to open fire in the streets. At least nine civilians were killed, according to Iraqi officials. The shootout occurred in the downtown neighborhood of Mansour at midday after an explosion detonated near the convoy, said police. In response, the security contractors "escalated the force to defend themselves," said a U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad. Iraqi officials alleged that the response by the security company, which was not named, involved excessive force and killed innocent civilians. The Iraqi government will investigate the incident and "probably will withdraw the authority for this security company in Baghdad," said Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman. "The security company contractors opened fire randomly on the civilians," he said. "We consider this act a crime." Read The Full Story Bush Settles On Retired Federal Judge Michael Mukasey For Attorney General 2007-09-16 22:57:02 President Bush has settled on retired federal judge Michael B. Mukasey to replace Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General, two sources familiar with the decision said Sunday. The appointment of Mukasey, 66, considered a law-and-order conservative and authority on national security issues, could come as early as Monday morning, said the sources. Former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson had been mentioned as a leading candidate for the job, but his chances may have been damaged after the Senate's top Democrat vowed last week to block his confirmation. Read The Full Story 'Belgium? Something That Does Not Exist.' Political Fault Lines Divide Nation 2007-09-16 22:56:11 Long-running crisis could lead nation to divide into Flanders and Wallonia. Willy the florist has had enough of his kingdom. He is an unwilling subject of an unloved country. A middle-class father of 12-year-old twins running a thriving flower business in this small Dutch-speaking town on the eastern fringe of Brussels, Willy is reduced to obscene gesturing by the very mention of his country. "Belgium?" he splutters. "That's something that doesn't exist. The national anthem? Nobody knows it. Nobody can sing it. The king? A parvenu. A dysfunctional family. We're not going to take it any more." Article continues Willy is Flemish and proud of it. His native language is Dutch but, like many Belgians, he also speaks French and English. When he goes into Brussels on business, he complains, they call him a racist if he speaks in his own tongue. Read The Full Story At Least 83 Killed As Jet Crashes In Thailand 2007-09-16 16:10:53 A low-fare airliner carrying many foreign tourists crashed in heavy rain and broke into pieces on Thailand’s resort island of Phuket on Sunday, killing at least 83 of the 130 passengers and crew on board. More bodies were expected to be retrieved from the smoldering wreckage of the plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82 that was Flight OG 269 of One-Two-GO, an airline based in Bangkok, officials said. The deputy governor of Phuket, Worapot Rattasima, said at a news conference that some of the survivors were from Britain, Iran and Israel. The exact cause of the crash remained unclear late Sunday, but witnesses said that the plane slid off the runway soon after touching down in heavy wind and rain. Read The Full Story Editorial: The Need For Regulation - For All The Nation's Imports 2007-09-16 16:10:11 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Sunday, September 16, 2007. To allay rising fears over imported products, the Bush administration has issued a “strategic framework” for improving import safety. The 22-page document contains some sensible ideas that could, if vigorously carried out, help provide better control over the flood of goods and foods that enter this country from abroad. Whether this is a genuine reform effort or mostly public relations will become clear in November when more detailed plans are released. The administration’s record provides grounds for skepticism. The new plan, the product of an interagency working group, leaves little doubt that reforms are needed in the current haphazard, underfinanced and understaffed system for protecting the public. Officials are powerless to order retailers to stop selling a product that has been recalled by its manufacturer. Incompatible information systems prevent government agencies from readily sharing information. The group’s most important proposal would shift the first line of defense from inspections at the border to broader surveillance along the supply chain: from the original grower or manufacturer to distributors abroad to American importers, manufacturers and retailers. Read The Full Story More Than 190 Arrested At Washington, D.C., Anti-War Protest 2007-09-16 02:11:05 Several thousand anti-war demonstrators marched through downtown Washington on Saturday, clashing with police at the foot of the Capitol steps where more than 190 protesters were arrested. The group marched from the White House to the Capitol to demand an end to the Iraq war. Their numbers stretched for blocks along Pennsylvania Avenue, and they held banners and signs and chanted, "What do we want? Troops out. When do we want it? Now." Army veteran Justin Cliburn, 25, of Lawton, Oklahoma, was among a contingent of Iraq veterans in attendance. "We're occupying a people who do not want us there," Cliburn said of Iraq. "We're here to show that it isn't just a bunch of old hippies from the 60s who are against this war." Counter-protesters lined the sidewalks behind metal barricades. There were some heated shouting matches between the two sides. Read The Full Story Britain's 'Housing Boom Over' As Bank Chaos Grows 2007-09-16 02:10:22 Economist wars of sharp downturn; Tory leaders criticizes prime minister over crisis. Britain's house price growth will be halved next year as the global financial crisis exacerbates the impact of rising mortgage rates, according to Nationwide, the U.K.'s biggest mortgage lender. After the dramatic bail-out of high street bank Northern Rock underlined the impact of the American "sub-prime"  mortgage crisis on Britain's financial sector, Fionnuala Earley, Nationwide's group economist, said she expected house price inflation to slow to around 3 per cent next year. Thousands of anxious customers queued outside Northern Rock branches for a second day Saturday, ignoring calls for calm from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, and the bank's management, and sparking fears of a full-blown "run" on the bank. Speaking to Britain's Channel 4 News Saturday night, Darling said he had been assured by the Financial Services Authority that Northern Rock was capable of meeting its financial obligations to its customers. Read The Full Story Torture Fate 'Awaits U.K. Deportees' 2007-09-16 02:09:14 Britain insists that is safe to send asylum seekers back to the Congo. Now, a repentant secret policeman has revealed the sickening brutality that awaits returning opponents of the Kinshasha regime. His stories are as shocking as they are horrific. A former senior member of the secret police in the Democratic Republic of Congo has revealed the inside story of the regime's brutal treatment of its political enemies. This is one of the few times that a perpetrator of the violence, rather than a victim of it, has spoken out. Jules Waka Ndumba decided to tell The Observer the truth about the killing, rape and torture ahead of a key legal challenge against the British government's policy of attempting to deport failed asylum seekers back to the Congo. Ndumba, 40, worked as part of the personal security corps for the former president Laurent Kabila and as a secret police chief. He said it was usual for trusted officials to have more than one "sensitive" job. Ndumba said he was involved in many acts of torture carried out at the notorious police headquarters, Kin Maziere, in the capital, Kinshasa. He said those most at risk of rapes, beatings and electrocutions at Kin Maziere are opponents of the government, both in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and abroad, and military deserters. Hundreds of people are tortured there every year, he said. Many of the inmates have been deported from the U.K., France and Germany. Read The Full Story Experts Eye China's Pig Disease 2007-09-16 02:07:46 Beijing says swine epidemic is under control, but scientists fear virus may lead to global crisis. At first, it was just some of the piglets. The mother gave birth to 13, all of them stillborn. Within a few weeks, however, she and other adult pigs in neighboring stalls became feverish and died. By the end of the summer, all but a handful of the village's 300 pigs had succumbed to the mysterious disease. "It was quick, very quick. Before we knew something was wrong, they were all dead," said Lo Jinyuan, a 55-year-old pig farmer in the village of Shandi. Moving rapidly from one farm to the next, the virus has been devastating pig communities throughout China for more than a year, wiping out entire herds, driving pork prices up nearly 87 percent in a year and helping push the country's inflation rate to its highest levels since 1996. The Chinese government has admitted that the swine deaths amount to an epidemic but contends that the situation is under control. Read The Full Story	Scientists: Global Warming Making Profound Changes In Animals' Habitats, Risking Extinctions 2007-09-16 22:57:22 What has gone missing here in Maryland's Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge is almost as spectacular as the 8,000 acres of swampy wilderness that remain. And that makes it Chesapeake Bay's best place to watch climate change in action. Visitors can see ospreys gliding overhead, egrets wading in the channels and Delmarva fox squirrels making their unhurried commutes between pine trees. Then the road turns a corner, and Blackwater's marsh yields to a vast expanse of open water. This is what's missing: There used to be thousands more acres of wetland here, providing crucial habitat for creatures including blue crabs and blue herons but, thanks in part to rising sea levels, it has drowned and become a large, salty lake. "If people want to see the effects" of Earth's increasing temperature, said refuge biologist Roger Stone, "it's happening here first." Not just here. Around the world, scientists have found that climate change is altering natural ecosystems, making profound changes in the ways that animals live, migrate, eat and grow. Some species have benefited from the shift. Others have been left disastrously out of sync with their food supply. Two are known to have simply disappeared. If warming continues as predicted, scientists say, 20 percent or more of the planet's plant and animal species could be at increased risk of extinction. As the shrinking habitat at Blackwater shows, the bad news isn't all in the out years: Some changes have already begun. "This is actually something we see from pole to pole, and from sea level to the highest mountains in the world," said Lara Hansen, chief climate change scientist at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF),  a private research and advocacy group. "It is not something we're going to see in the future. It's something we see right now." Read The Full Story Commentary: Apart From The Noose, This Is An Everyday Story Of Modern America 2007-09-16 22:56:38 Intellpuke: The following commentary is written by Gary Younge and appears in the Guardian edition for Monday, September 17, 2007. In his commentary, Mr. Younge writing from Jena, Louisiana, argues that racial tensions which flared in a small southern U.S. town laid bare the bias infecting the nation's justice system. His commentary follows: The four-hour drive from New Orleans to Jena takes you over long bridges, across still bayoux and deep into the remote backwoods of Louisiana. It's a journey that starts in the city that has become a byword for racial division and infrastructural neglect, following Hurricane Katrina. It then heads northeast through Opelousas where, as in so much of the south, people are literally segregated to death. There are two Catholic churches in the center of town - Holy Ghost, for African Americans, and St. Landry, for whites. In between is the cemetery where, by law and then by custom, blacks and whites have been buried according to their race - separate and finally equal, if only in the afterlife. And finally, it lands in the small town of Jena, surrounded by forests of pine where, it seems, even the flora can be racialized. It was here that Kenneth Purvis asked the headmaster at Jena high school if he could sit under the "white tree" - the tree in the school courtyard where the white children used to hang out during break. The principal said he could sit where he liked. Purvis took him at his word. The next day he went with his cousin Bryant and stood under the tree. The day after that white students hung three nooses there. If the symbolic threat of a schoolyard lynching makes this sound like a tale from a bygone era, then what happened next belongs very much to the present. It is a story of institutional indifference and judicial impunity that today condemns black American men: not to end their lives hanging from a tree, but to spend it rotting in jail. It illustrates to those who would like to draw a line under the civil rights era that they must first contend with its legacy before claiming to have conquered history. It serves as a salient example that legal barriers to integration may have been removed - itself no mean feat - but the ultimate goal of equality remains elusive. And it shows that just because you are allowed to do something - even something as basic as sitting under a tree - it doesn't mean that you are able to. Read The Full Story Alleged Killer Of Litvinenko To Run For Russia's Duma 2007-09-16 22:55:50 Far-right party practically guarantees Andrei Lugovoi a seat, as a Duma member the ex-spy would enjoy immunity. The former KGB spy accused of murdering the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko said Sunday he intends to embark on a new career as a politician and would run for election to the Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, in the country's December elections. Andrei Lugovoi said he would run as a candidate for the Kremlin-supporting ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic party. The party confirmed it had placed him second on its party list - a move that virtually guarantees him a seat as a  Duma member. As a member of Russia's Duma (lower house), Lugovoi would automatically enjoy immunity from prosecution. In reality this makes no difference since the Kremlin has categorically refused Britain's request to extradite Lugovoi to the U.K. Read The Full Story Gen. Gates Wants Bush To Veto Measure That Would Give Troops More Time Between Deployments 2007-09-16 16:10:29 U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday he would recommend a veto of a Senate proposal that would give troops more rest between deployments in Iraq, branding it a dangerous ''back door way'' to draw down forces. Democrats pledged to push ahead with the plan by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, and expressed confidence they could round up the votes to pass it, although perhaps not by the margin to override a veto. ''The operational tempo that our forces are under is excruciatingly difficult for our soldiers, Marines, all of our personnel and their families,'' said Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island. ''They deserve the same amount of time back home as they stay in the field.'' The comments represented the latest political clash over the future course of the war. Last week, President Bush announced plans for a limited draw down but indicated that combat forces would stay in Iraq well past 2008. Read The Full Story O.J. Simpson Arrested In Connection With Las Vegas Robbery 2007-09-16 16:09:36 O.J. Simpson, the former football star who was acquitted of murdering his wife, was arrested Sunday in connection with a reported armed robbery of some sports memorabilia in a Las Vegas hotel room on Thursday night, said the Las Vegas police. The precise charges against Simpson, 60, were not immediately clear, but another member of the group accused of storming the room at the Palace Station Hotel-Casino was charged with two counts of robbery with a deadly weapon, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit robbery and burglary with a deadly weapon, said Lt. Clint Nichols. The suspect has yet to be identified, and Lieutenant Nichols said others are being sought for questioning. Simpson has declared his innocence, insisting to the Associated Press that there were no guns involved in what he described as a self-organized “sting operation” aimed at retrieving some of his belongings. Read The Full Story Was Israeli Raid Into Syria A Dry Run For Attack On Iran? 2007-09-16 02:10:50 The head of Israel's air force, Major-General Eliezer Shkedi, was visiting a base in the coastal city of Herziliya last week. For the 50-year-old general, also the head of Israel's Iran Command, which would fight a war with Tehran if ordered, it was a morale-boosting affair, a meet-and-greet with pilots and navigators who had flown during last summer's month-long war against Lebanon. The journalists who had turned out in large numbers were there for another reason: to question Shkedi about a mysterious air raid that happened this month, codenamed "Orchard", carried out deep in Syrian territory by his pilots. Shkedi ignored all questions. It set a pattern for the days to follow as he and Israel's politicians and officials maintained a steely silence, even when the questions came from the visiting French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner. Those journalists who thought of reporting the story were discouraged by the threat of Israel's military censor. But the rumors were in circulation, not just in Israel but in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. In the days that followed, the sketchy details of the raid were accompanied by contradictory claims even as U.S. and British officials admitted knowledge of the raid. The New York Times described the target of the raid as a nuclear site being run in collaboration with North Korean technicians. Others reported that the jets had hit either a Hezbollah convoy, a missile facility or a terrorist camp. Amid the confusion there were troubling details that chimed uncomfortably with the known facts. Two detachable tanks from an Israeli fighter were found just over the Turkish border. According to Turkish military sources, they belonged to a Raam F15I - the newest generation of Israeli long-range bomber, which has a combat range of over 2,000 kilometers when equipped with the drop tanks. This would enable them to reach targets in Iran, leading to speculation that it was an "operation rehearsal" for a raid on Tehran's nuclear facilities. Read The Full Story Analysis: Prospects For Iraq War Accord Dim 2007-09-16 02:09:39 White House, Congress likely to stay deadlocked on Iraq, at least until Bush's term ends. When Army Gen. David H. Petraeus last week proposed withdrawing more than 20,000 U.S. troops from Iraq,  some congressional Democrats nodded their heads and saw it as a positive, if insufficient, step forward. Some wanted to take credit. After all, they reasoned, the drawdown, the benchmarks report, even Petraeus's Capitol Hill testimony came about only because of Democratic pressure. Within hours, that idea was shot down. When House Democratic leaders convened in the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (California) at 5:30 p.m. Monday, strategists concluded they were already getting credit for what was happening but that voters wanted much more. So Pelosi, according to aides at the meeting, insisted that Democrats coordinate their message and dictated what that message would be: The general's plan meant 10 more years of war, or even "endless war." Either way, what seems increasingly clear is that Washington will remain locked in an endless war over Iraq - at least until President Bush leaves office in 16 months. Following long-awaited congressional hearings, progress reports and presidential speeches, the prospect of a grand bipartisan resolution to the extended conflict in Iraq that some hoped September would bring appears more elusive than ever. Read The Full Story BAE Lands $80 Billion Saudi Plane Contract 2007-09-16 02:08:40 British aerospace giant BAE is part of a consortium that has clinched a £40 billion ($80 billion) contract to supply 72 Eurofighter Typhoons to Saudi Arabia in the world's biggest defense deal. The aircraft will replace the Tornados bought by the Saudis under the al-Yamamah oil-for-arms package agreed when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister in 1984. The Typhoon transaction will be worth £20 billion ($40 billion) to BAE over the next 20 years. Al-Yamamah was the target of a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation until the investigation was shut down after intervention by ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair last December. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the son of the Saudi defense minister, is said to have received payments from BAE as part of the Tornado contract, but the company and the Prince have denied that the payments were improper. One of the reasons cited for the abrupt closure of the Serious Fraud Office investigation was that it could jeopardize relations with the Saudi royal family and therefore the U.K.'s efforts to fight terrorism. BAE also claimed that it could threaten the Typhoon order, which has bolstered the company's share price. The company still faces an investigation from the U.S. Department of Justice, which in June announced a probe into whether the al-Yamamah deal broke anti-corruption laws. Read The Full Story French President Sarkozy Digs In As A Winter Of Strikes Looms 2007-09-16 02:07:21 The battle lines are being drawn, the tear gas and the placards stockpiled. France is preparing for a political war that is unlikely to be over by Christmas. Nicolas Sarkozy, the hyperactive new President, is taking on the self-proclaimed defenders of the rights of the French worker, the unions. Not any old unions either, but the railway workers, miners, fishermen, employees of the vast national electric company and many of the country's bureaucrats who, as they have proved on numerous occasions, are capable of paralyzing the country. This week Sarkozy is expected to announce that he will end the generous special retirement packages enjoyed or anticipated by the 1.6 million Frenchmen and women they represent and spark the first major clash of his presidency. "If the government has already made a decision and is going to try to impose it, then there will be a major conflict,"  said François Chereque, one railway union chief. A second, Bernard Thibault, promised "sport ... and not just on the rugby pitch". Read The Full Story
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