Free Internet Press Newsletter - Sunday September 2 2007 - (813)

Sunday September 2 2007 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
A Carbon Offset - Can You Buy A Greener Conscience? 2007-09-02 03:33:28 You can pay to erase your carbon footprint. It hasn't helped the Earth but you'll feel better. A budding industry sells "offsets" of carbon emissions, investing in environmental projects - but there are doubts about whether it works. The Oscar-winning film "An Inconvenient Truth" touted itself as the world's first carbon-neutral documentary. The producers said that every ounce of carbon emitted during production - from jet travel, electricity for filming and gasoline for cars and trucks - was counterbalanced by reducing emissions somewhere else in the world. It only made sense that a film about the perils of global warming wouldn't contribute to the problem. Co-producer Lesley Chilcott used an online calculator to estimate that shooting the film used 41.4 tons of carbon dioxide and paid a middleman, a company called Native Energy, $12 a ton, or $496.80, to broker a deal to cut greenhouse gases elsewhere. The film's distributors later made a similar payment to neutralize carbon dioxide from the marketing of the movie. It was a ridiculously good deal with one problem: So far, it has not led to any additional emissions reductions. Read The Full Story Commentary: The Great Iraq Swindle 2007-09-02 03:32:24 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Matt Taibbi and was posted on the Rolling Stone's web site  August 23, 2007. Mr. Taibbi uses some expletives (i.e. swear words, including the F-word) in his commentary and Free Internet Press has not edited them out. Mr. Taibbi's commentary follows: How Bush Allowed An Army Of For-Profit Contractors To Invade The U.S. Treasury. How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins - he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq. You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress - until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq. Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you've been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good - four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless careers. On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start living that private-sector good life. A few months later, in March 2004, your company magically wins a contract from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to design and build the Baghdad Police College, a facility that's supposed to house and train at least 4,000 police recruits. But two years and $72 million later, you deliver not a functioning police academy but one of the great engineering clusterfucks of all time, a practically useless pile of rubble so badly constructed that its walls and ceilings are literally caked in shit and piss, a result of subpar plumbing in the upper floors. Read The Full Story Bush, Congress Will Renew Battle Over Iraq 2007-09-02 03:30:51 The White House hopes Petraeus' report will change opinions, but many believe the war strategy must change. President Bush and the Democratic-led Congress are heading for another collision over the war in Iraq this month, framed by a flurry of conflicting assessments of military and political progress, and culminating in an impassioned debate over how soon U.S. forces should be withdrawn. Even before the debate has formally begun, officials on both sides are forecasting its likely course: The general who commands U.S. forces in Iraq will report that the current increase in troops has improved security, and will ask that it continue. Democrats will try again to impose a timetable for a withdrawal but acknowledge they don't have the votes in the Senate. Bush will continue to resist pressure for a major change in strategy but will weigh what aides call "adjustments". On one level, the battle may merely look like a rerun of the fiery but abortive one that Congress staged only two months ago, when Senate Democrats failed to pass measures that would have forced Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. Read The Full Story Felix Becomes Hurricane In Caribbean 2007-09-01 21:10:33 Hurricane Felix gathered strength Saturday and pounded Grenada with heavy rains and winds, snapping small boats loose from their moorings and toppling utility poles on its route toward the Caribbean island of Aruba. The storm was upgraded from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane Saturday evening, with sustained maximum winds near 75 mph. It was expected to strengthen even further as its outer bands started hitting the islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao late Saturday or early Sunday. Tropical Storm Henriette, meanwhile, was moving out to sea after dumping rain on Mexico's Pacific coastline. In Acapulco, the storm loosened a boulder that smashed into a home, killing three people. A teenager and her two brothers were also killed when a landslide slammed into their house in a poor neighborhood of the glitzy resort. Felix swept over Grenada on Saturday, knocking local radio and TV stations out of service and toppling utility lines. No injuries were immediately reported, but the storm ripped roofs off at least two homes and a popular concert venue was demolished. Orchards were left in ruin. Read The Full Story Scotland's Plan For Climate Change 2007-09-01 21:10:00 The Scottish Executive will launch an ambitious drive Monday to ensure that Scotland does its duty to combat climate change while at the same time preparing for the changes ahead. A website to help organizations think about the effects of Scotland's changing climate goes live with the aim of forcing businesses and members of the public to think about the future. While optimists claim that increased temperatures brought about by climate change will lead to a future Scotland basking in a Mediterranean lifestyle, the reality is that the hotter climate will also be less stable, possibly more stormy and certainly wetter. The new website from the Scottish Climate Change Impacts Partnership (SCCIP) will offer free access to the most reliable up-to-the-minute data on climate trends and their likely impact. Read The Full Story Bush Administration To Restrict Volunteers At Disaster Sites 2007-09-01 21:09:13 Retiree Gene O'Brien hurried to the World Trade Center site after Sept. 11, 2001, as a volunteer helping to shuttle supplies to police and fire workers. Some days, his only I.D. to get into the disaster site was a tattoo on his forearm. "A couple times I showed them my Marine tattoo, and they said go ahead," recalled O'Brien, adding that he and other volunteers also came up with their own makeshift identification cards. "We didn't forge anything; we just made them up with our own pictures, and at one point we copied a UPC code off a Pepsi can and they were as good as gold," said the Scarsdale resident. It might not be so easy the next time disaster strikes. Read The Full Story Immigrant Crackdown Halted 2007-09-01 14:23:12 Federal judge delays DHS plan to check Social Security numbers. A federal judge Friday barred the Bush administration from launching a crackdown Tuesday on U.S. employers who hire illegal immigrants while she considers a lawsuit by the AFL-CIO that charges that the plan will harm citizens and other legal workers. The ruling, issued by U.S. District Judge Maxine M. Chesney in San Francisco, California, prohibits the Department of Homeland Security from starting to mail notices to 140,000 employers about suspect Social Security numbers. The "no- match" letters warn of penalties employers face by having discrepancies in their paperwork. The order was a victory for the labor federation and the American Civilil Liberties Union (ACLU), which filed suit alleging that DHS is overstepping its authority to enforce immigration laws and is misusing a Social Security Administration database.They allege that the letters are an effort to pressure businesses to fire workers whose documents are flagged and could expose countless immigrant workers - including law-abiding citizens and legal residents - to job discrimination. Chesney granted the request for a temporary restraining order against the government, saying the court needs "breathing room" before issuing a decision on the DHS plan. She set a hearing for Oct. 1. Read The Full Story U.S. Sen. Craig Announces Resignation 2007-09-01 14:22:35 Embattled Idaho Republican to step down Sept. 30. U.S. Sen. Larry E. Craig, the Idaho Republican caught in a police crackdown on sexual solicitation in an airport men's room, announced his resignation from the Senate Saturday, succumbing to an erosion of support in his home state and from members of his own party. In a brief public statement in Boise, Idaho, Craig apologized to supporters, family members and Idaho residents "for what I have caused." He did not refer to any specific actions or admit wrongdoing. Standing with members of his family and top state GOP officials, Craig said that pursuing his "legal options" while continuing to serve in the Senate would be an unwanted distraction. Therefore, he said, he will resign "with sadness and deep regret" from the Senate effective Sept. 30. "I apologize to the people of our great state for being unable to serve out a term to which I have been elected," he said. "I hope you do not regret the confidence you have placed in me all these years." Read The Full Story U.S. Rep. Schakowsky: Bush's Iraq Plan Is Broken 2007-09-01 14:21:53 President Bush's strategy in Iraq isn't working, a Democratic congresswoman said Saturday as she repeated calls to start withdrawing U.S. troops. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois, who visited Iraq with a congressional delegation in August, delivered her party's weekly radio address. She said this year's buildup in U.S. troops "failed to achieve its main goal - reducing the violence so that progress could be made on key political benchmarks." Schakowsky said Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, told the delegation that the United States will be in Iraq for another nine or 10 years. "That was not the timetable I nor most Americans had in mind," said the congresswoman. Congress returns Tuesday from its August recess. Petraeus is to testify to Congress during the week of Sept. 10, and Bush is to deliver his own progress report by Sept. 15. Read The Full Story Former British Army Chief Attacks U.S. As 'Intellectually Bankrupt' Over Iraq 2007-09-01 02:15:51 The former head of the British Army has attacked U.S. postwar policy, calling it "intellectually bankrupt". General Sir Mike Jackson, who headed the army during the war in Iraq, described as "nonsensical" the claim by the former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that U.S. forces "don't do nation-building". He has also hit back at suggestions that British forces had failed in Basra. Rumsfeld was "one of the most responsible for the current situation in Iraq," Gen. Jackson says in his autobiography, "Soldier". He describes Washington's approach to fighting global terrorism as "inadequate" for relying on military power over diplomacy and nation-building. Read The Full Story Virginia Sen. John Warner Will 'Quietly Step Aside' 2007-09-01 02:15:06 John William Warner, who was best known for marrying actress Elizabeth Taylor when he entered the Senate 28 years ago but who grew into an elder statesman and Republican maverick highly regarded for his expertise in defense matters, announced his retirement Friday. Warner, 80, chose the north steps of the Rotunda at the University of Virginia, where he studied law a half-century ago, to reveal his widely anticipated decision not to seek a sixth term next year. "So I say that my work and service to Virginia as a senator ... will conclude upon the 6th of January, 2009, when I finish ... my career of .. 30 years in the United States Senate,"said Warner. The former Navy secretary and past chairman of the Armed Services Committee said he wrestled with the question, coming to closure only "in the last day or two." He postponed a decision, he said, until completing a trip to Iraq last week. Warner has been a leading GOP  critic of the Bush White House's war policy. The rigors of Senate service as he enters his 80s and the importance of letting the next generation of Senate leaders step up drove his choice, he said. "I'm going to quietly step aside," he said as his third wife, Jeanne, stood at his side. Read The Full Story We Will Lose Savings And Home, Says Injured British Soldier's Mother 2007-09-01 02:13:49 Parents make up shortfall for "insulting" compensation. Britain's Ministry of Defense will not raise payout for severely injured son. The mother of a British soldier who was severely injured while fighting in Afghanistan has said she will lose her life savings and will have to sell her home because of the "insulting" compensation offer made to her son by the Ministry of Defense (MoD). Lance Bombardier Ben Parkinson, 23, has been described as one of the most seriously wounded soldiers ever to survive. He lost both legs, suffered serious brain damage, fractured several vertebrae and sustained 34 further injuries when his vehicle struck a land mine in Helmand province last September. Despite the severity of his injuries, which have left him unable to speak and unlikely ever to walk, he was awarded £151,150 ($302,300) compensation, less than half the maximum available under the Armed Forces compensation scheme. Read The Full Story	Reaping Global Warming's Bitter Fruits 2007-09-02 03:32:55 In France and throughout the wine-producing world, climate change forces early harvests, threatens survival of centuries-old vineyards. On a cobweb-encrusted rafter above his giant steel grape pressers, Rene Mure is charting one of the world's most tangible barometers of global warming. The evidence, scrawled in black ink, is the first day of the annual grape harvest for the past three decades. In 1978, it was Oct. 16. In 1998, the date was Sept. 14. This year, harvesting started Aug. 24 - the earliest ever recorded, not only in Mure's vineyards, but also in the entire Alsace wine district of northeastern France. "I noticed the harvest was getting earlier before anybody had a name for it," said 59-year-old Mure, the 11th generation of his family to produce wine from the clay and limestone slopes of the Vosges Mountains near the German border. "When I was young, we were harvesting in October with snow on the mountaintops. Today we're harvesting in August." Throughout the wine-producing world, from France to South Africa to California, vintners are in the vanguard of confronting the impact of climate change. Rising temperatures are forcing unprecedented early harvests, changing the tastes of the best-known varieties of wine and threatening the survival of centuries-old wine-growing regions. Read The Full Story Iraq Far From Meeting U.S. Goals For Energy - $50 Billion Needed To Meet Demand 2007-09-02 03:31:43 Iraq's crucial oil and electricity sectors still need roughly $50 billion to meet demand, analysts and officials say, even after the United States has poured more than $6 billion into them over more than four years. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration has focused much of its $44.5 billion reconstruction plan on oil and electricity. Now, with the U.S.-led reconstruction phase nearing its close, Iraq will need to spend $27 billion more for its electrical system and $20 billion to $30 billion for oil infrastructure, according to estimates the Government Accountability Office collected from Iraqi and U.S. officials. Even with the funding, the GAO notes that it could take until 2015 for Iraq to produce 6 million barrels of oil a day and have enough electricity to meet demand. A commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers says it could have enough electricity sooner - 2010 to 2013. "The U.S. money was intended to get those industries started on recovery," said Stuart W. Bowen, Jr., the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, who is charged with finding waste, fraud and abuse in the multibillion-dollar effort. "We were working with a dilapidated, run-down system. It still has a long, long way to go." Read The Full Story 6.9 Earthquake Prompts Tsunami Warning In South Pacific 2007-09-02 03:29:28 A 6.9 magnitude earthquake centered about 22 miles (35 kilometers) undersea near the Santa Cruz Islands in the south Pacific erupted at 12:05 p.m. (3:05 a.m. GMT) Sunday, prompting a tsunami bulletin for the region, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The earthquake's center was locate about 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of Lata, Santa Cruz Islands, which are part of the Solomon Islands group,  275 miles (440 kilometers) east-southeast of Kira Kira, San Cristobal, Solomon Islands and 1,370 miles (2,200 kilometers) northeast of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, said the USGS. There was not immediate information about damage. Read The Full Story FBI Looks Overseas After Bomb Threats Phoned To U.S. Stores, Banks 2007-09-01 21:10:18 The FBI is looking overseas for suspects who have phoned bomb threats to more than 26 grocery stores, banks and discount stores in 17 states, including Virginia. The callers have threatened to set off a bomb unless store employees wire money to an account abroad. At a Dillons grocery store in Hutchinson, Kansas, the caller ordered customers and workers to take off their clothes and threatened to force them to cut off a manager's fingers. Store workers have been so frightened in at least five cases that they've wired thousands of dollars to the caller. Police in Newport, Rhode Island, said workers at a Wal-Mart wired $10,000 to the caller. Authorities in Buchanan, Michigan, said flustered workers at a Harding's Market sent $3,000 to an account in Paraguay, instead of Portugal  as the caller demanded. Read The Full Story British General Gets Backing Over Comment That U.S. Is 'Intellectually Bankrupt' On Iraq 2007-09-01 21:09:35 British Politicians and military figures have thrown their weight behind General Sir Mike Jackson after he launched a scathing attack on the U.S. for mishandling the aftermath of the Iraq war. Sir Mike, head of the army during the 2003 invasion, lambasted Washington's post-war policy as "intellectually bankrupt". In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, he also singled out ex-U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for criticism, describing his claim that U.S. forces "don't do nation-building" as "nonsensical". Sir Mike's autobiography brands the U.S.'s approach to fighting global terrorism as "inadequate" - insisting it relies too much on military power over diplomacy and nation-building. He lays the blame for the chaos engulfing Iraq firmly at the door of Rumsfeld, saying he was "one of the most responsible for the current situation". Read The Full Story Vital Lockerbie Evidence 'Was Tampered With' 2007-09-01 21:08:40 Fragments of timer that helped convict a Libyan ex-agent were "practically carbonized" before the trial, says bankrupt Swiss businessman. The key piece of material evidence used by prosecutors to implicate Libya in the Lockerbie, Scotland, bombing has emerged as a probable fake. Nearly two decades after Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Scotland on 21 December, 1988, allegations of international political intrigue and shoddy investigative work are being levelled at the British government, the FBI and the Scottish police as one of the crucial witnesses, Swiss engineer Ulrich Lumpert, has apparently confessed that he lied about the origins of a crucial "timer" - evidence that helped tie the man convicted of the bombing to the crime. The disaster killed 270 people when the London to New York Boeing 747 exploded in mid-air. Britain and the U.S.  blamed Libya, saying that its leader, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, wanted revenge for the U.S. bombing of Tripoli in 1986. At a trial in the Netherlands in 2001, former Libyan agent Abdulbaset al-Megrahi was jailed for life. He is currently serving his sentence in Greenock prison, but later this month the Scottish Court of Appeal is expected to hear Megrahi's case, after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ruled in June that there was enough evidence to suggest a miscarriage of justice. Lumpert's confession, which was given to police in his home city of Zurich, Switzerland, last week, will strengthen Megrahi's appeal. Read The Full Story Alaskan Economy Faces Fork In The River 2007-09-01 14:22:56 Side form over building one of the world's largest gold and copper mines at the risk of destroying its longtime fishing industry which feeds millions of people. Fly overhead in a bush plane - there are no roads between native villages - and marvel: Eight giant rivers braid across hundreds of miles of wetlands, carving cobalt ribbons through snow-coned mountains before emptying into Bristol Bay. For more than a century, the wealth of this southwest Alaska watershed has sprung from the astonishing volume of salmon nurtured by those wild rivers. Bank-to-bank, gill-to-gill, tens of millions of silver-hued fish thrash upstream to spawn each year, unrestrained by dams, untainted by pollution. It is the largest sockeye run in the world, accounting for more than a quarter of wild salmon harvested in the United States, feeding millions at a time when fisheries are dwindling across the globe. Read The Full Story Analysis: Republicans Face Dimming Prospects In 2008 2007-09-01 14:22:21 A Senate electoral playing field that was already wide open for 2008 has become considerably more perilous for Republicans with the retirement of Sen. John W. Warner (R-Virginia) and the resignation of Sen. Larry E. Craig  (R-Idaho). Republicans need a net gain of just one seat to take back control of the Senate, but they have 22 seats to defend, and campaign cash is conspicuously lacking. Warner's retirement raised to two the number of open Republican seats, and both of them - in Virginia and Colorado - are prime targets for Democrats. With former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey possibly waiting in the wings, Republicans are anxiously watching to see if Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Nebaska) will retire. And two more Republican seats open for reelection - in Wyoming and Idaho - would be occupied by unelected appointees, John Barrasso and Craig's replacement. "The state of the playing field looks very good, even in places where we didn't expect it to look good, even in deeply red states," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-New York), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "Things could change, but if you did a snapshot, we're going to have a good year." Read The Full Story Group Troubled By Rise In U.S. Government Secrecy 2007-09-01 02:16:11 Government secrecy by almost any measure is expanding and little is being done to stop it, according to a coalition of 67 organizations favoring greater openness. From classified information to the president's use of the state secrets privilege, the lack of disclosure should be a growing concern to the public and the Congress, said Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org, which compiled a report using mostly the government's own figures. "While some of the increased secrecy is attributable to a reaction to 9/11 and to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is also a significant expansion of the power of the executive at the expense of the public, the courts, and Congress," McDermott said Friday. "The executive branch seems to believe that something is kept under wraps solely on its say-so, whether it is legitimately so or not." White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the administration's goal is to effectively protect classified materials and to enforce laws and regulations related to the handling of sensitive information. Read The Full Story $1.6 Billion Hedge Fund Bail-Out Adds To London's Jitters Over Barclay's 2007-09-01 02:15:32 Barclays Capital, the financial group's investment banking arm, Friday bailed out a $1.6 billion (£800 million) hedge fund as the global credit squeeze and U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis claimed another victim. The news increased jitters about Barclays in the London, as it followed Thursday's revelation that it borrowed £1.6  billion ($3.2 billion) from the Bank of England after a breakdown in the electronic system that processes trades. Barclays, however, stressed it was not facing financial difficulties. It said its decision to borrow from the Bank of England - at a penalty rate of interest - was due to a technical hitch, and the bail-out of the Cairn Capital fund was unrelated. The London-based fund - Cairn High Grade Funding I - was structured by Barclays Capital and was one of a small but growing breed of hybrid investment funds called a SIV-Lite, designed to bring together elements of structured investment vehicles (SIV) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO). Only about half a dozen have been created and four of these have been structured by Barclays Capital. Read The Full Story Republican Officials Say Craig To Resign From Senate 2007-09-01 02:14:40 Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig will resign from the Senate amid a furor over his arrest and guilty plea in a police sex sting in an airport men's room, Republican officials said Friday. Craig will announce at a news conference in Boise Saturday morning that he will resign effective Sept. 30, GOP officials in Idaho and Washington told the Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity. Word of the resignation came four days after the disclosure that Craig had pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge arising out of his June 11 arrest during a lewd-conduct investigation at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The three-term Republican senator had maintained that he did nothing wrong except for making the guilty plea without consulting a lawyer. But he found almost no support among Republicans in his home state or Washington. Read The Full Story Military Briefs Bush On Soldiers' Welfare 2007-09-01 02:13:07 Effects of lengthy deployments discussed. President Bush went to the Pentagon Friday to hear firsthand the views of top military advisers concerned about the impact of extensive Iraq deployments on the overall health of the U.S. armed forces. Administration officials declined to offer details of Bush's private meeting with Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Bush did not appear publicly after the meeting but issued a written statement indicating that the discussions included plans to expand the size of the military and improve coordination between military and civilian officials in places such as Iraq. Bush once again urged lawmakers to withhold judgment on what to do in Iraq until after they hear from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, who are scheduled to testify before Congress on the progress of the U.S. strategy in Iraq. "It is my hope that we can put partisanship and politics behind us and commit to a common vision that will provide our troops what they need to succeed and secure our vital national interests in Iraq," said the president. Read The Full Story
Original materials on this site © Free Internet Press. Any mirrored or quoted materials © their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Original Free Internet Press materials may be copied and/or republished without modification, provided a link to http://FreeInternetPress.com is given in the story, or proper credit is given. Newsletter options may be changed in your preferences on http://freeinternetpress.com Please email editor@freeinternetpress.com there are any questions. XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication: http://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php