Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday October 18 2007 - (813)

Thursday October 18 2007 edition
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Senate, Bush Reach Consensus On Spying 2007-10-18 03:15:29 Legislation grants legal immunity to telecom companies that assisted in past eavesdropping while restoring court oversight of surveillance. Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration Wednesday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources. Disclosure of the deal followed a decision by House Democratic leaders to pull a competing version of the measure from the floor because they lacked the votes to prevail over Republican opponents and GOP parliamentary maneuvers. The collapse marked the first time since Democrats took control of the chamber that a major bill was withdrawn from consideration before a scheduled vote. It was a victory for President Bush, whose aides lobbied heavily against the Democrats' bill, and an embarrassment for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), who had pushed for the measure's passage. The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-West Virginia), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States. Read The Full Story Blackwater Likely To Be Out Of Iraq 2007-10-18 03:14:54 A State Department review of private security guards for diplomats in Iraq is unlikely to recommend firing Blackwater USA over the deaths of 17 Iraqis last month, but the company probably is on the way out of that job, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Blackwater's work escorting U.S. diplomats outside the protected Green Zone in Baghdad expires in May, said one official,  and other officials told the Associated Press they expect the North Carolina company will not continue to work for the embassy after that. It is likely that Blackwater does not compete to keep the job, said one official. Blackwater probably will not be fired outright or even "eased out", the official added, but there is a mutual feeling that the Sept. 16 shooting deaths mean the company cannot continue in its current role. State Department officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has not yet considered results of an internal review of Blackwater and the other two companies that protect diplomats in Iraq. Department officials said no decisions have been made and that Rice has the final say. Read The Full Story Commentary: Only Dogma And Corporate Capture (Privatization) Can Explain This 2007-10-18 03:13:31 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Seumas Milne and appears in the Guardian edition for Thursday, October 18, 2007. Mr. Milne writes that it beggars belief that U.S. health privateers straight out of Michael Moore's "Sicko" are being lined up to run core NHS (National Health Service) services. UnitedHealth is the largest healthcare corporation in the U.S., making billions of dollars a year out of cherry-picking patients and treatments, squeezing costs and restricting benefits to 70 million Americans forced to get by in the developed world's only fully privatized health system. Its chief executive, Bush donor William McGuire, paid $125 million in 2004, had to step down last year in a share-option scandal. Last month, UnitedHealth agreed with insurance regulators in 36 states to pay out $20 million in fines for failures in processing claims and responding to patient complaints. That follows a string of other fines over delayed payments, Medicare fraud and "cheating patients out of money" in New York State. Other major U.S. health corporations, such as Aetna and Humana, have also faced repeated fines for shortchanging doctors, using unlicensed agents, payment delays, failures to give information to claimants or fraud. In one case of a cancer patient who was refused payment for a failed experimental treatment its own doctors recommended, Aetna was ordered to hand over $120 million damages after it was found by a California jury to have committed "malice, oppression and fraud". All three companies figure prominently in Michael Moore's new film "Sicko", a compelling indictment of the U.S. health system - under which 18,000 Americans die a year because they are uninsured. Hardly the ideal players, you might think, to take a central role in the reform of Britain's National Health Service. Read The Full Story Pentagon To Alert 8 Guard Units For Duty 2007-10-18 03:12:30 The Pentagon is preparing to alert eight National Guard units that they should be ready to go to Iraq or Afghanistan beginning late next summer, the Associated Press learned Wednesday. The U.S. military is reaching out to more Guard units in an effort to maintain needed troop levels, ease some of the strain on the active duty Army and provide security for ports, convoys and other installations. According to defense officials, seven of the units would deploy to Iraq and one to Afghanistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the orders had not yet been signed and the announcement is not expected until the end of this week. Two of the units will be full combat brigades heading to Iraq - between next summer and into 2009, to serve as part of the rotation with active duty troops. There are currently 20 combat brigades in Iraq, but under plans mapped out by President Bush and his top commanders, that number will gradually drop to 15 next year, as the U.S. reduces its troop presence there. Read The Full Story Bush Ratchets Up Rhetoric, Says Iran Nuclear Project Risks War 2007-10-17 17:11:54 President Bush warned Wednesday that Iran would be raising the risk of a “World War III” if it came to possess nuclear weapons. The U.S. President said he believed that Russia still wanted to stop Iran from developing such weapons. Those comments, made during a far-ranging 45-minute news conference, came as reporters sought the president’s reaction to a warning on Tuesday by Russian President Vladimir V. Putin against any military strikes on Iran to halt the nuclear work that it has continued in defiance of much of the world. Iran contends that its nuclear program is purely peaceful. “If Iran had a nuclear weapon, it’d be a dangerous threat to world peace,” said Bush. “So I told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” Read The Full Story Bush, Congress Honor Dalai Lama 2007-10-17 17:11:33 President Bush, raising the ire of Beijing, on Wednesday called on Chinese leaders to welcome the Dalai Lama to the communist nation. The president called him a "universal symbol of peace and tolerance, a shepherd of the faithful and a keeper of the flame for his people." "He has won the respect and affection of the American people," Bush said at the U.S. Capitol where the spiritual head of Tibet's Buddhists received the prestigious Congressional Gold Medal. "America cannot look to the plight of the religiously oppressed and close their eyes or turn away," said Bush, who sat next to the Dalai Lama during the ceremony and personally handed the medal to him. "It is a great honor for me to receive the Congressional Gold Medal," said the Dalai Lama, who struggled to deliver remarks in English. "This recognition will bring tremendous joy and encouragement to the Tibetan people." Read The Full Story Social Security Payments To Increase 2.3 Percent 2007-10-17 17:11:06 Payments to Social Security retirement and disability recipients and millions of federal retirees will increase 2.3 percent in January, the lowest cost of living adjustment since 2003 as the pace of inflation eased. The adjustment will increase average monthly Social Security benefits by $24, to $1,079. The average monthly payment to disabled workers will increase by $23, to $1,004. The calculation of the annual COLA affects the finances of an estimated 50 million - including more than 31 million Social Security retirees and another 11 million people who receive some form of disability or other supplement income from the Social Security Administration. It is also a significant number for the Washington area: Of more than 4 million federal government and military retirees, about 500,000 live in the region. Read The Full Story Big Republican Donors Slow To Open Pockets 2007-10-17 03:03:16 More than a third of the top fundraisers who helped elect George W. Bush president remain on the sidelines in 2008, contributing to a gaping financial disparity between the GOPcandidates and their Democratic counterparts. Scores of Bush Pioneers and Rangers are not working for any Republican candidate, citing discontent with the war in Iraq, anger at the performance of Republicans in Congress and a general lack of enthusiasm. More than two dozen have actually made contributions to Democrats. Matt Fong, a former California state treasurer, 1998 U.S. Senate candidate and two-time Bush Pioneer, said that after months of disappointment in the Republican Party, he had hoped to be recharged by the new crop of presidential candidates. "I have yet to get interested in any of them," he said. "I'm just not happy with the direction of our party. I think we have a huge credibility problem, which I have not seen any of the candidates show the ability to rise above." Read The Full Story Leading Iraqi Official Urges Turkey To Use Caution On Kurds 2007-10-17 03:02:51 Iraqi Vice President Hashimi takes message to Turkey. Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, on an emergency visit here Tuesday, urged Turkish officials to resolve their problems with Kurdish separatists on Turkey's border through diplomacy rather than military action. "A political solution must be given priority to resolve this critical issue," Hashimi told reporters before meetings with Turkey's prime minister, president and foreign minister. "We can understand Turkey's anger, but what I'm aiming to achieve during my visit is a common understanding." Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told members of his ruling party Tuesday that he will demand that Iraq  take greater responsibility for curbing the activities of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known as the PKK, which has been operating freely in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.  "The central government in Iraq and the [Kurdish] regional government in northern Iraq must put a thick wall between themselves and the terrorist organization," said Erdogan. "Those who are unable to distance themselves from terrorism cannot avoid being adversely affected by the struggle against terrorism." Read The Full Story U.S. House Bill Seeks To Protect Reporters' Confidential Sources 2007-10-17 03:00:15 The House Tuesday overwhelmingly passed first-ever federal protections for journalists pressured to reveal confidential sources, as lawmakers from both parties backed legislation that advocates for the news media have sought for a generation. The bill, whose sponsors include conservative Republican Mike Pence (Indiana), House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Michigan) and Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Virginia),was the first reporter shield law to make it to a House vote in 30 years and more than 100 attempts. President Bush threatened to veto the bill, saying the protections it would afford "could severely frustrate - and in some cases completely eviscerate - the federal government's ability to investigate acts of terrorism and other threats to national security." Sponsors and supporters of the Free Flow of Information Act say it would provide important federal safeguards against a growing trend toward calling journalists into court in order to unmask confidential sources. The District and 49 states have versions of the protections, but there are none in federal law. The measure passed with a veto-proof vote of 398 to 21. The Senate version of the bill, introduced by Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) and Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania),was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee  on Oct. 4 but has not been scheduled for a vote in the full Senate. Read The Full Story	FCC Plan Would Relax Media-Ownership Rules 2007-10-18 03:15:15 The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has circulated an ambitious plan to relax the decades-old media ownership rules, including repealing a rule that forbids a company to own both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city. Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the commission, wants to repeal the rule in the next two months - a plan that, if successful, would be a big victory for some executives of media conglomerates. Among them are Samuel Zell, the Chicago investor who is seeking to complete a buyout of the Tribune Company, and Rupert Murdoch, who has lobbied against the rule for years so that he can continue controlling both the New York Post and a Fox television station in New York. The proposal appears to have the support of a majority of the five commission members, agency officials said, although it is not clear that Martin would proceed with a sweeping deregulatory approach on a vote of 3 to 2 - something his predecessor tried without success. In interviews on Wednesday, the agency’s two Democratic members raised questions about Martin’s approach. Read The Full Story Bush Claims He Remains Relevant 2007-10-18 03:13:59 President lashes out at lawmakers for stalling initiatives and judicial nominations. President Bush declared Wednesday that he remains "relevant" despite his political troubles, and he derided Democrats for running a do-nothing Congress that has failed to address critical domestic, economic and security issues in the nine months since they took control of Capitol Hill.  Trying to turn the tables on his adversaries, Bush lashed out at lawmakers for stalling housing and education initiatives, trade agreements, and judicial nominations, and for not having passed any of 12 annual spending bills more than two weeks into the new fiscal year. "Congress has little to show for all the time that has gone by," he said during a White House news conference. Bush's assault on Democratic leaders during the 47-minute session reflected a broader attempt by the White House to go on the offensive at a time when polls show that the public has soured on Congress just as it has on the president. Stuck with the lowest approval ratings of his presidency with just 15 months left in office, Bush presented himself as still in command of the Washington agenda and rejected the suggestion that he has grown "increasingly irrelevant," as a reporter put it in a question. Read The Full Story Green Groups Condemn U.K.'s Claim To Antarctica 2007-10-18 03:13:15 Plan to exploit regions seen as huge ecological risk; Britain's Foreign Office defends "safeguard of U.K. interests". Environmental groups Wednesday condemned British plans to claim sovereignty over a vast tract of the seabed off the coast of Antarctica, with Greenpeace and WWF expressing dismay that the Foreign Office was contemplating possible oil, gas and mineral exploration in the region. The Guardian Wednesday revealed that the Foreign Office was preparing to submit a rights claim to the United Nations commission on the limits of the continental shelf (CLCS) for 1 million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) of seabed off the coast of the British Antarctic Territory. Any claim, it is alleged, could threaten the stability of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which froze territorial disputes on the world's least explored continent. Drilling for oil or gas would disrupt the fragile marine ecology of the Southern Ocean, environmentalists warn. Read The Full Story Mukasey Pledges To Adhere To Law, Protect Civil Liberties Of Americans If Confirmed As Attorney General 2007-10-17 17:12:15 Intellpuke: There are two articles on Mr. Mukasey's confirmation here. The first is the Washington Post's write up of the hearings. That is followed by the New York Times' take on the same hearings. Here's the Post's article: U.S. attorney general nominee Michael B. Mukasey pledged Wednesday morning to adhere to the law and protect the civil liberties of Americans if he is confirmed as the head of the Justice Department, subtly signaling a fresh start after the tumultuous tenure of Alberto R. Gonzales. Mukasey, 66, a former federal judge from New York, said at the start of his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he would try to strike a balance between the need to forestall terrorist attacks and protect the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens. "Protecting civil liberties, and people's confidence that those liberties are protected, is part of protecting national security, just as is the gathering of intelligence to defend us from those who believe it is their duty to make war on us," Mukasey said in prepared remarks. "We have to succeed at both." Mukasey also sharply criticized a Justice Department legal opinion issued early in the Bush administration, and since rescinded, that narrowly defined the acts that constitute torture and laid the legal groundwork for the use of harsh interrogation techniques on U.S. detainees. Calling the memo "a mistake" and "unnecessary," Mukasey said that torture violates U.S. laws and pointed to the role of American troops in liberating Nazi concentration camps following World War II. "We didn't do that so we could then duplicate it ourselves," he said. Read The Full Story Turkey's Parliament OKs Military Raids Into Iraq 2007-10-17 17:11:43 Turkey's parliament Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a government request to launch cross-border raids into northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish separatists. Ignoring pleas from Washington, Baghdad and other foreign capitals to refrain from actions that could inflame the region, Turkish lawmakers granted the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan permission to send counter-terrorism troops into Iraq at any time during the next year. The vote was 507 in favor to 19 against, with most of those opposing votes coming from Kurdish members of parliament. Lawmakers broke into applause when the widely expected results were announced. Nevertheless, Erdogan and other senior officials indicated an invasion is not imminent. Read The Full Story Oral Roberts University President Asks For Leave Of Absence Amid Allegations 2007-10-17 17:11:22 Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts asked the school's board of regents for a leave of absence Wednesday amid accusations of lavish spending at donors' expense and illegal involvement in a political campaign. The 58-year-old son of the evangelist who founded the school said he would continue in his role as chairman and chief executive of Oral Roberts Ministries. "I don't know how long this leave of absence will last, but I fully trust the members of the Board of Regents," Roberts said in a statement released by the university. "I pray and believe that in God's timing, and when the Board feels that it is appropriate, I will be back at my post as president." An Oct. 2 lawsuit filed by three former ORU professors says they were wrongfully dismissed and accuses Roberts of misspending at donors' expense, including numerous home remodels and a senior trip to the Bahamas for one daughter on the ministry's dime. Read The Full Story Drug-Resistant Germ Is Spreading In U.S. 2007-10-17 03:03:28 Drug-resistant staph germ's toll is higher than thought. A dangerous germ that has been spreading around the country causes more life-threatening infections than public health authorities had thought and is killing more people in the United States each year than the AIDS virus, federal health officials reported Tuesday. The microbe, a strain of a once innocuous staph bacterium that has become invulnerable to first-line antibiotics, is responsible for more than 94,000 serious infections and nearly 19,000 deaths each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculated. Although mounting evidence shows that the infection is becoming more common, the estimate published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Associationis the first national assessment of the toll from the insidious pathogen, said officials. "This is a significant public health problem. We should be very worried," said Scott K. Fridkin, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC. Other researchers noted that the estimate includes only the most serious infections caused by the germ, known as methicillin-resistant S taphylococcus au reus (MRSA). Read The Full Story Genocide Resolution Losing Votes In U.S. House 2007-10-17 03:03:04 Worried about antagonizing Turkish leaders, House members from both parties have begun to withdraw their support from a resolution backed by the Democratic leadership that would condemn as genocide the mass killings of Armenians nearly a century ago. Almost a dozen lawmakers had shifted against the measure in a 24-hour period ending Tuesday night, accelerating a sudden exodus that has cast deep doubt over the measure’s prospects. Some made clear that they were heeding warnings from the White House, which has called the measure dangerously provocative, and from the Turkish government, which has said House passage would prompt Turkey to reconsider its ties to the United States, including logistical support for the Iraq war. Until Tuesday, the measure appeared on a path to House passage, with strong support from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It was approved last week by the House Foreign Affairs Committee but, by Tuesday evening, a group of senior House Democrats had made it known that they were planning to ask the leadership to drop plans for a vote on the measure. “Turkey obviously feels they are getting poked in the eye over something that happened a century ago and maybe this isn’t a good time to be doing that,” said Representative Allen Boyd, a Florida Democrat who dropped his sponsorship of the resolution on Monday night. Read The Full Story Neighboring Nations Join Call Against Attack On Iran 2007-10-17 03:01:59 Putin, at Tehran talks, cites Caspian solidarity. Visiting Iran on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated his opposition to any military attack on the country in response to its controversial nuclear program. No Caspian Sea country should let its territory be used by other countries "for aggressive or military operations against another Caspian state," said Putin, who is attending a meeting in Tehran of the leaders of the five countries that border the inland sea. The leaders jointly made a similar statement, signaling the opposition of Iran's neighbors to any military action by the United States or its allies. None of the adjacent countries had indicated willingness to support such a strike. But as tensions rise over Iran's uranium enrichment program, which Washington and some of its allies contend masks a weapons program, there has been speculation in the region that the United States might want to use bases in Azerbaijan to attack Iran. Read The Full Story Libya And Vietnam Elected To 2-Year Terms On U.N. Security Council 2007-10-17 02:59:35 Libya and Vietnam, countries once shunned by the West, were elected overwhelmingly on Tuesday to two-year terms on the Security Council starting Jan. 1. The 192 members of the General Assembly also selected Burkina Faso, Costa Rica and Croatia to the powerful panel through secret balloting. Burkina Faso, Libya and Vietnam ran unopposed to represent their regions and won on the first ballot. Other contenders for the Latin American and European seats - the Dominican Republic and the Czech Republic - withdrew their candidacies after earlier voting. The Dominican Republic and the Czech Republic withdrew after a second ballot gave Costa Rica 119 votes to 70 for the Dominican Republic and put Croatia ahead of the Czech Republic by 106 to 81. Their withdrawal was greeted by sustained applause in the General Assembly Hall, likely a sign of relief at the cooperative spirit of the outcome. Read The Full Story
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