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(what we're reading with our morning coffee) |
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| Is the United States planning to launch a missile strike on targets in Iran? News agencies are reporting that Washington is holding talks with allies, preparing them for such an eventuality in 2006. Der Spiegel via WatchingAmerica.com |
| Stem cells, singing mice, and landing on an alien world - the highlights
of an eventful year for scientists.
The Guardian |
| Anti-terror program authorized by Bush after 9/11 has expanded in size and ambition, despite a growing outcry over its clandestine tactics. Washington Post (reg/req) |
| ABC revamps its evening broadcast, citing the value of its West Coast viewers. Christian Science Monitor |
| STATS is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to improving public understanding of science and statistics. Each December STATS issues a list of scientific studies that were mishandled by the media during the preceding year. This year’s “Dubious Data Awards” detailing the worst examples of shoddy science reporting go to ... STATS at George Mason Univeristy |
| This year's round of buyouts and layoffs led to the loss of more than 2,000 newspaper jobs. Many who took buyouts were closer to age 50 than traditional retirement age. One observer warns: "What you've got is a gigantic negative-feedback circle here. You take resources out of the newsroom. As a result, quality goes down, and as a result, circulation goes down, and you leave an opportunity for competitors to come into the market." Editor & Publisher |
| Ike was president. Washington was desperate for Arab allies. Enter an Islamist ideologue with an invitation to the White House and a plan for global jihad. Mother Jones |
| WASHINGTON, DC—With 2005 drawing to a close, the White House held a special ceremony in the East Room Saturday to commemorate its fifth year without any sort of oral-genital contact within its historic confines. "This administration has upheld its promise to restore dignity to the White House," President Bush said. "I can assure that no one—including myself, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, 'Scooter' Libby, or Condi Rice—has been the recipient, or provider, of the kind of unnatural, depraved, and frankly gross sexual act that, not too long ago, disgraced this office in the eyes of the world." Bush was then joined on stage by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and Tom DeLay to cut a perfectly square, frostingless vanilla cake made especially for the occasion. The Onion |
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| Americans seem to be getting more miserable, University of Chicago
researchers have determined.
A survey found the percentage of people who have suffered at least one "negative life event" -- such as getting fired, divorced or hospitalized -- increased to 91.5 percent in 2004 from 89.1 percent in 1991. On average, people experienced 4.3 negative events in 2004, up from 3.8 in 1991. "We're somewhat more troubled," said study director Tom Smith of the university's National Opinion Research Center. Among other findings: *People with low incomes or little education tended to have more troubles. *Whites had fewer troubles than blacks or Hispanics. *Overall, widows and widowers had the fewest troubles, followed in order by people who were married, divorced, never married and currently separated. *Troubles declined with age, with retirees experiencing the fewest troubles.Chicago Sun-Times |
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| Based on online lookups, the #1 Word of the Year for 2005 was:
1. integrity
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| The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files
on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite
strict federal rules banning most of them.
These files, known as "cookies," disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week, and agency officials acknowledged Wednesday they had made a mistake. Nonetheless, the issue raises questions about privacy at a spy agency already on the defensive amid reports of a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States. "Considering the surveillance power the NSA has, cookies are not exactly a major concern," said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy advocacy group in Washington, D.C. "But it does show a general lack of understanding about privacy rules when they are not even following the government's very basic rules for Web privacy." The AP |
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| The quest for affordable housing and jobs is driving Americans from
expensive coastal states to more moderately priced parts of the country,
according to an analysis of Census population estimates out Thursday.
Halfway through the decade, people continue to leave states such as New York and California and spill into parts of the Southwest, Southeast and Rocky Mountains ... • New York lost people for the first time since 1980. "New York state's losses were masked in the boom of New York City and its suburbs in the '90s," says Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. "Once they slow down, even slightly, the decline Upstate becomes very apparent." • California was not the top gainer for the first time since 1995. Most of the state's net gain of 290,109 came from births. The data show that 239,417 more people left California for other parts of the USA than moved in. • Largely because of strong job growth, Virginia gained more people (86,133) than the nine Northeastern states combined (59,880). USA Today |
| Saddam Hussein insisted again Thursday that he had been beaten by his
American captors, denouncing Washington's denials as "lies" and mocking
President Bush's claim that Baghdad had chemical weapons.
The AP |
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| The series of speeches President Bush delivered during the past three weeks defending the invasion of Iraq failed to buy patience for the war or convince more Americans that the conflict is part of a broader campaign against terrorism, according to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken over the weekend. |
| Researchers have produced more evidence that dark chocolate may help
to reduce the risk of serious heart disease.
They found eating a few squares a day may stave off artery narrowing and hardening in smokers by countering the disruption caused by their habit. BBC |
| In its persistent attachment to the death penalty, the United States is an anomaly among modern democracies. Denied a reprieve by the state's movie-actor governor, the recent execution of Stanley 'Tookie' Williams in California once again drew global attention to what may see as a barbaric anachronism. France's Le Figaro newspaper asks the obvious question: 'Why?' via WatchingAmerica.com |
| A human rights group is alleging the United States operated a secret
prison near Afghanistan's capital as recently as last year. The group claims
that music by Eminem and Dr. Dre were used as instruments of torture.
New York-based Human Rights Watch has issued a report saying the United States operated a secret prison in Afghanistan and tortured detainees. The report quoted an Ethiopian-born detainee as saying he was kept in a pitch-black prison and forced to listen to Eminem and Dr. Dre’s rap music for 20 days before the music was replaced by "horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds." The report said detainees at the facility -- known as "Dark Prison" -- were deprived of sleep, chained to walls and forced to listen to loud music in total darkness for days. The AP |
| When Google introduced Google Earth, free software that marries satellite
and aerial images with mapping capabilities, the company emphasized its
usefulness as a teaching and navigation tool, while advertising the pure
entertainment value of high-resolution flyover images of the Eiffel Tower,
Big Ben and the pyramids.
But since its debut last summer, Google Earth has received attention of an unexpected sort. Officials of several nations have expressed alarm over its detailed display of government buildings, military installations and other important sites within their borders. India, whose laws sharply restrict satellite and aerial photography, has been particularly outspoken. "It could severely compromise a country's security," V. S. Ramamurthy, secretary in India's federal Department of Science and Technology, said of Google Earth. And India's surveyor general, Maj. Gen. M. Gopal Rao, said, "They ought to have asked us." Similar sentiments have surfaced in news reports from other countries. South Korean officials have said they fear that Google Earth lays bare details of military installations. Thai security officials said they intended to ask Google to block images of vulnerable government buildings. And Lt. Gen. Leonid Sazhin, an analyst for the Federal Security Service, the Russian security agency that succeeded the K.G.B., was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying: "Terrorists don't need to reconnoiter their target. Now an American company is working for them." But there is little they can do, it seems, but protest. NYT (reg/req) |
| Murder increased by 2.1% across the USA during the first six months
of 2005 and was on track to nearly reverse a 2.4% decline recorded last
year, according to preliminary FBI figures released Monday.
The largest spikes over the same period in 2004 occurred in some of the nation's smallest cities — population 10,000 or less — where homicides were up 13%, the report found. Murder and robbery were the only major crimes to increase in the preliminary review of 10,374 agencies. The review showed overall decreases in violent and property crimes, continuing a decade-long decline. Crime analysts on Monday were struggling to explain the sudden spike in small-town homicide. USA Today |
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| Coast Guard data show that 2,683 Cubans have been intercepted at sea this year, nearly double the amount for all of 2004. NYT (reg/req) |
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| Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials. NYT (reg/req) |
| HERE'S WHAT THEY SAID -- NOW HERE'S WHAT'S TRUE: Kevin Drum points
out that of the major news outlets covering George Bush’s speech yesterday
-- in which he “acknowledged” that “much of the intelligence turned out
to be wrong" -- only Knight Ridder bothered to note that he and top aides
also ignored intelligence that undercut the case for war. Here’s another
way to put this: Of the major news outlets covering the speech, only Knight
Ridder bothered to tell its readers the full truth.
One of the more irksome conventions of daily journalism is the constant use of the words “acknowledge” and “concede.” Reporters write these words into their copy reflexively, presumably because it creates the impression that they’re being tough on their subjects. In some cases, though -- such as yesterday’s speech -- these words actually help the subject. Bush claimed to be “acknowledging” that he was responsible for the decision to invade and that prewar intel was faulty. But even though he said he was acknowledging responsibility, he was actually evading it by continuing to push the lie that faulty intel was the primary reason he made the decision. As has been documented endlessly by now, Bush and his aides decided to invade in spite of good intelligence that weakened the case for war. So Bush wasn’t taking responsibility for the decision in any real sense at all. And “acknowledging” faulty intel is also a ruse, because all this "concession" really does is transfer responsibility to the intel services. The speech was, in fact, an evasion masquerading as an acknowledgment. The American Prospect |
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| A few hours north of Bolivia's capital of La Paz, a nearly impassable
dirt road runs along the edge of cliffs covered in a thick jungle canopy.
It is difficult to imagine that this little-known Yungas region has become
South America's latest drugs battlefront, bringing the United States and
Bolivia on to a collision course.
Bolivian coca cultivation is still associated with the southern Bolivian Chapare region, which provided the basic ingredient for almost half the world's cocaine during the 1980s and 1990s. After decades of looking the other way, the Bolivian government, with the help of millions of dollars of US military aid, launched the Dignity Plan in 1998, almost eliminating Chapare's coca production by 2001. Since then Yungas, an almost inaccessible area, has become the country's main coca-growing area. The government allows 12,000 hectares of legal coca cultivation in Yungas, but real production is nearly double that and growing - explaining the 35 per cent increase in cocaine production last year from 2003, according to the latest UN World Drug Report, and consolidating Bolivia as the world's third-largest cocaine producer. The US now seems determined to put an end to this situation, despite stern opposition from Evo Morales - a leader of the Chapare coca growers and favourite to win next Sunday's presidential elections - who defends the legalisation of coca for traditional uses such as medicinal tea. The Scotsman |
| The thinking that motivated the United States throughout its history is alive and well today, which is why, according to this op-ed article from Bolivia's Bol Press, political candidates that align themselves with the United States are suspect, and those that favor the policies of Hugo Chavez can reap electoral rewards. via WatchingAmerica.com |
| Iraqi police captured and mistakenly released militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last year, the Iraqi deputy interior minister says. Hussein Kamal told reporters that Zarqawi was arrested in the central Iraqi town of Falluja, but was released when nobody recognised him. BBC |
| A lesbian couple who entered into the nation's first same-sex civil union are splitting up amid allegations of violent behavior. Carolyn Conrad, 35, asked a court in October to end her relationship with Kathleen Peterson, 46 ... Bari Shamas, a member of the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force, said gay relationships are prone to the same difficulties as heterosexual marriages. "There's no proof that our relationships are any better than heterosexual relationships," Shamas said. The AP |
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Official Says 12 Prisoners Subjected to 'Severe Torture' |
| An Iraqi government search of a detention center in Baghdad operated by Interior Ministry special commandos found 13 prisoners who had suffered abuse serious enough to require medical treatment, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Sunday night. Washington Post (reg/req) |
| One might struggle to see the ethical side of bodysnatching, that grisly activity epitomised by Burke and Hare. But, according to a senior curator at the Royal College of Surgeons, some of the greatest discoveries in medical history might not have been possible without it. BBC |
| Since Sept. 11, the CIA has played a vital role in the war on terror. But what role is it? Operating in the shadows, American secret services have been given wide-ranging powers by the Bush Administration. And they include murder, abduction and torture. Der Spiegel |
| A pact of honor, calling, among other things, for the withdrawal of
U.S. troops, has been signed in Baghdad.
The signatories include “more than 57 political parties and influential tribes in the country,” said Bahaa al-Araji of the Sadr movement which helped drafting the pact. “The groups agreeing to our pact of honor represent all hues of the Iraqi society,” Araji said. He said any government assuming power after the December 15 elections will have to taken the signatories’ demands into account. The Sadr movement, led by the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, wields tremendous power among impoverished Shiite across the country. Among the signatories were Ahmad Jalabi, current deputy prime minister and representatives from influential Shiite and Sunni factions. The pact explicitly calls on the new government to make a clear distinction between “resistance” of foreign troops and “terror.” Araji said the pact “considers resistance a legitimate right but condemns terror, violence, the killing of civilians and kidnapping.” Azzaman (Iraq) |
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| The Bush administration's costly propaganda campaign aims to counter anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world. NYT (reg/req) |
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| A U.S. investigation into allegations that the American military is
buying positive coverage in the Iraqi media has expanded to examine a press
club founded and financed by the U.S. Army.
The Baghdad Press Club was created last year by the U.S. military as a way to promote progress amid the violence and chaos of Iraq, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman. USA Today |
| Talks neared an end today with the U.S. and China refusing to take any mandatory steps to avoid dangerous climate change. NYT (reg/req) |
| Fake news comes in several different varieties: There’s the funny kind,
as practiced by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert; the less funny kind done
by Saturday Night Live; and the potentially illegal variety made by the
Pentagon.
Last week’s revelation in The Los Angeles Times that the U.S. military has been “secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq” received front page treatment from both the Times and The New York Times, and has lit up the blogosphere. The propaganda, written by "information operations" troops and placed in Iraqi news outlets by a PR firm – the Lincoln Group – contracted by the military “present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said,” according to the LA Times. This isn't the first time we've heard about the military trying to plant stories in foreign media outlets. Three years ago, the Pentagon shuttered its Office of Strategic Influence after it was discovered that it was seeking to plant false news stories in the international press. While many were rightfully outraged, including (officially) the White House (don’t hold your breath for a full investigation, as Scott McClellan promised), other right-wingers applauded the move. Just a few days after the LA Times broke the story, Walter Jajko, a professor of defense studies at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C, wrote in the same paper that "it's about time" the American military sold fake news to the Iraqi press. Jajko hearkened back to a time when the American government regularly planted stories in the international press, noting that at one time "the CIA owned or subsidized, at various times, more than 50 newspapers, news services, radio stations, periodicals and other communications facilities, most of them overseas.” Center for American Progress |
| Al Thagher’s Class of 1976 had a recent reunion at a Red Sea resort. About 50 alumni turned up. No word from class member Osama bin Laden. The New Yorker |
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| Iraq has proven to be a particularly hazardous posting for journalists. More media workers have been killed there than during the two-decades-long war in Vietnam. And 15 have died at the hands of American forces. American Journalism Review |
| It was called the "water cure." But it was dosed out liberally to those who weren't sick. Unfortunate recipients were held by the neck beneath a water tank. The tap was turned on, and they were forced to swallow the gushing stream--or to choke within an inch of death while trying. Another variation used tubing to siphon water from a kerosene can into a detainee's nostril. Sworn testimony records the use of this tactic in the presence of a doctor. It was, after all, a "cure." When the detainee still refused to talk, the doctor would ratchet up the treatment, ordering a second tube to be placed in the detainee's other nostril and a handful of salt to be thrown into the water. Anyone who's ever had sea water up his or her nose will know just how pleasant that would have been. The Nation |
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| The playwright Harold Pinter turned his Nobel Prize acceptance speech on Wednesday into a furious howl of outrage against American foreign policy, saying that the United States had not only lied to justify waging war against Iraq but had also "supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship" in the last 50 years. NYT (reg/req) |
| * Maya Evans, 25, convicted for reading out names of 97 British soldiers
killed in Iraq at unauthorised protest
* Douglas Barker, 72, threatened with jail for withholding part of his tax payment in protest at the Iraq conflict * Malcolm Kendall-Smith, a 37-year-old RAF medical officer, facing court-martial for refusing to serve in Iraq The Independent |
| Coinless slot machines — popular in stateside gambling meccas such as Atlantic City, N.J., and Las Vegas — are now coming to overseas U.S. Navy bases, say Morale, Welfare and Recreation officials, in hopes of fattening MWR budgets. Stars and Stripes |
| Condoleezza Rice's contradictory, misleading and outright false statements about the U.S. and torture have taken America's moral standing -- and her own -- to new depths. Der Spiegel |
| The current U.S. administration is unwilling to learn from the series
of its ill-fated campaigns in Iraq.
It has been moving from one blunder to another, undercutting its credibility in the eyes of the Iraqis and eroding any remaining confidence in its efforts in the country. To salvage U.S. image, the Pentagon thought it could buy Iraqi trust by implanting ‘positive’ stories in local media. Azzaman (Iraq) |
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| Most of the estimated 6.3 million Mexicans who are in the USA illegally came because of family connections and better job opportunities here, not because they were unemployed or destitute in their homeland, according to a survey released Tuesday. USA Today |
| A former Australian terror suspect says he was caught up in the controversial
US policy of transferring detainees to foreign countries for interrogation.
Mamdouh Habib claims he was tortured while held for a period in his native Egypt during his four years in custody. He told the BBC he was brain-washed, beaten and given electric shocks. The US State Department has not commented on his specific allegations, but says it does not transfer prisoners for the purposes of torture. Mr Habib told the BBC's World Service that, after his "kidnap" in Pakistan in 2001, he was moved between Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay until his release at the beginning of 2005. BBC |
| After a US raid on a secret Iraqi government jail last month revealed
some detainees were tortured and abused there, Interior Minister Bayan
Jabr insisted abuse claims were exaggerated and that torture will not be
tolerated in the new Iraq.
US soldiers and some Iraqi officials disagree. They say not only is prisoner abuse widespread, but that much of it is carried out by Mr. Jabr's subordinates. Efforts to bring the problem under control during the past year have largely been frustrated by indifference from senior Iraqi officials, they say. Privately, half a dozen US officers have acknowledged to the Monitor that prisoner abuse by Iraqi police is common. Christian Science Monitor |
| It could take far longer than expected for the ozone "hole" over Antarctica
to repair itself, scientists have said. New research from the US and Canada
indicates ozone-eating chemicals are still being released into the atmosphere
in large quantities.
The latest modelling predicts the protective gas layer found in the stratosphere will not now recover its health until about the year 2065. This is a more than a decade later than previous forecasts. BBC |
| In Egyptian myth, Apophis was the ancient spirit of evil and destruction,
a demon that was determined to plunge the world into eternal darkness.
A fitting name, astronomers reasoned, for a menace now hurtling towards Earth from outerspace. Scientists are monitoring the progress of a 390-metre wide asteroid discovered last year that is potentially on a collision course with the planet, and are imploring governments to decide on a strategy for dealing with it. The Guardian |
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| Has September 11 fatigue set in? A high-level report declares that the U.S., while fighting terrorists abroad, has not done nearly enough to keep us safe here at home. Surely it has dominated front pages all week? Not exactly. Editor & Publisher |
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| Money-laundering charges dash congressman's hopes of reclaiming his House majority leader post. Washington Post (reg/req) |
| Every time I try to wrap my mind around President Bush's Iraq war and his associated war against the press, I come back to the lies the president and his courtiers have endlessly told. And to how they conned and cowed much of the press into being their early accomplices. The Village Voice |
| WWF (World Wildlife Fund) researchers have discovered a mysterious new creature in the dense central forests of Borneo. The animal, a mammal slightly larger than a domestic cat with dark red fur and a long, bushy tail, was photographed twice by a camera trap at night. There are still a number of stages to go through before the animal can be officially classed as new to science, but at this stage it is believed to be a completely new species of carnivore. WWF |
| Two CIA secret prisons were operating in Eastern Europe until last
month when they were shut down following Human Rights Watch reports of
their existence in Poland and Romania.
Current and former CIA officers speaking to ABC News on the condition of confidentiality say the United States scrambled to get all the suspects off European soil before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived there today. The officers say 11 top al Qaeda suspects have now been moved to a new CIA facility in the North African desert. ABC News |
| As European governments investigate reports about apparent CIA "black sites" maintained by the United States to hold suspected terrorists, Camp Bondsteel has come under great scrutiny. Prisoners were locked up for months in the Kosovo military camp without trial in conditions similar to those at Guantanamo. Alvaro Gil Robles, Human Rights Commissioner for the Council of Europe, tells SPIEGEL Online what he saw at the camp in 2002 and reveals that Germany knew all about it. |
| A German man filed a lawsuit Tuesday claiming he was held captive and
tortured by U.S. government agents after being mistakenly identified as
an associate of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Khaled El-Masri, who is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, said he was arrested while attempting to enter Macedonia for a holiday trip and flown to Afghanistan. During five months in captivity he was subjected to "torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," says a lawsuit he filed in U.S. District Court in suburban Alexandria, Va. The AP |
| Saying the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea
which is just plain wrong," Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean predicted
today that the Democratic Party will come together on a proposal to withdraw
National Guard and Reserve troops immediately, and all US forces within
two years.
Dean made his comments in an interview on WOAI Radio in San Antonio. |
| After a nearly four-years wait, French International News Channel (CFII) was officially launched last week. According to this article from France's Le Figaro newspaper, 'On Everyone's Mind' was the American coverage of rioting in the Paris suburbs. via WatchingAmerica.com |
| The members of the Sept. 11 commission gave dismal grades to the Bush
administration and Congress on Monday in measuring the government's recent
efforts to prevent terrorist attacks on American soil, concluding that
the government deserved many more F's and D's than A's.
The commissioners awarded the grades in a privately financed "report card" that found that four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the nation remained alarmingly vulnerable to terrorist strikes, including attacks with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. "While the terrorists are learning and adopting, our government is still moving at a crawl," said Thomas H. Kean, the commission's chairman and a former Republican governor of New Jersey. "Many obvious steps that the American people assume have been completed have not been. Our leadership is distracted." NYT (reg/req) |
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| Officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation mishandled a Florida
terror investigation, falsified documents in the case in an effort to cover
repeated missteps and retaliated against an agent who first complained
about the problems, Justice Department investigators have concluded.
In one instance, someone altered dates on three F.B.I. forms using correction fluid to conceal an apparent violation of federal wiretap law, according to a draft report of an investigation by the Justice Department inspector general's office obtained by The New York Times. But investigators were unable to determine who altered the documents. The agent who first alerted the F.B.I. to problems in the case, a veteran undercover operative named Mike German, was "retaliated against" by his boss, who was angered by the agent's complaints and stopped using him for prestigious assignments in training new undercover agents, the draft report concluded. Mr. German's case first became public last year, as he emerged as the latest in a string of whistle-blowers at the bureau who said they had been punished and effectively silenced for voicing concerns about the handling of terror investigations and other matters since Sept. 11, 2001. NYT (reg/req) |
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| French airports, too, have received "Guantanamo Express" flights. The first identified flight dates back to 31 March 2002. The flight plan shows that Learjet N221SG took off at 1336 hours from Keflavik, Iceland, bound for Brest-Guipavas, from where it apparently set off again for Turkey. Its point of departure was St John's, Newfoundland. Le Figaro |
| A potentially explosive report in Germany's Der Spiegel magazine disclosed yesterday that German air traffic controllers had handed Chancellor Angela Merkel's government a list of 437 flights suspected of being operated by the CIA in German air space. The Independent |
| If you have written a book suggesting that San Francisco could soon be levelled by a massive earthquake, you may find Californians a little reluctant to accept your message. Author Simon Winchester's idea that the US of the future could contain a number of ruined and abandoned cities has met a frosty reception. BBC |
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| Federal and state environmental agencies are downplaying long-term
health dangers posed by chemicals in sediment that covers much of the New
Orleans area, several environmental groups charged Thursday.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one of the nation's largest environmental groups, and several local Louisiana environmental groups said that heavy metals, petroleum components and pesticides in the dusty residue left behind by Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters pose such a risk that families with children shouldn't return until it is cleaned up. "The cancer risk and the risk of other long-term health effects is quite significant according to (federal) standards," said Gina Solomon, a physician with the Natural Resources Defense Council. The groups, including the non-profit Advocates for Environmental Human Rights law firm in Louisiana, based their assessment on tests they conducted in September and October. The tests found: • Average levels of arsenic that are 31 times higher than the level at which federal Environmental Protection Agency guidelines require that soil in residential areas be cleaned up. Exposure to arsenic can cause a variety of cancers. • The presence of banned pesticides in soil samples taken near an abandoned industrial facility in New Orleans' Gert Town neighborhood west of the French Quarter. Levels of pesticides such as DDT and dieldrin exceeded EPA cleanup standards. • High levels of cancer-causing hydrocarbons from petroleum products near a federal toxic waste site in New Orleans' Bywater neighborhood northeast of the French Quarter. Tests found levels as much as 20 times higher than EPA cleanup standards. USA Today |
| Murielle Degauque was, by all accounts, a normal child. A typical girl next door, you might say. True, as a teenager growing up in southern Belgium, she dabbled in drugs and preferred boys to books. But there was nothing to indicate that she would become the first Western woman to launch a suicide bomb attack in the name of jihad when she blew herself up in Iraq last month. The Independent |
| Archeological findings prompt new thinking about when city rose to prominence and whether the Bible can be used as a reliable historical reference. Washington Post |
| Besieged by reports of a secret news campaign in which the US military has been paying Iraqi newspapers and journalists to plant favorable stories about the war and the reconstruction effort in Iraq, the White House said yesterday it was “very concerned.” ... Two other federal agencies were investigated this past year for similar activities, leading Congress’ Government Accountability Office to condemn one, the Education Department, for engaging in illegal covert propaganda. Arab News |
| Not since Abu Ghraib has anything shocked the American media into such wide-eyed wonderment over the horrors of war. First, they learned that torture was part of the effort to bring democracy to Iraq; now they discover that the US military has been subverting Iraq's (soon-to-be) free, democratic press by planting stories! But while the White House vows to get to the bottom of this latest atrocity, it may be as well to remember the media's own role in propagating the Bush administration's propaganda about Iraq's WMDs. Not to mention the fact that the administration itself has bought off elements of the US media. Asia Times |
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The Village Voice |
| When the “Tsunami” disaster stroke, we were surprised by Abdul Aziz Al Fawzan on the Majd channel that “it” (i.e. the Tsunami) was the result of God’s anger towards the poor of the Maldives and other countries full of weak Muslims. When “Katrina” stroke and claimed lives amongst New Orleans-poor and weak, preacher Nasser Al Umr called for rejoice because of what happened to those “blasphemous”. Worse comes to worst when writer Maha Al Hujaylan indicates in her electronic article replying to a member of the Social Saudi Association for Human Rights, “Some of our sons find it excessive for the nation to rejoice when a predestined disaster falls upon a blasphemous nation, which spreads corruption on earth and sheds the blood of Muslims everywhere. They consider it inhumane and mourn the despotic nation with its tyrannical rhetoric… I wonder what they want”. The most weird commentary on “Katrina” disaster – which does not sound funny at all- was about an internet communiqué published on one of those extremist websites, whose author said that Oussama Bin Laden admires fighter “Katrina”, urging his brethren to marry her had she still been single. Dar Al-Hayat via WatchingAmerica.com |
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Navy Investigated the Legendary Actor-Dancer for Alleged Communist Activity One of the leading lights of Hollywood's golden age of musicals, Gene Kelly danced, sang, choreographed, and acted in several dozen movies, including Anchors Aweigh, An American in Paris, and, of course, Singin' in the Rain. He served in the Navy in 1944-45, and continued as a Naval Reserve officer until 1954. Beginning in March 1949, the Office of Naval Intelligence investigated Kelly under the direction of the Bureau of Naval Personnel Loyalty Review Board because, as they state, "According to reliable information received in 1945 this individual was actively associated during 1944 and 1945 with known Communists or Communist sympathizers in the Hollywood - Los Angeles area" [page 1 of the file]. Pages 16 to 25 of the file contain Kelly's detailed response to the accusations, which can be summed up by the sentence: "I could no more consider being a Communist than being a member of a voodoo sect." He does, however, have to engage is some fancy tapdancing to explain his actual and alleged involvement with some leftist organizations. The Loyalty Board eventually decided that there "is not, upon full review of the record, substantial reason to doubt the loyalty of the respondent" [page 11]. On the other hand, the board didn't seem very happy with his wife, whose "loyalty" they still found questionable [page 12]. Based on date stamps, the file appears to have been declared unclassified on 14 January 2004. It was released in a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI, which referred these records in their files to the Navy for processing. The Memory Hole |
| Titled "The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq," an article
written this week for publication in the Iraqi press was scornful of outsiders'
pessimism about the country's future.
"Western press and frequently those self-styled 'objective' observers of Iraq are often critics of how we, the people of Iraq, are proceeding down the path in determining what is best for our nation," the article began. Quoting the Prophet Muhammad, it pleaded for unity and nonviolence. But far from being the heartfelt opinion of an Iraqi writer, as its language implied, the article was prepared by the United States military as part of a multimillion-dollar covert campaign to plant paid propaganda in the Iraqi news media and pay friendly Iraqi journalists monthly stipends, military contractors and officials said. NYT (reg/req) |
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Washington Post (reg/req) |
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Knight Ridder |
| The body count from road accidents in developed economies is 390 times
higher than the death toll in these countries from international terrorism,
says a study appearing in a specialist journal, Injury Prevention. In 2001,
as many people died every 26 days on American roads as died in the terrorist
attacks of 9/11, it says.
Researchers led by Nick Wilson of Otago University, New Zealand, trawled through a US State Department database of deaths caused by international terrorism, and compared this with an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development database on road crash deaths among 29 OECD countries. Agence France-Presse |
| A PBS public affairs program featuring politically conservative viewpoints
is moving to Fox News after the show struggled to get airtime on local
public television stations, according to its producers.
The "Journal Editorial Report," a half-hour show hosted by Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot and featuring members of the newspaper's editorial board, will air for the last time on PBS on Friday. In January, the program will begin running on the cable news channel on Saturdays, in a time slot to be determined, Fox officials said Wednesday. Fox News executives said they approached Gigot about bringing his show to the network several months ago. LA Times |
| The waiting room for Hilarie Cash's practice has the look and feel
of many a therapist's office, with soothing classical music, paintings
of gentle swans and colorful flowers and on the bookshelves stacks of brochures
on how to get help.
But along with her patients, Dr. Cash, who runs Internet/Computer Addiction Services here in the city that is home to Microsoft, is a pioneer in a growing niche in mental health care and addiction recovery. The patients, including Mike, 34, are what Dr. Cash and other mental health professionals call onlineaholics. They even have a diagnosis: Internet addiction disorder. These specialists estimate that 6 percent to 10 percent of the approximately 189 million Internet users in this country have a dependency that can be as destructive as alcoholism and drug addiction, and they are rushing to treat it. Yet some in the field remain skeptical that heavy use of the Internet qualifies as a legitimate addiction, and one academic expert called it a fad illness. Skeptics argue that even obsessive Internet use does not exact the same toll on health or family life as conventionally recognized addictions. But, mental health professionals who support the diagnosis of Internet addiction say, a majority of obsessive users are online to further addictions to gambling or pornography or have become much more dependent on those vices because of their prevalence on the Internet. NYT (reg/req) |
| The powerful ocean current that bathes Britain and northern Europe
in warm waters from the tropics has weakened dramatically in recent years,
a consequence of global warming that could trigger more severe winters
and cooler summers across the region, scientists warn today.
Researchers on a scientific expedition in the Atlantic Ocean measured the strength of the current between Africa and the east coast of America and found that the circulation has slowed by 30% since a previous expedition 12 years ago. Guardian |
| Robotic explorers probing neighboring planets have found evidence of
hidden impact craters on Mars and dynamic weather, possibly including lightning,
on Saturn's giant moon Titan, scientists reported on Wednesday.
In a series of papers being published this week in two scientific journals, the scientists report that smog-shrouded Titan is a frigid, dynamic world of ice carved and colored by liquid methane and organic chemicals. The European Space Agency's Huygens mission, which landed on Titan on Jan. 14 after a seven-year ride to Saturn on NASA's Cassini spacecraft, parachuted through winds of up to 280 miles an hour while 75 miles above the surface. At a news conference in Paris, the researchers said the winds decreased at lower altitudes and dropped to walking speed at the surface. On its descent of 2 hours 28 minutes to the minus-290-degree surface, the Huygens craft found a surprising electrically charged ionospheric layer bearing evidence of lightning, roughly from 85 miles to 25 miles above Titan's surface, the researchers reported in papers published online and in the journal Nature. NYT (reg/req) |
| The family of an Australian man facing the death penalty in Singapore
has visited him for probably the last time.
Nguyen Truong Van, 25, is scheduled to be hanged before dawn on Friday, after being found with 14 ounces of heroin at Singapore's airport in 2002. BBC |
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| For every 5 pounds of fish caught by U.S. commercial fishing operations, 1 pound is dumped overboard as unwanted [called bycatch], according to a new study in the peer-reviewed journal Fish and Fisheries. Those wasted fish add up to more than 1 million tons a year, 28% of all commercially caught fish, the study says ... The biggest offender, the researchers say, are Gulf Coast shrimp-fishing operations, which discard 4 pounds of bycatch for every pound of shrimp they keep. That's nearly half of the nation's total bycatch. USA Today |
| In chessboxing, contestants match moves on the board one round, in the ring the next. Checkmate is as good as a knockout. LA Times |
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| In a sharp reversal, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission
said Tuesday that the agency now thinks cable companies should stop forcing
people to subscribe to bundles of channels and give them the option of
choosing individual channels.
Kevin Martin, FCC chairman since March 16, asserted that a la carte pricing could both allow parents to block offensive programming and lower their surging cable bills. His stance might push Congress to require cable and satellite companies to offer the option. Martin said that a 2004 FCC report — which concluded most consumers would face higher cable and satellite bills under a mandatory a la carte system — "presented incorrect and incomplete analysis." USA Today |
| A leading aide to the former secretary of state Colin Powell has accused
Vice-President Dick Cheney of creating the climate in which prisoner abuse
could flourish, and implied that he might have committed war crimes.
Lawrence Wilkerson, General Powell's chief of staff until January this year, alleged that US policy on Iraq before and after the March 2003 invasion had been hijacked by an alliance between Mr Cheney and the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld fostered by President George Bush's "detached" attitude to details of post-war planning. He also suggested that the faulty intelligence used to justify the war had been at the least "cherry-picked" by the White House and the Pentagon. The Independent |
| Was this past Sunday's "Doonesbury"
-- which had George W. Bush defending the burning of Yale University fraternity
initiates with a brand in 1967 -- fact or fiction?
"Totally fact-based," replied Garry Trudeau, in response to an E&P e-mail query. "Bush's comment in panel seven is a direct quote, which is why I put it in quotation marks. In the original Yale Daily News expose, we ran a photo of a pledge's seared backside." Trudeau, a Yale grad, added: "I did a week on this in the strip back during the 2000 election. The reason I revisited the episode is that it's gained in relevance with the president's reluctance to forego torture in intelligence-gathering." The branding, which was exposed by the Yale paper, was first covered by The New York Times in a Nov. 8, 1967, article. Trudeau much later told Rolling Stone in an interview that he drew his first editorial cartoon for the Yale Daily News during the branding controversy. According to that 1967 Times article, "The charge that has caused the most controversy on the Yale campus is that Delta Kappa Epsilon applied a 'hot branding iron' to the small of the back of its 40 new members in the shape of the Greek letter Delta, approximately a half inch wide, appeared with the article." It added that a former president of Delta revealed that "the branding is done with a hot coathanger. But the former president, George Bush, a Yale senior, said that the resulting wound is 'only a cigarette burn.'" Editor & Publisher |
| Buddhist monks are being murdered, Christian schoolchildren beheaded and dissenters blown up. Southeast Asia's peaceful co-existence among religions is under siege, from Bangkok to Jakarta. Meanwhile, politicians and military leaders are using Islamic fervor to boost their own power. Der Spiegel |
| As Iraq becomes a hotter political issue in the United States, President
Bush finds himself under new pressure over his handling of a range of foreign
policy issues, including the "war on terror".
Some in Washington are even speaking of a crisis of American leadership in the world. A new book by American counter-terrorism experts Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Next Attack, begins with the stark words: "We are losing." The two authors contend that, since the attacks of 9/11, the policies of the Bush administration have prolonged the "global insurgency" - as many now call the worldwide threat of radical Islamism - rather than curtailing it. BBC |
| Despite more than a decade's worth of research showing that taking too much of a popular pain reliever can ruin the liver, the number of severe, unintentional poisonings from the drug is on the rise, a new study reports. The drug, acetaminophen, is best known under the brand name Tylenol. But many consumers don't realize that it is also found in widely varying doses in several hundred common cold remedies and combination pain relievers. NYT (reg/req) |
| By now it should be amply clear to Washington that the Iraqi insurgency essentially feeds on the U.S. presence in the country. Regardless of the reasons that drew the Americans to Iraq - the mythical WMDs or the fiction about Saddam-Al Qaeda ties - it demand no extraordinary intelligence to see that the presence of foreign troops is fuelling and adding to popular frustration and unrest. And now, this anger is not directed at U.S. troops alone. The situation has degenerated into an all-out, free-for-all civil war, with Iraqi political parties, security agencies, and militias openly taking one another on ... Leaving Iraq and turning it over to the "elected" government sooner rather than later may be in everyone’s interest - in the interest of Iraqis as well as the Americans. Khaleej Times of the United Arab Emirates |
| Some religious people regard scientists as foul heathens, which is
terribly unfair. We aren't all that foul. On the other hand, we do tend
to be heathens. The most fundamental principle of science is that beliefs
must be predicated on empirical evidence — things that everyone can see,
touch, taste, and measure — and in more than two thousand years of recorded
history, no one has yet produced a shred of empirical evidence for the
existence of God. That hasn't kept most people from believing. For as long
as pollsters have been asking the question, roughly 90% of Americans have
been claiming to believe in God, and a sizeable majority believes that
God takes a personal interest in their lives and intervenes to help them.
When President Bush said, "God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck
them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did," most
Americans were not alarmed to learn that their leader was receiving orders
that no one else could hear. America is an unusually religious nation,
but even in the world's least religious nations the majority of people
claim to believe in God.
Scientists understand all this piety and faith by assuming that belief in God is one of the many primitive superstitions that human beings are in the process of shedding. God is a myth that has been handed down from one generation of innocents to the next, and science is slowly teaching them to cultivate their skepticism and shed their credulity. As Albert Einstein wrote: "(I had) a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies. It was a crushing impression. Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude towards the convictions which were alive in any specific social environment — an attitude which has never again left me." (Autobiographical Notes, 1949) Einstein's orgy of freethinking forever changed our understanding of space and time, and the phrase "Religion for Dummies" became, in the view of many scientists, a redundancy. But this conceptualization of religious belief misses an important point, namely, that people don't believe in God simply because they are told to by their elders, but because they are compelled to by their own experience. William James understood that religious belief grows out of human experience, and he urged scientists to investigate the experiences that spawned it: "I speak not now of your ordinary religious believer (whose)... religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. It would profit us little to study this second-hand religious life. We must make search rather for the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct." (The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902) If belief in God is compelled by experience, then what sorts of experiences compel it? The Edge Foundation |
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| Former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff says President
Bush was "too aloof, too distant from the details" of post-war planning,
allowing underlings to exploit Bush's detachment and make bad decisions.
In an Associated Press interview Monday, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson also said that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees after Sept. 11 arose from a coterie of White House and Pentagon aides who argued that "the president of the United States is all-powerful," and that the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant. Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. Wilkerson said that Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard." The AP |
| A top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell has launched a
stinging attack on US Vice-President Dick Cheney over abuse of prisoners
by US troops.
Col Lawrence Wilkerson accused Mr Cheney of ignoring a decision by President Bush on the treatment of prisoners in the war on terror. Asked by the BBC's Today if Mr Cheney could be accused of war crimes, he said: "It's an interesting question." "Certainly it is a domestic crime to advocate terror," he added. "And I would suspect, for whatever it's worth, it's an international crime as well." BBC |
| A "trophy" video appearing to show security guards in Baghdad randomly
shooting Iraqi civilians has sparked two investigations after it was posted
on the internet, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
The video has sparked concern that private security companies, which are not subject to any form of regulation either in Britain or in Iraq, could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqis. Telegraph |
| Evidence has begun to mount suggesting that Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods. NYT (reg/req) |
| Media mogul Ted Turner said Monday that Iraq is "no better off" following
the U.S.-led invasion that ousted dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Delivering the 141st Landon Lecture at Kansas State University, Turner said the world is at a "critical juncture" and compared the situation to that of a baseball team down two runs in the seventh inning. The AP |
| Should the views of the religious right, many of whom are Republican
party supporters, be adopted by the US government? In Washington, Justin
Webb considers the implications and asks whether politics and religion
make a good mix.
We are having dinner at the house of some friends who are supporters of President Bush. Their five-year-old son, a classmate of our children, takes me upstairs to see his collection of dinosaurs. Little Meade is a passionate palaeontologist and this is a land of plenty so the room heaves with prehistoric life. I am suitably impressed, but unknown to Meade I am not here to admire the bone structure of the dinosaurs. I am in this room on assignment, because in modern America Meade's dinosaurs are at the heart of the travails of a political party and I need to find out something about Meade's parents which will affect our relationship. I need to know what they told him about when the dinosaurs existed. Millions of Americans, most of them supporters of the Republican party, believe that the world was created only a few thousand years ago as per the account in Genesis and the dinosaurs can only date from then, so the Tyrannosaurus Rex romped around with Adam and Eve. In other words these Americans, heirs to every scientific advance in history, deny rational accounts of how the world came to exist. BBC |
| From Maine to Florida, from Virginia to Missouri, as much as half the United States confronts the possibility that harshly cold weather will lead to restrictions of natural-gas supplies. In some places - areas heavily dependent on natural gas to produce electricity - the prospect of "rolling blackouts," or controlled power outages, is much higher than in previous winters ... Such scenarios might seem a distant threat. Winter began mildly, and natural-gas storage caverns are now almost full. Still, hurricane damage continues to block about 6 percent of the nation's gas supply flowing through pipelines north from the Gulf of Mexico. The government reported last week that 32 percent of the Gulf supply remains "shut in" - a loss of 3.2 billion cubic feet per day. Christian Science Monitor |
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| Saddam Hussein loyalists leading the insurgency in Iraq have reinvented
themselves as Islamic militants in a deadly new strategy generating plenty
of recruits and funding, Iraq's national security adviser said on Sunday.
Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said the image makeover from secular insurgents to religious warriors was far more worrying than a deadly campaign waged by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al Qaeda in Iraq leader, and his suicide bombers. Embracing militant Islam has enabled Saddam's former agents with long years of intelligence and military experience to expand their support base, he said. "This is very dangerous. These people now have broader appeal among angry Iraqis and money from Arabs in regional states," he told Reuters in an interview. "It could take years to defeat them." Reuters |
| The Muslim Brotherhood may be banned, but it has demonstrated in the
latest parliamentary elections that it is by far the strongest Egyptian
opposition group, trouncing the secular political opposition and weakening
the governing party's power monopoly.
Results released by the government on Sunday showed the Brotherhood winning 29 more seats in the runoff on Saturday for the second round of parliamentary voting. It won 47 seats in the first round this month, meaning that with just one more round of elections to go, the Brotherhood already has 76 seats - more than five times its total in the departing Parliament. Because of the group's outlaw status, its candidates run as independents. NYT (reg/req) |
| The impact of spiralling pollution on the planet poses a threat to
civilisation just as catastrophic as much-vaunted weapons of mass destruction,
Britain's top scientist warned.
Robert May, president of the country's leading scientific body, the Royal Society, issued the warning as a 12-day conference was set to get underway Monday in Montreal to decide the fate of the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations' troubled treaty for curbing greenhouse gases. "The impacts of global warming are many and serious: sea-level rise ... changes in availability of fresh water ... and the increasing incidence of extreme events -- floods, droughts, and hurricanes -- the serious consequences of which are rising to levels which invite comparison with weapons of mass destruction," May said in an advance copy of a speech released Monday to coincide with the start of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change on the same day. Agence France-Presse |
| Drug companies seeking attractive sales representatives have opened a recruiting pipeline to top college cheerleading squads. NYT (reg/req) |
| Coal is back on the agenda as a serious player in meeting the world's
future energy demands.
After being pushed to one side in the "dash for gas" in the 1990s, attention is returning to the role of coal in the global energy mix because of its widespread availability and stable price. The recent volatility in the markets for oil and gas, combined with concern of an "energy gap" between rising demand and suppliers' struggle to provide the electricity, has positioned coal as a realistic option - both economically and politically. Politicians and industry experts hope the development of "clean coal technology" will also make the fuel environmentally acceptable among its climate conscious citizens. BBC |
| The National Environmental Policy Act - known as the Magna Carta of
US environmental laws - is under intense political scrutiny.
For 35 years, NEPA has required that everything built or operated on federal land that "significantly affects the quality of the human environment" be scrutinized for its impact. Thousands of construction projects and other ventures - from highways, dams, and water projects to military bases and oil drilling - have been adjusted and in some cases scrapped because of the law. The requirements of this Nixon-era act have done much for environmental protection, its supporters say. NEPA also has acted as a "sunshine law," opening the political process involving such decisions to all Americans through "environmental impact statements" allowing for public comment. But the law has also been the basis for hundreds of lawsuits, in effect becoming a tool for activists to slow or kill many projects. NEPA also has greatly added to the cost of public works, energy development, and other beneficial projects, critics say. Most recently, it has been charged, environmental lawsuits under NEPA stymied US Army Corps of Engineers plans that might have lessened the impact of hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast. A congressional task has just ended a series of public hearings in five states and Washington, D.C. Lawmakers heard from a range of interests - the New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association, the Women's Mining Coalition, the Zuni Tribe, the Sierra Club, energy lobbyists, and local officials. A report and recommendations from the task force are expected shortly. It's unclear whether these will produce major changes to NEPA, as some environmental activists fear, or merely tweaks in the law. Christian Science Monitor |
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www.humor.about.com |
| Without a new economic model or a change of reading habits by 30-somethings, local daily newspapers may soon become a relic of another era - a time when Americans had an inclination to understand the complexities of the world around them, as opposed to what Britney named her kid. St. Petersburg Times |
| The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering
and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies,
adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security
activities in the post-9/11 world.
The moves have taken place on several fronts. The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts -- including protecting military facilities from attack -- to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage. Washington Post (reg/req) |
| Tony Blair complained of "conspiracy theories" yesterday as he was
forced on the defensive over an Official Secrets Act trial starting this
week.
David Keogh, a former Cabinet Office official, is charged with passing a transcript of an April 2004 meeting between the Prime Minister and President George Bush to Leo O'Connor, researcher for a former MP. The two men will appear at Bow Street magistrates court on Tuesday where at the beginning of what could become one of the most controversial trials since Labour took office. The Independent |
| Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record, according to the country's first Prime Minister after the fall of Saddam's regime. Guardian |
| The American Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is an absolute disgrace
for President George W. Bush. The heinous treatment of al-Qaeda suspects
held at Guantanamo is well documented. The American torture practices -
no secret but still shocking and disgusting all the same - are well documented.
Human rights organizations, the Red Cross and - yes - even the FBI, have
all reported on torture by American troops at Guantanamo and Iraq. Internationally,
the Americans are being pressured to immediately halt the illegal treatment
of prisoners. It is the subject of ongoing debate in politics and society
as a whole. However in the end, nothing is being done about it. Guatanamo
Bay is a place where the Americans demonstratively ignore international
human rights.
NRC Handelsblad via WatchingAmerica.com |
| The fundamental question about what the United States should do in
Iraq is being asked with greater fervor across America and in the nation's
capital. The Bush administration is arguing that the nation must stay the
course to prevent Iraq from becoming an oil-rich haven for terrorists and
to keep the country from spiraling into a bloody civil war that could destabilize
the Middle East ...
"I would list all the arguments that you hear against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, the horrible things that people say would happen, and then ask: Aren't they happening already? Would a pullout really make things worse? Maybe it would make things better," wrote William E. Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general and former Reagan-era National Security Agency director, for a Harvard University Web site. Twin Cities/Pioneer Press |
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| A Japanese spacecraft apparently succeeded in landing on an asteroid and collecting surface samples Saturday, part of an unprecedented mission to bring the material back to Earth, Japan's space agency said. The AP |
| Carbon dioxide levels are much higher than at any time during the past 650,000 years, scientists discover. Christian Science Monitor |
| For years, Massoud Dehnamaki was known widely as the feared enforcer
of conservative rules that restricted freedom for women and society.
In recent years, however, he has emerged as Iran's Michael Moore, having directed a documentary on the taboo issue of prostitution and another forthcoming film on soccer as a metaphor of political struggle. Reformists and conservatives alike harshly criticized Mr. Dehnamaki for making the first movie, "Poverty and Prostitution." Conservatives were furious that one of their own had not only highlighted an un-Islamic social pathology but seemed to sympathize with the prostitutes. Reformists believed he deliberately exaggerated the problem to make a case against easing Islamic law. NYT (reg/req) |
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| The head of al-Jazeera is delivering a letter to Tony Blair demanding
the facts on reports that President Bush suggested bombing the Arab TV
station.
He wants a memo published which is alleged to show Tony Blair dissuaded President Bush from bombing its HQ. BBC |
| A member of Parliament from British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour party filed a motion Friday urging publication of a leaked document that suggests President George W. Bush wanted to bomb the headquarters of Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera. Editor & Publisher |
| The Associated Press leads news organizations in using the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents from the Pentagon, according to a log of such requests from 2000 to early 2005 obtained by a San Francisco-based activist. But one analyst decries the media's overall "lack of curiosity." Editor & Publisher |
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| When a president falls below 40% approval in public opinion polls —
as President Bush has done twice in the past two months — it's usually
a sign of serious political danger.
Since 1950, five of the eight other presidents who fell below 40% — Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush — lost their bids for re-election or opted not to run again. A sixth, Richard Nixon, was overwhelmed by the Watergate scandal and resigned. Only two, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, turned things around. Both saw their approval ratings drop below 40% early in their presidencies, but each had time to recover and got elected to a second term. USA Today |
| With Katrina, 'Plamegate' the situation in Iraq and 'the rash of scandal' spreading, Bush's poll numbers have never been lower. He is even accused of having misled Congress and the nation about Saddam and his WMDs. According to this op-ed article from the Tunis Hebdo of Tunisia, 'the crook Nixon fell flat on his face for less than that.' via watchingamerica.com |
| Widely considered a military hawk, President Richard M. Nixon fretted
privately over the notion of any no-holds-barred nuclear war, newly released
documents from his time at the White House reveal.
The recently declassified papers, from the first days of the Nixon presidency in 1969 until the end of 1974, show that Nixon wanted an alternative to the option of full-scale nuclear war - a plan for a gentler war, one that could ultimately vanquish the Soviet Union while avoiding the worst-case situation ... The documents reveal Mr. Kissinger's chilling insight that government budget-crunchers would prefer complete nuclear warfare because it was already planned for and would be cheaper than recasting American capabilities to permit limited strikes. "They believe in assured destruction because it guarantees the smallest expenditure," he said in August 1973 at a National Security Council meeting in the White House Situation Room. "To have the only option that of killing 80 million people is the height of immorality." The AP via NYT (reg/req) |
| Drawing lessons from his own career, Col. Mat Moten tells his students
at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., they could one day have
a duty just as important as fighting terrorism: helping rebuild an Army
fractured and exhausted by a long and unpopular war.
For Moten, it's a familiar story, one he first heard as a West Point cadet in 1978. Then, the all-volunteer Army was struggling after Vietnam. "It's not a cheery message," Moten says. USA Today |
| The Dictionary of Republicanisms, a grassroots lexicon that decodes conservative doublespeak. The Nation |
| Rupert Murdoch has forecast a gloomy future for newspapers with the
growth of the internet, saying he doesn't know "anybody under the age of
30 who has ever looked at a classified ad."
The owner of the Sun, Times, Sunday Times and the News of the World, who once described newspaper classified advertising revenue as providing "rivers of gold", now says: "Sometimes rivers dry up." "This is a generational thing; we've been talking about a 15- or 20-year slide on this," the News Corp chairman and chief executive tells trade paper Press Gazette in a rare interview. Guardian |
| The Gaza-Egypt border is to re-open, giving Palestinians control of a link to the outside world for the first time. BBC |
| "Let's do it."
With those last words, convicted killer Gary Gilmore ushered in the modern era of capital punishment in the United States, an age of busy death chambers that will likely see its 1,000th execution in the coming days. After a 10-year moratorium, Gilmore in 1977 became the first person to be executed following a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision that validated state laws to reform the capital punishment system. Since then, 997 prisoners have been executed, and next week, the 998th, 999th and 1,000th are scheduled to die. The AP |
| Sea levels are rising twice as fast as they were 150 years ago and greenhouse emissions are the prime cause, a new study has found. Tide lines worldwide are said to be rising by twice the rate found in 1850. The Independent |
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| A civil servant has been charged under Britain's Official Secrets Act
for allegedly leaking a government memo that a newspaper said Tuesday suggested
that Prime Minister Tony Blair persuaded President Bush not to bomb the
Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera.
The Daily Mirror reported that Bush spoke of targeting Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Doha, Qatar, when he met Blair at the White House on April 16, 2004. The Bush administration has regularly accused Al-Jazeera of being nothing more than a mouthpiece for anti-American sentiments. The Daily Mirror attributed its information to unidentified sources. One source, said to be in the government, was quoted as saying that the alleged threat was "humorous, not serious," but the newspaper quoted another source as saying that "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair." "We are not interested in dignifying something so outlandish and inconceivable with a response," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told The Associated Press in an e-mail. The AP |
| British editors threatened with jail if they print leaked memo; White House calls allegation 'outlandish.' Christian Science Monitor |
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| According to this op-ed article from the State-run People's Daily, neither the global order as it stands nor the policy of China itself should lead Washington to fear China's emergence as a challenge to American primacy. However, sooner or later, "the decline of U.S. primacy is inevitable," and the article asks, "if not China, then who." People's Daily (China) |
| The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq. LA Times (reg/req) |
| Iraqi leaders have put persistent differences to one side and agreed on their first joint statement, calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country. Aljazeera |
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| It's finally Wizard of Oz time in America. You know -- that moment when the curtains are pulled back, the fearsome-looking wizard wreathed in all that billowing smoke turns out to be some pitiful little guy, and everybody looks around sheepishly, wondering why they acted as they did for so long. Mother Jones |
| The whereabouts of 6,644 people reported missing after Hurricane Katrina have not been determined, raising the prospect that the death toll could be higher than the 1,306 recorded so far in Louisiana and Mississippi, according to two groups working with the federal government to account for victims. USA Today |
| Despair is growing among state and local officials who fear Congress and the White House are losing interest in their plight. NYT (reg/req) |
| Thousands of pilgrims are pouring into the dense jungle of southern
Nepal to worship a 15-year-old boy who has been hailed as a new Buddha.
Devotees claim that Ram Bomjon, who is silently meditating beneath a tree, has not eaten or drunk anything since he sat down at his chosen spot six months ago. Witnesses say they have seen light emanating from the teenager's forehead. "It looks a bit like when you shine a torch through your hand," said Tek Bahadur Lama, a member of the committee responsible for dealing with the growing number of visitors from India and elsewhere in Nepal. The Telegraph |
| The case of Jose Padilla cuts to the heart of the American debate over the limits of the president's authority in conducting the war on terror. BBC |
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| President George W Bush tried to make a quick exit from a news conference
in Beijing on Sunday - only to find himself thwarted by locked doors.
After answering just six questions from a group of US reporters, the president strode away heading towards the door. President Bush tugged at both handles on the double doors before admitting: "I was trying to escape. Obviously, it didn't work." BBC |
| CIA interrogators are worried they may face prosecution for alleged
abuse of detainees and are using techniques well short of the CIA's detailed
limits, according to three lawmakers who said the trend threatens to erode
the quality of information yielded by top terror suspects.
The lawmakers — House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., and Jane Harman of California, senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee — say nervousness among rank-and-file CIA interrogators is a growing intelligence concern. Because of their senior positions on national security committees, all three receive regular classified intelligence briefings and have daily access to classified intelligence reports. "You have an area where American interrogators fear that a liberal judge is going to hold them or find them criminally or civilly liable for merely isolating a terrorist," Hunter says. "It's going to be very difficult to conduct effective interrogations that could save American lives." USA Today |
| When President Bush was flying toward Asia a week ago, his national
security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, predicted to reporters in the back
of the plane that the four-nation trip would yield no "headline breakthroughs."
He turned out to be right.
As Bush wrapped up his stay in Beijing on Sunday and prepared to head home Monday after a brief stop in Mongolia, the trip has produced no real breakthroughs of any sort. On a wide variety of issues, from trade to security to human rights, Bush won no concrete agreements from any of his summit partners. Washington Post |
| For years the Bush administration played its color-coded fear card with unbelievable effectiveness. But suddenly fear is no longer on the Bush administration's side. The Oz-like moment has come when the curtains are pulled back, the fearsome wizard turns out to be some pitiful little guy, and everybody looks around sheepishly, wondering why they acted as they did for so long. Asia Times |
| Polls show that the war has lost favor with the US public faster than the Vietnam and Korean wars. Christian Science Monitor |
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| U.N. rights experts said Friday they rejected an U.S. invitation to
visit the military prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay because
U.S. restrictions make a fair assessment of detainee conditions impossible.
The experts, invited by the United States to visit Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, said they had to turn down the offer because U.S. officials refused to grant them the right to talk to the detainees in private. "We deeply regret that the United States government did not accept the standard terms of reference for a credible, objective and fair assessment of the situation of the detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility," said the experts, who independently check on rights around the world. The AP |
| Every week, Rep. John Murtha makes the rounds at Walter Reed Army Medical
Center to stand at the bedside of soldiers wounded in Iraq.
On Thursday, the Pennsylvania Democrat could stand by no more. Belying his reputation as one of Congress' most hawkish members, Murtha called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. "I feel very passionate about this," Murtha said in an emotional interview hours after his remarks. "I see a kid blown apart, and it breaks my heart." Democrats have long assailed President Bush's Iraq policy. But this is the top Democrat on the House panel that pays for Pentagon programs, a former Marine who was the first Vietnam veteran to serve in Congress and one of the most influential members of his party on military matters. "It's a turning point in the growing opposition to the war," said Rep. John Conyers, a liberal Democrat from Michigan. He said Murtha's time in military hospital wards "had a profound impact on him, and he's finally come to the point where he cannot rationalize us staying over there any longer." USA Today |
| In its efforts this week to bring clarity to the confusion surrounding
the Bush administration's military tribunals, the US Senate might also
have helped to make the controversial process a fixture of American law.
Since 9/11, President Bush has insisted that neither the country's civilian nor its military court systems are suitable to handle cases involving suspected terrorists held at Guantánamo Bay. As a result, he has used military commissions that have essentially created a third court system run by the executive branch - angering international allies and civil libertarians who worry that the trials lack the checks and balances of America's traditional courts. Christian Science Monitor</ |