Tuesday News Bucket

13 Comments

1. 

   CabinGirl on January 2, 2007 at 7:01 am

   because of his disagreements with the Bush “strategy”: NYT

   …The original plan, championed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Baghdad, and backed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, called for turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqis, shrinking the number of American bases and beginning the gradual withdrawal of American troops. But the plan collided with Iraq’s ferocious unraveling, which took most of Mr. Bush’s war council by surprise…

   …Over the past 12 months, as optimism collided with reality, Mr. Bush increasingly found himself uneasy with General Casey’s strategy. And now, as the image of Saddam Hussein at the gallows recedes, Mr. Bush seems all but certain not only to reverse the strategy that General Casey championed, but also to accelerate the general’s departure from Iraq, according to senior military officials.

   General Casey repeatedly argued that his plan offered the best prospect for reducing the perception that the United States remained an occupier — and it was a path he thought matched Mr. Bush’s wishes. Earlier in the year, it had.

   But as Baghdad spun further out of control, some of the president’s advisers now say, Mr. Bush grew concerned that General Casey, among others, had become more fixated on withdrawal than victory. …

   When will the anti-impeachment folks wake and realize that we have a crazy man in the White House, and even the Republicans will want to get rid of him when he won’t listen to reason from anyone?  They don’t like what’s happening with their complicit little monkey-puppet from Texas either – it’s costing them elections…

2. 

   CabinGirl on January 2, 2007 at 7:06 am

   more on the blundered execution of Saddam: Alternet

   …The video to the right is a censored version of the Saddam execution you can find just about anywhere on the web right now. If you must see the actual execution, go HERE.(Note from CG:  I’d just skip that, personally.  The shouts at the end are the important part.)

   I post it so you can hear for yourself its most important aspect. Toward the end of the clip, you can make out deafening shouts of “Muqtada,” indicating to the entire Muslim world and beyond that Saddam was essentially handed over to a Shi’ite militia to kill their enemy, a Sunni.

   The Bush admin has spent years telling everyone who would listen that the Unity government of Iraq (Sunni and Shi’ite) would thrive, that Democracy would flourish, that — as Josh details exhaustively — success lay just around the bend.

   Josh Marshall, asking whether we’ll look back on this as “a signal of American power or weakness,” notes that this sham is an American job from start till… juuuuust before the finish, when we handed Saddam over to Iraqi Shi’ites to do the killing. And this, after the trial for relatively small crimes, with a sentencing date ever so suspiciously timed to U.S. elections…

   I guess the thought is “If you break it, you bought it”, and the Bush administration is trying to get their money’s worth of breakage?

   • 

     Oui on January 2, 2007 at 7:51 am

     .
     and of course more information can be found in my recent diary:
     U.S.-Iran United in Praise for Saddam’s Execution ¶ World Express Fear

     "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

   • 

     boran2 on January 2, 2007 at 9:12 am

     And this is the story they’re spreading now:

     Link

     Report: U.S. Tried To Delay Saddam Hanging
     American Ambassador Concerned Execution Was Being Carried Out Too Quickly
      (CBS News) BAGHDAD In the hours before Saddam Hussein was led to the gallows by men in ski masks, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq reportedly tried, but failed, to delay the execution, reports CBS News correspondent Randall Pinkston.

     A Reuters report, quoting Iraqi officials familiar with the discussions, says ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad insisted that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki provide certain documents, including a signature from Iraq’s president.

     Iraq’s national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie confirmed to CBS News that the U.S. “brought to the attention of the government of Iraq to be careful with … documentation” and that Iraq provided the required paperwork including “a consent document from President Jalal Talabani.”

     The U.S. had leverage. From the moment of his capture, to his trial and sentencing, Saddam was in U.S. military custody, reports Pinkston. After the flurry of negotiations, Saddam wasn’t handed over until a few hours before his execution.

     After Hussein’s burial Monday, rage over the hanging spilled into the streets in many parts of the Sunni Muslim hartland Monday, especially in Samarra where a mob of angry protesters broke the locks off the badly damaged Shiite Golden Dome mosque and marched through carrying a mock coffin and photo of the executed former leader.

   • 

     idredit on January 2, 2007 at 9:13 am

     Glenn Greenwald weighs in Iraqis learn the art of legal “workarounds”.

     [In Iraq], we can’t even get a hanging right With all of the world watching, we yet again were the primary authors of a violent, uncivilized, and primitive act which — no matter how justified in some ultimate moral sense — was carried out in the most thuggish, wretched, inept, and (we now learn) patently illegal manner.

     It really is striking, and a potent sign of just how absurd is our ongoing occupation, that the “Iraqi Government” which we are fighting to empower could not even conduct this execution with a pretense of legality or concern for civilized norms — the executioners were not wearing uniforms but leather jackets and murderers’ masks, conducting themselves not as disciplined law enforcement officers but as what they are (death squad members and sectarian street thugs).

3. 

   ask on January 2, 2007 at 7:11 am

   Scientists find way to slash cost of drugs

   Two UK-based academics have devised a way to invent new medicines and get them to market at a fraction of the cost charged by big drug companies, enabling millions in poor countries to be cured of infectious diseases and potentially slashing the NHS drugs bill.

   Sunil Shaunak, professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College, based at Hammersmith hospital, calls their revolutionary new model “ethical pharmaceuticals”.

   Improvements they devise to the molecular structure of an existing, expensive drug turn it technically into a new medicine which is no longer under a 20-year patent to a multinational drug company and can be made and sold cheaply.

   The process has the potential to undermine the monopoly of the big drug companies and bring cheaper drugs not only to poor countries but back to the UK.

   • 

     Alice on January 2, 2007 at 8:05 am

     This is great news, thanks Ask.  But I can’t help thinking of the line in “Risky Business”  when Guido the pimp says  “Never, ever, fuck with another man’s livelihood.”

     I hope these scientists are prepared for the inevitable attack that is coming their way.  

     The idea of ‘ethical pharmaceuticals’ is just too revolutionary.

4. 

   Oui on January 2, 2007 at 7:28 am

   .

   90 killed in Indonesian jetliner crash

   MAKASSAR, Indonesia – An Indonesian jetliner crashed into a remote mountainous region, killing at least 90 people. The airline said there were a dozen survivors, but the national aviation chief said that report could not be confirmed.

   
   A passenger aircraft with 102 people on board -- including 11 children -- is missing in Indonesia after sending distress signals. (AFP/Adam Air)

   Rescue and search teams hiked through heavy rain and slippery forest paths for four hours before reaching the plane’s wreckage in a rugged area inaccessible by helicopter or car, said Setyo Raharjo, head of the National Commission on Transportation Safety. Bodies and debris were scattered over 300 yards of jungle and jagged cliff face on Sulawesi island’s western coast.

      BBC NEWS: Confusion mounts over Java plane

   Rescuers scour seas for Indonesia ferry missing

   JAKARTA (AFP) – Ships and rescue teams scoured rough seas off Indonesia for hundreds of people still missing after a ferry disaster off Java island, as more weary survivors were plucked to safety.

   Navy ships, fishermen and search and rescue teams have found more than 200 survivors since the ferry sank late Friday with some 600 on board.

   Map

   "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

5. 

   Knoxville Progressive on January 2, 2007 at 8:55 am

   The Permian-Triassic extinction, Earth’s largest extinction event, is not the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Nor does the cause appear to have been a meteorite strike, as in that famous event. The most likely explanation for the disappearance of up to 90 percent of species 250 million years ago, a new theory says, is that “the earth got sick”:  Global warming and reduced ocean circulation combined to reduce the supply of oxygen in the oceans, allowing certain bacteria to replace it with hydrogen sulfide, which is toxic to higher life forms.

   The theorists who first created the mathematics that describe the behavior of the recently announced “invisibility cloak” have revealed a new analysis that may extend the current cloak’s powers, enabling it to hide even actively radiating objects like a flashlight or cell phone.

   Your word of the day is… kisspeptin.  This recently discovered hormone seems to be a link between environmental factors like day length and reproductive fertility in mammals – including possibly humans.  Kisspeptin levels dropped in experimental hamsters in the fall and winter.  Recent research by scientists in the U.K. and France have shown human kisspeptin triggers the release of gonadotropin-releasing hormone and luteinizing hormone, both of which are important to puberty and other sex-related functions, and studies in humans have shown that individuals with deficits in the receptor for kisspeptin have severe reproductive impairments.  Kisspeptin’s role in seasonal human reproduction is unknown — that is, if it even has one.  However, it is interesting to note the CDC reports fertility rates in the United States decrease rapidly in autumn. The phenomenon is particularly clear-cut among Caucasians, believed to have originated in more temperate climes.

   A combination of global warming and the El Niño weather system is set to make 2007 the warmest year on record with far-reaching consequences for the planet, one of Britain’s leading climate experts has warned.  Professor Phil Jones said: “El Niño makes the world warmer and we already have a warming trend that is increasing global temperatures by one to two tenths of a degrees Celsius per decade. Together, they should make 2007 warmer than last year and it may even make the next 12 months the warmest year on record.”  The warning of the escalating impact of global warming was echoed by Jim Hansen, the American scientist who, in 1988, was one of the first to warn of climate change.  Happy (?) New Year…

   And if that last story inspires you to do something, or if you’re still working on New Years Resolutions, here are 10 things you can do in the new year to do your part for the environment.

6. 

   idredit on January 2, 2007 at 9:35 am

   Why did Chief Justice Roberts call lack of a pay hike for judges a ‘Constitutional Crisis’?

   Privacy erodes:

   Bush’s Data Strip-Mining Plans

   Lawsuit Demands Answers About Government’s Secret ‘Risk Assessment’ Scores

   and now we extend to the world;

   US ‘licence to snoop’ on British air travellers

   “Britons flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels and Washington.

   Microsoft adds behavioral targeting*

   Wal-Mart joins “New World Jobs Order”

   Like “just-in-time” inventory introduced throughout most industries and companies in recent years, Wal-Mart workers now will be “picked off the shelf” at the last minute by Wal-Mart managers to satisfy day-to-day shifts in sales demand, creating in effect a just-in-time work force–a trend that hasn’t been seen since the early 1930s in the longshore and trucking industries.

   A Mystery billionaire pays $200m in back tax – and keeps the sate of California afloat

   • 

     Kidspeak on January 2, 2007 at 11:24 am

     I know several folks who are or have been “just in time” employees. They are frequently made to work full-time at half-time wages and benefits. Their work schedule changes weekly and sometimes daily, with little or no predictability. If they complain about working so much, so erratically, they are fired or given hours that they cannot work, e.g. can’t work because of their class schedule, or needing to be at home overnight with their children. This practice seems to be increasingly common as a method of squeezing more profits out of a business.

7. 

   Alice on January 2, 2007 at 10:15 am

   Chief Justice John Roberts is deeply concerned because according to the AP he says:

   The issue of pay has now reached the level of a constitutional crisis.

   Robert’s year-end report to Congress addresses the threat to judiciary independence that exists because our judges are low-paid laborers.

   CNN.com story

   Roberts said that even an immediate 30-percent raise would, after inflation, return them only to what they were making in 1969.

   According to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, District Court judges will earn $162,500 in 2006, the same as members of Congress, and Circuit Court judges will earn $175,100.

   While noting that Congress must juggle other budget concerns, Roberts said that his predecessor, William Rehnquist, pushed the issue aggressively for two decades. Rehnquist died in September after 33 years on the high court, 19 of them as chief justice.

   The new chief noted that, in a 2002 year-end report, Rehnquist said Congress’ lack of action on the issue made him feel like he was “beating a dead horse.”

   Since 1990, 92 federal judges have left the bench, 59 of them going into private practice, where they are typically able to command higher salaries.

   The departures are increasing. In the past five years, 37 federal judges have moved on, nine during the last year alone. In the same time period, the overall federal caseload has increased, especially bankruptcy filings.

   I weep at the idea that the chief justice’s version of a constitutional crisis is the inadequacy of his own paycheck.  For a law professor’s viewpoint click here.

   Last but far from least, although most federal judges will deny it to their dying days, they don’t work very hard. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court takes less than a hundred cases a year. That workload is split among nine justices. Each of the nine justices has a handful of extremely bright law clerks to help them with their work, and they also get the benefit of legal briefs submitted by lawyers who spent a lot of time and money researching and writing them. To oversimplify a bit (but just a bit), all the justices need to do is pick the argument they like the best. That’s not difficult to do. Certainly, anyone making six figures a year should be able to do it. Again, if they can’t, or if they don’t want to, there are more than enough capable lawyers waiting in the wings who would be happy to switch places with them.

8. 

   idredit on January 2, 2007 at 11:52 am

   Forgetful Giuilani: (via Huffpost) loses his ’08 battle plans, left behind in a hotel.

   “It’s clearly laid out in 140 pages of printed text, handwriting and spreadsheets:
   The top-secret plan for Rudy Giuliani’s bid for the White House

   [O]n the same page is a list of the candidate’s central problems in bullet-point form: his private sector business; disgraced former aide Bernard Kerik; his third wife, Judith Nathan Giuliani; “social issues,” on which is he is more liberal than most Republicans, and his former wife Donna Hanover.”

   Now, that’s a lotta of baggage for someone to forget…leave behind in a hotel!