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Morning headlines brought to you by Carolyn Kay MakeThemAccountable.com Top StoryCheney calls Iran an obstacle to peace
LANDSDOWNE, Virginia (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney, taking a tough line toward Iran, described the country's government on Sunday as a "growing obstacle to peace in the Middle East." Cheney, in a speech to a think tank, also accused Tehran of practicing "delay and deception" regarding its nuclear program and warned of consequences if it did not comply with the West's demands that it halt sensitive nuclear work. Left Wing Conspiracy
The WorldTurkey bombards northern Iraq after ambush
The Turkish army stepped up its bombardment of the Iraqi side of the border after the rebels ambushed a military unit inside Turkey, hitting 11 different areas close to towns and villages, Kurdish officials said. In a separate incident in south-eastern Turkey, one person died and 17 were injured when their minibus was hit by a roadside bomb allegedly placed by the PKK (Kurdistan Workers party).
US: Raid of Baghdad's Sadr City kills 49
BAGHDAD - U.S. forces backed by airstrikes raided Sadr City, Baghdad's main Shiite district, killing 49 militants on Sunday as they targeted a militia leader accused in high-profile kidnappings, the military said. Iraqi officials said women and children were among the dead.
SAS raiders enter Iran to kill gunrunners
BRITISH special forces have crossed into Iran several times in recent months as part of a secret border war against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Al-Quds special forces, defence sources have disclosed. There have been at least half a dozen intense firefights between the SAS and arms smugglers, a mixture of Iranians and Shi’ite militiamen.
Israel: Militants planned to kill Olmert
JERUSALEM - Palestinian militants plotted to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when he traveled to the West Bank in August to meet with the Palestinian president, Israeli officials said Sunday.
China vice president steps down
BEIJING - China's politically powerful vice president stepped down Sunday amid a reshuffling of the Communist Party leadership, removing from office a potential challenger to President Hu Jintao's unrivaled authority.
Australian PM closing gap in election race: polls
SYDNEY (AFP) - Prime Minister John Howard is closing the gap on the opposition in Australia's election battle after pledging multi-billion dollar tax cuts, two opinion polls showed Friday.
Latin American women rise in nations long dominated by men
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Defying Latin America’s longtime reputation as a bastion of machismo, women in South America are winning political power at an unprecedented rate and taking top positions in higher education and even, albeit more slowly, in business… South American women also are leading important social movements and are earning, studying and speaking out more than ever. For the first time, women are forcing their traditionally male-dominated societies to confront such issues as domestic violence and reproductive health.
Iraq whistleblower Dr Kelly WAS murdered to silence him, says MP
Weapons expert Dr David Kelly was assassinated, an MP claim(ed Saturday). Campaigning politician Norman Baker believes Dr Kelly, who exposed the Government's "sexed-up" Iraq dossier, was killed to stop him making further revelations about the lies that took Britain to war. He says the murderers may have been anti-Saddam Iraqis, and suggests the crime was covered up by elements within the British establishment to prevent a diplomatic crisis.
Opposition party wins Poland election
WARSAW, Poland - A pro-business opposition party that wants Poland's troops out of Iraq ousted Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's government in parliamentary elections Sunday, as Poles opted for leadership offering a more cooperative approach to the European Union.
Ethiopian rebels claim to have killed 140 government troops
NAIROBI (AFP) - Ethiopian rebels on Sunday claimed they had killed at least 140 government troops in an attack in the Ogaden region, where the army is carrying out a crackdown. The NationFBI working to bolster Al Qaeda cases
WASHINGTON -- The FBI is quietly reconstructing the cases against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and 14 other accused Al Qaeda leaders being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, spurred in part by U.S. concerns that years of CIA interrogation have yielded evidence that is inadmissible or too controversial to present at their upcoming war crimes tribunals, government officials familiar with the probes said. The process is an embarrassment for the Bush administration, which for years held the men incommunicado overseas and allowed the CIA to use coercive means to extract information from them that would not be admissible in a U.S. court of law -- and might not be allowed in their military commissions.
And why are they working so hard to find this evidence? See below.—Caro
Ex-Prosecutor Alleges Pentagon Plays Politics
Politically motivated officials at the Pentagon have pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections, the former lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay said last night, adding that the pressure played a part in his decision to resign earlier this month. Senior defense officials discussed in a September 2006 meeting the "strategic political value" of putting some prominent detainees on trial, said Air Force Col. Morris Davis. He said that he felt pressure to pursue cases that were deemed "sexy" over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go.
Blackwater confiscated Iraqi planes.
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has revealed that “Blackwater USA tried to take at least two Iraqi military aircraft out of Iraq two years ago and refused to give the planes back when Iraqi officials sought to reclaim them.” Waxman (Friday) wrote to Blackwater CEO Erik Prince and requested that he “provide all documents related to the attempted shipment and to explain where the aircraft are now.” October 19, 2007
Blackwater to be phased out of guarding U.S. diplomats in Iraq
WASHINGTON — Troubled military contractor Blackwater USA is likely to be eased out of its role of guarding U.S. diplomats in Iraq in the aftermath of a shooting last month that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, U.S. officials said Friday.
"Love thy enemy" -- U.S. soldier gets discharge
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier who said his Christian beliefs compelled him to love his enemies, not kill them, has been granted conscientious objector status and honorably discharged, a civil liberties group said on Tuesday… "In following Jesus' example, I could not have fired my weapon at another human being, even if he were shooting at me," said (Capt. Peter) Brown, who plans to continue seminary classes he began by correspondence while in Iraq.
Groups Ask Senate To Remove Earmark Promoting Creationism From Spending Bill
WASHINGTON - October 17 - More than 30 organizations have joined forces to urge the U.S. Senate to remove a provision from an appropriations bill that directs tax money to a Louisiana group that promotes creationism. U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) … wants to designate $100,000 to the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) “to develop a plan to promote better science education.”.. (T)he groups point out that the LFF is a creationist organization with clear religious ties. Awarding tax money to this organization, they argue, presents serious church-state problems.
Gonzales could be prosecuted, McKay says
The U.S. Inspector General may recommend criminal prosecution of departed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the conclusion of an investigation, possibly as early as next month, the fired former U.S. attorney for Western Washington told a Spokane audience Friday. His refusal to open a federal criminal investigation into voter fraud allegations in Gov. Chris Gregoire’s razor-thin victory over Republican challenger Dino Rossi in 2004 may be the reason he was fired, John McKay told the Federal Bar Association.
So few people in this administration have been held accountable for their misdeeds that I can’t help but doubt whether Gonzales will be.—Caro
Governor-elect tackles Louisiana's image
KENNER, La. - Changing Louisiana's reputation for corruption would do more than just make over its image, Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal said Sunday: It could help the state attract businesses and win federal aid for hurricane recovery.
Louisianians are very savvy about corruption, having dealt with it forever. They know that the only way to get their rebuilding money is to elect a Republican governor.—Caro
Thomas uses private lawyers on opponents
Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money on private lawyers to pursue cases against people and organizations he and Sheriff Joe Arpaio politically oppose.
It’s the Republican way.—Caro
Oral Roberts President Exits Amid Scandal
(CBS/AP) Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts asked the school's board of regents for a leave of absence Wednesday amid accusations of lavish spending at donors' expense and illegal involvement in a political campaign. The allegations have rocked the Bible Belt university, known for its 60-foot bronze statue of praying hands, reports CBS News affiliate KOTV. Roberts, 58, said he would continue his role as chairman and CEO of Oral Roberts Ministries. MediaPermanent link to MTA daily media news
Carr’s dreams (by Jeff Jarvis)
Curmudgeonly contrarian Nick Carr picks his head up and comes to the defense of TimeSelect — after it is dead and buried — but misses some obvious economic realities. Carr quotes (an argument that) the Post should have tried (as the Times did) to get money out of its online audience while the getting was good. But this ignores the essential economic fact here that newspapers are no longer monopolies… Carr et al also ignore the economic reality of Google and the link becoming the new means of media distribution. If … you are hidden, your competitors will grab that distribution and marketshare from you.
Is the advertising model is the only way to make money on the internet? If so, that fact should be of extreme concern to progressives. Major advertisers fund content ranging from the most bland and centrist to the most right-wing. No room for progressives in that universe. Americans pay willingly for cable TV, but the difference from TimeSelect is that cable subscribers get lots of channels for one price and one payment. If the major news outlets had banded together to charge one subscription fee for all of them, who knows what might have happened? The linking problem could be at least partially solved by allowing access to single articles without a subscription, but there must be other solutions, too. Progressives could have enormous power over media content if we banded together to form a subscription service. We could insist on sane, fair, honest coverage of the issues, and relegate the crazies to the back pages of the most right-wing publications and websites.—Caro
Why Monks Are So Darn Happy (by Meredith F. Small, an anthropologist at Cornell University)
Humans, like all animals, are essentially selfish beings… On the other hand, His Holiness (the Dalai Lama) maintains that we are also naturally armed with compassion for others, and this is true. Humans express both sympathy and empathy, emotions that often move us to help those in need, even strangers… And that's why people are drawn to the Dalai Lama and why it is such a gift that monks roam my town. They are reminders that even if we have certain natural tendencies, it doesn’t mean we have to respond only to those tendencies. We could, in fact, have a better human nature if we just worked at it.
Not only that, we could be healthier and safer. This information could be used to counter the greed-is-good folks, if progressives ever woke up and decided to mount a coordinated campaign. I’d write a book about it, if I could find a publisher.—Caro
Local blog Baristanet plows into book reviews (by Stephen Baker at Blogspotting)
What a strange thing to see a book review by Jay McInerney in my local Montclair blog, Baristanet. Debbie Galant explains that this is an effort by review-starved publishers, a local bookstore, and a local blog… Eventually, she hopes these reviews will spread to thousands of local blogs. Many of them, presumably, will tie into promotions at local book stores. This is a brick-by-brick attempt to reinvent the book publishing monolith.
And book publishing definitely needs to be re-invented. The industry will only publish what they think will be blockbusters, not information that’s important for oh, say, democracy. Also, this effort coincides with the dropping of book review sections by many newspapers.—Caro
Kristol: Iran Is ‘The Only Real Threat’ To Success In Iraq
Today, on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol declared that the U.S. was close to victory in the Iraq war, arguing that the “only” concern left for the U.S is dealing with alleged Iranian involvement in Iraq: “We’re winning in Iraq. That is the absolute crucial precondition to having success in the broader fight against Islamic jihadism. … And I think we are going to have to be serious about dealing with both their intervention in Iraq — which is now the only real threat, I think, incidentally, to relative success in Iraq — and their nuclear program.”
Gosh, Kristol sounds an awful lot like Dick Cheney on Iran (Cheney calls Iran an obstacle to peace). Isn’t that odd? Click through to watch the video.—Caro
US intelligence does not show Syrian nuclear weapons program, officials say (by Larisa Alexandrovna)
Allegations that a Syrian envoy admitted during a United Nations meeting Oct. 17 that an Israeli air strike hit a nuclear facility in September are inaccurate (a mistranslation, according to the United Nations) and have raised the ire of some in the US intelligence community, who see the Vice President’s hand as allegedly being behind the disinformation… Recent news articles … continue to make allegations and suggest that a nuclear weapons facility was hit -- something that the Syrian government has denied, the Israeli government has not officially confirmed and US intelligence does not show.
See below for an example.—Caro
US official: Israel had mole inside Syrian site
Israel obtained detailed photographs from inside an alleged Syrian nuclear facility prior to carrying out an air strike on September 6, ABC News reported over the weekend. An unnamed senior source in the US told the news network that the Mossad had discovered in the summer that Syria was constructing a nuclear facility and proceeded to either place a mole inside the plant or convince one of the workers to supply Israel with intelligence.
How can we ever believe anything attributed to an unnamed source, senior or otherwise, in the Bush administration?—Caro
What Health Care Crisis? Most People Are Healthy (by Dean Baker)
I do my best to just ignore Ben Stein's columns in the Sunday NYT, but for some reason I looked at the latest one. Guess what -- most mortgages are not in default, most people who want jobs have them!!! I guess times have never been better. Stein is again noting that the likely cost of defaults in the subprime market are relatively small, he therefore concludes that we have nothing to worry about. What Stein failed to notice is that the reason defaults in the subprime market are soaring is that house prices are falling, and in many former bubble markets, like San Diego, Las Vegas, Tampa, Phoenix and Miami, they are falling at double-digit rates. We may see as much as $8 trillion in housing bubble wealth disappear before the incredible excess supply of housing dissipates.
Nevertheless, Stein pointed out something important at the end of the column. See below.—Caro
The Gloomsayers Should Look Up (by Ben Stein)
(T)he vicious, cruel truth (about the lending crisis) is that some very greedy, selfish and, yes, stupid men made fortunes on deals that were economically and/or ethically wrong… Their great-grandchildren will be rich from their deeds and misdeeds. As far as I can tell, they are not being called to account in any major way… And we stockholders and taxpayers foot the bill, of course. But even this is not the worst part: there are still lots of people who can say with a straight face that the world of finance is overregulated, that we should trust the power players to do the right thing, that if we put finance under a microscope, or allow financial miscreants to be sued for misconduct, America will be harmed… That’s the really sad part.
CNN: Republicans Admitted To Us That Their Latest Hit On Hillary Is Bogus -- But We'll Air It Anyway! (by Greg Sargent)
In a CNN report about the Republicans' latest criticism of Hillary, the reporter came right out and said that Republicans had privately told her that their attack on her is purely political. But the reporter nonetheless cheerfully aired those very same attacks, anyway… The GOP is faulting Hillary over an earmark she inserted into a health spending bill that would grant $1,000,000 to a museum in upstate New York devoted to preserving memories of Woodstock. Republicans -- I'm really not making this up -- are using this to link Hillary to the dope-smoking hippies of the counter-cultural 1960s.
Listen up, Tucker (by Jamison Foser)
(W)hat makes the (October 16 edition of MSNBC's) Tucker segment noteworthy is not that it featured false, misleading, and oversimplified claims about a prominent progressive -- that happens all the time on cable news. What really makes it noteworthy is that at the end of the segment -- a segment in which three journalists had discussed at length an allegation against Hillary Clinton that appeared, based on a single anonymous source describing a 14-year-old event, in a factually flawed book that at least two of the three had not read -- Carlson and his guests agreed that the media is giving Clinton a pass on the allegation.
And Speaking Of Paul Krugman (by tristero at Hullabaloo)
How outrageous for (Paul) Krugman to insinuate that (Iain) Murray was saying Gore was a friend of terrorists? It's ridiculous, merely because Murray wrote that Gore should share his Nobel Prize with that "well-known peace campaigner Osama bin Laden:" who implicitly endorsed Gore's stance - and that of the Nobel committee - in his September rant from the cave. Why would anyone think that Murray was associating Gore with bin Laden for any other reason but pure, clean, joking around? Technology & ScienceVerizon's Crocodile Tears Mask a Threat to Democracy (by Timothy Karr at Media Citizen)
You may have missed it in the fine print of your agreement. Phone companies like Verizon and AT&T reserve the right to block your free speech and terminate your cell phone services "without prior notice and for any reason or no reason." That's chilling enough, but here's the shocker. There are no laws that prevent these giant companies from censoring your speech on their networks. That's right -- free speech ends at your cell phone.
WiMax gets nod as wireless standard
GENEVA - The broadband technology WiMax has been added to a global standard for mobile devices, boosting its chances of becoming the preferred system for the next generation of high-speed wireless Internet access.
Skype to sell first cell phone through 3: source
NEW YORK (Reuters) - EBay Inc's Skype is expected to announce a deal soon with wireless service provider 3 to sell the Internet telephony company's first mobile phone, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.
25 Secrets of Mona Lisa Revealed
New images uncover 25 secrets about the Mona Lisa, including proof that Leonardo da Vinci gave her eyebrows, solving a long-held mystery.
Fall Time Change Could Be Boon for Sleep
Take advantage of that extra hour of snooze-time, experts say
U.S. Schools Getting Better at Boosting Kids' Health
But more is needed to improve nutrition and physical activity, report says
Torture Has a Long History ... of Not Working
From the dingy dungeons of the Dark Ages to today's shadowy holding facilities, the use of torture as an interrogation tactic has evolved little and possibly yielded even less, in terms of intelligence… But aside from the moral and legal implications, does torture ever produce reliable intelligence?... As a rule, torture is not an effective method of extracting information from prisoners, most experts agree.
Alaskan tribes to get ancient remains
Human remains estimated to be more than 10,000 years old will be returned to southeast Alaska Tlingit tribes 11 years after they were found in a cave in the Tongass National Forest.
Soyuz craft lands short of destination
ARKALYK, Kazakhstan - A technical glitch sent a Soyuz spacecraft on a wild ride home Sunday, forcing Malaysia's first space traveler and two Russian cosmonauts to endure eight times the force of gravity before their capsule landed safely. EnvironmentNASA: Ozone Hole Shrinks Back to Average Size
Nearly 80 percent of the ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere are man-made. But those compounds stay in the atmosphere 40 to 100 years and the total amount of chlorine compounds in the air is only down 3.1 percent since 2001… Warmer weather and more storms this year are the reason the hole is slightly smaller, (NASA atmospheric scientist Paul ) Newman said.
Shoot! I thought there was maybe SOMETHING we could point to as progress.—Caro
Rising seas threaten 21 mega-cities
BANGKOK, Thailand - Cities around the world are facing the danger of rising seas and other disasters related to climate change.
Oceans are 'soaking up less CO2'
University of East Anglia researchers gauged CO2 absorption through more than 90,000 measurements from merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments. Results of their 10-year study in the North Atlantic show CO2 uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005. Scientists believe global warming might get worse if the oceans soak up less of the greenhouse gas.
CNN takes stock of a 'Planet in Peril'
NEW YORK - It's a tough world, all right. Too bad it's not tougher. Right now Earth is looking pretty fragile as it suffers from increasing human punishment.
Poll shows Americans getting more concerned about global warming
(CNN) -- Most Americans blame emissions from cars and industrial plants as the primary cause of global warming and believe the United States should reduce levels even if other countries don't, a survey shows. Fifty-six percent of poll respondents said the phenomenon of global warming has been proven, and can be largely blamed on human endeavors, such as power plants and factories.
Hitting the solar highway (video)
Oct. 21 - Solar cars from around the world race into the Australian outback at the start of the World Solar Challenge. For more headlines, visit MakeThemAccountable.com.
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