TOP STORY
- Iraqis speak of random killings committed by private Blackwater guards.
Farid Walid, who was shot in Nisour Square two years ago during a massacre that killed 17 Iraqis, said: "Everybody here knows of cases where Blackwater guards shot innocent people without a second thought. They are a symbol of the occupation. Nobody will forget. But Iraqis might think at least a little differently of America if the killers are put in prison."
Mr Walid is among several Iraqis behind an attempt to take Blackwater to court in the US, helped by an American lawyer, Susan Burke, and her local legal team.
Umm Sajjad, whose husband was allegedly shot by Blackwater guards, said: "The US forces have come to our neighbourhood many times and they never harmed anybody. It was Blackwater that wanted to harm people."
Meteor Blade’s Green Diary Rescue celebrates Daily Kos eco diarists 6 days a week!
POLITICAL NEWS
- Sen. Warner: Liberals’ Ads vs. Democrats ‘Not at All’ Helpful.
ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: As liberal groups press moderate Democrats with ads in their home states, a key centrist Democrat said today that such efforts are "not at all" helpful in the drive to get a health care reform bill through Congress.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said today on ABCNews.com’s "Top Line" that the energies of groups such as MoveOn.org and Democracy for America would be better directed elsewhere than to be "taking whacks" at Democrats and moderate Republicans.
- Obama as The Joker: Racial Fear's Ugly Face.
The visual change signaled a change in the Joker's inner mechanism. Nicholson's dandified virtuoso of violence was replaced by a darker, more unpredictable and psychotic figure. What had been a caricature became more real and threatening. An urbane mocker of civilized values became simply a deformed product of urban violence.
It is the latter makeup job that has been superimposed over the face of President Obama in an anonymous Los Angeles poster campaign that is now the talk of the blogosphere, the airwaves and the 24/7 hermeneutical speculations of cable television. The image, which appears above the word "socialism," delights and distresses people roughly on the lines of the usual political cleavage, with wide agreement that the as-yet-unrevealed artist certainly intends it to be disrespectful. But there is little consensus about whether it is effective as political messagemaking.
- Teabaggers' Mob Rule Used in Constituent Meetings.
Rep. Brad Miller isn't holding any town hall meetings -- but that's not stopping the Tea Party crowd from protesting him.
As we reported yesterday, Miller is meeting one-on-one with constituents at his Raleigh district office. He wants to avoid the big, organized crowds of hostile people that have plagued other members. This decision was made especially easy after he received a death threat over the health care bill.
As it turns out, however, Miller agreed several days ago to hold a meeting with some conservative activists back home. So now a local Tea Party has been promoting it as a town hall -- which it is not -- and urging people to show up outside.
- Contrary to Steele’s Claim, State GOP Are Actively Promoting Town Hall Mobs.
The Texas GOP’s endorsement of these tactics joins remarks by Sen. John Coryn (R-TX) that the "fear" and "anger" of Americans over health care reform present "real opportunities" for the Republican Party.
The Texas GOP isn’t alone in encouraging the mob protests, though. On a blog post titled "Here’s to Mob Rule," Connecticut GOP chairman Chris Healy yesterday listed off the times and locations of several health care town halls. In the post he wrote that "one perrson’s [sic] mob is another person’s concerned’s citizen’s group" and remarked that if members of Congress "get upset because people are shouting at them, maybe they should listen."
- Unions To Take On Conservative Groups Health Care Town Halls.
The nation's largest federation of labor organizations has promised to directly engage with boisterous conservative protesters at Democratic town halls during the August recess.
In a memo sent out on Thursday, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney outlined the blueprint for how the union conglomerate would step up recess activities on health care reform and other topics pertinent to the labor community. The document makes clear that Obama allies view the town hall forums as ground zero of the health care debate. It also uses the specter of the infamous 2000 recount "Brooks Brothers" protest to rally its members to the administration's side.
- FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Subpoenaed, Set to 'Break' Gag Order Unless DoJ Intercedes.
Unless the Dept. of Justice re-invokes their twice-invoked "state secrets privilege" claim in order to once again gag former FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, her attorneys have notified the department by hand-delivered, sworn letter of declaration [PDF] this week, that she intends to give a deposition.
- Google Gives Hutchison's Campaign Site the Boot For Using Hidden Words.
In the latest search engine showdown, Google blocked the Web site of Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's gubernatorial campaign last week after it found hidden text in the Web site's source code.
To the average visitor, www.standbykay.com looked like any other political site. But those who could pull back the layers of the Web found something else.
According to the Austin American-Statesman, the source code for the site included more than 2,200 hidden phrases, including word combinations with Hutchison's name and Rick Perry, the name of the incumbent. The newspaper said it also included the phrase "rick perry gay."
The URL standbykay.com has been discontinued and directs to texansforkay.com. But when it was still alive, aides for the senator said the phrases were computer-generated based on campaign-related terms that Internet users would likely search for and were intended to help target online banner advertising, the Statesman reported.
- Murdoch says no more free news, will charge fees for online news.
News Corp owns the Times and Sun newspapers in the UK and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the US.
Mr Murdoch said he was "satisfied" that the company could produce "significant revenues from the sale of digital delivery of newspaper content".
... "Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting," he said.
WAR NEWS
- Secret deal to keep Karzai in power.
With less than two weeks to go until national elections, the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, is trying to cut a secret deal with one of his rivals to knock out his leading contender and ensure a decisive victory to avoid the chaos that a tight result might unleash.
Afghanistan's second democratic polls threaten to split the country along sectarian lines. That would risk undermining US and British-led peace efforts which are already under pressure from a resurgent Taliban.
Mr Karzai and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, hail from different ethnic groups and different regions. If neither wins outright in round one on 20 August, officials fear Afghanistan could be engulfed by violence reminiscent of the civil war of the 1990s.
- Cruel and Unusual: Why Are We Doling Out Harsh Justice to Returning War Vets?
Take incarcerated veterans. One might imagine that veterans would get equal, if not preferential, treatment when they come in contact with the criminal justice system. Not so.
Over three decades, surveys done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) have consistently found that veterans get longer sentences than non-veterans -- on average two years longer -- for the same crime.
And that is in spite of the fact that they tend to be better educated, are more likely to have been employed at the time of their arrest and are more likely to be in jail for a first offense -- all of which should be factors in their favor at sentencing.
- Sixty-four years after Hiroshima, opinion of the bombings is mixed.
Around the world today, people are commemorating the 64th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan.
The legacy of that act, which is credited with bringing about a swift end to World War II, is still unsettled: The nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and, three days later, in Nagasaki left a many as 220,000 Japanese dead, but by ending the war (Japan surrendered soon after), they may have spared more casualties.
- Iraqis Freed From Custody Face Few Jobs and Little Hope.
With that, $25 in cash and a new set of civilian clothes, the detainee, Alaq Khleirallah, 27, was back out onto the streets of Baghdad. He is one of roughly 90,000 detainees who have been released from American detention centers in the past six years, a process that will end sometime next year, when the last center is to be transferred to Iraqi control. Almost 10,000 detainees remain in American custody.
They have received a grim welcome. Many return to families crippled by debt from months without a breadwinner. Insurgents see them as potential recruits — or American agents. Old friends, neighbors and even relatives refuse to greet them in public, suspicious of their backgrounds or worried that a few minutes of socializing could mean guilt by association when the authorities, as Iraqi officials often intimate, come to round them back up.
- 5 U.S. Marines Killed in Afghanistan.
Five American Marines died Thursday, four of them in a single strike by a roadside bomb, making it one of the bloodiest single attacks against American service members in recent weeks.
Taking a page from the war in Iraq, Afghan insurgents have been rapidly making homemade bombs their preferred weapon against the soldiers of the American-led coalition. There were 465 bomb attacks against coalition troops in May, more than twice the number from the same month the year before.
- White House has dual strategy to defeat terrorism.
The Obama administration has mapped out a dual approach to defeating terrorism, fusing military strikes against insurgents with a commitment to pump economic development, political aid and training into countries that are considered safe havens for militant groups.
WORLD NEWS
- Clinton threatens Eritrea action, vows US Support for Somalia.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned that the US will "take action" against Eritrea if it does not stop supporting militants in Somalia.
She said after talks with Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, that Eritrea's actions were "unacceptable".
She also said the US would expand support for Somalia's unity government.
- TV blackout and boycott mar Ahmadinejad's swearing-in.
The man who is now formally Iran's President for the next four years cut an isolated figure as he took his oath of office yesterday. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in for a second term at a ceremony boycotted by scores of parliamentarians, leading clerics and other important figures who would normally have been expected to attend.
Out on the streets demonstrators, many in black T-shirts to symbolise mourning, or wearing green, the colour of the campaign run by defeated opposition challenger Mirhossein Mousavi, marked what ought to have been a celebratory occasion by chanting "Death to the Dictator". Security forces had been deployed in massive numbers around the Iranian parliament where the swearing-in was taking place, as well as at the entrances to a number of key underground train stations and overpowered protesters with batons, tear gas and pepper spray.
- Clinton Says U.S. Supports International Criminal Court.
At the town hall, the secretary was asked by a student how the United States could support having the International Criminal Court intervene in Kenya's problems when the U.S. government had not subjected itself to the court's procedures.
Clinton said it was "a great regret but it is a fact" that the U.S. government was not a member of the court. "But we have supported the court and continue to do so."
- China Executes 2 for Defrauding Investors.
China executed two businessmen for defrauding hundreds of investors out of more than $127 million, calling the scam a serious blow to social stability, state media said Thursday.
China puts to death more people than any other country, although last month a high official for the Supreme People's Court, which reviews every death sentence, said the punishment should be used more sparingly.
Though usually reserved for violent crimes, death sentences are also applied for nonviolent offenses that involve large sums of money or are seen to threaten social order.
NATIONAL NEWS
- Death in the Recession: More Bodies Left Unburied.
Have economic times gotten so bad that some of the dead are going unburied? Several large counties across the country are experiencing unprecedented increases in the number of unclaimed deceased — not only because the dead people could not be identified, were indigent or were estranged from their family, but also apparently because more people simply cannot afford to bury or cremate their loved ones. The phenomenon has increased costs for local governments, which have to dispose of the bodies.
- US food stamp list tops 34 million for first time.
For the first time, more than 34 million Americans received food stamps, which help poor people buy groceries, government figures said on Thursday, a sign of the longest and one of the deepest recessions since the Great Depression Enrollment surged by 2 percent to reach a record 34.4 million people, or one in nine Americans, in May, the latest month for which figures are available.
It was the sixth month in a row that enrollment set a record.
- White House Affirms Deal on Drug Cost.
Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.
Drug industry lobbyists reacted with alarm this week to a House health care overhaul measure that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices and demand additional rebates from drug manufacturers.
In response, the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul. The Obama administration had never spelled out the details of the agreement.
See also, Deal With Pharma Puts White House, Congressional Dems at Odds.
- Lawsuits Claiming Abuse Mount for Gov’t Mortgage Partners.
The mortgage companies that the administration is relying on to help stop foreclosures have records of preying on homeowners, according to an investigation by the Associated Press. At least 30 of the 38 mortgage servicers participating in the federal loan modification program have been sued for harassing homeowners, charging unwarranted fees or charging for insurance policies that homeowners did not need, the AP found.
...But these legal challenges extend beyond bad customer service into accusations of "abuse," including cases against at least 14 servicers for previously misleading customers about loan modifications, according to the AP. At least three companies have been sued hundreds of times after settling federal predatory collections cases.
- Dust exposure after 9/11 linked to high asthma rates.
About 1 in 7, or 13.5 percent of adults who encountered intense dust clouds after the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11 were later found to have asthma, compared with just 8.4 percent who had no dust cloud exposure, researchers in Atlanta and New York City reported on Tuesday.
Likewise, among various groups of people connected to the Twin Tower collapse, rescue and recovery workers were more likely to have a diagnosis of asthma (12.2 percent) than passers-by (8.4 percent).
- Weekly jobless claims drop more than expected.
The number of newly laid-off workers seeking unemployment benefits fell last week, the government said Thursday, a sign that the job market is making gradual improvement.
Job losses are likely to slow in coming months, economists said, a trend that could be reflected in the government's July unemployment report to be released Friday.
...Still, the number of people continuing to claim benefits rose by 69,000 to 6.3 million, after having dropped for three straight weeks — evidence that job openings remain scarce and the unemployed are having difficulty finding new work. The figures for continuing jobless claims lag behind those for initial claims by a week.
- Can You Ask For Your Pay Cut Back? Maybe. What you need to know to recover your pre-recession salary.
Last winter, at the apex of the current recession, many workers dodged large-scale layoffs only to be hit by mandatory salary reductions. Now that signs of a recovery are emerging, they're wondering if they can ask for their original salaries to be reinstated.
The answer isn't simple. It depends on several factors, including the state of your industry, company and whether you've been a model employee throughout the recession. And even if all those factors are in your favor, asking for more money during what are still very tough economic times could be a bad move.
- No More Perks: Coffee Shops Pull the Plug on Laptop Users.
Amid the economic downturn, there are fewer places in New York to plug in computers. As idle workers fill coffee-shop tables -- nursing a single cup, if that, and surfing the Web for hours -- and as shop owners struggle to stay in business, a decade-old love affair between coffee shops and laptop-wielding customers is fading. In some places, customers just get cold looks, but in a growing number of small coffee shops, firm restrictions on laptop use have been imposed and electric outlets have been locked. The laptop backlash may predate the recession, but the recession clearly has accelerated it.
ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS
Climate Change
- Report: Calif. should gird for heat, rising sea: Golden State urged to adapt its development, lifestyle to changing climate.
Even if the world is successful in cutting carbon emissions in the future, California needs to start preparing for rising sea levels, hotter weather and other effects of climate change, a new state report recommends.
It encourages local communities to rethink future development in low-lying coastal areas, reinforce levees that protect flood-prone areas and conserve already strapped water supplies.
- Cloud ships on course to beat climate change, says Copenhagen study.
One relatively cheap solution, however, is gaining favour among many different groups and is endorsed today by an independent study that compares the costs and benefits of all the main ideas. A wind-powered fleet of 1,900 ships would criss-cross the oceans, sucking up sea water and spraying it from the top of tall funnels to create vast white clouds.
These clouds would reflect a tiny proportion, between 1 and 2 per cent, of the sunlight that would otherwise warm the ocean. This would be enough to cancel out the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide emissions. The ships would be unmanned and directed by satellite to locations with the best conditions for increasing cloud cover. They would mainly operate in the Pacific, far enough from land to avoid interfering with rainfall.
- Quick climate changes fixes come with huge dangers, warn scientists.
Plans to reduce global warming by blasting jets of water into the atmosphere or placing mirrors in space could have devastating consequences, two climate scientists warn today.
They say that while such ideas may be highly effective, they could lead to severe droughts.
- High-speed rail in the United States: Back on track after 50 years of neglect.
With an initial infusion of $8bn, set aside under the spring's economic stimulus plan, the Obama administration is embarking on the most ambitious expansion of passenger rail in 50 years, with the construction or upgrade of up to 10 routes from California through the midwest to Florida.
Apart from California, none of the other routes envisaged would meet international standards for high-speed trains. But rail advocates say Obama has still taken an important first step towards the transformation of US rail.
- GM to launch Buick plug-in hybrid crossover in 2011.
The yet-to-be named Buick SUV will launch in late 2010 with a direct-injected gasoline engine and then be followed in 2011 with a plug-in hybrid model, the company said.
The new vehicle will depend upon new battery technology being developed for the Chevrolet Volt, an electric drive car slated for late next year. Potentially, the SUV has the ability to get twice the fuel economy of comparably sized vehicles, the company said.
Water & Natural Resources
- The world's rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan.
A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.
The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.
- Arctic Ocean may be polluted soup by 2070.
WITHIN 60 years the Arctic Ocean could be a stagnant, polluted soup. Without drastic cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, the Transpolar Drift, one of the Arctic's most powerful currents and a key disperser of pollutants, is likely to disappear because of global warming.
...Their model confirmed that most pollutants, including pesticide, petroleum residue and nuclear fallout, are currently washed out into the north Atlantic by the Transpolar Drift. But perhaps not for much longer.
- Sustainable Agriculture: Perennial Plants Produce More; Landscape Diversity Creates Habitat For Pest Enemies.
Advances in ecology increasingly reveal that conventional agricultural practices have detrimental effects on the landscape ecology, creating problems for long-term sustainability of crops. In a series of sessions at the Ecological Society of America's Annual Meeting, ecologists will present their ideas on how our agricultural practices can take lessons from natural environments.
- Federal court bans new roads in national forests. (h/t Magnifico)
A federal appeals court Wednesday reinstated a rule created in the final days of the Clinton administration that banned logging, mining and new roads on nearly 40 million acres of national forest land.
The court case began after President George W. Bush repealed the Clinton rule and issued his own roadless rule, giving states discretion to ban development in affected national forest land.
The 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, sided with several Western states and environmental groups that said the Bush rule violated the National Environmental Policy and Endangered Species acts.
Wildlife & Endangered Species
- A bloody battle is raging in Eastern Congo over the illegal charcoal trade that is killing the region's great apes.
For the past week a remarkable battle has been raging in the mountain forests of Eastern Congo. Park rangers entrusted with protecting some of the world's most endangered gorillas have launched an offensive against the rebel armies in the area and the charcoal industry that helps to support them.
Specially trained wildlife officers, backed by UN troops, have attacked and destroyed hundreds of illegal charcoal kilns deep in the forests of Virunga National Park, in a bid to disrupt the environmentally devastating industry.
The $30m (£17.7m) trade helps fund the myriad armed groups who destabilise this region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and its perpetrators are unlikely to accept the counterattack.
- African Elephant 'Slaughter' fear over poaching rise.
The number of African elephants killed illegally for their ivory is rising steeply.
One team of scientists argues that, today, about 38,000 elephants across sub-Saharan Africa are dying annually at the hands of poachers to feed the growing demand for ivory carvings and trinkets in eastern Asia.
If that poaching rate is correct and is sustained, the elephant would become extinct across most of sub-Saharan Africa in fifteen years.
Health Impacts
- How to Get Cancer: Move to the United States.
The risk of cancer for Hispanics living in Florida is 40 percent higher than for those who live in their native countries, a puzzling new study finds.
The finding holds even after researchers corrected for the increase detection rates in the United States. And access to health care did not make things better.
"This suggests that changes in their environment and lifestyles make them more prone to develop cancer," said Dr. Paulo S. Pinheiro, a researcher in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
TORTURE AND PROSECUTION NEWS
- Jurors Don't Discount Evidence Obtained From Rough Treatment.
An interesting side note to the debate about how to try roughed-up detainees: new research from psychologists and criminologists suggests that jurors tend not to discount evidence obtained from rough interrogations even though there's plenty of evidence to suggest that those claims aren't reliable. Writing in Psychology, Crime & Law, 2009, the authors conclude that jurors' expert bias -- their penchant to view expert testimony as more reliable -- overrides their perceptions and evaluations of the situation under which an interrogation was conducted. Indeed, even when given hints that confessions are false, jurors tend to put some weight in them. This finding, which replicates others in the field, has some important implications for any federal trials of terrorist suspects. Jurors tend to put themselves in the shoes of people under duress and project upon them their own principles, such as -- if they were innocent, they'd never give in to torture.
- Wife of ‘Disappeared’ Spanish Citizen Appeals to United Nations.
Charging that the U.S. government was complicit in the forced disappearance of an influential Muslim scholar four years ago, human rights groups in the U.S., the U.K., and Switzerland have asked the U.N. to investigate.
In a letter to the U.N., the organizations say Mustafa Setmariam Nassar, a Spanish citizen, was arrested by Pakistani officials and handed over to U.S. officials in October 2005 and has not been heard from since.
- ACLU Releases Video Featuring Prominent Figures Calling For Accountability For Torture.
"The chilling and clinical nature of these memos really sinks in when you hear them read aloud," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. "These memos shamefully contorted the law to justify the crime of torture, and now it's time for those responsible for this dark episode in our history to be held accountable to the American people."
- Kansas senators threaten action over moving Guantanamo detainees to Leavenworth.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who has threatened to shut down the Senate if President Obama tries to send Guantanamo Bay detainees to Leavenworth, has placed "holds" on Obama appointees.
The senators said the holds will remain in place "until they receive answers from the White House regarding recent press reports that decisions have been made to locate Guantanamo Bay detainees in Leavenworth, Kansas, or Standish, Michigan."