Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Monday, October 19, 2009.
OND's Blogroll: Meteor Blades's Green Diary Rescue & Open Thread
(Programming Note: jlms qkw will return next Monday.)
- Take That, Dick Cheney!
A footnote, but nevertheless some very nice and overlooked Icing On The Cake for Sen. Al Franken.
It turns out that Sen. Franken's successful bill to stop military contractor abuses, (inspired by Jamie Leigh Jones, who was gang-raped by her co-workers and held hostage) is also a big in-your-face to none other than Dick Cheney. Mother Jones has the story.(--BL)
EARTH & ENVIRONMENT
- Tribe teams with Google to make stand in Amazon
James Temple, San Francisco Chronicle
The chief of an endangered Amazon tribe will unveil today the product of an unusual partnership with Google Inc. that pairs high tech with indigenous knowledge in an effort to rescue ancient rain forests and a dying culture.
Almir Surui, speaking at the 20th annual Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, plans to showcase Google Earth images years in the making that throw into sharp relief the rapid encroachment of illegal mining and logging onto his people's 600,000-acre reserve.
The data-rich maps include layers of videos, pictures, text and historical markers gathered by tribe members. It promises to underscore the importance of the land and propel the Surui people's efforts to become self-sufficient
Google Earth tour of the Surui territory and history ... includes pictures and video of the tribe's first contact with outsiders, shows the contraction of their lands in the ensuing years, and outlines the tribe's efforts to ensure their survival ... will become available within the next few days at earth.google.com/outreach.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/...
- Haven't heard of Bioneers? boatsie can help, easy as 1 2 3:
- bioneering bioneers
- liveblog: bioneers: Jack Hildary
- BrokenRoots: Sunday Homelessness & "2 degrees of separation"
- Brazilian Meatpackers Agree on Amazon Deforestation Moratorium
By Steve Baragona, VOA, DC, 19 October 2009
In a move expected to slow the rate of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, Brazil's three largest meat processors have signed on to a moratorium on purchasing cattle from recently logged land.
Greenpeace report links consumer goods sold in U.S. to deforestation
The (moratorium) follows a report by the environmental group Greenpeace that linked products sold by Nike, Timberland and other major brands in the U.S. and Europe to Amazon deforestation through the Brazilian meat processors. The companies buying meat and leather put pressure on the meat processors to agree to the moratorium, says Lindsey Allen of Greenpeace
- Maldivian President, Cabinet Promote Climate Change (BBC)
(Photo Credit: AFP via BBC)
We are trying to send a message to the world about what is happening and what would happen to the Maldives if climate change isn't checked. If the Maldives is not saved, today we do not feel there is much chance for the rest of the world.
- Mohamed Nasheed
President of the Maldives
Billed as the world's first underwater cabinet meeting, President Mohamed Nasheed and 11 ministers, decked in scuba gear, held a meeting 4m (13ft) underwater.
While officials said the event itself was light-hearted, the idea is to focus on the plight of the Maldives, where rising sea levels threaten to make the nation uninhabitable by the end of the century.
Mr Nasheed, the country's first democratically elected president, has become an important global voice for climate change since he won in polls last October.
...
The 1192-island chain is at severe threat from rising sea levels, with 80% of its islands less than a metre above sea level.
- Here's some back-story behind the publicity stunt, in two (older) articles that offer the stark choice facing Maldivians:
... and two recent diarys:
THE ECONOMY
- Economic Espionage Trial Begins Tuesday
Silicon Valley espionage case only second of kind in nation to go to trial
By Howard Mintz
mercurynews.com
By the time the FBI came knocking on their doors in July 2003, engineers Lan Lee and Yuefei Ge were already caught in the cross hairs of a government investigation into whether they were stealing technology from their Silicon Valley employers to establish a rival company backed by China.
More than six years later, the story of their suspected theft of superfast computer chip plans is about to emerge from the shadows. In the second trial of its kind in the nation, the engineers are set to face economic espionage charges in federal court in San Jose. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday.
Lee, 44, and Ge, 36, are among just a handful of defendants to face federal charges under a section of the 13-year-old Economic Espionage Act, designed to prevent the illegal transfer of technology to foreign governments. While a number of defendants have pleaded guilty and been sentenced, only one other has gone to trial — a former Boeing Co. and Rockwell International engineer convicted this summer in Santa Ana federal court for passing critical information on the space program to China.
- Popular during the Great Depression, layaway plans wage comeback
NEW YORK—Toys R Us Inc. is introducing a layaway program for larger-ticket items such as bikes and cribs ahead of the holiday season, the company said Monday.
The largest U.S. toy retailer said the program is effective immediately in stores nationwide. Customers can put a variety of items on hold and make a series of payments until the item is paid in full.
Layaway programs are financing agreements in which retailers—without charging interest—hold merchandise for customers until they have finished paying in installments.
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Head of L.A.'s largest city pension agency resigns
By David Zahniser, Los Angeles Times
October 19, 2009
The president of Los Angeles' largest employee retirement system has resigned, becoming the sixth pension appointee of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to quit over the last six months.
Eric Holoman stepped down last week from the Los Angeles City Employees' Retirement System board after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law placing new limits on private financial work performed by publicly appointed pension board members.
Holoman is president of Magic Johnson Enterprises.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS & INTERNATIONAL NEWS
- Do we have this kind of coverage in the US? --BL
Cette Amérique qui fait peur
La violence des attaques lancées par l’extrême droite contre Barack Obama a pris une dimension hallucinante. Ces visages agressifs, ces poings menaçants, ces pancartes brandies comme des pics rappellent les sermons incendiaires du prêtre nationalcatholique et antisémite Charles Coughlin contre le président Roosevelt à la fin des années 30, la chasse haineuse aux militants antiracistes lors des « chevauchées de la liberté » dans le Sud profond des années 50, les attaques hystériques contre John et Robert Kennedy, lorsque ceux-ci appuyaient, aux côtés de Martin Luther King, les droits civiques des Noirs.
A l’image de Léon Degrelle qui prétendait représenter le « pays réel » ou de l’Action française hurlant contre le « juif Léon Blum », l’extrême droite américaine se présente comme la « vraie Nation » et disqualifie ses adversaires comme des envahisseurs et des infiltrés. Se déclarant « pure laine », blanche et chrétienne, elle se drape dans la bannière nationale et excommunie les différents et les déviants. Et elle est d’autant plus déchaînée que ces « différents et ces déviants » ont été élus démocratiquement à la tête de l’Etat.
Certes, les Etats-Unis ont une culture politique qui permet, au nom du Premier amendement de la Constitution, les outrances verbales et les appels à la haine. Mais l’ampleur des attaques dont Barack Obama est la cible ne relève plus du charivari démocratique, mais bien de l’appel au meurtre.
- Jean-Paul Marthoz
Journaliste et essayiste
LeSoir.Be (Belgium)
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The America That Scares
The violence of the attacks thrown by the extreme right at Barack Obama has assumed a hallucinatory dimension. These harsh faces, those threatening fists, those brandished placards recall the incendiary sermons of the national Catholic and anti-Semitic priest Charles Coughlin against President Roosevelt at the end of the 1930s, the heinous hunting of racists by some "riders of liberty" in the deep South in the 1950s, the hysterical attacks against John and Robert Kennedy and those who stood behind Martin Luther King for the civil rights of blacks.
In the image of Léon Degrelle, who pretended to represent the "real country" and French Action by crying out against the "Jew Léon Blum," the American far right presents itself as the "Real America," and diminishes its opponents as invaders or infiltrators. Declaring itself "pure wool," white and Christian, it drapes itself in the national banner and excommunicates those who are different. And it is all the more triggered by hate. However, the scope of the attacks targeting Barack Obama no longer reveals simply democratic uproar, but rather a call for murder.
Translation: Louis Standish
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- Obama trata a Zapatero como a un amigo especial - Editorial, El Mundo (Spain)
Obama Treats Zapatero as a Good Friend- (Morning in America? --BL)
EL ENCUENTRO entre Obama y Zapatero en la Casa Blanca formaliza el fin de un desencuentro que duró cinco años entre Washington y Madrid. Zapatero recupera así la normalidad al restablecer la tradicional buena relación con Estados Unidos: la que él mismo había dinamitado con sus equivocados desplantes a George W. Bush.
...
Obama distinguió a Zapatero con un trato muy especial; más que como presidente, como jefe de Estado. Le alojó en Blair House, la residencia situada frente a la Casa Blanca en la que los presidentes de Estados Unidos reciben a sus invitados principales. El complejo tiene un gran significado para cualquier líder europeo, ya que, acabada la Segunda Guerra Mundial, en él se diseñó el Plan Marshall ...
Por lo demás, Obama y Zapatero pusieron de manifiesto su buena sintonía personal, lo cual es positivo para España. Atrás quedan los fríos y secos saludos con Bush.
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The meeting between Obama and Zapatero in the White House formalizes the end of the discord that lasted for five years between Washington and Madrid. Zapatero took on the norm of re-establishing traditional good relations with the United States, which he himself demolished with his erroneous impudence toward George W. Bush.
...
Obama distinguished Zapatero with very special treatment. He was accommodated in Blair House, the residence situated in front of the White House in which the presidents of the United States receive their prime guests. The complex holds much significance for any European leader since, at the end of World War II, it was the base for designing the Marshall Plan ...
Obama and Zapatero made their personal harmony apparent, which is favorable for Spain. Left behind are the cold and dry greetings with Bush.
Translated By Talisa Anderson
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Symbolic move may signal start of outlawed PKK’s disarmament
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is expected to turn over a group of its members to Turkish authorities today in a move to force government's hand in the recently launched democratization process to solve the decades-old Kurdish problem.
The symbolic move, which some call a gesture toward the government while others say it was intended to force the government's hand, was initiated after Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the terrorist PKK, who is serving life in prison on İmrali Island, urged the PKK last week to send what he described as "peace groups" to surrender to the Turkish authorities.
...
The Turkish government launched an initiative in late July to solve the long-standing Kurdish question, a problem that has cost almost 40,000 lives over the last 30 years.
19 October 2009, Monday
AYŞE KARABAT ANKARA
Story/Phote credite: Today's Zaman (Turkey)
(See also Reuters, if you prefer. -BL)
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Nigeria offers 'revolutionary' oil deal to delta
By Tom Burgis in Port Harcourt
Financial Times
Published: October 19 2009 03:00
Nigeria plans to transfer 10 per cent of all its oil and gas ventures to the inhabitants of the oil-producing Niger Delta, in a multi-billion-dollar bid to end the rebellion that has for years hampered production in sub-Saharan Africa's leading energy supplier.
The initiative, which comes against the backdrop of a sweeping attempt to overhaul Nigeria's oil industry, would if approved by parliament signal a bold new phase in the government's efforts to broker a lasting settlement in the delta.
...
The latest overture follows an amnesty that has lured into the open some of the main leaders of the militants who have led a sustained campaign in the delta region against the federal government and the oil industry.
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The initiative is aimed at answering a longstanding demand from the delta's fighters and activists, ethnic leaders and aggrieved communities for a share in the ownership of the oil that generates 80 per cent of government revenue.
"The Niger Delta generates 80 percent of the Nigerian government’s revenue, but the region remains one of the country’s poorest areas. The plan is aimed at reducing the level of violence and oil theft in the Niger Delta."
- First Darfur case to reach Hague tribunal begins
"THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A Sudanese rebel leader is appearing at the International Criminal Court at a hearing to decide whether he must stand trial on charges of leading an attack that killed 12 peacekeepers."
- Niger rejects election delay plea
Critics say Mamadou Tandja wants to hold on to power for life
Niger has rejected a call to postpone a parliamentary election due on Tuesday, amid continuing controversy over the president's attempts to stay in power.
...dismissing a plea from West African group Ecowas for a postponement.
The opposition is boycotting the poll after President Mamadou Tandja changed the constitution earlier this year.
Mr Tandja dismissed the former parliament, which opposed his plans.