Monday News Bucket

18 Comments

1. 

   CabinGirl on December 10, 2007 at 7:29 am

   Not: AP/Yahoo

   Religious vigilantes have killed at least 40 women this year in the southern Iraqi city of Basra because of how they dressed, their mutilated bodies found with notes warning against “violating Islamic teachings,” the police chief said Sunday.

   Maj. Gen. Jalil Khalaf blamed sectarian groups that he said were trying to impose a strict interpretation of Islam. They dispatch patrols of motorbikes or unlicensed cars with tinted windows to accost women not wearing traditional dress and head scarves, he added.

   “The women of Basra are being horrifically murdered and then dumped in the garbage with notes saying they were killed for un-Islamic behavior,” Khalaf told The Associated Press. He said men with Western clothes or haircuts are also attacked in Basra, an oil-rich city some 30 miles from the Iranian border and 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.

   That’s some democracy and freedom you’ve installed there, Bushie-boy.

   • 

     ask on December 10, 2007 at 7:35 am

     It’s horrendous!
     Just read a diary entry on orange on this very subject.

     • 

       CabinGirl on December 10, 2007 at 7:41 am

       I wish they’d ask the presidential candidates on both sides just what kind of progress this demonstrates, and why we’re staying in Iraq when we’re just allowing this continue.

       Billions of dollars to set up another extremist Islamic regime in the world.  What a great way to fight a war on terra…

2. 

   CabinGirl on December 10, 2007 at 7:36 am

   is getting good reviews: NYT

   Honda has not announced who will get the FCX Claritys or how many will be available in Southern California, where the program begins. Households will be selected, in part, for their ready access to hydrogen stations. Honda is realistic about the slow growth of a hydrogen infrastructure as well as the viewpoint that fuel cells may not seem to make much sense using current methods of hydrogen production.

   But there are practical matters to consider as well: compared with alternatives like plug-in hybrids, the onboard energy supply is quicker to replenish and has a better travel range, 270 miles. Moreover, in Honda’s full-cycle calculation, a fuel-cell vehicle can reduce carbon dioxide output by half compared with a gasoline vehicle. In the United States, where much electricity is produced from coal, it is even better than a battery-electric car, Honda says.

   It will be a while before drivers selected for the three-year, $600-a-month Clarity lease program (it includes insurance and maintenance) will think about such topics. Instead, they will revel in its extraordinary silence. It drives away from a stop so quietly that it seems to be holding its breath, much as a hybrid does before the gas engine starts. Accelerating onto Interstate 10, though, incites a turbinelike zing — quite pleasant, really, if not as satisfying as the guttural bark of a V-8 — and the Clarity blends effortlessly into traffic. The sound of a pump at work breaks the silence occasionally, but it has none of the clicking and whirring evident in the previous-generation FCX.

   Wish I could get one of those.  I wish we all could.

3. 

   ask on December 10, 2007 at 7:39 am

   Webcast from the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony right now!

   • 

     CabinGirl on December 10, 2007 at 7:41 am

     Yay Al!

4. 

   ask on December 10, 2007 at 7:44 am

   US balks at Bali carbon targets

   The UN climate talks seeking a new pact on global warming hit a potential problem today when the US said it was unwilling to approve a draft agreement setting firm targets for cuts to carbon pollution.

   The US said a proposal for developed nations to reduce emissions by 25-40% by 2020, which is backed by Britain and the EU, was “totally unrealistic” and “unhelpful”. Other nations, including Japan, are believed to be against the idea.

   The US said it was in Bali to be “constructive” and wanted the meeting to agree a roadmap to a new agreement, which would be concluded by 2009. But it said it would not agree a firm target, presented either as an emissions reduction or as a maximum temperature rise.

   European negotiators argue such a target is needed to reflect the urgency of the problem and to encourage industry to invest in green technology.

   • 

     CabinGirl on December 10, 2007 at 8:03 am

     “Totally unrealistic” and “unhelpful”.  That would be a perfect description of the US attitude towards doing anything to slow global warming, wouldn’t it?

5. 

   CabinGirl on December 10, 2007 at 7:59 am

   has an interesting Rolling Stone piece on the 3-way tie in Iowa: via AlterNet

   It’s really too long to excerpt, but he lays out what I don’t like about Hillary pretty well here:

   Whatever his shortcomings, Obama is very effective at using his relative freshness as a politician to highlight Hillary’s almost Belichickian level of smugness, the reptilian air of inevitability surrounding her candidacy. In Iowa, all of Hillary’s weaknesses as a candidate are on display — her short fuse, her instinctive pandering, her fierce desire to control every aspect of her environment, her familial penchant for smoking issues without inhaling them and her reflexive paranoia, doubtless brought on by a lengthy stint serving as the human whipping post of the conservative right. In person, Hillary sometimes comes across as a caricature of the modern career woman who’s had to go too far to prove that she’s tough enough to hang. Now, with all of her traits thrust under the media glare, the Iowa race has quickly returned to wide-open status; the week before Thanksgiving, polls showed Hillary in a statistical dead heat, with Obama edging into the lead for the first time. Only three months ago, she led Obama by eleven points.

   The trouble for Hillary actually started in early October, at a campaign stop in New Hampton, Iowa. Clinton teed off on an audience member named Randall Rolph, who asked her a pointed question about her vote to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. “The premise of the question is wrong,” Clinton snapped. “Somebody obviously sent it to you.” Rolph angrily objected to the implication that he was a plant, leading to a poisonous exchange.

   Things got worse. During a Democratic debate at Drexel University in Philadelphia on October 30th, Clinton — who is nothing if not scrupulously prepared and on-message in debates — fumbled a question about a New York proposal to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Hillary appeared to support the plan, then backtracked after Chris Dodd blasted it — opening the door for Edwards to rip her one. “Unless I missed something,” Edwards cooed, “Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes.” From that point forward all of her rivals, as well as a predictable assortment of media assassins, began pounding the flip-flop theme. The sudden wave of negative attention seemed to throw Hillary off her game. First she reportedly forgot to tip a waitress named Anita Esterday at a Maid-Rite diner in Toledo, Iowa. Then her campaign made matters worse when it went back and left $20, inspiring yet another run of ugly headlines.

   And it didn’t stop there. A few weeks later, after Hillary outlined a renewable-energy plan during a town-hall event in Newton, Iowa, she called on a Grinnell College student named Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, who asked a question about global warming. Gallo-Chasanoff later told her campus newspaper she’d been asked by the Clinton campaign to lob the softball. Not long afterward, a minister named Geoff Mitchell revealed that the Clinton campaign had asked him to pose a question at a different event about how Hillary would be tough on Bush about funding the war.

   By then a full-blown controversy over the planted questions was raging, and Hillary seemed to be stepping in shit every time she went outside. On November 11th — ironically in Waterloo, Iowa — Hillary experienced the kind of unscripted fuck-up that can derail a campaign in the media age, getting entangled with four American flags, Chevy Chase-style, as she tried to leave the stage following a Veterans Day campaign stop. “I think that the bases are not weighted,” Hillary screeched as she frantically tried to right the toppling flags.

   Interesting that she was accusing people of asking her planted questions even while her own staff was planting questions for her…aren’t we all a bit sick of Karl Rove’s tactics by now?

6. 

   ask on December 10, 2007 at 8:03 am

   ‘Early independence’ for Kosovo

   Kosovo will declare independence from Serbia “much earlier” than the expected month of May, a spokesman says.

   The statement comes as a UN deadline for agreement on the future of Kosovo is set to expire, after months of talks which have failed to break a deadlock.

   Kosovo is still a province of Serbia, but ethnic-Albanian leaders there have threatened to declare independence after Monday’s deadline passes.

   EU diplomats say they are close to reaching a unified position on Kosovo.

7. 

   dada on December 10, 2007 at 11:05 am

   hard on the heels of the NIE the, the state-run ISNA news agency, citing Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari, stated that iran has “completely halted’ all oil transactions in dollars…

   this also follows last months OPEC meeting, where iran continued to challenge the saudis, and put forward the notion that an alternative currency, most likely the euro, should become the new standard.

   OPEC to Abandon Dollar?

   (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday that OPEC’s members have expressed interest in converting their cash reserves into a currency other than the depreciating U.S. dollar, which he called a “worthless piece of paper.”

   His comments at the end of a rare summit of OPEC heads of state exposed fissures within the 12-member cartel — especially after U.S. ally Saudi Arabia was reluctant to mention concerns about the falling dollar in the summit’s final declaration.

   […]

   “All participating leaders showed an interest in changing their hard currency reserves to a credible hard currency,” Ahmadinejad said. “Some said producing countries should designate a single hard currency aside from the U.S. dollar…to form the basis of our oil trade.”…

   time.com

   emptywheel, aka: marcie wheeler, had an excellent piece up at fdl/emptywheel this weekend: Persians Still Better at Chess than Americans.

   lTMF’sA

8. 

   dada on December 10, 2007 at 11:07 am

   proving, once again, that the only “green” the energy companies care about is the colour of their money:

   THIS CANADIAN WILDERNESS IS SET TO BE INVADED BY BP IN AN OIL EXPLORATION PROJECT DUBBED …
   ‘The biggest environmental crime in history’

   BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move “Beyond Petroleum” by finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of abandoning its “green sheen” by investing nearly £1.5bn to extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists say are part of the “biggest global warming crime” in history.

   The multinational oil and gas producer, which last year made a profit of £11bn, is facing a head-on confrontation with the green lobby in the pristine forests of North America after Greenpeace pledged a direct action campaign against BP following its decision to reverse a long-standing policy and invest heavily in extracting so-called “oil sands” that lie beneath the Canadian province of Alberta and form the world’s second-largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.

   Producing crude oil from the tar sands – a heavy mixture of bitumen, water, sand and clay – found beneath more than 54,000 square miles of prime forest in northern Alberta – an area the size of England and Wales combined – generates up to four times more carbon dioxide, the principal global warming gas, than conventional drilling. The booming oil sands industry will produce 100 million tonnes of CO2 (equivalent to a fifth of the UK’s entire annual emissions) a year by 2012, ensuring that Canada will miss its emission targets under the Kyoto treaty, according to environmentalist activists.

   The oil rush is also scarring a wilderness landscape: millions of tonnes of plant life and top soil is scooped away in vast open-pit mines and millions of litres of water are diverted from rivers – up to five barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of crude and the process requires huge amounts of natural gas. The industry, which now includes all the major oil multinationals, including the Anglo-Dutch Shell and American combine Exxon-Mobil, boasts that it takes two tonnes of the raw sands to produce a single barrel of oil…

   independent uk

   not a good week for Gaia, it would appear.

   lTMF’sA

9. 

   Oui on December 10, 2007 at 12:07 pm

   .

   British Pull Out of Basra

   LONDON (The Sun) – Prime minister Gordon Brown delivered a stirring festive message to Our Boys in Iraq: “Happy Christmas – war is over.” The PM was cheered as he praised UK troops and revealed combat operations in Basra will end “within two weeks”.

   Iraqi forces will take over as the 4,500-strong British force switches from front-line duties to a training role. By early next year, our contingent in Southern Iraq will be cut to 2,500 – and may be withdrawn completely in March.

   British PM eyes Basra transfer in Iraq visit: spokesman

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

   • 

     CabinGirl on December 10, 2007 at 2:51 pm

     Now, when do you think we can end the farce of referring to “coalition forces” in Iraq?  😉

10. 

    Oui on December 10, 2007 at 12:22 pm

    .

    Libby drops appeal in CIA leak case

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is dropping his appeal in the CIA leak case, his attorney said.

    Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of perjury and obstruction for lying about his conversations with reporters about outed CIA operative Valerie Plame.

    “We remain firmly convinced of Mr. Libby’s innocence,” attorney Theodore Wells said. “However, the realities were, that after five years of government service by Mr. Libby and several years of defending against this case, the burden on Mr. Libby and his young family of continuing to pursue his complete vindication are too great to ask them to bear.”

    …
    The decision to drop his appeal is also a tactical one. Even if a federal appeals court overturned Libby’s conviction, it would only lead to a new trial. If Libby were convicted again, a presidential commutation wouldn’t apply, meaning he might have to serve jail time. And by that time, President Bush likely would be out of office.

    “The appeal would lead only to a retrial,” Wells said, “a process that would last even beyond the two years of supervised release, cost millions of dollars more than the fine he has already paid, and entail many more hundreds of hours preparing for an all-consuming appeal and retrial.”

    Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has said the leak investigation is closed.  

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

    • 

      dada on December 10, 2007 at 12:27 pm
11. 

    dada on December 10, 2007 at 12:22 pm

    poor scooter, has resigned himself to life as a convicted felon:

    Libby to drop appeal in CIA leak case

    WASHINGTON – Former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is no longer appealing his conviction in the CIA leak case, a tacit recognition that continuing his legal fight might only make things worse.

    Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of perjury and obstruction but President Bush commuted his 30-month prison sentence in July. Had Libby won a new trial, that commutation would be meaningless and Libby would again face potential prison time.

    […]

    link

    given that a new trial would not occur until after chimpy’s out of office, and the prospect of a real sentence without a pardon…any wonder he’s seen the light?

    l’m still betting on an out the door pardon 20 jan 2009, one of 100’s, if not 1000’s by that time.

    lTMF’sA

12. 

    anarchronarchist on December 10, 2007 at 5:34 pm

    Paul Krugman is signing books at Market Fair at 7:00pm tonight just outside of Princeton, for those lucky enough to be in or near New Jersey. I gonna have him sign mine ‘My conscience isn’t the only part of me that’s liberal… Paul.’

    and perhaps a second, as a gift for Boo:

    ‘Dear Booman, Sorry I stole your beard! -Paul’

    Barnes & Noble. Market Fair, West Windsor 609-716-1570
    7 p.m. Princeton University professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman discusses his new book ‘Conscience of a Liberal.’