By Scott Haggett
Tue Jan 27, 2009 7:54pm EST
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - The rapid-fire development of Canada's oil sands region has garnered a new critic -- the Catholic bishop whose diocese extends over the world's second-largest oil reserves .
Luc Bouchard, bishop of the diocese of St. Paul, which covers nearly 156,000 square km (60,000 square miles) of northeastern Alberta and includes the massive oil sands developments near Fort McMurray, said this week that "the integrity of creation in the Athabasca oil sands is clearly being sacrificed for economic gain".
In a pastoral letter to the region's 55,000 Catholics, the bishop wrote that the exploitation of the huge resource is environmentally unsound, challenging the "moral legitimacy of oil sands production".
More than a million barrels of oil a day are produced from Alberta's oil sands, where reserves of 173 billion barrels are second only to Saudi Arabia's.
Production was expected to more than double by 2015, but falling oil prices and tightened credit have forced most of the region's operators to set aside ambitious expansion plans until the economy recovers.
The bishop joins a growing chorus of environmentalists worldwide who have become increasingly wary of the environmental costs of oil sands production.
Bouchard's letter said development has damaged the region's boreal forest and reduced the habitat of wildlife and birds, while the toxic tailings ponds from oil sands mining projects are a threat to aquifers and the water quality of the Athabasca River, which flows through the region.
He also condemned the projects' greenhouse gas emissions and their consumption of large quantities of natural gas to extract the tar-like bitumen from the sand.
"Any one of the above destructive effects provokes moral concern, but it is when the damaging effects are all added together that the moral legitimacy of oil sands production is challenged," the bishop wrote.
Bouchard called for the oil industry and government to halt further development until there are adequate environmental protection measures.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the lobby group that represents Canada's large oil firms, said producers are already committed to lowering the environmental impacts of their projects.
"We strongly believe oil sands development is sustainable, regulated and the cornerstone of Canada's resource supply," CAPP said in a statement.
"We look forward to talking with the bishop and others about environmental impacts, progress that has already been made, as well industry's future vision for balancing energy supply, environment and economy in the region."
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE50R09420090128
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
American Indians could reap almost $3B in stimulus
By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press Writer Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press Writer Wed Jan 28, 3:23 am ET
WASHINGTON – American Indians stand to gain almost $3 billion as part of the economic stimulus moving through Congress, money that could help some of the nation's poorest communities rebuild roads, improve health care and boost employment that has lagged behind the rest of the country for decades.
The Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday included $2.8 billion for Indian tribes in its portion of the nearly $900 billion economic stimulus bill, and a House version to be voted on Wednesday includes a similar amount. That includes hundreds of millions of dollars for schools, health clinics, roads, law enforcement and water projects.
Dante Desiderio, an economic development policy specialist at the National Congress of American Indians, which has lobbied for the money for the past year, calls the bill a "once in a lifetime opportunity" for tribes.
"It really has the potential to lift our communities out of poverty," Desiderio said.
Indian Country has a long way to go in terms of reviving tribal economies. According to the National Congress of American Indians, real per-capita income of Indians living on reservations is still less than half the national average, unemployment is twice that of the rest of the country, and eight of the 10 poorest counties in the United States are on reservations.
That group originally asked for $6.1 billion in the stimulus, an amount that they said would generate more than 50,000 jobs.
"It's not going to allow them to catch up, but its a significant boost," said North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee who inserted the money into the stimulus. "This is a group of Americans who have been left behind in many of the basic needs of life."
Julie Kitka, president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, asked Congress for stimulus dollars at a Senate Indian Affairs hearing earlier this month. She describes chronically underfunded Indian and Native Alaskan communities as "emerging economies" similar to developing countries around the world that can be hardest hit by an economic downturn. She says this is a chance for tribes to boost their economies for years to come
"It's an opportunity to do things right," she said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090128/ap_on_go_co/stimulus_american_indians/print
WASHINGTON – American Indians stand to gain almost $3 billion as part of the economic stimulus moving through Congress, money that could help some of the nation's poorest communities rebuild roads, improve health care and boost employment that has lagged behind the rest of the country for decades.
The Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday included $2.8 billion for Indian tribes in its portion of the nearly $900 billion economic stimulus bill, and a House version to be voted on Wednesday includes a similar amount. That includes hundreds of millions of dollars for schools, health clinics, roads, law enforcement and water projects.
Dante Desiderio, an economic development policy specialist at the National Congress of American Indians, which has lobbied for the money for the past year, calls the bill a "once in a lifetime opportunity" for tribes.
"It really has the potential to lift our communities out of poverty," Desiderio said.
Indian Country has a long way to go in terms of reviving tribal economies. According to the National Congress of American Indians, real per-capita income of Indians living on reservations is still less than half the national average, unemployment is twice that of the rest of the country, and eight of the 10 poorest counties in the United States are on reservations.
That group originally asked for $6.1 billion in the stimulus, an amount that they said would generate more than 50,000 jobs.
"It's not going to allow them to catch up, but its a significant boost," said North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee who inserted the money into the stimulus. "This is a group of Americans who have been left behind in many of the basic needs of life."
Julie Kitka, president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, asked Congress for stimulus dollars at a Senate Indian Affairs hearing earlier this month. She describes chronically underfunded Indian and Native Alaskan communities as "emerging economies" similar to developing countries around the world that can be hardest hit by an economic downturn. She says this is a chance for tribes to boost their economies for years to come
"It's an opportunity to do things right," she said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090128/ap_on_go_co/stimulus_american_indians/print
Storm may leave thousands in darkness for days
By JOHN RABY, Associated Press Writer John Raby, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 43 mins ago
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Utility companies and road crews prepared for the worst Wednesday as a winter storm barreled into the Northeast, while officials in areas already hit hard by the blast warned it may be days before some shivering communities have electricity again.
The storm has been blamed for at least 19 deaths, shuttered government offices and kept kids home from dozens of schools from the Southern plains to the East Coast. With more than a foot of snow forecast for New Hampshire, the Legislature canceled Wednesday's sessions. In Louisville, Ky., the mayor delayed opening government offices until 10 a.m. and urged businesses to follow suit.
Tree limbs encased in ice tumbled onto roads and crashed onto power lines in hard-hit Arkansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma, keeping thousands without power. In Arkansas — where ice in some places was 3 inches thick — people huddled next to portable heaters and wood-burning fires as utilities warned electricity may be out for days.
"We fully expect this to be one of the largest outages we've ever had," said Mel Coleman, CEO of the North Arkansas Electric Cooperative in Salem. "Right now, we're just hoping it's days and not weeks."
Ice storms overnight in West Virginia knocked out power to thousands more. American Electric Power reported more than 40,000 outages early Wednesday. Many other utilities struggled to keep up as ice accumulated on power lines and tree branches.
"Lines are still breaking," said John Campbell, the operations chief for Missouri's State Emergency Management Agency. "All the reports we are getting is they are losing the battle right now just because precipitation is still falling."
In Kentucky, transportation cabinet workers struggled throughout the night to clear debris from impassable roads as rain and freezing rain continued to fall across the state. Widespread outages continued into the morning.
Duke Energy called for reinforcements to keep up with power demands in Ohio, where some parts of the state were expected to receive anywhere from 6 inches to a foot of snow. Southern Ohio could get three-quarters of an inch of freezing rain that could solidify.
Winter storm warnings were posted for Wednesday from Arkansas to Maine, while ice storm warnings continued for parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. Philadelphia could be coated in up to a half-inch of ice.
Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry declared a statewide emergency Monday. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear did the same Tuesday in his state, where ice up to 1.5 inches thick weighed down tree limbs Tuesday and caused them to crash onto roadways.
"You hear the popping — it sounded like gunfire — and it's limbs from trees breaking," said Hopkins County, Ky., Judge-Executive Donald Carroll, who was among those with no power.
On Tuesday, West Virginia state offices shut down early after a 6-inch snowfall and forecasts of freezing rain and sleet, Arkansas state government offices opened two hours late, and all but essential state workers in Oklahoma were told to stay home.
Road crews in some states had a hard time keeping up with the pace of falling snow.
"The Division of Highways is knocking their socks off trying to keep the roads sort of clear," said Paul Howard, director of operations for the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Hundreds of public schools, colleges and universities in several states had called off classes Tuesday. Students were to be kept home again Wednesday in parts of West Virginia, a day after all 55 counties closed schools.
"Playing in the snow is pretty much the thing to do today," said Sarah Bonham, a student at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va.
Since the storm began building on Monday, the weather had been blamed for five deaths in Texas, three in Arkansas, three in Virginia, five in Missouri, two in Oklahoma and one in Indiana.
In Charleston, the Postal Service asked residents to remove snow and ice around their mailboxes out of safety concerns for mail carriers. In Oklahoma City, a postal worker fell on a patch of ice and hit her head while delivering mail Monday and was hospitalized in critical condition.
___
Associated Press writers Daniel Shea in Little Rock, Ark.; Justin Juozapavicius in Tulsa, Okla.; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Ky.; Kantele Franko in Columbus, Ohio; Jim Salter in St. Louis; and Randall Dickerson in Nashville, Tenn., and editor Roger Petterson in New York contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090128/ap_on_re_us/winter_storm/print
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Utility companies and road crews prepared for the worst Wednesday as a winter storm barreled into the Northeast, while officials in areas already hit hard by the blast warned it may be days before some shivering communities have electricity again.
The storm has been blamed for at least 19 deaths, shuttered government offices and kept kids home from dozens of schools from the Southern plains to the East Coast. With more than a foot of snow forecast for New Hampshire, the Legislature canceled Wednesday's sessions. In Louisville, Ky., the mayor delayed opening government offices until 10 a.m. and urged businesses to follow suit.
Tree limbs encased in ice tumbled onto roads and crashed onto power lines in hard-hit Arkansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma, keeping thousands without power. In Arkansas — where ice in some places was 3 inches thick — people huddled next to portable heaters and wood-burning fires as utilities warned electricity may be out for days.
"We fully expect this to be one of the largest outages we've ever had," said Mel Coleman, CEO of the North Arkansas Electric Cooperative in Salem. "Right now, we're just hoping it's days and not weeks."
Ice storms overnight in West Virginia knocked out power to thousands more. American Electric Power reported more than 40,000 outages early Wednesday. Many other utilities struggled to keep up as ice accumulated on power lines and tree branches.
"Lines are still breaking," said John Campbell, the operations chief for Missouri's State Emergency Management Agency. "All the reports we are getting is they are losing the battle right now just because precipitation is still falling."
In Kentucky, transportation cabinet workers struggled throughout the night to clear debris from impassable roads as rain and freezing rain continued to fall across the state. Widespread outages continued into the morning.
Duke Energy called for reinforcements to keep up with power demands in Ohio, where some parts of the state were expected to receive anywhere from 6 inches to a foot of snow. Southern Ohio could get three-quarters of an inch of freezing rain that could solidify.
Winter storm warnings were posted for Wednesday from Arkansas to Maine, while ice storm warnings continued for parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. Philadelphia could be coated in up to a half-inch of ice.
Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry declared a statewide emergency Monday. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear did the same Tuesday in his state, where ice up to 1.5 inches thick weighed down tree limbs Tuesday and caused them to crash onto roadways.
"You hear the popping — it sounded like gunfire — and it's limbs from trees breaking," said Hopkins County, Ky., Judge-Executive Donald Carroll, who was among those with no power.
On Tuesday, West Virginia state offices shut down early after a 6-inch snowfall and forecasts of freezing rain and sleet, Arkansas state government offices opened two hours late, and all but essential state workers in Oklahoma were told to stay home.
Road crews in some states had a hard time keeping up with the pace of falling snow.
"The Division of Highways is knocking their socks off trying to keep the roads sort of clear," said Paul Howard, director of operations for the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Hundreds of public schools, colleges and universities in several states had called off classes Tuesday. Students were to be kept home again Wednesday in parts of West Virginia, a day after all 55 counties closed schools.
"Playing in the snow is pretty much the thing to do today," said Sarah Bonham, a student at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va.
Since the storm began building on Monday, the weather had been blamed for five deaths in Texas, three in Arkansas, three in Virginia, five in Missouri, two in Oklahoma and one in Indiana.
In Charleston, the Postal Service asked residents to remove snow and ice around their mailboxes out of safety concerns for mail carriers. In Oklahoma City, a postal worker fell on a patch of ice and hit her head while delivering mail Monday and was hospitalized in critical condition.
___
Associated Press writers Daniel Shea in Little Rock, Ark.; Justin Juozapavicius in Tulsa, Okla.; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Ky.; Kantele Franko in Columbus, Ohio; Jim Salter in St. Louis; and Randall Dickerson in Nashville, Tenn., and editor Roger Petterson in New York contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090128/ap_on_re_us/winter_storm/print
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Bloody Monday: Over 71,400 jobs lost
Seven companies announce massive job cuts in a scary start to the week.
By Julianne Pepitone, CNNMoney.com contributing writer
Last Updated: January 27, 2009: 11:13 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The final week of January began with a bloodbath for the job market, as over 71,400 more cuts were announced on Monday alone.
At least six companies from manufacturing and service industries announced cost-cutting initiatives that included slashing thousands of jobs.
More than 200,000 job cuts have been announced so far this year, according to company reports. Nearly 2.6 million jobs were lost over 2008, the highest yearly job-loss total since 1945.
"It's all about the consumer, and the consumer's been hit hard," said Robert Brusca, chief economist at Fact and Opinion Economics. "It's a vicious circle as weakness begets layoffs, which beget more spending weakness."
Construction machinery manufacturer Caterpillar (CAT, Fortune 500) said Monday it will cut 20,000 jobs amid a "very challenging global business environment." The company had already planned to cut 15,000 workers since the fourth quarter of 2008, but added another 5,000, bringing the total to 20,000.
Pfizer (PFE, Fortune 500) said in an earnings report it would cut 10% of its staff of 81,900 and close five of its manufacturing plants. And a second round of cuts will shed about 15% of employees from the combined Pfizer/Wyeth staff of 120,000. That makes a total of 26,000 jobs lost. The company already cut 4,700 jobs in 2008.
Sprint Nextel Corp. (S, Fortune 500) will cut a total of about 8,000 jobs by March 31, the company said in a release. The telecommunications company's plan is to reduce internal and external labor costs by about $1.2 billion on an annual basis.
Home Depot (HD, Fortune 500), the world's largest home improvement retailer, announced Monday it will eliminate its EXPO design center business and cut 7,000 associates, or approximately 2% of the company's total workforce. The company blamed a lack of demand for big ticket design and decor projects.
Texas Instruments (TXN, Fortune 500) said it will slash its workforce by 3,400 employees to cope with weak demand and the slowing economy. More than half of those cuts will be layoffs while "voluntary retirements and departures" will make up the rest.
Dutch financial group ING said Monday it will take a 2008 loss of $1.3 billion and cut 7,000 jobs. The company could not comment on where the cuts would take place. ING employs around 130,000 people across 50 countries.
Deere& Co. (DE, Fortune 500) , the world's top farm-equipment maker, said it would cut nearly 700 jobs between factories in Brazil and Iowa.
The job cuts across sectors didn't surprise Brusca, as nearly all are weak, he said.
"The services sector is shedding jobs at a horrific pace, because that's where most of the jobs are," Brusca said. "When the consumer is in tough shape it's hard for business to do well, because it all depends on consumption or investments."
Continuing the scary trend
The cuts mark a horrific start to the week, and a brutal start to 2009. In the previous week, around 40,000 cuts were announced across multiple industries.
Wednesday, in particular, was littered with a slew of job cuts: BHP Billiton, Clear Channel Communications, Intel, Rohm and Haas Co., UAL Corp. and Williams-Sonoma all announced job cuts totaling over 27,000 positions.
Schlumberger said Friday that it will cut 5,000 jobs worldwide, with 1,000 of the cuts taking place in North America.
Also last week, Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. Entertainment said it would cut about 800 jobs, or 10% of its worldwide staff in the upcoming weeks, while Microsoft unveiled its plan to cut up to 5,000 jobs - 5.5% of its global workforce.
Outlook: A recovery in sight?
Brusca said he agreed with many economists' predictions that the recession will end after the second quarter of 2009. Americans might feel the job market start to bounce back a bit sooner than expected, he said.
"These recessions are like geometry," Brusca said. "It looks like we'll have a V-shaped cycle, in that we're going into this with very sharp losses. This intense-phase recession will probably recover fairly quickly, with the job market coming out it at the same angle it came in."
In the short term, the economy and the job market are in trouble, Brusca said. But "it doesn't look like the bottom is falling out of the economy," he said.
And there's a silver lining to the gloomy clouds over America's economy.
"The good news is it's so bad right now that we will have a definite, noticeable recovery when it comes," Brusca said. "We're getting a lot of adjustment out of the way early." To top of page
First Published: January 26, 2009: 1:03 PM ET
http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/26/news/economy/job_cuts/index.htm
By Julianne Pepitone, CNNMoney.com contributing writer
Last Updated: January 27, 2009: 11:13 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The final week of January began with a bloodbath for the job market, as over 71,400 more cuts were announced on Monday alone.
At least six companies from manufacturing and service industries announced cost-cutting initiatives that included slashing thousands of jobs.
More than 200,000 job cuts have been announced so far this year, according to company reports. Nearly 2.6 million jobs were lost over 2008, the highest yearly job-loss total since 1945.
"It's all about the consumer, and the consumer's been hit hard," said Robert Brusca, chief economist at Fact and Opinion Economics. "It's a vicious circle as weakness begets layoffs, which beget more spending weakness."
Construction machinery manufacturer Caterpillar (CAT, Fortune 500) said Monday it will cut 20,000 jobs amid a "very challenging global business environment." The company had already planned to cut 15,000 workers since the fourth quarter of 2008, but added another 5,000, bringing the total to 20,000.
Pfizer (PFE, Fortune 500) said in an earnings report it would cut 10% of its staff of 81,900 and close five of its manufacturing plants. And a second round of cuts will shed about 15% of employees from the combined Pfizer/Wyeth staff of 120,000. That makes a total of 26,000 jobs lost. The company already cut 4,700 jobs in 2008.
Sprint Nextel Corp. (S, Fortune 500) will cut a total of about 8,000 jobs by March 31, the company said in a release. The telecommunications company's plan is to reduce internal and external labor costs by about $1.2 billion on an annual basis.
Home Depot (HD, Fortune 500), the world's largest home improvement retailer, announced Monday it will eliminate its EXPO design center business and cut 7,000 associates, or approximately 2% of the company's total workforce. The company blamed a lack of demand for big ticket design and decor projects.
Texas Instruments (TXN, Fortune 500) said it will slash its workforce by 3,400 employees to cope with weak demand and the slowing economy. More than half of those cuts will be layoffs while "voluntary retirements and departures" will make up the rest.
Dutch financial group ING said Monday it will take a 2008 loss of $1.3 billion and cut 7,000 jobs. The company could not comment on where the cuts would take place. ING employs around 130,000 people across 50 countries.
Deere& Co. (DE, Fortune 500) , the world's top farm-equipment maker, said it would cut nearly 700 jobs between factories in Brazil and Iowa.
The job cuts across sectors didn't surprise Brusca, as nearly all are weak, he said.
"The services sector is shedding jobs at a horrific pace, because that's where most of the jobs are," Brusca said. "When the consumer is in tough shape it's hard for business to do well, because it all depends on consumption or investments."
Continuing the scary trend
The cuts mark a horrific start to the week, and a brutal start to 2009. In the previous week, around 40,000 cuts were announced across multiple industries.
Wednesday, in particular, was littered with a slew of job cuts: BHP Billiton, Clear Channel Communications, Intel, Rohm and Haas Co., UAL Corp. and Williams-Sonoma all announced job cuts totaling over 27,000 positions.
Schlumberger said Friday that it will cut 5,000 jobs worldwide, with 1,000 of the cuts taking place in North America.
Also last week, Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. Entertainment said it would cut about 800 jobs, or 10% of its worldwide staff in the upcoming weeks, while Microsoft unveiled its plan to cut up to 5,000 jobs - 5.5% of its global workforce.
Outlook: A recovery in sight?
Brusca said he agreed with many economists' predictions that the recession will end after the second quarter of 2009. Americans might feel the job market start to bounce back a bit sooner than expected, he said.
"These recessions are like geometry," Brusca said. "It looks like we'll have a V-shaped cycle, in that we're going into this with very sharp losses. This intense-phase recession will probably recover fairly quickly, with the job market coming out it at the same angle it came in."
In the short term, the economy and the job market are in trouble, Brusca said. But "it doesn't look like the bottom is falling out of the economy," he said.
And there's a silver lining to the gloomy clouds over America's economy.
"The good news is it's so bad right now that we will have a definite, noticeable recovery when it comes," Brusca said. "We're getting a lot of adjustment out of the way early." To top of page
First Published: January 26, 2009: 1:03 PM ET
http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/26/news/economy/job_cuts/index.htm
The Torture Ban that Doesn't Ban Torture: Obama's Rules Keep It Intact, and Could Even Accord With an Increase in US-Sponsored Torture Worldwide.
If you're lying on the slab still breathing, with your torturer hanging over you, you don't much care if he is an American or a mere United States - sponsored trainee.
When President Obama declared flatly this week that "the United States will not torture" many people wrongly believed that he'd shut the practice down, when in fact he'd merely repositioned it.
Obama's Executive Order bans some -- not all -- US officials from torturing but it does not ban any of them, himself included, from sponsoring torture overseas.
Indeed, his policy change affects only a slight percentage of US-culpable tortures and could be completely consistent with an increase in US-backed torture worldwide.
The catch lies in the fact that since Vietnam, when US forces often tortured directly, the US has mainly seen its torture done for it by proxy -- paying, arming, training and guiding foreigners doing it, but usually being careful to keep Americans at least one discreet step removed.
That is, the US tended to do it that way until Bush and Cheney changed protocol, and had many Americans laying on hands, and sometimes taking digital photos.
The result was a public relations fiasco that enraged the US establishment since by exposing US techniques to the world it diminished US power.
But despite the outrage, the fact of the matter was that the Bush/Cheney tortures being done by Americans were a negligible percentage of all of the tortures being done by US clients.
For every torment inflicted directly by Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and the secret prisons, there were many times more being meted out by US-sponsored foreign forces.
Those forces were and are operating with US military, intelligence, financial or other backing in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Jordan, Indonesia, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Colombia, Nigeria, and the Philippines, to name some places, not to mention the tortures sans-American-hands by the US-backed Iraqis and Afghans.
What the Obama dictum ostensibly knocks off is that small percentage of torture now done by Americans while retaining the overwhelming bulk of the system's torture, which is done by foreigners under US patronage.
Obama could stop backing foreign forces that torture, but he has chosen not to do so.
His Executive Order instead merely pertains to treatment of "...an individual in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government, or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States, in any armed conflict..." which means that it doesn't even prohibit direct torture by Americans outside environments of "armed conflict," which is where much torture happens anyway since many repressive regimes aren't in armed conflict.
And even if, as Obama says, "the United States will not torture," it can still pay, train, equip and guide foreign torturers, and see to it that they, and their US patrons, don't face local or international justice.
This is a return to the status quo ante, the torture regime of Ford through Clinton, which, year by year, often produced more US-backed strapped-down agony than was produced during the Bush/Cheney years.
Under the old -- now new again -- proxy regime Americans would, say, teach interrogation/torture, then stand in the next room as the victims screamed, feeding questions to their foreign pupils. That's the way the US did it in El Salvador under JFK through Bush Sr. (For details see my "Behind the Death Squads: An exclusive report on the U.S. role in El Salvador’s official terror," The Progressive, May, 1984 ; the US Senate Intelligence Committee report that piece sparked is still classified, but the feeding of questions was confirmed to me by Intelligence Committee Senators. See also my "Confessions of a Death Squad Officer," The Progressive, March, 1986, and my "Comment," The New Yorker, Oct. 15, 1990,[regarding law, the US, and El Salvador]).
In Guatemala under Bush Sr. and Clinton (Obama's foreign policy mentors) the US backed the army's G-2 death squad which kept comprehensive files on dissidents and then electroshocked them or cut off their hands. (The file/ surveillance system was launched for them in the '60s and '70s by CIA/ State/ AID/ special forces; for the history see "Behind the Death Squads," cited above, and the books of Prof. Michael McClintock).
The Americans on the ground in the Guatemalan operation, some of whom I encountered and named, effectively helped to run the G-2 but, themselves, tiptoed around its torture chambers. (See my "C.I.A. Death Squad," The Nation [US], April 17, 1995, "The Country Team," The Nation [US], June 5, 1995, letter exchange with US Ambassador Stroock, The Nation [US], May 29, 1995, and Allan Nairn and Jean-Marie Simon, "Bureaucracy of Death," The New Republic, June 30, 1986).
It was a similar story in Bush Sr. and Clinton's Haiti -- an operation run by today's Obama people -- where the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) helped launch the terrorist group FRAPH, the CIA paid its leader, and FRAPH itsef laid the machetes on Haitian civilians, torturing and killing as US proxies. (See my "Behind Haiti's paramilitaries: our man in FRAPH," The Nation [US], Oct 24, 1994, and "He's our S.O.B.," The Nation [US], Oct. 31, 1994; the story was later confirmed on ABC TV's "This Week" by US Secretary of State Warren Christopher).
In today's Thailand -- a country that hardly comes to mind when most people think of torture -- special police and militaries get US gear and training for things like "target selection" and then go out and torture Thai Malay Muslms in the rebel deep south, and also sometimes (mainly Buddhist) Burmese refugees and exploited northern and west coast workers.
Not long ago I visited a key Thai interrogator who spoke frankly about army/ police/ intel torture and then closed our discussion by saying "Look at this," and invited me into his back room.
It was an up to date museum of plaques, photos and awards from US and Western intelligence, including commendations from the CIA counter-terrorism center (then run by people now staffing Obama), one-on-one photos with high US figures, including George W. Bush, a medal from Bush, various US intel/ FBI/ military training certificates, a photo of him with an Israeli colleague beside a tank in the Occupied Territories, and Mossad, Shin Bet, Singaporean, and other interrogation implements and mementos.
On my way out, the Thai intel man remarked that he was due to re-visit Langley soon.
His role is typical. There are thousands like him worldwide. US proxy torture dwarfs that at Guantanamo.
Many Americans, to their credit, hate torture. The Bush/Cheney escapade exposed that.
But to stop it they must get the facts and see that Obama's ban does not stop it, and indeed could even accord with an increase in US-sponsored torture crime.
In lieu of action, the system will grind on tonight. More shocks, suffocations, deep burns. And the convergence of thousands of complex minds on one simple thought: 'Please, let me die.'
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http://www.allannairn.com/2009/01/torture-ban-that-doesnt-ban-torture.html
When President Obama declared flatly this week that "the United States will not torture" many people wrongly believed that he'd shut the practice down, when in fact he'd merely repositioned it.
Obama's Executive Order bans some -- not all -- US officials from torturing but it does not ban any of them, himself included, from sponsoring torture overseas.
Indeed, his policy change affects only a slight percentage of US-culpable tortures and could be completely consistent with an increase in US-backed torture worldwide.
The catch lies in the fact that since Vietnam, when US forces often tortured directly, the US has mainly seen its torture done for it by proxy -- paying, arming, training and guiding foreigners doing it, but usually being careful to keep Americans at least one discreet step removed.
That is, the US tended to do it that way until Bush and Cheney changed protocol, and had many Americans laying on hands, and sometimes taking digital photos.
The result was a public relations fiasco that enraged the US establishment since by exposing US techniques to the world it diminished US power.
But despite the outrage, the fact of the matter was that the Bush/Cheney tortures being done by Americans were a negligible percentage of all of the tortures being done by US clients.
For every torment inflicted directly by Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and the secret prisons, there were many times more being meted out by US-sponsored foreign forces.
Those forces were and are operating with US military, intelligence, financial or other backing in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Jordan, Indonesia, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Colombia, Nigeria, and the Philippines, to name some places, not to mention the tortures sans-American-hands by the US-backed Iraqis and Afghans.
What the Obama dictum ostensibly knocks off is that small percentage of torture now done by Americans while retaining the overwhelming bulk of the system's torture, which is done by foreigners under US patronage.
Obama could stop backing foreign forces that torture, but he has chosen not to do so.
His Executive Order instead merely pertains to treatment of "...an individual in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government, or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States, in any armed conflict..." which means that it doesn't even prohibit direct torture by Americans outside environments of "armed conflict," which is where much torture happens anyway since many repressive regimes aren't in armed conflict.
And even if, as Obama says, "the United States will not torture," it can still pay, train, equip and guide foreign torturers, and see to it that they, and their US patrons, don't face local or international justice.
This is a return to the status quo ante, the torture regime of Ford through Clinton, which, year by year, often produced more US-backed strapped-down agony than was produced during the Bush/Cheney years.
Under the old -- now new again -- proxy regime Americans would, say, teach interrogation/torture, then stand in the next room as the victims screamed, feeding questions to their foreign pupils. That's the way the US did it in El Salvador under JFK through Bush Sr. (For details see my "Behind the Death Squads: An exclusive report on the U.S. role in El Salvador’s official terror," The Progressive, May, 1984 ; the US Senate Intelligence Committee report that piece sparked is still classified, but the feeding of questions was confirmed to me by Intelligence Committee Senators. See also my "Confessions of a Death Squad Officer," The Progressive, March, 1986, and my "Comment," The New Yorker, Oct. 15, 1990,[regarding law, the US, and El Salvador]).
In Guatemala under Bush Sr. and Clinton (Obama's foreign policy mentors) the US backed the army's G-2 death squad which kept comprehensive files on dissidents and then electroshocked them or cut off their hands. (The file/ surveillance system was launched for them in the '60s and '70s by CIA/ State/ AID/ special forces; for the history see "Behind the Death Squads," cited above, and the books of Prof. Michael McClintock).
The Americans on the ground in the Guatemalan operation, some of whom I encountered and named, effectively helped to run the G-2 but, themselves, tiptoed around its torture chambers. (See my "C.I.A. Death Squad," The Nation [US], April 17, 1995, "The Country Team," The Nation [US], June 5, 1995, letter exchange with US Ambassador Stroock, The Nation [US], May 29, 1995, and Allan Nairn and Jean-Marie Simon, "Bureaucracy of Death," The New Republic, June 30, 1986).
It was a similar story in Bush Sr. and Clinton's Haiti -- an operation run by today's Obama people -- where the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) helped launch the terrorist group FRAPH, the CIA paid its leader, and FRAPH itsef laid the machetes on Haitian civilians, torturing and killing as US proxies. (See my "Behind Haiti's paramilitaries: our man in FRAPH," The Nation [US], Oct 24, 1994, and "He's our S.O.B.," The Nation [US], Oct. 31, 1994; the story was later confirmed on ABC TV's "This Week" by US Secretary of State Warren Christopher).
In today's Thailand -- a country that hardly comes to mind when most people think of torture -- special police and militaries get US gear and training for things like "target selection" and then go out and torture Thai Malay Muslms in the rebel deep south, and also sometimes (mainly Buddhist) Burmese refugees and exploited northern and west coast workers.
Not long ago I visited a key Thai interrogator who spoke frankly about army/ police/ intel torture and then closed our discussion by saying "Look at this," and invited me into his back room.
It was an up to date museum of plaques, photos and awards from US and Western intelligence, including commendations from the CIA counter-terrorism center (then run by people now staffing Obama), one-on-one photos with high US figures, including George W. Bush, a medal from Bush, various US intel/ FBI/ military training certificates, a photo of him with an Israeli colleague beside a tank in the Occupied Territories, and Mossad, Shin Bet, Singaporean, and other interrogation implements and mementos.
On my way out, the Thai intel man remarked that he was due to re-visit Langley soon.
His role is typical. There are thousands like him worldwide. US proxy torture dwarfs that at Guantanamo.
Many Americans, to their credit, hate torture. The Bush/Cheney escapade exposed that.
But to stop it they must get the facts and see that Obama's ban does not stop it, and indeed could even accord with an increase in US-sponsored torture crime.
In lieu of action, the system will grind on tonight. More shocks, suffocations, deep burns. And the convergence of thousands of complex minds on one simple thought: 'Please, let me die.'
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Yard Sale Nation: The Change Required to Salvage U.S Society Runs Much Deeper Than Most Imagine
By James Howard Kunstler, Kunstler.com
Posted on January 21, 2009, Printed on January 27, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/121146/
Barack has Obama stepped into the shoes of Lincoln, FDR, Millard Fillmore and forty other predecessors -- this time as the wished-for Mr. Fix it of a nation run into a ditch. Surely over the months of transition, someone with a clear head and a fact-laden portfolio has clued-in the new President about the reality-based state-of-the-Union -- as opposed, say, to the Las Vegas version, where Santa Clause presides over a whoredom of something-for-nothing economics, and all behaviors are equally okay, and consequence has been sliced-and-diced out of the game … where, in the immortal words of Milan Kundera, anything goes and nothing matters.
Mr. Obama deserves credit for a lot of things, but perhaps most amazingly his ability to see "hope" in a public so demoralized by their own bad choices that the USA scene has devolved to a non-stop Special Olympics of everyday life, where absolutely everybody is debilitated, deluded, challenged, or needs a leg up, or an extra buck, or a pallet on the floor, or a gastric bypass, or a week in detox, or a head-start, or a fourth strike, or a $150-billion bailout. There's a lot of raw material from sea to shining sea, admittedly, but how do you re-shape it into a population guided by a sense of earnest purpose, with reality-based expectations, with habits of delayed gratification and impulse control, and a sense of their own history? That will be quite a trick. Many of us -- myself included -- will be pulling for Barack. Maybe the power of his rhetoric and his sheer buff physical presence can whip this republic of overfed clowns into shape.
He inherits a government of superficially gleaming marble edifices -- all gloriously on view tomorrow -- but full of broken machinery within, infested with weevils, termites, and rats. The USA is functionally bankrupt. We have no money. The pixel "money" being emailed over to the insolvent banks has no basis in reality beyond the quiver in Ben Bernanke's voice as he announces each new injection. Yet all reports so far indicate that President Obama is bent on continuing the process one way or another.
Mr. Obama's first task taking stage in the lonely Oval Office should be to get right with his own credo of "change," meaning he'll have to persuade the broad American public that the "change" required to salvage this society runs much deeper, colder, and thicker than they'd imagine in their initial transports over hallelujah-Bush-is-Gone. Many of the familiar touchstones of the recent American experience have got to go.
Say goodbye to the "consumer society." We're done with that. No more fast money and no more credit. The next stop is "yard-sale nation," in which all the plastic crapola accumulated over the past fifty years is sorted out for residual value and, if still working, sold for a fraction of its original sticker price. This includes everything from Humvees to Hello Kitty charm bracelets.
It will be a very salutary thing if we stop even referring to ourselves as "consumers." This degrading moniker, used for decades unthinkingly by everyone from The New York Times Nobel Prize pundits to the Econ 101 section men of the land-grant diploma mills has been such a drag on our collective development that it has extinguished the last latent flickers of duty, obligation, and responsibility for the greater good in a republic of broken communities shattered by WalMarts.
The government will not have to do a thing to bring down the chain-stores. History and inertia is already on that case, with the easy credit racket terminated and new frictions arising over global trade, and even Peak Oil waiting to work its hoodoo behind the scrim of deceptively temporarily low pump prices. The larger question for President Obama is: how can we collectively promote the reconstruction of Main Street, including all the fine-grained layers of retail and wholesale trade. High tech "solutions" are not likely to avail in this.
In fact, techno-grandiosity and techno-triumphalism must be be sedulously monitored and guarded-against. They jointly amount to the great mass psychosis of our time and culture. This array of traps -- from proposed flying cars to "renewable" motor fuels -- is the ultimate Faustian "bargain." It will be at the heart of any campaign to sustain the unsustainable, sucking us ever more deeply into the diminishing returns of over-investments in complexity. Hence, the last thing this nation needs now is a stimulus plan aimed at the development of non-gasoline-powered automobiles -- married with extensive rehabilitation of the highway system. What I incessantly refer to as the Happy Motoring fiesta is drawing to a close as we have known it, whether we like it or not. Cars will be around for a while, of course, but as an increasingly elite activity. The owners of cars will be increasingly beset by grievance and resentment on the part of those foreclosed from the Happy Motoring life -- and it could easily degenerate to vandalism and violence, since the "right" to endless motoring was surreptitiously made an entitlement somewhere around 1957.
The "change" we face in agriculture dwarfs even the death throes of Happy Motoring (and is not unrelated to it either). A lot of people are likely to starve in America if we don't get our act together pronto in terms of how we produce the food we eat. Petro-agribusiness faces a set of disturbances that are certain to induce food shortages. Again, the Peak Oil specter looms in the background, for soil "inputs" and diesel power to run that system. But all of a sudden even that problem appears a lesser danger than the gross failure of capital finance now underway -- and petro-agriculture's chief external input is credit. Credit may be in extremely short supply this year, and hence crops may be in short supply as we turn the corner into spring and summer. Just as in the case of WalMart versus Main Street, the reform of farming in America is one of those "changes" much larger than most of us imagine. I'd go so far to say that a large proportion of young people now in college will find themselves not working in office cubicles, but in some way or other in farming or the "value-added" activities connected to it.
I don't see how America can confront the "change" represented by the stark fact that suburbia-is-toast. It is the sorest spot of all in the corpus of a culture beset by disease and debility. The salient manifestation of suburbia's demise is the remorseless drop of housing values in the places most representative of that development pattern. The worst thing the Obama team could do about this would be to attempt to prevent the fall of inflated house prices. Their real value needs to be clearly established before a picture emerges of which places have a plausible future, and which places are destined to be mere ruins or salvage yards.
Americans will have to live somewhere, of course, but the terrain of North America faces a very comprehensive reformation. The biggest cities will contract; the small cities and small towns will be reactivated, the agricultural landscape will be inhabited differently, and the suburbs will undergo an agonizing decades-long work-out of bad debt and true asset re-valuation. Since the loss of so much vested "wealth" is implied by the crash of suburbia, this may be a source of revolutionary political violence moving deeper into the Obama administration.
There's been plenty of buzz in the blogosphere about the imminent failure of the US "social safety net," including especially the social security program. Retirees are the biggest block of voters. They're not liable to foment riots -- that is best left to the youthful high-testosterone cohort -- but the older folks -- with Baby Boomers now coming aboard -- could be so distressed by the loss of their presumed entitlements that they will elect any maniac promising to bring back something that looked like the 1980s. We haven't begun to hear their war cries, and I hope they do not beat a path straight into some sort of crypto corporate fascism -- as, finally, every last failing scrap of American life is nationalized.
Some natural processes hide in the thickets ahead. A hyper-inflation could take this country in any weird and unappetizing direction, from scapegoating and persecution to a new kind of corporate fascism. But I'm inclined to see our tribulations governed more by weakness in high places than by real power. In a world of declining capital and depleting energy resources, the key to any successful venture will be smaller scale. I'm not convinced that any emergency could make the US government more effective at getting anything done. Our hopes really ought to be vested locally, since that is where the most effective action is likely to be in the years just ahead.
... There are many Americans of good will who would like to see the meaning of real "change" clearly articulated in a way that comports with reality, not just "dreams" and wishes. We'll hear a lot about dreams this week, anyway, of course, but then reality will set in and the heavy lifting will commence. Many Americans of good will also stand ready to face reality, to roll up our sleeves, ditch the video games and the Nascar and the microwaved cheese treats, and the internet porn and all the other noxious, narcolepsy-inducing distractions of our time, and put our shoulders to the wheel to haul this nation into a plausible future.
© 2009 Kunstler.com All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/121146/
Posted on January 21, 2009, Printed on January 27, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/121146/
Barack has Obama stepped into the shoes of Lincoln, FDR, Millard Fillmore and forty other predecessors -- this time as the wished-for Mr. Fix it of a nation run into a ditch. Surely over the months of transition, someone with a clear head and a fact-laden portfolio has clued-in the new President about the reality-based state-of-the-Union -- as opposed, say, to the Las Vegas version, where Santa Clause presides over a whoredom of something-for-nothing economics, and all behaviors are equally okay, and consequence has been sliced-and-diced out of the game … where, in the immortal words of Milan Kundera, anything goes and nothing matters.
Mr. Obama deserves credit for a lot of things, but perhaps most amazingly his ability to see "hope" in a public so demoralized by their own bad choices that the USA scene has devolved to a non-stop Special Olympics of everyday life, where absolutely everybody is debilitated, deluded, challenged, or needs a leg up, or an extra buck, or a pallet on the floor, or a gastric bypass, or a week in detox, or a head-start, or a fourth strike, or a $150-billion bailout. There's a lot of raw material from sea to shining sea, admittedly, but how do you re-shape it into a population guided by a sense of earnest purpose, with reality-based expectations, with habits of delayed gratification and impulse control, and a sense of their own history? That will be quite a trick. Many of us -- myself included -- will be pulling for Barack. Maybe the power of his rhetoric and his sheer buff physical presence can whip this republic of overfed clowns into shape.
He inherits a government of superficially gleaming marble edifices -- all gloriously on view tomorrow -- but full of broken machinery within, infested with weevils, termites, and rats. The USA is functionally bankrupt. We have no money. The pixel "money" being emailed over to the insolvent banks has no basis in reality beyond the quiver in Ben Bernanke's voice as he announces each new injection. Yet all reports so far indicate that President Obama is bent on continuing the process one way or another.
Mr. Obama's first task taking stage in the lonely Oval Office should be to get right with his own credo of "change," meaning he'll have to persuade the broad American public that the "change" required to salvage this society runs much deeper, colder, and thicker than they'd imagine in their initial transports over hallelujah-Bush-is-Gone. Many of the familiar touchstones of the recent American experience have got to go.
Say goodbye to the "consumer society." We're done with that. No more fast money and no more credit. The next stop is "yard-sale nation," in which all the plastic crapola accumulated over the past fifty years is sorted out for residual value and, if still working, sold for a fraction of its original sticker price. This includes everything from Humvees to Hello Kitty charm bracelets.
It will be a very salutary thing if we stop even referring to ourselves as "consumers." This degrading moniker, used for decades unthinkingly by everyone from The New York Times Nobel Prize pundits to the Econ 101 section men of the land-grant diploma mills has been such a drag on our collective development that it has extinguished the last latent flickers of duty, obligation, and responsibility for the greater good in a republic of broken communities shattered by WalMarts.
The government will not have to do a thing to bring down the chain-stores. History and inertia is already on that case, with the easy credit racket terminated and new frictions arising over global trade, and even Peak Oil waiting to work its hoodoo behind the scrim of deceptively temporarily low pump prices. The larger question for President Obama is: how can we collectively promote the reconstruction of Main Street, including all the fine-grained layers of retail and wholesale trade. High tech "solutions" are not likely to avail in this.
In fact, techno-grandiosity and techno-triumphalism must be be sedulously monitored and guarded-against. They jointly amount to the great mass psychosis of our time and culture. This array of traps -- from proposed flying cars to "renewable" motor fuels -- is the ultimate Faustian "bargain." It will be at the heart of any campaign to sustain the unsustainable, sucking us ever more deeply into the diminishing returns of over-investments in complexity. Hence, the last thing this nation needs now is a stimulus plan aimed at the development of non-gasoline-powered automobiles -- married with extensive rehabilitation of the highway system. What I incessantly refer to as the Happy Motoring fiesta is drawing to a close as we have known it, whether we like it or not. Cars will be around for a while, of course, but as an increasingly elite activity. The owners of cars will be increasingly beset by grievance and resentment on the part of those foreclosed from the Happy Motoring life -- and it could easily degenerate to vandalism and violence, since the "right" to endless motoring was surreptitiously made an entitlement somewhere around 1957.
The "change" we face in agriculture dwarfs even the death throes of Happy Motoring (and is not unrelated to it either). A lot of people are likely to starve in America if we don't get our act together pronto in terms of how we produce the food we eat. Petro-agribusiness faces a set of disturbances that are certain to induce food shortages. Again, the Peak Oil specter looms in the background, for soil "inputs" and diesel power to run that system. But all of a sudden even that problem appears a lesser danger than the gross failure of capital finance now underway -- and petro-agriculture's chief external input is credit. Credit may be in extremely short supply this year, and hence crops may be in short supply as we turn the corner into spring and summer. Just as in the case of WalMart versus Main Street, the reform of farming in America is one of those "changes" much larger than most of us imagine. I'd go so far to say that a large proportion of young people now in college will find themselves not working in office cubicles, but in some way or other in farming or the "value-added" activities connected to it.
I don't see how America can confront the "change" represented by the stark fact that suburbia-is-toast. It is the sorest spot of all in the corpus of a culture beset by disease and debility. The salient manifestation of suburbia's demise is the remorseless drop of housing values in the places most representative of that development pattern. The worst thing the Obama team could do about this would be to attempt to prevent the fall of inflated house prices. Their real value needs to be clearly established before a picture emerges of which places have a plausible future, and which places are destined to be mere ruins or salvage yards.
Americans will have to live somewhere, of course, but the terrain of North America faces a very comprehensive reformation. The biggest cities will contract; the small cities and small towns will be reactivated, the agricultural landscape will be inhabited differently, and the suburbs will undergo an agonizing decades-long work-out of bad debt and true asset re-valuation. Since the loss of so much vested "wealth" is implied by the crash of suburbia, this may be a source of revolutionary political violence moving deeper into the Obama administration.
There's been plenty of buzz in the blogosphere about the imminent failure of the US "social safety net," including especially the social security program. Retirees are the biggest block of voters. They're not liable to foment riots -- that is best left to the youthful high-testosterone cohort -- but the older folks -- with Baby Boomers now coming aboard -- could be so distressed by the loss of their presumed entitlements that they will elect any maniac promising to bring back something that looked like the 1980s. We haven't begun to hear their war cries, and I hope they do not beat a path straight into some sort of crypto corporate fascism -- as, finally, every last failing scrap of American life is nationalized.
Some natural processes hide in the thickets ahead. A hyper-inflation could take this country in any weird and unappetizing direction, from scapegoating and persecution to a new kind of corporate fascism. But I'm inclined to see our tribulations governed more by weakness in high places than by real power. In a world of declining capital and depleting energy resources, the key to any successful venture will be smaller scale. I'm not convinced that any emergency could make the US government more effective at getting anything done. Our hopes really ought to be vested locally, since that is where the most effective action is likely to be in the years just ahead.
... There are many Americans of good will who would like to see the meaning of real "change" clearly articulated in a way that comports with reality, not just "dreams" and wishes. We'll hear a lot about dreams this week, anyway, of course, but then reality will set in and the heavy lifting will commence. Many Americans of good will also stand ready to face reality, to roll up our sleeves, ditch the video games and the Nascar and the microwaved cheese treats, and the internet porn and all the other noxious, narcolepsy-inducing distractions of our time, and put our shoulders to the wheel to haul this nation into a plausible future.
© 2009 Kunstler.com All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/121146/
Prosecutor: Slain toddler said 'I love you' at end
By JUAN A. LOZANO, Associated Press Writer Juan A. Lozano, Associated Press Writer 28 mins ago
GALVESTON, Texas – A slain toddler tried to stop her mother and stepfather from beating her to death by reaching out to her mother and saying, "I love you," a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday. The pleas from 2-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers didn't stop her mother, Kimberly Trenor, from continuing to brutalize her, assistant district attorney Kayla Allen said in her opening statement at Trenor's murder trial.
But defense attorney Tommy Stickler Jr. told the jury that Trenor, 20, never intended to kill her daughter in 2007 and that things just "spun out of control."
The toddler was dubbed "Baby Grace" by investigators who worked to identify her decomposed remains after the body was found in a plastic container in October 2007 on a tiny island in Galveston Bay.
Trenor's 25-year-old husband, Royce Zeigler II, is to be tried separately on murder charges. His attorney points the finger at Trenor.
Prosecutors declined to seek the death penalty because they didn't think they could prove that either one would be a future danger, as required.
During her opening statement, Allen detailed for jurors the day that she said Riley Ann died for forgetting to say "please" and "yes, sir."
Allen said that on July 25, 2007, Trenor and Zeigler disciplined Riley by whipping her with a belt, pushing her head against a pillow and holding her head under water. She said Zeigler grabbed Riley and tossed her across the room, fracturing her skull. An autopsy concluded the skull fractures caused her death.
"To the very end, Riley said, 'I love you' to her mom. She's reaching out," Allen said. "That's her lifeline, to her mother. What does Kim do after hearing her say I love you? She starts beating her."
Allen said the adults did nothing to help even as Riley lay dying.
She said the pair bought a plastic container, stuffed Riley's body inside and stored it in a shed for a month or two before setting it out to sea, prosecutors said.
Stickler portrayed Trenor as a scared 19-year-old girl who had moved to Texas from Ohio to marry a man she met while playing an online game. She said Riley's father, her former boyfriend, had assaulted her and Zeigler was her "knight in shining armor, her Texas cowboy."
"I don't want to use the word accident, but this wasn't something that was intentional," Stickler said.
Trenor could receive an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted of capital murder. The jury could also convict her of a lesser charge.
Riley's remains were unidentified for weeks until an Ohio woman, Sheryl Sawyers, saw an artist's sketch and told authorities she believed the girl was her granddaughter. Sawyers' son is Trenor's ex-boyfriend.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090128/ap_on_re_us/child_s_remains/print
GALVESTON, Texas – A slain toddler tried to stop her mother and stepfather from beating her to death by reaching out to her mother and saying, "I love you," a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday. The pleas from 2-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers didn't stop her mother, Kimberly Trenor, from continuing to brutalize her, assistant district attorney Kayla Allen said in her opening statement at Trenor's murder trial.
But defense attorney Tommy Stickler Jr. told the jury that Trenor, 20, never intended to kill her daughter in 2007 and that things just "spun out of control."
The toddler was dubbed "Baby Grace" by investigators who worked to identify her decomposed remains after the body was found in a plastic container in October 2007 on a tiny island in Galveston Bay.
Trenor's 25-year-old husband, Royce Zeigler II, is to be tried separately on murder charges. His attorney points the finger at Trenor.
Prosecutors declined to seek the death penalty because they didn't think they could prove that either one would be a future danger, as required.
During her opening statement, Allen detailed for jurors the day that she said Riley Ann died for forgetting to say "please" and "yes, sir."
Allen said that on July 25, 2007, Trenor and Zeigler disciplined Riley by whipping her with a belt, pushing her head against a pillow and holding her head under water. She said Zeigler grabbed Riley and tossed her across the room, fracturing her skull. An autopsy concluded the skull fractures caused her death.
"To the very end, Riley said, 'I love you' to her mom. She's reaching out," Allen said. "That's her lifeline, to her mother. What does Kim do after hearing her say I love you? She starts beating her."
Allen said the adults did nothing to help even as Riley lay dying.
She said the pair bought a plastic container, stuffed Riley's body inside and stored it in a shed for a month or two before setting it out to sea, prosecutors said.
Stickler portrayed Trenor as a scared 19-year-old girl who had moved to Texas from Ohio to marry a man she met while playing an online game. She said Riley's father, her former boyfriend, had assaulted her and Zeigler was her "knight in shining armor, her Texas cowboy."
"I don't want to use the word accident, but this wasn't something that was intentional," Stickler said.
Trenor could receive an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted of capital murder. The jury could also convict her of a lesser charge.
Riley's remains were unidentified for weeks until an Ohio woman, Sheryl Sawyers, saw an artist's sketch and told authorities she believed the girl was her granddaughter. Sawyers' son is Trenor's ex-boyfriend.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090128/ap_on_re_us/child_s_remains/print
Fast action needed to avoid climate chaos: study
Tue Jan 27, 2009 11:27am EST
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Global temperature rises due to climate change could be kept below the critical 2 degree mark by fast international action to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent by 2030, a report said on Monday.
Scientists say that if temperatures increase beyond 2 degrees, humanity faces severe environmental fallout, such as melting polar ice caps and rising sealevels.
Increasing numbers of scientists and politicians question whether the 2 degrees goal is achievable, given the slow progress of international negotiations so far.
But it is not too late to avert dangerous climate change, said the report by consultancy McKinsey and backed by ten organizations including energy companies, Enel, Vattenfall and Royal Dutch Shell.
"Achieving the deep emissions cuts required to keep global warming below the 2 degrees limit is possible but difficult," said McKinsey director Tomas Naucler.
Global investment of 530 billion euros ($686 billion) would be needed by 2020, and 810 billion by 2030, the report added.
Countries would offset much of the cost by simultaneously cutting their bills for oil, gas and coal, resulting in a net cost of less than 1 percent of gross domestic product.
The report comes one month after the European Union agreed ambitious measures to cut carbon dioxide and amid renewed optimism U.S. President Barack Obama will lend fresh momentum to global talks after having pledged to curb emissions at home.
Obama will start reversing former President George W. Bush's climate policies on Monday with steps to raise fuel efficiency standards and to grant states authority to limit emissions from cars, officials say.
Keeping climate change manageable would require fast global action, said the report.
A 70 percent cut in emissions by 2030 would see greenhouse gas emissions peaking at 480 parts per million (ppm), roughly the level scientists say would cause a 2 degree rise.
But a 10-year delay would make it difficult to keep greenhouse gas emissions below 550 parts per million (ppm).
"Every year of delay adds to the challenge, not only because emissions will continue to grow during that year, but also because it will lock the economy into high-carbon infrastructure," said the report.
(Reporting by Pete Harrison)
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE50P4E520090127
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Global temperature rises due to climate change could be kept below the critical 2 degree mark by fast international action to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent by 2030, a report said on Monday.
Scientists say that if temperatures increase beyond 2 degrees, humanity faces severe environmental fallout, such as melting polar ice caps and rising sealevels.
Increasing numbers of scientists and politicians question whether the 2 degrees goal is achievable, given the slow progress of international negotiations so far.
But it is not too late to avert dangerous climate change, said the report by consultancy McKinsey and backed by ten organizations including energy companies, Enel, Vattenfall and Royal Dutch Shell.
"Achieving the deep emissions cuts required to keep global warming below the 2 degrees limit is possible but difficult," said McKinsey director Tomas Naucler.
Global investment of 530 billion euros ($686 billion) would be needed by 2020, and 810 billion by 2030, the report added.
Countries would offset much of the cost by simultaneously cutting their bills for oil, gas and coal, resulting in a net cost of less than 1 percent of gross domestic product.
The report comes one month after the European Union agreed ambitious measures to cut carbon dioxide and amid renewed optimism U.S. President Barack Obama will lend fresh momentum to global talks after having pledged to curb emissions at home.
Obama will start reversing former President George W. Bush's climate policies on Monday with steps to raise fuel efficiency standards and to grant states authority to limit emissions from cars, officials say.
Keeping climate change manageable would require fast global action, said the report.
A 70 percent cut in emissions by 2030 would see greenhouse gas emissions peaking at 480 parts per million (ppm), roughly the level scientists say would cause a 2 degree rise.
But a 10-year delay would make it difficult to keep greenhouse gas emissions below 550 parts per million (ppm).
"Every year of delay adds to the challenge, not only because emissions will continue to grow during that year, but also because it will lock the economy into high-carbon infrastructure," said the report.
(Reporting by Pete Harrison)
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE50P4E520090127
Britain told to publish Iraq war discussions
Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:55pm EST
By Tim Castle
LONDON (Reuters) - Records of British cabinet discussions over the legality of invading Iraq, held in the buildup to war in 2003, must be released to the public, a tribunal ruled Tuesday.
Publication of the documents could embarrass Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose predecessor Tony Blair was accused by critics of glossing over lawyers' initial reservations about launching the invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Brown's office said it was considering its response to the ruling, made by a tribunal which decides on requests for documents under freedom of information laws.
The tribunal said it was in the public interest to release minutes of the cabinet discussions.
The documents from two cabinet meetings in March 2003 may reveal whether ministers were aware of an apparent change of mind over the invasion's legality made by the government's then senior legal officer, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith.
Previously released documents have shown that Goldsmith had cast doubt on the legal grounds of war on March 7, days before Blair ordered British troops in.
Ten days later, when Britain had failed to get a new United Nations resolution authorizing an invasion, Goldsmith gave the cabinet and parliament short written advice that war was legal -- and mentioned no doubts.
Blair denied Goldsmith had bowed under political pressure but opposition parties accused the then prime minister of deceit.
"The release of these minutes could be critical in how history views this decision," said Edward Davey, a spokesman for the opposition Liberal Democrat party.
"The Labor government has put a wall of secrecy over the years since 2003 to prevent the full facts coming out," he told BBC television.
Both the Liberal Democrats and the opposition Conservatives have called for a full inquiry into the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which the government has resisted as long as British troops remain in Iraq.
Britain has said it will withdraw almost all its remaining troops from Iraq by the end of July.
The minutes of cabinet meetings would normally be kept secret for 30 years.
Britain's Information Commissioner ruled last February that the government should release the documents.
The government appealed against this ruling but Tuesday the tribunal upheld the Commissioner's decision.
The government has until shortly before the end of February to decide whether to challenge the ruling in the High Court.
(editing by Dominic Evans)
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE50Q5GW20090127
By Tim Castle
LONDON (Reuters) - Records of British cabinet discussions over the legality of invading Iraq, held in the buildup to war in 2003, must be released to the public, a tribunal ruled Tuesday.
Publication of the documents could embarrass Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose predecessor Tony Blair was accused by critics of glossing over lawyers' initial reservations about launching the invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Brown's office said it was considering its response to the ruling, made by a tribunal which decides on requests for documents under freedom of information laws.
The tribunal said it was in the public interest to release minutes of the cabinet discussions.
The documents from two cabinet meetings in March 2003 may reveal whether ministers were aware of an apparent change of mind over the invasion's legality made by the government's then senior legal officer, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith.
Previously released documents have shown that Goldsmith had cast doubt on the legal grounds of war on March 7, days before Blair ordered British troops in.
Ten days later, when Britain had failed to get a new United Nations resolution authorizing an invasion, Goldsmith gave the cabinet and parliament short written advice that war was legal -- and mentioned no doubts.
Blair denied Goldsmith had bowed under political pressure but opposition parties accused the then prime minister of deceit.
"The release of these minutes could be critical in how history views this decision," said Edward Davey, a spokesman for the opposition Liberal Democrat party.
"The Labor government has put a wall of secrecy over the years since 2003 to prevent the full facts coming out," he told BBC television.
Both the Liberal Democrats and the opposition Conservatives have called for a full inquiry into the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which the government has resisted as long as British troops remain in Iraq.
Britain has said it will withdraw almost all its remaining troops from Iraq by the end of July.
The minutes of cabinet meetings would normally be kept secret for 30 years.
Britain's Information Commissioner ruled last February that the government should release the documents.
The government appealed against this ruling but Tuesday the tribunal upheld the Commissioner's decision.
The government has until shortly before the end of February to decide whether to challenge the ruling in the High Court.
(editing by Dominic Evans)
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE50Q5GW20090127
To Support and Defend: A Message to US Senators and Representatives
Friday 23 January 2009
by: Phillip Butler, Ph.D., t r u t h o u t | Perspective
The Constitution of the United States of America.
"I, Phillip Neal Butler, having been appointed a Midshipman in the United States Navy, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter, so help me God." (Oath of Office, July 1, 1957.)
Upon graduation from the United States Naval Academy in 1961, I had the honor of repeating this oath to be commissioned an ensign in the United States Navy. I served 20 years as an active duty commissioned officer. During that time, I became a naval aviator, flew combat in Vietnam, was downed over North Vietnam on April 20, 1965, and became a prisoner of war. I was repatriated on February 12, 1973, having served 2,855 days and nights as a POW - just short of eight years. The Vietnamese were not signatories to any international treaties on treatment of prisoners. They pronounced us "criminals" and freely used torture, harassment, malnutrition, isolation, lack of medical care, and other degradations during our captivity. I was tortured dozens of times during my captivity. But I often thought of our Constitution and the higher purpose we served - a purpose that helped me resist beyond what I thought I'd ever be capable of. Ironically, we POWs often reminded each other "that our country would never stoop to torture and the low level of treatment we were experiencing at the hands of our captors."
This Oath of Office, the same one sworn to by all officers, government officials, presidential cabinet members, senators and representatives of our nation, has had a powerful effect on me. It has given me an over-arching purpose in life: to serve the greatest and most influential legal document ever written. The only different oath is specified for the president of the United States in Constitution Article II, Section 1 (8.) It mandates that he or she will "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution."
So, what in the world has happened during the past eight years of the George W. Bush administration? The only defensible answer is that he and his subordinates have trampled our precious Constitution and the rule of law into the ground, while our elected members of Congress have stood idly and complicitly by. Our highest elected officials have utterly failed in their duty of greatest responsibility.
During these years, we have seen gross attempts to institutionalize torture. Our Constitution, Article VI, (2), commonly known as the "Supremacy" clause, clearly states that treaties made shall become "the supreme law of the land," thus elevating them to the level of constitutional law.
The Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, ratified in 1949, states in Article 17, "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind." This and numerous other ratified treaties clearly stipulate that "prisoners" is an inclusive term that is not limited to any nation's uniformed combatants.
Other gross Bush administration crimes, in addition to authorizing torture, of general and constitutional law include: 1) the use of "signing statements" to illegally refrain from complying with laws, 2) authorization of the illegal suspension of Habeas Corpus, 3) authorization of wire tapping and other intrusive methods to illegally spy on American citizens, 4) unilateral declaration and pre-emptive conduct of war in violation of US Constitution Article I, Section 8 (11).
These violations of our Constitution and rule of law have resulted in reducing our nation to the level of international pariah. Our beacon of liberty and justice no longer shines throughout the world. We no longer set the example for other nations to follow. We no longer stand on a firm foundation. We have lost our national, moral gyro.
I despair when I think of the personal sacrifices made by so many in US wars and conflicts since 1776. If our forefathers were here to see, they would surely be angry and disappointed. And I think they would issue a clarion call for redress and setting an example for the world by punishing those who are guilty. The only way our nation can right itself is for Congress to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes.
I, therefore, call on my elected representatives in the Senate and House of Representatives to bring criminal charges against President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, legal counsel William J. Haynes, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former legal counsel David Addington, and potentially other high officials and uniformed officers. There is no other option if you are to carry out your responsibilities. Citizens of the United States and of the world are watching you. Do your duty. Support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
---------
Note: This article was written for and at the request of Sen. John Kerry, to use as leverage with his Senate colleagues.
http://www.truthout.org/012309A
by: Phillip Butler, Ph.D., t r u t h o u t | Perspective
The Constitution of the United States of America.
"I, Phillip Neal Butler, having been appointed a Midshipman in the United States Navy, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter, so help me God." (Oath of Office, July 1, 1957.)
Upon graduation from the United States Naval Academy in 1961, I had the honor of repeating this oath to be commissioned an ensign in the United States Navy. I served 20 years as an active duty commissioned officer. During that time, I became a naval aviator, flew combat in Vietnam, was downed over North Vietnam on April 20, 1965, and became a prisoner of war. I was repatriated on February 12, 1973, having served 2,855 days and nights as a POW - just short of eight years. The Vietnamese were not signatories to any international treaties on treatment of prisoners. They pronounced us "criminals" and freely used torture, harassment, malnutrition, isolation, lack of medical care, and other degradations during our captivity. I was tortured dozens of times during my captivity. But I often thought of our Constitution and the higher purpose we served - a purpose that helped me resist beyond what I thought I'd ever be capable of. Ironically, we POWs often reminded each other "that our country would never stoop to torture and the low level of treatment we were experiencing at the hands of our captors."
This Oath of Office, the same one sworn to by all officers, government officials, presidential cabinet members, senators and representatives of our nation, has had a powerful effect on me. It has given me an over-arching purpose in life: to serve the greatest and most influential legal document ever written. The only different oath is specified for the president of the United States in Constitution Article II, Section 1 (8.) It mandates that he or she will "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution."
So, what in the world has happened during the past eight years of the George W. Bush administration? The only defensible answer is that he and his subordinates have trampled our precious Constitution and the rule of law into the ground, while our elected members of Congress have stood idly and complicitly by. Our highest elected officials have utterly failed in their duty of greatest responsibility.
During these years, we have seen gross attempts to institutionalize torture. Our Constitution, Article VI, (2), commonly known as the "Supremacy" clause, clearly states that treaties made shall become "the supreme law of the land," thus elevating them to the level of constitutional law.
The Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, ratified in 1949, states in Article 17, "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind." This and numerous other ratified treaties clearly stipulate that "prisoners" is an inclusive term that is not limited to any nation's uniformed combatants.
Other gross Bush administration crimes, in addition to authorizing torture, of general and constitutional law include: 1) the use of "signing statements" to illegally refrain from complying with laws, 2) authorization of the illegal suspension of Habeas Corpus, 3) authorization of wire tapping and other intrusive methods to illegally spy on American citizens, 4) unilateral declaration and pre-emptive conduct of war in violation of US Constitution Article I, Section 8 (11).
These violations of our Constitution and rule of law have resulted in reducing our nation to the level of international pariah. Our beacon of liberty and justice no longer shines throughout the world. We no longer set the example for other nations to follow. We no longer stand on a firm foundation. We have lost our national, moral gyro.
I despair when I think of the personal sacrifices made by so many in US wars and conflicts since 1776. If our forefathers were here to see, they would surely be angry and disappointed. And I think they would issue a clarion call for redress and setting an example for the world by punishing those who are guilty. The only way our nation can right itself is for Congress to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes.
I, therefore, call on my elected representatives in the Senate and House of Representatives to bring criminal charges against President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, legal counsel William J. Haynes, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former legal counsel David Addington, and potentially other high officials and uniformed officers. There is no other option if you are to carry out your responsibilities. Citizens of the United States and of the world are watching you. Do your duty. Support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
---------
Note: This article was written for and at the request of Sen. John Kerry, to use as leverage with his Senate colleagues.
http://www.truthout.org/012309A
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