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Thank You - From RINF

Monday, December 24th, 2007

Thank you to all who have been sending in your best wishes to me for the holidays, it is greatly appreciated.

Unfortunately I’m unable to answer each of you personally so I hope this short message goes some way to express my thanks to all of you.

Hope you all have a great holiday and thank you for your continued support.

Here’s to a productive 2008!

All the best,
Mick

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Activists free battery hens

Monday, December 24th, 2007

Animal rights activists have freed 15 hens from an Auckland farm in an effort to persuade more people to boycott battery eggs.

New Zealand Open Rescue spokeswoman Deirdre Sims says the group took the hens because of the conditions they were living in. She says farmers in New Zealand cage 2.8 million hens, all of which are unable to nest, bath or move freely.

Sims says hen farmers should be ashamed of making money from caging hens.

The activists say they had to take action because legislation designed to protect hens from cruel treatment is failing. The activists would not reveal which farm they raided and say they only freed 15 of the thousands of chickens there.

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1318360/1520106

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Lyric censorship heralds swansong for the BBC

Monday, December 24th, 2007

TELEVISION Quality seems to be the very last thing on BBC execs mind, writes Declan Lynch

THERE was a general air of stupefaction when the BBC bleeped the word “faggot” from Fairytale Of New York. But those of you who were reading this column last week were not surprised at all. No, you’ll have smiled knowingly, remembering that opening line about the the BBC being dead, killed by many things but mainly by the wrong sort of people rising to positions of power within that once-great corporation.

With exquisite timing, on the very next day, we learn that someone in a position of power at the BBC has nothing better to be doing than censoring perfectly good songs for no good reason. And within this sad vignette, we can glimpse the broader calamity which has reduced the BBC to the level of any other channel of the 800,000 currently available.

It reveals the sort of thinking which seems to take almost everything into account, apart forn the one thing which matters — and lest we forget, the one thing that matters, the only thing that should concern any BBC person in relation to any piece of work, is whether it is any good.

Is Fairytale Of New York any good ? Yes, it is very good indeed.

That should be the only issue at stake here, the rest is all form-filling.

Because it’s hard to be good.

It can take a lot out of you, being good. And if you’re spending any time at all worrying about offending people, you probably won’t manage it.

In fact, you’ll end up being offensive anyway, to those of us who like good things. Ronan Keating offended me, for example, when he changed “you cheap lousy faggot”, to “you’re cheap and you’re haggard”, but I didn’t complain about it much. Until now.

You also encounter this fearful mentality in other areas. “What’s in this for women?” they might ask a programme-maker, who should reply that if something is good, then everyone, including women, will feel the benefit. So that’s what is in it for women — its goodness.

Ah, but that’s not what is meant at all. These fearful types would be perfectly happy if the work was a complete load of cobblers, so long as there’s something in it for women. And seemingly, there’s a lot of types like that in the BBC these days, wasting everyone’s time on stuff that doesn’t matter, asking all the wrong questions.

THERE wasn’t much for women in Himself the recent profile on Setanta of the golfer Christy O’Connor (Senior). So why did they make it?

Something to do with the fact that Christy O’Connor seemed for many years to be one of the few Irish people who were any good at anything, in this case the game of golf. He was also very good at drinking and staying up late and generally having a wonderful time, after which he could still be standing on the first tee at first light, starting with a solid par and then going birdie, birdie, birdie on his way to shooting a new course record of 62.

In fact, in these days, when the ancient recreations of men are increasingly reviled, there would probably be some sort of a law against Christy O’Connor, or “Himself”, as he is known to his butties, in stereotypical fashion.

Indeed, if a female equivalent inspired a documentary called Herself, it would be seen as faintly patronising.

Yet, as we searched the film in vain for something that might be offensive to lesbians and gay men, we could only agree with contributor Niall Toibin, who ventured the view that the two greatest Irishmen of all time are the singer John McCormack and the same Christy O’Connor. Were they any good? Yes, they were very good indeed. In fact, they were great. And, while you can see a plaque to my fellow Athlone man McCormack on the front of an excellent Chinese takeaway in the town, you can remember “Himself” on DVD.

THEN again there is such a thing as prejudice, and we must guard against it. Having seen Mr Jacob Zuma, the new head of the ANC on an RTE news report for approximately 45 seconds, I formed the iron conviction that this man would be the scourge of Africa.

Just a few key words like “acquitted on rape charges”, and “massive corruption claims” led me to jump to the conclusion that this man needs to be watched carefully..

I can only hope that I’m wrong about this. For once.

The Book of Poor Ould Fellas, written by Declan Lynch and Arthur Mathews, published by Hodder Headline,€14.32 makes an ideal last-minute Christmas present

- Declan Lynch

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CIA rebuts 9/11 suggestion

Monday, December 24th, 2007

CIA rebuts suggestion it did not cooperate with 9/11 Commission investigation

David Remes, an attorney for a dozen Yemeni prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, speaks to reporters following a hearing in federal court as costumed protestors stage a demonstration

 The CIA on Saturday rebutted suggestions the spy agency was uncooperative and hid from the Sept. 11 commission the videotaped interrogations of two suspected terrorists, saying it waited until the panel went out of business before destroying the material now in question.

The destruction in late 2005 of the videotapes of two al-Qaida suspects has upset a federal judge and riled the Democratic-controlled Congress, which has promised an investigation. The Justice Department also is trying to find out what happened and whether any laws were broken.

A recent memo by Philip Zelikow, the former executive director of the Sept. 11 commission, suggests the CIA was less than forthcoming when asked for documents and other information from the panel, which investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The CIA disputed that characterization and suggested the panel should have requested interrogation videotapes specifically if it wanted them.

“The notion that the CIA wasn’t cooperative or forthcoming with the 9/11 commission is just plain wrong. It is utterly without foundation,” spokesman Mark Mansfield said Saturday. “The CIA’s cooperation and assistance is what enabled the 9/11 commission to reconstruct the plot in their very comprehensive report.”

In a statement e-mailed separately Saturday, Mansfield suggested the commission should have been specific about wanting videotapes.

“Because it was thought the commission could ask about tapes at some point, they were not destroyed while the commission was active,” he said. Mansfield, citing similar comments this month by CIA Director Michael Hayden, added that “the tapes were destroyed only when it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries.”

Zelikow’s seven-page memo, dated Dec. 13, reviews the commission’s requests for information from the CIA.

It cites a Jan. 26, 2004, meeting of commission members and administration officials, including then-CIA Director George Tenet, at which the government offered to present written questions to the detainees and relay their answers back to the commission.

“None of the government officials in any of these 2004 meetings alluded to the existence of recordings of interrogations or any further information in the government’s possession that was relevant to the commission’s requests,” Zelikow wrote.

Near the end of the commission’s work, and in response to a request by the commission to all agencies, John McLaughlin, then the deputy CIA director, confirmed on June 29, 2004, that the CIA had “taken and completed all reasonable steps necessary to find the documents in its possession, custody or control responsive” to the commission’s formal requests and “has produced or made available for review” all such documents, the memo said.

The existence of Zelikow’s memo was first reported by The New York Times.

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Criticism For BUTCHER Blair Over Conversion

Monday, December 24th, 2007

Tony Blair’s conversion to Catholicism has been criticised by commentators who argue his views as PM were at odds with church teachings.

Tony Blair has met Pope Benedict

Mr Blair was welcomed into the Roman Catholic church by the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor - leader of the Roman Catholics in England and Wales.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor welcomed the politician’s personal decision, which culminated in the ceremony at the chapel of the Archbishop’s House in Westminster.

He said: “For a long time he has been a regular worshipper at Mass with his family and in recent months he has been following a programme of formation to prepare for his reception into full communion.”

The move comes after years of speculation that Mr Blair, whose wife Cherie and four children are Catholic, would convert from Anglicanism after he resigned from Number 10 in June.

Converting while in office would have caused him problems in connection with issues such as abortion, contraception, homosexuality and faith schools.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) reacted with surprise to the news.

John Smeaton, SPUC’s national director, said: “During his premiership Tony Blair became one of the world’s most significant architects of the culture of death, promoting abortion, experimentation on unborn embryos, including cloned embryos, and euthanasia by neglect.

“SPUC is writing to Tony Blair to ask him whether he has repented of the anti-life positions he has so openly advocated throughout his political career.”

Tory MP Ann Widdecombe, who converted to Catholicism in 1993, told Sky News it was possible in her opinion to be a practising Catholic and prime minister.

She said: “I think the crucial thing to remember is at the point you are received (into the Catholic church) you have to say individually and out loud ‘I believe everything the church teaches to be revealed truth’.

“And that means if you previously had any problems with church teaching, as Tony Blair obviously did over abortion, as he did again over Sunday trading…you would have to say you changed your mind.

“And I think people will want to know that he did go through that process, because otherwise it will seem as if the church did make an exception for somebody just because of who he is.”

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VIDEO: Pop Mec Test Drives Electric Car

Monday, December 24th, 2007

PM hits the streets and gets looked at more than ever before, then heads to the shop for first-look details on a futuristic car so efficient it’ll make your jaw drop. The good news? It’s coming next year.

 

Three hundred miles per gallon and a Jetsons-style look are enough to get anyone excited. But ever since the word got out on it last month, Aptera’s innovative Typ-1 three-wheeler has been the target of relentless theorizing and conjecture across the Web. Is it real? Does it have what it takes to be a practical vehicle for daily transport? Is it stable enough to drive? Does it even actually drive? Well we wondered some of those things, too, so we scouted out if a drivable prototype really exists.

It does.

This week we visited Aptera’s headquarters in Carlsbad, Calif., and became the very first outside of the company to hit the street in the Typ-1 e. And, as you can see from the video of our 20-mile test drive above, we’re impressed.

Aptera has two innovative models that are almost production-ready at $30,000 and below: for next year, the all-electric, 120-mile-range Typ-1 e that we drove; and, by 2009, the range-extended series gasoline Typ-1 h, which Aptera says will hit 300 mpg. A more conventional third model, called “Project X” or perhaps Typ-2, is now in the design phase, with plans for a four-wheeled chassis and seating up for to five passengers.

For now, though, the Typ-1 will certainly do. Check out a full gallery for the inside scoop on all the specs from the shop and the street …

The Typ-1’s exposed chassis shows how the company has taken inspiration from aircraft, boats and high-performance cars. For durability as well as weight and cost savings, the majority of the Typ-1 is constructed from a top and bottom advanced composite structures bonded together along the midsection. With the top and bottom weighing in at a mere 160 and 180 pounds, respectively, the entire vehicle sits at approximately 1480 pounds today.

The chassis has steel reinforcements in key areas: at the roll hoop, along the bottom of the windshield, in the doors (for side impact protection) and, of course, in the front subframe (for the suspension system as well as the engine and battery cradle).

On the all-electric model, the battery pack lives in the center space of the subframe. A tiny gasoline internal combustion engine in the hybrid models shares that space. In fact, this chassis has part of the hybrid’s exhaust, which you can see just below and to the left of the subframe.

The rear-drive wheel is mounted to a steel swing arm similar to that of motorcycle—but with a design optimized to handle the Aptera’s loads. The rear wheel has 3 in. of up travel and 2 in. of droop.

A belt drive system connects to an electric motor that has regenerative braking to help charge the battery pack. The tires on the prototype are the same 165/65R14 tires from the Honda Insight.

The Typ-1 e is expected to have a target range of 120 miles per charge. A ful1 recharge of the pack will take about 4 to 6 hours with a standard 110-volt outlet. Aptera’s team is still evaluating lithium phosphate battery packs from a few suppliers, so the final specs of the 10-kWh batteries remain confidential. (The hybrid model will use a smaller battery pack.)

This wall of equipment is part of the battery test station. Twin super capacitors augment the battery pack for when you neeed quick boosts of power (think passing stupefied fellow drivers on the highway).

Continue..

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9/11 Panel Joins Probe of Destroyed CIA Tapes

Monday, December 24th, 2007

By Diane Smith

According to the U.S. panel investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks, the CIA had deliberately withheld tapes of supposed torture of terrorism suspects to obstruct the panel’s work, the New York Times wrote in its Saturday edition.

Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean, the leading chairmen of the panel, were the ones to comment on the issue for the New York Times. The two declared that the CIA had disposed of hundreds of hours of recordings of CIA investigators using “enhanced” investigation techniques such as waterboarding.

The latest revelation on the CIA disposal of the tapes has triggered investigations by the justice department, Congress and from within the CIA, and also provoked members of the September 11 commission to review the top secret documents and communications supplied by the CIA during their probe, the Times said.

Philip Zelikow, the panel’s former executive director, said he prepared a memorandum on the review according to which the panel had sought complete documents, reports and information linked to the interrogation process. Zelikow had been assured by the CIA that it had “produced or made available for review” everything that had been requested.

Panel chairman Lee Hamilton declared to the Times that the CIA had “clearly obstructed” the commission’s investigation. The other top chairman of the panel said he would submit Zelikow’s review to federal prosecutors and congressional investigators responsible with the destruction of the tapes issue.

The lawyers hired by the Guantanamo detainees said on Friday to federal judge Henry H Kennedy Jr. that this issue shows the Bush administration is ready to destroy evidence of possible torture or illegal interrogation methods.

“Until these inquiries are complete, until the oversights’ finished, I will be rendering no opinion from the podium,” Bush said.

“Let’s wait and see what the facts are,” the president added.

The destroyed tapes illustrated the 2002 interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and another top al-Qaeda member. At that point in time, Zubaydah was the most important capture of an al-Qaeda figure following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

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Girl hit in missile strike fights to stay in Israel

Monday, December 24th, 2007

By Carolynne Wheeler in Jerusalem

Six-year-old Maria Amin races ahead of her father on the way to school. “Hurry up, papa. The bus will leave without us,” she calls, steering her electric wheelchair with a mouth-stick towards the specially-equipped van.

	Symbol of hope: Maria Amin’s case has captured the hearts of the Israeli public

It’s a journey that, 19 months ago, it was impossible to imagine her making. In May last year, the little Palestinian girl and other family members were in her uncle’s car in Gaza when it was torn apart by shrapnel from an Israeli missile.

Travelling just ahead of them had been Mohammad Dahdouh, a senior Islamic Jihad commander responsible for directing rocket attacks against Israeli towns.

The missile hit its target, but destroyed her uncle’s car as well, killing her mother, grandmother and older brother. She was thrown out of the window - alive, but paralysed from the neck down.

The fact that today she is able to pilot herself around, using her chin to steer, is a testament to the skill of Palestinian and Israeli doctors, to the care of the Jerusalem hospital where she now lives, and to her own indomitable spirit.

It also reflects the media attention her case has drawn in Israel, which added to pressure on the Israeli government to help her.

Transferred first to a Tel Aviv hospital and then to Jerusalem’s private Alyn rehabilitation centre, after Gaza’s hospitals were unable to care for her, Maria captured the hearts of the Israeli public.

Last week she was given the good news that she will be allowed to remain where she is for at least another year - providing a flicker of hope for reconciliation in a part of the world that sorely needs it.

Her endless rounds of medical care, tests and physiotherapy are broken up by lessons at Jerusalem’s only bilingual school, where Jewish and Arab students study together in classes taught jointly by Hebrew and Arabic-speaking teachers.

It is a fitting place for a little girl who began learning Hebrew almost from the moment she arrived at the Alyn centre, and who has drawn people from both sides of this conflict to her cause.

“She is very active and has the character of a leader,” said Dalia Peretz, the Jewish Israeli who heads the Max Rayne Hand-in-Hand School with an Arab colleague. “The children like to be around Maria and to play with her, and I know many of the parents care a lot about her.”

It is one of the many ironies that permeate this conflict that Ms Pertetz’s brother is Amir Peretz, who was the Israeli defence minister when the missile struck.

Teachers say they are astonished by Maria’s ability to compensate for her limitations. Her artwork adorns the classroom’s walls, painted with the help of a paintbrush or crayon attached to a wand which she grasps with her teeth. In music lessons, she sings as loudly as her softly whooshing respirator will allow her.

“She’s marvellous,” said her music teacher, Helen Sabella. “She’s really dominant - she proves herself.”

Maria’s father, Hamdi, who survived the air strike along with her younger brother, is now devoted to looking after the two children in a family suite next to the hospital.

Each morning, he combs Maria’s hair into a neat ponytail and polishes her fingernails before accompanying her to school.

“When I saw first Jews, Christians and Muslims together without any discrimination, I was fascinated. Look at the kids playing together,” marvelled the 30-year-old former driver as he watched in the school’s courtyard.

While Maria studies, a network of Israeli volunteers is fighting to keep her here.

In the summer, the Israeli defence ministry issued an order to move her from the Alyn centre, which has a specialist unit for patients with spinal injuries, to a Palestinian hospital in Ramallah, but her doctors opposed the move, saying it was tantamount to a death sentence.

They argued that no Ramallah hospital could provide the same care, and that the Israeli checkpoints through which travellers must pass on the way to Jerusalem would prevent her from getting prompt medical help in an ­emergency.

Last week, the ministry backed down, agreeing to a one-year freeze on the deportation order while another solution was sought. Meanwhile, it is paying Maria’s tuition fees and other expenses.

However, despite the freeze, it also seems unlikely that she will stay where she is.

“She has finished the treatment in Alyn hospital, so every day that she is staying there is a waste of time and money,” said Shlomo Dror, a defence ministry spokesman.

Maria’s Israeli legal team is preparing to pursue her case in the Supreme Court. A hearing is scheduled for February.

“I’m optimistic,” said Adi Lustigman, a Jerusalem lawyer who is leading the team.

“I don’t see how the court can send Maria to Gaza or the West Bank where it’s clear she could not survive. In order to salvage what’s left, Maria needs stability.”

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Dollar declines as traders wrangle over Fed rate cuts

Monday, December 24th, 2007

The US dollar declined against the euro and the pound on Friday as traders continued to hotly debate whether the US Federal Reserve would continue cutting interest rates amid economic uncertainty.

The euro was swapping hands at US$1.4378 in late afternoon trading in New York, up from US$1.4320 late on Thursday.

The British pound was quoted at US$1.9841, up from US$1.9830 a day earlier.

Although the pound gained ground it has dropped below two dollars of late, marking its lowest levels against the US dollar since August.

The US dollar was meanwhile trading at ¥114.09, up from ¥113.09 on Thursday.

The US currency’s value has risen and fallen in the past week as traders have either bet up or discounted the odds of a fresh Fed rate cut.

The Fed has cut borrowing costs three times since September in a bid to underpin US economic momentum in the face of a prolonged housing slump, but analysts say rising inflationary pressures may soon put an end to the rate cuts.

The US Commerce Department reported earlier on Friday that a core US inflation gauge, which excludes volatile food and energy costs, bounced up an annual 2.2 percent last month, above the Fed’s comfort zone of between 1 percent and 2 percent.

In late New York trading, the US dollar stood at 1.1551 Swiss francs from SF1.1581 on Thursday.

AFP

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GOP deals Dems some bitter pills

Monday, December 24th, 2007

By Deirdre Shesgreen

The first session of the 110th Congress started off with a snap and had plenty of crackle. But the end was more fizzle than pop.

“We had 50 weeks of basically polarization and brinksmanship and two weeks of problem-solving,” said Rep. Todd Akin, R-Town and Country.

Democrats were catapulted into power after the 2006 elections on big promises: They would clean up Washington, change course in Iraq and devote new attention to domestic needs.

But as lawmakers rushed home for the holidays last week, Republicans were declaring victory for confounding their political foes at almost every turn, with one GOP lawmaker deriding this as the “cave-in Congress.”

Even as Democrats trumpeted some meaty achievements — from ethics reform to a minimum-wage increase to a landmark energy bill — their liberal base was fuming over some of the concessions Democrats made.

After bruising battles with the White House and congressional Republicans, Democrats swallowed three bitter pills in the final days of the year:

— They handed President George W. Bush $70 billion in funding for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with no strings attached.

— They passed a flat extension of a children’s health insurance program — something the GOP had been calling for, for months — after conceding that their efforts to expand the popular program could not overcome Bush’s vetoes.

— They approved an 11th-hour, $50 billion tax fix that will shield the middle class from a major tax increase, but without raising additional revenue — violating their self-imposed vow to offset any new spending or tax breaks so as not to worsen the deficit.

“Our members probably went home yesterday happier than … in the 11 years I’ve been here,” said House GOP Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

Congress’ final weeks were so chaotic that many lawmakers booked multiple flights home because they had no idea when last votes would be cast on a $555 billion omnibus budget loaded with more than 8,000 of lawmakers’ pet projects.

Where Akin saw polarization and brinksmanship, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., saw idealism and pragmatism, and she said the Senate had “a healthy dose of both this year,” making for bitter fights as well as solid, albeit last-minute, agreements.

“At the end of the day it’s not bad what we got done in spite of ourselves,” she said. But the process “sure isn’t pretty.”

Steven Smith, a political science professor at Washington University, said that with Democrats barely in control of the Senate and a Republican in the White House, “there was essentially a stalemate” on all major legislative initiatives. “This was a situation where both parties had the ability to veto the highest priorities of the other.”

He said the 49-member Republican minority in the Senate used threats of a filibuster to protect Bush from embarrassing vetoes on Iraq and other matters. In the process, he said, they were able to make the Democrats look bad “for not governing an institution they seemed to control.”

EARLY VICTORIES

The messy ending to the first half of this Congress stands out all the more because of its sharp beginning.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the first woman to be speaker of the House, swept into office with a 100-hour legislative blitz. With the help of moderate Republicans, Democrats racked up a raft of early victories: cutting interest rates on student loans, enacting long-stalled recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, and raising the minimum wage, among other things.

“Those are issues that the American people wanted to see us address, and we did,” said Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis. “And we became more fiscally responsible than previous Congresses and this administration.”

Indeed, some Republicans found themselves cheering the Democrats’ final spending package as one that was much better than any they ever produced. Bush forced Democrats to stick to his bottom line, something he never did when the GOP was in control, rather than allow them to add $22 billion in new spending.

“We’re leaving with Bush’s numbers plus some emergency spending for things we can support,” such as veterans care, said Rep. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville. With that new financial restraint, he said, “we’re going back to our base in a Democratic majority. … That’s a pretty good Christmas present.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the budget deal was “really a heartbreak” because Democrats wanted desperately to boost spending for health care, education and other programs they felt have been ignored. Democrats did shift money to fill some of their priorities but failed to force Bush to agree to a higher overall budget number.

WHITE HOUSE POWER

Durbin said Democrats had no options in the budget showdown because they simply did not have the votes to override Bush’s threatened veto.

“In the end there was only one card that could be played: the Newt Gingrich government shut-down card,” Durbin said, referring to the standoff between the former GOP House speaker and President Bill Clinton that led to government offices being shuttered and a political fallout for the GOP. “We were never going to let that happen, and the president knew it,” Durbin said.

Democrats also saw the collapse of a sweeping and controversial immigration reform package. They failed to override Bush’s veto of a bill to lift restrictions on government funding for stem cell research. And most irksome to their liberal supporters, they failed to win a raft of Iraq votes that would have imposed withdrawal timetables for U.S. troops or restricted war funding.

Pelosi said Congress had “put a lot of pressure on the administration” over the war through “very intense oversight.” But, she conceded, “No one is more disappointed with the fact that we couldn’t change that (the course of the war) than I am.”

Pelosi said she and other Democrats made one miscalculation on that front: They underestimated the GOP’s willingness to rally behind an unpopular president on an unpopular issue.

Republicans said they were unified against the Democrats’ “slow-bleed” strategy for Iraq.

Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, R-Mo., said Democrats spent “an awful lot of time redoing” varying Iraq votes to send “a message to their extreme left-wing base.” Now that the United States is seeing some military progress in Iraq, he said, “I think we’ll see them temper their political efforts” on the war.

SETTING UP FOR ‘08

But that’s unlikely when Congress reconvenes next month.

“We will keep pushing the president to come up with withdrawal dates, with benchmarks, with time lines, and he will resist all of it,” Clay said. “So it’ll be a test of wills again.”

At the same time, Democrats said they hoped to shine a brighter spotlight on some new domestic issues. Pelosi said health care would be front and center, along with legislation to address global warming.

Durbin said he expected a major push on economic issues and the mortgage crisis in particular.

But others said the main issue on the agenda would be politics. With next year’s presidential race and congressional elections at full throttle, there will be “more of the same” gridlock, said Smith, the Washington University professor.

“Legislative accomplishments will not be their chief goal,” he said. “Setting themselves up for 2008 will be.”

Megan Boehnke of the Post-Dispatch Washington bureau contributed to this story.

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Syrian MP threatens Dimona

Monday, December 24th, 2007

As Bush and Sarkozy lose patience with Assad, Syrian MP threatens Dimona

A Syrian member of parliament thought to be familiar with the thinking of President Bashar al-Assad is quoted in the London-based pan-Arab daily newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi on Saturday as saying that Syria could strike Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona as retaliation for any future forays into Syrian airspace and violation of Syrian “sovereignty”, Haaretz reports.

MP Mohammad Habash noted that Dimona is well within range of Syrian missiles, and that Damascus does not rule out the possibility of additional Israeli attacks against Syria. Though Habash said that Syria has no interest in escalating tensions between the two countries, he also said that no such contacts are currently being held between them.

An attempt to exchange messages between Israel and Syria in recent months has failed, Haaretz reports, citing European diplomatic sources as saying that the reason for the impasse was an inability to reach an agenda for talks and that “the bottom line was a negative one.” But in off-the-record conversations, several sources close to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are quoted as saying that “the Syrian track still has higher chances of success when compared to the Palestinian track” and needed to be given a chance.

“It is a lot simpler and it is possible to achieve an agreement in a short time,” one of Olmert’s confidants said. “The only problem is that the Syrians are not sending positive signals.”

“The Syrians wanted the talks to revolve only on the Golan [Heights],” the European diplomats are quoted as saying. “But Israel wanted to first talk about other issues that trouble it, such as [Syrian] ties with Iran and the support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and Syria did not agree.”

The U.S., however, appears strongly opposed to any gestures or concessions toward Damascus. President George W. Bush told a White House press conference last week that he was fed up with Syrian President Bashar Assad. “Syria needs to stay out of Lebanon,” Bush said when asked whether he would be willing to talk to Assad about stabilizing Lebanon, which is caught up in a political crisis over the election of a new president. “My patience ran out on President Assad a long time ago,” he said. “The reason why is because he houses Hamas, he facilitates Hezbollah, suiciders go from his country into Iraq and he destabilizes Lebanon,” the president said.

During last week’s foreign ministers’ meeting in Paris to donate to the Palestinian Authority, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attacked Syria for what she said was a missed opportunity at Annapolis. “Annapolis was a chance we gave Syria and its test were the [presidential] elections in Lebanon. So far, the Syrians have failed completely.” European diplomatic sources also said that “Syria is undermining any chance for an accord [in Lebanon] and is pushing Hezbollah and the rest of its allies in Lebanon to raise the bar on their demands.”

The same sources said that Assad is interested in giving the impression, whatever the cost may be, “that without him nothing will move in Lebanon,” and therefore the assessment is that the crisis there will continue.

In an interview published on Wednesday, 19 December 2007, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he told Assad that “Lebanon has a right to have an autonomous president who will have a national unity government,” adding bluntly: “You (Assad) must use all the means and abilities at your disposal to influence the attainment of this goal!’” He accused Damascus of using its influence over Lebanese opposition groups to perpetuate the crisis in Beirut.

http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Diplomacy/12498.htm

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Congressman reaching out to Iran

Monday, December 24th, 2007

By Matthew Hay Brown

While Washington debates whether it should talk to Iran, one Maryland congressman has already struck up a conversation.

For the past year, Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest has been meeting with Iranian officials and business leaders to talk about ways to improve relations between the United States and the Islamic republic that President Bush put in his Axis of Evil.

With the recent release of a U.S. intelligence report concluding that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program four years ago, he now sees an opportunity.

“You get this kind of momentum, we will begin a dialogue with Iran,” the Eastern Shore Republican said. “If it’s not in this administration - although I think it’s possible - you will see a change in policy so that the next administration will have a better opportunity to openly discuss issues with the Iranians.”

That’s been Gilchrest’s goal since a private meeting last autumn with Iran’s envoy to the United Nations. The three-hour session with Ambassador Mohammad Javad Zarif was the start of a continuing effort by Gilchrest, a former Marine who had come to regret his 2002 vote to authorize the use of military force in Iraq, to develop relations with the country that some believed the White House planned to attack next.

He has followed up with other Iranians, exchanged letters with the speaker of the Iranian parliament and organized a group of Republicans and Democrats focused on improving relations.

Called the Dialogue Caucus, the group is looking to spark broader communication between U.S. and Iranian lawmakers. To the 61-year-old Gilchrest, wounded as a platoon leader in Vietnam, it’s a matter of “sending old men to talk before we send young men to die.”

“What I’ve seen in Congress,” he said, “is when you have two people talking, exchanging information, the potential for solutions is infinite. When they don’t talk, there’s no potential at all.”

Still, he says, he has no illusions about the difficulty of finding common ground.

“These guys are not sprouting halos,” he said. “We’re not talking about a poor, misunderstood country. But, you know, this is politics. I’d rather have them talking than shooting at us.”

Gilchrest says Iran has legitimate interests in the security of neighboring Iraq, where it has strong ties to the Shiite majority. He says that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not speak for the whole country, any more than Bush speaks for all Americans.

The largely behind-the-scenes effort is not without political risk. Bush says the recent release of the National Intelligence Estimate will not change the administration policy of mostly shunning Iran, which the United States accuses of arming Shiite insurgents in Iraq.

The moderate Gilchrest, who has split with his party over Iraq, is facing a strong primary challenge from the right from state Sen. Andrew P. Harris in the conservative 1st Congressional District, which voted twice for Bush. State Sen. E.J. Pipkin and three other Republicans are also vying for the nomination.

“He joined [Democratic House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi in wanting to try to run the war, and now I guess it seems that he wants to make an end run around the State Department in handling these foreign affairs as well,” Harris said. “Freelancing on the part of Foreign Service wannabes … is probably not the best thing for this country.”

Efforts by lawmakers to reach out to nations with whom the United States has troubled relations have a long and not very productive history.

But former Democratic Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, whose Iraq Study Group urged the administration to open talks with Iran, says that outreach of the sort that Gilchrest is attempting is “exactly what is needed.”

Gilchrest says he has told Bush of the effort and has kept the administration apprised of his contacts. A State Department spokeswoman said members of Congress are free to speak with whomever they choose - but added that “we would hope that if they did engage in discussions with members of the Iranian government, they would reiterate our policy and explain to them the clearly outlined steps that they need to take in order to come to the negotiating table with the United States.”

The United States and Iran recently agreed to a fourth round of talks between their ambassadors in Baghdad to discuss security in Iraq. But U.S. officials say they will not hold higher-level meetings or broaden the discussion to other topics unless Iran stops processing the uranium that they say still could be used for nuclear weapons.

The focus on foreign affairs is something of a departure for Gilchrest. The former high school social studies teacher has been better known for his interest in the environment as a member of the House Natural Resources and Transportation committees.

Then came the Iraq war, on which he says he was “sold a bill of goods,” and what he sees as an increasingly and unnecessarily confrontational approach to the world by both the White House and Congress. He has visited Iraq three times since the 2003 invasion, and has also traveled to Syria, Israel, Jordan and other countries in the region.

“I just couldn’t sit on the side any longer and watch all this stuff unfold,” he said. “I hear my colleagues. I see resolution after resolution coming to the floor condemning this one and condemning that one. Isolating the Palestinians, not talking to the Iranians, calling people evil empires. They’re trying to put out fires by throwing on more dry logs.”

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The Diana inquiry cop who was on £1,000 a day

Monday, December 24th, 2007

Britain’s former top policeman Lord Stevens was paid £1,000 a day for taking charge of the inquiry into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Documents released exclusively to The Mail on Sunday under the Freedom of Information Act reveal he was being paid double what he would have earned in his former role as Met Police Commissioner.

The payments, for his part-time role in charge of Operation Paget, are among a number of lucrative deals that Porsche-driving Lord Stevens has secured since he retired two years ago.

Critics have asked why a senior detective, already employed by the force, could not have overseen the inquiry.

While he was at the Yard from 2000 to 2005, Lord Stevens was paid £150,000 a year, the daily equivalent of approximately £420 – less than half the fees for his two-and-a-half years’ work on the Diana probe.

The FOI reply from the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards – which took almost a year to be answered – discloses that between February 28, 2005, and September 30, 2007, his company Stevens Consultancy raked in £276,125 for Operation Paget.

He was also reimbursed £26,550 for accommodation costs away from home – mainly in London hotels. And he received £13,599 for travel costs plus £97.51 for meals, making a total of £316,000.

Fears: Diana suggested in a letter that the Prince was plotting ‘an accident’

Lord Stevens – known by former Yard colleagues as “Captain Beaujolais” because of his love of fine wines – insisted last night that the payments were “justified”.

He said: “If you look at my commitment over two-and-a-half years, it’s been a continuous commitment since I left as Commissioner.

“I don’t get all of that money, because it goes into the consultancy to help run that.”

Lord Stevens confirmed his daily rate was £1,000. Asked about his other business interests, the peer said: “These figures are not the vast sums that people think.”

Lord Stevens receives £30,000 a year as non-executive chairman of Quest, the security consultancy for whom he has led the Football Association probe into soccer transfer “bungs”.

He gets a further £25,000 annual fee as a non-executive director of the Mercer Street business consultancy and is a non-executive director of airport operators BAA, currency exchanger Travelex and analytical services provider LGC.

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Happy times: Diana relaxing on holiday with Dodi shortly before their deaths

The former police chief refused to divulge how much he is paid for his other directorships, but said they were “similar figures”.

He also receives fees for speeches on leadership and policing.

Richard Barnes, a Tory member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, last night described the Operation Paget fee as “ludicrous”.

Scotland Yard would not add to its FOI statement and was unable to say why it took almost a year to provide a reply.

Source

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CIA ‘kept’ tapes from 9/11 probe

Monday, December 24th, 2007

A leaked memorandum from the former 9/11 commission says it made repeated requests to the CIA for information on the interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects. But ex-commission executive director Philip Zelikow says the CIA did not hand over tapes that have since come to light, the New York Times reported.

The CIA later erased the footage, which allegedly contains images of abuse.

The memo urges a further investigation into whether the agency acted illegally by withholding the recordings.

The CIA says there was no specific request for the tapes, which reportedly contained images of interrogation techniques including water-boarding, which simulates drowning. The CIA denies torture.

‘Clearly obstructed’

The agency filmed the footage in 2002 and erased it in 2005, a year after the commission ended its work.

The commission conducted an internal review earlier this month after the deleted CIA tapes came to light.

A copy of Mr Zelikow’s findings, dated 13 December, was obtained by The New York Times.

His memorandum notes the commission asked the CIA in 2003 and 2004 for “documents”, “reports” and “information” relating to interrogations.

But, the report says, a CIA director replied in 2004 that it had already “produced or made available for review” all relevant material.

Mr Zelikow’s seven-page findings conclude “further investigation is needed” to determine if the CIA’s withholding of the tapes violated federal law.

It notes that it is illegal to “knowingly and wilfully” withhold or “cover up” a “material fact” from a federal inquiry.

The CIA insisted on Saturday it had gone to great lengths to help the commission, which was set up to investigate al-Qaeda’s 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.

The agency’s spokesman Mark Mansfield said: “Because it was thought the commission could ask about tapes at some point, they were not destroyed while the commission was active.”

But one of the commission chairmen, former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, told the New York Times the CIA had “clearly obstructed” the commission’s work.

The CIA and the Department of Justice have already launched an inquiry into the erasing of the tapes.

The agency said the footage was deleted to protect the identities of agents and because it was no longer of intelligence value.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7157993.stm

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FBI aims to amass huge database

Monday, December 24th, 2007

FBI aims to amass huge database of people’s physical characteristics

By Ellen Nakashima

The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world’s largest computer database of people’s physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement in Clarksburg. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives.

In coming years, law-enforcement authorities around the world may be able to use iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps the unique ways people walk and talk to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists.

The FBI also will retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

“Bigger. Faster. Better. That’s the bottom line,” said Thomas Bush III, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division (CJIS), which operates the growing database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.

The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. It also is drawing criticism from those who worry that people’s bodies will become de facto national-identification cards. Critics said such government initiatives should not proceed without proof the technology can pick a criminal out of a crowd.

The use of biometric data is increasing throughout the government. For the past two years, the Defense Department has been storing in a database images of fingerprints, irises and faces of more than 1.5 million Iraqi and Afghan detainees, Iraqi citizens and foreigners who need access to U.S. military bases. The Pentagon also collects DNA samples from some Iraqi detainees that are stored separately.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been using iris scans at some airports to verify the identity of travelers who have passed background checks and who want to move through lines quickly. The department also is looking to apply iris- and face-recognition techniques to other programs.

The DHS has a database of millions of sets of fingerprints that include records collected from U.S. and foreign travelers stopped at borders for criminal violations, from U.S. citizens adopting children overseas and from visa applicants abroad.

“It’s going to be an essential component of tracking,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s enabling the always-on-surveillance society.”

If successful, the FBI system, Next Generation Identification, will collect a wide variety of biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes.

In an underground facility the size of two football fields, a request reaches an FBI server every second from somewhere in the United States or Canada, comparing a set of digital fingerprints against the FBI’s database of 55 million sets of electronic fingerprints. A possible match is made — or ruled out — up to 100,000 times a day.

Soon, the server at CJIS headquarters also will compare palm prints and, eventually, iris images and face-shape data, such as the shape of an earlobe.

If all goes as planned, a police officer making a traffic stop or a border agent at the airport could run a 10-fingerprint check on a suspect and within seconds know if the person is on a database of the most-wanted criminals and terrorists. An analyst could take palm prints lifted from a crime scene and run them against the expanded database. Intelligence agents could exchange biometric information worldwide.

More than 55 percent of the search requests now are made for background checks on civilians in sensitive positions in the federal government and jobs that involve children and the elderly, Bush said. Those prints are destroyed or returned when the checks are completed.

But the FBI is planning a “rap-back” service, under which employers could ask the FBI to keep employees’ fingerprints in the database, subject to state privacy laws, so that if employees are arrested or charged with a crime, the employers would be notified.

Advocates said bringing together information from a wide variety of sources and making it available to multiple agencies increases the chances of catching criminals. The Pentagon has matched several Iraqi suspects against the FBI’s criminal-fingerprint database. The FBI intends to make criminal and civilian data available to authorized users, officials said. There are 900,000 federal, state and local law-enforcement officers who can query the fingerprint database today, they said.

The FBI’s biometric database, which includes criminal-history records, communicates with the Terrorist Screening Center’s database of suspects and the National Crime Information Center database, which is the FBI’s master criminal database of felons, fugitives and terrorism suspects.

The FBI is building its system according to standards shared by Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

At the West Virginia University Center for Identification Technology Research, 45 minutes north of the FBI’s biometric facility in Clarksburg, researchers are working on capturing images of people’s irises at distances of up to 15 feet, and of faces from as far away as 200 yards. Soon, those researchers will do biometric research for the FBI.

Covert iris- and face-image capture is several years away, but it is of great interest to government agencies.

Skeptics said such projects are proceeding before there is evidence they reliably match suspects against a huge database.

In the world’s first large-scale study on how well face recognition works in a crowd, the German government this year found that the technology, while promising, was not effective enough to allow its use by police.

The study was conducted from October 2006 through January at a train station in Mainz, Germany, which draws 23,000 passengers daily. The study found that the technology was able to match travelers’ faces against a database of volunteers more than 60 percent of the time during the day, when the lighting was best. But the rate fell to 10 to 20 percent at night.

To achieve those rates, the German police agency said it would tolerate a false positive rate of 0.1 percent, or the erroneous identification of 23 people a day. In real life, those 23 people would be subjected to further screening, the report said.

Accuracy improves as techniques are combined, said Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI’s biometric-services section chief. The Next Generation database is intended to “fuse” fingerprint-, face-, iris- and palm-matching capabilities by 2013, she said.

To safeguard privacy, audit trails are kept on everyone who has access to a record in the fingerprint database, Del Greco said. People may request copies of their records, and the FBI audits all agencies that have access to the database every three years, she said.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), said the ability to share data across systems is problematic. “You’re giving the federal government access to an extraordinary amount of information linked to biometric identifiers that is becoming increasingly inaccurate,” he said.

In 2004, EPIC objected to the FBI’s exemption of the National Crime Information Center database from the Privacy Act requirement that records be accurate. The group noted that the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2001 found that information in the system was “not fully reliable” and that files “may be incomplete or inaccurate.”

FBI officials justified that exemption by claiming that in law-enforcement data collection, “it is impossible to determine in advance what information is accurate, relevant, timely and complete.”

Privacy advocates worry about the ability of people to correct false information.

“Unlike say, a credit-card number, biometric data is forever,” said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley technology forecaster. He said he feared the FBI, whose computer-technology record has been marred by expensive failures, could not guarantee the data’s security.

“If someone steals and spoofs your iris image, you can’t just get a new eyeball,” Saffo said.

In the future, said Center for Identification Technology Research Director Lawrence Hornak, devices will be able to “recognize us and adapt to us.”

“The long-term goal is ubiquitous use of biometrics,” Hornak said. A traveler may walk down an airport corridor and allow his face and iris images to be captured without stepping up to a kiosk and looking into a camera, he said.

“That’s the key,” he said. “You’ve chosen it. You have chosen to say, ‘Yeah, I want this place to recognize me.’ ”

Washington Post staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.

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