Good Morning! - Morning Headlines

[Caro]

Morning headlines brought to you by

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

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Global Military Spending Hits $1.2 Trillion, Study Says
STOCKHOLM - Global military spending rose 3.5 percent last year to $1.2 trillion as U.S. costs for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan mounted, a European research body said on Monday in an annual study. The United States spent $529 billion, slightly less than the entire GDP of the Netherlands, on military operations in 2006, up 5 percent over the previous year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in its latest year book.

Project for the Old American Century

The World

Al-Qaida targets Iraqi infrastructure
BAGHDAD - Suspected al-Qaida bombers stepped up attacks on key transportation arteries, striking a bridge north of the capital Monday a day after shutting the superhighway south of Baghdad with a huge explosion that collapsed an overpass and killed three U.S. soldiers.

US military arming Sunni groups in Iraq: report
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US military commanders in Iraq are turning to a new counterinsurgency strategy, which involves arming Sunni Arab groups that have promised to fight militants linked with Al-Qaeda, The New York Times reported on its website late Sunday.

Grenade fired at home of Palestinian PM
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - A rocket-propelled grenade hit the home of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas on Tuesday, in what Hamas said was an attempted assassination. The house was damaged, but Haniyeh and his family were not harmed.

Officials: U.S. troops kill Afghan police
KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S. forces mistakenly killed seven Afghan police and wounded four in an apparent friendly fire incident early Tuesday in eastern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said.

British Parliament rejects Iraq inquiry
LONDON - The House of Commons on Monday rejected a motion by the opposition Conservative Party calling for a formal inquiry into the British government's decision to go to war in Iraq.

Spain prepares for renewed ETA threat
MADRID, Spain - Spain will step up protection for recently elected government and opposition town councilors after the armed Basque separatist group ETA said it was ending a 15-month cease-fire, security officials said Monday.

The Nation

GOP blocks Gonzales no-confidence vote
WASHINGTON - Republicans blocked the Senate's no-confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Monday, rejecting a symbolic Democratic effort to prod him from office despite blistering criticism from lawmakers in both parties.

Reid says U.S. strike on Iran would be destabilizing
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected on Monday another prominent senator's call for a military strike against Iran, saying a U.S. attack would destabilize the Middle East.

Immigration Judges Often Picked Based On GOP Ties
The Bush administration increasingly emphasized partisan political ties over expertise in recent years in selecting the judges who decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, despite laws that preclude such considerations, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. At least one-third of the immigration judges appointed by the Justice Department since 2004 have had Republican connections or have been administration insiders, and half lacked experience in immigration law, Justice Department, immigration court and other records show.

Court rules in favor of enemy combatant
RICHMOND, Va. - The Bush administration cannot use new anti-terrorism laws to keep U.S. residents locked up indefinitely without charging them, a divided federal appeals court said Monday… In the 2-1 decision, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel found that the federal Military Commissions Act doesn't strip Ali al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident, of his constitutional rights to challenge his accusers in court. It ruled the government must allow al-Marri to be released from military detention.
Please let this be a harbinger of a general return to sanity among the judiciary. —Caro

Court lets firms sue over cleanup costs
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration Monday in an environmental lawsuit, allowing a company to seek recovery of some of its costs for voluntarily cleaning up a hazardous site.
Another transfer of wealth from us ordinary folks to corporations. —Caro

The Abstinence Gluttons
Over the past six years George W. Bush's faith-based Administration and a conservative Republican Congress transformed the small-time abstinence-only business into a billion-dollar industry. These dangerously ineffective sexual health enterprises flourish not because they spread "family values" but because of generous helpings of the same pork-heavy gumbo Bush & Co. brought to war-blighted Iraq and Katrina-hammered New Orleans--a mix of back-scratching cronyism, hefty partisan campaign donations, high-dollar lobbyists, a revolving door for political appointees and a lack of concern for results.

Blackwater Heavies Sue Families of Slain Employees for $10 Million in Brutal Attempt to Suppress Their Story
Raleigh, NC -- The families of four American security contractors who were burned, beaten, dragged through the streets of Fallujah and their decapitated bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River on March 31, 2004, are reaching out to the American public to help protect themselves against the very company their loved ones were serving when killed, Blackwater Security Consulting. After Blackwater lost a series of appeals all the away to the U.S. Supreme Court, Blackwater has now changed its tactics and is suing the dead men's estates for $10 million to silence the families and keep them out of court.

Orthodox Economics: Descriptive, or Tranformative? (thanks to Economist’s View)
What's so special about one broken framework that those who choose other approaches must toil like monks under a vow of obscurity? There are lots of possible answers, many of which were hashed over last week. But it strikes me that perhaps we are all missing the point. Perhaps orthodox economics isn't even trying to describe how the world works. Perhaps the project is really about how the world should work. If life can imitate art, why couldn't life imitate a model?
And there you have the essence of right wingism. It’s all about the way they think things OUGHT to be, instead of being about how things really are. —Caro

Media

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution advocates justice.
Newspaper editorials have long advocated political positions, but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution went a step further in the case of Genarlow Wilson, the young man sentenced to 10 years in prison for having consensual sex with a teenager when he was also a teenager. The newspaper published the email address ([e-mail]) and phone number (404-656-3300) of Attorney General Thurbert Baker to encourage citizens to protest the young man’s continued incarceration. Let’s let the AJC know that we think this is the very definition of responsible journalism. Contact the editorial’s author, Maureen Downey at [e-mail] or click here to send a letter to the editor.

FAIR Action Alert: Incendiary Weapons Are No 'Allegation'
Reviewing the London-based anti-Iraq War play Fallujah, New York Times reporter Jane Perlez wrote (5/29/07), "The denunciations of the United States are severe, particularly in the scenes that deal with the use of napalm in Fallujah, an allegation made by left-wing critics of the war but never substantiated."… Unfortunately for the Times, which does make a pretense of objectivity, the U.S. government did use the modern equivalent of napalm in Iraq.

Bush Says We’ll Be in Iraq for 50 Years, But Reporters Don't Bother to Ask Iraqis to Comment
And none of them spoke with Saleh al Mutlaq, the powerful leader of the Iraqi National Dialogue Front, who said of talk of a Korea model: "This will make the few Iraqis who still believe in a political solution lose hope." He warned that "planning to leave permanent bases will only increase our political and military problems."
But the introduction of the Korea model isn’t about Korea, or even about long-term occupations. It’s about stopping discussion of the Vietnam model. —Caro

Flynt Ad Yielding Tips
Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt told the Examiner "that the newspaper ad he took out last week offering a million-dollar bounty for evidence of illicit sexual activity with lawmakers has yielded about 200 tips so far. He said he'll let them continue to trickle in over the next two weeks or so before his team begins to follow up on them." Said Flynt: "We'll be lucky if we get 2 to 4 percent hard leads that could yield a payout."
Git out the popcorn popper, Maude, we’re gonna have a whole lotta fun! —Caro

Joe Klein's stirring defense of Lewis Libby
It is difficult to recall a single episode which has been more revealing of our political culture than the collective Beltway horror over the plight of the poor, maltreated and persecuted (and convicted felon) Lewis Libby… To our media stars, "Beltway crime" is an oxymoron, at least when it is committed by a high-level political official. In exactly the way they treated all prior acts of lawbreaking by Bush officials as innocuous political controversies, the Beltway press speaks of Lewis Libby's felonies as being something other than a "real crime"…

Paul Krugman: Authentic? Never Mind
(T)he news media seem to find it deeply disturbing that John Edwards talks about fighting poverty while living in a big house. On the other hand, consider the case of Fred Thompson. He spent 18 years working as a highly paid lobbyist, wore well-tailored suits and drove a black Lincoln Continental. When he ran for the Senate, however, his campaign reinvented him as a good old boy: it leased a used red pickup truck for him to drive, dressed up in jeans and a work shirt, with a can of Red Man chewing tobacco on the front seat. But Mr. Thompson’s strength, says Lanny Davis in The Hill, is that he’s “authentic.”
Bob Somerby expounds on the Krugman column. —Caro

Technology & Science

1 Billion PCs Forecast in 2008
Analyst firm Forrester forecasts there will be more than 2 billion PCs worldwide by 2015, with more than 1 billion of these in use by the end of next year.

Have QWERTY, Will Travel
The Palm Foleo is a "mobile companion" to the Palm Treo handheld smartphone and eventually other smartphones to "help you do more on the go." The device, which looks like a small laptop, has a 10-inch screen and a full QWERTY keyboard and weighs about 2.5 pounds. The device, which will sell for $499, is said to get five hours of battery life which is certainly more than most notebook PCs. In addition to communicating with the Treo, it also has WiFi to make a direct connection to the Internet in cafes or wherever you have access to a "hot spot."
It’s like a mobile docking station. —Caro

Anger Fuels Better Decisions
The next time you are plagued with indecision and need a clear way out, it might help to get angry, according to a surprising new study. Despite its reputation as an impetus to rash behavior, anger actually seems to help people make better choices—even aiding those who are usually very poor at thinking rationally.
It doesn’t work for me. My mind goes totally blank when I’m angry. —Caro

Private Insurance May Help in Earlier Cancer Detection
MONDAY, June 11 (HealthDay News) -- Uninsured Americans or those with certain types of public health insurance are more likely to have oral or breast cancer diagnosed at an advanced stage, compared to people with private insurance whose disease is caught earlier.
But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pursue universal coverage paid for by our taxes. That will give us the ability to change the health care system to actually care for health, instead of being completely oriented toward fixing the effects of illness after it has occurred. —Caro

Alzheimer's Drug Trials Offer Promising Results
Two drugs, Dimebon and the diabetes medication Avandia, may help curb Alzheimer's in different ways. And close to five years of follow-up data suggest that an "Alzheimer's vaccine" might someday harness the power of the immune system to protect against dementia. All of these agents work to alter the progression of the underlying disease, not just mask or limit its symptoms, as current Alzheimer's drugs do.

Ancient Rome reborn in digital simulation
Experts from around the world on Monday unveiled what they called the largest and most complete simulation of a historic city, which digitally recreates Rome as it appeared at the peak of its power.

Environment

Congress' Goal: A Clean, Green Capitol
Congress says it's going to join the war against global warming by cleaning up its own backyard, now cluttered with a coal-burning power plant, a fleet of fuel-inefficient vehicles and old-fashioned lights.

Study: Salvage Logging, Replanting Worse
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - Contrary to the conventional wisdom, scientists have found that logging big dead trees after a wildfire and planting young ones makes future fires worse, at least for the first 10 or 20 years while the young trees create a volatile new source of fuel.

Are You Eating Dinner on a Piece of Rainforest?
Love your new dining room table ... but did you ask the salesman whether it's made from chopped up rainforest trees? A growing number of furniture shoppers are doing just that when they buy new home decor.

China Punishes Five Officials for Lake Pollution
China has sacked or otherwise punished five officials for dereliction of duty after green algae covered the country's third largest lake, prompting a drinking water crisis for millions, a newspaper said on Monday.
Funny how we refuse to make our own polluters similarly accountable. Put a few corporate executives in prison, and see how the situation changes. —Caro

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