Democrats Abroad New Zealand
3.20.2007
Bush Appointees 'Watered Down Greenhouse Science' (Guardian.co.uk)
Suzanne Goldenberg and James Randerson in Washington
Tuesday March 20, 2007
The Guardian
The Bush administration ran a systematic campaign to play down the dangers of climate change, demanding hundreds of politically motivated changes to scientific reports and muzzling a pre-eminent expert on global warming, Congress was told yesterday.
The testimony to the house committee on oversight and government reform painted the administration as determined to maintain its line on climate change even when it clashed with the findings of scientific experts. James Hansen, who heads the Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York, said in prepared testimony: "The effect of the filtering of climate change science during the current administration has been to make the reality of climate change less certain than the facts indicate, and to reduce concern about the relation of climate change to human-made greenhouse gas emissions."
Since the Democratic takeover of Congress last January the committee's chairman, Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, has led efforts to uncover the extent of White House interference with scientific debate.
The Bush administration has moved to exercise direct control over environmental agencies by installing political appointees including Philip Cooney, a former oil industry lobbyist, as chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, and a 23-year-old college drop-out who was made a public affairs officer at Nasa after working on Mr Bush's re-election campaign. Mr Cooney told the committee yesterday: "My sole loyalty was to the president and advancing the policies of his administration."
Documents released yesterday show that in 2003 Mr Cooney and other senior appointed officials imposed at least 181 changes to a strategic plan on climate change to play down the scientific consensus on global warming. They made another 113 alterations to minimise the human role in climate change, and inserted possible benefits of climate change. "These changes must be made," said a note in Mr Cooney's handwriting. "The language is mandatory."
(More ... Guardian Unlimited > Special Report > United States of America)
Tuesday March 20, 2007
The Guardian
The Bush administration ran a systematic campaign to play down the dangers of climate change, demanding hundreds of politically motivated changes to scientific reports and muzzling a pre-eminent expert on global warming, Congress was told yesterday.
The testimony to the house committee on oversight and government reform painted the administration as determined to maintain its line on climate change even when it clashed with the findings of scientific experts. James Hansen, who heads the Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York, said in prepared testimony: "The effect of the filtering of climate change science during the current administration has been to make the reality of climate change less certain than the facts indicate, and to reduce concern about the relation of climate change to human-made greenhouse gas emissions."
Since the Democratic takeover of Congress last January the committee's chairman, Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, has led efforts to uncover the extent of White House interference with scientific debate.
The Bush administration has moved to exercise direct control over environmental agencies by installing political appointees including Philip Cooney, a former oil industry lobbyist, as chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, and a 23-year-old college drop-out who was made a public affairs officer at Nasa after working on Mr Bush's re-election campaign. Mr Cooney told the committee yesterday: "My sole loyalty was to the president and advancing the policies of his administration."
Documents released yesterday show that in 2003 Mr Cooney and other senior appointed officials imposed at least 181 changes to a strategic plan on climate change to play down the scientific consensus on global warming. They made another 113 alterations to minimise the human role in climate change, and inserted possible benefits of climate change. "These changes must be made," said a note in Mr Cooney's handwriting. "The language is mandatory."
(More ... Guardian Unlimited > Special Report > United States of America)
Labels: Bush, Climate Change, Guardian
¶ 19:40 0 comments
World's Most Important Crops Hit by Global Warming Effects (Independent.co.uk)
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 19 March 2007
Global warming over the past quarter century has led to a fall in the yield of some of the most important food crops in the world, according to one of the first scientific studies of how climate change has affected cereal crops.
Rising temperatures between 1981 and 2002 caused aloss in production of wheat, corn and barley that amounted in effect to some 40 million tons a year - equivalent to annual losses of some £2.6bn.
Although these numbers are not large compared to the world-wide production of cereal crops, scientists warned that the findings demonstrated how climate change was already having an impact on the global production of staple foods. "Most people tend to think of climate change as something that will impact the future, but this study shows that warming over the past two decades has already had real effects on global food supply," said Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, analysed yields of cereals from around the world during a period when average temperatures rose by about 0.7C between 1980 and 2002 - although the rise was even higher in certain crop-growing regions of the world.
There was a clear trend, showing the cereal crops were suffering from lower yields during a time when agricultural technology, including the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, became more intensive. The study's co-author, David Lobell of America's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said that the observed fall in cereal yields could be clearly linked with increased temperatures during the period covered by the study.
(More ... Independent > News > Environment > Climate Change)
Published: 19 March 2007
Global warming over the past quarter century has led to a fall in the yield of some of the most important food crops in the world, according to one of the first scientific studies of how climate change has affected cereal crops.
Rising temperatures between 1981 and 2002 caused aloss in production of wheat, corn and barley that amounted in effect to some 40 million tons a year - equivalent to annual losses of some £2.6bn.
Although these numbers are not large compared to the world-wide production of cereal crops, scientists warned that the findings demonstrated how climate change was already having an impact on the global production of staple foods. "Most people tend to think of climate change as something that will impact the future, but this study shows that warming over the past two decades has already had real effects on global food supply," said Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, analysed yields of cereals from around the world during a period when average temperatures rose by about 0.7C between 1980 and 2002 - although the rise was even higher in certain crop-growing regions of the world.
There was a clear trend, showing the cereal crops were suffering from lower yields during a time when agricultural technology, including the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, became more intensive. The study's co-author, David Lobell of America's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said that the observed fall in cereal yields could be clearly linked with increased temperatures during the period covered by the study.
(More ... Independent > News > Environment > Climate Change)
Labels: Climate Change, Independent
¶ 18:54 0 comments
Obama Supporter Casts Clinton as Big Brother (Independent.co.uk)
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 20 March 2007
It is the most striking, perhaps most powerful advertisement to come out of the US presidential campaign to date: a 74-second spot in which Hillary Clinton, recast as Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984, spouts platitudes from a giant screen as her worker-drone supporters march in lock-step to offer their support.
The advertisement is a dramatic pitch for Mrs Clinton's strongest rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama, and quickly became the talk of the political punditry.
But the most striking of all is that the ad did not originate with the Obama campaign and required no political campaign money either to produce or distribute. Rather, it was made by a single unknown Obama supporter working with a laptop and a suite of video editing software, who posted his handiwork on YouTube, the video-sharing website.
The ad is a clever "mash-up" - or re-edit - of a famous television spot for Apple computers which ran on network television during the 1984 Superbowl, the culmination of the annual American football season.
(More ... Independent > News > World > Americas)
Published: 20 March 2007
It is the most striking, perhaps most powerful advertisement to come out of the US presidential campaign to date: a 74-second spot in which Hillary Clinton, recast as Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984, spouts platitudes from a giant screen as her worker-drone supporters march in lock-step to offer their support.
The advertisement is a dramatic pitch for Mrs Clinton's strongest rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama, and quickly became the talk of the political punditry.
But the most striking of all is that the ad did not originate with the Obama campaign and required no political campaign money either to produce or distribute. Rather, it was made by a single unknown Obama supporter working with a laptop and a suite of video editing software, who posted his handiwork on YouTube, the video-sharing website.
The ad is a clever "mash-up" - or re-edit - of a famous television spot for Apple computers which ran on network television during the 1984 Superbowl, the culmination of the annual American football season.
(More ... Independent > News > World > Americas)
Labels: 2008 election, Clinton, Independent, Obama
¶ 18:51 0 comments
3.18.2007
Obama Draws 10,000 to Calif. Rally (USAToday.com)
OAKLAND (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama attracted a crowd of 10,000 or more to his first rally in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Having glided to the top tier of Democratic candidates on a message of hope, the Illinois senator told the crowd in downtown Oakland Saturday that his campaign "is a vehicle for your hopes; it is a vehicle for your dreams."
But he also used the appearance to contrast himself with his chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton. Without naming her, Obama made an issue of Clinton's much criticized 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq, for which she has refused to apologize.
"I am proud of the fact that I opposed this war from the start," Obama said to huge cheers in this most anti-war of cities. "That I stood up in 2002 and said this is a bad idea. This is going to cost of billions of dollars and thousands of lives."
Obama said it was time to leave Iraq and to tell the Iraqis, "We want to be your partners, but we can't continue this occupation."
Obama is also challenging Clinton for support in the black community and his appearance in Oakland, a center of black life in Northern California, was part of that strategy.
Oakland resident Chris Nishioka, 61, a black woman who is married to a Japanese man and the mother of two biracial children, said Obama's rise as a credible candidate for president gave her whole family cause for hope. Obama is the son of a white American woman and a black man from Kenya and was raised in Hawaii and Indonesia.
"What I like about him, is he has a global background and a global view," said Nishioka, a retired attorney. "He's more of a change from the status quo. He's definitely fresh."
(More ... USA Today > News > Washington)
Having glided to the top tier of Democratic candidates on a message of hope, the Illinois senator told the crowd in downtown Oakland Saturday that his campaign "is a vehicle for your hopes; it is a vehicle for your dreams."
But he also used the appearance to contrast himself with his chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton. Without naming her, Obama made an issue of Clinton's much criticized 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq, for which she has refused to apologize.
"I am proud of the fact that I opposed this war from the start," Obama said to huge cheers in this most anti-war of cities. "That I stood up in 2002 and said this is a bad idea. This is going to cost of billions of dollars and thousands of lives."
Obama said it was time to leave Iraq and to tell the Iraqis, "We want to be your partners, but we can't continue this occupation."
Obama is also challenging Clinton for support in the black community and his appearance in Oakland, a center of black life in Northern California, was part of that strategy.
Oakland resident Chris Nishioka, 61, a black woman who is married to a Japanese man and the mother of two biracial children, said Obama's rise as a credible candidate for president gave her whole family cause for hope. Obama is the son of a white American woman and a black man from Kenya and was raised in Hawaii and Indonesia.
"What I like about him, is he has a global background and a global view," said Nishioka, a retired attorney. "He's more of a change from the status quo. He's definitely fresh."
(More ... USA Today > News > Washington)
Labels: 2008 election, Obama, USA Today
¶ 20:56 0 comments
U.S. Odd Man Out In Climate Consensus (Reuters.com)
Sat Mar 17, 2007 2:05pm ET
By Louis Charbonneau
POTSDAM, Germany (Reuters) - A consensus on the need to protect the world's environment is emerging among rich and developing nations, but the United States remains at odds with other countries on key points, Germany said on Saturday.
Environment ministers of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations, and officials from leading developing countries, were meeting to prepare for a June G8 summit where they plan to discuss specific targets for protecting the environment.
"On two issues, the United States were the only ones who spoke against consensus," German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told reporters at the end of the two-day meeting, which he chaired on behalf of Germany's G8 presidency.
Gabriel said the U.S. remained opposed to a global carbon emissions trading scheme like the one used in the European Union and rejected the idea that industrialized nations should help achieve a "balance of interests" between developing countries' need for economic growth and environmental protection.
"We find this regrettable," Gabriel said, adding "I would have been disappointed if I'd expected something different."
(More ... Reuters > News > Top News)
By Louis Charbonneau
POTSDAM, Germany (Reuters) - A consensus on the need to protect the world's environment is emerging among rich and developing nations, but the United States remains at odds with other countries on key points, Germany said on Saturday.
Environment ministers of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations, and officials from leading developing countries, were meeting to prepare for a June G8 summit where they plan to discuss specific targets for protecting the environment.
"On two issues, the United States were the only ones who spoke against consensus," German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told reporters at the end of the two-day meeting, which he chaired on behalf of Germany's G8 presidency.
Gabriel said the U.S. remained opposed to a global carbon emissions trading scheme like the one used in the European Union and rejected the idea that industrialized nations should help achieve a "balance of interests" between developing countries' need for economic growth and environmental protection.
"We find this regrettable," Gabriel said, adding "I would have been disappointed if I'd expected something different."
(More ... Reuters > News > Top News)
Labels: Climate Change, EU, Reuters
¶ 20:49 0 comments
3.04.2007
CO2 Output From Shipping Twice as Much as Airlines (Guardian.co.uk)
· Maritime emissions not covered by Kyoto accord
· Studies suggest 75% rise in 15 years as trade grows
John Vidal, environment editor
Saturday March 3, 2007
The Guardian
Carbon dioxide emissions from shipping are double those of aviation and increasing at an alarming rate which will have a serious impact on global warming, according to research by the industry and European academics.
Separate studies suggest that maritime carbon dioxide emissions are not only higher than previously thought, but could rise by as much as 75% in the next 15 to 20 years if world trade continues to grow and no action is taken. The figures from the oil giant BP, which owns 50 tankers, and researchers at the Institute for Physics and Atmosphere in Wessling, Germany reveal that annual emissions from shipping range between 600 and 800m tonnes of carbon dioxide, or up to 5% of the global total. This is nearly double Britain's total emissions and more than all African countries combined.
Carbon dioxide emissions from ships do not come under the Kyoto agreement or any proposed European legislation and few studies have been made of them, even though they are set to increase.
Aviation carbon dioxide emissions, estimated to be about 2% of the global total, have been at the forefront of the climate change debate because of the sharp increase in cheap flights, whereas shipping emissions have risen nearly as fast in the past 20 years but have been ignored by governments and environmental groups. Shipping is responsible for transporting 90% of world trade which has doubled in 25 years.
Donald Gregory, director of environment at BP Marine, said this week that BP estimates that the global fleet of 70,000 ships uses approximately 200m tonnes of fuel a year and this is expected to grow to 350m tonnes a year by 2020. "We estimate carbon dioxide emissions from shipping to be 4% of the global total. Ships are getting bigger and every shipyard in the world has a full order book. There are about 20,000 new ships on order" he said.
The estimate supports other academic studies which, until now, have been dismissed as "extreme", because the industry fears that emissions regulations will be forced on it if it is not seen to be addressing the issue. "The International Maritime Organisation [IMO] needs to come up with an emissions strategy, or it will be down to us," said Mr Gregory. "Aviation is in the firing line now but shipping needs to take responsibility. There will be increasing pressure to do something."
(More ... Guardian Unlimited > Climate Change)
· Studies suggest 75% rise in 15 years as trade grows
John Vidal, environment editor
Saturday March 3, 2007
The Guardian
Carbon dioxide emissions from shipping are double those of aviation and increasing at an alarming rate which will have a serious impact on global warming, according to research by the industry and European academics.
Separate studies suggest that maritime carbon dioxide emissions are not only higher than previously thought, but could rise by as much as 75% in the next 15 to 20 years if world trade continues to grow and no action is taken. The figures from the oil giant BP, which owns 50 tankers, and researchers at the Institute for Physics and Atmosphere in Wessling, Germany reveal that annual emissions from shipping range between 600 and 800m tonnes of carbon dioxide, or up to 5% of the global total. This is nearly double Britain's total emissions and more than all African countries combined.
Carbon dioxide emissions from ships do not come under the Kyoto agreement or any proposed European legislation and few studies have been made of them, even though they are set to increase.
Aviation carbon dioxide emissions, estimated to be about 2% of the global total, have been at the forefront of the climate change debate because of the sharp increase in cheap flights, whereas shipping emissions have risen nearly as fast in the past 20 years but have been ignored by governments and environmental groups. Shipping is responsible for transporting 90% of world trade which has doubled in 25 years.
Donald Gregory, director of environment at BP Marine, said this week that BP estimates that the global fleet of 70,000 ships uses approximately 200m tonnes of fuel a year and this is expected to grow to 350m tonnes a year by 2020. "We estimate carbon dioxide emissions from shipping to be 4% of the global total. Ships are getting bigger and every shipyard in the world has a full order book. There are about 20,000 new ships on order" he said.
The estimate supports other academic studies which, until now, have been dismissed as "extreme", because the industry fears that emissions regulations will be forced on it if it is not seen to be addressing the issue. "The International Maritime Organisation [IMO] needs to come up with an emissions strategy, or it will be down to us," said Mr Gregory. "Aviation is in the firing line now but shipping needs to take responsibility. There will be increasing pressure to do something."
(More ... Guardian Unlimited > Climate Change)
Labels: Climate Change, Guardian
¶ 12:27 1 comments
3.02.2007
Most Support U.S. Guarantee of Health Care (NYTimes.com)
By ROBIN TONER and JANET ELDER
Published: March 2, 2007
A majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing to pay higher taxes to do it, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
While the war in Iraq remains the overarching issue in the early stages of the 2008 campaign, access to affordable health care is at the top of the public’s domestic agenda, ranked far more important than immigration, cutting taxes or promoting traditional values.
Only 24 percent said they were satisfied with President Bush’s handling of the health insurance issue, despite his recent initiatives, and 62 percent said the Democrats were more likely to improve the health care system.
Americans showed a striking willingness in the poll to make tradeoffs to guarantee health insurance for all, including paying as much as $500 more in taxes a year and forgoing future tax cuts.
But the same divisions that doomed the last effort at creating universal health insurance, under the Clinton administration, are still apparent. Americans remain divided, largely along party lines, over whether the government should require everyone to participate in a national health care plan, and over whether the government would do a better job than the private insurance industry in providing coverage.
(More ... New York Times > U.S. > Politics)
Published: March 2, 2007
A majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing to pay higher taxes to do it, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
While the war in Iraq remains the overarching issue in the early stages of the 2008 campaign, access to affordable health care is at the top of the public’s domestic agenda, ranked far more important than immigration, cutting taxes or promoting traditional values.
Only 24 percent said they were satisfied with President Bush’s handling of the health insurance issue, despite his recent initiatives, and 62 percent said the Democrats were more likely to improve the health care system.
Americans showed a striking willingness in the poll to make tradeoffs to guarantee health insurance for all, including paying as much as $500 more in taxes a year and forgoing future tax cuts.
But the same divisions that doomed the last effort at creating universal health insurance, under the Clinton administration, are still apparent. Americans remain divided, largely along party lines, over whether the government should require everyone to participate in a national health care plan, and over whether the government would do a better job than the private insurance industry in providing coverage.
(More ... New York Times > U.S. > Politics)
Labels: 2008 election, Health Care, New York Times, poll
¶ 21:45 0 comments
National Guard Not Fully Equipped at Home (Reuters.com)
Fri Mar 2, 2007 1:58am ET
By JoAnne Allen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon is not adequately equipping the National Guard and has not adapted to the increasingly important security role it plays in the post-September 11 environment, an independent commission said in a report to Congress on Thursday.
The report said the global war on terrorism had placed increased demands for the National Guard to provide forces for both overseas and domestic missions, but added that the Defense Department, or DOD, had been slow to adapt to the change.
"DOD's failure to appropriately consider National Guard needs and funding requirements has produced a National Guard that is not fully ready to meet current and emerging missions," the commission concluded.
Among its findings, the 13-member panel said the Defense Department was not adequately equipping the Guard for its domestic missions.
The National Guard's 458,000 citizen-soldiers have a dual mandate to protect the United States both at home and abroad.
Nearly 90 percent of Guard units in the United States are rated "not ready," partly because of equipment shortages, according to Guard data and the findings of the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, The Washington Post reported.
National Guard units deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have been required to leave large quantities of gear behind when they return home, the newspaper said.
(More ... Reuters > News > U.S.)
By JoAnne Allen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon is not adequately equipping the National Guard and has not adapted to the increasingly important security role it plays in the post-September 11 environment, an independent commission said in a report to Congress on Thursday.
The report said the global war on terrorism had placed increased demands for the National Guard to provide forces for both overseas and domestic missions, but added that the Defense Department, or DOD, had been slow to adapt to the change.
"DOD's failure to appropriately consider National Guard needs and funding requirements has produced a National Guard that is not fully ready to meet current and emerging missions," the commission concluded.
Among its findings, the 13-member panel said the Defense Department was not adequately equipping the Guard for its domestic missions.
The National Guard's 458,000 citizen-soldiers have a dual mandate to protect the United States both at home and abroad.
Nearly 90 percent of Guard units in the United States are rated "not ready," partly because of equipment shortages, according to Guard data and the findings of the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, The Washington Post reported.
National Guard units deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have been required to leave large quantities of gear behind when they return home, the newspaper said.
(More ... Reuters > News > U.S.)
Labels: GWOT, National Guard, Reuters, U.S. Military
¶ 21:39 0 comments
The Bush Conversion: How the President Saw the Light and Changed Foreign Policy (Guardian.co.uk)
Aggressive - and ineffective - approach abandoned in favour of diplomacy
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Friday March 2, 2007
The Guardian
It is being called George Bush's Come to Jesus moment. As in the midlife realisation that led Mr Bush to give up alcohol and embrace Christianity, the president in his sixth year in the White House has undergone another radical conversion, abandoning an ideological foreign policy for a more pragmatic approach, foreign policy experts say.
Within the space of two weeks, the Bush administration has made dramatic steps towards diplomatic engagement of two countries once shunned as part of the Axis of Evil - agreeing to contacts with Iran and opening the door to recognition of North Korea.
In Washington, the shift was seen yesterday as a belated acknowledgement that the administration's approach to the world - on Iraq, nuclear weapons proliferation, and Middle East peace - was not just ineffective, but dangerous.
"The main thing was that there was a sense that American foreign policy was spinning out of control. The administration was looking at one series of failures after another and these were really beginning to damage national security," said James Steinberg, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration and now heads the Lyndon Johnson school of public affairs in Texas.
Others attribute the conversion in part as a product of Mr Bush's stark view of the world. "It is the president's impulse-driven, faith-driven, black-and-white view of the world that enabled the hardline contingent within the administration to pursue the path that it pursued," said David Rothkopf, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who is writing a book about US foreign policy. "It is only the shift in recognition that that approach isn't working that has created very much the equivalent of his Come to Jesus moment when he was 40."
The deepening chaos in Iraq, the heightened nuclear tensions with Iran and North Korea, and the instability in Lebanon also served to discredit the approach advocated by the hardline powers within the administration: the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the former Pentagon chief, Donald Rumsfeld.
(More ... Guardian > Special Report > United States of America)
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Friday March 2, 2007
The Guardian
It is being called George Bush's Come to Jesus moment. As in the midlife realisation that led Mr Bush to give up alcohol and embrace Christianity, the president in his sixth year in the White House has undergone another radical conversion, abandoning an ideological foreign policy for a more pragmatic approach, foreign policy experts say.
Within the space of two weeks, the Bush administration has made dramatic steps towards diplomatic engagement of two countries once shunned as part of the Axis of Evil - agreeing to contacts with Iran and opening the door to recognition of North Korea.
In Washington, the shift was seen yesterday as a belated acknowledgement that the administration's approach to the world - on Iraq, nuclear weapons proliferation, and Middle East peace - was not just ineffective, but dangerous.
"The main thing was that there was a sense that American foreign policy was spinning out of control. The administration was looking at one series of failures after another and these were really beginning to damage national security," said James Steinberg, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration and now heads the Lyndon Johnson school of public affairs in Texas.
Others attribute the conversion in part as a product of Mr Bush's stark view of the world. "It is the president's impulse-driven, faith-driven, black-and-white view of the world that enabled the hardline contingent within the administration to pursue the path that it pursued," said David Rothkopf, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who is writing a book about US foreign policy. "It is only the shift in recognition that that approach isn't working that has created very much the equivalent of his Come to Jesus moment when he was 40."
The deepening chaos in Iraq, the heightened nuclear tensions with Iran and North Korea, and the instability in Lebanon also served to discredit the approach advocated by the hardline powers within the administration: the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the former Pentagon chief, Donald Rumsfeld.
(More ... Guardian > Special Report > United States of America)
Labels: Bush, Guardian, Iran, North Korea
¶ 21:33 0 comments
CIA Blunder 'PromptedKorean Nuclear Race" (Independent.co.uk)
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 02 March 2007
The United States appears to have made a major intelligence blunder over North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, one that may have exacerbated tensions with Pyongyang over the past four years and goaded Kim Jong-Il into pressing ahead with last October's live nuclear test, intelligence and Bush administration officials have said.
The blunder does not concern the plutonium-based bomb technology that North Korea used in its test and has clearly been developing for decades. Rather it concerns the assessment, in a Central Intelligence Agency report to Congress in November 2002, that North Korea was also pursuing a parallel uranium enrichment programme capable of providing the raw material for two or more nuclear weapons a year, starting "mid-decade".
That prompted the US to cut off oil supplies to Pyongyang, to which North Korea responded by throwing out international weapons inspectors and ratcheting up its plutonium bomb programme.
But now many intelligence officials doubt whether the North Koreans have a viable uranium enrichment programme, and administration officials have begun wondering if they could not have handled the North Korean crisis much more smartly if they had been in less of a hurry to get confrontational.
On Tuesday, a veteran intelligence official called Joseph DeTrani told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the government's certainty about the programme's existence was only at "the mid-confidence level", agency-speak meaning the information is not fully corroborated and some officials hold other views.
On Wednesday, the Director of National Intelligence declassified a report on North Korea which stated: "The degree of progress towards producing enriched uranium remains unknown."
(More ... The Independent > News > World > Americas)
Published: 02 March 2007
The United States appears to have made a major intelligence blunder over North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, one that may have exacerbated tensions with Pyongyang over the past four years and goaded Kim Jong-Il into pressing ahead with last October's live nuclear test, intelligence and Bush administration officials have said.
The blunder does not concern the plutonium-based bomb technology that North Korea used in its test and has clearly been developing for decades. Rather it concerns the assessment, in a Central Intelligence Agency report to Congress in November 2002, that North Korea was also pursuing a parallel uranium enrichment programme capable of providing the raw material for two or more nuclear weapons a year, starting "mid-decade".
That prompted the US to cut off oil supplies to Pyongyang, to which North Korea responded by throwing out international weapons inspectors and ratcheting up its plutonium bomb programme.
But now many intelligence officials doubt whether the North Koreans have a viable uranium enrichment programme, and administration officials have begun wondering if they could not have handled the North Korean crisis much more smartly if they had been in less of a hurry to get confrontational.
On Tuesday, a veteran intelligence official called Joseph DeTrani told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the government's certainty about the programme's existence was only at "the mid-confidence level", agency-speak meaning the information is not fully corroborated and some officials hold other views.
On Wednesday, the Director of National Intelligence declassified a report on North Korea which stated: "The degree of progress towards producing enriched uranium remains unknown."
(More ... The Independent > News > World > Americas)
Labels: CIA, Independent, North Korea, nuclear proliferation
¶ 21:25 0 comments
UN Says Climate Change as Dangerous as War (NZHerald.co.nz)
7:50AM Friday March 02, 2007
By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS - Climate change poses as much danger to the world as war, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today as he pledged to make global warming the focus of talks with world leaders in June.
In his first address on the subject, Ban said he would emphasise the climate crisis with the leaders at a meeting in Germany of the Group of Eight industrialised nations -- Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, the United States and Russia.
"The majority of the United Nations work still focuses on preventing and ending conflict," Ban said. "But the danger posed by war to all of humanity and to our planet is at least matched by the climate crisis and global warming."
"In coming decades, changes in our environment and the resulting upheavals from droughts to inundated coastal areas to loss of arable land are likely to become a major driver of war and conflict," said Ban.
(More ... NZ Herald > News > World Story)
By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS - Climate change poses as much danger to the world as war, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today as he pledged to make global warming the focus of talks with world leaders in June.
In his first address on the subject, Ban said he would emphasise the climate crisis with the leaders at a meeting in Germany of the Group of Eight industrialised nations -- Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, the United States and Russia.
"The majority of the United Nations work still focuses on preventing and ending conflict," Ban said. "But the danger posed by war to all of humanity and to our planet is at least matched by the climate crisis and global warming."
"In coming decades, changes in our environment and the resulting upheavals from droughts to inundated coastal areas to loss of arable land are likely to become a major driver of war and conflict," said Ban.
(More ... NZ Herald > News > World Story)
Labels: Climate Change, New Zealand Herald, UN
¶ 21:18 0 comments
3.01.2007
Is Black America Ready to Embrace Obama? (CNN.com)
POSTED: 0546 GMT (1346 HKT), March 1, 2007
From Candy Crowley and Sasha Johnson
CNN Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In recent months, ABC News-Washington Post polls showed Sen. Hillary Clinton running 40 points higher than Sen. Barack Obama among blacks voters asked to name their preference in the Democratic primary.
But in Wednesday editions, the Washington Post reported a poll that has Obama leading Clinton by 11 points among black voters -- 44 percent to 33 percent. Obama is the Senate's only black member and has been campaigning across the country for the last couple of months. Clinton is his chief rival for the 2008 presidential nomination
That change represents a stunning 24-point swing, but does it mean the black community has embraced the Illinois Democrat as its candidate?
Not exactly.
"Obama does have a plurality of black voters right now. He doesn't have a majority yet," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "That means a majority of blacks still aren't sure about him.
"Forty-four percent favor him. That's certainly good news for him, but I think the Obama camp would like to see that be significantly higher."
Among blacks, Obama's favorables are high (70 percent), but Clinton's are higher (85 percent). Plus, Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have deep roots in the black community.
Blacks, in part, may be slow to warm to the candidacy of Obama because, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll suggests, they are less likely than whites to believe that America is ready for a black president.
The poll, conducted December 5-7, 2006, found that 65 percent of whites thought America was ready, compared with 54 percent of blacks. The poll's margin of error was plus-or-minus 5 percentage points.
(More ... CNN > Politics)
From Candy Crowley and Sasha Johnson
CNN Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In recent months, ABC News-Washington Post polls showed Sen. Hillary Clinton running 40 points higher than Sen. Barack Obama among blacks voters asked to name their preference in the Democratic primary.
But in Wednesday editions, the Washington Post reported a poll that has Obama leading Clinton by 11 points among black voters -- 44 percent to 33 percent. Obama is the Senate's only black member and has been campaigning across the country for the last couple of months. Clinton is his chief rival for the 2008 presidential nomination
That change represents a stunning 24-point swing, but does it mean the black community has embraced the Illinois Democrat as its candidate?
Not exactly.
"Obama does have a plurality of black voters right now. He doesn't have a majority yet," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "That means a majority of blacks still aren't sure about him.
"Forty-four percent favor him. That's certainly good news for him, but I think the Obama camp would like to see that be significantly higher."
Among blacks, Obama's favorables are high (70 percent), but Clinton's are higher (85 percent). Plus, Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have deep roots in the black community.
Blacks, in part, may be slow to warm to the candidacy of Obama because, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll suggests, they are less likely than whites to believe that America is ready for a black president.
The poll, conducted December 5-7, 2006, found that 65 percent of whites thought America was ready, compared with 54 percent of blacks. The poll's margin of error was plus-or-minus 5 percentage points.
(More ... CNN > Politics)
Labels: 2008 election, CNN, Obama
¶ 21:32 0 comments
US Commanders Admit: We Face a Vietnam-style collapse (Guardian.co.uk)
Elite officers in Iraq fear low morale, lack of troops and loss of political will
Simon Tisdall
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
An elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.
The officers - combat veterans who are experts in counter-insurgency - are charged with implementing the "new way forward" strategy announced by George Bush on January 10. The plan includes a controversial "surge" of 21,500 additional American troops to establish security in the Iraqi capital and Anbar province.
But the team, known as the "Baghdad brains trust" and ensconced in the heavily fortified Green Zone, is struggling to overcome a range of entrenched problems in what has become a race against time, according to a former senior administration official familiar with their deliberations.
"They know they are operating under a clock. They know they are going to hear a lot more talk in Washington about 'Plan B' by the autumn - meaning withdrawal. They know the next six-month period is their opportunity. And they say it's getting harder every day," he said.
By improving security, the plan's short-term aim is to create time and space for the Iraqi government to bring rival Shia, Sunni and Kurd factions together in a process of national reconciliation, American officials say. If that works within the stipulated timeframe, longer term schemes for rebuilding Iraq under the so-called "go long" strategy will be set in motion.
(More ... Guardian Unlimited > Special Report > Iraq) ¶ 21:27 0 comments
Simon Tisdall
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
An elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.
The officers - combat veterans who are experts in counter-insurgency - are charged with implementing the "new way forward" strategy announced by George Bush on January 10. The plan includes a controversial "surge" of 21,500 additional American troops to establish security in the Iraqi capital and Anbar province.
But the team, known as the "Baghdad brains trust" and ensconced in the heavily fortified Green Zone, is struggling to overcome a range of entrenched problems in what has become a race against time, according to a former senior administration official familiar with their deliberations.
"They know they are operating under a clock. They know they are going to hear a lot more talk in Washington about 'Plan B' by the autumn - meaning withdrawal. They know the next six-month period is their opportunity. And they say it's getting harder every day," he said.
By improving security, the plan's short-term aim is to create time and space for the Iraqi government to bring rival Shia, Sunni and Kurd factions together in a process of national reconciliation, American officials say. If that works within the stipulated timeframe, longer term schemes for rebuilding Iraq under the so-called "go long" strategy will be set in motion.
(More ... Guardian Unlimited > Special Report > Iraq) ¶ 21:27 0 comments
