By Mubashir Zaidi and Laura King - Los Angeles Times
While India has not yet accused a particular group, Pakistan vows to investigate possible links to militants.
REUTERS/Stringer
CAIRO (AFP) – OPEC predicted on Saturday that world oil prices would not rebound until mid-2009, after the cartel left its output unchanged at a consultative meeting in Cairo.
"The prices will not begin to rise before the second half of 2009," said OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem El-Badri.
Oil prices have slumped by two-thirds since striking record highs above 147 dollars per barrel in July, as the market has been rattled by a looming global recession and weak demand.
El-Badri added that OPEC ministers have reached a "consensus" about cutting output at the next production meeting in Oran, Algeria, on December 17.
"There's a general consensus for an action," in Algeria, he added.
"We have to look at what happens to demand from here to Oran and... what is happening to stocks."
Raw Story
Bush administration aides are rushing to pass a safety rule which would make government regulation of workers' exposure to toxic chemicals more difficult; a rule President-elect Barack Obama opposes.
Public health officials worry the decreased protections will result in additional, unnecessary deaths.
It is just one of about 20 controversial Labor Department proposals being pushed by large business interests, according to a published report.
Other proposals would allow power plants to be built closer to parks and wildlife preserves, and further limit the role of environmental and animal experts in determining where major infrastructure projects may be carried out.
President-elect Obama has long been critical of the Bush administration's removal of workplace protections. During the campaign, Obama co-sponsored legislation which would prohibit this specific deregulation.
While presidents have the authority to unilaterally repeal their predecessor's executive orders, the process to remove or add regulations is more complicated and takes longer. Obama has already undertaken a review of President Bush's executive orders, with the stated goal being the repeal of those he deems to be unconstitutional.
"I think across the board, on stem cell research, on a number of areas, you see the Bush administration even today moving aggressively to do things that I think are probably not in the interest of the country,” said John Podesta, co-chair of Obama's transition team. "I think that’s a mistake.”
Written by Jeff Koopersmith - American Politics Journal
If you think the CitiGroup bailout was a breeze, you need to look at the facts and think again.
November 28, 2008 – Geneva (apj.us) – Citibank went crying to Hank Paulson the weekend before Thanksgiving, and the next thing we know the U.S. Taxpayer is on the hook for as much as $300 billion of corporate cornucopia bailout.
What you may not know is that former Texas governor George W. "Lame Turkey" Bush and Hank "Plunder" Paulson are scrounging around the Persian Gulf asking the potentates for another $300 billion in cash “injections” to keep the whole mess afloat.
Citi lied from the start. First, they went weeping to Uncle Sam about their poor-mouth real estate loans and their portfolio in general. Then they turned the spigot on the tears about their credit card debt. Then Citi claimed it would eat another $18 billion from its “structured investments” (another term for “cheating the owners' investments”).
This week they told us they were laying off 50,000 people.
What on earth did all those people do in the first place?
Of course, we can also laugh at the dimwit Citi chairman Win Bischoff, who to my mind must have known that every mortgage that Citi “packaged” for sale to unwary or just plain stupid buyers was a fraud.
As someone recently said, we shouldn’t be looking for a bailout for these jokers — they should be looking for bail!
Citi has more than $3 trillion in paper assets, both on and off “the books”. I ask you this: how on earth would that first $25 billion they received help them? That was more than two months ago. What happened to that $25 billion?
Now, under the latest damn fool plan from the U.S. Treasury (read: Hank Paulson), Citi will cover only losses of near $30 billion. Then you, the taxpayers, will take on 90% of the other Citi losses. So far more than $300 billion is Citi assets have been fingered as near worthless. Late history tells me that there’s probably another few hundred billion hanging around on Citi’s mail room floor that has not been “discovered”.
On top of that, most of the $300 billion at risk over at Citi is credit card debt. We all know how safe credit card debt is – it’s not even collateralized. Oh well, I guess Mr. Paulson believes we can afford to pay another $250 million for that. And guess what? CitiGroup gets to keep the profits on any loans that are actually paid.
Is that astounding or what? Hank Paulson looks like either a genius, corrupt, or a moron. You choose.
According to law the United States’ credit limit – and it has one – is about $11.5 trillion. Right now we owe $10.7 trillion.
For all intents, the United States is bankrupt under law. Of course, we can continue to print money as the Treasury in now doing – most likely night and day.
The sad fact is that almost every business on earth is urging you to spend, spend, spend, not save, save, save – and the truth is that if you don’t spend almost everything you have – the world will sink into a depression far worse than we’ve ever seen.
Bottom line? Checkmate – for the corporate moguls. We lose. They win.
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Jeff Koopersmith is an internationally renowned political consultant, opinion research authority and policy analyst. He has lobbied for causes including the alternative fuel sector and women's health, and is an expert on the international real estate market. He lives in Philadelphia, Washington and Geneva.
REUTERS/John Vizcaino
From the OUR GODS BETTER THAN YOUR GOD Department:
Reuters - guardian.co.uk
More than 200 people have been killed in two days of clashes between Christians and Muslims in central Nigeria, the Red Cross said yesterday, during the worst unrest in the country for years.
The army sent reinforcements to enforce a 24-hour curfew in the city of Jos, which lies at the flashpoint where Nigeria's Muslim north and Christian south meet, after rival gangs set fire to churches and mosques.
'I counted 218 dead bodies at Masalaci Jummaa [mosque]. There are many other bodies in the streets,' said a Red Cross official, who asked not to be named. That death toll did not include hospital mortuaries, victims already buried, or those taken to other places of worship. The final count could be much higher, officials said.
About 7,000 people had fled their homes and were sheltering in government buildings and religious centres, the Red Cross said.
The governor of Plateau state, of which Jos is the capital, said in a statement that troops had orders to shoot on sight to enforce the curfew in neighbourhoods hit by the violence. Gunfire and explosions heard in the early hours of Saturday later died down, but many streets remained deserted. Military checkpoints were set up around the city and soldiers helped to clear bodies from the streets.
'The situation demanded that we send in additional troops from neighbouring states,' said a Nigerian army spokesman, Brigadier General Emeka Onwuamaegbu.
Violence started on Thursday night as groups of youths burnt tyres on the roads after reports of election rigging. Bodies from the Muslim Hausa community were brought into the central mosque compound. The local imam, Sheikh Khalid Abubakar, said more than 300 bodies were brought there on Saturday alone. Those killed in the Christian community would probably be taken to the city morgue, raising the possibility that the death toll could be much higher.
Police spokesman Bala Kassim said there were 'many dead', but could not give a firm number. Despite the overnight curfew groups in some areas took to the streets again as soon as police patrols had passed by.
The unrest is the most serious of its kind in a country of 140 million people, split roughly equally between Christians and Muslims, since President Umaru Yar'Adua took power in May 2007.
Christians and Muslims generally live peacefully side by side in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, but hostility has simmered before in Plateau. Hundreds were killed in fighting in Jos in 2001. Three years later, hundreds more died in clashes in Yelwa, leading the then President Olusegun Obasanjo to declare a state of emergency.
The tensions in Plateau have their roots in decades of resentment by indigenous minority groups, mostly Christian or animist, towards migrants and settlers who come from Nigeria's Hausa-speaking Muslim north.
A Congolese boy jumps in to the Ishasha River that separates Uganda and Congo as refugees bathe and collect drinking water at the shared frontier border town of Ishasha, November 28, 2008. REUTERS/T.J. Kirkpatrick
Posted by Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake / Alternet
"This type of spending is indefensible and unacceptable to Citigroup's new partner and largest investor: the American taxpayer."
In his press conference today, Obama says he wants Detroit automakers to come up with a "plan" before they can receive a bridge loan that will keep three million jobs from being lost as we teeter on the edge of a global depression.
I guess this is the plan for Citi and AIG:
AIG, Citibank and a number of other federally bailed-out financial institutions have no plans to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in sports team sponsorships, even as they take billions in taxpayer support, ABC News has found.
In boom times, the sponsorships were seen as a way to advertise the firms' "brands" and appeal to potential customers. Even today, at least one bank told ABC News that a naming deal was increasing its revenue. But critics, including a member of Congress, say the decision to continue them now is hard to defend.
Struggling Citibank just sealed a multi-billion-dollar emergency "backstop" deal with the U.S. government. The financial behemoth, suffering with billions in bad mortgage-related assets on its books, recently shed 53,000 workers and saw its stock price lose over half its value. Yet it's in a 20-year contract to pay the New York Mets $400 million to name the team's new stadium "Citi Field."
"This type of spending is indefensible and unacceptable to Citigroup's new partner and largest investor: the American taxpayer," said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., in a statement Monday.
There are a million UAW pensioners living in fear right now because pontificating, sanctimonious, disingenuous creeps like Richard Shelby are on TV preaching that they must give up the retirement funds they spent a lifetime contributing to because they make Detroit "uncompetitive" with Japanese automakers in his state. No mention is made that right-to-work states like Alabama give foreign auto makers a protective advantage by making it illegal to unionize.
Pelosi and Reid want to be reassured that no bonuses will be given out to anyone in the auto industry making more than $200,000 a year, while Wall Street bonuses will actually be more generous as a result of their bailout. They want Detroit to promise that bridge financing money won't be paid in dividends to stockholders, yet the Treasury said it was okay for banks to pay out half of the funds they received to shareholders because "suspending quarterly dividend payments would have deterred banks from participating in the voluntary program."
Obama now says that the automakers must prove they can be profitable and create more fuel efficient cars before they will get federal assistance for a problem caused by mismanagement of the same financial institutions who had no strings whatsoever put on their loans, despite the fact that there is no proof that people will buy more fuel efficient cars when gas prices are low -- something the government can affect, but which the automakers have no control of whatsoever.
But thank gawd A-Rod can still pick up the tabs for those spending sprees if he wants to get busy with Madonna. I was getting worried there for a minute.
Jane Hamsher is the founder of FireDogLake. Her work has also appeared on the Huffington Post, Alternet and The American Prospect.
ThinkProgress
In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, Karl Rove applauds Barack Obama’s appointment of a “first-rate economic team,” cheering the selections of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, National Economic Council director Lawrence Summers, Council of Economic Advisers chief Christina Romer, and OMB head Peter Orszag.
But while issuing compliments of most of Obama’s nominees, Rove issued this back-handed swipe at Melody Barnes, who ThinkProgress first reported would be chosen to lead the White House Domestic Policy Council:
The only troubling personnel note was Melody Barnes as Domestic Policy Council director. Putting a former aide to Ted Kennedy in charge of health policy after tapping universal health-care advocate Tom Daschle to be Health and Human Services secretary sends a clear signal that Mr. Obama didn’t mean it when his campaign ads said he wouldn’t run to the “extremes” with government-run health care.
During the campaign, Barnes helped inform Obama’s health care approach — the same approach he is now promising to pursue in office. Obama pledged to bring together “doctors and patients, unions and businesses, Democrats and Republicans” together to build on the existing system and “reduce the cost of health care to ensure affordable, accessible coverage for all Americans.”
Taking a look at the health care stats in the Bush/Rove era, it’s clear that most Americans have seen a decline in their health care at the same time that health insurance companies have reaped tremendous gains:
– Since 2000, the ranks of the uninsured have grown by 7.2 million.
– Health care premiums have doubled under Bush. Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have risen from $5,791 in 1999 to $12,680 in 2008.
– The fastest growing component of health care is health insurers’ administrative costs.
– Enrollment in Medicare private plans doubled. Through such plans, insurers “have increased the cost and complexity of the program without any evidence of improving care.”
– The combined profits of the nation’s largest insurance companies and their subsidiaries increased by over 170 percent between 2003 and 2007.
Obama is putting together a team, starting with Melody Barnes and Tom Daschle, who will be committed to ending the unfairness and inequity of the current health care system. Meanwhile, Karl Rove is committed to defending the health insurance industry and preventing any change to the status quo. Fortunately, the American people are proclaiming that they are ready for the change that Obama is promising.
ONE THING I am thankful for on Thanksgiving weekend is having absolutely no desire to go to the mall. I cannot remember the last time I did so, which by extension leaves me utterly out of touch with the national impulse to waddle out of bed at 4 a.m., especially the morning after the biggest collective burp on the American calendar.
It seems that it is not enough for Americans to watch football on turkey day. Obviously inspired by our beloved black-and-blue brutality, otherwise sane Americans treat Black Friday as their day in the NFL, blasting through the hole of the store opening to the 20-, the 30-, the 40-, the 50-percent-off sweater department! Then you chop-block the shopper ahead of you to advance from 53d to 52d in the checkout line.
All this sweat, tears, and occasional blood for the argyle for dear old Dad that becomes moth bait.
This year is, of course, different. Black Friday really turned tragic as a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death in New York. This and the economy stinks. President-elect Obama has said for two years the planet is in peril. That originally only referred to global warming. But Americans keep thinking we can pilfer the planet at no peril. SUV sales are already picking up again now that gasoline is back under $2 a gallon, at the very same time we whine like the Wicked Witch of the West, shrinking to our knees screaming that our wallets are "melting! melting!"
This would seem like a great time to reassess the difference between what we want and what we need, both for the wallet and the planet. The National Retail Federation estimates that 49 million Americans were sure to go shopping this weekend. That is one-sixth of America. Depending how deep the discounts go, up to 128 million Americans could clog the aisles, over a third of the nation. One shopping center in Wisconsin, which opened at midnight after Thanksgiving, offered free pajamas to shoppers who came in pajamas. Mattel is throwing $50 Visa cards at $100 Barbie shoppers. Department stores were offering toys at half off and bringing back layaway plans.
The federation said this week, "For the first time since March 2005, the average price of self-serve, unleaded gasoline is $1.91, leaving shoppers with a little extra padding in their wallets . . . Shoppers who held off buying a DVD player or winter coat over the last few months will find that prices may literally be too good to pass up."
Like crack cocaine, I suppose. The Associated Press, in getting the reaction of motorists to the price of gasoline falling to an average of $1.79 in Columbus, Ohio, quoted one woman as saying, "It's awesome. With this gas guzzler, there was no way I could afford to keep paying, the way we're going."
It would be far more awesome to stop the addiction. A growing number of families have gone cold turkey on turkey day, banning the blizzard of boxes under the Christmas tree in lieu of charitable gifts to people really in need. Now, more than ever, with a planet disproportionately fouled by our pollution and waste (Americans waste 27 percent of food, according to the government), we need to ask: Does my kid really need that toy? Do I really need to upgrade my cellphone? Is happiness really wrapped up in the 50-percent-off sweater?
I have a suggestion for these holidays. The average American, according to the government, consumes six times more energy than the world average. Take whatever you spent on gifts last year, slash 5/6ths of it, and see what you can do with the rest - unless of course you make a charitable donation. You're broke anyway, right, so what's the harm? Chances are, your loved ones won't love you any less, someone in need will love you more, and your children might understand a bit more how the rest of the planet lives.
And the planet itself can give thanks for being a few pieces of plastic less in peril.
By Brigid Schulte - Washington Post Staff Writer
The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn't find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.
Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.
But Simmons really got spooked when he was teaching a class on identifying oak and hickory trees late last month. For 2 1/2 miles, Simmons and other naturalists hiked through Northern Virginia oak and hickory forests. They sifted through leaves on the ground, dug in the dirt and peered into the tree canopies. Nothing.
"I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe," he said. "But this is not just not a good year for oaks. It's a zero year. There's zero production. I've never seen anything like this before."
The absence of acorns could have something to do with the weather, Simmons thought. But he hoped it wasn't a climatic event. "Let's hope it's not something ghastly going on with the natural world."
To find out, Simmons and Arlington naturalists began calling around. A naturalist in Maryland found no acorns on an Audubon nature walk there. Ditto for Fairfax, Falls Church, Charles County, even as far away as Pennsylvania. There are no acorns falling from the majestic oaks in Arlington National Cemetery.
"Once I started paying attention, I couldn't find any acorns anywhere. Not from white oaks, red oaks or black oaks, and this was supposed to be their big year," said Greg Zell, a naturalist at Long Branch Nature Center in Arlington. "We're talking zero. Not a single acorn. It's really bizarre."
Zell began to do some research. He found Internet discussion groups, including one on Topix called "No acorns this year," reporting the same thing from as far away as the Midwest up through New England and Nova Scotia. "We live in Glenwood Landing, N.Y., and don't have any acorns this year. Really weird," wrote one. "None in Kansas either! Curiouser and curiouser." (continue reading)
by Ian Black - The Guardian (UK)
The United States and Britain are urging India and Pakistan to act with restraint and do nothing that could set back the recent thaw in their relations in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks. But a direct public accusation by India yesterday that the perpetrators were linked to Pakistan risked rekindling tensions.
With signs of a growing rapprochement between the nuclear-armed neighbours linked to hopes for a more effective US and Nato-led military effort against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the stakes for the south Asian region could hardly be higher, diplomats and analysts said.
"We are privately encouraging them not to do anything that could derail this process," a senior British official said.
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, is to discuss the crisis with foreign secretary David Miliband in London before a Nato ministerial meeting on Monday.
Whether by chance or design - some experts believe it was a goal of the terrorists - the Mumbai attacks came days after Ali Asif Zardari, the Pakistani president, made striking overtures: to withdraw his country's first-strike nuclear threat, sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, create an EU-style economic zone with India and allow visa-free travel.
Illustrating this progress, Pakistan's foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, had just finished talks in Delhi with his Indian counterpart on terrorism, trade and visas when the terrorists struck.
But the fragility of the rapprochement was underlined too when Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister, said the attacks were probably masterminded by a group based in an unnamed "neighbouring country" - usually code for Pakistan.
India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, went further yesterday by saying that "initial evidence" showed "elements with links to Pakistan are involved".
International alarm at this finger-pointing was tempered by relief that Pakistan is behaving so helpfully. Zardari condemned the attacks and agreed yesterday to send the head of the powerful ISI intelligence agency, Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shujaa Pasha, to India to review evidence on the Mumbai atrocities.
Analysts said this suggested the Pakistan military was confident that no direct links will be revealed by India. Pakistan is keen to avoid a repeat of the near-war situation following the assault on the Indian parliament in December 2001.
But there were hints that the Pakistani authorities might acknowledge the existence of indirect links with terrorist groups: when Zardari telephoned Singh yesterday to again condemn the attacks, he said that "non-state actors" were responsible. "Non-state actors wanted to force upon the governments their own agenda but they must not be allowed to succeed," Zardari's office cited him as saying.
"Do not play politics into this issue," Qureshi warned. "This is a collective issue. We are facing a common enemy. We have to join hands to defeat this enemy."
The US state department said it, like Britain, was sending investigators to Mumbai to help the Indian authorities.The wider US concern, however, is about what one diplomat predicted could be "significant deterioration" in the process of Indo-Pakistani reconciliation. That has been boosted since Zardari, widower of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto, replaced Pervez Musharaf to become Pakistan's first civilian president since 1999.
Barack Obama, the US president-elect, has signalled that this will be a priority for him and for General David Petraeus, head of US central command. The aim is to persuade Pakistan to pay less attention to India and more to the al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in the border tribal areas.
On a visit to Afghanistan in July, Obama highlighted the regional aspect of the fight against the Taliban in that country and, increasingly, inside Pakistan. "A lot of what drives motivations on the Pakistan side of the border still has to do with their concerns and suspicions about India," he said. Pakistan continues to station the larger part of its army not on the Afghan border but along the line of control in Kashmir.
The two countries have fought three wars since independence in 1947 and nearly did so again in 2002 after the attack on India's parliament. Pakistan for years supported militants battling Indian forces in Kashmir but reined them in after the 9/11 attacks on the US. While seeking Pakistani cooperation in the "war on terror," the Bush administration also drew closer to India.
By Dave Lindorff, Smirking Chimp / Alternet
The author tries to renew his drivers license and runs afoul of the catch-a-terrorist system in the DMV.
I am not a terrorist.
How can I prove this in these paranoid times? Easy. The New York Department of Motor Vehicles took my $30 payment over the phone to clear what they said was a record of my NY drivers license having once been withdrawn, and informed the National Driver Register in Washington that I'm a good guy deserving of a renewal of my Pennsylvania drivers license.
Let me explain.
After 9-11, Congress and the Bush Department of Homeland Security went into overdrive passing things like the USA PATRIOT Act, the establishment of the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) to monitor air passengers and to develop lists of people to harass at air terminals, a network of black sites to detain and torture suspected terrorists, and more recently the National Driver Register, a federal data bank designed to link all drivers licenses and car registrations to a central computer system, and thus ferret out would be terrorists trying to create false identities courtesy of the state DMVs.
I, like uncounted tens of thousands of innocent Americans, ran afoul of this latest catch-a-terrorist system as my Pennsylvania drivers license, which I first obtained in 1997 when I moved from New York to Pennsylvania, came up for a third renewal. Several months ahead of my renewal date, I got a coldly worded and ominous letter from the Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles saying my license could not be renewed because the new federal data base was reporting that my New York license had been "withdrawn" by the NY DMV.
When I called the Pennsylvania DMV to explain that my New York license had never been withdrawn or suspended (it had to have been in good order for me to have used it under the state's reciprocity agreement with neighboring New York to obtain my new Pennsylvania license), and to ask what the problem might be, I was told that they couldn't tell me, because the federal report doesn't say what the problem is. Nor is there any way to contact or appeal to Washington.
My only recourse was to deal with the New York State DMV -- probably one of the blackest of bureaucratic black holes known to man. (continue reading)
By Yoichi Shimatsu, New America Media / Alternet
The Mumbai attacks carry the signature of Ibrahim Dawood, a Indian living in Pakistan and former crime boss turned self-styled avenger.
The coordinated nighttime assault against seven major targets in Mumbai is reminiscent of the 1993 bombings that devastated the Bombay Stock Exchange. The recent attack bears the fingerprints of the same criminal mastermind – meticulous preparation, ruthless execution and the absence of claims or demands.
The eerie silence that accompanied the blasts are the very signature of Ibrahim Dawood, now a multi-millionaire owner of a construction company in Karachi, Pakistan. His is hardly a household name around the world like Osama bin Laden. Across South Asia, however, Dawood is held in awe and, in a twist on morals, admired for his belated conversion from crime boss to self-styled avenger.
His rise to the highest rungs of India's underworld began from the most unlikely position as the diligent son of a police constable in the populous commercial capital then known as Bombay.
His childhood familiarity with police routine and inner workings of the justice system gave the ambitious teenager an unmatched ability to outwit the authorities with evermore clever criminal designs. Among the unschooled ranks of Bombay gangland, Ibrahim emerged as the coherent leader of a multi-religious mafia, not just due to his ability to organize extortion campaigns and meet payrolls, but also because of his merciless extermination of rivals.
Dawood, always the professional problem-solver, gained the friendship of aspiring officers in India's intelligence service known as Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). He soon attracted the attention of American secret agents, then supporting the Islamic mujahideen in their battle against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan. Dawood personally assisted many a U.S. deep-cover operation funneling money to Afghan rebels via American-operated casinos in Kathmandu, Nepal. (continue reading)
Russia Today / Prison Planet.com
For the first time ever, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has admitted that his country started the military conflict in South Ossetia in August. But the Georgian leader is adamant the action was justified. He was testifying before a parliamentary commission investigating the five-day war.
According to Saakashvili, the attack on the South Ossetian capital, which involved night shelling of residential areas with multiple rocket launcher systems, was aimed at protecting Georgian citizens. He said it was a response to Russia’s “intervention” in the region.
“We did start military action to take control of Tskhinvali and other unruly areas. But we took this difficult decision to fend off our territory from intervention and save the people who were dying. It was inevitable,” Saakavili said.
The Georgian President claims Russia moved tanks into South Ossetian territory before Georgia launched its attack.
He said: “The issue is not about why Georgia started military action – we admit we started it. The issue is about whether there was another chance when our citizens were being killed? We tried to prevent the intervention and fought on our own territory.”
“I used to like Putin”
Mikhail Saakashvili said the deterioration of relations between Tbilisi and Moscow had nothing to do with his personal relations with Vladimir Putin. There was some speculation in the media that Putin bore a personal grudge against Saakashvili after he allegedly insulted Putin when he was president several years earlier.
The Georgian President said: “I never insulted him [Vladimir Putin] before anyone, that’s a lie.”
“All the gossip that the differences between our countries are based on personal hostility is an invented thing,” he said.
Ex-ambassador’s allegations ‘groundless’
Mikhail Saakashvili dismissed as nonsense the allegations voiced earlier this week by the former Georgian ambassador to Moscow, Erossi Kitsmarishvili. The diplomat said Tbilisi had been preparing the military campaign against South Ossetia for several years and put the blame for the bloodshed on Mikhail Saakashvili.
“Kitsmarishvili’s allegations are groundless; his status was not high enough to attend the Security Council meetings where the country’s foreign policy was decided. He could not know our plans, and those certainly have nothing to do with his version,” the Georgian leader said on Friday.
Opposition: EU should treat Saakashvili like Zimbabwe’s Mugabe
The opposition Labour Party in Georgia has called on the EU to freeze the bank accounts of Mikhail Saakashvili and several other top officials. According to party secretary, Georgi Gugava, such a move would stop them from fleeing the country.
“The Saakashvili administration have packed their suitcases and hope to flee and live a quiet and prosperous life abroad on what they’ve stolen and looted,” he said.
The proposed sanctions would be similar to those imposed against more then 100 Zimbabwe officials, who had their bank accounts frozen by the EU in June.
By Joe Bageant
Making the best of a slow apocalypse
We just concluded an election in which both parties talked about hope, one more so than the other. Hope, that murky, undefined belief that some unknown force, perhaps Jesus, or modern science, or some great political leader, or other -- as yet unknown force -- will reverse our national or personal condition ... will deliver us from what every bit of evidence indicates is irreversible, if not politically, then ecologically: Decline and eventual collapse. There is quite a difference between hope and understanding the facts, then holding justified optimism. Hope is magical thinking, a sucker's game. Politicians the world 'round fully understand this.
Consequently, we go into a new year with millions of Americans still clinging to The Audacity of Hope. And we do so because we are victims of learned helplessness, learned from the cradle as it is rocked by the foot of the Capitalist consumer state. Sure we can hope for movement away from domination of the weak by the arrogant, away from ecocide and genocide toward a better world. What the hell, hope is one of the few free activities in this society. We don't even have to put down the remote and get off our asses to do it. In fact, its delivered through television.
(continue reading)
USA Today
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — The vacation is over for tens of thousands of tourists in Thailand. But they can't go home.
The Hotel California-like drama began Tuesday when anti-government protesters shut the country's primary international airport. The following day they moved in on the capital's domestic airport, grounding all commercial flights in and out of the city.
About 100,000 people have been stranded by the closures, dealing a severe blow to the country's reputation as a safe and reliable vacation destination. Officials project the tourism industry's losses from now until the end of the year will balloon to about $4.2 billion, equal to 1.5% of gross domestic product.
Hundreds gathered at Thai Airways' cramped ticket office in Bangkok on Saturday desperately seeking a way out of the country.
Slumped in chairs or out smoking on the street outside the office, travelers swapped tales of being stuck in the airport for 23 hours or ending up in a cockroach-infested hotel. Most expressed frustration about the uncertainty of it all — the baseless rumors, the conflicting information and the uncertainties that come with navigating a strange place. (continue reading)
USA Today
MARKLE, Ind. (AP) — Police in Indiana say five deer that wandered onto a highway overpass have jumped to their deaths on Interstate 69, one of them crashing through a tractor-trailer's windshield.
Indiana Department of Natural Resources spokesman John Salb says the deer may have been spooked by cars as they were crossing the overpass Friday. They fell 20 to 30 feet onto the highway.
Police say the driver of the tractor-trailer rig struck by one of the deer was not injured.
Late fall is stressful for deer because it is hunting season, said DNR spokesman Phil Bloom said.
Farmers are also removing the last of their crops from the fields, reducing the animals' food supply as the animals' breeding season is in full swing.
By Anna Mulrine - U.S. News & World Report
U.S. military officials speculate the cyber attack may have originated in China
KABUL—The largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan was hit by a computer virus earlier this month that affected nearly three quarters of the computers on the base, U.S. News has learned.
This wasn't the first such cyberattack, and officials said that earlier incarnations of the virus had exported information such as convoy and troop movements here. It was not clear precisely what information, if any, was being pulled from Department of Defense computers by this latest virus, they said.
Officials familiar with the computer attack characterized it as extremely aggressive and said that it originated in China. However, they haven't been able to determine whether the viruses are part of a covert Chinese government effort or the work of private hackers.
U.S. military officials on the base took the step of prohibiting the use of portable flash memory, or "thumb drives," as they learned more about the virus. The move reflects the concern that the portable drives can inadvertently spread viruses through separate computer networks in the field. Late last week, Pentagon officials also banned the use of thumb drives because of concerns that they were spreading a virus through the Department of Defense computer networks.
U.S. military spokesmen at Bagram declined to comment, citing operational security.
But privately, U.S. military officials express grave concerns. The Chinese "learn a lot from these attacks," says one U.S. military intelligence official. "Like how our logistics and other systems work."
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