World-News

The CIA believed it was operating lawfully in detaining and interrogating 96 suspected terrorists at locations from Thailand to Europe, until the Supreme Court this summer demolished that legal foundation.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091706F.shtml

Former Ohio Congressman Bob Ney has admitted his role in Washington's influence-peddling scandal, but prosecutors still have other politicians in their sights.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091706E.shtml

Thom Hartmann writes, "A cornerstone of the cons' movement to consolidate power in the hands of a wealthy corporate elite is the campaign to end corporate income taxes altogether- and leave the rest of us to pick up the entire tab for corporate use of our institutions and corporation despoliation of our commons."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091706C.shtml

At the National Counterterrorism Center — the agency created two years ago to prevent another attack like September 11 — more than half of the employees are not US government analysts or terrorism experts. Instead, they are outside contractors.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091706B.shtml

President Bush made an impassioned defense on Friday of his proposed rules for the interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects, warning that the nation’s ability to defend itself would be undermined if rebellious Republicans in the Senate did not come around to his position.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091706A.shtml

Rarely has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush's 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC's "Path to 9/11" so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: "For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091706Y.shtml

Deal may be in works on interrogations
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060917/ap_on_go_co/congress_terrorism


goodbye,

Gary the Grouch


Voter Security: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/


"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." -- Pericles

Two years after the anniversary of the Bush administration's acknowledgement that the slaughter in Darfur constitutes genocide, the killing continues. Africa Action, the oldest Africa advocacy organization in the US, documents the differences between the reaction of the American public and US policymakers, and chronicles the deadly inadequacy of their response.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091706X.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Darfur

Former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Abu Bakker Qassim writes about 9/11 attacks, saying: "I too was its victim. I would never have experienced the ordeal and humiliation of Guantanamo if this horrific event had not taken place."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091706Z.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Guantanamo

GM: The cover-up

Revealed: Government food watchdog gave green light to supermarkets to sell 'illegal' genetically modified rice

By Geoffrey Lean,
Environment Editor
Published: 17 September 2006

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1604094.ece

Britain's official food safety watchdog has privately told supermarkets that it will not stop them selling an illegal GM rice to the public.

Documents seen by this newspaper show that the Food Standards Agency assured major manufacturers and retailers 10 days ago that it would not make them withdraw the rice - at the same time as it was telling the public it should not be allowed to go on sale.

The environmental group Friends of the Earth has already found GM material in two types of own-brand rice sold in Morrisons supermarkets - in direct contravention of food safety regulations - and believes the GM rice is likely to be widespread throughout Britain.

But the agency has not carried out its own tests for modified rice in products on the market, and has not instructed retailers to do so. It says that the rice is safe, but some scientists disagree.

Last night, Peter Ainsworth, the shadow Environment Secretary, described the agency's conduct as "a massive scandal" and said it "smelt of a cover-up". He said he would be asking for an official investigation into whether the agency had broken the law.

Legally, no GM material is allowed to go on sale in Britain or any other EU country. But last month the Bush administration admitted it had found a modified material, which had not even received safety clearance in the US, in long-grain rice intended for export.

The unauthorised rice, which is listed as LLRICE601, was developed by Bayer CropScience to tolerate weedkiller, and tested on US farms between
1998 and 2001. The company decided not to market it. Nevertheless it has turned up widely in US rice, possibly because pollen from the tested rice spread to conventional crops. The European Commission says that it has been found in 33 of 162 samples of rice imported from the US.

The EC last month banned any further imports unless they could be proved to be clear of the GM rice, and instructed governments to test products already on the market to make sure that they did not contain it.

The European health and consumer protection commissioner, Markos Kyprianou, said it should not be allowed to enter the food chain "in any circumstances".

Two big Swiss supermarket chains have already banned all US long-grain rice from sale.

The Food Standards Agency publicly announced that "the presence of this GM material in rice on sale in the UK is illegal under European food law", adding: "Food retailers are responsible for ensuring the food they sell does not contain unauthorised GM material."

But on 5 September, a senior agency official, Claire Baynton, privately met major retailers and food manufacturers. According to records of the meeting seen by The Independent on Sunday, she said the agency did not expect companies to trace products and withdraw them.

The agency says it told the companies at the meeting that it was their responsibility to ensure that the food they sold did not contain GM material, but that it would not "require" them to test for it or withdraw products if found.

It says that it has "not carried out tests of products on the market" and "has not issued any instructions to retailers" to do so. The agency says that modified rice does not present a safety concern and is advising people who may have US rice at home to continue to eat it. But some scientists say it could give cause for "concern over its potential allergenicity".

Friends of the Earth has found GM material in two samples of Morrisons American long-grain rice and American long-grain brown rice, although it was not able to verify that it was LLRICE601. Morrisons accepts that selling any GM rice is illegal. It cleared its shelves of the products "as a precautionary measure" immediately after being informed of the findings.

Clare Oxborrow, GM campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: "The discovery of illegal GM ingredients is very worrying. The Food Standards Agency has failed to take action to identify and withdraw contaminated food, so it is likely that more illegal rice will reach the plates of unsuspecting customers.

"Instead of down-playing this contamination incident, and delaying action, the agency should be taking urgent steps to prevent illegal GM rice from being sold in our shops."

Britain's official food safety watchdog has privately told supermarkets that it will not stop them selling an illegal GM rice to the public.

Documents seen by this newspaper show that the Food Standards Agency assured major manufacturers and retailers 10 days ago that it would not make them withdraw the rice - at the same time as it was telling the public it should not be allowed to go on sale.

The environmental group Friends of the Earth has already found GM material in two types of own-brand rice sold in Morrisons supermarkets - in direct contravention of food safety regulations - and believes the GM rice is likely to be widespread throughout Britain.

But the agency has not carried out its own tests for modified rice in products on the market, and has not instructed retailers to do so. It says that the rice is safe, but some scientists disagree.

Last night, Peter Ainsworth, the shadow Environment Secretary, described the agency's conduct as "a massive scandal" and said it "smelt of a cover-up". He said he would be asking for an official investigation into whether the agency had broken the law.

Legally, no GM material is allowed to go on sale in Britain or any other EU country. But last month the Bush administration admitted it had found a modified material, which had not even received safety clearance in the US, in long-grain rice intended for export.

The unauthorised rice, which is listed as LLRICE601, was developed by Bayer CropScience to tolerate weedkiller, and tested on US farms between
1998 and 2001. The company decided not to market it. Nevertheless it has turned up widely in US rice, possibly because pollen from the tested rice spread to conventional crops. The European Commission says that it has been found in 33 of 162 samples of rice imported from the US.

The EC last month banned any further imports unless they could be proved to be clear of the GM rice, and instructed governments to test products already on the market to make sure that they did not contain it.

The European health and consumer protection commissioner, Markos Kyprianou, said it should not be allowed to enter the food chain "in any circumstances".

Two big Swiss supermarket chains have already banned all US long-grain rice from sale.

The Food Standards Agency publicly announced that "the presence of this GM material in rice on sale in the UK is illegal under European food law", adding: "Food retailers are responsible for ensuring the food they sell does not contain unauthorised GM material."

But on 5 September, a senior agency official, Claire Baynton, privately met major retailers and food manufacturers. According to records of the meeting seen by The Independent on Sunday, she said the agency did not expect companies to trace products and withdraw them.

The agency says it told the companies at the meeting that it was their responsibility to ensure that the food they sold did not contain GM material, but that it would not "require" them to test for it or withdraw products if found.

It says that it has "not carried out tests of products on the market" and "has not issued any instructions to retailers" to do so. The agency says that modified rice does not present a safety concern and is advising people who may have US rice at home to continue to eat it. But some scientists say it could give cause for "concern over its potential allergenicity".

Friends of the Earth has found GM material in two samples of Morrisons American long-grain rice and American long-grain brown rice, although it was not able to verify that it was LLRICE601. Morrisons accepts that selling any GM rice is illegal. It cleared its shelves of the products "as a precautionary measure" immediately after being informed of the findings.

Clare Oxborrow, GM campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: "The discovery of illegal GM ingredients is very worrying. The Food Standards Agency has failed to take action to identify and withdraw contaminated food, so it is likely that more illegal rice will reach the plates of unsuspecting customers.

"Instead of down-playing this contamination incident, and delaying action, the agency should be taking urgent steps to prevent illegal GM rice from being sold in our shops."


Informant: binstock

Some Officials Say Voting Law Changes And New Technology Will Cause Trouble

By Dan Balz and Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 17, 2006; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600885.html

An overhaul in how states and localities record votes and administer elections since the Florida recount battle six years ago has created conditions that could trigger a repeat -- this time on a national scale -- of last week's Election Day debacle in the Maryland suburbs, election experts said.

In the Nov. 7 election, more than 80 percent of voters will use electronic voting machines, and a third of all precincts this year are using the technology for the first time. The changes are part of a national wave, prompted by the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 and numerous revisions of state laws, that led to the replacement of outdated voting machines with computer-based electronic machines, along with centralized databases of registered voters and other steps to refine the administration of elections.

But in Maryland last Tuesday, a combination of human blunders and technological glitches caused long lines and delays in vote-counting. The problems, which followed ones earlier this year in Ohio, Illinois and several other states, have contributed to doubts among some experts about whether the new systems are reliable and whether election officials are adequately prepared to use them.

In a polarized political climate, in which elections are routinely marked by litigation and allegations of incompetent administration or outright tampering, some worry that voting problems could cast a Florida-style shadow over this fall's midterm elections.

"We could see that control of Congress is going to be decided by races in recount situations that might not be determined for several weeks," said Paul S. DeGregorio, chairman of the federal Election Assistance Commission, although he added that he does not expect problems of this magnitude.

"It's hard to put a factor on how ill-prepared we are," said former Ohio governor Richard F. Celeste, a Democrat who recently co-chaired a study of new machines with Republican Richard L. Thornburgh, former governor of Pennsylvania, for the National Research Council. They advised local election officials to prepare backup plans for November.

"What we know is, these technologies require significant testing and debugging to make them work," added Celeste, now president of Colorado College. "Our concern -- particularly as we look to the November election, when there is a lot of pressure on -- is that election officials consider what kinds of fallbacks they can put in place."

The main focus is on whether people know how to properly use the machines, particularly the large army of volunteers who staff the polls at most precincts.

"We know the equipment works because it's been qualified to federal standards," said Kevin J. Kennedy, executive director of the Wisconsin State Elections Board and president of the National Association of State Election Directors. "The real challenge is to make sure our poll workers are trained and make sure voters have been educated so that we don't have an experience like Maryland had."

What is clear is that a national effort to improve election procedures six years ago -- after the presidential election ended with ambiguous ballots and allegations of miscounted votes and partisan favoritism in Florida -- has failed to restore broad public confidence that the system is fair.

To the contrary, litigation is on the rise. Rick Hasen, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and the author of Election Law Blog, found that the number of election challenges filed in court had risen sharply from 2000 to 2004 -- from 197 per year to 361. "Parties have become more willing to go to court," Hasen said.

In 2004, some Democrats alleged widespread voting irregularities in Ohio, including questionable vote-counting and problems with machines in Democratic-leaning precincts. Nonpartisan election experts have said the problems were not so severe to call President Bush's victory, by about
119,000 votes, into question.

This year, there are debates over standards for keeping voter registration rolls up to date; for the handling of "provisional ballots" used by people who do not show up on those rolls but believe they are legally qualified to vote; and for assuring the validity of electronic vote counts through the use of paper trails for all electronic machines. State legislation requiring state or federal identification for all voters has been challenged in courts.

One reason many issues are coming to a head this year is that the Help America Vote Act set the start of 2006 as the deadline for states to comply fully with its regulations.

Help America Vote does not mandate electronic voting, but it has greatly accelerated that trend. The law banned lever machines and punch cards to end debates about ambiguous "hanging chads" of the sort that occurred in Florida in 2000. What is clear is that electronic machines have their own imponderables.

In Montgomery County, the breakdown came when election officials failed to provide precinct workers with the access cards needed to operate electronic voting machines. In Prince George's County, computers misidentified some voters' party affiliation and failed to transmit data to the central election office. At least nine other states have had trouble this year with new voting technology.

During Illinois's March primary, poll workers in Cook County (Chicago) experienced problems at hundreds of sites with new voting technology, delaying results in a crucial vote for the county's board.

In Ohio, results from the May primary election were delayed for nearly a week in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) when thousands of absentee ballots were incorrectly formatted for electronic scanners and had to be counted by hand.

Twenty-seven states require electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail available for auditing during a recount, but an analysis of Cuyahoga County's paper trail by the nonpartisan Election Science Institute showed that a tenth of the receipts were uncountable.

So far, none of these problems has prompted lingering legal challenges. But experts say turnout in general elections is much higher than in primaries and will put new stresses on the election system.

Although Help America Vote imposed national standards, it did not impose a uniform system. There are different styles and brands of equipment in use, with the potential for different bugs. The main systems are optical-scan machines and touch-screen machines. The potential problems election officials cite include machines breaking down or paper ballots not being read by optical-scan machines.

Beyond technical bugs, questions remain about whether the machines are vulnerable to vote fraud by hackers.

For several years, prominent computer scientists have taken aim at the electronic voting machines, which in essence are computers. In analyses of the software that runs widely used models of the machines, and in tests on specific brands, the scientists have shown how they could manipulate the machine to report a vote total that differed from the actual total cast by voters.

Machine vendors and some election officials have said that, while changing vote totals may be possible for someone with sophisticated technical knowledge in a controlled experiment, it is highly unlikely in a real election, given the security and oversight.

In the wake of Help America Vote, Congress has appropriated more than $3 billion to states to upgrade equipment, and Vermont Secretary of State Deb Markowitz, the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said many states have met all of Help America Vote's requirements. Backers credit the law with making voting easier for the disabled and people for whom English is not a primary language. And they say that when machines and databases work properly, they make voting more accurate.

As Election Day nears, however, states remain embroiled in legal disputes growing out of Help America Vote's requirements for centralized voter databases and for some first-time voters to show identification at the polls. The Justice Department has sued New York state for failing to comply with Help America Vote requirements, such as upgrading machines and building a central voter database.

Democrats and Republicans remain at odds over voter registration rolls. The Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal advocacy group, recently showed that properly registered voters in Florida, New Jersey and Kentucky were being removed from voter databases through electronic purges.

"Voter suppression doesn't happen with intimidation on Election Day, but rather through silent and sometimes secret government actions in the weeks leading up to an election," said Michael Waldman, the center's executive director.

Republicans have pressed for laws requiring voters to show a state or federal identification card -- a requirement Democrats say could disenfranchise low-income and minority voters.

A handful of states have passed expansive laws requiring voters to show state or federal ID at the polls. On Thursday, a circuit court judge in Missouri struck down as unconstitutional that state's ID requirement. That ruling followed a similar decision by a court in Georgia. A court in Indiana, however, upheld the requirement.

Further clouding the election process is the fact that, in many states, the administration of elections remains in political hands -- run by secretaries of state or other officials who run for office with partisan affiliations and who often have designs on higher office.

Robert Pastor, director of a commission on election reform organized by American University and headed by former president Jimmy Carter and former secretary of state James A. Baker III, said this tradition should be abandoned.

"The Carter-Baker commission identified 87 steps that need to be undertaken," he said. "Regrettably, almost none of them are being done right now. I would start by establishing statewide, nonpartisan election administration."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company


Informant: binstock

By David Usborne in New York
Published: 16 September 2006

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1603871.ece

There is something doleful about the whispering of the white-barked aspen trees that carpet the slopes of the Rocky Mountains. It is a sound of sickness and death.

Scientists believe that up and down the mountain chain, the aspen trees are beginning to vanish. As many as 10 per cent have died or are ailing in parts of Arizona, Colorado and Utah, according to the surveys. In parts of Alberta, Canada, about 30 per cent of the trees have died in five years.

The greatest problem for the 100 scientists at a conference in Utah last week is that they are not sure what is afflicting the trees."As soon as we understand what's going on, then maybe we can do something about it," said Dale Bartos, a US Forest Service ecologist based in Utah. Tom Wardle, a forester from Colorado, said: "We will, I'm very confident, figure it out."

Researchers are focusing on the unusual reproductive system of the aspen. Instead of distributing seeds, the trees sit upon hugely complex root systems. As older trees die, the roots send up shoots which become saplings.

The greatest worry is that in areas where the trees are in trouble, the shoots are not appearing either. "If we're losing roots," warned Wayne Shepperd, of the US Forest Service, "that's going to change the amount of aspens on the landscape."

One possibility could be the presence of a previously undetected fungus. Recent periods of drought in the American West could be to blame, as well as the eating of shoots by herds of elk as well as human interference with the normal cycles of forest fires. Scientists are also wondering if caterpillars are responsible.


Informant: binstock

--------

September 26, 2006

Emblem of the West Is Dying, and No One Can Figure Out Why

By KATIE KELLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/science/earth/26aspen.html

[foto] Kevin Moloney for The New York Times - Dr. Wayne Shepperd among aspen trees in North Park Valley, Colo.

DENVER, Sept. 25 — The aspen, an emblematic tree of the West and the most widely distributed tree in North America, is rapidly and mysteriously dying.

Its rapid decline is bewildering scientists and forest ecologists, who say they cannot pinpoint a cause.

“What’s causing the aspen to die?” asked Wayne Shepperd, a veteran researcher at the Rocky Mountain Research Center of the United States Forest Service. “We don’t know. Maybe this has been there all along, and we haven’t noticed it before, or maybe it’s something new.”

There is no shortage of suspects. Forest experts, who met this month at a conference in Utah to discuss the problem and look for solutions, say it may be insects, drought or climatic stress in general or overgrazing by animals like elk and cattle. Or it may be none or all of the above.

The aspen dieback is particularly baffling in that it seems to be occurring just in some Western states and is not affecting any neighboring trees, many of which already suffer from a plague of mountain pine beetles that has been devastating the West.

Since word of the aspen dieback began spreading last fall, Dr. Shepperd’s office began receiving reports of similar losses throughout the West — not just Colorado, where the problem is most predominant, but also in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Montana, Arizona and southern Wyoming.

But because there has been no concerted investigation, it is not clear how many aspen have died, much less why. “Quite honestly we just don’t have any answers,” Dr. Shepperd said.

The die-off is particularly worrisome because of the special nature of the aspen. The tree reproduces through vegetative regeneration. Genetically identical suckers sprout from the root of one tree and become clones. If the root of an aspen dies, it is unlikely to reproduce.

“We actually dug in a couple of instances and looked for live roots, and we couldn’t find any,” Dr. Shepperd said.

The dieback may go back as far as 1996, at the beginning of the recurrent drought, according to Mary Lou Fairweather, a plant pathologist for the Southwestern region of the Forest Service, who said she first noted the loss of trees in Arizona.

“I started monitoring the dieback on how the trees were growing, when and if it was continuing,” Ms. Fairweather said.

She added that she thought that the first deaths were caused by seasonal climate changes like spring freezes and then accelerated by other factors, including stress affecting the trees, although she noted that those were just theories.

In Utah, Dale Bartos, an aspen ecologist for the Forest Service, agreed that the lack of precipitation had contributed more stress to the aspen than initially thought.

“We’ve been in a major drought over the last few years, and I’m sure this has exacerbated the problem,” Mr. Bartos said.

Dr. Shepperd is not so sure. Although the current drought is probably a factor, he said, extensive long-term studies are needed.

“There’s no real pattern,” he said.

But he has noticed one intriguing clue. Some younger groves of aspen appear to be more resilient than the mature ones.

“Generally, younger stands seem to be healthier,” he said. But he added that it would be discouraging if these younger stands did not sprout. “We’re seeing it across the spectrum of site-conditioned aspen,” he said, meaning that no aspen is safe.

Mr. Bartos estimates that at the current rate 10 percent of the aspens in the West could die within several years. Some of his colleagues call that a conservative estimate.

“We’ve seen in southern Utah, over a period of 12 years, where we have very healthy-looking clones with dark green leaves go to sites where there aren’t any trees left at all,” Mr. Bartos said, adding that in other cases researchers had observed an even quicker rate of decline. “To me, 12 years is fairly rapid when we’re talking about trees that have been on site for 100 to 125 years.” Nevertheless, the scientists who met in Utah to look for a solution came away somewhat hopeful, said John Guyon, a forest pathologist for the Intermountain Regional Office of the Forest Service.

Mr. Guyon said he thought that grazing elk and cattle might be eating away the regenerating aspen. And because the trees thrive after disruptions like avalanches and fires, the lack of such disturbances may be contributing to the dieback.

Jim Worrall, another Forest Service pathologist, said the question was fraught with uncertainty.

“What we don’t know is what the future holds,” Mr. Worrall said. “It’s an unprecedented event.”

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company


Informant: Teresa Binstock

http://www.freemarketnews.com/Analysis/94/5982/911.asp?wid=94&nid=5982


Informant: ranger116

16.09.2006

Konsequenzen aus dem bevorstehenden Klimawandel hat Astrid Klug, Parlamentarische Staatssekretärin im Bundesumweltministerium, gefordert.

http://sonnenseite.kjm4.de/ref.php?id=d874168301ms10