In the News Thursday, February 12

[MacBeth]

Taliban Stealing War From US
www.truthout.org/021209A
Shahan Mufti, GlobalPost: "Throughout the ages, this ancient Silk Road town near the border of Afghanistan has been the place where the black market thrives and the military spoils of empires are hawked openly. Here in the storefronts you can still buy antique field rifles left over from the British presence of the 19th century and find uniforms and revolvers from the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Now the shops in this industrial rim of Peshawar are filling with military equipment and computers looted from the most recent empire to bog down in this hostile and impenetrable terrain: the United States of America."

Next Flash Point Over Terror Detainees: Bagram Prison
www.truthout.org/021209B
Warren Richey, The Christian Science Monitor: "At the height of its operation, the terror detention camp at Guantanamo was viewed as a legal black hole, a place where Al Qaeda suspects could be held and questioned beyond the glare of judicial scrutiny. President Obama has made the closing of the detention facility a priority. But as Guantanamo is being drawn down, large-scale construction is under way at a US military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan."

J. Sri Raman | Questions Remain After A.Q. Khan's Release
www.truthout.org/021209C
J. Sri Raman, Truthout: "Many questions have been raised in the wake of the recent release from house detention of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, known in Pakistan as the Father of the Islamic Bomb and to the world as a nuclear smuggler. Some questions, however, remain to be asked. They do not figure in the flurry of political and media reactions to the Islamabad High Court's verdict ending his five-year-long effective incarceration."

Immigration Fight Simmered During Stimulus Negotiations
www.truthout.org/021209D
Daphne Eviatar, The Washington Independent: "Among the many provisions of the $800-plus billion stimulus bill hotly debated and horse-traded behind closed doors, one that remained largely under the radar through the negotiations would have forced employers receiving stimulus money to use a controversial federal computer system to verify that all of its employees are legal U.S. workers. Although preliminary indications are that the requirement did not make it into the final version, the battle over E-Verify is far from over."

Rick Arnold | Obama's Canada Trip May Spell Change for NAFTA
www.truthout.org/021209E
Rick Arnold, Foreign Policy in Focus: "Canadians are looking forward to Barack Obama's February 19 visit to Ottawa - the president's first trip to a foreign country since he took office. Many of us here dare to hope Obama's 'change' agenda will inspire some fresh thinking among our own politicians. Ironically, Canadians concerned about our country's economic future (along with the well-being of our social programs) may now find a more sympathetic ear in Washington than in Ottawa - particularly when it comes to the subject of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)."

Max Gallo | The Crisis Is but a Symptom
www.truthout.org/021209F
Max Gallo, Le Figaro: "Crisis: how could this little word, worn-out and imprecise, allow us to define that which has carried us off with accelerating speed since the fall of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008? When one specifies - banking, financial, cyclical, economic, social, political - crisis, one better defines one aspect of the reality. But then one masks the connections, the simultaneities, the interactions that create the globality of a phenomenon."

[MacBeth]

Dahr Jamail | The New Fallujah
www.truthout.org/021209R
Dahr Jamail, TomDispatch.com: "Driving through Fallujah, once the most rebellious Sunni city in this country, I saw little evidence of any kind of reconstruction underway. At least 70 percent of that city's structures were destroyed during massive US military assaults in April, and again in November 2004, and more than four years later, in the 'new Iraq,' the city continues to languish."

Judd Gregg Withdraws Commerce Secretary Nomination
www.truthout.org/021209S
David Espo, The Associated Press: "Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire abruptly withdrew his nomination as Commerce secretary Thursday, citing 'irresolvable conflicts' with President Barack Obama's handling of the economic stimulus and 2010 census. 'We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy,' Gregg said in a statement released by his Senate office."

KBR Fined in Nigeria Bribery Case
www.truthout.org/021209T
Joanna Chung, The Financial Times: "Kellogg, Brown & Root, the engineering, construction, and services company, and its former parent, Halliburton, have agreed to pay a combined $579 million to settle US criminal and civil allegations that KBR bribed Nigerian government officials to obtain contracts."

Israeli Elections: Kadima Emerges With Most Seats
www.truthout.org/021209U
Rory McCarthy, David Batty and agencies, The Guardian UK: "With military and overseas ballots counted, Kadima had 28 seats - far short of the 61 needed to govern alone. Likud won 27 seats, while the far-right Israel Our Home party won 15 seats, making its leader, Avigdor Lieberman, a likely kingmaker. The final results, which include the votes of several thousand soldiers and Israelis living abroad, were unchanged from the preliminary results."

Global Warming Changing Birds' Habits
www.truthout.org/021209EA
The Associated Press: "When it comes to global warming, the canary in the coal mine isn't a canary at all. It's a purple finch. As the temperature across the US has gotten warmer, the purple finch has been spending its winters more than 400 miles farther north than it used to."

Cristina Jimenez | The Real Economics of Immigration Reform
www.truthout.org/021209LA
Cristina Jimenez, The American Prospect: "Shortly after the November election, a few congressional offices privately acknowledged that it would be smart for the Obama administration to try to include pro-immigration provisions in the upcoming stimulus package. Some policy staffers were reading studies and hearing testimonies about how hardworking immigrants drive productivity and job creation across many different sectors of the economy. But as the stimulus bill gets finalized in conference this week and heads to Obama's desk for a signature, immigration will be debated only in the narrow terms of E-verify, the Bush-mandated system that all businesses benefiting from the stimulus may be required to use to verify the immigration status of their employees."

Fewer Women Winning Jobs in Executive Suites
www.truthout.org/021209WA
Cindy Krischer Goodman, The Miami Herald: "Women are stalled in the climb up the corporate ladder. And nowhere is it more clear than in Florida, one of the country's most populous states. A new study released Wednesday shows that as the economy began to slow, so did the advancement of women."

Peanut Company Executives Take the Fifth
www.truthout.org/021209HA
Aliya Sternstein, Congressional Quarterly: "Executives of the peanut company blamed for a deadly salmonella outbreak refused to testify Wednesday at a House committee hearing, citing their rights to avoid possible self-incrimination."

Bill Gates | School Reform That Works
www.truthout.org/021209EDU
Bill Gates, The Washington Post: "Bill Gates released an annual letter this week outlining the state of his foundation and its goals for 2009. Following are excerpts from the section on education: Warren Buffett [says] every American, including him, is lucky to have been born here. He calls us winners of the 'ovarian lottery.'"

[MacBeth]

Robert Parry | The GOP's Jihad on Obama
www.truthout.org/021209J
Robert Parry, Consortium News: "The Republicans and their right-wing media allies are doing whatever they can to strangle the Obama phenomenon in its cradle; the mainstream media pundits are stressing the negative so they don't get called 'in the tank for Obama'; and the Democrats are shying away from holding the Bush-Cheney administration accountable for its crimes. None of these developments is particularly surprising. Indeed, they track closely to the political-media pattern that took shape the last time a young Democrat won the White House, when Bill Clinton became President in 1993."

Senate Panel Approves Labor Nominee Hilda Solis
www.truthout.org/021209K
Sam Hananel, The Associated Press: "Rep. Hilda Solis edged closer Wednesday to winning confirmation as the nation's next labor secretary, after more than a month of delays over questions about her husband's unpaid taxes and her work for a pro-union group. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee cleared her nomination in a voice vote with only two Republicans voting against her. The action sends the nomination to the full Senate for a final vote likely this week."

Pennsylvania Judges Accused of Jailing Kids for Cash
www.truthout.org/021209L
Michael Rubinkam and Maryclaire Dale, The Associated Press: "For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses. The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench. In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers."

Poll: With 69 Percent Approval, Obama Has Political Firepower
www.truthout.org/021209M
Steven Thomma, McClatchy Newspapers: "Nearly seven in ten Americans approve of the way President Barack Obama is doing his job, giving him enormous political capital as he pushes Congress to give him unprecedented tools to fight economic crisis, according to a new McClatchy-Ipsos poll. Obama outpolls Congress by more than 30 points, and he also can point to an uptick in the number of people who think the country's headed in the right direction even as a majority thinks the worst is yet to come in the economy. The survey found that 69 percent of Americans approve of Obama's performance - with a robust 38 percent 'strongly' approving."

Domenici's Records Subpoenaed in Firings Probe
www.truthout.org/021209N
Pete Yost, The Associated Press: "A federal grand jury has subpoenaed records of former Sen. Pete Domenici, and prosecutors are preparing to interview an ex-aide to former White House political adviser Karl Rove in an investigation of politically tinged firings of US attorneys. The moves are the clearest sign yet that the criminal inquiry, which began in September, is likely to continue for many months. Career federal prosecutor Nora R. Dannehy is looking into whether former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, other Bush administration officials or Republicans in Congress should face criminal charges in the dismissals."

Change? Obama Follows Bush Lead in Early Records Decisions
www.truthout.org/021209O
Marisa Taylor, McClatchy Newspapers: "The Obama administration, which vowed to usher in a 'new era of openness in our country,' either has delayed action on requests for access to government records or refused to disclose them in three early, high-profile tests of the pledge. This week, Justice Department lawyers announced that they'd continue to assert the state secrets argument made by the Bush administration in a lawsuit alleging that five men were tortured abroad in US-run prisons. In a separate case, the Obama Justice Department has agreed with the Bush administration - at least initially - that the news media shouldn't have immediate access to court records in the ongoing Guantanamo detainee litigation."