Necessary News

All you need to know to sound brilliant

A Toddler Could Raid U.S. Nuke Facilities, Report Finds

• Flashback: More than a year ago, Congress told the Energy Department that too many of the nation’s nuclear facilities were susceptible to terrorist raids, and that their security standards drastically needed an upgrade. [New York Times]
• So much for that warning: According to the most recent report, at least 5 of the 11 nuclear sites originally reviewed are certain to miss their deadlines, some by many years.
• The Energy Department’s claiming that they’ve got another plan in place; it says that it has put off security improvements at some sites that store plutonium because it plans to consolidate the material at central locations. Though according to the Government Accountability Office, that project is also experiencing a severe lag.
• In short, what does this mean? It means nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands. For instance, one site that will miss its deadline by years is the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which holds a large stock of weapons-usable uranium. Two other sites that will miss their deadlines are operated by the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is responsible for weapons security.
• Meanwhile, another facility in Idaho that is being upgraded to meet security standards won’t be completed until 2013. It was originally expected to be finished in 2008.
• “The department seems to think that the terrorist threat to its nuclear facilities is no more serious than a Halloween prank, as evidenced by its failure — more than six years after the 9/11 attacks — to do what it must to keep our stores of nuclear-weapons-grade materials secure,” said Congressman Edward Markey (D-Mass.).

That’s a pretty rough Halloween prank.

Fire Relief Doesn’t Come Easy For Immigrants

• As firefigthers gain an upper hand against the devastating flames that have engulfed California for more than a week, the clearing smoke is beginning to reveal some harsh realities. Namely, treatment and relief given to victims of the fire haven’t been blind — and immigrants have been feeling the heat. [San Diego Union Tribune]
• Last week, as the flames raged the strongest, many immigrants and day-laborers failed to join the exodus of Californians seeking shelter in San Diego’s Qualcomm stadium. The reason? Fear. Some don’t want to leave because it’s near where they work, and they fear losing their jobs if they go. Others fear going to a shelter because they’re undocumented and worry about being deported.
• Meanwhile, a number of non-English speaking immigrants simply did not have proper warning. Cut off from television or radio, they smelled the thick smoke and wondered what’s going on, but they lacked the information to know what to do or where to go, if anywhere. In some cases, authorities simply neglected to warn them that they were indeed in very real danger.
• As many as 2 million illegal immigrants work and live in the hills charred by the California fires. [ABC]
• And although the federal government said that it suspended immigration raids during the fires, those illegal immigrants who did seek shelter from the blazes weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms. [San Diego Union-Tribune]
• On Wednesday, Border Patrol agents were called to assist at Qualcomm stadium, where they ended up deporting six immigrants (including children). Andrea Guerrero, field and policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego, said about 25 families who were staying at the stadium left after the incident because they were undocumented, or of mixed legal status.
• Additionally, authorities spurned any evacuees who couldn’t produce proper documentation. That’s right, folks: no ID — no relief.
• The arrests have left many evacuees shaken and anxious — a side-effect which has caused them to forgo requests for basic supplies such as food.

What ever happened to general humanity?

He’s Baaaaaa-ack! You All Remember Ahmad Chalabi, Right?

• The United States has tapped Neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi to be The Guy to helps bring electricity, education and security services to Baghdad neighborhoods.
• That’s right. *That* Ahmad Chalabi. [McClatchy]
• Col. Steven Boylan, spokesman for Gen. Petraeus: Chalabi “is an important part of the process. He has a lot of energy.”
• Before the U.S. invasion of Iran, Chalabi aggressively fed eager White House officials a steady stream of bogus, faked, made-up and overheaded stories about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism.
• (Chalabi’s most famous bogus source was the one nicknamed “Curveball” who made up the stories about the mobile biological weapons labs later used by Colin Powell in his speech to the United Nations.)
• In 2003, Chalabi bragged that his lies brought the U.S. into Iraq, saying, “We are heroes in error.”
• After the fall of Baghdad, the anti-Sunni Chalabi was put in charge of the de-Baathification process. Experts agree the way the U.S. handled the de-Baathification process poured gasoline on the Civil War fires raging to this day in Iraq. And is the anti-Sunni guy really the best choice to work on the re-unification process?
• He also turned against the U.S. and threw his support behind militant anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. [NY Times]
• And don’t forget, in 2004, Chalabi was suspected of supplying “sensitive information about U.S. security operations in Baghdad to the Iranian government.” [NY Times]
• In 2004, the Defense Intelligence Agency “concluded that for years Iran has used a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress to funnel disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources.” [Newsday]
• Did we mention Chalabi is a fugitive of the law? He’s still wanted in Jordan after being convicted of embezzling millions of dollars from a bank.

He’s basically the Keyser Soze of Iraq.

How Our Oil Thirst Props Up Iran

The Story

• Despite increasing rhetoric and pressure from the US, a group of American, European and Iranian analysts have determined that Iran is “likely to be able to withstand the new U.S. sanctions.” [Washington Post]
• The reason? The price of oil.
• Peaking at $90 a barrel this week, the price of oil is set internationally. Faced with U.S. pressure, many major Western banks have agreed to stop facilitating Iranian oil sales, but Iran oil companies (many attached to the government) have found partners in “smaller banks, Islamic financial institutions and Asian banks.”
• The revenues from this windfall oil money (Iran still sells to China, Germany, France and many other European countries) has made “it easier for the government to maintain social-services payments designed to bolster its popularity amid economic problems.”
• Another thing that would strengthen the Iranian government? An attack by the United States.
• A New York Times editorial yesterday writes that, with regards to Iran, “President Bush still confuses bullying with grand strategy.”
• It continues: “Rain down American bombs...and the mullahs and Iran’s Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are more likely to be turned into national heroes than hung from lampposts.” [NY Times]
• David Ignatius says that by attacking Iran, the United States “walking toward a well-planned trap.”
• Paul Kurgman puts it in perspective: “Yes, the Iranian regime is a nasty piece of work in many ways, and it would be a bad thing if that regime acquired nuclear weapons. But let’s have some perspective, please: we’re talking about a country with roughly the G.D.P. of Connecticut, and a government whose military budget is roughly the same as Sweden’s.” [NY Times]
• The solution? Contain and Engage. [American Progress]

The Audio

Mohamed El Baradei, Nobel Prize-winning director of the International Atomic Energy Agency

• “Have we seen Iran have the nuclear material that can readily be used into a weapon? No. Have we seen an active weaponization program? No.”
  Please log in to download this clip.
• “I see no military solution. The only durable solution is through negotiation and inspection. ”
  Please log in to download this clip.

It’s time to stop te fear-mongering and wean ourselves off of oil.

Supreme Court Dives Into Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill

• The Supreme Court has decided to hear an appeal from Exxon-Mobil seeking to slip out of $2.5 billion in punitive damages for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. [Reuters]
• Remember this? The Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground off the coast of Alaska and “spread oil to more than 1,200 miles of coastline, closed fisheries and killed thousands of marine mammals and hundreds of thousands of sea birds.”
• The Alaska Supreme Court originally awarded $5 billion to “32,000 commercial fishermen, Alaska natives, property owners and others harmed by the nation’s worst tanker spill,” but this amount was later reduced to $2.5 billion by a U.S. appeals court.
• $2.5 billion dollars represents “a little more than three weeks of Exxon Mobil’s current net profits.” [BBC][Reuters]
• The Supreme Court taking up this case could be bad news. The Court, under Bush-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts, has consistently “made it more difficult for plaintiffs to sue corporations or win substantial damage awards.” [Washington Post]
• They’ve thrown out a high profile case against big tobacco, “found that the Civil Rights Act doesn’t allow lawsuits by women and minorities alleging past discrimination; and ruled that the mortgage-lending subsidiaries of national banks cannot be regulated by states.” [Washington Post]
• Said one Washington lawyer, “I always thought that the Rehnquist court was really quite a good forum for business...But I think we now know that the Roberts court is even better.”

Something’s a little greasy...

Good News, Bad News

Still think it’s cool that you can send text messages to your friends through your phone? YAAAAWN. That’s *so* 2006. The new hot trend right now is group texting. That’s right – join a service like Jyngle or Frengo and send one text or voice messages to entire contact lists or groups of your nearest and dearest 237 friends with the touch of a button. [ABC News]

Good News: Now you can share every passing thought with the phones of hundreds of your friends with a touch of a button.

Bad News: Now obnoxious Brad from Accounting can share his every passing thought with the phones of hundreds of his “friends” with the touch of a button. Annoying forwards: They’re not just for e-mail anymore.

Quote Of The Day

“That is not a drug. It’s a leaf. My drug was pumping iron, trust me.”

— Gov. Ahnuld, on why pot isn’t actually a drug. (Don’t even get him started on ’shrooms.) [GQ via LA Times]

Speed Round

AUDIO: STOP BOMBING US

Afghan President Karzai urges that President Bush re-think the U.S.’s use of air strikes against his country. During 2007 alone, air strikes killed more than 270 civilians. [Think Progress]

SAUDI WARNING

The King of Saudi Arabia says that Britain ignored warnings he gave them that could have prevented the July 7th, 2005 suicide bombings in London. [Guardian]

WAR

Suicide bomber on a bike killes 28 police officers in Iraq. [Washington Post]

WAR

Twenty headless corpses found near a police station in Iraq. [MSNBC]

HE’S NOT A DOCTOR, HE JUST PLAYS ONE ON TV

The Pope yesterday urged Catholic pharmacists not to fill any prescriptions they did not agree with morally, “specifically ones that have the goal of preventing the implantation of the embryo or shortening a person’s life.” [NY Times]

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

Uber-rightwing Rep. Tom Tancredo (R., CO) announced he will quit Congress when his term is up. [Roll Call]

JOHNS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

Why was Sen. David Vitter the only guy to vote against the replacement for former USAID head Randall Tobias? “Roll Call” thinks it has the answer: “Guys who hook together, stick together …Vitter and Tobias, you might recall, were the two biggest names to be revealed on the client list of the “D.C. Madam.” [Roll Call]

BAD NEIGHBORS

Mexican cops estimate 100% of drug killings in Mexico are committed with weapons smuggled in from the U.S. [Washington Post]

YOU’RE FIRED

Psyche! The Department of National Intelligence reports that, contrary to what we believed, the embattled director of FEMA’s external affairs, John “Pat” Philbin, will *not* be picking up a job with the agency. [Think Progress]

WE’RE GETTING POLITICS FOR CHRISTMAS

Iowa’s primary date on January 3rd means the candidates will be competing with Christmas and New Years for the attention of voters. [Guardian]

NOT A DRUG

Schwarzenegger says that he was joking when he said marijuana was “not a drug.” Ha. Ha. Tell it to the 60,000 folks stuck behind bars for marijuana offenses. [NORML] [Guardian]

AZERBAIJAN

The U.S. embassy in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, is on full alert after a foiled terrorist “large-scale horrifying attack.” [MSNBC]

A GAP IN HUMAN RIGHTS

GAP withdraws a line of blouses after a British investigative jounalism team discovers they were sewn by ” children between 10 and 13 [working] in conditions close to slavery.” [Newsweek]

BLACKWATER

Talk about damning headlines: “U.S. gave immunity to Blackwater bodyguards” [AP]

$93

The price per barrel of oil — the highest ever. [USA Today]

TRAGEDY

Tropical storm Noel kills 20 people in Dominican Republic. [AP]