Morning News Roundup (05 September)

Middle East Sturm und Drang

• The biggest news from Iraq over the weekend, via The London Telegraph:
  

  The most influential moderate Shia leader in Iraq has abandoned attempts to restrain his followers, admitting that there is nothing he can do to prevent the country sliding towards civil war.
  
  Aides say Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is angry and disappointed that Shias are ignoring his calls for calm and are switching their allegiance in their thousands to more militant groups which promise protection from Sunni violence and revenge for attacks.
  
  "I will not be a political leader any more," he told aides. "I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters."
  
  It is a devastating blow to the remaining hopes for a peaceful solution in Iraq and spells trouble for British forces, who are based in and around the Shia stronghold of Basra.

  
  
• Unknown assailants assassinated Shaikh Hasan Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawadi, 56, in the southern city of Amara on Sunday. Al-Jawadi was a senior aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Amara is a rough neighborhood, dominated by displaced Marsh Arabs, where the Sadrist Movement and its splinters are strong and maintain paramilitaries. It is alarming that this assassination is almost certainly a further manifestation of Shiite on Shiite violenc [Juan Cole's Informed Comment]
  
  
• The new White House line: Iraq war critics would have tolerated slavery. Referencing Iraq, Secretary Rice said: “I know there were people who said, ‘Why don’t we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?‘” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• As the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States approaches, another somber benchmark has just been passed. The announcement Sunday of four more U.S. military deaths in Iraq raises the death toll to 2,974 for U.S. military service members in Iraq and in what the Bush administration calls the war on terror. The 9/11 attack killed 2,973 people, including Americans and foreign nationals but excluding the terrorists. [CNN]
  
  
• Seven American and British troops were killed in separate incidents across Iraq over the past 48 hours, military officials said Monday. Their deaths were announced as gunmen rampaged through a Sunni Arab neighborhood in western Baghdad, killing at least 12 people in the latest spasm of sectarian bloodshed that many fear is shoving Iraq toward civil war. [WaPo]
  
  
• AP and Reuters report that 33 bodies, most showing signs of torture, were found in the streets of Baghdad on Monday. The victims were likely victims of reprisal killings from the opposite branch of Islam. Another two bodies were found in the southern Shiite city of Kut [Juan Cole's Informed Comment]

Domestic Potpourri

• The Bush administration proclaimed significant progress in the war on terror Tuesday but said the enemy has adjusted to U.S. defenses and that "America is safer but we are not yet safe."
  [...]
  Bush has said on many occasions that the country must be prepared for a drawn-out battle against a new kind of enemy, and the new counterterrorism strategy released Tuesday says flatly that "the war on terror will be a long war."
  
  It says that among the strategies the United States must emphasize are making all sovereign nations accountable for what happens on their soil, strengthening existing coalitions and partnerships against terrorists and continue to develop more expertise in this area. [WaPo]

Climate Crisis

• The rapid rise in greenhouse gases over the past century is unprecedented in at least 800,000 years, according to a study of the oldest Antarctic ice core which highlights the reality of climate change. Air bubbles trapped in ice for hundreds of thousands of years have revealed that humans are changing the composition of the atmosphere in a manner that has no known natural parallel.
  [...]
  The core shows that carbon dioxide was always between 180 parts per million (ppm) and 300 ppm during the 800,000 years. However, now it is 380 ppm. Methane was never higher than 750 parts per billion (ppb) in this timescale, but now it stands at 1,780 ppb. But the rate of change is even more dramatic, with increases in carbon dioxide never exceeding 30 ppm in 1,000 years -- and yet now carbon dioxide has risen by 30 ppm in the last 17 years. [The Independent]
  
  
• Life is full of coincidences. On the same day we see a two page spread in Wired promoting GM's initiatives in flex-fuel cars, we read in the New York Times that even in corn country in the Midwest, supplies are difficult to find and it is almost impossible to drive from Chicago to Kansas on E85 fuel. So why is GM promoting Flexfuel? It turns out that the Government gives GM a bonus in the average fuel economy standards, whether or not the pickup truck or SUV ever sees a drop of the stuff. [Treehugger]

Recent Huggs
[I've been submitting "green" news stories to the user-initiated eco-news service Hugg.com; you can see all my huggable items here, and if you create an account, you can submit news and give others a hugg]

• Sacramento residents can get up to 10 free trees from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. It's given away about 375,000 shade trees in the past 16 years, with plans to plant at least 4 million more. Perhaps the most arresting feature of Sacramento's shade crusade is its rarity, despite federal research showing that carefully planted trees can lower summertime temperatures in cities, significantly reduce air-conditioning bills and trap greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. [Hugg | original news source]
  
  
• People who use tax loopholes when purchasing SUVs will reduce federal tax revenue by $2.6 billion next year, according to a report from Congressman Ed Markey. In his report "Tipping the Scales," Markey points out that SUVs are classified as trucks and therefore don't have to pay the gas guzzler tax that is assessed to vehicles that get less than 22.5 miles per gallon. The Massachusetts Democrat wants to close the loophole with a bill titled H.R. 5579, the No Special Subsidies for Gas Guzzlers Act. [Hugg | original news source]
  
  
• Green roofs are hot. Or cool, actually. The new Minneapolis library has one. Minneapolis City Hall is getting one. As is the Lunds store at 12th and Hennepin. Does the planting make a difference in the heat? Indeed. On a 90-degree day last summer, the temperature on top of the typical black roof hit 170 degrees. On the green roof it measured 92 degrees. [Note - the image at right is from the Minnapolis Central Library's green roof, designed by Kestrel Design Group, which is a focus of the article.] [Hugg | original news source]

Big Blue Marble

• “The Sudanese government has dramatically intensified the war in Darfur in a bid to finish off a tenacious, three-year-old rebellion before a U.N. peacekeeping force can deploy there,” the Washington Post reports. [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]

Misc.

• Following up with more on ABC's upcoming 9/11 "docudrama" (see previous post), ThinkProgress asks Richard Clarke (former counterterrorism czar for Bush I, Clinton and Bush II) to respond to a scene "where former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger refuses to give the order to the CIA to take out bin Laden — even though CIA agents, along with the Northern Alliance, have his house surrounded."
  

  1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.
  
  2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Ladin camp and did not see UBL.
  
  3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.

  
  
• Pudgy toddlers face a good chance of becoming overweight 12-year-olds, according to government research that shoots down the notion that children naturally outgrow early chubbiness. Children who were overweight at age 2 or later during their preschool years were five times more likely to be overweight at age 12 than youngsters who were not overweight early on, the study found. Sixty percent of the children who were overweight at any time during the preschool period were overweight at age 12. [BoGlobe]

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