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Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

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Al Gore’s Nobel Speech: Rumors Of My Demise Were Greatly Exaggerated
In his Nobel speech, Gore referenced the fact that seven years ago this week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Bush v. Gore: “Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken — if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose. Unexpectedly, that quest has brought me here. Even though I fear my words cannot match this moment, I pray what I am feeling in my heart will be communicated clearly enough that those who hear me will say, ‘We must act.’”
Click through to watch a portion of Gore’s speech. I watched some of an interview with Gore and his co-recipient on CNN International. Gore said again that he has no plans to run for president. When asked if he would take a position in the administration of another, he said no. He said he won’t completely rule out getting back into politics someday, but that if he does it will be to run for president.—Caro

AlGore.com

The World

Suicide bombing kills 2 in Iraq
BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives at a checkpoint protecting offices of Iraq's former prime minister and a Sunni lawmaker on Tuesday, killing two guards in a neighborhood bordering the fortified Green Zone.

Bomb kills Iraqi police chief
About the same time that he was being praised by U.S. commanders for his role in improving security in Babil province, south of Baghdad, a popular police chief was killed Sunday by a roadside bomb that struck his convoy. Maj. Gen. Qais Hamza Mamouri died along with two bodyguards in Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, Iraqi law enforcement officials said. It was the latest in a series of assassinations of high-ranking officials in the country's oil-rich south.

Fresh wave of violence hits Baghdad
Fourteen people have been killed and dozens of others wounded as a fresh wave of violence hits the shattered Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

Israeli tanks, bulldozers move into Gaza
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip - Israeli tanks and bulldozers backed by attack aircraft moved into the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing four militants in the widest operation in the territory since Islamic Hamas forces wrested control in June.

Prosor: War with Iran may be unavoidable
It must be clear that if Iran does not cooperate with the West on the nuclear issue, military confrontation will be unavoidable, incoming Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, was quoted as saying Sunday. Prosor, who served as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's senior adviser on Iran, told the Sunday Telegraph that Teheran could enrich enough uranium to make an atomic bomb by 2009.

Iranian president: US report positive
TEHRAN, Iran - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday called a U.S. intelligence estimate that concluded Iran stopped developing a nuclear weapons program four years ago a "step forward," and he said more such steps could create an "entirely different" situation between the two countries.

Iran drops dollar from oil deals: report
TEHRAN (AFP) - Major crude producer Iran has completely stopped carrying out its oil transactions in dollars, Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said on Saturday, labelling the greenback an "unreliable" currency.

Iran, China finalise two billion dollar oil contract
Iran and China's Sinopec on Sunday signed a two billion dollar contract to develop a major Iranian oil field, a crucial deal for the Iranian energy industry at a time of mounting international pressure.

Brown: UK troops in Afghanistan for decade
British troops will have to remain in Afghanistan for more than a decade in order to defeat the Taliban and international drug gangs, Gordon Brown will warn tomorrow. The Prime Minister is due to set out a new long-term strategy for Afghanistan after visiting the country yesterday amid some of the most intensive fighting British forces have encountered there.

Twin car bombs kill 47 in Algiers
ALGIERS (Reuters) - At least forty-seven people were killed when two car bombs exploded in upscale districts of Algiers on Tuesday, a security source said, in the bloodiest attack since the 1990s on the capital of the OPEC member state.

The Nation

C.I.A. Lawyers Cleared Destroying Torture Tapes
Lawyers within the clandestine branch of the Central Intelligence Agency gave written approval in advance to the destruction in 2005 of hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting interrogations of two lieutenants from 'Al Qaeda,' according to a former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the episode.

CIA Interrogation Tapes: “Bad” is Hardly the Word — Call it Criminal (by Jonathan Turley)
We are now at a crossroad in history. On just the admissions made by Hayden, there appear to be at least six indictable offenses against at least a dozen individuals, including the president. That number of offenses and offenders is likely to increase in the coming week, but clearly include obstruction of justice, obstruction of Congress, false statements to Congress, false statements to federal courts, conspiracy and, of course, torture.

White House Finally Issues Preservation Order, Days After Destruction Of Torture Tapes Revealed
After the media revealed last Thursday evening that the CIA had destroyed at least two torture tapes, both the White House and the Department of Justice delayed in sending out a preservation order ensuring that federal government employees did not undertake any further acts of destroying evidence. Lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights representing Guantanamo Bay detainee Majid Khan warned in a Nov. 29 filing that, “absent a preservation order, there is substantial risk that the torture evidence will disappear.”

Lawyer seeks Britain's help in preserving Guantanamo evidence
Binyam Mohamed, 27, claims through his lawyer and in an affidavit filed with the U.S. Supreme Court that U.S. forces turned him over for questioning to Morocco, where interrogators sliced his chest and penis with a scalpel during 18 months there in 2002 and 2003. He was transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in September 2004. Late Sunday, his attorney wrote British Foreign Secretary David Milliband asking that he intervene to preserve evidence, since Mohamed lived in Britain and sought asylum there in the early 1990s.

Chaplain describes 'horror' of Guantanamo Bay
A Muslim chaplain who visited Omar Deghayes in Guantanamo Bay has spoken of his horror at the conditions there. James Yee was locked up himself after complaining about inmates' treatment. Now he has joined campaigners to call for the immediate release of the remaining prisoners.

Feingold wants answers on torture from Mukasey.
In light of news that the CIA destroyed tapes documenting the torture of detainees, Sen. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) today wrote to Attorney General Michael Mukasey asking that he detail his views on interrogation. Mukasey repeatedly dodged these questions during his nomination hearings.

AWOL military justice (by Morris D. Davis)
Iwas the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until Oct. 4, the day I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system. I resigned on that day because I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively or responsibly. In my view -- and I think most lawyers would agree -- it is absolutely critical to the legitimacy of the military commissions that they be conducted in an atmosphere of honesty and impartiality. Yet the political appointee known as the "convening authority" -- a title with no counterpart in civilian courts -- was not living up to that obligation.

Wexler urges hearings on Cheney trial
U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach (a Democratic-leaning Palm Beach-Broward district), recently took an e-mail poll of about 3,000 constituents and found 61 percent in favor of impeaching Cheney and removing him from office. Wexler insists he hasn't prejudged the matter but wants hearings to probe whether Cheney manipulated intelligence to bamboozle the U.S. into war with Iraq, which Wexler voted to authorize in 2002.

ACTION ALERT: FEC about to take a swipe at liberal online fundraising
(T)he FEC is now about to declare that ActBlue is a PAC and that therefore presidential candidates can't get federal matching monies for funds raised via ActBlue (i.e., for a lot of your donations that you made via links on your favorite liberal blogs)… If the FEC does this, then they'll basically kill any fundraising that we can do via the blogs. After all, why give here if your donation will be matched (i.e., doubled) by giving elsewhere? Does the FEC really want to kill this experiment in participatory democracy in one fell swoop?

MORTGAGE MELTDOWN: Interest rate 'freeze' - the real story is fraud (by Sean Olender, San Francisco Chronicle)
The sole goal of the freeze is to prevent owners of mortgage-backed securities, many of them foreigners, from suing U.S. banks and forcing them to buy back worthless mortgage securities at face value - right now almost 10 times their market worth. The ticking time bomb in the U.S. banking system is not resetting subprime mortgage rates. The real problem is the contractual ability of investors in mortgage bonds to require banks to buy back the loans at face value if there was fraud in the origination process.

Media

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Entrepreneurial lessons (by Jeff Jarvis)
I’m trying to catalogue some of the lessons I learned in my entrepreneurial journalism course at CUNY… To my amazement, every single one of the students said they wanted to start these businesses; I was hoping one or two might be so ambitious and independent. Now, of course, real job offers with real salaries will properly distract some of them… It is a lesson to the industry: Give this kind of talent an opportunity to invent and innovate and they will. But we need an incubator. These businesses need ongoing advice and nurturing, most do.
Progressive media need to learn the same lesson. It’s a pretty closed environment. You almost have to be a white male graduate of an Ivy League college living in D.C., New York, or San Francisco to get any traction.—Caro

White House stays quiet on CIA tapes
White House lawyers have advised President Bush's spokeswoman not to answer specific questions about why the CIA destroyed tapes of terror suspects under interrogation, as Congress seeks answers about the matter.

WHO KNEW?.... (by Kevin Drum at Political Animal, The Washington Monthly)
Let me get this straight. The White House had been in the loop for two years. The CIA had received letters from both the Justice Department and congressional leaders arguing that the tapes shouldn't be destroyed. The CIA's top lawyer had been involved for the entire time. And yet we're supposed to believe that, in 2005, a mid-ranking agency lawyer suddenly decided the tapes could be destroyed and the head of the clandestine branch then gave the order to do so without anyone else being involved? Really? Does anyone actually believe this story?

Mythbuster: Senators and Representatives Could Have Spoken Out On Waterboarding: the Constitution Protects Their Right to Speak Out Without Fear of Legal Consequences (by Michael Froomkin, Professor, University of Miami School of Law, thanks to Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars)
Thanks to the Speech and Debate Clause there was a way for any Senator or Representative who wanted to blow the whistle to do so in a way that involved no risk of jail or fines… Thus, it would have been possible for Rep. Harman, or Senator Rockefeller, or the others allegedly briefed to go to the floor … and denounce the Bush administration’s determinate to torture helpless captives in secret offshore detention facilities.

WaPo’s Ignatius deems Bush’s NIE lie ‘a non-story.’
Last week, the White House conceded that President Bush had been informed in August that Iran’s nuclear weapons program “may be suspended,” despite his earlier claim that he didn’t have “the information” until November. On the Chris Matthews Show this weekend, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius claimed that Bush lying about the National Intelligence Estimate was “a non-story.”
Click through to watch the video.—Caro

Pundits Lavish Tons Of Attention On Rudy's "Cackle" (by Greg Sargent at TPM Horse’s Mouth)
Okay, admittedly, that hasn't happened yet. But surely it will, right? After all, every pundit in town surely watched Rudy Giuliani's interview (Sunday) on Meet the Press. If you saw it, you couldn't help but notice that Rudy giggled...and giggled...and giggled some more… Those of you with long memories will recall that a couple months ago D.C. reporters, commentators, pundits and talk-show hosts went absolutely bonkers for days and days over Hillary's far-less-surprising "cackle" in interviews, relentlessly lampooning her allegedly phony outbursts of hilarity… At any rate, brace yourself for wall-to-wall pundit dissection of Rudy's laugh... ...it's coming any second now, I tell you... ...any second now...

New Health Care Ad: If Dick Cheney Didn’t Have Government Care, ‘He’d Probably Be Dead Now’
In Iowa (Monday), 10 newspapers are running a full page ad advocating for a single-payer health-care bill, highlighting the fact Vice President Dick Cheney has benefited from his government-provided coverage. “If he were anyone else, he’d probably be dead by now,” the ad claims. Cheney, as the ad notes, has a long history of health problems… The ad, which is sponsored by the California Nurses Association and the National Nurses Organizing Committee, argues that without his government-provided health care, Cheney’s recent heart problems would have been “a death sentence”.

FRC ties Colorado shooting to ’secular media.’
In its Action Update today, the Family Research Council (FRC) partially cast blame for the tragic shooting at a megachurch in Colorado yesterday on “the secular media.” In the e-mail, which was sent under the name of FRC Action President Tony Perkins, the group says it’s “hard not to draw a line between” the shooting and “hostility” by “some in the secular media toward Christians”.

Bubble denial (by Paul Krugman)
So how come the housing crisis has come as such a surprise to so many people? Part of it was the usual bubble psychology. Economists like to cite Stein’s Law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” I think it needs to be paired with another law — let’s call it Glassman’s Law — along the lines of “If something unsustainable goes on for a while, there will be people claiming it can go on forever.” But I also think bubble denialism was to an important extent political… (W)hen I began writing about housing, I got a lot of mail from people claiming that I was only saying that there was a bubble because I hated Bush. Honest.

Pranksters laugh after news sites fall for bogus Trump tale
A story about Donald Trump leaving a $10,000 tip was fabricated by Derober.com. Co-founder John Resig says of the hoax: "How many people get on the front page of Fox News with a story that doesn't contain one single ounce of truth?" Arianna Huffington, whose site linked to the story, says: "Let's remember, this wasn't a phony story about aluminum tubes put on the front page of the New York Times; this was a fun, positive story" that passed the sniff test because it "fit the Trump MO of tireless self-promotion."

Talk show host Ward charged with Internet kiddie porn
Ward's attorney, Doron Weinberg, said Thursday that for the past three years, he and other attorneys have been trying to convince the federal government that Ward is not a sexual predator, that he was simply doing research for a book on hypocrisy in America and was not engaged in anything more.
Are you still wondering why librarians don’t want to give the government information on what we read?—Caro

Rachel Maddow gets MSNBC tryout.
Progressive talk radio host Rachel Maddow “taped a pilot” recently for MSNBC, in which she teamed up with MSNBC prime time VP Bill Wolff. Maddow currently makes “irregular appearances on MSNBC.” According to TVNewser, there is “no word on if the pilot is being considered ready for take-off.”

Technology & Science

Americans Ingested Too Much Holiday E-Mail Spam, Survey Finds
Symantec also sees spammers trying new techniques, such as spamming via bot-net, audio and video spam, and spamming using protocols for IM, SMS, and online games.

CompUSA Sold, Will Close Stores; Expect Big Sales
Venerable electronics retailer CompUSA has been sold to an affiliate of restructuring firm Gordon Bros., and will close all of its retail stores.

Shift from landlines to mobile may be slowing
More than one in eight households have cell phones but lack traditional landline telephones, according to a federal study released Monday that tracks the country's growing dependence on wireless phones.

Cyberlawyer 2.0 (The Economist Technology Quarterly)
Lawrence Lessig is known for his work at the interface between technology and law. Why is he shifting his focus to corruption?... Mr Lessig bemoaned that “copyrights have not expired, and will not expire, so long as Congress is free to be bought to extend them again,” adding that congressmen are, indirectly, defending their “gravy train of contributions”.

The New New Philosophy (by Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosopher at Princeton University, and the author of “Experiments in Ethics,” which will be published next month)
Philosophers don’t observe; we don’t experiment; we don’t measure; and we don’t count… But now a restive contingent of our tribe is convinced that it can shed light on traditional philosophical problems by going out and gathering information about what people actually think and say about our thought experiments.

Is hotness an inherited trait?
Like father, like son — sexy fathers can give rise to sexy sons in the insect world. Researchers suggest these findings might also apply to humans.

Herbal Extract Found To Increase Lifespan
ScienceDaily (Dec. 10, 2007) — The herbal extract of a yellow-flowered mountain plant indigenous to the Arctic regions of Europe and Asia increased the lifespan of fruit fly populations, according to a University of California, Irvine study. Flies that ate a diet rich with Rhodiola rosea, an herbal supplement long used for its purported stress-relief effects, lived on an average of 10 percent longer than fly groups that didn’t eat the herb.

Scientists Strike Blow In Superbugs Struggle
ScienceDaily (Dec. 11, 2007) — Scientists from The University of Manchester have pioneered new ways of tweaking the molecular structure of antibiotics -- an innovation that could be crucial in the fight against powerful super bugs.

Good Physical Function Halves Stroke Risk
Researchers find pronounced effect in those over 40

Best Meteor Shower of 2007 Peaks Dec. 13
Here is what astronomers David Levy and Stephen Edberg have written of the annual Geminid Meteor Shower: "If you have not seen a mighty Geminid fireball arcing gracefully across an expanse of sky, then you have not seen a meteor."

Scientists find the dent in our solar system
New observations from the edge of our solar system show what scientists have suspected for several years: The solar system is squashed.

First Sunset Outside Our Solar System Glimpsed
Traces of a distant extrasolar planet's hazy red sunset have been detected for the first time. Astronomers pointed the Hubble Space Telescope HD 189733b, a gaseous Jupiter-like world about 63 light-years from Earth, as it passed in front of its parent star to catch a glimpse of the planet's atmosphere.

Environment

Light Up Your Holiday, Not Your Electrical Bill
In New York City, the incandescent lights that have adorned the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree were replaced this year with 30,000 energy-efficient bulbs; in Paris, the trees lining the Champs-Elysees are shining brighter while using less energy; and in Washington, D.C., the White House will spend less on electricity to light its tree on the lawn this season. All these trees are now beaming with light-emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of the traditional incandescent bulbs.

Greenland ice melts at record rate, scientists find
WASHINGTON — Rising temperatures caused ice to melt in Greenland at a record rate this year, climate scientists reported Monday. ''The amount of ice lost by Greenland over the last year is the equivalent of two times all the ice in the Alps or a layer of water more than one-half-mile deep covering Washington, D.C.,'' said Konrad Steffen, an Arctic expert at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Climate conference agrees on adaptation fund
Bali Island, Indonesia - The world climate conference in Bali agreed to implement the climate change adaptation fund, a key aspect of the Kyoto Protocol, it was announced on Tuesday.

No money for world's largest solar power plant
Bali, Dec 11 - Representatives of UN member countries and international organisations who have gathered here for the UN Climate Change Conference are talking of promoting renewable energy sources but no one is ready to fund the world's largest solar power project, says the project's developer.

Report Links Leader Mindset Development and Corporate Sustainability Success
ATLANTA, Dec. 10, 2007 - A new study examines the progress of 10 global corporations against a comparative five-stage sustainability framework and suggests a direct correlation between leader mindsets and sustainability success.
Of course. In my experience in American business, when things weren’t going well the top guys would bring in consultants to change everyone else’s behavior, when the problem was with the top guys themselves.—Caro

German battery could jump-start electric car production
FRANKFURT (AFP) - German cars are known for strength, speed and high fuel consumption, but a firm in eastern Saxony has designed a lithium-ion battery membrane that could finally make electric cars common.

Spain unveils green home plan to beat global warming
Spain plans to give people grants to make their homes more environmentally-friendly, the prime minister said on Monday, a sign the government wants to push the green issue ahead of March's general election.

Sun Cuts Paper Use Through SEC Rule; Guide for Cutting Paper Emissions Released
OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 11, 2007 -- Sun Microsystems has made big savings through reducing paper used for SEC filings, and a new guide gives businesses information on how to cut paper-related emissions.

For more headlines, visit MakeThemAccountable.com.

Caro