Sunday, June 28, 2009
The House measure, co-sponsored by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), would impose a limit, or "cap," on greenhouse emissions starting in 2012, while setting up a complex system for trading allowances and permitting offsets. By 2020, the cap would lower emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels. Unlike Obama's initial proposal, in which the federal government would have auctioned 100 percent of emission allowances, the Waxman-Markey bill would give 85 percent of them at no charge for a prolonged transition period.
Obama brushed aside criticism of compromises House leaders made by giving away free emission allowances to a long list of industries and interest groups, including coal-fired utilities, oil firms, algae makers and superconductor makers. He said the allowances were needed to ease regional differences, help industries adjust to carbon pricing, protect low- and middle-income households from higher electricity costs, and round up enough votes in Congress.
"Part of the reason I think that business was supportive, and ultimately we got support from legislators who in the past had been opposed, is because of the flexibility that was built . . . into this bill," he said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/28/AR2009062801229_pf.html
Iran’s government said Sunday that it had arrested Iranian employees of the British Embassy, while the police in Tehran beat and fired tear gas at several thousand protesters who joined a demonstration at a mosque in support of the defeated presidential candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi.
The government’s arrest of nine Iranian employees of the British Embassy was a significant escalation in its conflict with Britain, which Tehran has sought to cast as an instigator of the unrest since the disputed June 12 election. It said the embassy employees played a significant role in organizing the protests, which have reached across the country and across social and economic lines.
Tehran also continued to charge journalists with working as agents of discord, publishing one editor’s “confession” while continuing to keep others behind bars without charge, or barred from working.
The arrests, detentions and restrictions added to Iran’s growing international isolation, as European Union foreign ministers meeting in Corfu, Greece, warned in a statement that there would be a “strong and collective E.U. response” to any intimidation of its members’ diplomatic staffs. The British Foreign Ministry said some of its personnel had been released, but declined to provide details. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/world/middleeast/29iran.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
Cyber Talks: Looking to avoid Cyber Warfare
The United States and Russia are locked in a fundamental dispute over how to counter the growing threat of cyberwar attacks that could wreak havoc on computer systems and the Internet.
Both nations agree that cyberspace is an emerging battleground. The two sides are expected to address the subject when President Obama visits Russia next week and at the General Assembly of the United Nations in November, according to a senior State Department official.
But there the agreement ends.
Russia favors an international treaty along the lines of those negotiated for chemical weapons and has pushed for that approach at a series of meetings this year and in public statements by a high-ranking official.
The United States argues that a treaty is unnecessary. It instead advocates improved cooperation among international law enforcement groups. If these groups cooperate to make cyberspace more secure against criminal intrusions, their work will also make cyberspace more secure against military campaigns, American officials say. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/world/28cyber.html?pagewanted=print
Iraq: Wednesday is a National Holiday to mark the ostensible shift of U.S. troops back to their bases and out of major cities. And, it’s a big day for auctioning oil fields:
Iraq is poised to open its coveted oil fields to foreign companies this week for the first time in nearly four decades, a politically risky move in a country eager to shake off the stigma of occupation.
Iraqi politicians and some veteran oil officials have said the deals are unduly beneficial to oil giants, which are viewed warily by many in this deeply nationalistic but cash-strapped country.
Oil executives have been following the matter with apprehension, industry analysts said, but they are eager to get a foothold in Iraq, which has the world's second-largest proven crude reserves and is seen as the only major penetrable market.
"It's something the industry really wants," said Ben Lando, editor of Iraq Oil Report, an Iraq energy news Web site. "The number of reserves around the world that they have access to is declining. And Iraq has so much oil."
Iraq's Oil Ministry is expected to auction eight contracts for six active oil fields and two largely undeveloped gas fields Monday and Tuesday. Thirty-five companies have been selected to submit bids for the 20-year service contracts.
The winners will be required to give the Iraqi government a total of $3 billion in loans. They will be compensated for costs and will earn a per-barrel fee for boosting production at the fields, ravaged by years of war and sanctions. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/27/AR2009062702233_pf.html
Violence is Iraq is Up:
Many observers see Iraq's most crucial milestone being the parliamentary election next January, rather than the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from town and cities by the end of this month.
That vote will be a defining test of whether the country's feuding factions can live together after the years of sectarian bloodshed unleashed by the 2003 U.S. invasion.
"Security gains in a narrow sense will be of limited value unless the ... election is turned into a thoroughly inclusive affair where Iraqis get the opportunity to discuss fundamental issues of national reconciliation in an open atmosphere," said Reidar Visser of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and editor of Iraq-focused website www.historiae.org. http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSLP064310
Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.
Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that an order, which would bypass Congress, could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.
After months of internal debate over how to close the military facility in Cuba, White House officials are increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the prison by the president's January deadline.
Viet Nam: Dams- Destroying a Way of Life. A no longer uncommon development. Turkey played with the Tigris, the U.S. w/ the Colorado / Rio Grande. In Viet Nam, it’s the great Mekong
Vietnam is now a fast-growing, Westernizing economy. But, paradoxically, peace and prosperity is currently the biggest threat to what is one of the world's last great wild rivers. Almost half a century of wars in southeast Asia kept engineers away from the Mekong. Their plans for giant hydroelectric dams on the river gathered dust. But all that is changing. And on the delta, they have reason to fear the consequences, for the tens of millions of people who rely on the river's wildness for their supper could soon see their main source of protein dry up.
Last October, Chinese engineers finished construction of the Xiaowan dam on the upper reaches of the River Mekong,
This cascade of dams will be able to store half the entire flow of the Mekong as it leaves China and rushes downstream toward Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. In the future, the annual flood will be released gradually as turbines are switched on and off to supply year-round electricity. From then on, the river will rise and fall at the whim of engineers rather than nature.
In late May, a report from the United Nations Environment Programme warned that these dams are "the single greatest threat" to the future of the river and its fecundity. The new regime will largely eliminate the river's annual flood pulse, one of the natural wonders of the world, and wreck the ecosystems that depend on it.
Aviva Imhof, campaigns director at the International Rivers Network, said that the dams will cause incalculable damage downstream. "China is acting at the height of irresponsibility," said Imhof. "Its dams will wreak havoc with the Mekong ecosystem as far downstream as the Tonle Sap. They could sound the death knell for fisheries which provide food for over 60 million people."
Experts in downstream countries have been reluctant to criticize China's policies. But Professor Ngo Dinh Tuan from Hanoi Water Resources University told Vietnamese reporters last month, "If China builds dams to serve power production, the first impact would be a remarkable reduction of aquatic resources. It would be very dangerous for people who live in the lower section."
…The Mekong is a reminder of how the world's rivers used to be before the dam-builders got to work. Two-thirds of our rivers today, including most of the largest, have dams holding back their natural flood pulses on their main channels. China has already dammed the other major Asian rivers that flow out of Tibet, including the Yellow River and the Yangtze, which is now stopped by the Three Gorges Dam.
They are tamed, but much less productive as a result. The Mekong is the exception. No river on Earth has such variation in flow. Only the Amazon has greater biodiversity. Only the Amazon produces more fish.http://www.alternet.org/water/140842/the_damming_of_the_mekong%3A_major_blow_to_an_epic_river_/
