By Antonino Condorelli
Reuters

SAN LUCA, Italy (Reuters) - Police banned funeral processions for five of six Italians gunned down in Germany in a suspected mafia feud when they were buried in southern Italy on Thursday.

Extra police were drafted in to the mountain villages of Calabria to prevent further violence in a 16-year-old feud inside the Calabrian underworld organization, the ‘Ndrangheta, that has claimed up to 20 lives.

In a small church in the village of San Luca, at the epicenter of the feud, hundreds gathered to say goodbye to Sebastiano Strangio, Marco Marmo and Francesco Giorgi, who at 17 years old was the youngest victim.

As is the custom, men waited outside the church while women attended the service, fanning themselves in the August heat.

“The life we live does not seem like ‘life’ any more,” said Pino Strangio, the parish priest, quoted by ANSA news agency.

“Looking at your coffins, we discover how love has turned to hatred … Tragedy is growing like an unstoppable cancer.”

In the nearby village of Siderno, family and friends gave brothers Francesco and Marco Pergola, aged 22 and 20, a noisy send-off. As in San Luca, people clapped in a show of respect as the two coffins were rushed off to the cemetery.

read more HERE

The Shins - “Australia”

Here’s another tune from The Shins’ latest album, Wincing the Night Away. Like their other new videos, this is a goofy one with no real relation to the song, but it’s fun.

By BECKY BOHRER
The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS - Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were a roughly $100 billion blow to Louisiana buildings and infrastructure, and federal rebuilding aid and insurance payments fall about $34 billion short of making up for the losses, a state agency says.

The $100 billion estimate, in a Louisiana Recovery Authority report set to be released Friday, includes levees, public buildings and infrastructure, businesses, houses and personal property lost or damaged in the 2005 hurricanes. Of that, insurance has covered $40 billion and federal aid $26 billion, the report says.

The damage estimate was compiled using property loss estimates from various sectors, LRA spokeswoman Melissa Landry said.

Andy Kopplin, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, said he isn’t suggesting that the federal government or insurers write a $34 billion check. But he said people shouldn’t be surprised if Louisiana continues to ask Congress for help rebuilding, something he expects to happen over the next decade.

A recent report from the Government Accountability Office noted the difficulty in assessing damages from the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes, saying the exact costs may never be known but that overall they would likely “far surpass” those of the three other costliest disasters in recent memory - the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks; Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and California’s Northridge earthquake in 1994.

read more HERE

By KATHERINE SHRADER
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Iraqi government is strained by rampant violence, deep sectarian differences among its political parties and stymied leadership, the nation’s top spy analysts concluded in a sobering assessment released Thursday.

With the country teetering between success and failure in the next year, Iraq’s neighbors will continue to try to expand their leverage in the fractured state in anticipation that the United States will soon leave, the new report found.

It predicted that the Iraqi government “will become more precarious over the next six to 12 months” because of criticism from various Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions. “To date, Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively,” it said.

There was a glimmer of backhanded hope for the Iraqi leadership in the often dark analysis: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will continue to benefit from the belief among other Shiite leaders that “searching for a replacement could paralyze the government.”

The new National Intelligence Estimate was an update of another high-level assessment prepared six months ago by the top analysts scattered across all 16 U.S. spy agencies. The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency were the key contributors to Thursday’s report, which found some security progress but elusive hopes for reconciliation among Iraq’s feuding groups.

read more HERE

By Jonathan Stempel
Reuters

Mozilo must be a real Einstein to have the guts and cojones to say there’s a recession ahead with all the mortgage foreclosures. What a freaking genius! - JS

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Countrywide Financial Corp Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo said on Thursday the U.S. housing downturn is likely to lead the country into recession, but that the largest U.S. mortgage lender will survive.

In an interview, Mozilo also said that to promote liquidity, the U.S. Federal Reserve should cut the rate it charges banks to borrow.

Countrywide faced a credit shortage this month as mortgage defaults rose and capital markets tightened. On August 16, it announced an unexpected drawdown of an entire $11.5 billion credit line because it had trouble selling short-term debt.

But on Wednesday, Bank of America Corp said it would invest $2 billion in Countrywide, buying preferred securities convertible into common stock.

This eased fears about Countrywide’s fate, which at least two analysts this month had said could include bankruptcy.

Mozilo called the investment a “vote of confidence” and a “priceless endorsement,” but said housing and the economy were not out of the woods.

Falling home prices hurt homeowners psychologically and cause them to spend less, he said. The 68-year-old executive has worked in financial services for more than a half century.

read more HERE

By CHRISTINA DAVIDSON
from Iraq Slogger.com

Bush’s Former Envoy to Iraq is Top US Lobbyist for Key Iraqi Critic of Iraqi PM

Documents obtained by IraqSlogger show Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s chief Iraqi opponent, Ayad Allawi, is paying Washington lobbyists with close ties to the White House $300,000 to help with Allawi’s efforts in the U.S. to promote himself and undermine Maliki.

The powerhouse Republican firm retained by Allawi is Barbour, Griffith, & Rogers (BGR)
, and its BGR International unit is headed by President’s Bush’s one-time White House point man on Iraq, Robert Blackwill, who will lead the lobbying efforts on Allawi’s behalf.

Allawi signed the BGR lobbying contract with Blackwill, who served as Presidential Envoy to Iraq in 2004 when Allawi was appointed the country’s interim prime minister with the U.S. government’s blessing.

Blackwill assumed the position of BGR International president after leaving the Bush administration following the 2004 elections.

Allawi, who called for Maliki’s ouster in a Washington Post op-ed August 18, is believed by many Iraq observers to positioning himself to be Maliki’s successor.

As previously reported exclusively by IraqSlogger, the Republican lobbying firm Barbour, Griffith, & Rogers, LLC, began its work for Allawi August 17 by registering the domain name Allawi-for-Iraq.com. In recent days, BGR sent hundreds of e-mail messages in Allawi’s name from the e-mail address DrAyadAllawi@Allawi-for-Iraq.com.

Those e-mail messages to Congressional staffers and others in Washington included Allawi’s Washington Post op-ed and the text of a statement from Democratic Senator Carl Levin calling for Maliki to quit.

Nothing like a trip to Iraq to make one change their mind.

Warner: Bush should begin Iraq withdrawal

Republican senator says the president should set timetable, not Congress

NEW YORK - President Bush should announce on Sept. 15 a small initial pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq to spur the Iraqi government to take steps toward political reconciliation, an influential Republican senator said Thursday.

Virginia Sen. John Warner said Bush should “announce on the 15th that in consultation with our senior military commanders he has decided to initiate the first step in a withdrawal of our forces.”

Warner, a senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee who has pressed Bush to change his Iraq policy, suggested a withdrawal of “say 5,000″ troops, who could be home by Christmas in December of this year.

Warner said the United States needed “to show that we mean business” when it says its commitment to Iraq is not open ended.

Reuters

Source: MSNBC.com

By: Steve Benen
cross posted at Crooks and Liars

Bush’s Defense Department recently agreed to distribute “freedom packages” to U.S. soldiers in Iraq, as prepared by a fundamentalist Christian ministry called Operation Straight Up (OSU). As the LAT explained, OSU’s packages included “Bibles, proselytizing material in English and Arabic and the apocalyptic computer game A-Left Behind: Eternal Forces- (derived from the series of post-Rapture novels), in which ’soldiers for Christ- hunt down enemies who look suspiciously like U.N. peacekeepers.”

By agreeing to distribute these “freedom packages,” the Pentagon seemed to be endorsing the idea that the U.S. military presence in Iraq should include more fundamentalist Christian evangelism. Fortunately, after the Military Religious Freedom Foundation raised a fuss, the Defense Department backpedaled and announced it would not deliver OSU’s packages, but the larger problem persists.

American military and political officials must, at the very least, have the foresight not to promote crusade rhetoric in the midst of an already religion-tinged war. Many of our enemies in the Mideast already believe that the world is locked in a contest between Christianity and Islam. Why are our military officials validating this ludicrous claim with their own fiery religious rhetoric?

It’s time to actively strip the so-called war on terror of its religious connotations, not add to them. Because religious wars are not just ugly, they are unwinnable. And despite what Operation Straight Up and its supporters in the Pentagon may think is taking place in Iraq, the Rapture is not a viable exit strategy.

Well said. Now, if only Bush’s Defense Department would stop giving everyone reason to be afraid.

Fox Snooze is at it again! this time with their drumbeating to bomb the Middle Eastern country of Iran into the stone age. Robert Greenwald’s work is heroic and tireless to point out the injustices and idiocy of right-wing neocon war-mongering.

Enjoy and be informed! - JS

By Robert O’Harrow Jr.
The Washington Post
cross posted at TRUTHOUT

Use of favored firms a common shortcut.

Under pressure from the White House and Congress to deliver a long-delayed plan last year, officials at the Department of Homeland Security’s counter-narcotics office took a shortcut that has become common at federal agencies: They hired help through a no-bid contract.

And the firm they hired showed them how to do it.

Scott Chronister, a senior official in the Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement, reached out to a former colleague at a private consulting firm for advice. The consultant suggested that Chronister’s office could avoid competition and get the work done quickly under an arrangement in which the firm “approached the government with a ‘unique and innovative concept,’ ” documents and interviews show.

A contract worth up to $579,000 was awarded to the consultant’s firm in September.

Though small by government standards, the counter-narcotics contract illustrates the government’s steady move away from relying on competition to secure the best deals for products and services.

A recent congressional report estimated that federal spending on contracts awarded without “full and open” competition has tripled, to $207 billion, since 2000, with a $60 billion increase last year alone. The category includes deals in which officials take advantage of provisions allowing them to sidestep competition for speed and convenience and cases in which the government sharply limits the number of bidders or expands work under open-ended contracts.

Government auditors say the result is often higher prices for taxpayers and an undue reliance on a limited number of contractors.

“The rapid growth in no-bid and limited-competition contracts has made full and open competition the exception, not the rule,” according to the report, by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Keith Ashdown, chief investigator at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said that in many cases, officials are simply choosing favored contractors as part of a “club mentality.”

read more HERE