[JustPiper]

Tempel Steel has China toe-hold

Tempel Steel Co., a Chicago-based steel stamping company with $400 million in revenues, is establishing a presence in China by acquiring rival National Lamination Co., says Tempel CEO Vincent Buonanno. National, a unit of Las Vegas-based Tang Industries Inc. with $60 million in revenues, has plants in China, Mexico and Des Plaines. Tempel will continue operating the China and Mexico plants but will close the Des Plaines facility, which employs about 180 people, and shift production to its Chicago and Libertyville operations. Tempel plans to use the China plant to supply customers operating in that country, Mr. Buonanno says. He wouldn't disclose terms of the deal, which is expected to close in March.

[JustPiper]

Bill would require disclosure on pollutants
By Amy Boerema Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted February 23, 2004
It was frightening enough to discover their water was tainted with a toxic chemical.

But it was even more unfathomable to learn the government knew about it and didn't tell them, said Lisle residents Teresa and Al LeClerq.

"We found out, and it felt like we were in a horror movie," Teresa LeClerq said.

Had they known their water was polluted with trichloroethylene from the Lockformer Co. site on Ogden Avenue, they could have taken precautions, they said.

http://www.dailyherald.com/cook/main_story.asp?intID=380402

[JustPiper]

Leaked Pentagon report warns climate change may bring famine, war: report
Sun Feb 22, 5:17 PM ET

LONDON (AFP) - A secret report prepared by the Pentagon (news - web sites) warns that climate change may lead to global catastrophe costing millions of lives and is a far greater threat than terrorism.

The report was ordered by an influential US Pentagon advisor but was covered up by "US defense chiefs" for four months, until it was "obtained" by the British weekly The Observer.

The leak promises to draw angry attention to US environmental and military policies, following Washington's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites) on climate change and President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s skepticism about global warning -- a stance that has stunned scientists worldwide.

The Pentagon report, commissioned by Andrew Marshall, predicts that "abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies," The Observer reported.

The report, quoted in the paper, concluded: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.... Once again, warfare would define human life."

Its authors -- Peter Schwartz, a CIA (news - web sites) consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of Global Business Network based in California -- said climate change should be considered "immediately" as a top political and military issue.

It "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern", they were quoted as saying.

Some examples given of probable scenarios in the dramatic report include:

-- Britain will have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020.

-- by 2007 violent storms will make large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable and lead to a breach in the acqueduct system in California that supplies all water to densely populated southern California

-- Europe and the United States become "virtual fortresses" trying to keep out millions of migrants whose homelands have been wiped out by rising sea levels or made unfarmable by drought.

-- "catastrophic" shortages of potable water and energy will lead to widespread war by 2020.

Randall, one of the authors, called his findings "depressing stuff" and warned that it might even be too late to prevent future disasters.

"We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years," he told the paper.

Experts familiar with the report told the newspaper that the threat to global stability "vastly eclipses that of terrorism".

Taking environmental pollution and climate change into account in political and military strategy is a new, complicated and necessary challenge for leaders, Randall said.

"It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat," he said.

Coming from the Pentagon, normally a bastion of conservative politics, the report is expected to bring environmental issues to the fore in the US presidential race.

Last week the Union of Concerned Scientists, an influential and non-partisan group that includes 20 Nobel laureates, accused the Bush administration of having deliberately distorted scientific fact to serve its policy agenda and having "misled the public".

Its 38-page report, which it said took over a year to prepare and was not time to coincide with the campaign season, details how Washington "systematically" skewed government scientific studies, suppressed others, stacked panels with political and unqualified appointees and often refused to seek independent expertise on issues.

Critics of the report quoted by the New York Times denied there was deliberate misrepresentation and called it politically motivated.

The person behind the leaked Pentagon report, Andrew Marsall, cannot be accused of the same partisan politicking.

Marsall, 82, has been an advisor for the defense department for decades, and was described by The Observer as the author of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's plans for a major transformation of the US military.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1521&e=2&u=/afp/britain_us_environment

Threads on subject on FR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?s=Leaked+Pentagon+report+warns+climate+change+may+bring+famine%2C+war%3A+report&ok=Search&q=quick&m=any&o=score&SX=403b10904fb48dbe3d58511c0238462ff6f2c511

[JustPiper]

Pakistan launches al-Qaeda offensive
Reuters ^ | Tue 24 February, 2004
Posted on 02/23/2004 11:48:44 PM CST by yonif

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani troops have launched a fresh offensive against al Qaeda and Taliban militants hiding in remote tribal areas near the Afghan border, officials say.

A day earlier, U.S. military officials said the whereabouts of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden remained a mystery and the focus of hunts in border regions where many Islamic militants and Taliban remnants are believed to be hiding.

"We have launched an operation against foreign terrorists," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told Reuters on Tuesday.

Asked whether operation was intended to hunt bin Laden, he said only: "It is against foreign terrorists."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1084153/posts

[JustPiper]

More details emerge on reports of terrorist activity before 9-11 attacks... [Story is up]
Drudge Report ^ | 2-23-04

Posted on 02/23/2004 6:58:38 PM CST by RWR8189
Edited on 02/23/2004 9:53:53 PM CST by Lead Moderator. [history]

C.I.A. Was Given Data on Hijacker Long Before 9/11 By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 — American investigators were given the first name and telephone number of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers two and a half years before the attacks on New York and Washington, but the United States appears to have failed to pursue the lead aggressively, American and German officials say.

The information — the earliest known signal that the United States received about any of the hijackers — has now become an important element of an independent commission's investigation into the events of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said Monday. It is considered particularly significant because it may have represented a missed opportunity for American officials to penetrate the Qaeda terror cell in Germany that was at the heart of the plot. And it came roughly 16 months before the hijacker showed up at flight schools in the United States.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1084017/posts

[JustPiper]

Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York
Sunday February 22, 2004
The Observer

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1153513,00.html

[JustPiper]

• Dramatic climate change could become global security nightmare at Knight Ridder (Feb 23, 2004)
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/fcstorymod/ext/Related%20News%20Stories/afp/britain_us_environment/SIG=11okiq8o1/*http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8023054.htm

Leaked Pentagon report warns climate change may bring famine, war: report AFP via Yahoo! News (Feb 23, 2004)
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/fcstorymod/int/Related%20News%20Stories/afp/britain_us_environment/*http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1521&e=2&u=/afp/20040222/pl_afp/britain_us_environment_040222221744

US 'does accept climate threat' at BBC (Feb 23, 2004)
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/fcstorymod/ext/Related%20News%20Stories/afp/britain_us_environment/SIG=11nf1r2jt/*http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3513559.stm

[JustPiper]

Foreign workers get the ax as Saudization drive hits the gold industry (25,000 foreign workers)
menareport.com ^

Posted on 02/23/2004 9:34:14 AM CST by chance33_98

Foreign workers get the ax as Saudization drive hits the gold industry

In line with the national Saudization program, gold and jewelry shop owners had until yesterday to replace some 25,000 foreign workers with local employees.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1083700/posts