The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 3A
NEWS BRIEFS
AUBURN HILLS, Mich.
Chrysler to slash
13,000 jobs
For 13,000 Chrysler workers,
Feb. 14 will now be known as the
Valentine's Day massacre.
Chrysler announced yesterday
its long-awaited restructuring,
which included a 16 percent reduc-
tion in its work force, shift reduc-
tions, a plant closing and a surprise
hint that the plan could lead to a
DaimlerChrysler divorce.
The Chrysler plan calls for clos-
ing the company's Newark, Del.,
assembly plant, and reducing shifts
at plants in Warren, Mich., and St.
Louis. A parts distribution center
near Cleveland also will be closed,
and reductions could occur at other
plants that make components for
those facilities.
Chrysler blamed the wrenching
restructuring on poor sales after a
shift in consumer taste from SUVs
and trucks to more fuel-efficient
vehicles. Workers blamed manage-
ment.
Aside from the job cuts, Chrys-
ler's German parent, Daim-
lerChrysler AG, said it is looking
at all options to revive its fortunes,
including partners for the troubled
Chrysler. Its chairman wouldn't
rule out a possible sale of the U.S.
operation.
WASHINGTON
Bush says Iran is
supplying weapons
to Iraqi insurgents
Challenged on the accuracy of
U.S. intelligence, President Bush
said yesterday there is no doubt
the Iranian government is provid-
ing armor-piercing weapons to kill
American soldiers in Iraq. But he
backed away from claims the top
echelon of Iran's government was
responsible.
Iran was a dominant theme of
reporters' questions because of
conflicting statements about U.S.
intelligence in Iran and recurring
speculation that Bush is looking
for an excuse to attack the Islam-
ic republic, which is believed by
Washington and its allies to be
seeking nuclear weapons.
Defending U.S. intelligence that
has pinpointed Iran as a hostile
arms supplier in Iraq, Bush said,
"Does this mean you're trying
to have a pretext for war? No. It
means I'm trying to protect our
troops."
BAGHDAD
Iraqi government
launches Baghdad
security sweep
The Iraqi government formally
launched a long-awaited security
crackdown in Baghdad yesterday,
with U.S. and Iraqi troops step-
ping up patrols, establishing new
checkpoints and randomly search-
ing cars to stop the violence in the
capital.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
said the sweep, code-named oper-
ation Imposing Law, would target
those "who want to continue with
rebellion."
There were conflicting reports,
meanwhile, about the where-
abouts of Muqtada al-Sadr, whose
militia have been blamed for some
of the worst sectarian killings in
the past year, after a U.S. official
said the radical Shiite cleric had
fled to Iran ahead of the security
operation.
LONDON
Cleopatra's beauty
called into question
So maybe Mark Antony loved
Cleopatra for her mind.
That is the conclusion being
drawn by academics at Britain's
University of Newcastle from a
Roman denarius coin which depicts
the celebrated queen of Egypt as a
sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman
with a protruding chin.
In short, a fair match for the
hook-nosed, thick-necked Mark
Antony on the other side of the
coin, which went on public display
yesterday at the university's Shef-
ton Museum.
Replicas of the denarius can be
found on eBay, and images on other
ancient coins are no more flatter-
ing.
- Compiled from
Daily wire reports
Russians to vote, but some
parties lose in advance
PEDDLING LOVE BY THE DOZEN
Critics say Kremlin
is undermining the
democratic process
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
The New York Times
ST. PETERSURG, Russia - Two
candidates in local elections here
in March, a soccer star and figure
skating champion, have no known
intention of giving up sports for
legislative politics. If they "win,"
as they almost certainly will, their
Kremlin-friendly parties, not the
voters, will choose who will fill
their seats.
An opposition party was kicked
off the ballot for forging signa-
tures but was given little chance to
prove it didn't. Government-con-
trolled television has effectively
barred parties except those loyal
to President Vladimir V. Putin
from the airwaves.
The elections here on March
11, like those in 13 other regions,
will give a preview of coming
national elections, in which vot-
ers' choices will be severely lim-
ited at best. "Democracy?" asked
Vladimir I. Fyodorov, a leader of
the Communist Party here, which
faces an uphill task of winning
any seats in the city's 50-member
legislature. "I would not call the
process under way in our country
democracy."
Here, as on the national level,
Putin's Kremlin has left little to
chance or surprise.
At the Kremlin's urging, crit-
ics say, Parliament has raised the
threshold for parties to win seats,
eliminated minimum turnout
requirements and abolished dis-
trict elections in favor of party
lists. A new law on extremism
would ban a candidate from criti-
cizing his or her opponent, or any-
one actually in office.
The Kremlin has also made it
more difficult for political parties
to form and register. According
to officials, the Justice Ministry
refused to qualify 15 of the 32 that
applied last year, and other, largely
inactive, parties faded into his-
tory.
That measure, like most of the
others, has an ostensibly reason-
able and democratic purpose:
to simplify and clarify the rules
of elective politics. To critics,
though, the Kremlin has simply
assured the smooth re-election of
pliant pro-presidential parties.
"It would be like if Califor-
nia had an election and only five
Republican Parties could run,"
said Maksim L. Reznik, the chair-
nan of the St. Petersburg branch
of Yabloko, a liberal party.
The city election commission
disqualified it after declaring that
a sample of the 40,000 signatures
on the party's voter registration
application contained forgeries.
The party was given two days to
disprove a handwriting expert's
conclusions by producing signed
affidavits and copies of passports
for hundreds of would-be voters.
By early February, with the
elections barely a month away,
Yabloko had also been barred from
the ballot in two other regions,
Orel in west-central Russia and
Leningrad, which surrounds St.
Petersburg, in what party officials
called a deliberate attempt by the
Kremlin to weaken it further.
Another liberal party, the Union
of Right Forces, was knocked
off the ballot in Vologda, Pskov
and Samara. The Communist
Party faced challenges is several
regions, including Tyumen and
Dagestan, but ultimately qualified
after protests.
In all, parties were denied
registration in 17 instances. The
only three parties that faced
no problems were United Rus-
sia, Just Russia and the Liberal
Democratic Party, all pro-presi-
dential.
In Russia, as elsewhere, all poli-
tics are local. Yabloko's leaders
argue that their banishment here
in St. Petersburg resulted from
their opposition to the city's gov-
ernor, Valentina L Matviyenko, a
devoted supporter of Putin.
Yabloko's three members in the
city legislature were the only ones
who voted against Putin's reap-
pointment of her as governor in
December. They have also led a
public challenge to plans by Mat-
viyenko and Gazprom, the energy
giant, to build a skyscraper on the
banks of the Neva River.
Party officials and political
analysts, though, have detected a
national trend in the pressure on
Yabloko and other opposition par-
ties. "They would like to reduce
uncertainty as much as possible,"
said Vladimir Y. Gelman, a politi-
cal scientist at the European Uni-
versity at St. Petersburg.
The goal, he and others said, is
to bolster United Russia, which
now controls the lower house of
parliament and is called "the party
of power," by forcing out smaller
parties like Yabloko. At the same
time, the Kremlin hopes to create
a loyal counterweight in Just Rus-
sia, a party created by the merger
of three smaller parties and led by
a staunch Putin supporter, Sergei
M. Mironov.
"Just Russia is the only real
opposition currently," Mironov
said recently, campaigning in the
icy cold at a small park here, where
he unveiled a new merry-go-round.
"The others are just playthings."
Oleg A. Nilov, the party's
regional chairman, acknowledged
that political debate had withered
in Russia since the emergence of
United Russia. Just Russia, he
said, will become a populist chal-
lenger, taking the side of the poor,
the pensioners and the workers
who have shared far less in Rus-
sia's new energy-fueled boom than
most. That stance, though, extends
only to the local legislature and
the lover house of parliament, the
State Duma.
"We are saying that on the level
of the State Duma there should be
real competition," he said in an
interview in the party's headquar-
ters, which displays large portraits
of Putin. "The executive power
exists on the next level."
On that level, he added, "there
should be unity."
Vadim A. Tulpanov, the incum-
bent chairman of St. Petersburg's
legislature, dismissed criticism
of Yabloko's registration troubles,
calling them self-inflicted. He said
the election simply reflected the
natural evolution of Russia's young
democracy, with the old parties
like Yabloko and the Communists
losing their popular appeal.
"Gradually, in Russia, as I
understand it, a two-party system
is being created, like in America,"
he said.
For now the two main par-
ties have distinct advantages:
access to the airwaves, which
are government-controlled, and
to campaign financing. Private
donations to parties became risky
after the prosecution of Mikhail
B. Khodorkovsky, the former
chairman of Yukos Oil, after he
openly supported political parties
in the Duma.
A result of the uneven resources
is visible on the streets here: Post-
ers and billboards of United Rus-
sia and Just Russia are ubiquitous,
the others largely absent. Another
advantage of incumbency has been
the city's refusal to allow Yabloko
and other parties to hold protests
or other rallies.
Karim Elayach sells bouquets of flowers from a small tent on South University
Avenue. Elayach has been selling flowers from the tent to students and other pedes-
trians for the last two days. On Valentine's Day, florists do one-third of their annual
business, The New York Times reported.
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