Links of the Day

Links of the Day WE ARE ALL SOCIALIST NOW - but only if your already rich

2008-09-25T04:33:00.000-07:00

WE ARE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW! But you only get a piece of the pie if your already rich!

What a crock! Bush and McShame are so full of it their eyes are brown! First McCain hasn’t been back to D.C. since April, missing over 150 votes. Now he wants to slink back to D.C. to convince House republicans to ram through a $700,000,000,000 bail out for Wall Street that as usual has no over site on how they spend it, sounds a lot like the bottomless pit called Iraq to me. Bush and his idiot in charge Paulson want us to give them a blank check. Ha Haaaaa.

McShame wants to “bail out” of tomorrow’s debate and hold it next week on the day ol Sarah is to go head to head with Joe Biden. I imagine after that great Speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH1z3UnXe78&feature=user Joe gave yesterday on the economic crises the McShame camp is trembling in their boots because shaking hands with world leaders only gives you a sore arm. What did he think she could get foreign policy experience through osmosis? Hee Hee.

I suggest Obama take the famous words spoken by John McCain F U ! But I know he can’t just wishful thinking on my part.

Obama, McCain called to White House for financial crisis talks
Republican presidential candidate wants to postpone debate

http://www.cbc.ca/world/usvotes/story/2008/09/24/us-polls.html

Statement on Obama Meeting with President Bush

A few moments ago, President Bush called Senator Obama and asked him to attend a meeting in Washington tomorrow, which he agreed to do. Senator Obama has been working all week with leaders in Congress, Secretary Paulson, and Chairman Bernanke to improve this proposal, and he has said that he will continue to work in a bipartisan spirit and do whatever is necessary to come up with a final solution. He strongly believes the debate should go forward on Friday so that the American people can hear from their next President about how he will lead America forward at this defining moment for our country.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stateupdates/gGgYWb

Obama: Debate is 'More Important Than Ever'

Earlier today, Barack made a brief statement to the press and took questions regarding the ongoing economic crisis, his decision to reach out to John McCain this morning to suggest issuing a joint statement urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner, and John McCain's suggestion that Friday night's debate be postponed: Please take a minute to share this video with your friends . . .
VIDEO
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stateupdates/gGgYvq

In just 24 hours 100,000 Americans have signed the no bail out petition. I think we can make it 1 million if we pass this button on to our blog and to friends and family in a email.

A country held hostage - Resistance Grows to Banker's Coup D'etat
More than 100,000 letters sent through VoteNoBailout.org to Congress
New Free Web Button Available for VoteNoBailout

Get your button here
http://www.impeachbush.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5321

We can keep the pressure on by call Congress too. Now the DC switchboard is flooded so keep trying, eventually someone will answer the phone 1-877-851-6437 FREE CALL then ask for your Rep and both your Senators.

By now I hope you know who they are but if not here’s the links to find your critter.

U.S. Senate
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

U.S. House http://www.house.gov/

These people are giving socialism to the rich for their bad investments but whoa to the rest of us working slobs if we want Universal Health care!

Bush can’t find money to give health insurance to little kids but he sure found a chunk of change for his base, didn’t he?

Public Citizen has a petition too and I say you can’t sign enough of these to stop them from robbing us blind!

Tell Congress to Put YOUR Interests First in a Financial Bailout

Today, Congress and lobbyists are listening to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke tell them that they must devise a $700 billion bailout plan immediately. Two kinds of people are represented in that room: Wall Street speculators whose greed-driven schemes have jeopardized the economic stability of our nation, and public officials who should have done something to prevent this economic situation. Americans will be on the outside.

Public Citizen says enough! We're launching a campaign, along with Consumer Watchdog, to put consumers first in any financial bailout plan. We're mobilizing millions of Americans, and we need your support to make our voices heard in the halls of power!

Please sign our petition, and encourage your friends and colleagues to join the fight!

http://action.citizen.org/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=1405

The Backbone Campaign has a petition too with DEMANDS!

SIGN THE PETITION
Democrats.com petition for the Backbone Campaign demands

http://www.democrats.com/stop-paulsons-plunder

Like I said the more petitions we sign the more we flood congress with the message that we do NOT want to fund the richest corporations in America.

Even George Soros says it’s a bad idea to give them a blank check. Letter received in a email.

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

I thought you might be interested in this opinion piece by George Soros which appears in the September 25 edition of the Financial Times and which is online now here.

Paulson Cannot be Allowed to Have a Blank Check

By George Soros
Hank Paulson's $700bn rescue package has run into difficulty on Capitol Hill. Rightly so: it was ill-conceived. Congress would be abdicating its responsibility if it gave the Treasury secretary a blank cheque. The bill submitted to Congress even had language in it that would exempt the secretary's decisions from review by any court or administrative agency - the ultimate fulfillment of the Bush administration's dream of a unitary executive.

Mr Paulson's record does not inspire the confidence necessary to give him discretion over $700bn. His actions last week brought on the crisis that makes rescue necessary. On Monday he allowed Lehman Brothers to fail and refused to make government funds available to save AIG. By Tuesday he had to reverse himself and provide an $85bn loan to AIG on punitive terms.

The demise of Lehman disrupted the commercial paper market. A large money market fund "broke the buck" and investment banks that relied on the commercial paper market had difficulty financing their operations. By Thursday a run on money market funds was in full swing and we came as close to a meltdown as at any time since the 1930s. Mr Paulson reversed again and proposed a systemic rescue.

Mr Paulson had got a blank cheque from Congress once before. That was to deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. His solution landed the housing market in the worst of all worlds: their managements knew that if the blank cheques were filled out they would lose their jobs, so they retrenched and made mortgages more expensive and less available. Within a few weeks the market forced Mr Paulson's hand and he had to take them over.

Mr Paulson's proposal to purchase distressed mortgage-related securities poses a classic problem of asymmetric information. The securities are hard to value but the sellers know more about them than the buyer: in any auction process the Treasury would end up with the dregs. The proposal is also rife with latent conflict of interest issues. Unless the Treasury overpays for the securities, the scheme would not bring relief. But if the scheme is used to bail out insolvent banks, what will the taxpayers get in return?

Barack Obama has outlined four conditions that ought to be imposed: an upside for the taxpayers as well as a downside; a bipartisan board to oversee the process; help for the homeowners as well as the holders of the mortgages; and some limits on the compensation of those who benefit from taxpayers' money. These are the right principles. They could be applied more effectively by capitalising the institutions that are burdened by distressed securities directly rather than by relieving them of the distressed securities.

The injection of government funds would be much less problematic if it were applied to the equity rather than the balance sheet. $700bn in preferred stock with warrants may be sufficient to make up the hole created by the bursting of the housing bubble. By contrast, the addition of $700bn on the demand side of an $11,000 market may not be sufficient to arrest the decline of housing prices.
Something also needs to be done on the supply side. To prevent housing prices from overshooting on the downside, the number of foreclosures has to be kept to a minimum. The terms of mortgages need to be adjusted to the homeowners' ability to pay.

The rescue package leaves this task undone. Making the necessary modifications is a delicate task rendered more difficult by the fact that many mortgages have been sliced up and repackaged in the form of collateralised debt obligations. The holders of the various slices have conflicting interests. It would take too long to work out the conflicts to include a mortgage modification scheme in the rescue package. The package can, however, prepare the ground by modifying bankruptcy law as it relates to principal residences.

Now that the crisis has been unleashed a large-scale rescue package is probably indispensable to bring it under control. Rebuilding the depleted balance sheets of the banking system is the right way to go. Not every bank deserves to be saved, but the experts at the Federal Reserve, with proper supervision, can be counted on to make the right judgments. Managements that are reluctant to accept the consequences of past mistakes could be penalised by depriving them of the Fed's credit facilities. Making government funds available should also encourage the private sector to participate in recapitalising the banking sector and bringing the financial crisis to a close.

George Soros

OK Lastly there’s Emergency Rallies being held all over the country to stop the bail out.

From United For Peace And Justice

Billions for War & Billions for Wall Street?

The Bush administration strong-armed Congress into supporting the war. The administration has spent more than $800 billion for wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere around the world. Now they demand a $700 billion blank check for Wall Street using fear and threats with no public debate!

Bail Out the Troops and Main Street, Not Wall Street!

EMERGENCY RALLIES

Thursday, September 25, 5 PM

Pick a spot, and mobilize! The most important thing is to pick a spot where you will be seen and start inviting other people RIGHT NOW!

Click here to post your action and get the word out!
http://www.truemajority.org/NoBailout/Event

We are joining True Majority, US Action and scores of others to take the debate into the streets.

Click here to set up events in your area.
http://www.truemajority.org/NoBailout/Event

Click here to find events in your area.
http://www.truemajority.org/NoBailout/Search

CALL CONGRESS NOW!

Some on Capital Hill are having second thoughts about going along with the administration's plan.

Call your Senator NOW and say, "Oppose the Bush bailout. Stand up for Main Street. And bring the troops home!"

Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

Click here to report back to UFPJ how your call to your Senator went.
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/modinput4.php?modin=148

RESOURCES:

Although the crisis is complicated, whatever action is taken must be done based on what we need in our communities. Tremendous work is being done to uncover not only the roots, but also guidelines for making the solution to this crisis one that benefits working families and our communities!

Click here for an interview with Columbia University Professor Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winner in Economics and author of the 'The Three Trillion Dollar War'.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-gardels/stiglitz-the-fall-of-wall_b_126911.html

Click here for William Greider from The Nation Magazine's article on the Wall Street bailout.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081006/greider2

Click here for updates on the bailout situation from a number of respectable economic analysts at the Dollars & Sense blog.
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/blog/

The Congressional Research Service's July 2008 report on the costs of the war(s) can be found here.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf

This is a great web site that talks to us in term we can understand. I like because then I can tell off republicans I know where their hard earned tax money goes.

National Priorities Project analyzes and clarifies federal data so that people can understand and influence how their tax dollars are spent.

http://nationalpriorities.org/

Lets flood into Obama/Biden Events

Events

Sep 25
"Change We Need" Community Gathering with Joe Biden
in Greensburg, PA

Sep 25
"Change We Need" Community Gathering with Joe Biden
in Wilkes-Barre, PA

Sep 27
Voter Registration Rally with Michelle Obama and Jill Biden
in Tallahassee, FL

Sep 27
"Change We Need" Rally with Barack Obama and Joe Biden
in Greensboro, NC

Here’s a bit of GREAT NEWS!

US won't send monitors to polls

September 24, 2008

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department said yesterday it will not station criminal prosecutors at the polls on Election Day after civil rights groups said minority voters who are expected to turn out in unprecedented numbers because of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama could be intimidated by them.

The move reverses a decades-long practice that put prosecutors on the lookout for voter fraud, ballot access violations, and other polling problems.

"This decision was made as a precaution and is not the result of any instance of intimidation or complaint regarding any specific incident," acting Assistant Attorney General Grace Chung Becker said in a statement.

Becker and Attorney General Michael Mukasey met two weeks ago with about 40 representatives from voter access watchdogs, hoping to assure them that having a smooth Nov. 4 election is a top Justice Department priority. Some civil rights groups, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said the monitors themselves could be part of the problem.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/09/24/us_wont_send_monitors_to_polls/?rss_id=Boston.com+--+National+news

Stupid Bush and his NeoCons. Pakistan has the bomb and they attack Iraq for freaking oil! While I hated Mushariff he like Saddam at least kept the religious zealots in check. Lets hope if they get their hands on the bomb they use it on each other.

Pakistani Civil War Feared

The violence and political unrest in nuclear-armed Pakistan continues to grow worse.

An Afghan diplomat was kidnapped near Peshawar; a Marriott hotel in Islamabad was hit with a suicide bomb killing at least 53 people; and the killing of Pakistani villagers by a U.S. missile has strained relations between Islamabad and Washington.

MUST SEE VIDEO! http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/092308b.html

TaTa for now.

Links of the Day is Back (for now) Bush is kissing China’s butt

2008-09-23T03:50:00.000-07:00

"Links of the Day is back for now. I know back in April I said I'd be gone a week and it ended up being 5 months. After posting everyday for a year I needed a long break from all the crap I was reading. My physical and personal life was suffering and I needed to step back.

Well Obama is doing great and I'm counting on all the young people to get out and vote. The pollsters don't count them because their not allowed to call cell phones.

Our Government sucks! I know this is a week old but our media never tells us anything when another country calls us War Mongers, but it goes along with the article posted after it.

UN General Assembly Opens With a Denunciation of US Policies
By Walter Wisniewski
New York 17 September 2008

A new session of the United Nations General Assembly has opened in New York, with a sharp attack on the United States by the assembly's president, former Nicaraguan foreign minister Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann. VOA's Walter Wisniewski reports from our New York newscenter.

The past year's General Assembly of the United Nations has come to a close, and the new, 63rd session of the General Assembly is now formally open. World leaders will address the annual U.N. meeting next week, but the Assembly's incoming president caught diplomats' attention Tuesday with his opening remarks, a scathing attack on U.S. policies.

he General Assembly president, former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, mentioned the United States by name only a few times, but made it clear who his target was.

D'Escoto says it is "undeniable" that some members of the Security Council have "an addiction to war," and he says they are threatening international peace and security. In a scarcely veiled reference to President George W. Bush's administration, d'Escoto also said no nation has the right "to decide on its own which states are sponsors of terrorism, and which are not."

"By now, over 1.2 million people have died as a direct consequence of that aggression and occupation," d'Escoto said about the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

The 75-year-old diplomat, who is a Roman Catholic priest, told reporters later he intends to try to reform the U.N. to give the 192-member General Assembly a stronger role, compared to the Security Council, whose permanent members - the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain - have veto power over U.N. decisions.

D'Escoto says the world has changed since 1945, when the United Nations was founded, but the U.N. has not kept pace. He predicts "soul-searching" and frank debate at the General Assembly in the weeks and months to come.

"This will be an interesting year, and I will be making an appeal from the very depth of my heart and my experience," he said.

D'Escoto used spiritual terms in his opening speech, which he addressed to "my dear brothers and sisters" from all over the world. Asked about the significance of his dual role as General Assembly president and also a priest, he tried to deflect the comment with a joke.

"I'm also the oldest and the most decrepit [laughter], healthwise, and I know that. But will I, therefore, because I am a priest, pay particular attention to interfaith dialogue?" he asked. "That's already on the agenda. This is something that I have spoken about quite a bit with the secretary-general, and he is asking me to join him in this effort."

He was asked about his scheduled appearance at a forum next week together with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel's destruction several times. D'Escoto says he does not feel it is inappropriate for him to take part.

"Obviously, if I am here talking about brotherhood and sisterhood, I don't want anyone to be wiped off the map - not even any individual, much less a state," he said.

He also pretended not to hear when another reporter asked whether he would condemn Russia's military action against Georgia last month constituted an act of aggression. D'Escoto, who has embraced leftist policies for decades, said he did feel that any act of aggression in the Caucasus region was committed by Georgia, against South Ossetia.

Heads of state and government will be streaming into New York over the next few days, before the General Assembly's traditional round of speeches by each leader begins next Tuesday.

link

....Bush and Dick like causing Chaos because war is very profitable.

September 22, 2008

US Hands Over Suitcase Nukes To Al Qaida In Pakistan

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers (Traducción al Español abajo)

Russian Military Analysts are reporting in the Kremlin today that the massive blast that caused 53 deaths at the Islamabad Marriott hotel in Pakistan was an operation conducted by India's foreign intelligence agency The Research and Analysis Wing [RAW] in an attempt to 'decapitate' Pakistan's entire leadership, including their President, Prime Minister and Military Chiefs all of whom, at 'the last minute,' changed the location of their planned meeting with the United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who had arrived in their country unannounced.

These reports continue by stating that India had become 'alarmed' by the United States Defence Intelligence Organization [DIA] and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI] plan to provide Al Qaida and Taliban terrorist forces with 37 suitcase nuclear weapons to be used against Western Nations in the coming month.

Not being understood by the American people is that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agents were the 'creators and controllers' of these terrorist organizations and are still active in their operations and attacks, and as we can read:

"Pakistan's intelligence agency is helping the Taliban to pursue an insurgency in Afghanistan that has seen a 50 percent hike in attacks in some areas this year, the NATO commander here told AFP.

The number of foreign fighters, including Europeans, is also increasing here while NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) still lacks the soldiers it needs, US General David D. McKiernan said in a weekend interview.

"There certainly is a level of ISI complicity in the militant areas in Pakistan and organisations such as the Taliban," the four-star general said, echoing allegations by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and others.

"I can't say to what level of leadership that goes to but there are indications of complicity on the part of ISI... to the extent that they are facilitating these militant groups that come out of the tribal areas in Pakistan."

To the exact transferring to Al Qaida and Taliban of these suitcase nuclear weapons we can read as reported by Pakistan's International News Service:

"Witnessed by many, including a PPP MNA and his friends, a US embassy truckload of steel boxes was unloaded and shifted inside the Marriott Hotel on the same night when Admiral Mike Mullen met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and others in Islamabad.

Both the main gates (the entrance and the exit) of the hotel were closed while no one except the US Marines were either allowed to go near the truck or get the steel boxes unloaded or shift them inside the hotel. These steel boxes were not passed through the scanners installed at the entrance of the hotel lobby and were reportedly shifted to the fourth and fifth floors of the Marriott.

Besides several others, PPP MNA Mumtaz Alam Gilani and his two friends, Sajjad Chaudhry, a PPP leader, and one Bashir Nadeem, witnessed this mysterious activity to which no one other than the PPP MNA objected and protested.

A source present there told The News that after entertaining them with refreshments at the Nadia restaurant at midnight when Mumtaz Alam, along with his friends, was to leave the hotel, he found a white US embassy truck standing right in front of the hotel's main entrance.

Both the In-gate and the Out-gate of the hotel were closed while almost a dozen well-built US Marines in their usual fatigues were unloading the steel boxes from the truck. No one, including the hotel security men, was either allowed to go near the truck or touch the steel boxes, which were being shifted inside the hotel but without passing through the scanners.

Upon inquiry, one of the three PPP friends who was waiting for the main gates of the hotel to open to get his car in, was informed that the suspicious boxes were shifted to the fourth and fifth floors of the hotel. Mumtaz Alam was furious both at the US Marines and the hotel security not only for the delay caused to them but also for the security lapse he was witnessing."

The International News Service further reports that two of the US Marines involved in the transferring of these nuclear weapons were also killed:

"The US Department of Defence at Pentagon has confirmed the death of its two marines in Hotel Marriott blast in Islamabad. According to GEO News, the Pentagon said on Sunday its two marines succumbed to injuries in the blast. The soldiers were deployed in the US embassy in Islamabad, it said. Pentagon said the names of the US marines could not be revealed prior to informing families of the victims."

India's anger against both the United States and Pakistan was further raised by Pakistan's deadly bombing of the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan, and as we can read:

"According to U.S. intelligence sources, Pakistan's intelligence service provided support to pro-Taliban insurgents responsible for the July 7 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which killed more than 40 people. Shocking though Pakistani involvement may seem to some, it is thoroughly predictable, given the worldview and interests of Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Unless we address what's angering the ISI, we won't be able to stabilize Afghanistan or capture al-Qaeda leaders inside its borders."

Most disturbing about these reports is their stating that 'an unknown number' of these suitcase nuclear weapons survived the explosion and are now to be 'presumed to be in the hands of their intended recipients'.

These reports also state the nuclear materials contained in these suitcase bombs were obtained during what is termed in the United States as a 'Bent Spear' incident which occurred in 2007, and as we can read:

"The 2007 United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident occurred at Minot Air Force Base and Barksdale Air Force Base on August 29–30, 2007. Six AGM-129 ACM cruise missiles, each loaded with a W80-1 variable yield nuclear warhead, were mistakenly loaded on a United States Air Force (USAF) B-52H heavy bomber at Minot and transported to Barksdale.

The nuclear warheads in the missiles were supposed to have been removed before taking the missiles from their storage bunker. The missiles with the nuclear warheads were not reported missing and remained mounted to the aircraft at both Minot and Barksdale for a period of 36 hours. During this period, the warheads were not protected by the various mandatory security precautions required for nuclear weapons."

Also, and as we had reported on in our September 16^th report US To Declare October 'Economic Emergency', Suspend Elections, the use of these suitcase nuclear weapons do, indeed, appear to be designed to deal the final death of the Western Nations political and economic structures in their continued efforts to shock their citizens senseless and allow them to institute the final set of laws needed to totally enslave these peoples forever.

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1145.htm

OKAY NOW I AM WORRIED! This article is from Sept 8th and I do not recall the media telling us about this shit. Will we get to vote on November 4th or will Bush/GOP/Neo Cons declare martial law on us and install McCain as the new dictator of the United States?

If so will we the American people stand up on November 5th (like in V for Vendetta) and fight for our Freedom and our countries Constitution or will we go quietly along because we are afraid to fight and die? I hope for bravery but I think we Americans have gone soft and like a cur dog will tuck our tails and crawl back under the porch. It's not our fault we've been shocked and awed so much in the last 8 years that we will be frozen by fear.

We will either fight for freedom or die slaves.

Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1

3rd Infantry's 1st BCT trains for a new dwell-time mission. Helping 'people at home' may become a permanent part of the active Army By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Sep 8, 2008 6:15:06 EDT

The 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they're training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.
Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.
"Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission. How the [Defense Department] chooses to source that and whether or not they continue to assign them to NorthCom, that could change in the future," said Army Col. Louis Vogler, chief of NorthCom future operations. "Now, the plan is to assign a force every year."

The command is at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., but the soldiers with 1st BCT, who returned in April after 15 months in Iraq, will operate out of their home post at Fort Stewart, Ga., where they'll be able to go to school, spend time with their families and train for their new homeland mission as well as the counterinsurgency mission in the war zones.

Stop-loss will not be in effect, so soldiers will be able to leave the Army or move to new assignments during the mission, and the operational tempo will be variable.
Don't look for any extra time off, though. The at-home mission does not take the place of scheduled combat-zone deployments and will take place during the so-called dwell time a unit gets to reset and regenerate after a deployment.

The 1st of the 3rd is still scheduled to deploy to either Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010, which means the soldiers will have been home a minimum of 20 months by the time they ship out.

In the meantime, they'll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the "jaws of life" to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.

The 1st BCT's soldiers also will learn how to use "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

"It's a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they're fielding. They've been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we're undertaking we were the first to get it."

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

"I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered," said Cloutier, describing the experience as "your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.

"I'm not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds ... it put me on my knees in seconds."
The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced "sea-smurf").

"I can't think of a more noble mission than this," said Cloutier, who took command in July. "We've been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home ... and depending on where an event occurred, you're going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones."

While soldiers' combat training is applicable, he said, some nuances don't apply.
"If we go in, we're going in to help American citizens on American soil, to save lives, provide critical life support, help clear debris, restore normalcy and support whatever local agencies need us to do, so it's kind of a different role," said Cloutier, who, as the division operations officer on the last rotation, learned of the homeland mission a few months ago while they were still in Iraq.

Some brigade elements will be on call around the clock, during which time they'll do their regular marksmanship, gunnery and other deployment training. That's because the unit will continue to train and reset for the next deployment, even as it serves in its CCMRF mission.

Should personnel be needed at an earthquake in California, for example, all or part of the brigade could be scrambled there, depending on the extent of the need and the specialties involved.

Other branches included

The active Army's new dwell-time mission is part of a NorthCom and DOD response package.

Active-duty soldiers will be part of a force that includes elements from other military branches and dedicated National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Teams.

A final mission rehearsal exercise is scheduled for mid-September at Fort Stewart and will be run by Joint Task Force Civil Support, a unit based out of Fort Monroe, Va., that will coordinate and evaluate the interservice event.

In addition to 1st BCT, other Army units will take part in the two-week training exercise, including elements of the 1st Medical Brigade out of Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Bragg, N.C.

There also will be Air Force engineer and medical units, the Marine Corps Chemical, Biological Initial Reaction Force, a Navy weather team and members of the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

One of the things Vogler said they'll be looking at is communications capabilities between the services.

"It is a concern, and we're trying to check that and one of the ways we do that is by having these sorts of exercises. Leading up to this, we are going to rehearse and set up some of the communications systems to make sure we have interoperability," he said.

"I don't know what America's overall plan is — I just know that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are standing by to come and help if they're called," Cloutier said. "It makes me feel good as an American to know that my country has dedicated a force to come in and help the people at home."

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/

Well I'm sure there is alot more news out there today like the U.S. melt down of our economy but I warned you about that over a year ago.

But maybe you should know Bush is meeting with our lender China to talk about our Economy. Who would ever have imagined a U.S. president having to talk to China about our economy, but China has become our master since Bush has borrow billions from them to make the oil corps rich by invading Iraq to steal their oil.

before you read the next article go sign the petition to stop the give away of our tax money for Wall Street who has embezzled BILLIONS over the last 71/2 years.

NO BAIL OUT FOR WALL STREET!

http://www.votenobailout.org/

China's Hu, Bush talk on financial crisis

BEIJING, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao and U.S. President George W. Bush spoke by telephone on Monday about the financial crisis engulfing Wall Street, China News Service reported.

The state-run news agency said the two leaders spoke at Bush's request.

"We have noticed that the United States has taken some important measures to stabilise the domestic financial market, and we hope these measures can achieve quick results so that economic and financial conditions in the United States will gradually improve and turn better," the news agency paraphrased Hu as saying.

The two spoke at the end of a weekend of intensive talks in Washington between Bush's administration and Congress to hammer out details of an unprecedented $700 billion bank bailout to forestall further financial market turmoil that risks plunging the economy into a deep recession.

Hu said the U.S. plan was in the interests of both the United States and China.

"It is also conducive to maintaining international financial market stability in order to promote the stable and healthy development of the world economy," China News Service paraphrased Hu as saying.

Seven Chinese banks have reported exposure of more than $700 million to failed investment bank Lehman Brothers. Lehman also guaranteed $500 million in structured notes held by a Chinese overseas investment fund.

But China's capital controls and the overwhelmingly domestic focus of its banks and insurers have largely insulated the country from the immediate fallout of the turmoil on Wall Street.

LOTS AT STAKE

However, China has a huge stake in the health of the U.S. financial system, not least because an estimated two-thirds of its $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves is invested in dollar bonds.

Beijing is a big holder of U.S. treasuries and of debt issued by the two mortgage agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that the U.S. Treasury effectively nationalised this month.

So a ballooning of U.S. government debt that drove down bond prices or the value of the dollar would spell big losses for China.

Looked at in another way, the United States could remain heavily reliant on Beijing to buy the extra U.S. debt needed to fund the bailout.

The China News Service story did not say whether Hu and Bush discussed possible investments by Chinese institutions in U.S. financial firms desperate to replenish capital depleted by writedowns on mortgage loans and securities.

China Investment Corp, the country's $200 billion sovereign wealth fund, is in talks to increase its 9.9 percent stake in Morgan Stanley .

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke hatched the unprecedented rescue plan amid concerns that other major banks could collapse and that credit markets were close to freezing, threatening the U.S. and global economy.

Under his plan, foreign banks with operations in the United States could also be eligible to sell illiquid residential and commercial mortgage-related assets to the Treasury.

Some U.S. lawmakers are demanding in return that foreign governments set up similar bailout programmes.

"We have a global financial system and we are talking very aggressively with other countries around the world, and encouraging them to do similar things, and I believe a number of them will," Paulson said on ABC television on Sunday. (Reporting by Zhou Xin; Writing by Alan Wheatley; Editing by Ken Wills)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7816217

See you tomorrow for more happy news brought to you by our Fascist Government.

Links of the Day 4/25/2008 Rush Limbaugh calls for Riots in Denver during the DNC Convention! Homegrown Terrorism!

2008-04-25T05:58:00.000-07:00

ACTION ALERT!

Limbaugh calls for riots in Denver during the DNC Convention.

Just when I think I’ve heard the worst from Limbaugh now he’s dreaming of riots in Denver.

Go here to listen to his terrorist threats

http://www.crooksandliars.com/category/right-wing-pundits/rush-limbaugh/

And the people of Denver think his remarks are ok. They’ll think ok when riots break out in Denver, homes and cars are burned, people are injured or murdered won’t they!

Go look how the people of Denver are voting! http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/15980105/detail.html

Go read what they are saying in the Denver Post!

Limbaugh "dreams" of - doesn't advocate - Denver riot

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_9043850

They are actually playing it down! He can advocate riots in Denver to millions of his listeners and that’s ok but let Reverend Wright talk to his congregation and they go nuts!

SURVEY Do you think Rush Limbaugh crossed the line when he hoped for riots during Denver's DNC convention?

61% say NO!

Can you imagine Randi Rhodes or Thom Hartmann or Jeff Farias or Stephanie Miller on NovaM http://novamradio.com/live/stream.php calling for riots in Denver?

Limbaugh clearly is asking some of his wacko listeners to go to Denver and cause a riot.

Here’s what we need to do.

1) Call both your senators and demand Limbaugh be censured then call your House rep and demand the they censure him too. If they can censure MoveOn.org for playing with a name surely they can censure these terrorist remarks.

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Contact both senators from Colorado too!

Salazar, Ken- (D - CO)Class III 702 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510 (202) 224-5852 Web Form: salazar.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm

Allard, Wayne- (R - CO)Class II 521 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510 (202) 224-5941 Web Form: allard.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Home

I believe he’s up for re-election this year.

2) File a complaint with the FCC http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/cgb/fcc475B.cfm

3) Contact Homeland Security and ask they investigate Limbaugh for terrorist threats for calling for a riot in Denver.

Contact Us

Citizen Line

Operator Number: 202-282-8000

Comment Line: 202-282-8495

Send a message using our online form about FOIA, Jobs, Security Threats, Website Issues or DHS Press. Direct link http://contact.dhs.gov/

4) Contact Limbaughs sponsors and tell them this is the last straw. If they advocate terrorist threats and condone calling for riots you will never buy their products ever again >.<

Sponsor list. http://www.topplebush.com/boycott_rush.shtml

http://www.takebackthemedia.com/rushbusted.html

This kind of crap by Limbaugh must stop!!!

Mike Malloy is right and I agree this Recreate68 is a black ops or CIA web site that too is calling for riots in Denver.

http://www.recreate68.org/

Contact the MSM if you want but as of today the media is still talking about the Reverend Wright while Limbaughs call for a riot in Denver are ignored!

Today I am starting a week vacation. I’m not planning on going anywhere just puttering in the garden.

I had been thinking about taking some time off for awhile and Limbaugh’s remarks have told me I really really need some time off.

Later All

Links of the Day 4/24/2008 Edwards Backers Team Up With Obama and Penis theft panic hits city..

2008-04-24T06:05:00.000-07:00

April 23, 2008, 2:32 pm

Edwards Backers Team Up With Obama

By Julie Bosman

No, John Edwards has not yet endorsed a candidate.

But nearly 50 of his most prominent backers lined up behind Senator Barack Obama today, in a gesture designed to give Mr. Obama a heavy boost of support less than two weeks before the North Carolina primary on May 6.

The group includes Ed Turlington, Mr. Edwards’s former national general campaign chairman; three North Carolina members of Congress; and 46 local activists, philanthropists and business leaders, among others. (Not surprisingly, given Mr. Edwards’s background, the list holds the names of 20 lawyers.)

Mr. Turlington, speaking from his law office in Raleigh, said that he had not expected to endorse a candidate after Mr. Edwards dropped out of the race on Jan. 30.

“I thought I was going to be on the sidelines,” Mr. Turlington said, adding that he made the decision about 10 days ago, after speaking to Mr. Obama. “I think his candidacy is doing a lot of important things that are similar to themes that John Edwards ran on.”

Among those things, he said, were Mr. Obama’s pledges to change the culture of Washington and fight for issues that are important to working people.

Throughout his second bid for the Democratic nomination, Mr. Edwards clashed repeatedly with Mrs. Clinton, particularly in debates. He criticized Mrs. Clinton for accepting campaign contributions from Washington lobbyists, a practice that he fiercely opposed.

And much of his campaign pitch centered on the notion that establishment Washington politicians have become corrupted by the influence of lobbyists for drug companies, oil companies and other corporate interests.

“You can’t just trade corporate Republicans for corporate Democrats,” he told audiences frequently, an attack aimed at Mrs. Clinton.

Mr. Edwards’s campaign sounded similar themes to Mr. Obama’s – both candidates positioned themselves as change agents who would clean house in Washington.

But despite heavy courting from both candidates, Mr. Edwards has still not made an endorsement. And the former Edwards supporters cautioned today that their announcement should not be viewed as a sign that Mr. Edwards’s endorsement was right behind. Two former campaign aides of Mr. Edwards said today that he has signaled recently that he may not endorse a candidate at all.

Mr. Turlington said he has “no idea” if Mr. Edwards agrees that Mr. Obama is the better choice. “He’ll make up his own mind,” he said.

Direct link

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/edwards-backers-team-up-with-obama/

Daniel Shays is an American hero it was his actions that brought about our Constitution and The Bill of Rights.

Shays’s Rebellion and the attack on Springfield Arsenal, January 25th, 1787

The Last Battle ofthe AmericanRevolution

In the Fall of 1786, General George Washington feared that the American Revolution might destroy the nation he and his countrymen had fought so hard to create. To his fellow Virginian and war comrade, Henry Lee, that October 31st, he wrote:

"I am mortified beyond expression when I view the clouds that have spread over the brightest morn that ever dawned in any country... What a triumph for the advocates of despotism, to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallacious."

Samuel Adams, President of the Massachusetts Senate, expressed his sentiment, when he later weighed in on the issue of pardons for Shays's rebels the following Spring, that:

“Rebellion against a king may be pardoned, or lightly punished, but the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death."

Thomas Jefferson, writing to James Madison from Paris, France, however, felt safe and assured when he wrote on January 30th, 1787, that:

"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion."

http://www.nps.gov/spar/historyculture/shays-rebellion.htm

Or here http://www.calliope.org/shays/shays2.html

Before Bush leaves office millions will lose their homes and because of the new bankruptcy laws they will be sentenced to decades of debt without relief.

Americans have been taken to the laundry by the mortgage lenders and their government. Our lawmakers set up the American people by deregulation. While they banks ripped us off they were setting themselves up for a downfall too.

Now Bush is bailing out the criminals while innocent Americans lose it all.

The rising defaults on subprime mortgages in the US have triggered a global crisis for the money markets. Hedge funds and banks across the world have found themselves exposed

It’s time for a new rebellion!

Subprime crisis provokes wave of lawsuits

By Joanna Chung in New York

Published: April 23 2008 22:20 | Last updated: April 23 2008 22:20

Plaintiffs have filed approximately two private lawsuits a day related to subprime mortgages in the US this year, setting case volumes on course to exceed levels not seen since the aftermath of the savings-and-loan crisis, a study has found.

During the first quarter of this year, 170 new civil cases were filed in federal courts, approaching the 181 filings made during the final six months of 2007, according to a review by Navigant Consulting, published on Wednesday. They were overwhelmingly dominated by class-action lawsuits, which accounted for 76 per cent of new cases.

“Like the credit crunch itself, the litigation is unrelenting,” said Jeff Nielsen, managing director at Navigant Consulting. “What we saw in 2007 was a mild breaking wave compared to the tsunami we’re witnessing now.”

He said the pace of subprime mortgage and related filings – now totalling 448 cases over 15 months to the end of March – suggests levels could soon surpass the 559 savings-and-loan cases of the early 1990s, which is seen by some as a historically high watermark in terms of a litigation fallout from a financial crisis.

The civil lawsuits will take many years to resolve, not least because of the complex nature of many cases. “Like the S&L cases, this is a process that will likely take years to play out,” said Mr Nielsen.

More than three-quarters of the civil cases filed last year are still active. But only 10 of the total 191 class actions filed in 2007 have been class certified, according to the report. Only 15 per cent of the cases have received a ruling on a motion to dismiss. The new cases from this quarter are “greener still”, the report says.

But the latest data, which exclude lawsuits filed at the state level, reflects the widespread nature of the credit crisis, which has spread far beyond the subprime mortgage sector. Eight of the most recent class-action securities lawsuits involved claims related to auction-rate securities, which are the subject of regulatory probes.

Many of the new suits, half of which were filed in courts in California and New York, alleged inadequate disclosure in connection with the loan origination process or claimed securities fraud. Some municipalities, including Baltimore and Cleveland, have filed suits against firms involved in the origination, servicing and securitisation of subprime mortgages.

The report notes that the number of suits targeting lenders over mortgage origination practices is likely to diminish, given the reduction in subprime mortgage activity. But other types of filings will continue to be sensitive to the state of the credit markets, and events, such as the collapse of Bear Stearns last month. “Intra-industry disputes appear likely to expand as financial institutions shun traditional mores and pursue remedies from one another through litigation,” it said.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4b1208da-117a-11dd-a93b-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

Concerns spread beyond mortgages

By Daniel Pimlott, Krishna Guha and Joanna Chung

Published: April 22 2008 23:52 | Last updated: April 22 2008 23:52

Risky loans made to borrowers with poor credit at the height of a housing boom may have helped to kick off the credit crisis, but residential mortgages were not the only type of lending where standards fell.

While residential property experienced the most dramatic deterioration in the quality of loans issued, contributing to a sharp rise in defaults rates on mortgage repayments, attention is increasingly turning to other kinds of loans as the economic slowdown puts borrowers under greater stress.

“We definitely saw a loosening of underwriting in a broad category of instruments over time which we are watching and monitoring,” said John Dugan, who as Comptroller of the Currency oversees national US banks, including most of the largest banks such as Citibank and Bank of America. “We’re seeing declining credit in a broad range of asset classes.”

Defaults on other forms of consumer loans such as home equity loans, credit cards, auto loans and commercial real estate are now beginning to shift higher, albeit from historically low levels, he said.

The rise in default rates threatens to spur yet further losses at major banks and could cause rising numbers of bank failures.

Bank of America earlier this week raised its loan loss provisions by nearly $5bn because of rising losses on home equity and small business loans as well as loans to homebuilders. Wachovia, Citigroup and Washington Mutual have also upped loan loss provisions to prepare for deteriorating credit.

So far the 20 largest banks that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency regulates have raised in excess of $80bn in capital since October to help deal with mounting losses and larger volumes of lending parked on their balance sheets. However, writedowns across the financial system from subprime related assets exceed $200bn, and are set to rise.

The rising losses at banks, including those from other forms of deteriorating credit, are likely to force banks to raise yet more capital, said Mr Dugan.

The capital raising has been encouraged by the Federal Reserve and its chairman Ben Bernanke, as well as the US Treasury Department, who as well as wanting to help protect US banks see the money as necessary in order to maintain lending levels and avoid a broader credit “crunch” across the economy. However, while the OCC has also been pushing capital raising, its priority is the “safety and soundness” of the US banking system, rather than the overall economy, Mr Dugan said.

“This is a place where I think you might get a little different answer from the Fed or Treasury,” he said. “I won’t say we are indifferent to the two [options of raising capital or selling off assets and cutting back on lending] because we think capital raising is a good thing. But we think that banks where they need to be prudent they should be.”

Outside of the major US banks, one of the greatest emerging risks is in commercial real estate, particularly to developers and homebuilders investing in residential property, according to the OCC. The Comptroller has been warning for several years over the problems posed by growing concentrations of commercial property lending, and last week called on bank managers to move quickly to recognise losses.

The proportion of nonperforming commercial real estate doubled in the year to the end of third quarter last year to nearly 2 per cent, according to the OCC. The Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversees savings and loans institutions, said that nonperforming commercial real estate loans had risen more than fivefold from 0.91 per cent of loans to 4.6 per cent in the year up to December 2007.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d074d4e0-10b1-11dd-b8d6-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=d355f29c-d238-11db-a7c0-000b5df10621.html

From The Times April 24, 2008

Inflation: vengeful return of the dragon that we thought had died

Gary Duncan: Analysis

During most of the past decade the idea of inflation as a menace to global prosperity faded. A problem that for most of the postwar era was an economic pestilence ceased to register as a big issue.

A tidal wave of cheap goods from Asia allowed Western shoppers to become used to ever-lower price tags. Central banks like the Bank of England, charged with keeping inflation in check, had never had it so easy. Inflation sank to historic lows as year-on-year rises in the cost of living dropped to low single figures, and interest rates plunged.

It marked a double dividend for living standards. Economists talked of “the death of inflation”. The economic dragon of the Seventies had finally, it seemed, been slain. Abruptly, however, inflation is back with a vengeance. The inflationary dragon was far from dead, merely dormant.

As in the Seventies, a driving force behind the inflation threat is soaring oil prices. But just as four decades ago, a drastic surge in energy costs is coupled with huge increases in prices for an even more basic necessity: food.

The fallout has been as startling as the upward spike in the prices of oil and foodstuffs. Across the world, a popular backlash has erupted.

In the developing world, the poorest struggling to eke out existences are being forced to cut back on meat to afford a meagre diet of rice and vegetables. The middle classes of poor nations, and the poor of middle-income nations, face a brutal blow to living standards. Food riots have erupted in countries as diverse as the Philippines and Egypt. In the West, the toll may be less vicious but the consequences are still far-reaching. As sharply rising living costs leave consumers feeling a severe squeeze on their pockets, governments are coming under fire.

The intensity of the danger from inflation is hampering the efforts to fend off the threat that a global credit crunch, as well as housing market downturn in the US and Britain, will trigger economic setbacks, if not recessions. Trying to keep a lid on inflation, central banks have been forced to limit interest rate cuts they might have made to bolster growth.

At the heart of the problem lies the reemergence of China as an economic power, along with the rise of other mainly Asian emerging market nations. These trends have unleashed massive extra demand for commodities and energy.

At the same time, the rising incomes of millions of Asia’s poor who are migrating to its cities has triggered a shift to Western-style diets. Since feeding animals means even greater consumption of cereals, crop prices have also charged upwards.

Western efforts to promote biofuels have meant tracts of land once used for food being given over to crops for this purpose. Droughts in Australia and other disruptions have exacerbated food shortages. Worldwide stocks of wheat and rice have dropped from about 30 per cent of annual consumption in 2000 to only 15 per cent.

Oil prices are, meantime, kept at record levels by a combination of scant spare capacity for extracting and refining crude, strong global demand and Middle Eastern unrest, as well as speculation.

A growing number of economists believe that the fundamental forces now at work will keep food and fuel prices high for years to come.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article3803742.ece

Credit Suisse bank loses billions

UK Teachers' Pay Strike Closes Thousands of Schools

Britain hit with massive work stoppages

Go Jimmy Carter! Condi Rice like her boss has been a complete failure in her current job!

Carter says Secretary Rice "not telling truth"

Matthew Bigg
Reuters US Online Report Top News

Apr 23, 2008 13:37 EST

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of not telling the truth about warnings she said her department gave Carter not to speak to Hamas before a Middle East trip.

The State Department has said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, issued the warning before Carter, a veteran of Middle East diplomacy, went on his trip last week.

Rice said in Kuwait on Tuesday: "We counseled President Carter against going to the region and particularly against having contact with Hamas."

"President Carter has the greatest respect for ... Rice and believes her to be a truthful person. However, perhaps inadvertently, she is continuing to make a statement that is not true," a statement issued by the Carter center in Atlanta said on Wednesday.

"No one in the State Department or any other department of the U.S. government ever asked him (Carter) to refrain from his recent visit to the Middle East or even suggested that he not meet with Syrian President (Bashar) Assad or leaders of Hamas," it said.

It said Carter attempted to call Rice before making the trip and a deputy returned his call since Rice was in Europe.

"They had a very pleasant discussion for about 15 minutes, during which he never made any of the negative or cautionary comments described above. He never talked to anyone else," the statement said.

Carter had already on Monday, in an interview with National Public Radio, described as "absolutely false" any suggestion he had been warned not to meet Hamas.

"PRIVATE CITIZEN"

"The United States is not going to deal with Hamas and we certainly told President Carter that we did not think that meeting with Hamas was going to help the Palestinians," Rice said Tuesday while attending a conference in Kuwait.

The White House backed Rice and said events after Carter's meeting showed Hamas' true character.

Carter "is a private citizen and he made a decision to not comply with what the State Department asked him to do," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters on Wednesday.

Perino made an apparent reference to an attack on Saturday in which a Palestinian suicide bomber and two other gunmen were killed when they attacked a border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, wounding 13 Israeli soldiers.

"Actions speak louder than words," said Perino of Hamas.

Hamas, which controls Gaza, is viewed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel.

Carter, who met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Syria over the weekend, is trying to draw the Islamist group into peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

But Rice and other senior U.S. officials are concerned that Carter's meeting could confuse U.S.-brokered peace talks already moving at a slow pace between Abbas and Olmert.

Hamas won a 2006 election and briefly formed a unity government with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. It seized control of Gaza from Abbas' secular Fatah faction in fighting in June.

(Editing by Tom Brown)

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN23419139

Jimmy Carter doing the job Condi Rice cannot do as Secretary of State!

Hamas to hand truce proposals with Israel Thursday

Thu Apr 24, 2008 8:04am EDT

CAIRO (Reuters) - The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas will give Egypt detailed proposals on a truce with Israel on Thursday, a Hamas spokesman said.

A Hamas delegation led by former Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud el-Zahar arrived in Cairo on Wednesday night and has a meeting with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman on Thursday afternoon, added spokesman Taher al-Nono.

Nono declined to give details of the proposals in advance but a Palestinian official familiar with the truce talks said the Islamist movement had backed away from its earlier demand that a truce should include a ban on Israeli attacks on Hamas members in both Gaza and the West Bank.

Hamas, which controls Gaza but has prominent members resident in the West Bank, has previously insisted that a truce should begin and apply at the same time to both areas.

The new offer suggests a truce could begin in Gaza first and then move after an agreed period of time to the West Bank, said the Palestinian official, who asked not to be named.

Under the truce proposal Palestinian factions will stop rocket attacks from Gaza and Israel will refrain from raids and targeted killings and will open up crossing points out of Gaza, especially the Rafah crossing with Egypt, he added.

Israel has said it is not negotiating a truce with Hamas but would have no reason to launch attacks on the Gaza Strip if rocket fire from the territory ceased. But it says it reserves the right to take military action to protect its citizens.

The Egyptian intelligence chief, who is in regular contact with the Israelis, has been trying to negotiate a truce between Israel and Hamas, especially since Palestinians broke through the border with Egypt in January to escape a long Israeli siege.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, on a Middle East tour which ended this week, tried to persuade Hamas to declare a unilateral ceasefire with Israel. Hamas declined on the grounds that Israel had not responded to similar gestures in the past.

Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza in the past 10 days. Three Israeli soldiers were killed on the border with Gaza on April 16.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Writing by Jonathan Wright; Editing by Charles Dick)

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2412233620080424?sp=true

Israelis Claim Secret Agreement With US To Build On Captured Palestinian Land

Concerns mount ahead of US briefing on Israeli strike in Syria

Lebanese anti-aircraft positions fire on attacking Israeli aircraft

Karl Rove escaped the hand of justice during Watergate because the prosecutor said he had bigger fish to fry. Well Karl you’re the big fish now and justice is a dish best served cold and your days are numbered.

MUST READ ARTICLE! Great video too

Siegelman: Rove 'hijacked' the Dept. of Justice to win elections

Muriel Kane
Published: Wednesday April 23, 2008

In an extensive interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, who was released from prison on bond last month pending an appeal of his conviction on corruption charges, laid the blame for his prosecution squarely on Karl Rove's "hijacking" of the federal Department of Justice.

"This is not about me, it's not about my case," Siegelman emphasized in his appearance on Air America's Ring of Fire, a show hosted by Kennedy and Mike Papantonio available online at GoLeft.tv. "This is about America, and about a quest now that must be pursued to find out who was responsible for hijacking the Department of Justice and using it as a political tool to win elections. I believe that person that Congress will ultimately hold responsible is Karl Rove."

Siegelman noted that even before Republican whistleblower Dana Jill Simpson implicated Rove directly, "I suspected from the circumstantial evidence that Karl Rove was deeply involved in my prosecution. I mean, it was just so obvious that it was easy for me to put two and two together and connect those dots."

"I grew up with your father being the Attorney General," Siegelman told Kennedy, "and the heroic deeds that he did, and you know, you always thought that the Department of Justice was the last place that you could look to for justice and for fair play. But I think Karl Rove learned two things out of Watergate. ... He learned that you didn't have to create a secret plumbers unit within the White House when you had the Department of Justice. If you just appointed the right U.S. Attorneys, you could accomplish the same thing and more. And the second thing I think Rove learned was, you don't leave evidence behind like Nixon did with his tapes. You destroy e-mails."

Siegelman made clear his belief that, even though the corruption investigation launched against him by a Republican state attorney general just a few weeks after he was sworn in as governor in 1999 may have begun as a matter of local politics, once the Bush administration took office it became something far larger. By then, Siegelman was a rising star among Democratic governors, and after losing his bid for re-election in 2002 he became an increasingly visible critic of the administration. That in itself was reason enough for Rove to want to bring him down.

In support of his argument that he was targeted at the highest levels of the Department of Justice, Siegelman cited the involvement of several highly-placed figures. One was Noel Hillman, formerly the head of the Public Integrity Section at the department, whom Kennedy described as "a crooked federal judge from Camden, New Jersey, who is one of the other people who has completely corrupted the democratic process in our country and taken the Justice Department ... and turned it into a political outlet for muzzling and jailing political opponents."

According to Siegelman, Hillman "actually came to Alabama several times to speak up for the prosecution, even at a time when there were questions whether or not they were going to move forward with the case. He called the U.S. Attorneys to Washington and told them to go back and take a top-to-bottom review of the Siegelman case once they had lost their first run at me in 2004."

Another was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who visited U.S. Attorney Leura Canary in Alabama after the first case against Siegelman was thrown out by the judge and, far from criticizing her failure, offered his strong support. "Shortly after the case was lost by the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, who is a close social friend of Karl Rove's, Alberto Gonzales comes to Alabama to give her an applause and to pat her on the back and to shore her up and to tell everybody what a great U.S. Attorney she was."

Siegelman also noted that when the government witness who was preparing to testify against Siegelman told a room full of Department of Justice representatives that he had also given cash and blank checks to two prominent Republicans -- former Attorney General William Pryor and Senator Jeff Sessions -- "not one word was said and nothing was done."

"Every single one of those people had a conflict and should have stepped out of that room at that time," Siegelman explained. "It cries about selective prosecution, but it also cries out, who is holding this umbrella of protection over these people so that they felt comfortable operating in that environment where they were possibly, certainly violating the cannons of ethics, but possibly violating laws and certainly subverting my right to a fair trial?"

Siegelman added that "the Department of Justice, still to this day, is withholding over 500 documents that would shed some light on the origins of this case."

Karl Rove has denied having ever met Dana Jill Simpson, the Republican whistleblower who linked him directly to the prosecution of Governor Siegelman, and has rejected her allegations. He told GQ in an interview following Simpson's appearance on 60 Minutes, "She's a complete lunatic. I've never met this woman. This woman was not involved in any campaign in which I was involved. I have yet to find anybody who knows her. ... CBS is a shoddy operation. They said, 'Hey, if we can say "Karl Rove," "Siegelman," that'll be good for ratings. Let's hype it. We'll put out a news release on Thursday and then promo the hell out of it on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.'"

Video and audio of the interview follow.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Siegelman_Rove_hijacked_Dept._of_Justice_0423.html

CIA Acknowledges It Has More Than 7000 Documents Relating to Secret Detention Program, Rendition, and Torture

24/04/2008

Human Right Groups Charge Documents Reveal CIA Stonewalled Congressional Oversight Committees; CIA Says Many Documents too Sensitive to Release

NEW YORK and WASHINGTON, April 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) must stop stonewalling congressional oversight committees and release vital documents related to the program of secret detentions, renditions, and torture, three prominent human rights groups said today. Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the International Human Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law (NYU IHRC) reiterated their call for information, following the CIA's filing of a summary judgment motion this week to end a lawsuit and avoid turning over more than 7000 documents related to its secret "ghost" detention and extraordinary rendition program. This motion is in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed in federal court last June by these groups. The organizations will file their response brief next month.

Among other assertions, the CIA claimed that it did not have to release

the documents because many consist of correspondence with the White House or top Bush administration officials, or because they are between parties seeking legal advice on the programs, including guidance on the legality of certain interrogation procedures. The CIA confirmed that it requested -- and received -- legal advice from attorneys at the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel concerning these procedures.

"For the first time, the CIA has acknowledged that extensive records

exist relating to its use of enforced disappearances and secret prisons,"

said Curt Goering, AIUSA senior deputy executive director. "Given what we already know about documents written by Bush administration officials

trying to justify torture and other human rights crimes, one does not need

a fertile imagination to conclude that the real reason for refusing to

disclose these documents has more to do with avoiding disclosure of

criminal activity than national security."

The CIA's admission that it possesses at least 7000 documents relating

to rendition, secret detention and torture generated renewed calls by the

human rights groups for transparency and accountability from the

government.

"The Freedom of Information Act is one of the major checks on

government criminality in this country," said CCR Executive Director

Vincent Warren. "The CIA has acknowledged that it has well over 7000

documents that relate to the torture and disappearance of men. These

include some of our clients, like Majid Khan, who were known to be in the program. The public needs to know what crimes were committed in our name and how they were justified. This has been the most secretive, least transparent administration in history, and it is well past time for

accountability."

AIUSA, CCR, and NYU IHRC have filed FOIA requests with several U.S. government agencies, including the CIA. These FOIA requests sought information about individuals who are -- or have been -- held by the U.S. government or detained with U.S. involvement, and about whom there is no public record. The requests also sought information about the government's legal justifications for its secret detention and extraordinary rendition program. Comprehensive information about the identities and locations of prisoners in CIA custody -- as well as the conditions of their detention and the specific interrogation methods used against them -- has never been publicly revealed. This lack of transparency continues to prevent scrutiny by the public or the courts and leaves detainees vulnerable to abuse and torture.

Although the CIA did release a paltry number of documents in response

to the FOIA request, most were already in the public domain, such as

newspaper articles and a single copy of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which governs the treatment of civilians in times of war. The limited relevant documents that were released were documents pertaining to briefings demanded by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees regarding various aspects of the overseas detention and interrogation program.

Documents released to plaintiffs by the CIA demonstrate that many

within the government itself have been unable to obtain accurate

information from the CIA. These documents, which include letters from

Members of Congress to the CIA, demonstrate a pattern of withholding

information from Congress. In a pointed bipartisan letter on October 16,

2003, then-Chair and Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence requested that CIA Director George Tenet provide senior level briefings on the treatment of, and information obtained by, three men known to be held in secret CIA detention, admonishing the CIA by stating that the committee was "frustrated with the quality of the information" provided in past briefings.

The CIA appears to have avoided answering detailed requests for

specific information, responding instead with form letters and references

to briefings. These practices led to a forceful letter from Senator Carl

Levin, Current Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, (then the Ranking Member) who was attempting to investigate CIA involvement in detainee deaths. In a letter dated Oct. 24, 2005, Senator Levin noted that "[t]he lack of CIA cooperation with the investigations to date has left significant omissions in the record." The CIA's failure to cooperate with members of Congress demonstrates the need for public scrutiny of the secret detention and extraordinary rendition program under FOIA.

"The CIA has employed illegal techniques such as torture, enforced

disappearances, and extraordinary rendition," said Meg Satterthwaite,

Director of the NYU IHRC. "It cannot use FOIA exemptions as a shield to hide its violations of U.S. and international law."

In its legal filings, the CIA acknowledged that this program "will

continue." Some prisoners have been transferred to prisons in other

countries for proxy detention where they face the risk of torture and where they continue to be held secretly, without charge or trial. Human rights reports indicate that the fate and whereabouts of at least 30 people

believed to have been held in secret U.S. custody remain unknown.

In September 2006, President Bush publicly acknowledged the existence

of CIA-operated secret prisons. At the same time, 14 detainees from these facilities were transferred to Guantanamo and several more have arrived since. The administration has admitted to using so-called "alternative interrogation procedures" on those held in the CIA program, including waterboarding. The international community and the United States, in other contexts, have unequivocally deemed these techniques torture.

For more information or copies of the CIA's legal filings and released

documents, please contact ssingh@aiusa.org jnessel@ccrjustice.org or

opgenhaffen@juris.law.nyu.edu

For more information about the organizations involved, please see their

websites: http://www.amnestyusa.org http://www.ccrjustice.org or http://www.chrgj.org To see the most recent documents from this CIA filing, go to http://www.ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/cia-foia-documents.

SOURCE: PR NewsWire.com

http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=24220

WTF article of the year! The Congo has many problems but I’m sure penis theft is not one of them.

Penis theft panic hits city..

Wed Apr 23, 2008

By Joe Bavier

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.

"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.

Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.

"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station

(Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mary Gabriel)

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2319603620080423?sp=true

Republicans continue their economic assault on women including their own Mother’s, wives and daughters!

We women are still seen as second class citizens to the republicans. Women like foreign workers are nothing more than cheap labor for business in America.

McCain fails to vote on defeated equal pay for women Senate bill

04/23/2008

NEW ORLEANS — Republican Sen. John McCain, campaigning through poverty-stricken cities and towns, said Wednesday he opposed a Senate bill that sought equal pay for women because it would lead to more lawsuits.

The bill was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 56-42.

The Senate had scheduled a late Wednesday vote on the measure, which would have made it easier for women to sue their employers for pay discrimination. Both Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, left the campaign trail and returned to Washington to vote for the bill.

McCain skipped the vote to campaign in New Orleans.

"I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what's being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems," the expected GOP presidential nominee told reporters. "This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system."

The bill would have overturned a Supreme Court decision limiting how long workers can wait before suing for pay discrimination.

It was named for Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.'s plant in Gadsden, Ala., who sued for pay discrimination just before retiring after a 19-year career there. By the time she retired, Ledbetter made $6,500 less than the lowest-paid male supervisor and claimed earlier decisions by supervisors kept her from making more.

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 last May 29 to throw out her complaint, saying she had waited too long to sue.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) released a statement blasting Senate Republicans following the defeat of the bill. "By obstructing a vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Senate Republicans have thwarted efforts to restore balance in the law and allow victims of wage discrimination to seek justice in the courts. In so doing, they have again stopped necessary progress for all Americans," read the statement, in part.

Democrats criticized McCain for opposing the bill.

"At a time when American families are struggling to keep their homes and jobs while paying more for everything from gasoline to groceries, how on Earth would anyone who thinks they can lead our country also think it's acceptable to oppose equal pay for America's mothers, wives and daughters?" Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Karen Finney said.

McCain stated his opposition to the bill as he campaigned in rural eastern Kentucky, where poverty is worse among women than men. The Arizona senator said he was familiar with the disparity but that there are better ways to help women find better paying jobs.

"They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else," McCain said. "And it's hard for them to leave their families when they don't have somebody to take care of them.

"It's a vicious cycle that's affecting women, particularly in a part of the country like this, where mining is the mainstay; traditionally, women have not gone into that line of work, to say the least," McCain said.

McCain chose to visit the tiny hamlet of Inez, Ky., because it is where President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty. But McCain, contradicting President Bush by acknowledging the U.S. is presently in a recession, said Johnson's poverty programs had failed.

"I wouldn't be back here today if government had fulfilled the promise that Lyndon Johnson made 44 years ago," he said.

In recent weeks, McCain has proposed a series of tax breaks for corporations, government-backed refinancing for struggling homeowners and a summer holiday from gas taxes. He proposed another new program Wednesday: a tax write-off for companies that provide high-speed Internet access for underserved, low-income communities.

http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=10210

Hundreds riot at LA detention center for illegal immigrants

The Associated Press

Wed, Apr 23, 2008 (7:42 p.m.)

Hundreds of illegal immigrants awaiting deportation rioted at a county-run detention center and had to be subdued with tear gas, authorities said Wednesday.

The riot Tuesday started as a fight between detainees from rival gangs and spread to the detention center's outdoor yard, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Nearby sheriff's stations sent additional deputies to separate the detainees. The brawl was diffused "within minutes" after tear gas was used, said sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore.

Fights among incarcerated gang members periodically break out at state jails, prisons and immigrant detention facilities, sometimes sparking riots.

The federal Department of Homeland Security contracts with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to staff and manage the Mira Loma Detention Center in Lancaster, which holds about 900 detainees who are in the process of being deported or awaiting resolution of their cases in immigration courts.

Ten detainees were treated for injuries, including two who suffered serious head injuries.

Sheriff's officials will evaluate how Mira Loma guards separate detainees based on gang affiliation, Whitmore said. About 45 detainees involved in the riot have been identified as suspected gang members and moved to other federal facilities.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/apr/23/hundreds-riot-at-la-detention-center-for-illegal-i/

IRAQ

04/24/08 AP: Reconstruction of Samarra shrine unites factions in Iraq It was the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine here that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war, bloodshed that has left tens of thousands dead and this ancient city in ruins.

04/24/08 AP: British foreign secretary visits Iraq amid further clashes Britain's foreign secretary held talks Thursday with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as at least 13 people were reported killed in the ongoing fighting between Shiite militiamen and Iraqi and U.S.-led forces.

04/23/08 AP: US auditor says Iraqi oil windfall growing even bigger than expected New data on Iraq oil revenues suggests that country's government will reap an even larger than expected windfall this year — as much as $70 billion (€43.9 billion) — according to the special U.S. auditor for Iraq.

04/23/08 AFP: Petraeus to head US Middle East forces General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, has been named to head US forces in the Middle East, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday.

04/23/08 Reuters: Bangladesh evacuates stranded workers from Iraq Bangladesh has begun evacuating thousands of stranded workers who were trafficked into war-ravaged Iraq by illegal manpower traders, officials said on Wednesday. An Emirates Airlines flight carrying 42 Bangladeshis arrived in Dhaka...

04/23/08 khaleejtimes: Filipinos warned against defying Iraq travel ban The Philippine Consulate-General on April 23 repeated its caution to all Filipinos in the United Arab Emirates against violating the travel ban and risking their lives by travelling to Iraq for employment.

04/23/08 AFP: Death toll rises as Baghdad clashes spread Another 19 people were killed in fighting between militiamen and security forces in Shiite areas of Baghdad, officials said, as the death toll from weeks of street battles passed 360.

AFGHANISTAN

04/24/08 AFP: Pakistan, Afghanistan agree to a 'new beginning' in relations Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed to a "new beginning" to bilateral relations based on complete mutual trust and understanding, an joint statement said. The announcement came as Afghan foreign minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta concluded...

04/24/08 CNN: First-ever oil paintings found in Afghanistan Scientists have found what they described this week as the earliest oil paintings ever discovered. Murals found on cave walls in Afghanistan prove that painting with oil had been going on in Asia for centuries before artists...

KURDISTAN

Turkish army says it strikes PKK group in N. Iraq

Thu Apr 24, 2008

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish warplanes fired on a group of Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq on Wednesday as they tried to cross into Turkey, the army said on Thursday.

The army statement came a day after a military source said at least four Turkish military jets bombed Kurdish separatist targets inside northern Iraq.

"A group of armed PKK/KONGRA-GEL terror organization members, who were trying to cross into Turkey from northern Iraq's Hakurk region, were spotted and neutralized by fire from aircraft of the Air Forces," the statement said.

It gave no further details, but "neutralized" generally means killed.

On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrilla group said Turkish planes bombed a remote part of northern Iraq but no one was hurt.

A PKK spokesman denied the Turkish army statement and said the Turkish bombing had caused no casualties among the rebels.

"The Turkish news is false. There was a fierce battle between Turkish forces and the PKK in the area of Sirnak (in southeastern Turkey) yesterday. It lasted for hours," Ahmed Danees, PKK spokesman in northern Iraq, said.

"There were killed and wounded on the Turkish side," he said.

The Turkish military staged an eight-day incursion in northern Iraq in February against the PKK, which uses northern Iraq as a base to launch attacks on targets inside Turkey.

Ankara blames the separatist group for the deaths of 40,000 since 1984, when the group took up arms to carve out an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey.

The United States and the European Union, along with Turkey, consider the PKK a terrorist organization.

(Writing by Selcuk Gokoluk; Editing by Giles Elgood)

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2482862020080424?sp=true

The Kurds like the Armenians are being murdered by the Turks as Bush sits by an allows Iraq to be attacked!

Could the following article be one of the reasons for this new attack by Turkey?

: Staffan de Mistura takes Kirkuk issue to Brussels :

Since the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of Kurds, who were forcibly removed from their homes and farms by Saddam Hussein and replaced by Arab settlers, have been patiently waiting for their rights to be reinstated. Many Kurds from Kirkuk and its environs rushed back to the city following the downfall of Saddam Hussein, hoping that they will be able to return to homes and farms they lost. However, the U.S. military stopped the Kurds in their tracks and they were told that they should wait until an elected Iraqi government had emerged to address their grievances through legal channels. Large numbers of the internally displaced Kurds, who are still languishing in Kirkuk’s sport stadium and in ramshackle former government buildings, have been waiting for the government to restore their rights by implementing article 140 of the Iraqi constitution. However, foot-dragging by the government, supported by Washington and Turkey, has erected obstacle after obstacle to prevent implementation of that very article, which was approved by Iraq’s political factions and supported by American constitutional experts.

Article 140 was made redundant by the surprise visit of the U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to Kirkuk and her meetings with Kurdish, Arab and Turkman political factions on December 18, 2007. Kirkuk’s Arab and Turkman politicians, influenced by Arab nationalists and Turkey, opposed Kurdish demands during their meeting with Rice. It was after Rice’s visits to Kirkuk that the chairman of the Higher Committee for implementing article 140 resigned, stating that the legal time limit of December 31, 2007 had elapsed and that there was no more reason for the continuation of his committee. It was then that the issue of Kirkuk and other Arabized Kurdish territories was referred to the U.N. envoy, Staffan de Mistura in Baghdad. The referral of the issue to the U.N. practically froze all major steps taken since 2004 to address the issue of Arabized Kurdish territories.

Instead of expediting implementation of article 140 through mediations between Iraq’s political factions, de Mistura traveled to Brussels to seek advice from NATO and EU officials about the issue. On April 22, 2008, de Mistura, told a Reuters reporter, “The status of the northern Iraqi Kurdish city of Kirkuk must be solved through a political formula and not a hastily organized referendum that would trigger violence.” [1] It was part of de Mistura’s job was to help organize a well-grounded and not hastily prepared referendum. Instead of trying to bridge the gap between Iraqi politicians, de Mistura traveled to Brussels to seek remedies for the Kirkuk issue from the EU and NATO members, including the U.S. and Turkey, who have been responsible for blocking implementation of the article in question. De Mistura is doing disservice to Iraq and the Kurds by internationalizing the issue in favor of Turkey and the U.S., who are interested mainly in the oil and gas resources of Kirkuk. The resolution of the problem requires not only political consensus but also practical technical measures to readjust the administrative boundaries of the old Kirkuk province.

It is puzzling to see NATO and EU officials discourage de Mistura from organizing a simple referendum in Kirkuk, while they were instrumental in dismembering the former Yugoslavia and replace it by Slovenia, Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia. The double standard exercised by the west just to appease one of their members, Turkey, is outrageous. The Kurds are merely trying to reclaim what has been taken away from them by force through legal channels and are not seeking independence as Turkey claims. It is the Turkish paranoia about the Kurds and not Kirkuk, which is dragging the whole region down a slippery slope. Turning their back on the civil and human rights of some 30 million strong Kurds is a recipe for regional instability.

While de Mistura calls Kirkuk a Kurdish city, yet he fails to pursue implementation of article 140 of the Iraqi constitution, which prescribes remedies to the problem. De Mistura merely regurgitates the position of a Turkish parliamentarian, who visited Kikuk during fall 2006 and arrogantly told Kurdish officials that there will be no referendum on Kirkuk and that the future of the city should be settled through consensus. De Mistura says that the issue of “Kirkuk needs to be solved through a political formula in which everybody, majorities and minorities feel comfortable,” yet he offers no comfort to the Kurdish majority of Kirkuk. He told Reuters, “he would propose options so Iraq could decide under which authority to put four disputed locations,” near Kirkuk, but excluding Kirkuk. He assumes that the resolution of the administrative responsibility for those selected areas would help in deciding the future status of Kirkuk. This means an indefinite delay in addressing the grievances of more than 200,000 internally displaced Kurds, while Sunni Arab insurgents are consolidating their grip on Arabized Kurdish territories in Mosul, Salahadin, Kirkuk and Diyala. It is disappointing to learn that a U.N. representative like de Mistura say, “Nobody doubts that Kirkuk is a crucial area for Iraq and for the region,” while ignoring the rights of the province’s indigenous people. Is this what the United Nations stands for?

Since de Mistura is on a U.N. assignment in Iraq, he has no right to publicize his half-baked report, which should be submitted for the consideration of the Iraqi government. It is for the government to decide whether it should publicize the contents of such a sensitive report. De Mistura seems to be unaware of the fact that ethnic cleansing and sectarian violence has been rampant in Arabized Kurdish areas during the past five years in an effort to complete the job started by Saddam Hussein’s government. Agreements between Iraq’s political faction for holding a referendum on Arabized Kurdish territories should help stabilize the situation rather than not inflame it. The longer he waits, the more difficult it becomes to address the issue to the satisfaction of all parties, especially the Kurds. In a campaign of scare tactics, the U.S., Turkish and Iraqi Arab officials, helped by media, have often referred to Kirkuk as a powder keg, which could turn into a regional war. Now, de Mistura has coined a new phrase by describing the issue as the “mother of all issues.” One wonders whether de Mistura is trying to help solve the Kirkuk problem or he is merely trying to inflame the situation further.

http://www.kurdmedia.com/article.aspx?id=14744

Links of the Day 4/23/2008 Oil Hits New High and Don't forget who has the oil, Canadian Prime Minister warns US

2008-04-23T06:41:00.001-07:00

Clinton Wins.

Gees I guess you people in Pennsylvania like the same ol same ol. Change must not appeal to you, you like the way you’ve been treated for the last 30 years.

I guess you too want to bomb , bomb, bomb bomb bomb Iran. Lemmie tell you we are not the policemen of the world Israel can take care of herself.

You like dirty political ads that scare you and you like the Karl Rove politics. Oh well.

Even we here in Missouri voted for change and went with Obama.

Here is the Pennsylvania results. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#PA

Clinton the Brawler Beats Obama the Consensus Builder

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted April 23, 2008.

Clinton wins Pennsylvania to fight on, while Obama maintains a firm delegate lead.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) pledged to continue her campaign Tuesday in a victory speech in Pennsylvania, where she said she was best qualified to be the Democratic presidential nominee after beating Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) by 10 points in the Pennsylvania primary.

"Some people counted me out and said to drop out, but the American people don't quit and they want a president who doesn't want to quit either," Clinton told a packed Philadelphia ballroom in her first remarks in many days that contained no criticism of Obama -- after what many observers said was the most mud-filled primary yet.

Still, Clinton left no doubt that she would fiercely compete for the nomination, saying she would campaign in upcoming primaries that continue into early June.

"My answer to any who doubt is, 'Yes we will,'" she said, to cheers.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton led Obama 55 percent to 45 percent. Early analysis suggested Clinton's win would cut into Obama's 144-delegate lead by perhaps 20 delegates, a gain that could be reversed if Obama wins in North Carolina, as polling suggests, in two weeks. Also on May 6 is Indiana's primary, which is expected to be close.

"I am in this race to fight for every one who has been counted out," Clinton said, striking the underdog theme. Early in her remarks, while live on national television, she asked for donations, saying, "The fate of this campaign is in your hands."

Meanwhile, Sen. Obama, speaking at a rally in Evansville, Indiana, congratulated Clinton and thanked supporter, including new voters and people who returned to voting after many years. He then returned to his main theme in the final days of the Pennsylvania race: that he wants to change Washington, for both Republicans and Democrats, so Americans can have a government that is responsive to real public needs.

"We believe that the challenges we face are bigger than the smallness of our politics and we know that this election is our chance to change it," Obama said. "The question is not whether the other party will bring change to Washington, but will we ... because the truth is the challenges we face are not just the fault of one man or one party."

Summing up, Obama implicitly criticized the heavily negative tactics of the just-finished Pennsylvania contest, where most outside observers -- including Wednesday's editorial in The New York Times -- said Clinton was to blame for throwing the most political mud.

"We can be the party that says and does whatever it takes to win the next election," he said. "We can calculate and poll-test our positions, tell everyone exactly what they want to hear. Or we can be the party that doesn't just focus on how to win, but why we should win. We can tell everyone what they need to hear about the challenges we face. We can seek to redeem, not just an office, but the trust of the American people."

What Next?

As the candidates resume campaigning in the next primary states, Indiana and North Carolina, political analysts and Democratic Party leaders -- including approximately 850 super-delegates that have not yet pledged to back either candidate -- will be taking a hard look at the reality of which candidate can win the 2,024 delegates to get the nomination and be best positioned to challenge the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz).

The difference between the campaigns' views on this point is significant and can be described as largely generational. Clinton's campaign has been arguing that it is best suited to challenge McCain because its candidate has won in major must-win states for the fall, such as New York, California, Ohio and Pennsylvania. It discounts Obama's victories in red states where Republicans have held majorities until now or very recent state elections. On the other hand, the Obama campaign sees itself as redrawing the political map -- much like Ronald Reagan did in 1980 or John F. Kennedy did in 1960, when those candidates brought a new generation of voters into their parties.

Both candidates mobilized crucial bases in the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania. Clinton won in the state's blue-collar regions, where steel mills closed a decade ago and people have struggled to keep a middle-class lifestyle. She also won among seniors in a state that has one of the highest percentages of elderly in the country, Catholics, and according to reports, attracted young voters in the working-class regions.

Obama, in contrast, won among the state's African-Americans, who are concentrated in its cities such as Philadelphia. He also won among middle-class whites in the suburbs in the state's southeast region and among students at mid-state universities.

The party's superdelegates, its elected officials and luminaries, will parse these splits in coming weeks as they decide whom to support. Those political insiders will be looking at issues that will not be in front of voters in the remaining primary states, such as each candidate's fundraising abilities and damage to the party of an increasingly negative contest. Party leaders fear these attacks will continue and would damage the eventual nominee as Sen. McCain escapes scrutiny.

The Spin

Earlier Tuesday, both campaigns issued statements spinning Clinton's expected victory.

The Clinton campaign, for its part, does not acknowledge any scenario that would counter its claim that she can win the needed number of delegates to be the nominee. They asked Tuesday why Obama did not win decisively if he was the best candidate to beat McCain in the fall.

"Sen. Obama's supporters -- and many pundits -- have argued that the delegate 'math' makes him the prohibitive frontrunner," the Clinton campaign's prepared statement said. "So if he's already the frontrunner, if he's had six weeks of unlimited resources to get his message out, shouldn't he be the one expected to win tonight? If not, why not?"

The Obama camp, in contrast, noted that Clinton had advantages that money cannot buy, such as the endorsement of Pennsylvania's popular and influential Democratic Governor, Edward Rendell, and the backing of his organization in a state with a history of loyal party politics. Still, Obama's staff said he would clinch the nomination in coming contests because the "delegate math" was on his side.

"We anticipate having a comfortable lead when voting in the last nine contests wraps up in June," his campaign said. "Sen. Obama will continue to gain strength with Democratic super delegates. He will maintain his position as the best candidate to take on John McCain. And he will be ready to unite the American people and begin a new chapter in our history."

http://www.alternet.org/election08/83233/?page=entire

April 23, 2008

Q: What Happened in Pennsylvania's Primary Election Today?

A: We'll Never Know.

PA Primary Called "All-Important." Democracy? Not So Much.

Once again, Keystone Staters were forced to cast their votes on non-transparent, unreliable and often inaccessible electronic voting machines, machines that produce results that cannot be proven to have any relationship whatsoever to the votes actually cast by voters.

While it's not possible to know how Pennsylvania as a whole voted today, nor whether any individual vote was counted as cast--and it never will be known--it is possible to know that eligible voters were denied the right to cast a ballot, that machines malfunctioned, that election laws were broken.

For details on that, we refer you to Velvet Revolution co-founder Brad Friedman's coverage over at The BRAD BLOG: Pennsylvania Primary: E-Voting, Registration, Polling Place Problem Report Wire and background information in Monday's blog post: The Pennsylvania Primary: Democracy of the Gods: Tuesday's Election Will be 'Unrecountable, Unverifiable, and Unauditable'...

For more analysis, check out Voice of the Voters on Wednesday night, April 23. This weekly election reform radio show hails from Pennsylvania, and host Mary Ann Gould has a great line-up of guests for this week. Listen online! or if you're in the greater Philadelphia area, tune in to 1360 a.m. ( http://www.1360wptt.com/ ) This week's special 90-minute show begins at 7:30 p.m. Eastern.

And, as always, check Daily Voting News by Voters Unite's John Gideon, posted daily at The BRAD BLOG or available by free email subscription from VotersUnite.org

Posted by Editor on April 23, 2008 7:33 AM

http://www.velvetrevolution.us/electionstrikeforce/

Brad has all the voting machine problems here http://www.bradblog.com/

News from the Votemaster

Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary by about 9.4%. Here is the map of the results by county. More details can be found at the NY Times.

Obama did well around Philadelphia, including Dauphin, Lancaster, Chester, and Philadelphia counties, winning by 10% in most of them. He won by 20% in Centre county, where Penn State University is located and eked out a narrow victory in neighboring Union county. The rest of the state was Hillaryland, where she rolled up big victories. In Lackawanna county in the northeast, for example, she won by an astounding 48%. She even won Allegheny county (Pittsburgh) by 8%, an area Obama had hoped to win. All in all, the voting pattern was similar to Ohio.

Here is what the exit polls had to show. Among men it was Obama 53% to 46% but among women it was the reverse, Clinton by 56% to 44%. However, breaking that down by race gives a different picture. She won white men 53% to 46% and white women 64% to 36%. Obama won black men 96% to 4% and black women 89% to 11%. We've seen that before only never so starkly. Black women identify enormously by race and hardly at all by gender. By income we again see the usual pattern, with Clinton winning by about 10% in households making under $75,000 a year and Obama winning those making $150,000. Also following the usual pattern: among high school graduates, Clinton won by 28% while Obama won the people who have done postgraduate study by 4%. Clinton won among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Obama won voters under 44 and Clinton won voters 45 and older.

These demographics have held for pretty much all the big industrial states in the rust belt all year. What is new is the partisanship. 98% of the Clinton voters said they would be satisfied only if Clinton were the nominee and 97% of the Obama voters said it's Obama or nothing. Also, 94% of the Clinton voters thought she will be the nominee, despite most outside experts having serious doubts about that.

In short, the Democratic party is deeply divided and that division is likely to continue until at least June 3. There are very clear demographic groups supporting each candidate and elections seem to turn on which candidate's group is larger in a given state. In North Carolina, Obama is likely to win due to the presence of many black voters, who go overwhelmingly for Obama. Clinton is likely to abandon North Carolina and concentrate entirely on Indiana, which also votes May 6. A clear Obama victory there could knock her out, but the state is a mixture of rural and rust belt, like Ohio and Pennsylvania, so she has a good chance there.

Here is a new poll of North Carolina. We also have new head-to-head polls in New York, showing either Democrat beating McCain there.

State	Pollster	End date	Clinton	Obama
North Carolina	SurveyUSA	Apr. 21	41%	50%

http://www.electoral-vote.com/

Obama camp charging voting problems in PA

Nick Juliano
Published: Tuesday April 22, 2008

Update: Local campaign alleges 'dirty tricks' in voting problems

Barack Obama's campaign has been circulating anecdotal reports of voting machine problems in some Philadelphia precincts, according to news reports.

The site Election Journal has been compiling reports of voting machine malfunctions and other problems throughout the day Tuesday. Brad Friedman also is compiling reports of voting problems on his blog.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, several machines were malfunctioning in the city, leading one local candidates campaign to allege "dirty tricks" were the cause.

Readers and Inquirer reporters attempting to cast ballots this morning found long lines across the region created by broken machines.

One of two machines was down at a busy Delaware County polling site. About 50 people already had voted by 9:15 a.m. at the Temple Israel on Spruce and Bywood Avenue in Upper Darby, which is heavily populated by immigrant and first time voters. Many of those freshly-minted voters had difficulties using the one machine that still functioned. "Hell of a day for one of the machines to be down," said one poll worker.

In South Philadelphia, both voting machines were broken at 4th and Ritner, smack dab in the middle of a John Dougherty strong hold. "The dirty tricks have begun," said Frank Keel, spokesman for the Dougherty campaign, who sees a conspiracy.

A local elections official interviewed on MSNBC acknowledged some problems early Tuesday morning, but he said those had been resolved before midday. He denied reports that only one or two voting machines were functional in some predominantly African American neighborhoods.

"We had a few problems early on. We always do," Fred Voight, a deputy commissioner in Philadelphia told MSNBC.

Video of Voight's interview is available here.

He called reports of machines breaking down "flat out untrue" and said "everything is working throughout the city as we speak." The interview aired around 11:15 a.m. Tuesday.

The Justice Department announced Monday that it would have monitors in Philadelphia to ensure compliance with voting laws.

Obama's campaign apparently passed along anecdotal reports of voting machine problems earlier Tuesday morning, MSNBC reported. Voight told the network that "campaigns are like four steps removed from where things are actually happening."

In two Pittsburgh neighborhoods, Obama's campaign also circulated reports of voting problems, according to the Tribune Review:

Obama's campaign said there were problems with machines in Lincoln Place and the Hill District, but county officials couldn't confirm that.

The Post Gazette also reported some minor problems but said they weren't causing major delays:

Because of the expected large turnout, election judges' difficulty getting machines started at a polling place in North Braddock and another in the city's Banksville section prompted some concern.

At these two sites, election judges, clerks and inspectors, all nominally paid volunteers, initially were unable to print out verification that the voting machines had been set at zero.

Nothing was wrong with the machines in either case, Mr. Wolosik said.

A technician was dispatched to each location and helped to properly set up the machines.

More than 30 people in Banksville and several more in North Braddock used emergency paper ballots to cast their votes.

Post-Gazette readers also reported problems at one or two polling stations this morning, including Graham Field and Beacon Hill in Wilkinsburg.

No details were available about those issues.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misidentified Philadelphia deputy commissioner Fred Voight

DEVELOPING...

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_camp_charging_voting_problems_in_0422.html

BUSH IN DENILE

Bush Says US Not in Recession; Dollar Slumps to New Low; Oil Hits New High

By Scott Stearns
New Orleans
22 April 2008

U.S. President George Bush says he is concerned about rising gasoline prices and the effects of higher energy costs on an already slowing economy. VOA White House Correspondent Scott Stearns reports, Mr. Bush made the comments in New Orleans, where he has been meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

President Bush says the U.S. economy is not in recession, but there is no doubt it is slowing down with higher food and health care costs depressing retail sales and a growing number of Americans struggling to make their house payments.

Record-high oil and gasoline prices are only making things worse. Speaking to reporters at the close of a summit with the leaders of Canada and Mexico, President Bush again called on Congress to approve a controversial plan that would allow drilling for oil in an Alaskan wildlife refuge.

"No question rising gasoline prices are like a tax on our working people," he said. "What is happening is that we have had an energy policy that neglected hydrocarbons in the United States for a long period of time, and now we are paying the price."

The president's comments came as the price of crude oil reached a new record above $119 a barrel and the U.S. dollar hit a record low against the euro. The U.S. housing market also continues to drag down the economy. Home sales and prices fell again last month with banks repossessing more and more homes as owners default on their mortgages.

Mexican President Calderon said the U.S. slowdown is being felt beyond its borders.

"I think that the steps taken so far by the fiscal tax monetary authorities in the United States and the Bush administration and in general have been appropriate. They have been the right measures, and we hope that they will very soon demonstrate effects so that we have a quick recovery among all our economies."

President Bush and opposition Democrats in Congress agreed on a temporary economic stimulus package of business incentives and tax rebates earlier this year. Mr. Bush said tax rebate checks should reach more than 130 million households next month, and that should begin to help the economy by the start of the third economic quarter in July.

He also called on Congress to make his record tax cuts permanent and criticized Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for saying they would repeal some of those cuts for wealthier Americans.

"You got people out there campaigning, 'Well, we are just going to tax the rich.' You can't raise enough money to meet their spending appetites by taxing the so-called rich," he said. "Every one of those so-called tax-the-rich schemes ends up taxing the middle class families. And in a time of economic uncertainty, we need tax certainty. At a time of rising gasoline prices, we need to be sending a message to all Americans: We are not going to raise your taxes."

This was the last North American leaders' summit for President Bush, who will be leaving office before next year's meeting in Mexico.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-04-22-voa54.cfm

Bush is running around the world trying to salvage his legacy. Fer-git-about-it George.

You sucked, your Administration sucked, your foreign policy sucks, EVERYTHING about your Presidency sucked.

Bush Hosts Middle East Leaders to Discuss Peace Effort

By VOA News
23 April 2008

U.S. President George Bush is hosting Jordan's King Abdullah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas this week to discuss the Middle East peace process.

Mr. Bush held a private breakfast Wednesday with King Abdullah, who has supported the Bush administration's effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before the president's term ends early next year. King Abdullah later left the White House, making no comments to reporters.

Mr. Abbas is due to meet Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice later Wednesday. He meets Thursday with President Bush.

The Palestinian president recently met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss a proposed peace conference to be hosted by the Kremlin.

Mr. Bush is set to visit the Middle East next month.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-04-23-voa14.cfm

Lets see if the MSM shows us this News Conference today. I’m betting they won’t. Maybe LeftTV or Democracy Now will air it.

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
Walkout Coalition To Hold Press Conference Tomorrow to Support Rutgers Students Prosecuted for Protesting Iraq War

Charges Especially Contentious as Walkout Was Widely Reported as Peaceful with Police Pleased

New Brunswick, NJ – Tuesday April 22, 2008 – Three Rutgers students, Erik Straub, a Rutgers College junior and member of Tent State University/Students for a Democratic Society, Suzan Sanal, a Douglass College junior and member of Rutgers Against the War, and Arwa Ibrahim, a Rutgers College senior, have been issued summons for activities that took place during the March 27, 2008 Rutgers Walk Out Against the War. These three students will be issuing a statement at a press conference immediately preceding their first trial date this coming Wednesday, April 23rd at 11:00AM during the Tent State University event located on the College Avenue campus of Rutgers in New Brunswick, NJ. The press conference will take place at the Vietnam War Memorial on Voorhees Mall.

The Walkout brought together about 600 Rutgers students and supporters, who walked out on their daily routine and rallied in protest of the war in Iraq. The Walkout culminated in a march, with an estimated 300 participants, that took a path through the streets of downtown New Brunswick and onto nearby highway Route 18.

Despite the fact that the action involved hundreds of students, police singled out only three for prosecution. Furthermore, while for the second year in a row the protest yielded no injuries, no arrests, and no incidents of vandalism or property damage, the New Brunswick Police Department is charging the three students with 'recklessly creating … a hazardous or physically dangerous condition by an act which serves no legitimate purpose.'

"91 Rutgers students will be shipped to Iraq beginning this month; Rutgers students are significantly more likely to be put into harm's way due to the criminally negligent actions of President Bush than they ever will be attending a protest in New Brunswick," replied Jean Pierre Mestanza, a member of the Walkout Coalition "The only hazardous and dangerous situation that has been created has been the result of the decision by the US government to invade Iraq." Mestanza went on to cite a recent report by the National Institute for Strategic Studies, a respected Defense Department research center, which referred to the Iraq war as "a major debacle."

Reactions among organizers of the Walkout have been mixed.

"I called my parents as soon as I found out," said a participant at the Walkout who wishes to remain anonymous. "I was worried when I heard they were prosecuting students because I was helping to organize during the march that day too. My job was mainly to walk around and make sure nothing got out of hand. One officer even thanked me after the event; I'm not sure if he opposed the war too or if he was just glad for the assistance we were providing by circulating through the crowd and keeping the situation calm and under control."

Other students took a different view.

"This is quite clearly selective political prosecution with the intent to intimidate organizers and prevent future protests from happening," said Adriel Bernal, a Walkout participant and member of Tent State University/Students for a Democratic Society. "They don't want us protesting against the war even if we're being peaceful and nonviolent. If we can't even protest peacefully in our own city, it's clear that our voices will never be strong enough to reach those in power elsewhere."

"While they're busy putting students on trial, they should be arresting the real criminals: the architects of the war," Bernal concluded.

The Walkout Coalition has issued the following demands in regards to the charges against Arwa, Suzan, and Erik, which they hope will be echoed and supported by the residents of New Brunswick, the Rutgers community, and peace and justice advocates across the United States and beyond:

To the New Brunswick Prosecutor's Office: Drop all charges against the Rutgers students being prosecuted in relation to the 2008 Walkout Against the War.

To the City of New Brunswick: Students are being prosecuted for peacefully opposing the war. It is obvious that the voice of students is not being considered in City Hall.

Therefore, we demand student seats on the New Brunswick City Council to represent our student neighborhoods. Student representation for our student wards! (www.empowernb.com)

As for Erik Straub, one of the students being prosecuted, he is trying to take everything in stride. "We all want our sisters and brothers in the military to come home," Straub explained. "While I don't relish the idea of spending any time in a jail cell, countless others have sacrificed even more in this unjust war. I am convinced we will defeat these unjust charges, but whatever happens, I believe I have a moral imperative to do whatever is required from me in the nonviolent pursuit of freedom from occupation for the Iraqi people and an end to the war."

http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=1002

Don't forget who has the oil, Canadian Prime Minister warns US

US, with less than 5 percent of the World's population, reports nearly 10 percent of its citizens behind bars

Fingerprints Aren’t ‘Personal Data’, Says US Homeland Security Chief

Load Up The Pantry, This Is Not A Drill

This is a must read article it’s written by a libertarian but he makes some sense.

Topic: Energy
It's the End of the World, as We Know it.

World oil production has peaked and is now in free-fall. The world as we know it will never be the same.

by Kipper Mathews
(Libertarian)
Tuesday, April 22, 2008

With the latest crude oil price hitting $115 a barrel on Wall Street and more increases predicted to be on the way. I decided to do a little intensive investigating to see if I could find a common denominator between the rise in oil and the sharp incline in gold prices.

It wasn't long before I realized my search needed to be refined to just oil and it looks as though I may have to write about oil and gold together at another time, as there is so much that needs to be reported on with oil alone.

I figured that the big increases probably had something to do with Big Oil, the wars in the Middle East and/or George Bush and his friends pockets. Unfortunately, from a writers point of view, there is no obvious corporate conspiracy to blame it on.

The answer simply was in supply and demand, as production can't keep up with the worlds expanding addiction for not just gasoline, but for all of the many products and services that we take for granted, such as manufacturing, the computer industry and food production and transportation which are so dependent upon oil.

Our whole country and most of the industrialized countries of the world can't survive without oil as we have steadfastly defined our culture around its production.

The world as we know it is abruptly coming to an end and most people aren't even aware of it.

It is not that we are running out of oil so much as it is that we can't produce it fast enough to support the economy.

In the 1960's gas seemed to be an endless commodity and service stations around the country were having what was referred to as "gas wars." Stations were selling gas for as little as 18 cents per gallon trying to steal customers from their competitors.

Continued here http://www.nolanchart.com/article3498.html

Denmark evacuates Algeria, Afghanistan embassies over 'imminent' threat

Brown Faces Growing Revolt Over UK Tax Increase On 5.3 Million Of Poorest Families

Olmert tells Syrian President Assad he agrees to cede whole Golan for peace

Iran, UN nuclear watchdog agree to discuss nuclear allegations

Using Food to Make Fuel Is Criminal, Venezuela Says

Calderon defends Mexican immigrant workers in US

Bush, Harper, Calderon Defend Trade Amid Backlash

Ya think cuz Mexico gave Halliburton the contract to repair oil lines etc? YES I DO!

Mexican oil output falls 7.8 percent in first quarter

Mexico could lose its status as one of the World's largest oil exporters

The OCCUPATION of Iraq must end now!

IRAQ

04/22/08 KUNA: Arab angst over Shiite power underpins Iraq policy

Ever since the fall of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003, Sunni Arab countries have had trouble adjusting to the emergence of a powerful Shiite-led Iraq. Sunni Arab governments have held back from establishing full diplomatic ties with Baghdad...

04/22/08 KUNA: Sadr cannot be defeated by force

Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr says the next step is "open war". The US-backed government shows no sign of backing down. Suddenly, after many months in which the news from Iraq has been mostly about falling violence, the country is reeling...

04/22/08 MNF: Marines attacked by SVBIED near Ramadi - 2 killed, 3 wounded

Two MNF-West Marines were killed when a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated at an entry control point in the vicinity of Ramadi, Iraq, at approximately 7:30 a.m. April 22. The SVBIED attack wounded three other Marines.

04/22/08 MNF: Marines attacked by IED - 1 killed, 1 wounded

A Multi-National Force – West Marine was killed by an improvised explosive device in Basra, Iraq, April 21. Additionally, one Marine was injured in the attack.

04/23/08 WaPo: Iraqi Women Take On Roles Of Dead or Missing Husbands

Thousands of Iraqi women have in recent years embraced new roles as violence has claimed their men. For Abadi, 43, the turning point came when she accepted the powerful assault rifle from friends concerned about her welfare.

04/23/08 WaPo: Iraqi Christians Struggle With Fear After Slayings

At the Rev. Thair Abdal's church, where on Sunday mornings sweet songs of prayer stream from the doorway, the congregation's fear of death leaves the sanctuary half-filled.

04/23/08 AP: Sadr City residents caught in the middle of Iraq showdown

Parents are afraid to send their children to school. Once-thriving markets are nearly empty as residents fear being caught up in gunbattles and airstrikes or face intimidation by gunmen who rule the streets.

AFGHANISTAN

04/23/08 AP: Denmark evacuates embassies in Algeria, Afghanistan

The Danish Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that it has evacuated its staff from embassies in Algeria and Afghanistan because of threats after newspapers reprinted a cartoon depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

04/23/08 TIME: 13 Killed in Attacks

A spate of suicide bombings and other attacks on security forces in southern Afghanistan Wednesday left 13 people dead and 24 others wounded, officials said

04/23/08 Reuters: Taliban kill seven Afghan police

Taliban insurgents killed seven Afghan policemen in an attack on a police post and a separate suicide bomb blast, officials and witnesses said. Five police were killed when Taliban insurgents attacked their post in the eastern province...

04/21/08 Reuters: Pakistan frees cleric who fought U.S. in Afghanistan

Pakistan's new government on Monday released the founder of an outlawed pro-Taliban militant group which has been involved in insurgency in both Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan, an official said.

04/21/08 Newsweek: Taliban Shifts to Small-Scale Operations in Afghanistan

In many ways the Kajaki dam is a symbol of Afghanistan's troubled history. Built by the United States back in the 1950s, it fell into disrepair for lack of spare parts under the Taliban.

04/21/08 Reuters: The Terrible Plight of Afghan Children

Afghan labourer Chaman travelled a whole day to bring his son to Kabul to have a kidney stone removed after doctors in their home province turned them away because they could not afford the fees.

04/22/08 RTTNews: Taliban Attack Checkpoint In Southern Afghanistan Killing Six Policemen

#Suspected Taliban militants attacked a border police checkpoint in southern Afghanistan and killed six policemen, police said Tuesday.

Links of the Day 4/22/2008 Go Vote and The Only Way out of Iraq is in a Body Bag

2008-04-22T06:04:00.000-07:00

OK Pennsylvania it's your turn so GO VOTE!

Barack Obama has won 13.7 million votes

Hillary Clinton has won 12.9 million votes

C-span hopefully will have good coverage of the Pennsylvania primary today without all the spin of the MSM beginning at 8 pm (ET).

http://www.c-span.org/Politics/Default.aspx

Sen. Clinton Rally Speech in Philadelphia
Monday | Clip

Sen. Obama Rally Speech in Pittsburgh. PA
Monday | Clip

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) "Exactly" Campaign Ad (1 min.)
Sunday

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) "Closed" Campaign Ad (1 min.)
Wednesday

Direct link for all of the above http://www.c-span.org/Politics/Default.aspx

National Poll of Polls Likely Democratic primary voters' choice

Likely Democratic primary voters' choice

http://edition.cnn.com/POLITICS/

"Thinking ahead to the next presidential election, do you think a Democratic or a Republican president would do a better job resolving the situation in Iraq?"

4/10-13/08

Democratic Republican Depends (vol.) No Difference (vol.) Unsure

52% 35% 2% 4% 7%

Are Americans finally waking up to the fact that Global Warming is real?

http://www.pollingreport.com/

USA Today 4/22

Bush's disapproval worst of any president in 70 years

President Bush has set a record he'd presumably prefer to avoid: the highest disapproval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll. In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing; 69% disapprove. . .

Direct link http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-04-21-bushrating_N.htm

New York Times 4/22

In Clinton vs. Obama, Age One of Greatest Predictors
... In a campaign where demographics seem to be destiny, one of the most striking factors is the segregation of voters by age. In state after state, older voters have formed a core constituency for Mrs. Clinton, who is 60, while younger voters have coalesced around Mr. Obama, who is 46. Age has been one of the most consistent indicators of how someone might vote -- more than sex, more than income, more than education. . . .

Direct link

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/us/politics/22age.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=politics&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1208865644-F+HlKgy+G1iwLxr7ZF92Ig

CBS News 4/21

Economy Worries Young Voters
Concerns about the state of the economy have passed the Iraq war as the top concern for voters between the ages of 18 and 29, according to a poll conducted by CBS News and MTV. Twenty-two percent of young adults surveyed cited the economy as the number one issue facing their generation, compared to 13 percent who said the war in Iraq. . . .

Direct link http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/21/opinion/polls/main4029859.shtml

New Republic 4/21

The New Class
Amidst all the statistics clamoring for attention during the last six weeks of 24/7 Pennsylvania primary coverage, there's one key number that hasn't gotten the attention it deserves: 306,918. That's the number of new Democrats added to the voter rolls in Pennsylvania between January 1 and the voter registration deadline on March 24. . .

Direct link http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=d67776d8-ab4e-4c12-9c1f-bfa041dcb314 .

Great article by Ray McGovern a MUST READ!

What About the War, Benedict?

By Ray McGovern
April 21, 2008

Pope Benedict XVI arrived in the United States last week against a macabre backdrop featuring reports of torture, execution and war. He chose not to notice.

Torture: Fresh reporting by ABC from inside sources depicted George W. Bush’s most senior aides (Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice and Tenet) meeting dozens of times in the White House during 2002/03 to sort out the most efficient mix of torture techniques for captured “terrorists.”

When initially ABC attempted to insulate the president from this sordid activity, Bush abruptly bragged that he knew all about it and approved. That comment and the action memorandum Bush signed on Feb. 7, 2002, dispelled any lingering doubt regarding his personal responsibility for authorizing torture.

Execution: Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court, with a majority of judges calling themselves Catholic, was openly deliberating on whether one gram, or two, or perhaps three of this or that chemical would be the preferred way to execute people.

Always colorful prominent Catholic layman Antonin Scalia complained impatiently, “Where does it say in the Constitution that executions have to be painless?”

Scalia did not seem at all concerned that the pope might remind him and his Catholic colleagues about the Church’s teaching on capital punishment, i.e., the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.” (Evangelium Vitae 56).

It was enough to bring this student of German history (and five-year resident there) vivid memories of frequenting those places where precisely these kinds of torture and execution policy reviews were conducted at similarly high levels by Hitler’s inner circle – yes, including judges.

War: Can the pope possibly be so suffused with his peculiar brand of theology that he is oblivious to what happened when he was a young man during the Third Reich.

Is it possible that papal advisers forgot to tell him that the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal described an unprovoked war of aggression, of the kind that the Third Reich and George W. Bush launched, as the “supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only in that it contains the accumulated evil of the whole?”

Could they have failed to tell the pope he would be hobnobbing with war criminals, torturers and the enabling cowards in Congress who refuse to remove them from office?

For this Catholic, it was a profoundly sad spectacle – profoundly sad.

Not since WWII, when the Reich’s bishops swore personal oaths of allegiance to Hitler (as did the German Supreme Court and army generals) have the papacy and bishops acted in such a fawning, un-Christ-like way.

With very few exceptions, the bishops (Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran) collaborated with the Nazis. Meanwhile, Hamlet-like Pius XII kept trying to make up his mind as to whether he should put the Catholic Church at some risk, while Jews were being murdered by the thousands.

Albert Camus

In 1948, in the shadow of that monstrous world war, the French author/philosopher Albert Camus accepted an invitation from the Dominican Monastery of Latour-Maubourg.

To their credit, the Dominicans wanted to know what an “unbeliever” thought about Christians in the light of their behavior during the Thirties and Forties. Camus’ words seem so terribly relevant today that it is difficult to trim them:

“For a long time during those frightful years I waited for a great voice to speak up in Rome. I, an unbeliever? Precisely. For I knew that the spirit would be lost if it did not utter a cry of condemnation…

“It has been explained to me since, that the condemnation was indeed voiced. But that it was in the style of the encyclicals, which is not all that clear. The condemnation was voiced and it was not understood. Who could fail to feel where the true condemnation lies in this case?

“What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man.

“That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today.

“It may be … that Christianity will insist on maintaining a compromise, or else on giving its condemnations the obscure form of the encyclical. Possibly it will insist on losing once and for all the virtue of revolt and indignation that belonged to it long ago.

“What I know – and what sometimes creates a deep longing in me – is that if Christians made up their mind to it, millions of voices – millions, I say – throughout the world would be added to the appeal of a handful of isolated individuals, who, without any sort of affiliation, today intercede almost everywhere and ceaselessly for children and other people.”
(Excerpted from Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays)

Sixty years ago!

Perhaps the Dominican monks took Camus seriously; monks tend to listen. Vatican functionaries, on the other hand, tend to know it all, and to urge the pope to be “discrete.”

You saw that this past week with the pope in Washington and New York, as he forfeited the opportunity to follow the biblical injunction to speak truth to power – to speak out clearly, as Camus suggested, with moral authority.

Catholics All Around

Think back to last week and all the prominent Catholics who flocked to see the pope – many of them officials with considerable influence in the Judiciary and Legislature, with some important players in the Executive Branch as well.

There they were, with their families, the five Catholic Supreme Court justices, fresh from detailed deliberations on how best to implement state-sponsored killings, executions that are banned by virtually every civilized country.

Justice Scalia audibly salivated over how much noxious chemical should be shot into the veins of a “condemned,” and how quickly. (For those with strong stomachs, C-SPAN captured the proceedings.)

I am embarrassed to acknowledge that, like me, Scalia is the product of a Jesuit education (Xavier H.S. in Manhattan and Georgetown College). Despite his advocacy of “soft” torture techniques like driving nails under fingernails, Scalia continues to be lionized by many Jesuits and bishops alike.

In the House? Speaker Nancy Pelosi, erstwhile doyenne of the Archdiocese of Baltimore and now San Francisco, and minority leader John Boehner, R-Ohio – Catholics both – are about to allocate another hundred billion dollars to death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan for the most reprehensibly crass of political purposes – the coming election.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Massachusetts, last week tried to guild the lily, noting that Pelosi now insists that, in McGovern’s words, “We’re an equal branch of government; we’re no longer a cheap date.” Right.

Sadly, it appears that Pelosi’s key functionaries on House Appropriations (both of them Catholics) will cave in once again.

It is not as though they do not know the right thing to do. Just six months ago, Appropriations chair Dave Obey, D-Wisconsin, declared, “I have no intention of reporting out of committee anytime in this session of Congress any such [funding] request that simply serves to continue the status quo.”

Subcommittee chair John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, put it even more strongly a year before Obey did, and came close to calling the occupation of Iraq a lost cause – which, of course, it is. But it is not politic to say that before the election. Never mind the troops on the front lines.

Obey and Murtha caved last time. I will find it particularly devastating if Obey caves again now, for I have always considered him among the best legislators in Congress.

And since he is from Wisconsin, Obey recognizes better than others the McCarthy-ite demagoguery coming from the likes of Texas Republican Michael Burgess, to the effect that anything short of giving the president all the war funding he demands is “basically giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”

Pelosi also has been unusually candid in admitting that it is electoral politics, pure and simple, that explain her resistance to holding President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney accountable for high crimes and misdemeanors via the orderly procedure given us by the Founders for precisely this purpose – impeachment in the House; trial in the Senate.

If, as widely expected, the war funding goes through, several hundred more American troops are likely to die before some common sense can be injected into U.S. policy next year – not to mention how many Iraqis.

Iraq is a shambles. Two million Iraqis have fled abroad; another two million are internal refugees. Am I the only one who finds macabre the raging debate as to whether the attack and occupation of Iraq has resulted in a million or “only 300,000” Iraqis dead?

Apparently, the pope did not have any opinion on the Iraq War.

But Torture?

Surely the pope would speak out against the kind of torture for which our country has become famous: Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, CIA “black sites” – the more so, since Jesus of Nazareth was tortured to death.

The pope chose silence, which presumably came as welcome relief to four-star torturer’s apprentice, Gen. Michael Hayden, now head of the CIA.

The White House has made clear that Hayden is ready to instruct his torturers to waterboard again, upon Caesar’s approval.

Hayden proved his mettle when he was head of the National Security Agency. He saluted smartly when the president and vice president told him to disregard the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act and his oath to defend the Constitution.

One of Hayden’s predecessors as NSA director asserted that Hayden should have been court-martialed. Pelosi was briefed both on the illegal surveillance and the torture, but did nothing.

Having demonstrated his allegiance to the president, Hayden was picked to head the CIA. The general likes to brag about his moral training and Catholic credentials. At his nomination hearing, he noted that he was the beneficiary of 18 years of Catholic education.

All the while it was quite clear he was positively lusting to be in charge of waterboarding and other torture techniques – whatever you say, boss.

I was somewhat crestfallen after adding up my own years of Catholic education – only 17. Clearly I missed “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques 301.”

Keep It General; Focus on Others’ Sins

Saturday at the UN, the pontiff pontificated on “God-given human rights” and “massive human rights abuses,” but pretty much left it at that. The Washington Post reported that the pope was “short on specifics and long on broad themes.”

But there was one specific. Here in the U.S., the pope seemed to prefer to dwell on the pedophilia scandal – to the exclusion of much else. He is to be applauded for meeting with victims of clergy sexual abuse and expressing deep shame, but he got a free pass from the media in disguising his own role in trying to cover the whole thing up.

While still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he headed The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the Vatican office that once ran the Inquisition. In that capacity he sent a letter in May 2001 to all Catholic bishops throwing a curtain of secrecy over the widespread sexual abuse by clergy, warning the bishops of severe penalties, including excommunication for breaching “pontifical secrets.”

Lawyers acting for the sexually abused accused Ratzinger of “clear obstruction of justice.”

Very few American bishops have been disciplined. And when Bernard Cardinal Law was run out of Boston for failing to protect children from predator priests, he was given a cushy sinecure in Rome; many believe he should be behind bars.

In an interview with the Catholic News Service in 2002, Ratzinger branded media coverage of the pedophilia scandal “a planned campaign … intentional, manipulated, a desire to discredit the Church.”

It is nice that the pope has now changed his tune. Nicer still for him, he found himself mostly in the congenial atmosphere of Washington, where very few powerful miscreants are held accountable.

So What Did You Expect?

I do wish my friends would stop asking me that.

While it was good that the pope addressed the pedophilia issue head on, it seemed as though he made a decision to devote time and energy to the issue.

The side-benefit, of course, was being able to speak in glorious generality on other major issues – war, torture, capital punishment – in all of which, as we have seen, many of “the faithful” are deeply engaged – embarrassingly engaged.

I had hoped – naively, it turned out – that the pope might encourage his brother bishops to find the courage to state plainly what 88 bishops of the Methodist faith, George W. Bush’s tradition, declared on Nov. 8, 2005:

“We repent of our complicity in what we believe to be the unjust and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. In the face of the United States Administration’s rush toward military action based on misleading information, too many of us were silent.

“We confess our preoccupation with institutional enhancement and limited agendas while American men and women are sent to Iraq to kill and be killed, while thousands of Iraqi people needlessly suffer and die.”

I thought that perhaps the U.S. Catholic bishops could adopt the kind of resolution that 125 Methodist bishops signed on Nov. 9, 2007. It called for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the reversal of any plans to establish permanent military bases there.

The Methodist bishops’ resolution noted: “Every day that the war continues, more soldiers and innocent civilians are killed with no end in sight to the violence, bloodshed, and carnage.” And Bishop Jack Meadors summed up the situation nicely:

“The Iraq War is not just a political issue or a military issue. It is a moral issue.”

Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem

Visiting Yad VaShem, the Holocaust museum in West Jerusalem last summer, I experienced painful reminders of what happens when the church allows itself to be captured by Empire. An acquiescent church, it is clear, loses whatever residual moral authority it may have had.

At the entrance to the museum, a quotation by German essayist Kurt Tucholsky set a universally applicable tone:

“A country is not just what it does – it is also what it tolerates.”

Still more compelling words came from Imre Bathory, a Hungarian who put his own life at grave risk by helping to save Jews from the concentration camps:

“I know that when I stand before God on Judgment Day, I shall not be asked the question posed to Cain: ‘Where were you when your brother’s blood was crying out to God?’”

According to former President George H. W. Bush, George W. has “read the Bible straight through – twice.” Perhaps he skipped by that passage too quickly; or maybe he is highly selective as to whom he considers his brothers.

No excuse for Benedict, though; he knows better. And yet he opted to squander his glorious chance to speak out and make a difference.

Methodist Bishop Meadors is right; the war is a moral issue. But President Bush has refused, time and time again, to meet with his Methodist bishops. And now he has the imprimatur of the pope.

The bottom line is challenging: to the degree that right and wrong, moral and immoral considerations are to be injected into discussions about war, executions, torture – well, let’s face it. There is only us.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington, DC. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. (To make a blog comment about this or other stories, you can use your normal e-mail address and password. Ignore the prompt for a Google account.) To comment to us by e-mail, click here. To donate so we can continue reporting and publishing stories like the one you just read, click here.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/042108a.html

Oil running out as prime energy source: world poll

Sun Apr 20, 2008

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most people believe oil is running out and governments need to find another fuel, but Americans are alone in thinking their leaders are out of touch with reality on this issue, an international poll said on Sunday.

On average, 70 percent of respondents in 15 countries and the Palestinian territories said they thought oil supplies had peaked. Only 22 percent of the nearly 15,000 respondents in nations ranging from China to Mexico believed enough new oil would be found to keep it a primary fuel source.

"What's most striking is there's such a widespread consensus around the world that oil is running out and governments need to make a real effort to find new sources of energy," said Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, a global research organization that conducted the poll.

Concerns over climate change, which is spurred by emissions from fossil fuels including oil, also were a factor among respondents, Kull said.

The current tightening of the oil market is not temporary but will continue and the price of oil will rise substantially, most respondents said.

"They think it's just going to keep going higher and a fundamental adaptation is necessary," Kull said in a telephone interview.

In the United States, the world's biggest oil consumer and among the biggest emitters of climate-warming pollution from fossil fuel use, 76 percent of respondents said oil is running out, but most believed the U.S. government mistakenly assumes there would be enough to keep oil a main source of fuel.

U.S. GOVERNMENT "NOT FACING REALITY"

"Americans perceive that the government is not facing reality," Kull said.

The United States is alone among major industrialized nations in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to limit greenhouse gas emissions that exacerbate global warming.

Last week, President George W. Bush said U.S. greenhouse emissions, especially carbon dioxide spewed by the burning of fossil fuels like oil, would stop growing by 2025 but gave no details on how this would come about.

The announcement drew sharp criticism from environmental groups. Others pointed out this means emissions will continue to grow for the next 17 years.

Only in Nigeria did a majority -- 53 percent -- believe enough new oil would be found to keep it a primary energy source, a reflection of its status as a major oil exporter and member of OPEC.

The poll was conducted in China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, Mexico, Britain, France, Iran, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Egypt, Turkey, South Korea and the Palestinian territories.

The margin of error varied from country to country, ranging from plus or minus 3 percentage points to plus or minus 4.5 percentage points, Kull said.

WorldPublicOpinion.org involves research centers around the world, and the locations of these centers determined which countries were included in the poll. Kull noted that the poll included countries that make up 58 percent of the global population.

The project is managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

(For more Reuters information on the environment, see here )

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1835277320080420?sp=true

Is there NOTHING the Bush Administration won’t LIE about?

18 veterans kill themselves EVERYDAY! Have I mentioned lately how much I hate Bush?

VA DELIBERATELY CONCEALED SUICIDE NUMBERS

AND RISK, INTERNAL E-MAILS SHOW -- E-mails from

Dr. Ira Katz, VA's mental health chief, show 18 vets a day

commit suicide and four to five of them are in VA care.

Earlier today, The New York Times had a BIG story about the VA's suicide prevention hotline. I wondered: Why this story and why now? That story here...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/08/nf08/nfAPR08/nf042208-1.htm

One reason, is the ongoing class-action lawsuit against the VA. The VA wanted some "good press." The latest on the lawsuit is here...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/08/nf08/nfAPR08/nf042108-1.htm

But, the real reason is that CBS News got the goods on the VA about veterans and suicide. Basically, the VA lied about veteran suicide numbers. And, the VA knew that CBS was going to release the story and "planted" the story in The Times.

Here are links to the incriminating e-mails...
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/VA_email_021308.pdf
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/VA_email_121507.pdf
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/katzresponse.pdf

For more about CBS News reports on veterans and suicide, use the VA Watchdog search engine...click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=cbs+suicide&op=and

Video of this story is here...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/08/nf08/nfAPR08/nf042208-7.htm

Today's story here... http://www.cbsnews.co
m/stories/2008/04/21/cbsnews_investigates/main4032921.shtml

VA Hid Suicide Risk, Internal E-Mails Show

CBS/AP) The Department of Veterans Affairs came under fire again Monday, this time in California federal court where its facing a national lawsuit by veterans rights groups accusing the agency of not doing enough to stem a looming mental health crisis among veterans. As part of the lawsuit, internal e-mails raise questions as to whether top officials deliberately deceived the American public about the number of veterans attempting and committing suicide. CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports.

In San Francisco federal court Monday, attorneys for veterans' rights groups accused the VA of nothing less than a cover-up - deliberately concealing the real risk of suicide among veterans.

"The system is in crisis and unfortunately the VA is in denial," said Veterans Rights Attorney Gordon Erspamer.

The charges were backed by internal emails written by Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's head of Mental Health.

In the past, Katz has repeatedly insisted while the risk of suicide among veterans is serious, it's not outside the norm.

"There is no epidemic in suicide in VA," Katz told Keteyian in November.

But in this e-mail to his top media advisor, written two months ago, Katz appears to be saying something very different, stating: "Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among veterans we see in our metical facilities."

Katz's email was written shortly after the VA provided CBS News data showing there were only 790 attempted suicides in all 2007 - a fraction of Katz's estimate.

"This 12,000 attempted suicides per year shows clearly, without a doubt, that there is an epidemic of suicide among veterans," said Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense.

And it appears that Katz went out of his way to conceal these numbers.

First, he titled his e-mail: "Not for the CBS News Interview Request."

He opened it with "Shh!" - as in keep it quiet - before ending with
"Is this something we should (carefully) address … before someone stumbles on it?"

Today we showed the e-mail to Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., who chairs the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.

"This is disgraceful. This is a crime against our nation, our nation's veterans," Filner told CBS News. "They do not want to come to grips with the reality, with the truth."

And that's not all.

Last November when CBS News exposed an epidemic of more than 6,200 suicides in 2005 among those who had served in the military, Katz attacked our report.

"Their number is not, in fact, an accurate reflection of the rate," he said last November.

But it turns out they were, as Katz admitted in this e-mail, just three days later.

He wrote: there "are about 18 suicides per day among America's 25 million veterans."

That works out to about 6,570 per year, which Katz admits in the same e-mail, "is supported by the CBS numbers."

In an e-mail late Monday to CBS News, Katz wrote that the reason the numbers were not released was due to questions about the consistency and reliability of the findings - and that there was no public cover-up involved.

posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org

Don't forget to read all of today's VA News Flashes (click here)

Click here to make VA Watchdog dot Org your homepage

email Larry

Direct link http://www.vawatchdog.org/08/nf08/nfAPR08/nf042208-6.htm

TALKING VETERANS DOWN FROM DESPAIR (04-22-08)

VA suicide hotline has received more than 37,200 calls and made
more than 720 rescues -- sending out emergency responders
all over the country to find someone on a bridge, with a
gun in his hand, with a stomach full of pills.

AND STOP LOSS WILL CONTINUE!

Contracts mean nothing so learn a lesson here if you join the military you will become a permanent indentured servant! The only sure way out of stop-loss is in a body bag!

General: Army Needs 'stop-loss' Until Late 2009

Soldiers Moving Toward More Home Time, But Keeping Them Beyond Contracts To Continue

WASHINGTON, Apr. 21, 2008

(AP) It will be more than a year before the Army can end the unpopular practice of forcing soldiers to stay in the service beyond their retirement or re-enlistment dates, a top official said Monday.

Lt. Gen. James D. Thurman, deputy chief of staff for operations, said he hoped that wartime demand for troops will decline enough by around the fall of next year to end "stop-loss." He said there are more than 12,000 currently serving under the practice _ an action that critics have called a "backdoor draft."

Thurman also said that as officials continue to increase the size of the Army, it could be possible by the fall of 2011 for troops to be home two years for every year they are deployed.

The two issues of stop loss and long tours of duty have been among the Pentagon's most disliked practices among troops. Thousands have been forced to stay in the service beyond their contracts since the start of the global war on terrorism. And tours of duty were increased to 15 months from 12 months a year ago so the Army could come up with the extra forces President Bush ordered for the troop buildup in Iraq.

Now that most of the extra troops are being drawn down by the end of July, Bush early this month ordered the tours cut back to 12 months, a move Thurman said would help the Army begin to restore its balance.

"We want to reduce the strain and stress on our soldiers and our families," he told a Pentagon news conference.

There are currently 17 Army combat brigade teams deployed _ 15 in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. Two are scheduled to come out of Iraq in the drawdown.

Though that allows officials to shorten tour lengths, it will be a while before they also can end stop-loss, he said.

"As the demand (for troops) comes down, we should be able to get us weaned off of stop-loss ... it's our intent to do that," Thurman said.

"But the demand exceeds supply right now," he told a Pentagon news conference.

He said he hoped, but couldn't promise, that if demand stabilized at around 15 brigades, the use of stop-loss could be ended by the end of budget year 2009, or beginning of budget year 2010.

Those currently being held even though their service is supposed to be finished include more than 6,800 active-duty Army, about 3,800 in the Army National Guard and close to 1,500 in the Reserves, he said.

The high tempo of operations in recent years has not only strained troops and increased separations and stress on their families, but prevented troops from training for the full range of possible operations. They have focused training on counterinsurgency operations and neglected other skills because counterinsurgency is what's needed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Though the Pentagon is expected to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan sometime next year, Thurman said he had not been asked for such troops.

"Could that happen? Yes," he said.

The United States now has about 31,000 troops there _ the most since the war began in October 2001 _ and also has been pressing the allies to contribute more.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/21/ap/cabstatepent/main4033239.shtml

Guest Column: Why stop-loss shouldn't be used in Iraq

Jonathan S. Miller

Issue date: 4/22/08 Section: Opinion

The government has largely admitted the original reason (justification) for intervention in Iraq - nuclear weapons were being developed in the state - was faulty or based upon false or faulty intelligence. If true, this would have been a legitimate national security concern, however poor or mistaken the means used to address it might have been. But after finding no evidence for nuclear weapon development in Iraq, the government under President George W. Bush immediately switched to moral arguments - getting rid of an evil dictator, establishing democracy in Iraq, etc. - to justify its continued intervention in Iraq.

Why, then, didn't the courts at this point begin to rule in favor of servicemen in Iraq who objected to having their originally agreed-upon terms of service extended against their will? Even though government officials had admitted the national security reasons for the original intervention were no longer valid, the courts continued to deny these servicemen, who wanted to leave Iraq or the service itself, their fundamental rights. Surely when the draft was abolished and Congress passed the original legislation allowing for stop-loss, which allowed the military to keep people in the service past their original terms of enlistment, they didn't allow it for any old reason. It had to be for genuine national security crises. What crisis was there when the government itself had admitted there was none? None, other than one delivered by engaging in some twisted and perverse logic that could make anything a crisis.

But the courts continued to rule against these servicemen and, in doing so, were implying these soldiers had no rights. The government could use them for any purpose whatsoever, not just for purposes of legitimate national defense. They had forfeited their rights when they joined the military and, in theory, could now be kept indefinitely. But does the law say that? It does not. But even if it did, that law would have been clearly unconstitutional. The courts were seriously amiss in defending these soldiers' constitutional rights. If these rulings are allowed to stand, a new class of citizens (Or shall we say non-citizens?) will have been established by the courts in the United States, without any rights whatsoever, except maybe to vote. The Defense Department will have found those robot soldiers it has been looking for.

When the president stated that we were fighting in Iraq to establish democracy and not to get rid of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, he forfeited the right to continue the war with unwilling personnel. He still could continue the war, but only with volunteers for that specific mission.

I am not saying that Bush's and Vice President Dick Cheney's original decision to intervene in Iraq, on the grounds that Hussein was developing nuclear weapons, wasn't also fraudulent. It was. But when they finally admitted it, or at least admitted they had been mistaken about the weapons, that should have ended it, right then and there (as I doubt Bush could have found sufficient numbers of volunteers to continue the war). But it didn't, and the real question is: Why? The answer and blame for this extends far beyond just Bush and Cheney and their administration or the military.

Once you get the unwilling participants out of Iraq, or any other location on the globe that is non-strategic (defining the term "strategic" in the narrowest sense of the word, meaning essential to the military safety of the U.S.), there are two questions you ask about those who remain in Iraq: Are their goals moral? And do their methods and plans indicate a reasonable possibility of achieving those goals? But these are questions you don't ask until all the unwilling participants are out of there.

Whether Barack Obama or the Democrats will follow such a policy as this is open to question. In at least one speech Obama gave, he only spoke of pulling the troops out of Iraq gradually. This is Nixon talk. This is what Nixon was saying in 1968 about Vietnam, or at least what he was practicing in Vietnam from 1969 onward, until the end of his presidency in 1974.

Jonathan S. Miller is a geography graduate student. He can be reached at jsmiller@geog.umd.edu.

http://media.www.diamondbackonline.com/media/storage/paper873/news/2008/04/22/Opinion/Guest.Column.Why.StopLoss.Shouldnt.Be.Used.In.Iraq-3339370.shtml

FIGHTING THE FERES DOCTRINE: SEEKING RECOURSE
FOR MILITARY MEDICAL MALPRACTICE (04-21-08)

Outrage over a recent spate of incidents spurs fresh efforts
to overturn the Feres doctrine, a 1950 Supreme Court
decision denying active-duty service members the
right to sue over medical errors. (with Video)

Direct link http://www.vawatchdog.org/

VETERANS' CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST
VA GOES TO TRIAL (04-21-08)

Claims VA isn't doing enough to prevent
suicide and provide adequate mental
health care for veterans.

Direct link http://www.vawatchdog.org/

What made the FDA think drugs made in China would be safe when the toys they sent us were poisonous?

Hell China didn’t keep any of the medicine for themselves they exported it all to other countries, so I think they KNEW!

Heparin & FDA Drug Inspections

Today

Yesterday, the Food and Drug Admin. (FDA) cited a Chinese firm for impurities found in the blood thinner, heparin. Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach appears at a House Energy and Commerce Subcmte. hearing on heparin and the FDA's Foreign Drug Inspection Program.

WATCH http://www.c-span.org/

FDA cites Chinese firm's manufacturing processes for heparin

By KEVIN FREKING – 16 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Chinese manufacturer of a heparin ingredient does not have adequate systems for ensuring that the raw materials it uses are safe and that any impurities are removed, the Food and Drug Administration told the company Monday.

The FDA released a warning letter to Changzhou SPL Co., hours after Chinese officials voiced doubts that a contaminant identified in the blood thinner heparin caused severe allergic reactions in hundreds of U.S. patients.

The FDA told Changzhou SPL that it had "significant deviations" from good manufacturing processes. Until it complies, the agency will recommend disapproval of any new applications listing the company as the manufacturer of any active pharmaceutical ingredient.

Raw heparin is derived from pig intestines, often processed by small, unregistered workshops in China. Heparin is commonly used before certain types of surgery to prevent dangerous blood clots. Kidney patients also take it before undergoing dialysis.

The raw ingredient for Baxter International's recalled heparin came from Wisconsin-based Scientific Protein Laboratories, which in turn owns a Chinese factory — Changzhou SPL — and buys additional raw heparin from other Chinese suppliers.

The company said it regretted FDA's decision and that it did not believe the warning letter reflected Changzhou SPL's actual state of compliance with good manufacturing practices.

At an embassy news conference, Chinese officials said the problems linked to heparin could have occurred in the United States, or that chronic conditions in some patients led to severe reactions. They plan to visit a Baxter International plant in Cherry Hill, N.J., to get a better picture of heparin's development. They also hope to take back some samples for their investigation.

"When you see it, then you believe it," said Jin Shaohong, the deputy director general for the National Institute for the Control of Pharmaceutical and Biological Products in China.

The FDA has counted 62 deaths from allergic-style reactions that were associated with recalled heparin batches. The FDA can't say for sure what caused the reactions, but the chief suspect is a contaminant that the agency discovered in supplies of raw heparin coming from China — a compound derived from animal cartilage that so closely mimics heparin that routine purity tests can't detect it.

Germany also discovered the contaminant and recalled batches of heparin after some patient illnesses.

But the Chinese officials contended Monday that batches not containing the contaminant — called oversulfated chondroitin — also have been associated with side effects.

"The oversulfated chondroitin can therefore not be a suspected root cause of heparin adverse events as reported in U.S. media previously," Shaohong said.

Baxter denied that claim.

"We do not agree with that," said Baxter spokeswoman Erin Gardiner. "We have seen adverse event reports on batches where the contaminant has been confirmed to be present."

Baxter was considering the Chinese officials' request for additional heparin samples for their own further testing, Gardiner said.

The Chinese officials also said that aside from the U.S. and Germany, more than 10 other countries used heparin containing the contaminant to produce their final injection but reported no side effects. Also, one batch of heparin injections free of the contaminants has resulted in about a hundred adverse events, of which 25 were serious.

The officials also noted that the implicated Chinese factory — Changzhou SPL — was managed and overseen by a manager from its U.S. headquarters. The heparin ingredient produced by the factory has all been exported.

"None has been sold into the Chinese domestic market," Shaohong said.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iYOiZpfz8vLL3CRzyoqkXNgIQfZQD906F4E00

Mmm, funny our MSM is not reporting on the Puerto Rican Independence Movement. Why am I not surprised. This article is from last Wednesday.

FBI Continues It's Harassment on Puerto Rican Independence Movement

Cross posted from The Latin Americanist.

Just this morning, a Puerto Rican independence activist was payed a not so friendly visit by the FBI. Miguel Viqueira was getting ready to leave his home to go to work when armed FBI agents showed up, insulting and threatening Viqueira .

At 8:10 this morning, the FBI continued it's witch hunt by approaching Tania Delgado Soto as she left her home in Rio Piedras.

In both cases the FBI left when the individuals asserted their legal right not to speak to agents without a warrant and without legal counsel.

These very recent examples of the continued harassment of Puerto Rican activist demonstrates just how the U.S. federal government operates with regards to the Puerto Rican people and those determined to fight for the island's sovereignty. People are reminded that they have no legal responsibility to speak to federal agents, that when they are approached they should seek legal counsel, and report all incidents of harassment so that the Feds know that they are being watched.

Edited to add that now radio reports are coming in saying that up to four people have been harassed by armed FBI agents. There is also an unconfirmed report of an arrest. Information will be updated as I get the information.

Gracias to Jo Boriken for the information.

http://vivirlatino.com/2008/04/16/fbi-continues-its-harassment-on-puerto-rican-independence-movement.php

Al Qaeda No. 2: Attacks on Western nations in works
CNN - 50 minutes ago
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Al Qaeda still has plans to target Western countries involved in the Iraq war, Osama bin Laden's chief deputy warns in an audiotape released Tuesday to answer questions posed by followers.
Al-Qaeda leader Zawahiri slams UN presence in Lebanon Monsters and Critics.com
Al-Qaeda slams Hamas for making peace overture Australian News

Direct link http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/04/22/zawahiri.targets.ap/

Zimbabwe bristles at criticism of arms shipment
The Associated Press - 38 minutes ago
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Zimbabwe's government on Tuesday bristled at criticism it was receiving arms from China, as pressure mounted for neighboring African countries to keep the weapons from reaching their destination.
German bank gets impound order for Chinese ship's Zimbabwe-bound cargo International Herald Tribune
China may recall Zimbabwe weapons BBC News

Direct link http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i4kT7pJlnuzY_vpKdTACcQYIPcvQD906TEG00

Links of the Day 4/21/2008 Bush Flies Confederate Flag while welcoming the Pope

2008-04-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

Don’t forget Saturdays action alert to the Illinois Governor.

26 years behind bars for an innocent man is enough punishment.

Links of the Day 4/19/2008 and Action Alert Saturday

Pentagon study calls Iraq war 'a major debacle' with outcome 'in doubt'

The Financial Times Endorses Obama

By astral66 - April 21, 2008

The premier international financial daily newspaper, The Financial Times, has endorsed Barack Obama. Some excerpts: (link below)

"After Tuesday’s vote, the Democrats should move quickly to affirm Mr Obama’s nomination. That is not just because his lead in elected delegates is already unassailable and the contest should be brought to a swift conclusion. It is also because he is, in fact, the better candidate."

"Mr Obama has fought a brilliant campaign, out-organising his opponent, raising more money, and convincing undecided Democrats as well as the country at large that he was more likeable, more straightforward and more worthy of trust."

"On form, he is a spell-binding orator and holds arena-sized audiences in thrall. He is given to airy exhortations, it is true, but genuinely seeks consensus and has cross-party appeal.

Mrs Clinton’s campaign, in contrast, has been a shambles. She and her team expected to have it all sewn up long ago; they made no plans for a long struggle, ran short of money and had to reorganise on the run.

Her speaking style is pedestrian, when it is not actually grating. Those who dislike her tend to do so with a passion: her disapproval ratings started high and after months of campaigning are climbing still. It is a tribute to her tenacity and to the loyalty she commands in the party that her fate was not sealed weeks ago.

How much the way that a campaign is run tells you about a candidate’s fitness to be president is debatable – but it does tell you something, especially if the candidate with the misfiring strategy is running on a claim of management expertise."

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/04/the-financial-times-endorses-o.php

Standing Room Only at Obama Town Hall in Erie, PA

By astral66 - April 18, 2008

Excerpts of blog

After his speech, Obama switched to the Q & A town hall meeting format. There were a lot of interesting questions, ranging from national intelligence issues, health care, jobs and the economy, veterans issues, and disability benefits. Obama fielded all of these extremely well. No one asked about any of the media generated controversies at all, people really wanted to focus on real issues that had a direct effect on their lives.

You could tell by Obama's statements and answers that he has done a lot of listening as he has travelled through Pennsylvania, and he cited specific examples of businesses closing, such as the Corning plant in State College that shut down and shipped it's equipment to China, or Steris in Erie, which recently shut down and shipped 350 jobs off to Mexico.

One man stood up and said, "We have lost a lot of jobs here in Erie, and it's quite all right with us if you tell people that we are bitter." That brought the whole crowd to their feet in applause once again, and Obama said, "That's the biggest response we've had all day!"

Eventually, Obama said it was time to wrap up the Q & A and took one more question. Things ended with a man who stood up with a cane when the microphone was brought to him. He started to say "I'm a disabled veteran and I served in ...," but the whole crowd stood up and applauded him so loudly that the rest of his sentence was drowned out by the noise. The applause went on for some time and then he waved for us to let him speak. It was a very poignant moment and you could see that he was very moved by the show of appreciation for his service, and had started to get choked up. At that point Obama went up to him and shook his hand, and the man said "I just want to thank you for running for President. Thank you."

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/04/standing-room-only-at-obama-to.php

THE MYTH OF 'AL QAEDA' NOW BEGINNING TO BE RECOGNISED BY THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA.

posted by Damian Lataan

Saturday, April 19, 2008

It’s interesting to note that, at long last, the mainstream media is hinting that the words ‘al Qaeda’ has simplistically become a metaphor for those that are fighting the US in Iraq and elsewhere and that ‘al Qaeda’ is not, as they have pushed for years, a specific organisation that is led and organised by the equally metaphoric and very dead ‘Osama bin Laden’.

Michael Cooper and Larry Rohter of ‘The New York Times’ today wrote: “As he campaigns with the weight of a deeply unpopular war on his shoulders, Senator John McCain of Arizona frequently uses the shorthand “Al Qaeda” to describe the enemy in Iraq in pressing to stay the course in the war there.” It’s a step in the right direction for the mainstream media to at last concede that ‘al Qaeda’ is indeed merely ‘shorthand’ for those that battle against US occupiers of various countries in the Middle East and Central Asia.

In much the same way as the Americans invoked the words ‘al Qaeda’ to denote those that raise their hands against them in defense of their lands, the Israelis today refer to all Palestinians that are fighting for their lands back as ‘terrorists’. The Israelis tried for a while to cast Palestinian fighters into the ‘al Qaeda’ mould but it was quickly revealed that those the Israelis ‘captured’ turned out to be Israeli intelligence patsies. They have occasionally tried it on since but haven’t of late been silly enough to actually insist that ‘al Qaeda’ is active with Palestinian fighters.

http://lataan.blogspot.com/2008/04/myth-of-al-qaeda-now-beginning-to-be.html

A Guide to 'NYT' Scoop on Pentagon's Media Propaganda

By Greg Mitchell

Published: April 20, 2008 12:45 PM ET

NEW YORK The front-page David Barstow epic in today's New York Times on how the Pentagon, starting in 2002, assembled a crew of retired military officers to disseminate propaganda via all-too-willing network and cable news outlets is drawing wide attention (see other story http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003791663 ). Barstow aptly refers to this as "a kind of media trojan horse."

Continued http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003791665

The Confederate flag has no place in public today but to be displayed on the White House South lawn is darn right disrespectful.

Pope Benedict XVI waves to the crowd as President Bush applauds, Wednesday, April 16, 2008, during a South Lawn arrival ceremony at the White House in Washington.

(AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

Go look

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/President-Bush-Pope-Benedict-XVI/photo//080416/480/ab187fab53ab425bb437930feb4f23c6/

>SIGH<

April 20th, 2008 2:50 pm
War-torn vets speak out

Haunted by their wartime experiences, some Iraq veterans are are protesting

By Claudia Feldman / Houston Chronicle

Hart Viges walks the streets of Austin in a tunic and carries a sign that reads, "Jesus Against War." It's one of many ways, he says, that he must atone for his actions as an American soldier in Iraq.

Army Sgt. Ronn Cantu says lingering memories of killing a civilian in Iraq led him to start a chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War at his home — Fort Hood.

And in Houston, Chris Hauff, an Iraq War vet who returned from combat two years ago, wrestles with the feeling that his best friend died in a misguided war.

"The idea that American soldiers are there to spread democracy and liberate the people is all smoke and mirrors," Hauff says.

After five years and more than 4,000 American deaths, hundreds of anti-war Iraq veterans and even some active-duty soldiers are speaking out in protest. Though they make up a relatively small percentage of all the soldiers who have served, certainly they speak from experience. They've had their boots on the ground.

Nationally, more than 1,000 have joined Iraq Veterans Against the War, which is calling for an immediate troop pullout. At a recent IVAW conference in suburban Washington, D.C., 60 vets addressed about 400 peers. Collectively, they described American soldiers unraveling under pressure — devolving from fighting for freedom and defending innocents to saving their own lives, protecting their friends and getting revenge.

Viges, tall and reed-slim, spoke as if his entry to heaven were on the line.

"I joined the Army right after September 11th," he began. He ended with, "I don't know how many innocents I've helped kill. ...

"I have blood on my hands."

His story, common among the speakers, began with good intentions and patriotic zeal. Then he realized he couldn't tell friend from enemy, and as he dodged mortar fire and roadside bombs, he feared each new day was going to be his last.

In that atmosphere, Viges and other soldiers assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division aimed countless mortar rounds at the town of As Samawah, southeast of Baghdad. They were trying to root out insurgents, but to this day, Viges doesn't know whom or what they hit.

"This wasn't army to army," Viges said. "People live in towns."

The panelists' speeches were vetted ahead of time by two groups of veterans who scoured news accounts, researched documents, videos and photographs where available, and interviewed others who were present at the time.

The testimonials were sobering. They included heart-stopping details. But the vets kept talking. Clearly, it was information they felt compelled to share.

Jason Washburn's testimony is preserved on the Internet. A Marine veteran from Philadelphia, he explained how the rules of engagement kept changing until it seemed there were no rules at all.

"If the town or the city that we were approaching was a known threat, if the unit that went through the area before we did took a high number of casualties, we were allowed to shoot whatever we wanted.

"I remember one woman was walking by, and she was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us. So we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher. And when the dust settled, we realized that the bag was only full of groceries. And, I mean, she had been trying to bring us food, and we blew her to pieces for it."

Jon Michael Turner, a Marine veteran from Vermont, described 3 a.m. house raids in which "problem" Iraqi men were subjected to his "choking hand."

It was tattooed in Arabic with an all-too-American epithet.

Turner recalled the first time he shot an Iraqi civilian. He offered no context or explanation except, "We were all congratulated after we had our first kills."

Turner also recalled the blind rage that led him and fellow Marines to start fights, spray bullets indiscriminately and fire on mosques. Eighteen men in his unit were killed by the enemy, he said. After that much bloodshed, the surviving soldiers were damaged mentally, if not physically.

"I just want to say that I'm sorry for the hate and destruction that I've inflicted on innocent people," said Turner, who began his speech by ripping off his service medals. "Until people hear about what is happening in this war, it will continue."

Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, read from a one-paragraph response to the conference:

"(We) always regret the loss of any innocent life in Iraq or anywhere else. The U.S. military takes enormous precautions to prevent civilian deaths and injuries. By contrast the enemy in Iraq takes no such precautions and deliberately targets innocent civilians. When isolated allegations of misconduct have been reported, commanders have conducted comprehensive investigations to determine the facts and held individuals accountable when appropriate."

The vast majority of American soldiers, Ballesteros added, serve honorably in combat.

The veterans who came to Maryland last month called their conference Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a sequel to a tense 1971 gathering in a Howard Johnson motel in Detroit, where more than 100 Vietnam vets braved frigid winter conditions to speak out against their war.

(Organizers of the original chose the title Winter Soldier Investigation to evoke Thomas Paine, who wrote in 1776, "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.")

Navy Lt. John Kerry, the future U.S. senator and presidential candidate, attended that meeting and, a few months later, lambasted the war before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Proud American soldiers were reduced to acts of senseless destruction, Kerry told the senators, "not isolated incidents but crimes ... ."

Many Americans — still recovering from the news of the My Lai massacre — believed Kerry. But lingering resentment from his testimony may have cost him the 2004 presidential election.

During his campaign against President Bush, Vietnam vets still furious with Kerry for somehow staining their service records and their honor struck back. They claimed he wasn't a war hero, that he hadn't earned his multiple medals, that in fact, he'd awarded his medals to himself.

The topic is still red-hot, even today. Pennsylvania veteran Bill Perry, who campaigned for Kerry and attended both Winter Soldier meetings, offered his perspective: "Kerry came from a well-educated, wealthy family, and he could have ducked the whole thing. I respect the person who served."

The comment was aimed at President Bush, who did not fight in Vietnam or any war.

The latest Winter Soldier event coincided with national polls showing two-thirds of Americans disagree with the handling of the war but consider the economy and their own financial logjams more pressing than combat halfway around the world.

Viges, the veteran of the 82nd Airborne, struggled to understand that disconnect.

One of his jobs in Iraq was to stand guard with a .50-caliber machine gun while his buddies searched houses supposedly inhabited by insurgents and enemy combatants. At the conference, searches of that kind were described vividly. Sometimes soldiers kicked in the front doors. Sometimes they upended refrigerators and ripped stoves out of walls. Sometimes they turned drawers upside down and broke furniture.

One day Viges was instructed to search a suspicious house, a hut, really, but he couldn't find pictures of Saddam Hussein, piles of money, AK-47s or roadside bombs.

"The only thing I found was a little .22 pistol," Viges said, " ... but we ended up taking the two young men, regardless."

An older woman, probably the mother of the young men, watched and wailed nearby.

"She was crying in my face, trying to kiss my feet," Viges said. "And, you know, I can't speak Arabic, but I can speak human. She was saying, 'Please, why are you taking my sons? They have done nothing wrong.' "

The testimonials went on for 3 1/2 days. They were interrupted once, when a middle-age man leaped from his seat and ran toward the stage.

"Liars! Liars!" he shouted. "Kerry lied while good men died, and you guys are betraying good men."

Others among the counter-protesters tried for a more even tone.

Chris Eaton, a former Houstonian now living in Dallas, spoke for them when he described himself as an average guy doing his best to support American troops.

"I'm not hateful," he said. "I'm not a warmonger."

He's married and the father of three. For his little girl's seventh birthday, he welded a butterfly made of old car parts, plate steel and rebar.

But Eaton didn't travel halfway across the country to talk about butterflies. He wanted to lend his voice to the counter-protesters. He wanted to remind the anti-war vets that they needed to tell the absolute and precise truth or risk demoralizing their brothers and sisters still fighting overseas.

Eaton also wanted to support his friend, retired Army Col. Harry Riley, who organized the counter-protest and the sponsoring group, Eagles Up.

Riley is a decorated Vietnam vet. He's got a calm, mellifluous voice — until he flashes back to 1971.

"No one stood up for me or millions of others smeared by Kerry," Riley said. "That first Winter Soldier meeting was total bunk, denigration and falsehood. We want to ensure this second one meets our criteria for accuracy."

It is true, Perry said, that a few of the testimonies from '71 contained significant errors and should have been omitted. That's unfortunate, he said, but hardly surprising given the impromptu nature of that meeting. The great majority of the vets, Perry said, spoke the truth.

Did not, said Riley, referring to a government investigation of the most serious charges made in Detroit. Not one of the soldiers' testimonies was substantiated.

Perry noted that the investigation was conducted by Army personnel. In his opinion, the Army's investigation of itself was a joke.

With a wrench, Riley pushed the conversation back into the 21st century. If atrocities or war crimes are taking place in Iraq or Afghanistan, he said, service men and women are duty-bound to report them under oath and through official channels. Failure to do so, he added, means they are potential criminals themselves and subject to prosecution.

"Oh, great," retorted Hauff, the Houstonian. Soldiers aren't going to turn themselves in, and they're not going to report their peers or their superiors, either, he said.

"Nobody wants to be viewed as a snitch or a narc," Hauff said. And who, he asked, volunteers for a dock in pay or a loss of rank or a court-martial or worse?

"You're supposed to do what you're told in the military."

For vets who often feel isolated by their experiences and their memories, old war buddies are their best, most comfortable friends.

Viges greeted old friends joyously between sessions at the Winter Soldier conference. Many of them were vets from the Vietnam era.

"They are my fathers," he said.

After struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, Viges said, he is somewhat better. He still jumps at the sound of fireworks, but he's stopped patrolling the perimeter of his house.

With shoulder-length, brown hair and a goatee, Viges looks very much like a model for velvet Jesus portraits. When he puts on his tunic and takes his anti-war campaign to the streets, he tells anyone who will listen, "Love thine enemy" and "Turn the other cheek."

A devout Christian, Viges finally left combat as a conscientious objector.

Cantu, the Fort Hood soldier, was one of several celebrity Texans at the conference. He says his pro-war sentiments changed 180 degrees the day he killed a civilian in Iraq. His convoy had been hit by an improvised explosive device, and he wanted revenge.

Next thing he knew, a car was coming toward them, and despite the warnings, it didn't stop.

Cantu opened fire. He didn't know until too late the car was filled with multiple members of an Iraqi family.

"I was literally on the verge of quitting (the military) right then and there," said Cantu, a third-generation military man.

Instead, he's spoken out against the war, through the protest chapter he founded and a 60 Minutes interview in 2007.

He occasionally comes to the attention of his superiors, too.

"All I've done is use my First Amendment rights," Cantu said. "I appreciate the Constitution. You can't really love it until you've actually been protected by it."

Cantu is scheduled to return to Iraq for his third tour of duty in early 2009.

"I've cheated death so many times," he said, suddenly somber. "I hope I can do it again."

Hauff, the Houston vet, didn't try to make it to Maryland. He had his hands full, with his job, his wife and his little girl. Besides, he didn't want to talk about the ugly side of war.

His best friend was on patrol, subbing for Hauff, when he was killed.

Hauff paused, keeping the many things he thought about that tragedy to himself. He had his emotions under control, he said, and he's moved on with his life.

His mother-in-law, sipping coffee and listening to him, cocked her head as if she didn't quite agree.

That year in Iraq changed him, Sherry Glover said. He doesn't like to be touched. He can be impatient with the people, even the child he loves the most. It's almost like he's barricaded himself inside an invisible fence that has a sign: "Keep out."

When Hauff finished talking, he frowned at his mother-in-law and walked away. They're sharing the same house, at least until Hauff and his family can afford to move.

Military families are paying for this war, Glover said darkly. She has a friend whose son tried to commit suicide between tours of duty. Army doctors gave him a bunch of prescriptions and deemed him ready to serve.

Glover couldn't go to the conference — she wanted to keep an eye on things at home — and made do by listening to the testimony on the local Pacifica radio station, KPFT-90.1 FM.

She and many other peace activists wondered why only a couple of outlets in the mainstream media covered the event.

The vets also wondered what all the other newspapers, magazines and TV stations were afraid of. The truth?

That's not it, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

The gathering was tiny, Sabato said, in comparison to protests from the Vietnam era.

Also, activists on both sides of the war have moved the debate to the presidential campaign.

President Bush has been unequivocal in his support for the war, Sabato said, and those who share that commitment will vote Republican. Those who oppose the war will vote for the Democrat.

It's not that Americans don't have an opinion, he said. They're just waiting for Election Day.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=11324

Whoa real bugs used for spying, unreal!

Pentagon agency that created spy bugs declines to allow scientist to talk

John Byrne
Published: Monday April 21, 2008

Vice President Dick Cheney is so favored by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency -- DARPA -- that they invited him to blow out the candles at their 50th anniversary bash.

"This agency brought forth the Saturn 5 rocket, surveillance satellites, the Internet, stealth technology, guided munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles, night vision and the body armor that's in use today," Cheney claimed. "Thank heaven for DARPA."

The secretive Pentagon outfit, a research arm which develops new military technologies, refused to allow a scientist to be interviewed for an article Sunday about on a program that has received scant attention by the press: small insect cyborgs that may mark the next generation in military surveillance.

No, it's not April Fool's.

"No agency admits to having deployed insect-size spy drones," the Washington Post's Rick Weiss wrote last October. "But a number of U.S. government and private entities acknowledge they are trying. Some federally funded teams are even growing live insects with computer chips in them, with the goal of mounting spyware on their bodies and controlling their flight muscles remotely."

"The robobugs could follow suspects, guide missiles to targets or navigate the crannies of collapsed buildings to find survivors," he adds.

But in an article reported late Sunday by TIME's Mark Thompson, the agency has admitted creating insects with embedded computer chip systems.

"DARPA declined TIME's request to interview Dr. Lal about his program and the progress he is making in producing the bugs," Thompson wrote. "The agency added that there is no timetable for turning backyard pests into battlefield assets. But in a written statement, spokeswoman Jan Walker said that 'living, adult-stage insects have emerged with the embedded systems intact.'"

"Presumably," he mocks, "enemy arsenals will soon be well-stocked with Raid."

But he may be underplaying the case. The CIA developed simplistic "dragonfly" robots in the 1970s, Weiss notes, but scientists are skeptical that enhanced cyborg surveillance insects have been created.

Adds Thompson:

So what's hot at DARPA right now? Bugs. The creepy, crawly flying kind. The Agency's Microsystems Technology Office is hard at work on HI-MEMS (Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical System), raising real insects filled with electronic circuitry, which could be guided using GPS technology to specific targets via electrical impulses sent to their muscles. These half-bug, half-chip creations - DARPA calls them "insect cyborgs" - would be ideal for surveillance missions, the agency says in a brief description on its website. Scientist Amit Lal and his team insert mechanical components into baby bugs during "the caterpillar and the pupae stages," which would then allow the adult bugs to be deployed to do the Pentagon's bidding. "The HI-MEMS program is aimed at developing tightly coupled machine-insect interfaces by placing micro-mechanical systems inside the insects during the early stages of metamorphosis," DARPA says. "Since a majority of the tissue development in insects occurs in the later stages of metamorphosis, the renewed tissue growth around the MEMS will tend to heal, and form a reliable and stable tissue-machine interface." Such bugs "could carry one or more sensors, such as a microphone or a gas sensor, to relay back information gathered from the target destination."

Wrote Weiss in October: "In one approach, researchers funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are inserting computer chips into moth pupae -- the intermediate stage between a caterpillar and a flying adult -- and hatching them into healthy 'cyborg moths.'"

More images of the fitted insects are here.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Secretive_government_program_wont_comment_on_0421.html

Ann Coulter booksigning takes place... in a university bathroom?

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Ann_Coulter_booksigning_takes_place..._in_0420.html

Must see video, this is to funny to pass up.

BLOGGED BY Alan Breslauer ON 4/20/2008 11:15AM

VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: ABC News Democratic Debate Protest In Los Angeles Protesters Hand Out Flag Lapel Pins To ABC/Disney Employees Coverage You Won't See In The Mainstream Media.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5913

This is a must read article!

Apr 22, 2008

CREDIT BUBBLE BULLETIN
Crisis intermission - now for stage two
Commentary and weekly watch by Doug Noland

Martin Feldstein, Harvard professor and former chairman of the US President's Council of Economic Advisors, wrote an op-ed piece in last Wednesday's Wall Street Journal - "Enough with Interest Rate Cuts" - worthy of comment.

"It's time for the Federal Reserve to stop reducing the federal funds rate, because the likely benefit is small compared to the potential damage. Lower interest rates could raise the already high prices of energy and food, which are already triggering riots in developing countries. In order to offset the inflationary impact of higher imported commodity prices, central banks in those countries may raise interest rates. Such contractionary policies

would reduce real incomes and exacerbate political instability.

"The impact of low interest rates on commodity-price inflation is different from the traditional inflationary effect of easy money. The usual concern is that lowering interest rates stimulates economic activity to a point at which labor and product markets cause wages and prices to rise. That is unlikely to happen in the US in the coming year. The general weakness of the economy will keep most wages and prices from rising more rapidly. But high unemployment and low capacity utilization would not prevent lower interest rates from driving up commodity prices.

"Many factors have contributed to the recent rise in the prices of oil and food, especially the increased demand from China, India and other rapidly growing countries. Lower interest rates also add to the upward pressure on these commodity prices, by making it less costly for commodity investors and commodity speculators to hold larger inventories of oil and food grains. Lower interest rates induce investors to add commodities to their portfolios. When rates are low, portfolio investors will bid up the prices of oil and other commodities to levels at which the expected future returns are in line with the lower rates. An interest rate-induced rise in the price of oil also contributes indirectly to higher prices of food grains. It does so by making it profitable for farmers to devote more farm land to growing corn for ethanol."

While I concur with the basic premise of the article (stop the cuts!), the substance of Mr Feldstein's analysis leaves much to be desired. First of all, I find it strange than he would address the issues of overly accommodative Federal Reserve policy, commodity price risk, and inflationary pressures without so much as a cursory mention of our weak currency. The word "dollar" is nowhere to be found; not a mention of our current account deficits. The focus is only on interest rates, and such one-dimensional analysis just doesn't pass muster in our complex world.

Most people remain comfortably oblivious to today's inflation dynamics. Mr Feldstein mentions increased demand from China and India. He seems to imply, however, that portfolio buying (financed by low interest rates) by "commodity investors and speculators" is providing the major impetus to rising inflationary pressures generally. Perhaps price gains could have something to do with the US$2.5 trillion increase in global official reserve positions over the past two years (85% growth). I would also counter that destabilizing speculative activity is an inevitable consequence, rather than a cause, of an alarmingly inflationary global backdrop.

I'll remind readers that we live in a unique world of unregulated credit. Excess has evolved to the point of being endemic to an apparatus that operates without any mechanism for adjustment or self-correction. There is, of course, no gold reserve system to restrain domestic monetary expansions. Some years back, the dollar-based Bretton Woods global monetary regime lost its relevance. And, importantly, the market-based disciplining mechanism ("king dollar") that emerged at times to ruthlessly punish financial profligacy around the globe throughout the nineties has morphed into a dysfunctional dynamic that these days nurtures self-reinforcing excesses.

The "recycling" of our "bubble dollars" (in the process inflating local credit systems, asset markets, commodities and economies across the globe) directly back into our securities markets rests at the epicenter of global monetary dysfunction.

A historic inflation in dollar financial claims was the undoing of anything resembling a global monetary system, and now this anchorless "system" of wildcat finance is the bane of financial and economic stability. To be sure, massive and unrelenting US current account deficits and resulting dollar impairment have unleashed domestic credit systems around the globe to expand uncontrollably. Today, virtually any major credit system can and does inflate domestic credit to create the purchasing power to procure inflating global food, energy, and commodities prices.

The long-overdue US credit contraction and economic adjustment could change this dynamic. But for now there are reasons to expect this uninhibited global credit bubble to instead run to precarious extremes, and for resulting monetary disorder to become increasingly problematic. Destabilizing price movements and myriad inflationary effects are poised to worsen. The specter of yet another year of near $800 billion current account deficits coupled with huge speculative outflows of dollars is just too much for an acutely overheated and unstable global currency and economic system to cope with.

I hear pundits still referring to a "deflationary credit collapse". Well, the US credit system implosion was largely stopped in its tracks last month. The Fed bailed out Bear Stearns, opened wide the Fed discount window to Wall Street; and implemented unprecedented liquidity facilities for the benefit of the marketplace overall. Central banks around the globe executed unparalleled concerted market liquidity operations.

Here at home, the GSEs' regulator spoke publicly about Fannie and Freddie (mortgage agencies) having the capacity to add $200 billion of mortgages to their balances sheets, with the possibility of increasing their guarantee business as much as $2 trillion this year (certainly including "jumbo" mortgages, that is, larger than the present limits set by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). The Federal Home Loan Bank system was given the OK to continue aggressive liquidity injections and balloon its balance sheet in the process. And now (see "GSE Watch" below) we see that the Federal Housing Administration (with its new mandate and $729,550 loan limit) is likely to increase federal government mortgage insurance by as much as $200 billion this year, while Washington’s Ginnie Mae (Government National Mortgage Association) is in the midst of a securitization boom.

Together, the Fed and Washington have effectively nationalized a large portion of both mortgage and market liquidity risk. It is, as well, worth noting that JPMorgan Chase expanded assets by $80.7 billion during the first quarter (20.7% annualized) to $1.642 trillion, with six-month growth of $163.3 billion (22.1% annualized). Goldman Sachs expanded its balance sheets by $69.2 billion during Q1 (24.7% annualized) to $1.189 trillion, with half-year growth of $143.2 billion (27.4%). Even Wells Fargo grew assets at an almost 14% pace this past quarter. And we know that bank credit overall has expanded at a 12.6% rate over the past 38 weeks.

Meanwhile, mortgage-backed securities (MBS) issuance by government-sponsored enterprises (such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) issuance has been ramped up to a record pace. And let’s not forget the credit intermediation function now being carried out by the money fund complex, with assets having increased an unprecedented $371 billion year to date (41.3% annualized) and $900 billion over the past 38 weeks (47.7% annualized). It is also worth noting the $184 billion y-t-d increase (29% annualized) in foreign "custody" holdings held at the Fed.

Sure, the credit system remains under significant stress, with additional mortgage and corporate credit deterioration in the offing. But, at least for now, policymakers have successfully stemmed systemic deleveraging. The credit system is simply not in deflationary collapse mode.

I could not be more pessimistic with regard to our economy's prognosis. And certainly much more severe credit problems lay ahead. I could argue further that recent credit system developments are indeed consistent with the unfolding "worst-case scenario". Yet I tend right now to see benefits from analyzing the current backdrop in terms of the conclusion of the first stage of the crisis.

The key aspect of this first stage was a breakdown in Wall Street's highly leveraged risk intermediation and securities speculation markets. The speed and force of the unwind was extraordinary and in notable contrast to traditional banking crises that track real economy developments. "Resolution" came only through the Federal Reserve and federal government assuming unprecedented risk, and at a cost of a policymaking mix of interest-rate cuts, marketplace interventions and government guarantees. It is worth pondering some of the near-term ramifications.

First of all, and as the market recognized this past week, yields have been driven to excessively low levels. Fed funds are today ridiculously priced in comparison both with the inflationary backdrop and with global rates. Mr Feldstein is calling for a halt to rate cuts when it would be more appropriate for the Fed to move immediately to return rates to a more reasonable level. They, of course, would not contemplate as much.

So I will presume that today's non-imploding credit system, replete with government-backed mortgage securitizations, government-guaranteed bank credit, presumed government-backstopped money funds and a recovering debt issuance apparatus, will suffice in the near-term in generating credit sufficient to perpetuate our enormous current account deficits. This is no minor point.

I have in past Bulletins made the case that US credit and economic bubbles had become untenable; the scope of credit and risk intermediation necessary to support the maladjusted economy had become too large. Extraordinary measures to effectively nationalize mortgage and market liquidity risk change somewhat the direction of the analysis. I would today argue that the risk of a precipitous economic downturn has been reduced in the near-term. As a consequence, US credit growth could

Continue to page 2 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JD22Dj02.html

Bush and Lee talk T-bones and bombs
It was all smiles after two days of talks between US President George W Bush and South Korea's Lee Myung-bak, and if secret deals are being hammered out between US and North Korean nuclear envoys, mum's the word. For public consumption, the leaders tackled issues ranging from an impending free-trade agreement to the US troop presence in South Korea - and beef. - Donald Kirk (Apr 21, '08)

I missed this one that came out on Saturday.

Petraeus hid Maliki's resistance to US troops

April 19^th

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - General David Petraeus, in testimony before US congressional committees last week, portrayed Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's late March offensive in Basra as a poorly planned effort that departed from what US officials had expected.

What Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, did not reveal is that Maliki was deliberately upsetting a Petraeus plan to put US and British forces into Basra for a months-long operation to eliminate the Mahdi Army from the city.

Petraeus referred to a plan for an operation to be carried out in Basra that he and his staff had developed with the head of the Basra Operational Command, General Mohan al-Furayji. But

Petraeus carefully dodged a question from Senator Hillary Clinton about what resources he was planning to deploy to Basra and over what length of time.

Clinton evidently suspected that the plan envisioned the deployment of US troops on a large scale in the Shi'ite south, despite the fact that the Iraqi government is supposed to be responsible for security there. Petraeus responded vaguely that it was "a phased plan over the course of a number of months during which different actions were going to be pursued".

Reports in the British press indicated, however, that the campaign plan was based on the assumption that British and US troops would play the central role in an effort to roll up the Mahdi Army in Basra. The Independent reported March 21 that Furayji had publicly declared there would be a "final battle" in Basra, probably during the summer, and that Britain had already promised to provide military forces for the campaign. It quoted "senior government sources" as saying that Prime Minister Gordon Brown's earlier pledge to cut the number of British troops in the south from 4,100 to 2,500 would "almost certainly be postponed until at least the end of the year".

Two days later, the Sunday Mirror quoted a "senior US military source" as saying that the "coalition" would turn its attention to Basra once the "huge operation" in Mosul against al Qaeda and nationalist Sunni insurgents was completed, and that the US was prepared to redeploy "thousands" of US Marines to Basra, if necessary.

This plan for a major foreign troop deployment to the south for the first time since the US battles against the Mahdi Army in April 2004 did not sit well with Maliki. In 2006 and 2007, he had repeatedly blocked US proposals that US and Iraqi forces target Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Baghdad as well as in the south.

When Vice President Dick Cheney, who had previously played the "bad cop" in the George W Bush administration's relations with Maliki, visited Baghdad in mid-March, one of his objectives was to get Maliki to go along with the Petraeus plan to eliminate the commanding position of Muqtada's forces in Basra. Maliki has told Iraqi officials that Cheney put pressure on him to go along with the Basra operation, according one Iraqi source.

After Cheney met briefly with Maliki on March 17, he discussed the "security situation" with Muqtada's Shi'ite rival, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which has been pushing for the destruction of the Mahdi Army. Cheney lavished praise on Hakim, whom he ostentatiously called "my friend", for "working so hard with the United States and with Iraq's other leaders to advance the cause of Iraq's freedom and democracy". The signal of the Bush administration's intentions toward Muqtada could hardly have been clearer.

The Cheney visit apparently mobilized Maliki, but not in the way Cheney had intended.

Four days later, when Petraeus met with Maliki's national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie to talk about the US campaign plan for Basra, Rubaie warned Petraeus that Maliki had a different plan. Petraeus was apparently told that the operation would last from a week to 10 days - not the several months envisioned in the Petraeus plan.

The main point of Maliki's operation, however, was that it would exclude US troops. As Maliki explained in an interview with CNN correspondent Nic Robertson on April 7, he had demanded that US and British troops stay out of Basra, "because that would give an excuse to some militant groups to say that this is a foreign force attacking us".

Maliki thus feared that a confrontation between thousands of US and British troops and the Mahdi Army would further inflame the feelings of Shi'ites in the south about the occupation, with which his own regime has been so tightly linked.

The Shi'ite south has become the most anti-occupation region in the country. The British polling firm ORB, which has been doing opinion surveys in Iraq since 2005, found in March that 69% of respondents in the south believed security would improve if foreign troops were withdrawn, and only 10% believed it would get worse.

When Maliki met with Petraeus the following morning, according to Petraeus' spokesman, Petraeus warned against sending "a couple of brigades" into the city, suggesting that he did not consider the scale of the operation to be large enough. Nevertheless, when Maliki told him the decision to launch an operation in Basra had already been made and that it would begin in three days, Petraeus agreed to support it.

When the Basra operation became an obvious disaster, however, Washington officials began to question Maliki's motives. On the third day of the operation, as Bush administration officials were reassessing what they described as "a rapidly deteriorating situation in southern Iraq", one official told the Washington Post's Peter Baker they were comparing conspiracy theories about why Maliki had acted so precipitously.

Although that comment was not explained, it clearly implied that Maliki was deliberately undermining the US objective of eliminating the Mahdi Army by using US and British troops.

Bush administration suspicions of Maliki's intentions could not have been eased by the fact that a delegation of pro-government parties traveled to Iran to ask the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps to negotiate a ceasefire with the Mahdi Army. That ploy, which did result in a tenuous ceasefire, raised the possibility that Maliki intended from the beginning that the outcome of the Basra operation would be a new agreement that would prevent the deployment of US and British troops to fight the Mahdi Army during the summer.

Bush administration officials have been asserting that the most important thing about the Basra operation is that Maliki is now convinced that Iran is really an enemy rather than a friend. But Maliki's April 7 interview with CNN's Robertson made it clear that he has not budged from his position that his government's interests lie in an accord between Iran and the United States - not in taking sides against Iran.

"We will always reject the idea of any side using Iraq as a launching pad for its attack on others," said Maliki. "We reject Iran using Iraq to attack the US, and at the same time we reject the idea of the US using Iraq to attack Iran ..."

Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.

(Inter Press Service)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JD19Ak01.html

IRAQ

04/21/08 AP: Roadside bomb hits convoy in Basra, causes casualties

The U.S. military says a roadside bomb hit one of its convoys in the southern city of Basra, causing casualties. The military has given no further details. AP Television News footage from Basra showed smoke rising from a vehicle burning...

The face of a madman.

04/20/08 MCT: Sadr threatens unending 'war' in Iraq if attacks don't end

Renegade cleric Muqtada al Sadr on Saturday issued a "final warning" to the Iraqi government, threatening an open-ended "war until liberation" if U.S. and Iraqi troops don't stop their offensive against followers of his militant Shiite Muslim movement.

04/21/08 AFP: US warplanes bomb Baghdad’s Sadr City

US warplanes dropped bombs overnight in the east Baghdad district of Sadr City where Shiite militiamen are battling security forces, residents said on Monday, as the American military reported another five people killed in the embattled township.

04/21/08 AFP: Iraq PM heads to Kuwait for key security conference

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki left for Kuwait on Monday to attend a conference of Iraq's neighbours to discuss the security situation in the battered country, his office said.

04/21/08 Reuters: Iraq to confront militias after Sadr threat

Iraq's government will confront armed militias and will not allow all-out war as threatened by populist Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Monday.

04/20/08 Reuters: 16 decapitated bodies found in Diwaniya

16 decapitated and decomposed bodies were found in the desert near Diwaniya, 180 km (112 miles) south of Baghdad, a senior military official in Diwaniya said. The bodies and heads were in separate plastic bags.

AFGHANISTAN

Afghanistan moves to center stage
The United States' monopoly of the Afghan war is coming under serious public challenge. Iran and Turkey have been vocal in their criticism of the way things are going - or not going. At the same time, erstwhile bitter enemies of the Taliban from the former Northern Alliance are now involved in direct talks with "important people" from the Taliban. Simultaneously, the geopolitics of energy are inextricably drawing China, Russia and Iran towards Afghanistan. - M K Bhadrakumar (Apr

04/20/08 MCT: With U.S. busy in Iraq, violence surges in Afghanistan

While America's attention remains focused on Iraq, violence is escalating in Afghanistan, worrying senior U.S. defense officials and commanders who are struggling to find some 7,000 more American and European troops to combat...

04/20/08 Agencies: Missing Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan says held by Taleban

Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, who went missing in February in the Khyber region, appeared on Arabic television on Saturday saying he was being held by the Taleban and urged Islamabad to meet their demands.

04/20/08 Reuters: Taliban urge U.N. to block Afghan executions

Taliban insurgents urged the international community and right groups to stop Afghan President Hamid Karzai approving the execution of about 100 prisoners whose death sentences were approved by the supreme court.

04/20/08 Xinhua: Afghan police seize 4.7 tons opium

Police in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province confiscated more than 4 tons opium, according to a press release of Interior Ministry issued here on Sunday. 04/20/08 AP: Iranian, Afghan forces clash at border Afghan police clashed with Iranian forces at the southwestern border between the two countries, leaving one civilian dead and two Iranian officers wounded, officials said Sunday.

04/19/08 AP: Up to 10 dead in Afghanistan from rare liver disease; wheat contamination suspected

As many as 10 people have died in western Afghanistan from a rare liver disease believed to be caused by contaminated wheat, officials said Saturday.

KURDISTAN

Let’s welcome Layla’s imprisonment for freedom!

KurdishMedia.com - By Hataw Sarkawt

15/04/2008 00:00:00

We are one of the greatest nations in blaming others for our miseries. Maybe our oppressors see our problems and have a reason to believe a good Kurd should be a dead one.

View Article

KNC-NA calls for revoking prison sentences of Kurdish leaders in Turkey

KNC -North America

16/04/2008 00:00:00

Kurdish National Congress of Norht America, April 16, 2008: On April 10, 2008, Mrs. Leyla Zana, a former MP for the Turkish government, and a recipient of the Rafto Prize in 1994, and the Sakharov Prize in 1995

View Article

Iraqi Kurds back PKK despite hardships

IWPR

18/04/2008 00:00:00

Villagers in the north continue to support rebels fighting Turkey and Iran, even though many have been displaced by recent fighting.

View Article

Open letter to President Carter: Help solve the Kurdish conflict in Turkey

KurdishMedia.com - By Karwan Azadi

20/04/2008 00:00:00

This week was another highly controversial one for you as you set out to solve an old problem in Gaza by meeting with a group the world has described as terrorist.

View Article

Links of the Day 4/19/2008 and Action Alert Saturday

2008-04-19T07:29:00.000-07:00

Take Action Saturday

The following article will need action to be taken on Monday. We need to flood the Governor’s office with phone calls.

We can send emails today. But lets drive them nuts on Monday with phone calls. For that matter ALL week, because the Governors office is SILENT and refuses to comment!

This is a pass it on, post it everywhere, send it to everyone in your email list.

What kind of article is this? I have several questions like who are the attorney’s that kept the secret while an innocent man sat in prison for 26 years. Who was this Andrew Wilson?

Who was the prosecutor that convicted Alton Logon when he had evidence that the gun that killed the guard was found where Miller lived? Was that ever presented in court or did the prosecutor cover that up? The prosecutor knew he convicted an innocent man but all he cared about was putting any man behind bars. Another notch in his win category. Did he party that night with his colleagues after the wrongful conviction of an innocent man?

Our justice system really sucks and needs reforms. This is an outrage that for 26 years they were bound by this attorney-client privilege. We must find a way for attorney’s to tell if they know a man is innocent without violating this privilege.

As for Alton Logan why should he be put through another trial for a crime we know he did not do. Wasn’t 26 years behind bars enough for the peoples revenge?

Should the people of Illinois have to pay for another trial of an innocent man? Why doesn’t Governor Rod Blagojevich intervene and free Alton Logan and clear his name.

I know why. This Governor is only thinking how much will it cost the state in reparations to Logan and I say plenty Governor write the damn check.

Shame on the state of Illinois for convicting an innocent man. I wonder what the jurors think of their work now?

Contact the Governor

Office of the Governor
207 State House
Springfield, IL 62706
Phone: 217-782-0244 or 312-814-2121
TTY: 888-261-3336
Governor's Online Contact Form
Governor's Website
direct link http://www.illinois.gov/helpdesk/contact.cfm

Contact the Lt. Governor

Springfield
Office of Lt. Governor
214 State House
Springfield, IL 62706
Phone: 217-782-7884
Fax: 217-524-6262

Man who claims innocence freed after 26 years

Attorneys say their client, now dead, committed murder

CHICAGO - A man who spent 26 years in prison was freed on bond Friday while he awaits a new trial for a murder another inmate confessed to his lawyers.

Alton Logan’s family said they took up a collection in the lobby of the Cook County Criminal Courthouse and quickly came up with the $1,000 needed for his release.

A tearful Logan said he felt great leaving the courthouse surrounded by friends and family.

Two attorneys recently revealed that their former client, Andrew Wilson, admitted to committing the crime that Logan was convicted of but that attorney-client privilege kept them from coming forward.

Logan did not kill a security guard in a McDonald's restaurant in January 1982, the two lawyers said.

For nearly 26 years, they said, they kept a sealed affidavit of their client's confession to the crime in a locked box.

The attorneys came forward in January after Wilson died.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24207440/

A killer's 26-year-old secret Lawyers hope dead man's confession will clear prisoner serving life

CHICAGO - For nearly 26 years, the affidavit was sealed in an envelope and stored in a locked box, tucked away with the lawyer's passport and will. Sometimes he stashed the box in his bedroom closet, other times under his bed.

It stayed there — year after year, decade after decade.

Then, about two years ago, Dale Coventry, the box's owner, got a call from his former colleague, W. Jamie Kunz. Both were once public defenders. They hadn't talked in a decade.

"We're both getting on in years," Kunz said. "We ought to do something with that affidavit to make sure it's not wasted in case we both leave this good Earth."

Coventry assured him it was in a safe place. He found it in the fireproof metal box, but didn't read it. He didn't need to. He was reminded of the case every time he heard that a wronged prisoner had been freed.

In January, Kunz called again. This time, he had news: A man both lawyers had represented long ago in the murder of two police officers, Andrew Wilson, had died in prison.

Kunz asked Coventry to get the affidavit.

"It's in a sealed envelope," Coventry said.

"Open it," Kunz said, impatiently.

And so, Coventry began reading aloud the five-line declaration the lawyers had written more than a quarter-century before:

An innocent man was behind bars. His name was Alton Logan. He did not kill a security guard in a McDonald's restaurant in January 1982.

"In fact, another person was responsible," the document said.

The secret's out

They knew, because Andrew Wilson told them: He did it.

But that was the catch.

Lawyer-client privilege is not complete; most states allow attorneys to reveal confidences to prevent a death, serious bodily harm or criminal fraud. But this case didn't offer that kind of exception.

So when Wilson told his lawyers that he, and not Logan, had killed the guard, they felt powerless — aware of information that could free a man they believed to be innocent, but unable to do anything with that knowledge. And for decades, they said nothing.

As they recall, Wilson — who was facing charges in the February 1982 murders of police officers William Fahey and Richard O'Brien — was even a bit gleeful about the McDonald's shooting. To Kunz, he seemed like a child who had been caught doing something naughty.

"I was surprised at how unabashed he was in telling us," he says. "There was no sense of unease or embarrassment. ... He smiled and kind of giggled. He hugged himself, and said, 'Yeah, it was me.'"

Logan already had been charged with the McDonald's shooting, which left one guard dead and another injured. Another man, Edgar Hope, also was arrested, and assigned a public defender, Marc Miller.

Miller says he was stunned when his client announced he didn't know Logan and had never seen him before their arrests. According to Miller, Hope was persistent: "You need to tell his attorney he represents an innocent man."

Hope went a step further, Miller says: He told him Wilson was his right-hand man — "the guy who guards my back" — and urged the lawyer to confirm that with his street friends. He did.

An unapologetic confession

Miller says he eventually did tell Logan's lawyer his client was innocent, but offered no details.

First, though, he approached Kunz, his fellow public defender and former partner.

"You think your life's difficult now?" Miller recalls telling Kunz. "My understanding is that your client Andrew Wilson is the shooter in the McDonald's murder."

Coventry and Kunz brought Wilson to the jail law library and this, they say, was when they confronted him and he made his unapologetic confession. They didn't press for details. "None of us had any doubt," Coventry says.

And, he adds, it wasn't just Wilson's word. Firearms tests, according to court records, linked a shotgun shell found at McDonald's with a weapon that police found at the beauty parlor where Andrew Wilson lived. The slain police officers' guns also were discovered there.

Now the lawyers had two big worries: Another killing might be tied to their client, and "an innocent man had been charged with his murder and was very likely ... to get the death penalty," Kunz says.

But bound by legal ethics, they kept quiet.

Instead, they wrote down what they'd been told. If the situation ever arose where when they could help Logan, there would be a record — no one could say they had just made it up. They say they didn't name Wilson, fearing someone would hear about the document and subpoena it. They didn't even make a copy.

Signed and sealed

But on March 17, 1982, Kunz, Coventry and Miller signed the notarized affidavit: "I have obtained information through privileged sources that a man named Alton Logan ... who was charged with the fatal shooting of Lloyd Wickliffe ... is in fact not responsible for that shooting ... "

Knowing the affidavit had to be secret, Wilson's lawyers looked for ways to help Logan without hurting their client. They consulted with legal scholars, ethics commissions, the bar association.

Kunz says he mentioned the case dozens of times over the years to lawyers, never divulging names but explaining that he knew a guy serving a life sentence for a crime committed by one of his clients.

There's nothing you can do, he was told.

Coventry had another idea. He figured Wilson probably would be executed for the police killings, so he visited him in prison and posed a question: Can I reveal what you told me, the lawyer asked, after your death?

"I managed to say it without being obnoxious," Coventry says. "He wasn't stupid. He understood exactly what I was asking. He knew he was going to get the death penalty and he agreed."

Coventry says he asked Wilson the same question years later — and got the same answer.

But ultimately, Wilson was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

His death penalty was reversed after he claimed Chicago police had electrically shocked, beaten and burned him with a radiator to secure his confession. Decades later, a special prosecutor's report concluded police had tortured dozens of suspects over two decades.

Representing an innocent man

Logan's case was working its way through the courts, too. During the first of two trials in which he was convicted, Coventry walked in to hear part of the death penalty phase. "It's pretty creepy watching people deciding if they're going to kill an innocent man," he says.

The lawyers had a plan if it came to that: They would appeal to the governor to stop the execution. But with a life sentence, they remained silent.

Still, there were whispers. When Logan changed lawyers before his second trial, Miller says the new lawyer approached him. He had heard that Miller knew something more.

Please, he asked, can you help?

Miller says he told him he could do nothing for him. But he says he repeated the words he had uttered to Logan's first lawyer, more than a decade earlier:

"You represent an innocent man."

In prison, Logan heard the news: First, Wilson had died. Second, there was an affidavit in his case.

"I said finally, somebody has come (forward) and told the truth," Logan says. "I've been saying this for the past 26 years: It wasn't me."

In January, the two lawyers, with a judge's permission, revealed their secret in court.

Two months later, Marc Miller testified about his client's declaration of Logan's innocence.

But an affidavit and sworn testimony do not guarantee freedom — or prove innocence.

And Logan knows that. After spending almost half his 54 years as an inmate, this slight man with a fringe of gray beard, stooped shoulders and weary eyes seems resigned to the reality that his fate is beyond his control.

"I have to accept whatever comes down," he says, sitting in a visitor's room at the Statesville Correctional Center in Joliet.

He insists he's not angry with Hope — the man who first said he was innocent — or even Wilson. He says he once approached Wilson in prison and asked him to "come clean. Tell the truth." Wilson just smiled and kept walking.

Nor is Logan angry with the lawyers who kept the secret. But he wonders if there wasn't some way they could have done more.

"What I can't understand is you know the truth, you held the truth and you know the consequences of that not coming forward?" he says of the lawyers. "Is (a) job more important than an individual's life?"

Defending their client

The lawyers say it was about their client — Wilson — not about their jobs, and they maintain that the prosecutors and police are at fault.

Kunz says he knows some people might find his actions outrageous. His obligation, though, was to Wilson.

"If I had ratted him out ... then I could feel guilty, then I could not live with myself," he says. "I'm anguished and always have been over the sad injustice of Alton Logan's conviction. Should I do the right thing by Alton Logan and put my client's neck in the noose or not? It's clear where my responsibility lies and my responsibility lies with my client."

On April 18, Logan will be in court as his lawyer, Harold Winston, pushes for a new trial. Along with the affidavit, Winston has accumulated new evidence, including an eyewitness who says Logan wasn't at McDonald's and a letter from an inmate who claims Wilson signed a statement while in prison implicating himself in the murder — and clearing Logan.

But obstacles remain

Logan can't depend on Hope. According to his attorney, Hope probably will exercise his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

And he'll have to deal with eyewitnesses. His lawyer says one person changed her story in the two trials, but a second, the security guard injured in the shooting, did not. A third, who has since died, had acknowledged that Wilson and Logan looked alike.

Logan prefers not to look too far ahead or think too far back. He refuses to dwell on missed opportunities — marriage, children, job. "You cannot live with the situation I'm in and say, 'What if?'"

He says if he is released, he'll move to Oregon to be with his brother. "After spending 26 years in this hellhole, I want to get as far away from here as I possibly can," he says.

Last month, the Chicago Sun-Times, in an editorial, urged the attorney general or governor to release Logan, noting his claims of innocence "ring achingly true." The state has declined comment on the case.

No looking back

Logan keeps a copy of the 26-year-old affidavit in his cell. Every now and then, he reads the single paragraph, trying to divine what the lawyers were thinking and if this piece of paper will help unlock the prison doors.

He's not banking on it.

"I'm not sold on it," he says. "The only time I'll be sold is when they tell me I can go."

For now, though, Logan waits. The heavy prison doors clank behind him as he walks down the corridor to his cell. He does not look back.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24083675/

Email from Public Campaign Action Fund Clean Money Clean Elections

Just Call Us Pony Express

There’s one way to make sure a letter doesn’t get lost in the mail: deliver it in person. That’s what we did with the letter we asked you to sign last week asking Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to take a position on reforming our campaign finance system, and to pledge his support for full public financing of congressional campaigns and the Presidential race. McCain has long supported Clean Elections at the state level, including in his home state of Arizona, but his support for a similar system at the federal level has faltered as he’s pursued the White House.

We decided to deliver the letter with more than 9,000 signatures to McCain at a Washington, DC fundraiser for the Senator by 35 high-powered lobbyists. The $1,000 a plate fundraiser was held at the exclusive Willard Hotel, just steps from the White House. We thought this was the perfect place and time to try and deliver the letter to McCain. We were successful in placing the letter and stack of signatures in the hands of a staff member on McCain’s campaign. See pictures from the event here, and video of the letter delivery here. You can even take a survey on where you think the letter and signatures eventually ended up.

We are still awaiting a response from Sen. McCain.

We called it!

Nine in 10 Americans give the economy a negative rating. From the halls of Congress to board rooms on Wall Street, people have been trying to place the blame for the downturn in the economy. The late 1990s was a boom for the financial industry, with legislation passing left and right deregulating the industry. As Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) told the New York Times, “we thought we didn’t need regulation.”

Well, back in 1999, Public Campaign staffers Nancy Watzman and Micah Sifry knew what was happening. In an issue of the former Public Campaign newsletter, “Ouch,” Watzman and Sifry highlighted the $175 million the industry had donated to members of Congress as they gutted financial industry regulation. They said, “Now, despite promises otherwise, the U.S. Treasury and the taxpayers will be in the position of bailing out speculators in the event that their risky plays in the securities business threaten the solvency of the soon-to-be-formed mega-banks.”

A decade later, the financial industry, members of Congress, and American consumers are feeling the consequences of deregulation and the influence of campaign contributions.

Action Week in Review

Clean Elections supporters from Michigan to California came out strong this past week to get the word out about the Fair Elections Now Act in the Senate. The second annual Fair Elections Action Week involved hundreds of activists from around the country. Actions included student rallies, lectures and film screenings at the University of San Diego, Colgate College, University of Virginia, Hamilton College and many others (hats off to Democracy Matters for their hard work!).

The Michigan Campaign Finance Network submitted op-eds to papers around the state. Clean Elections supporters in West Virginia got the word out to the press about the lobbying efforts of their members, who called and wrote to legislators calling for support of the Fair Elections Now Act.

The week is wrapping up, and we’re pleased by its success and reach. But that doesn’t mean you can’t keep up efforts to get the word out about the Fair Elections Now Act. Call your legislators, write a letter to your paper, or ask your friends to sign on as citizen co-sponsors of the bill!

Hold Up in Hawaii

Years of organizing by Voter-Owned Hawaii yielded exciting developments earlier this year when the county council on the Big Island of Hawaii moved to consider a pilot full public financing program for their elections. Unfortunately, recent maneuvers on behalf of state Senators, including an attempt to tie the adoption of a program to an increase in contribution limits, spelled trouble for passing the program into law.

Opponents of Clean Elections are busy parroting the usual talking points, but Clean Elections advocates are firing back. Take a look at this letter from Todd Lange in Arizona on the merits of Clean Elections programs. Hawaii activists have faced setback before and lived to fight another day.

Goin’ To The Chapel...Hill

This week the town council of Chapel Hill, North Carolina begins discussions about the possible full public financing of elections program they will implement for town council elections. A longtime project of Council Member Mark Kleinschmidt, the program was given the go-ahead from the North Carolina Assembly this year and may pave the way for other towns and municipalities in the state to pursue similar systems.

Thanks to the ongoing work of Democracy North Carolina, the state pioneered a Clean Elections modeled program for judicial races. And in 2007, they helped pass a pilot program that will give candidates for three of the nine Council of State seats the opportunity to run with a public grant as well.

In the Paid for By...Blog

Signed, Sealed, Delivered: What do you get for the lobbyist who has everything?

Big Waste: My company donated to Congress and all I got was this nuclear waste.

Big Money Still, Well, Big: Small donors still, well, small.

In the Blog

Signed, Sealed, Delivered
Only $5k for a post office?

The nuclear option?
Money from nuclear interests...

Big Donors Still Big
Small donors still minor player.

Thanks for reading Voter File. If you have comments you’d like to share with us, please click here.

Dear

Senate Majority Harry Reid needs to hear from you now.

Republican senators and conservative activists are applying intense pressure on Senator Reid to move the president's appellate-level judicial nominees who havenâ€™t been confirmed. Senator Reid needs to resist that pressure. Under the long-standing tradition known as the "Thurmond Rule," controversial judicial nominees should not be brought up for consideration this close to a presidential election.

Call Senator Reid now and tell him to do everything he can to block the most dangerous Bush judicial nominees.

Senator Reid: (202) 244-3542

The Republicans are ratcheting up the pressure on judicial nominations by threatening to hold the majority's legislative agenda hostage. But controversial appeals court nominations should not be used as bargaining chips to pass legislation. If confirmed, nominees would receive lifetime appointments, and in many cases, would be in positions to do harm to the law and Americans' constitutional rights for decades.

Here are some of the nominees of most concern:

Peter Keisler, a co-founder of the Federalist Society and former clerk to rejected Reagan Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, who has been nominated to fill a seat on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals -- arguably the second most powerful court in the land behind the Supreme Court. When President Clinton tried to fill this very seat, Republicans blocked his nominee saying the court's caseload was too small to fill the vacancy. Well its caseload is even smaller now!

Robert Conrad (nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit), who has a disturbing record on reproductive freedom, the environment and workers' rights, and has criticized the notion of safe sex as a way to avoid contracting AIDS.

Steve Matthews (also nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit), who served for years on the board of the Landmark Legal Foundation, a group which in 2007 nominated Rush Limbaugh for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Tell Senator Reid to keep Americans' fundamental rights off the bargaining table.

Senator Reid: (202) 244-3542

You can report back on your call using our online call report form at http://pfaw.kintera.org/CallReport.

After you take action by calling, if you have not already, please make sure you sign our petition to the Democratic leadership urging them to halt consideration of all controversial nominees. And pass the petition on to your friends. More than 20,000 activists have already signed and this is very useful in lobbying meetings as evidence that there is grassroots support for invoking the Thurmond Rule.

Petition: http://www.pfaw.org/go/StopBadJudges

Thank you.

-- Your Allies at People For the American Way

Towards Shared Recovery

People and Communities are Hurting.
How Helping Them is Not Only Right --
It's the Best Way to Boost the Economy

Webinar: Friday, April 25 at 3:00 p.m. eastern time (noon Pacific time) Click here to register: www.bostonconferencing.com/chn

Please join us to learn about proposals before Congress to respond to the recession, and about a growing effort by advocates to support the most effective forms of aid: extending unemployment benefits, help with the high cost of food and home energy, funds to prevent cuts to Medicaid, child support, and other services, and school repair. (For more information, see Towards Shared Recovery at http://www.chn.org/pdf/2008/stimulus4142008.pdf)

This 60-minute webinar will feature a Member of Congress (details coming soon), Jared Bernstein, Director of the Living Standards program at the Economic Policy Institute, a prominent, engaging, jargon-free economist, and Deborah Weinstein, Executive Director of the Coalition on Human Needs, to explain how putting more money in the hands of people and communities who need it is the best way to reverse the recession, as well as one of the best prospects this year for federal help to those in need. Ellen Teller of the Food Research and Action Center will moderate. It's a great way to get answers to your questions about the recession and to learn about easy steps to take to make sure Congress knows this assistance is urgently needed.

Sign up today - and forward this message to let others know. It's free, thanks to the generous support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The webinar and related materials will be available on the Coalition on Human Needs' website after the live presentation. Please sign up to be sure you get the links to all the information we will make available.

This webinar is sponsored by the Coalition on Human Needs in partnership with: ACORN; AFSCME; American Friends Service Committee; Center for Law and Social Policy; Community Action Partnership; Emergency Campaign for America's Priorities; Food Research and Action Center; Jewish Council for Public Affairs; National Association for State Community Services Program; National Association of Social Workers; National Head Start Association; National Research Center for Women & Families; National WIC Association; National Women's Law Center; NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby; OMB Watch; Public Education Network; RESULTS; SEIU; USAction; Voices for America's Children; Wider Opportunities for Women; YWCA USA.

Also from NWLC

18 percent of women in the United States are without health insurance.

Nearly 70 percent of adult Medicaid beneficiaries are women.

One in four women say that they are unable to pay their medical bills.

When you look at the facts about women and health care, it's clear - there is work to be done. Women must be active and vocal advocates in this fight. To that end, the National Women's Law Center has launched Reform Matters: Making Real Progress for Women and Health Care to give women's advocates the information, tools, and resources they need to make a difference.

Let’s make affordable, high quality health care a reality for women:

Learn the basics of comprehensive, affordable health reform through our Reform Matters Toolkit.

Connect with health policy experts and activists in a monthly conference call series to discuss health reform at the local, state, and national levels.

Collaborate with NWLC for technical support and general assistance on policy proposals and research questions.

Sincerely,

Judy Waxman
Vice President for Health and Reproductive Rights
National Women's Law Center

From Code Pink

We are in love with our planet. One of the reasons we work for peace is to nurture our entire planet; we want our beautiful Mother Earth to flourish. CODEPINK is one of the few groups that connect war and the environment. Pink and green are gorgeous together, don't you think? As natural as a stem and a flower.

War is definitely not green. It is, in fact, quite the opposite. The U.S. military is the single largest consumer of oil in the world and the world's larger polluter, generating 750,000 tons of toxic waste annually. If we stop funding the war for oil in Iraq, our tax dollars can go toward developing clean, green sources of energy that will help us build a healthy, peaceful planet.

We like to think of CODEPINK as a perennial garden; we plant seeds of love and peace that flower throughout the year--often in surprising places (did you see the parody of CODEPINK on Saturday Night Live this weekend?) Help the CODEPINK garden grow. You can spread seeds of peace by signing our War is Not Green petition and sending it along to five friends. The more people who join us, the more we can work for the Earth.

It is deeply inspiring to see what we can create when we come together. We witnessed a glorious blossoming in New Orleans, where we just planted a beautiful community garden in the still devastated Lower Ninth Ward. Click here to see pictures of the garden and photos from the phenomenal tribute to the women of New Orleans organized by V-Day--the campaign to end violence against women and girls. It was a true honor to bring love and beauty and hope to a community so desperately in need of healing.

You can plant seeds of peace in your own community by downloading our War is Not Green petition and flyer and bringing them to your local Earth Day celebrations; you can also put our War is Not Green sign in your window. We need to remind our friends and neighbors how war hurts the Earth as well as her citizens. We need to remind them that we can all stand up and nurture both peace and the environment.

Thank you for helping us spread seeds of peace throughout the world!

With love (and love for our amazing Mother Earth),
Alicia, Dana, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Jodie, Liz, Medea, Nancy, Rae, and Tighe

P.S.

Gather even more seeds of peace at our Summer of Hope in DC! We will be hosting weekly activist training camps in June and July at the CODEPINK house; you and other passionate, engaged women will learn powerful and creative activism tools, and will then bring your new knowledge straight to the halls of Congress! To join us, click here.

Thanks to those who resisted as the filed their taxes this week and did not BUY BUSH'S WAR.

Sign our online
War is Not Green petition

Help CODEPINK grow by sending the
petition to five friends

Plant seeds of peace in your own community by downloading our War is Not Green petition & flyer and bringing them to your local Earth Day celebrations

You can also put our War is Not Green sign in your window

I watched this debate and will continue my boycott of ABC and all their sponsors. I don’t if they didn’t sponsor this debate they advertise on ABC that’s all I need to know.

ABC Sponsor List. These sponsors need to know we mean busiess when it comes to our vote and we will vote with our dollars!

If you know of other sponsors please add it to the comment section, Thank You.

Lunesta
1 800 Lunesta

Lipitor
1 888 Lipitor

Vytorin
1 877 Vytorin

Good Neighbor Phamacy
1 888 gnpstor

Lenders
The Lending Tree
1 800 555 tree

Carpet

Empire Carpet
800 588 2300

A few sponsors with websites

www.ficherhomes.com

www.edwardjones.com

Aloha Airlines
http://www.alohaairlines.com/
Mailing Address:
Aloha Airlines Customer Relations
P.O. Box 30028
Honolulu, Hawaii 96820
Telephone support: 888-771-2855 (or) 808-539-5994
Fax support: 808-539-5999

Sears
http://www.sears.com

Mailing:
Sears National Customer Relations
3333 Beverly Road
Hoffman Estates, IL 60179
Customer Service #: 1-800-349-4358

Mr. Clean and Swiffer
Divisions of Home Made Simple
Email Form

Charles Schwab
http://www.schwab.com/
866-855-9102
Charles Schwab Bank, N.A.
5190 Neil Road, Suite 100
Reno, NV 89502-8532

Kellogg's
Email Page
Consumer Affairs Number: 800-962-1413

Chase Rewards Card
Email Page
Phone: 1-800-432-3117

AAA

Go to http://www.aaa.com and enter your zipcode to find your state/local numbers

Bounty
A division of Proctor & Gamble
Email page

Symantec
World HQ (Cupertino, CA) #: 1-408-517-8000

Subway
http://www.subway.com

Subway Franchise Headquarters
325 Bic Drive
Milford, CT 06460 USA
Tel.(203) 877-4281 / (800) 888-4848
Customer Service Form

Mitshubishi
http://www.mitsubishicars.com/...
1-888-MITSU2005
1-866-876-3018

T-Mobile
http://www.t-mobile.com/
1-800-937-8997

Mazda
http://www.mazdausa.com

1-800-222-5500

CitiGroup
http://www.citigroup.com/
399 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10043
U.S.A.
800-285-3000

Claritin
http://www.claritin.com
1-800-CLARITIN
Email Form

Jell-O
Product of Kraft Foods
Email form
Choose your age and "General Comment about Kraft" as the "subject"

Home Depot
http://www.homedepot.com
1-800-553-3199

Red Lobster
http://www.redlobster.com
Corporate HQ:
5900 Lake Ellenor Drive
Orlando, FL 32809
(407) 245-4000

Hyundai Motor America
http://www.hyundaiusa.com
800-633-5151
HQ: 714-965-3000

CashCall
A Division of First Bank & Trust
1-877-289-0685
Customer Service: 1-877-525-2274

Comcast
http://www.comcast.com
1-800-COMCAST
Email form

Aflac
http://www.aflac.com/...
Media Relations: 1-706-243-8004
Customer Service: 1-800-992-3522
Admin Service: 1-877-353-9487

Nissan
http://www.nissanusa.com
(800) NISSAN-1 (or 800-647-7261)
Email form - http://www.nissanusa.com/... (start with the topic "general question")

Carl's Junior
(877) 799-7827
Email form

Dear MoveOn member,

If you missed the Democratic presidential debate on ABC last night, Editor & Publisher called it "perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years."¹ (Click below to see video excerpts.)

Moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson spent the first 50 minutes obsessed with distractions that only political insiders care about—verbal gaffes, polling numbers, the stale Rev. Wright story, and the old-news Bosnia story. And, channeling Karl Rove, they directed a video question to Barack Obama asking if he loves the American flag or not. Seriously.

Enough is enough. The public needs the media to stop hurting the national dialogue in this important election year. Can you sign the petition to ABC and other media outlets and pass it on to friends who are also fed up? Click here for our must-see video with excerpts from last night—and to sign the petition:

http://pol.moveon.org/enoughdistractions/

The petition says: "Debate moderators abuse the public trust every time they ask trivial questions about gaffes and 'gotchas' that only political insiders care about. Enough with the distractions—ABC and other networks must focus on issues that affect people's daily lives."

We'll deliver petition signatures to ABC and the networks hosting future debates. And if we reach 100,000 signatures, we'll reprint the petition in an ad campaign targeting the networks on this issue.

ABC's natural inclination will be to ignore their critics, so we need to go above and beyond to show them that the public is truly outraged. So, please, think about some friends who may be fed up with 2008 media coverage and forward them this email. If thousands of us do that, it'll make a huge difference.

The reaction to last night's debate has been very consistent:

"A stinker, an absolute car crash—thanks to the host network ABC...[It] ran the gamut from banal to inane. At the end of the debate members of the crowd appeared to be booing moderator Charlie Gibson."—The Guardian's Richard Adams²

"Halfway through the debate, not a single question on any policy issue had been asked."—OpenLeft.com's Chris Bowers³

"For the first 52 minutes...Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with."—Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales.⁴

"We've revisited bitter. We've gone back to Bosnia. We've dragged Rev. Wright back up onto the podium. We've mis-spent this debate by allowing Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos to ask questions that skirt what in my mind is what we need to know now."—Philadelphia Inquirer's Daniel Rubin⁵

Shame on ABC for letting voters down with last night's abysmal debate. Bad debates aren't just painful to watch—they actually hurt the country by distracting voters and politicians away from big issues of the day.

Please send a message to ABC and other media outlets that we need our national dialogue to focus on the real issues facing Americans. Click here to sign the petition:

http://pol.moveon.org/enoughdistractions/

Thanks for all you do.

–Adam G., Patrick, Anna, Peter, Justin, and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Thursday, April 17th, 2008

Sources:

1. "Clinton-Obama Debate: ABC Decides Top Issues Facing Americans Are Gaffes, Flag Pins and '60s Radicals," Editor & Publisher, April 16, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3580&id=12458-4807576-YV5GdR&t=6

2. "Worst. Debate. Ever." The Guardian blog, April 16, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3582&id=12458-4807576-YV5GdR&t=7

3. "Philadelphia Debate Thread," Chris Bowers, OpenLeft.com, April 16, 2008
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5195

4. "In Pa. Debate, The Clear Loser Is ABC," Washington Post, April 17, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3581&id=12458-4807576-YV5GdR&t=8

5. "The Debate Debacle," The Philadelphia Inquirer blog, April 16, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3583&id=12458-4807576-YV5GdR&t=9

Support our member-driven organization: MoveOn.org Political Action is entirely funded by our 3.2 million members. We have no corporate contributors, no foundation grants, no money from unions. Our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. If you'd like to support our work, you can give now at:

http://political.moveon.org/donate/email.html?id=12458-4807576-YV5GdR&t=10

Now I’m going out and planting my free trees I received from the Arbor Day Foundation for my $15.00 membership. I got the flowering trees so maybe I can save a few bees.

http://www.arborday.org/index.cfm

Membership direct link http://www.arborday.org/shopping/memberships/memberships.cfm?trackingid=528

Oh one last action alert for you. As many of you know Randi Rhodes has left Air America and is now with NovaM.

Well I’m on dial up and NovaM’s founders club doesn’t really have anything I can use and I’m sure some of you are like me. But we can show our support of progressive radio by making purchases from their sponsors.

Well Mother’s Day people is just 3 weeks away sooo might I suggest a gift for mom or the mother of your children?

I bought the 6 pack bar soap for my Mom it was 48. bucks but WAIT if you use the NovaM in the coupon code section you save 20% thats almost 10 buck savings and shipping was 4 bucks so all together it was only 42 dollars!

Mom will love it and Granny too cuz we all know old people smell funny. That inclueds me.

https://www.skinnyskinnysoaps.com/

Direct link to the 6 bar gift set.

http://www.skinnyskinnysoaps.com/products/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=24